Death's Sweetest Kiss

On Break

2011-10-16T14:20:00.002-04:00

It's been over a year since my last post on this recording of my pod life. I don't regret it either. This past year saw me slowly losing my interest in undocking. And then, when the glorious CCP gave us our own quarters, and the ability to leave the pod... I guess I lost interest for some time in ever getting back in it. (not to mention my "brain" nearly melted when trying to explore the oh-so-wonderful CQ) But perhaps I should mention that CQ was really just the final drop for me on a growing pile of negative experiences.

I guess it started when the corp I was with chose to join a low-sec alliance. Not that it was a bad thing but at that time I was really just in the mood to sit comfy in high sec for awhile. Slowly the corp member base began vanishing from our high sec system and thus things started to get a lot quieter. So I chose to move on.

I ended up creating a corp of my own. Really just because I didn't want to be in the default corporation. But with my associates, the corporation Hellhound Productions was given birth. It was a temporary thing, something to make tracking my various associates efforts a little more effortless for me. It was a good endeavor but not really one I had any intention of growing. The problem is that I am a bit of a social bug. So after awhile, the need for a more fulfilling existence grew beyond my ability to contain it. Thus, I sought company with a corporation I felt I could mesh well with. Deep in nullsec with the Mostly Harmless alliance.

Things were going alright at first. However, it was nothing like life with SSE and Sys-K. The leadership for the corp/alliance was a bit more fragmented. I had a more difficult time comprehending what was even going on. What really didn't help was that the corp and alliance relied heavily upon a forum board for getting news out. A forum board that was consistently screwed up to the point of where I could never even get on it, and thus had no idea when ops and other important info was being posted. So even though I was living where I wanted to be, I still felt a bit detached. It was also a bit of a pain in that given I hadn't acquired a carrier yet, I was moving my gear ship by ship through some rather turbulent areas. Moving stuff this way can be excruciatingly taxing.

And then a real bomb dropped. Without much notice, the corporation I was in was booted from the alliance. Everyone was so caught up getting their own shit out, I was pretty much stranded as my calls for assistance went unanswered. So I did the only thing I could think to do. I left the corp and sought employment with another corporation in MH. By then I'd decided I just wanted out and so my only real reason for joining a MH corp was to get my gear out. Unfortunately, that's when shit REALLY hit the fan for all of MH. My routes out were suddenly under constant attack from invading forces, jump bridges where being decimated and often JB passwords would be changed (and of course i still had no access to the forums so I couldn't retrieve the new ones).

To top it off, stations where I still had ships and gear stashed were quickly falling into enemy hands and thus cutting me off from retrieving them. So here I find myself, sitting in one of those stations that is now an enemy controlled with most of my gear spread around me, deep in enemy territory. I guess all I can do now is sell my stuff in a sudo-fire sale, hoping to get a decent amount, and then clone jump to empire. That is...whenever i reactive my pilot's license.

OMG!! I'm an Industrialist!! :O

2010-07-12T16:06:00.001-04:00

I’ve gotten lazy in writing. (as if that’s not evident) It’s not entirely for lack of interest or sitting in my pod, but simply lack of anything really worth writing about. I’m certainly no teacher and most of what I’ve been doing as of late can be found and learned in much better formats and guides than I could ever detail.

So what have I been up to?

Lately, I’ve been doing things I thought I’d given up entirely when I moved to Nullsec. PVE was never really my thing. Of course, in order to make isk, it was a necessary evil really but ratting in 0.0 is, in my opinion, a lot different than running missions in Empire. First, you’re constantly on the move. Warp into a belt, kill the rats, salvage if you want, then move on to the next. Second, while ratting, you have to maintain constant visual on the intel channels as well as local. A ship designed for ratting is a lot different than one you’d want to get caught in a pvp confrontation with. However, a confrontation is always still a possibility and as such, you should be prepared. So needless to say, it’s not quite as mind numbingly boring as running missions in high sec.

Second, I thought as well that I would never touch another mining laser if my life depended on it. Yeah….umm…that’s changed a bit. Given the current event, Hulkageddon, my exhumer, Universal Stripper, has been packed away nicely in its hanger until it’s safe to once more undock. Yes, it is possible to avoid or elude suicide gankers, but frankly, my associate lacks proper tanking skills at this time and so I prefer for him to just avoid even a possible loss of the ship. Given the cost of the ship, it’s just not worth the risk. So mining will resume when the festivities have passed.

Fortunately, to deal with the time, my associate now has the skills to both manufacture as well as step up his research. I’ve been amassing a fairly large amount of BPOs in the past few months and he’s been working diligently to research the M.E. levels of said BPOs. I’ve also stepped up his trading work. Something I hadn’t really gotten into before was placing buy orders, instead having favored the buy low from sell orders in one region, and sell high in another. Sometimes, for quick isk, I just sold to a high buy order. Other times, if profit was more favorable (though I understand it usually is) I’d put up my own sell orders. This past weekend however, I stepped out on a limb and gave buy orders a try.

I have to say, I’m quite surprised at the results I’m getting! The buy orders I’ve placed have been filling up unexpectedly fast! And given they are less than half the price of what said objects are being sold at in other regions, I can easily see now, in full, how traders can amass so much wealth in what really equates to a rather short time. Currently, I only have about 200mil on the market in buy orders. However, as long as there isn’t a drastic change in the market, I foresee turning around and selling the goods at 500mil, thus netting me an easy profit of 300mil. And as fast as the orders are filling, I could easily take it to Jita, and sell it to buy orders there for an easy 200mil profit or sell it myself and get the full 300mil profit. That just comes down to how much time I’m willing to wait to turn a profit. Frankly, I’ve got nothing but time.

The other option I have, and this might be giving away a little bit about my market focus, is to actually take the products I’m buying and use them to manufacture an end product. That was my original intent really in placing the buy orders, but given the prices I’m acquiring the goods at, I’ve only grown curious to see how well they’d transition into an end product and then sold. Would the profit be better or worse? I’m horrible with making spreadsheets so I’ll have to keep my eye out for one that would suite my purpose and track the financial gain better than I could by mental power alone.

In the meantime, while my associate has been taking care of business back at home, I’ve drifted over to the nearest Federation Customs station and resumed running level 4 missions. Given my excellent standings with Federation Customs I’d gained while stationed in Solitude, the agent was really quite elated to work with me. So much so that she gave me a mission titled Angel Extravaganza right from the start. I’ve heard this to be one of the better missions so I really was somewhat excited by my good fortune. I still haven’t given up on running missions to gain standings with the R&D level 4 agents, but found myself in need of earning some more isk and quick.

Reason? One of the ships I’ve been wanting to get my associate was an Orca, a giant industrial command ship. It would make a great addition to his growing fleet of industrial ships. At present, he has all the skills to fly it, minus the actual industrial command skill, and can fit it fairly decently. However, I just haven’t had the spare funds lately to invest in what is a fairly expensive ship at current market prices. As luck would have it though, it seems a corp mate has been churning out Orcas about once per week and offered to sell me one at a greatly reduced price under market. It’s an offer that is just too good to pass up. I could have my associate skill up some more to build one himself, but I’d really like to get my hands on one for him sooner than that would take, not to mention how it would deviate from my current objectives.

Speaking of current objectives. Here is how he stands currently:
1. Production lines operational….operational yes, producing not yet.
2. Trade investments escalated….check.
3. Research wing operational….check

Things still needing work (in no particular order):
1. PI (Planetary Interaction) installations set up and operational. (have the skills trained, just haven’t implemented them yet)
2. R&D agents accessed and researching (Working on that myself..sort of..and will then piggyback his standings up to par)
3. Skills to efficiently reprocess mission loot drops.
4. Skills to efficiently refine ore into minerals.
5. Standings with the sovereign station corporation to have a location in close proximity of where the associate mines, whose refinery services he can then utilize at minimum expense. (Not a rushed necessity as other stations are close enough to just haul the ore to in the freighter)

I know this seems like I’m really stretching my associate’s skills out to fully accomplish all this, but that is the overall objective. Eventually, I intend to have him as the ultimate industrialist, starting from the base up, but able to work in any aspect, to some degree of efficiency, within the industrial side of New Eden. And so far, at roughly 11 million skillpoints, he’s doing quite well. It will still be awhile before he could even consider T2 production…but I’m thinking that by next year, he will have all the things listed above covered to an above average level and then be able to start working towards that. Oh, and hopefully by that time, I’ll have both a dreadnought AND a carrier and he’ll own and fly his own Rorqual, along with the Providence freighter and the Orca. Now that would make a pretty nifty personal capital fleet and would thus make my associate and me a very useful and beneficial member to have on any corporate roster. Only missing capital ship would be a jump freighter but um….yeah. At around 4 to 5 billion, that’s a good ways down the road. (oh, and this does NOT include Super Capitals, but frankly, I have no desire to ever fly them)

The Right Corp

2010-06-21T08:25:00.003-04:00

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

2010-06-10T23:12:00.006-04:00

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...

2010-06-09T16:42:00.000-04:00

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

2010-06-07T16:25:00.004-04:00

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?

Blog Banter: Captain Kirk Hates Eve

2010-04-21T08:54:00.008-04:00

(I was going to hold off on posting this till closer to the due date. However, seeing some of the posts already being made, I’ve chosen to throw it out there now for your reading pleasure so as not to seem like I’m stealing from anyone else!)

Welcome to another installment of the EVE Blog Banter, a recurring EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux, which invites EVE bloggers to address a common topic for a period of one week. Posts run the gamut: short, long, humorous, serious, and everywhere in between, but always fun to read! This month's banter comes to us from CrazyKinux himself, who asks: "What could CCP Games do to attract and maintain a higher percentage of women to the game. Will Incarna do the trick? Can anything else be done in the mean time? Can we the players do our part to share the game we love with our counterparts, with our sisters or daughters, with the Ladies in our lives? What could be added to the game to make it more attractive to them? Should anything be changed? Is the game at fault, or its player base to blame?"

For a sci-fi MMO, Eve certainly stands out at the top. It’s large, it’s versatile, and it offers a wealth of paths for those who like to play the game their way. You can be a pirate. You can be a miner. You can even be the next Emperor Palpatine of Nullsec if you have the drive (and a little Jedi magic wouldn’t hurt). But yet, if you’re the great emperor looking to find your perfect empress….well I hope you’re gay. Like, in the homosexual way gay. Because otherwise you’d better really flash them pretty teeth and hit the gym if you want to compete with the likes of Mr. Roc Weiler, who one would believe already has the edge on the only all-girl pirate corporation I know of, the Hellcats.

But why is this so? How is a man supposed to strive to be the next Captain Kirk of Eve, exploring the depths of space, wooing every gorgeous woman he meets along the way….when there is so few women to be found? What could Eve offer that would finally bring those women out of the shrouded nebulas to once more mingle amongst the stars with the rest of “man” kind. One would think the female population to be just as rare and mysteriously reclusive as those creepy Jovians!

But alas! There may be a cyno beacon in the distance after all and they call it Incarna.

Okay, so no. It’s nothing really ground breaking. Nothing extraordinarily original or highly complex. In fact, it’s probably going to be like 90% of the answers to this challenging question. I mean, I thought about saying that CCP should give you the ability to make more attractive male characters (lord knows how freakishly ugly or hideous most the characters are) but that just wouldn’t leave me much room to expand on so….Incarna it is! Oh, and for those who don’t know, Incarna is an upcoming release that good ole CCP has been haunting us with for sometime now, never really writing on veldspar when that will be. I mean seriously! Maybe if they’d just hire Chreeba? ….. just sayin…

But anyways… sit down for a second and let me tell you why Eve needs this. Why I think CCP needs to push themselves hard to realize this goal. And let me tell you how it relates to the female population.

I don’t want to throw all women into a single box and claim that all women are the same. If that were so, based on current statistics, there would be NO women in Eve. (thank god for cloning else the human race would be doomed!) So obviously there is some key ingredient that Eve is missing. Something that would bring in all those ladies New Eden is currently not seeing….which obviously means I’m excluding all those exotic dancers I know you guys are carrying around in your cargo holds! I believe the missing ingredient is what I’ll call Social Character Immersion; the ability to actually BE your character as you interact with your other pod pilots. The ability to see who it is you’re talking to and actually feel like your talking to them. The ability to dress and fit your character to represent your mood or just who you are.

Men in general are highly competitive. There is always a level of testosterone willing them to beat the other guy. The bigger the gun. The bigger the muscles. The bigger the….err…well anyways… When a woman comes on scene, she generally has to work extra hard to prove herself capable of competing with “the boys”. (Either that or she’s drooled over so much she ends up being flushed right back out with all the saliva…) With the release of Incarna however, it will open up a whole new world of social interaction, one that I feel will appeal to women much more. No more chatting via the chatbox to some soul you are completely disconnected from. Yes, it’s all bits and bytes, but being able to even see a real humanoid representation of a person is much more pleasurable then just staring at some static photo. Its reasons like this why virtual worlds like The Sims and Second Life are so popular amongst the ladies. Virtual social interaction.

But wait! There’s more!

Not only will Incarna give people the chance for virtual living, but from what I understand, there will also be various mini-games to be played. I can’t even begin to tell you how many women I know that have no real interest in long, heavily involved games. Instead, they’d rather sit down, enjoy some casual conversation, and play silly little games to pass the time. It doesn’t need to be anything too in-depth (and that’s not saying women are air-headed) but just garnering enough attention to keep it interesting. Mix that together with the virtual, social interaction and I can easily smell a win situation.

Incarna will bring a new era to Eve. It will be an entirely new galaxy that I believe will finally bring out the ghosts of New Eden…the true sleeper race. The women of Eve.

So have faith Captain Kirk. There may still be hope for you yet!

And here are just the first 10 of the other Blog Banter participants to get you started:

The Ladies of New Eden
Is EVE a man's world?
Sorry, No Pink Spaceships Here Please
EVE Blog Banter: Chicks 'N Ships
Eve Blog Banter: The Girls Who Fly Spaceships
It’s not about fluffy bloody Kittens people!
Space Boobies Are Bad, m'kay?
Special Blog Banter: I Like Girls
Special Edition or making Eve More Casual
I wish my wife played EVE

For a much more complete list (which appears to be growing daily), check out Crazy Kinux's full list of participants and their entries! And even better, get involved yourself!

Empire Grind

2010-03-26T10:30:00.000-04:00

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

2010-03-23T13:55:00.001-04:00

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.

2010-03-22T12:39:00.002-04:00

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

2010-03-16T16:52:00.002-04:00

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??

2010-03-15T13:05:00.003-04:00

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

2010-03-15T13:02:00.001-04:00

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

2010-03-13T09:12:00.007-05:00

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

2010-03-09T11:06:00.001-05:00

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.

The Goonswarm Beehive Crumbles!

2010-01-26T15:02:00.004-05:00

Is Delve cursed? One would certainly think so!

As of this morning, it seems the map of Eve will once again change drastically! Just as it did back when Band of Brothers (BoB) were betrayed and disbanded by one of their own directors. However, unlike BoB, the sudden loss of sovereignty came from an entirely different mechanic failure. The CAOD forums are on fire as IT, my own alliance, and other friends are dancing in utter excitement while the Goonies cry foul.

Basically, Goon leadership failed to pay the sovereignty bills and thus lost their control over a large swath of territory. Since the sudden loss, many of their enemies have swarmed their beehive, taking systems left and right including key strategical systems. With these losses, it could easily mean the end of yet another Delve empire.

Do I think it's fair? Honestly, I think its a lot more fair in comparison to how BoB was disbanded. A company, even in the real world, can lose their assets if a bill isn't paid. If you know your bills are coming due, which they should have given the spam of evemails you get, it would be in your best interest to make sure enough funds are in the necessary wallet to cover the expense. From what I personally gather, too many of the folks who control this said wallet were "on vacation". True or not, doesn't matter. In the case of BoB, they were disbanded by simple click by one person. In both cases, it sucks that what could seem to be a trivial thing could become the downfall for such massive entities. However, is this yet another case of the butterfly effect?

Let us not overlook as well the loss of sovereignty by Wildly Inappropriate. and Legion of xXDeathXx due to the same failure. Personally, I'm not sure Wildly Inappropriate failed. It could very likely have been intentional since they had pretty much already lost their space to invaders anyways. And whatever they still held, was likely to fall soon enough given their loss of morale. As for Legion's sovereign space, it's the drone regions...thus as far as most of the nullsec alliances are concerned, they can keep it.

Either way, this is certainly another day that will go down in the history books of Eve politics!

3 Strikes But Not Out

2010-01-05T12:25:00.001-05:00

So as if it isn’t obvious, it’s been quite some time since I sat down and wrote anything. Not for lack of logging pod time but just from a lack of motivation to write. Frankly, there’s been lots to write about, but I’ve just been lazy.

Let’s start with the fact that I’ve been in 0.0 for….what? 4 months now? Maybe 5? Up until this past month, things had been going great. I had yet to even experience the loss of a clone. This past month of December changed all that drastically. In a single month, I’ve been pod killed 3 times. In fact, they probably all happened within a 2 week time period.

The first took place while in a class 5 wormhole I’d found in our home system earlier that day. I had just finished scanning the system for other entrances/exits and decided I was a tad hungry. So I cloaked up (or so I thought) and stepped away from the controls for perhaps no more than 5 minutes. Next I know, my roommate comes walking from the back hallway and mentions he thinks something’s wrong with my computer, that a bunch of beeps and warning sounds are coming from my room. Immediately, I ran back to the room but of course it was too late. By the time I’d gotten back, I found myself already sitting in a station.

So that was loss number one.

The second loss came from what I admit to being a rather dumb move on my part. We’ve had a serious of attacks on our home systems by a group called DarkSide. It’s not hard to notice just how badly they’re beating on us by all the red on our killboards. To they’re credit, they’re very skilled, using great tactics and frankly, when you’re throwing a home defense fleet together fast, you just don’t have the time to organize a well laid out fleet to counter they’re tactics.

In this particular attack, they had moved into one of our choke points and we’re holding their ground. Unfortunately, most of our alliance was a number of jumps away partaking in what was a really great cruiser competition. Lots of good fights from all the participants. I had visited and watched the event from my Arazu recon ship when I heard the news of the attackers. Figuring I’d at least go and get some eyes on them, I made my way over to the adjoining system. When I reached the gate I knew them to be sitting on the other side of, I found a single lone Dramiel floating around the gate. Watching the intel channels, I took note of people claiming our allies, Stain Empire, was engaging the enemy fleet. For a moment, I contemplated what to do and then made the decision that sealed my fate. Figuring their fleet to be busy on the other side and being engaged would not be able to come through any time too soon, I moved to within my optimal range from the Dramiel. I recall there being a few other alliance mates present at the gate but obviously they bailed. Either way, I quickly decloaked and locked my targeting system onto the ship. I’d fired off no more than one salvo when the gate lit up like a Christmas tree. Apparently the intel had been either too delayed or just wrong period given the number of ships that swarmed me. I’d almost had the Dramiel finished off before their logistics repped him back up. After that, it was just a matter of moments before I saw my second death in 0.0 space.

The first and second deaths sucked, but I was at least able to accept with heavy spirit. The third death I will not accept however. As usual, the pathetic empire wankers, Privateers or some crap like that, have a war dec out on us. This is pretty much an ongoing thing. They really are nothing more than a bunch of pathetic Jita 4-4 station campers that continuously war dec nullsec corporations and get their thrills from killing any of the pilots going to pick up or sell goods in the Jita hub. All the while talking smack on CAOD as if they’re some big time nullsec corp when in reality, they’re the only corporation that pretty much all of nullsec alliances laugh at in unison.

Anyways, I’m making it sound like I’m mad at them for what happened but in truth I’m not at all. I come out of warp at the station. I’m a bit farther from the station than I’d hoped but I wasn’t too concerned and immediately put the engines at full and burned towards the station in my cheap little Atron frig. I already expected to lose the ship and wasn’t at all concerned about that. Sure enough the ship takes like two hits and poof. So now I’m in my pod. The genius at the docking control then sends me the notification that my docking request has been accepted and that I am to be towed into station. At this point, I should be immune to the buzzard pukes and though it lags a bit changing screens, I finally am able to breathe a sigh of relief as the image of space clears and the station sounds fill my ears.

“Wait a minute….something’s not right. This isn’t a Caldari hanger,” I think in exclamation. Sure enough, looking up at the station ID I see the big familiar symbol of my corporation, Silver Snake Enterprise! I’m in such disbelief at this point that I could only sit there for a moment in complete shock. Finally senses come back to me and I quickly check my combat logs. Sure enough, the I see the log files for the hits on my ship, and then the Docking request accepted and then…nothing. So I check my loss mails. Yep. There’s the Atron loss but no mail for the pod loss! This just will not do!

So yeah. I sent a petition to CCP about it. First time that I can recall ever submitting a petition. I’ll be curious to know how quick a response time they have. As I said in my petition, I understand and accept the loss of the ship. But not the loss of the pod given I’d received the docking request accepted long before my pod went pop. Long being like 5 seconds but hey, 5 seconds in a pod…in combat…is a REALLY long time. Hopefully they agree with my cry of foul. If I hadn’t received that docking acceptance, than I would be accepting of the pod loss too. (and the somewhat expensive implants I lost in the process)

In retrospect, yes, it wasn’t a very good idea to go to a station where war targets are sure to be at. Honestly, I didn’t even think about just using my alt, something I banged my head a few times over for afterwards. But that still don’t change my stance on the events.

Either way, I seriously have a lot of making up to do for all these stupid losses….and it seems I’ll soon be getting my chance. Actually, a lot of chances. More to come on that later though. J

No Swiss Cheese Please!

2009-11-11T20:48:00.007-05:00

"No matter how brilliantly an idea is stated, we will not really be moved unless we have already half-thought of it ourselves." ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

So the costs and more details of the new Sovereignty mechanics has been released and let me say, I’m not at all impressed. I actually did have high hopes for D-day but those hopes were quickly snuffed out.

First of all, I’m in agreement with what many others have been saying about the costs. I was fully expecting a tiered expense. Meaning, the more systems you own, the higher the bill gets. Not statically as in ‘this system costs 2 mil. That system costs 2 mil. Oh, and that system costs 2 mil. You want all three? Okay, that’ll be 6 mil then.” Simple, sure, but this is certainly not what I had in mind. CCP’s mindset seems to be if they make it expensive enough and make the upgrades even more expensive, that will control the number of systems people own. I seriously beg to differ.

Now when it comes to talking numbers and values and all that other jazz, I’d be like the kid in gym class who gets picked last every time. I can barely manage my own finances let alone the idea of watching market values and fluctuations and actually comprehending what I’m reading. What I do know is that if it takes farming complexes on a daily basis just to help pay for our systems, then I have to wonder, where is the time to go shoot someone else. Add to that the fact of not having a reason to take their space because that would just mean even more systems to pay for without any real value of actually having them, and it ruins the whole beauty of 0.0 and the epic battles for space superiority. I said not too long ago we’ll fight because we can and because we have guns. But epic fights come from having goals and objects, trophies to be won other than just another notch on the killboard.

I said it before and I’ll say it again, the revamp of 0.0 is not at all going to be like people seem to think. It’s not going to consolidate the current alliances into smaller blocks in space. Based on the new prices posted by CCP, I can actually agree with a comment made on the CAOD forums by a Goon member, Nobani, when he said the following:

Originally by: Darriele
And those are basic expenses, but when upgrades are implemented the cost can double or even triple. Ofc no ally will try to keep up sov. in so many systems,they will try to compact their "sphere of influence" around a single spot.

Originally by: Nobani
It's more likely we'll get swiss-cheese sov. Station, cap ship construction, jump bridge, key moon mining and key PvE systems will have sov claimed. Transit systems with four belts and no R64s will not have sov, but the local alliance will still drop a hammer on anyone who tries to set up shop there.

Frankly, here’s what I was sort of hoping for:

You start off with choosing your home system. This would be like your capitol system that you would spider web out from. For that capitol system, you pay a measly amount. Let’s say 1 million. You’re able to upgrade it, put in an outpost, build whatever. From that system, you can then claim any of the systems around yours. The systems next to your claimed capitol system will each cost the number of jumps from your capitol system multiplied by itself.. This would exclude the first jump which would automatically be double whatever the base amount is. In this example, it would be 2 million. From there on out, a system 2 jumps away would be 4 million. Based on 2 x 2. Three jumps out would be 9 million based on 3 x 3. Four jumps out, 16 million based on 4 x 4. Five jumps out, 25 million based on 5 x 5. I’ll assume you get the picture by now. As a side note, the prices shown here are for EACH system. Like systems four jumps out cost 16 mil a piece. So if you want say all 6 systems that are 4 jumps out from your capitol system, you would owe 96mil (16x6) a month for those systems plus whatever other systems you owe closer to your capitol.

Of course these numbers could be adjusted based on the findings of people who know more about the isk flow. However, I have no doubt this system would be more effective towards alliances making serious considerations towards the size of the space they own. I would also propose an alliance can only have one capitol system thus preventing the swiss cheese effect.

Now yes, this would create the issue of people just creating alt alliances to mitigate the effects of the tiered costs. However, how many alt alliances do you really think they’d make? Imagine the complications that having numerous alt alliances would create by way of logistics. Imagine the chances of those alt alliances being more easily torn apart through internal conflicts. On top of that, the more alliances you have, the more isk you gotta sink to create em.

I’m sure others could come up with other loop holes, or just outright disagree. But frankly, at least in my own opinion and I think many others, it would be a MUCH better system than what CCP is proposing to implement and is the design I think most had in their heads already.

Either way though, no matter what happens, people will adapt….. Or die in trying…

Dominion: Gold Rush or Fool's Gold?

2009-11-04T16:46:00.007-05:00

A lot of buzz has been going around about the upcoming changes to sovereignty, what I've termed D-day. With a severe lack of solid information (even so close to it's supposed release dates), I've been hard pressed about writing anything and giving any sort of firm opinion on the subject. I can however say a few things with almost complete confidence. This is NOT going to be end of the current 0.0 empires! This is NOT going to be the mad space rush that people seem to think it will be.

Pay enough attention to the forums and you'll begin to see, the only people that will be in 0.0 are the people familiar with 0.0 as it currently is. Yes, there may be some alliances that fail cascade under the new mechanics. But alliances such as Goonswarm, Atlas, AAA, Tau Ceti, Razor, and even my alliance, Systematic Chaos, are not just going to suddenly disappear. And all that space they hold? Okay, sure, they may consolidate the actual space they have their names on, but if empire dwelling corporations and alliances think they're suddenly going to move out to 0.0 and stake their claim in the vacated areas, well I say they're in for a real eye opener.

I think Eve Monkey said it best in the last line of his blog post. "...it will be difficult to gain any space your neighbor doesn’t want you to." And that is 100% true.

Basically, take a look at this map. We'll take Goonswarm space as an example. Currently, on that map you see a huge yellow blotch covering the areas that Goonswarm maintains sovereignty over. After D-day, yes, that may very likely change. That blotch of yellow will probably shrink quite a bit. Does this mean the surrounding areas, the areas that will no longer be covered in that ugly yellow, will suddenly be open turf and gobbled up by other, previously unknown, formerly empire based alliances? No. It may no longer have their name on it but don't think for a moment that it will suddenly become open game to just about anyone. They may not have their name on it but in essence it will still be controlled by Goonswarm. It will likely still be patrolled and regulated by their fleets on a consistent basis.

In my opinion, Sovereignty will no longer be a "put your name on as much space as you can" game. Instead it will be, "this is our home, but nobody can live around our home unless we want you there and you pay us to live there or at least work out some sort of agreement."

So okay. Not being one to beat my own chest and insist I am completely right on a subject of which a lot of information is still lacking, let’s consider the other difficult aspect of 0.0 living. This isn’t like wormholes. This isn’t a situation where you’ll fairly often be able to find a nice route back to Empire space. You have got to take into consideration logistics.

Currently, my alliance resides in the region Esoteria. Referring to that same map, you can see it’s quite a distance between there and empire. And between us is a number of other alliances. However, the reason we’re able to survive there is because we have a very well established and organized logistics system. But more importantly, we have agreements with those alliances between us and empire allowing us use of their jump bridges and safe travel through their systems. Without that, we would be hard pressed to survive in the area we are. Not impossible mind you, just a lot more difficult. This is what Goonswarm was actually trying to break in this last war. They had hopes of ruining our relationship with the other Alliances and thus breaking our ability to survive. Unfortunate for them, they failed.

So I suggest to all those corps and alliances that intend to move to nullsec after D-day, start thinking about where you'd like to go. Then speak with the diplomats of the current sovereign alliance about possible relations or treaties. Otherwise, don't be surprised when you get your butt handed to you and sent back to empire via the clone vat express.

Oh, and for those wondering about the war, it ended just about as quickly as it started. There was a lot of bullshit that flew around about it, but I think this sounds to be the most logical.

Originally Posted by The Mittani
THE FALL OF ESOTERIA

STANDING ORDERS:

1. Withdraw to TPAR.
2. Prepare to defend PA-V in Period Basis against Romulans

WHAT THE FUCK:

Vietnam is a poor gimmick for this war, because since we're opting to cut our losses it has instead become something of a Bay of Pigs. We could bog down in A1 after losing a host of towers in the face of 700 hostiles last night in our primetime, or we could say "Here's what went wrong" and sever.
WHAT WENT WRONG:

First, the attack should have focused on stations, not logistics hubs, with GS at the tip of the spear and not ZAF. Instead, ZAF was given a station to take, and GS was assaulting a bridge system. Should GS have succeeded, the enemy would have been impacted somewhat, but not as grievously as if we had been grinding on a station. ZAF was distracted by their loss of sov in PA-V and the Romulan invasion of that system, and so couldn't really concentrate against their Esoteria station target; moreover, they don't have much experience in the vanguard assault position. That station was not taken and the hostile bloc could concentrate against us in A1.

While losing a capfleet is no big deal to us, combined with the IGNE titan loss, our enemies saw weakness and surged over the weekend to bring 700 people against our 100 in our primetime. Pubbies don't understand that we think the IGNE thing is funny, they just smell blood in the water and swarm. Our timers and pos-fittings haven't had a chance to recover in A1 and our foothold on that system never fully established.

This invasion was planned by someone who does not usually do our war planning. It was a 'final exam' of sorts, and that exam was failed. However, you can legitimately blame the directorate for entrusting such an important plan to someone who screwed it up.

For example, allies were going to be making some distracting assaults on the blocs involved to draw attention away such that Atlas couldn't gangpile in along with Stainwagon, ROL and -A-. Those assaults did not happen because the person who was planning the war never confirmed these plans with our allies, nor followed up with them.

Logistics was also a disaster with GSOL essentially being unprepared for the invasion and left scrambling to pick up the pieces while understaffed.

In sum, the directorate fucked up by delegating the invasion to the wrong person and not making sure these critical issues were being handled competently.

WHAT NOW:

Expect an energized foe to strike us. Romulans moved six Jump Freighters into PA-V, in Period Basis, a former ZAF station system. In the near term we will be retreating to TPAR and preparing to help defend PA-V.

Meanwhile, ROL has been running distraction attacks on us in Querious, so we need to trim out a few small staging towers they dropped on us, and possibly make some reprisal attacks on their moons in Khanid.

Now, honestly, given my lack of time in the pod lately, I’m not sure what happened after that between the “Romulans” and Goons. As for Systematic Chao’s involvement, if you want a better look into what transpired from our perspective of the war, hop on over to Prometheus09’s blog. He did an awesome job of writing about it.

For me, all I know is that things in Eso have gone back to its usual business. In fact, with D-day coming, and the latest war, we haven’t been bothering much with Brick squad. Guess they were so saddened by the sudden lack of engagements, yesterday they decided to declare official war on us through Concord. All I can say is, good luck with that…

Let The Battle Drums Be Heard

2009-10-20T11:31:00.002-04:00

I jacked into my pod yesterday evening expecting to either find a group to join up with for a roam or if none were to be had, to go out hunting on my own. It seems however, that was not to be.

“You can't say civilization don't advance -- for in every war, they kill you in a new way.” –Will Rogers

I’m still pretty new to 0.0 but from what I’m always told, things always have a tendency to heat up during the latter part of the year. Already, things have begun to heat up in the northern areas of Nullsec. Up until now, the south, where my alliance resides, has been for the most part fairly quiet. I honestly had a thought that little would happen until after the release of Dominion and Concord’s changes to the sovereignty rights of 0.0 alliances. However, my lack of experience in 0.0 warfare is exactly why I didn’t put any real weight on that belief and it’s good I didn’t cause as it appears, I was wrong.

At some point yesterday or the night before, Goonswarm and their pets, Zenith Affinity, invaded Esoteria and more specifically, my alliance’s home systems.

The difference between 0.0 and empire is that there doesn’t always have to be an “official” proclamation of war filed with Concord. It’s not that it doesn’t happen; it’s just not a common occurrence. Declaring war by filing with Concord is not only bad for the group being attacked but bad as well for the attacker. So when I say we are at war, understand that is an “unofficial” statement.

However, when your home space is invaded as ours has, I think it’s pretty obvious.

So….with that in mind, and taking a cue from a fellow blogger as well as alliance mate, Manasi, I will be locking down my comments section. They will not be blocked entirely but will now require approval before being posted. This journal isn’t nearly as popular as his, nor am I a corporation director within the alliance, so I don’t entirely feel the need to block the comments entirely. However, Goons are known for their out-of-pod babble and I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see them eventually attempting to post their drivel here whenever I may post something about my engagements with them.

Beyond that though, I look forward to the plenty of battles I’m sure we will be having. This is, after all, the reason I wanted to move to 0.0. So to all the goon children that may read this, “See you on the battlefield!”

Back In The Pod Saddle

2009-10-19T09:07:00.002-04:00

Life outside the pod can get a little hectic at times. I never deny being the individual who is easily distracted from one thing to another but eventually….. I always come back. So has it been with being in the pod and more importantly, being there for my corporation/alliance. I still can't quite commit the time I'd like right now to going out and fighting the good fight, but hopefully soon that will change and things will settle down.

I did, however, manage to get out on a roam with some of my alliance mates yesterday. I almost felt it was necessary given it appears my absence has been noticed. Since I'm still fairly new to the corp and I don’t want them thinking I’m just useless weight. More importantly, thinking I’m some alt spy. I spoke with my good friend, Prom, who'd originally recruited me and he, in his non-chalant way, also expressed his concern for me and my lack of interaction. That conversation took place on Friday, so I made a point of hopping in the pod over the weekend with hopes of perhaps redeeming myself. Unfortunately, out-of-pod events kept me away from the hanger on Saturday, to which it seemed I missed some sort of CTA, but Sunday, it was game on.

I had just connected into my pod systems when I saw an invite for a fleet op. 'Perfect,' I thought as I quickly linked my comm systems with the gathering fleet. There was a bit of discussion for some time as to what exactly we were doing and eventually it was decided on a simple random roam. The fleet consisted of a whole slew of ship sizes so I opted to just go in my favored ship, the assault frigate. "Buzz”, my Ishkur, has been a faithful companion to me for many months now. Having seen numerous engagements, and getting my ass out of them alive and intact, it had earned itself a very special place in my heart. This roam, as it turned out, would see Buzz saving my stupid butt once again.

Just a quick side note. I realized a desperate need to start taking notes of things, as they happen, given my inability to remember a lot of the details when I do finally sit down to write about them. So is the case with this incident. In other words, forgive some lack of details and info or, for those involved, anything important I might miss.

So yeah…back to the story…

We were roaming through Period Basis, looking for possible targets to engage. There were a couple of small engagements I believe, a frig here or a cruiser there, but really nothing grand until a call came in on the intel channel. Two Zenith Affinity carriers had been tackled in a system fairly close to us, about 6 jumps away. Immediately we put the burners on and rushed towards the system. Being in an assault frig, I was fortunate to be one of the first on scene and quickly moved in to get a point on them. Goal was to further strengthen our hold until the main dps of our small, roughly 20 man fleet could arrive. My rusty experience nearly taught me a hard lesson though, as I moved too close to the primaried Archon. In a sudden blast of blinding light, my shields nearly vaporized. It was quickly followed by a second blast which tore away a large chunk of armor. Smartbombs. Damn I hate those things...

Quickly, I spun the frig away from the carriers and hit the MWD. I had surprisingly just survived a double whammy as both carriers, fairly close together, had set off smartbombs. Silly me had gotten right between the two ships when they were set off, and much too close to the Archon for my usual taste anyways. I had surprisingly survived, but in the blast, I'd also lost my first set of drones, Hobgoblin IIs, which I had stupidly deployed already. I had expected to be engaging deployed fighters. However, the lack of fighters present really should have put up a giant red flag for me to be wary. Obviously I wasn’t. Hindsight is always 20/20 right?

Anyways, burning away, I reached a distance of about 30km before turning back and setting myself in a nice orbit just close enough to keep my overheated point on the carrier while staying out of his bomb range. By this time, the rest of the fleet had arrived and were already chewing through his shields and armor. A few other enemy ships appeared, ranging from battlecruisers down to frigs, all of which we quickly dispatched before returning to work on the carriers.

But a carrier kill was not to be had.

Suddenly the gate activated and local spiked. A large fleet from Goonswarm had just appeared to save the tackled carriers. Having focused so intently on keeping my point, not getting too close to their discoing smartbombs (though failing a couple more times beyond my initial hits), I’d only been able to assist on one other kill and that being only a small amount. So when the Goon fleet had entered the battle and comms went just a little crazy, I determined to go after a kill even if it meant suicide killing “Buzz”. I just sort of tuned out the ‘static’ on the comms and spotting a nearby Amarr cruiser, unleashed the remaining Warrior II drones. I then ordered my ship to set a nice tight orbit and opened fire with my 3 Ion blasters. Under the combined fire, the cruiser’s shields peeled away quickly and I was soon half way through its armor when suddenly I realized my ship had left it’s orbit around the cruiser!

“What the hell,” I stammered, seeing my warp drive activated by what appeared to be its own accord. “NO!!” was all I had time to scream as the warp bubble wrapped itself around my ship and my Ishkur hurled itself away from the battle. Not only had I just left a likely kill but I’d also left behind my remaining drones! Come to find out, the FC had made the decision to withdraw and, given the current lack of discipline on the comms, he had simply initiated fleet warp.

When my ship finally came out of warp at a safe spot, for a moment all I could do was just sit there, stunned by what had just happened. Even as local continued to rise with the usual goon blob continuing to roll in, still I remained motionless. I mean, being fleet warped… unannounced… from the middle of a battle… can have a very disorienting effect! Especially when your blood lust is pumped up so high.

To be honest, I’m not sure how long I simply just sat there. However, after some moments, I came back to my senses. Thankfully, it was just in time to hear the order given to move out while one of the gates were still clear. We’d taken a few losses, but for the most part were still intact and it was determined that it’d be best to just make our way home and regroup there. We were chased, of course, but made our escape with very little problems and were soon safely docked at home.

Once I’d completed the docking sequence, instead of sticking around for a regrouping, I chose to just unplug and go for a coffee or something. One close call was enough for one day.

Maybe this evening I’ll go out for a little solo roam and see if I can redeem my abrupt denial of a kill. I definitely could use something to get myself back into the flow of things and a solo roam would certainly do that…

The Industrialist

2009-09-30T16:58:00.000-04:00

“Hey love...”

“Hey hun! So…how did it go??”

“It went well. As expected, I’m on a trial basis but it was pretty much a sure fire thing to get that at least. She’s already discu….”

“Wait a minute…she?” the woman on the screen spoke, her eyes narrowing at him slightly.

“Yes, it’s a she,” the man answered, a gentle chuckle rumbling through his throat. “No worries love. She may in essence be immortal but she’s still only half my age.”

“Hmm….but didn’t you already tell me she was Gallante?”

“Yes…she is…but..”

“Well then, that’s bad enough. We both know how free spirited and troublesome Gallante women can be. You watch yourself around her. I swear I will hunt…” She cut short as he burst out in full blown laughter. “It’s not funny,” she exclaimed with a pout, crossing her arms over her chest in a defiant stance.

“Yes it is,” he said, continuing to laugh. “You damn well know better than that, so stop pretending.”

“Oh….blah,” she sneered before a smile broke across her own face. “Still though, just be good.”

“You know I will be.”

“So when will you be home?”

He sighed and leaned back in his seat. “I’m afraid that won’t be for awhile. In fact, I’m not sure when exactly it will be. I mean, at present, I’m working on sorting and consolidating the assets here in Jita. Once I’ve got that accomplished, I’ve gotta pick up where her hauler pilot left off; sorting through bpo’s, doing some recon for possible locations to put up a POS, and possibly even doing a little market trading to get isk flowing here in Empire.”

Shrugging, he sat up a bit straighter, glancing over the reports splayed out on his work center’s screen.

“I’ll give the girl credit though. It definitely appears she’s done her research. I’ve got a listing of potential gear to put out buy orders for, along with what systems to buy and what systems to sell in, an entire and complete schematic for a POS setup, a complete skill training plan, along with a neural remap point, for the next 8 months, and a growing list of spreadsheets for tracking production and sales. This girl definitely shows that she knows how to run a business…. So what am I here for again??”

The woman laughed. “Planning is one thing darling. Doing is another. And she couldn’t hire a better man for the job.”

Grinning, ‘Wolf’ playfully lifted his nose to the air. “You’re just saying that cuz you’re my wife.”

“Yeah. You’re right. But if anything, at least you’ll get the skill injections from her. If things don’t work out, I’m sure you’ll be able to at least sell your services to someone else at the bazaar. “

“True. But alright. I gotta catch some sleep. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

“Sounds good. Love you.”

“Love you too,” he said just before closing the vid link and slipping away to find the warm comfort of his bed.

Welcome Aboard

2009-09-28T13:21:00.000-04:00

A knock on the door pulls Selina from her concentration. The paperwork massing on her desk had begun to overflow and she was finally just now sitting down to sort through it. This endeavor into the production side of life was quite mind boggling at times, but slowly she felt she was getting a handle on it. Lately, she’d been doing a lot of research and had come up with quite a few answers to her remaining questions about production, research, and everything else involved with ‘that side of life’. Soon, she should be ready to begin her own production and hopefully, soon after, start to see the results of her work flashing the wallet. It was, of course, going to take some time, effort and organization to track everything but it was something she was sort of looking forward to. It was a goal that she could focus on and create perhaps a steadier source of income and be far less dependant on the time consuming task of killing bounty clad pirates in the local belts.

However, after having done all the research, she realized it wasn’t something she was going to be able to do on her own. She needed an associate, a business and financial handler. She needed someone who could focus entirely on the company’s production and sales and eventually be able to transport the tons of resources and finished products from one place to another. To do this herself would take far too much time….time that could instead be spent on training her combat skills. She’d already spent perhaps too much time training to run some of the production….but to be truly efficient, she needed someone that could be more focused than she could allow herself to be. Thus, she’d put in a call to the various academies in Empire. She didn’t have the funds at present to hire an already trained pilot, so instead she resorted to hiring a fresh academy recruit. Besides, at least this way she would be able to train and focus the person entirely the way she wanted.

“Enter,” she called out.

The door slid open with a soft hiss and in walked a large Amarrian man. He was tall and stocky, a man well into his 50s with dark, neatly trimmed, through slightly receding, hair. Across his brow was implanted a standard Amarrian steel tattoo and his garb consisted of a tight necked, militant style uniform, common amongst the aristocratic, industrial executives of Amarrian society. The site of him, though, made her cringe a bit. Not because of his garb or attire but rather due to her all too familiar knowledge of their slave practices. Being Gallante, having been raised as a Gallante woman, her distaste for their practices were almost ingrained in her DNA…but at the same time, she definitely knew their ability to get things done….efficiently…

“Greetings m’am,” he started as soon as he entered the room. “My name is..”

“I don’t care what your name is. I already have all of your information here. Besides, too many ears in this place and frankly, I’d rather nobody knew of our association for the time being. Is that understood?”

“Yes M’am. Quite understood,” the man stated, his back straight, his eyes glaring just slightly.

“Look, it’s nothing personal. And I understand and have received notice of your reservations about working for me. This is your first time out of Amarr space, is it not?”

The man nodded slowly, his eyes turning curious.

“The fact is, from this point forward, it doesn’t matter whether you are Amarr, Galante, Caldari, or Minmatar. You are a pod pilot and possibly the soon to be executive officer of my industrial affairs…and that’s it. Both your income and mine will be intertwined. You will be responsible for running all empire based business affairs while I deal with things out in nullsec. All monetary transactions will be shared between our accounts. You pull from the pot as needed, just as I will. I can return to Empire whenever need be, but I can’t be in two places at once, so I would prefer to keep my presence there to a minimum. Is that clear?”

Again the man nodded, the glare having left his face. “Yes M’am. Very clear.”

“Good. Now please, though you will be working for me, understand as well that you are not what I would consider my employee. You are my business associate. Plain and simple. However, until you are at a point of being self sufficient, basically when production is in full swing, I will be supplying you with all the isk needed to get things going. What skills do you have training at present?”

“Currently all the base learning skills, M’am.”

“Please, stop calling me that. You’re more than welcome to call me Selina. And as for skills, that’s perfect. I will look into purchasing the advanced skills for you as soon as I get a chance. By my calculations, we should have those pretty much done before the medical staff’s timers expire, stating its no longer safe to train you at the increased neural speed. From there, we’ll get you into a Hauler for doing the basic stuff and then work on getting your production skills to an advanced level, followed by your trade skills. After that, we will stay focused on your training for jump freighters with an emphasis on the freighter piloting abilities first, and finally, look into training you to fly an Orca. Beyond the Orca...….well…we’ll look into that when the time comes. The production, trade and jump freighter is your main objectives. That alone will probably take you the better part of a year.”

“Sounds good to me,” he states, his demeanor seeming to finally relax.

Selina sits for a moment, looking at him in contemplation. “Understand, you’re still on trial. Concord has given me the right to train you for 21 days before I’m required to get you a full pilot’s license. I already know there are some skills I will not be able to supply to you while you’re on trial, based on Concord regulations, but I will see how far I can go and we’ll work from there. When your trial period expires, I’m sure I’ll have a more concrete decision as to whether I want to take you on fully. Basically, I just want time to decide if you are the right decision for me.”

The man slowly nods. “I quite understand and am very appreciative of this chance you’re giving me. I will do my best not to let you down.”

Selina smiles and finally stands, extending her hand to the man. “Well then,” she says as he takes her hand. “Welcome aboard. Oh, and from here on out, your code name, a sort of call sign I will always refer to you as, shall be Wolf.”

The man grins, obviously pleased by the nickname. “Sounds good to me.”

“Well good, again, welcome aboard Wolf. Be sure to speak with my hauler pilot, Ailiana, on your way out. She’ll get you set up with whatever you need as well as the location and access to our industrial storage hanger. Otherwise, you’re dismissed.”

“Yes M’am,” he says before turning and slipping quietly out the door.

Once the door closed, Selina plopped back into her seat, rubbing her temples. She sure as hell hoped she was making a wise decision. But either way, it was certainly worth a shot.

Clueless Endeavors

2009-09-23T17:34:00.003-04:00

"Begin recording...

"I really have no idea what I'm doing. And am I odd for saying I find it to be quite comical?

"Basically, I’m nearly finished training up all the skills to a suitable level for building. As per my usual though, I’m now questioning myself and wondering if it was really intelligent of me to train myself for this. I don’t have an “associate” like many do (although I once did) so I pretty much do everything on my own. I did take a small amount of time away from my own training, to train up my hauler pilot. However, the gal is really only trained just enough to transport any materials to and from our staging base in Empire. Otherwise, she has pretty much no other skills. I mean, I brought her on-board my roster before the new pilot academy system was put into effect, so she at least had a base set of skills to work off of. But beyond the minimum knowledge in Minmatar combat systems, and the skill to fly her Amarrian hauler, she knows little else. And I have no intention or desire in the near future to train her any further as it would inhibit my own training too much.

"So the reason for this brainstorm is that I’m considering hiring a new associate to be a focused industrial coordinator. This is, for the most part, what my previous associate was, but he was focused more on mining as well as exploration than actually building anything. A true prospector if you will. In hiring a new associate, I would want a character focused entirely on industrial skills for both building, as well as training up the skills needed to eventually fly a jump freighter. This leaves me with the question of either train one up myself or just get up the money to buy an already trained character from the eve-o forums… For now though, I think I’ll just wait a bit and see how things work out with doing it myself to build.

"Biggest hurdle will be finding a place to do the material and time efficiency research. I can see it being rather difficult to find that here in 0.0 without setting up my own POS. But a POS, after some thought, is a burden I really don’t think I want right now. So I may just look into a few quiet, remote, low sec stations. HOWEVER, that in and of itself creates some problems and is thus the reason why I’ve started considering getting an associate. If I have to do all my research in empire, it could seriously inhibit my ability to be an active, reliable member for my corporation. Having my research done so far away will require me to jump clone back and forth quite regularly. Due to the 24 hour cool down period between jump cloning, this means there may be a lot of days where I won’t be able to respond to any spur of the moment CTAs or home defense.

"But again, this is all initial thinking and I’ll get it all figured out eventually.

"As for BPOs….well I already have a rather significant amount of BPOs piling up in my hanger. It’s taken a fair amount of traveling to gather all that I currently have, and I still have a few more I want to get. Problem is that I’m having a tough time locating them all. I’ve mostly been focusing on the original, seeded locations to purchase the BPOs as this is generally the cheapest price, as well as the most focused locations, for an entire category of BPOs I’m looking for. However, a few of the BPO categories I’m seeking are being a bit elusive. There just doesn’t seem to be a good, solid reference as to which corporation I can find a particular BPO from.

"Ahh well, I’m actually kind of enjoying this little treasure hunt.

"End recording."

You Wascally Wabbit!

2009-09-22T11:03:00.001-04:00

“Systems check.”

“All systems online and fully operational.”

“Roger that. Set the nav computer to home ladies and gents. We’re getting the hell out of here!”

A chorus of “aye” could be heard over Selina’s neural ship comms as the crew turned to their stations, ready for the journey.

“Initiate warp sequence.”

And with that, the Ishkur frigate and its crew lurched forward, rocketing through space, bent on returning home….. or to die trying.
__________________________________

“They’re on the run!”

“Who?!”

“KIA. They had a small gate camp set up in U-6. We just broke it up and now they’re on the run.”

“Ahh, roger that. I’m just a few jumps out from y’all. What’s their direction of travel?”

“We’re not entirely sure. Working on that now.”

Selina, noticing a flicker in another portion of her mental view, shifted her ‘eyes’ and mentally smiled to herself.

“No need pilot. They’re here, in my system LC. And you’re right. They do appear to be on the run,” she said as she watched the local pilot numbers trickle up and then start to drop again before the last of them had even entered system. Well this was certainly an opportunity she wasn’t about to pass up. “I’m warping to their outbound gate, VNPF. Try to see if I can lock one or two of them down.”

“In warp to the gate as well, Selina,” another pilot from her alliance announced.

Slowly the distance and the local numbers trickled down as her ship approached the gate until finally, the warp bubble collapsed. Her alliance mate, in another Ishkur, appeared to have landed just before her and was already moving to engage a straggling lone Jaguar. At first it appeared the Minmatar frigate was going to engage. Maybe if Selina had arrived only a few seconds later, he would have, but with the appearance of a second Ishkur, Selina’s Ishkur, he quickly disengaged and turned to run. Sadly for him because although he narrowly escaped certain doom at the hands of two Ishkurs… he was now trapped in the system.

A couple times Selina and the other Ishkur pilot nearly had him, chasing him from one place to the next, but each time narrowly missing him. She couldn’t help but chuckle and ‘tip her hat’ to the poor rabbit. For about 30 minutes they played this game. Occasionally he would make it out of the system only to return a moment later after seeing other ships on the other sides of the gates. Finally, after unsuccessfully being able to lock him down, she decided to just let him go and move on. The call of a nice hot dinner and a plush warm bed was becoming too much to ignore.

Sleeping in the Enemy’s House

2009-09-21T14:31:00.000-04:00

Having checked the day prior, Selina had read an alliance mail of an early morning CTA. No particular goal in mind, it was claimed to be a simple roam, hoping to get some nice kills in. When the time came however, the CTA was called off and instead, a small gang of about 20 to 25 pilots decided to go for a long roam anyways.

Powering up the systems of her Ishkur, she undocked and made her way to the rally point. It had been quite some time since she’d been on any organized roams and she was determined to fulfill that growing need for blood and destruction. This particular fleet consisted of mostly smaller ships; a few cruisers, interdictors, heavy assault cruisers, some battlecruisers and a small flight of frigates, hers included. It felt good to be back in her Ishkur and with the minimal numbers of frigates in the fleet, she expected she was going to be busy.

After they had gathered at the rally point, the destination system was given and they immediantly set out. Thirty-seven jumps, her navigation computer informed her, with much of that through Goon space. As much as she despised Goons, as much as she wanted to wipe them from the face of Eve and everything they stood for, it still made her a tad nervous to travel so far through the space they held sovereignty over. They were an enormous presence in 0.0 with perhaps the largest pilot roster currently in existance. They weren’t necessarily considered exceptional pilots, but their numbers certainly made up for it. And with so many numbers, they had the luxury of forming large fleets rather quickly. However, the beauty of it was the inevitable ability to find plenty of targets as well as a good fleet fight.

But anyways, for the first half of the roam, things went alright. Few significant targets were found except a passing Hurricane that was obviously set up for ratting. Sadly, Selina didn’t even get in close enough to let loose some of her dust covered ammo. The unfortunate pilot had decloaked on the far side of the gate from where she was and went down so fast that just as she’d got her disrupter on it, the ship went poof.

From that point forward, things took a definite turn for the worse…

It really was no fault of the Fleet Commander’s or a lack of skill in the fleet. Fact of the matter was they quite possibly of a spy amongst the fleet, relaying their position and heading. It was either that, or the nearly 40 man goon fleet waiting for them had Lady Luck flying their wing.

The scouts for Selina’s fleet reported the present danger and even after resetting their course and trying to evade, the enemy fleet always seemed to know where they were going and used their jump bridges to repeatedly get ahead. Inevitably, they became trapped in a system, outgunned and outnumbered. All they could do was run from one safe spot to another, hoping to evade at all costs the numerous scanner probes seeking them out. At one point, they counted roughly 20 combat scanner probes out, in an attempt to locate them in their safe spots.

Finally, the order was given for them all to power down their systems and wait a bit, hoping that perhaps their pursuers would get bored enough to leave, or at least become slightly lax, giving them an opportunity to escape. Eventually they did and after quickly powering back up, the fleet made a run for it. But as with before, the goon fleet jump bridged ahead of them and once more they were cut off. It was still a hopeless fight. so once again, the order was given to power down all but the most basic life support systems. A brief discussion ensued from which it was determined a set amount of time would be waited out. If they powered their ships up once again and found themselves still camped in the system, then they would just go down fighting. Either way, after unplugging herself from her pod, Selina got a bit caught up in a movie in the frigate’s rec room that she missed the designated time to make their escape.

“No worries,” she explained to the crew commander over her com link as she prepared for bed that evening. “It might be better to make our own run for home, flying solo, than to fly in a large, fairly noticeable fleet.”

Staring out the thick window as she laid down to sleep, the dark mass of Goon space beyond, she took a deep breath. “At least I hope….”

A New Era In Eve

2009-09-18T16:28:00.003-04:00

They are calling it Dominion. They are calling it the emergence of sovereignty. They are reshaping capital fleets as we know it, tweaking the combat effectiveness of factional ships, boosting the capabilities of the assault frigates, pushing forward with the development of a new IGB (In Game Browser - and not entirely sure if that will be released with the next expansion), cleaning the feeds our camera drones give when viewing planets, and more…. All adding up to an entire revamping of what it is we are fighting for, and how we are fighting for it, out in the depths of nullsec and even in empire.

Back in March of this same year, a series of cataclysmic anomalies took place and we were introduced to what was termed Apocrypha. That alone brought not only a few changes, such as the massive overhaul of the probing system, but also the discovery of wormholes. Natural phenomenon that provided portals to systems previously unknown to the current population. It was here we discovered the lost race known as Sleepers, which in turn led to the development and introduction of what has been dubbed T3 technology. The face of our universe changed….but more than just changing, it grew. It was, as most believed, an epic alteration to the universe we knew.

Some went on with their regular schedules. Living out their busy lives in Empire or 0.0 with their regular doses of combat and/or production. Markets fluctuated but eventually settled back into a regular flow. Business went on as usual. For others, the dream of exploring strange, new, uncharted systems, finding an entire system they could call their own, prospecting for materials and salvage that could fatten their wallets… It was these things that drew them out of Empire to live amongst the unknown stars.

But that was then….and this is now.

Within only a year, the universe as we know it is about to change yet again. Much of what we knew will be wiped clean. And once more, we, the pod pilots of Eve, will be called upon to adapt…….or die.

I suggest you buckle your seat belts boys and girls, cause this is gonna be one hell of a ride!

'Building' My Combat Support Fund

2009-09-14T15:28:00.002-04:00

I really need to focus myself more. I really really want to train up my gunnery skills. I mean, being in a 0.0 corp with what is in my opinion, crap skills for gunnery is just piss poor. Especially when I try to claim I'm a combat pilot. However, I allowed myself to get sidetracked once again...

In a previous post, I mentioned that I'm looking for ways to bring in more isk. I thank both readers, fellow writers, as well as some fellow corp mates for the advice. In terms of ratting, I learned where I was failing and after some adjustment to my tactics, saw a noticeable increase. However, as I said, I still allowed myself to get sidetracked.

I was also doing some research on the net and came across a few decent guides on how to be "industrious". Even when I first started out in Eve, contemplating all the various avenues I could take as a career, I paid almost no attention whatsoever to building things. I mean, I did…sort of…..but only because the academy instructors forced me to. Reality was that the whole science and industry area just boggled my simple brain.

Truth be known, my first thought when I set out in my rookie ship was to become a miner. It didn’t take long before I realized how insanely boring it was. (No offense to all the miner’s out there.) So then I tried exploration. It was going quite well until suddenly there was a revamp of the probing system and next I knew, the career profits that could be made from exploration sites took a nose dive…and that was IF you could even find any sites not already cleaned out. So then I focused entirely on running missions. While not as insanely dull as mining, after you have the right skills, and a decently fitted ship, it really is almost just as monotonous.

Now, I really did enjoy exploration. It was exciting to me to probe down sites that you wouldn’t normally see without the effort of hunting. It just became frustrating to narrow one down, warp in, only to find it’d already been cleaned out. Fortunately, it seems that the whole ‘probe rush’ has begun to subside and people have returned to their normal, asteroid and mission grinding routines. Thus, I think it’s become a little more viable as an occupation. (key words being ‘I think’). As I mentioned before, I might still go ahead and set myself up a remote base of operations in low sec to run exploration sites.

HOWEVER, as I was saying, I came across a couple guides the other day on how to build things. After doing a little bit of in-depth research on what it would take to build a few particular items…I realized it really wouldn’t take me long at all to get the skills necessary to make some objects proficiently. I mean, I wouldn’t be able to invent and build the t2 variants…. but frankly, I’m not too concerned with that right now. Maybe someday in the future, like say after I finish my hybrid gunnery skills, but not right now. Besides, the t1 variants sell for a decent enough price (and god knows I got more than enough of the materials used to build them just lying around) that I believe if I make them and seed them in the right station markets, I could make a fairly decent chunk of change. If anything, it will at least be an interesting project to focus on. So yeah, I’ve already diverted my training for the skills. At present, the plan shows about 10 to 15 days of training. Then, once I’ve got the skills finished, THEN I’ll finally be ready to remap my attributes and put my focus on my gunnery skills.

Pirate? ROFLMFAO

2009-09-14T09:56:00.004-04:00

/begin rant.

I don't have a problem with pirates. I really, honestly, truly don't. I even gave a half-assed attempt at the pirate life myself a short time back while I was waiting on word about joining the nullsec corp I'm with now. I’ll admit it was a rather fail attempt but an attempt nonetheless. They swoop in, blow your ship to bits, loot your stuff, and then vanish as quickly as they appeared. Generally they fly small frigates and cruisers, opting for the quick hit and fade. Other times you'll find em in large groups with large ships, hurtling themselves mercilessly at anything that doesn't run or run away fast enough. I tip my hat to a lot of them, for both their skill and their prowess to be able to survive on such an existence. Not only survive....but thrive.

However, there are some out there calling themselves pirates that really get under my skin. To me, it's these people who tarnish the title of pirate. Frankly, in my opinion, they're not pirates at all but rather just posers who want numbers rather than quality for their killboards.

This is the second time this incident has happened to me so yeah. Maybe I’m shedding some so-called frustrated carebear tears over it, but it really is just pathetic.

What I’m talking about it is the slackers sitting at stargates in low sec, smart bombing rookie ships, shuttles and frigs coming out of warp at gates.

It seems to be a growing trend since I’ve been seeing it a lot more often lately. A trend I believe to be rather craptastic. I mean, if you do it on occasion for shits and giggles, fine. Whatever floats your boat and I wouldn’t be sitting here griping about it now even if I did find it annoying. But take for instance the guy who blew apart my haulers rookie ship this past weekend….

Quick story goes...I’d put a few +1 implants I’d obtained over time from doing low level missions into the hold of a freebie rookie ship and set out. She was headed from Jita to Heimatar to meet up with an old friend who recently got his pilot’s license. It’s not much, and generally worthless to me as I’ve got like a dozen of each implant type just sitting in my hanger there in Jita, but I figured a few implants would be quite helpful to him to stimulate his learning. I decided to set the course to go through the lowsec systems near Jita since I was in a free ship, and carrying nothing but 4 cheap implants. I wasn’t worried at all about losing em if I got caught somehow. If I was worried, I would’ve had no problem taking the long route….but again, didn't really care.

Anyways, keeping this story short, I got bombed coming out of warp at the second to last gate of the shortcut. Fortunately, 3 of the 4 implants went poof along with my ship so he didn’t get much out of it and all it really did was cause me to take an express trip back the six systems to Jita and make the trip again. The second time I simply avoided that particular gate and made it to my destination without a second incident.

Now, for the sake of not giving him whatever bit of glory or hard-on he gets from it, I’m refraining from mentioning his name but I will say he belongs to the Negative Ten corporation. And I mention this fact only because I found it rather funny that more than half of the people I saw from their corporation that day weren’t even negative five, this buffoon included. Anyways….in my usual fashion, I couldn’t help myself. Instead of running away in my pod like most probably would, I instead sat there, at the gate with him, making fun of him from my pod over local. Especially when he gloated about having the one implant that survived the wreck, as well as his fail attempt at smart bombing me in my pod. But then what really got me was when I check this guy’s killboard and see that a VERY large portion of his “kills” are frigs, shuttles, pods and rookie ships by….wouldn’t you guess…smart bombs!

For the love of the Eve gods….what is happening to pirates these days???

/end rant.

Show Me the Iskies!

2009-09-08T11:29:00.004-04:00

So I was actually able to undock for the first time in what would seem like forever. Okay...not really forever but still, it was a rather lengthy bit of time.

I'd particularly set this weekend aside for Eve as the tournament began this week and so far it seems to be kicking off to a great start. Not so much for my own alliance as admittedly we got pummelled in our first match but ahh well. Our team had a decent setup in my opinion, just that their opponents came with something better.

As for my own activities while this was going on, I did jack into the ship in just enough time to hear of a POS defense fleet in effect. Seems Brick Squadron had decided to put one of our own POS's into reinforced mode. I didn't make it in time for most of the action, although I guess there never was much...but after hopping in the Megathron, I undocked and headed to the system anyways along with another pilot named S3V3N in a battleship as well and an inty pilot (whose name I forgot, apologies) scouting for us through the 9 or so jumps. Unfortunately, we made it just in time to meet up with the main fleet for the roam back to our home system. The bricks did manage as we were leaving to put a small fleet together to trail behind us on our way home but pretty much kept their distance, only hoping to pick off any stragglers.

I had to take care of a few errands after that, so once again, i missed another fleet op but ahh well. I spent the rest of the weekend attempting to earn back some of the money I spent on my move out to nullsec.

Speaking of which...I'm going to have to look into other means of isk making. I mean, in roughly the 8 or 9 hours of ratting, i made about 120 million in bounties and picked up a lot of nice loot and salvage but that's a lot of time spent making...well...not the huge sums of money I had heard could be made living the 0.0 life. I've never done a 0.0 plex so I might hunt down one of those and give it a try but I've heard they can be quite difficult to manage solo.

The other thing I've considered is moon mining. Though I haven't the foggiest idea how that works. As I understand it, you set up a tower, put some moon thingamajigs up next to it, set up some defenses, some silos, and give it fuel. Somehow though that just seems a little too simple.... :/ Besides the fact I don't even know what skills I'd need to operate all this and even if I did figure all that out, what the hell am I going to do with the minerals a tower might mine when I can't even fly a hauler bigger than an Iteron I?

Meh...I'll try the plex thing. See how that goes first before I start looking at industrial endeavors. I'm currently finishing the training for Energy Management V to be able to train thermodynamics, thus able to overheat my modules. After that, though, I have Survey and one other somewhat lengthy skill I intend to train to use hacking and archaeological modules. I mean, I don't mind running plexes with corpmates and friends, but I would like to find things I can do solo given the vast majority of my corp mates are mostly European based timezone while I myself am American. If I can't run 0.0 plexes solo, then I just may set myself up a jump clone in a quiet sector of low sec to run plexes in. I can think of a few places that might be great for that...

Note to self though...may need to work a bit more on my probing skills given the amount of time it's taken me in the past to narrow down those sites....

Any other thoughts though would be appreciated! :)

Busy But Not Gone

2009-08-27T08:28:00.002-04:00

OOC:

Just a quick post to say that RL has been a bit on the hectic side for me. Other than for changing skills, I haven't had much time to log in. It really sucks too given all that appears to be happening lately with the alliance! However, I'm currently in the process of making a RL move that has consumed my time with packing and other tedious tasks in preparation. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate moving! :/

So no, its not another 2 month hiatus like it was before. Oh, and speaking of that... I realized recently that my 2 month absence from Eve happened to be about 6 months into the game. I guess they do say that at about 6 months is the point at which people decide to either stay with Eve or get bored and leave. I wasn't exactly bored with it at that time, just frustrated with the corp I was in, busy in RL with various things, as well as reestablishing contact with old friends from the other 'game' I play. (Second Life) Anyways, I finally found a way to balance out my RL time, ended my term with the old corp in search of something else (which I found with Silver Snake Enterprises and it's alliance, Systematic Chaos) and returned to playing and flying with renewed vigor. I just thought it was funny though when I look back and remember when I'd first heard that bit about people and the 6 month period. I was like, "nope! won't happen to me!" and lo and behold it almost did... :)

But I did come back, and I am here to stay..............just as soon as I finish this move....So then I can go smash Bricks with everyone else! :D

DUST In My Head

2009-08-21T16:11:00.002-04:00

At first I was just going to make a return comment in regards to what jamenta said in my last post, my entry for the C.K. Contest. However, I realized it was getting too long for being just a comment and decided it was worth a post of its own.

So yeah, it was kind of ironic with the timing of my post and the news release of DUST 514. I'm not sure of exact dates as I write this (and because I'm too lazy to look), but then again I did write the post even a few days before I actually posted it. Just wanted to wait a bit to keep some of my ideas as secret as possible. :)

Frankly though, I think my previous concept could still be implemented even with the introduction of DUST 514.

Now, thinking about DUST.... Originally, when I heard about DUST, I was contemplating writing my thoughts on the new game, creating my own blog post about it. Yet so much has already been written by others, most of them having the same opinion and thoughts as myself, that I didn’t think it necessary. However, in writing my comment a moment ago, I realized I had a lot to say still and sometimes it’s just nice getting it out, even if it is repetitive of what others been saying.

So to sum up my thoughts on DUST 514… Frankly, I’m not a fan at all of console games (mostly cuz i suck at handling a controller :P) However, I’m certainly not gonna go and emo-rage-quit over a rather vague and cryptic CCP announcement. I mean, so many details were left unsaid, it would be wrong of me to have a solid opinion myself already. Yet, the tid-bits they did give, did not leave me with a good feeling. Honestly, it wouldn’t have bothered me in the least (and I’m guessing numerous others) if they had suggested the game being released for both console and PC, yet that was not the case. And I think it’s this reason why so many are upset, myself included.

We, the current PC gaming Eve players, are the ones that made CCP. Not myself specifically, but us as a whole. If it wasn’t for the population of Eve Online, CCP’s investors might have shut them down a long time ago. A starting company in the gaming business never has it easy. But they did it and they did via us, the game players and fans. Now, to create a game, a game that will affect our gaming, and not give us the ability to take part in that action unless we go and get the console game (and for some of us, the console to play it on which is priced at about the same these days as a new computer), then we get to do nothing but sit back and watch. I personally wouldn’t care if I had to pay another subscription fee to be a part of it. I understand it IS like an entirely new game and so I do consider it to be fair to have to subscribe separately…though that could be argued against. But either way, I just don’t like the idea of them trying to force me to play on another piece of hardware in order to do so.

I invested a lot of money into building the PC I currently use. I’m not about to invest my money in a contraption that will be obsolete in a few years when they come out with a new, upgraded, cutting-edge, better-than-ever, console. Yes, I realize this or that in my current computer will become obsolete over time as well. But I am not about to invest double the money for two separate systems. Besides, I can only play on one at a time.

So that’s my rant. Maybe I’ll end up being wrong about the whole situation and biting my own tongue for speaking too freely, too quickly. Or maybe I won’t. Either way, that’s my rant and now I’m finished. Otherwise, for now, back to the present future world….or uhh..yeah.…something like that. :)

Planetary Conquistadors!

2009-08-14T16:00:00.010-04:00

WARNING!!! OOC POST!!! OMG THE HORROR!! (okay...so it's not entirely OOC. read on..)

So anybody who knows anybody in the Eve blogger's world seems to know the great and mighty Crazy Kinux. And for good reason, as he's done a lot for both the Eve bloggers as well as the Eve Community at large. This month though, he's presented a challenge to our little wonderful community that even involves a prize!

The goal is to write an article on planetary control and how that would be implemented in EVE. Your article needs to cover what features, game mechanic, game design you would like to see implemented if (or when) planetary control/exploration/exploitation becomes available in EVE.

You're required to write a two-part article. The first part needs to be a fiction piece that tells a story based on the feature (or game mechanic, game design, etc...) that you would like to see implemented, while the second part would be the actual description of how that would work in game. Each part of your article needs to be a minimum of 300 words (600 word minimum for the whole article).

I'll be judging the entries and will pick the 5 best articles, amongst which I will randomly choose the winner. This lucky blogger will get to interview a CCP Dev during a podcast with yours truly! Details on the podcast will be provided to the winner prior to the show's recording.

So I figured since I achieved a reputation of perhaps being considered a very critical (and maybe even to the point of sounding negative) person in my comments on the last entries for the C.K. writing contest, I figured it best that I actually involve myself in this one. However, I would like to think my approach is a little more passive and reserved. No wild, crazy, off-the-wall ideas here! I swear it! :)

Part 1 - The Fiction

The room was crawling with a roar of activity. Only moments ago, the system scan report had come in of a massive armada of ships entering system. They had not come by way of the local stargate so it was obvious this was no random roaming fleet. Every station and planet in system was in high alert as the focus of this enemy had yet been determined....but all knew the most likely target.

The system was SMH2-2, a system deep in the heart of 0.0 space and home to not only a moon full of valuable materials, but also a perfectly habitable planet. The balance between water and solid land was comparable to that of the mythical Earth, with an atmosphere consisting of a perfect blend of crisp, breathable air. This resulted in a prime choice planet for producing a vast array of resources needed for intergalactic commerce and thus garnered the attention of the numerous opportunistic alliances and corporations seeking to expand their territories…and their pockets. Since its discovery, the skies far above, outside of the planet's gravity well, had already become littered with the wreckage of thousands of ships, all having perished over the many months of conflict. And as was obvious today, the current sovereign alliance was about to have its control challenged once again.

Upon receiving her orders, Ailiana gave a stout salute to the commanding officer before running for her ship. It was a Talon class atmospheric combat ship, or ACS, humbly named Feral Glimmer. She wished she could be a part of the initial defense force far out in the depths of space, jacked into a real pod and a real ship beyond the planet's atmosphere, but the reports coming in told her it wouldn't be long anyways before she got her share of the action. The inbound fleet was far superior in numbers and firepower to be held back by the few pilots currently in space and would thus be left to those already here planet side. Here is where the real stand would take place. Here is where the enemy would not just be facing combative ships but also the planets defensive placements, built and cared for with a lot of isk and blood.

Just as she finished connecting the flight control jacks to the neural implant sockets on her head, she felt the vibration of the alpha strikes, the first impacts from the planetary bombardment the enemy dreadnoughts and battleships now unleashed far overhead against the terrain colony's shields. Soon she thought, as her physical senses dimmed and her mind became one with the ship, soon would come the enemy's own ACS's....and soon she would get her own chance to help prove that her and her corporation were going nowhere...

***************************************************

Executive Officer Arkold stood before the massive observation window of the mothership's command deck, a broad grin spread across his scarred face. So far, things had gone perfectly. After arriving in system via the titan jump bridge, they had made a very quick check of the fleet before initiating warp and landing as close as they dared to the target planet. The commander knew little of this particular planet that now swallowed his view... nor did he care. He had his orders and that was all he needed.

"Commander, you may begin the planetary assault procedures, executive order 194A-32HC."

"Aye sir. Commencing planetary bombardment." Turning, Arkold's commander activated his comm link. "Alpha and Bravo squads, initiate attack sequence."

Without a heartbeat passing, the sky between their fleet and the planet before them lit up in a brilliant array of lights as assault beams and blasters tore through the planets atmosphere, pummeling the stationary defenses far below. The pod pilots commanding these ships thirst for blood, thirst for the combat experience this presented them, but more importantly, thirst for the valuable isk this planet would provide their corp…and each of them as well...

The diligent commander, however, only hesitated for the briefest of moments to watch those initial volleys before flipping his comm switch over to a second channel. "Flight deck, prepare to launch all available ACS's."

"All ACS's prepped and ready commander."

"Roger that, ACS squads one, two, three, and four. Your designation is Viper. Launch on my command. Three....two....one....launch!"

And like missiles from a launcher module, the ACS's shot forward from the mothership, careening towards the planet at breakneck speeds. Each one piloted by the very same demi-gods who controlled the battleships and dreadnoughts alongside the massive mothership.

"Well wishes to you all," Arkold thought as he watched his fellow pod pilots descend upon the planet. "and may the gods have mercy on us all....."

Part 2 - The Mechanics

One of the oldest complaints I’ve heard in Eve, pretty much dating back to when I really started to pay attention to 0.0 warfare and tactics, was the failure design of sovereignty. Okay, so perhaps failure isn’t the best word but the mechanic is one that is obviously quite frustrating to many of the Alliances. Space is a big place. One could theoretically construct a station anywhere in a system. (At least it seems the NPC pirates can in Empire…) So would this mean they now have sovereignty? Of course not and for that reason, in my opinion, it shouldn’t be that way either for the alliances in nullsec.

What I suggest is to take the mechanic of sovereignty control away from the POS’s in system. POS’s come and go. What is permanent is the planets themselves. To control a planet should be what defines the actual sovereignty. You want to own more space? Then be prepared to defend and protect what assets you have on more planets.

Once an Alliance controls all the habitable planets within a constellation, they are then granted the ability to construct outposts. Outposts of course require personal, and thus food sources to maintain as the NPC agents seem to so often suggest in Empire space. It is THIS reason why planets are truly necessary. Without control of enough planets to provide the resources necessary to maintain the outpost, it becomes under-staffed and thus able to be conquered. With this in mind though, I am not suggesting outposts require ‘fuel’ in the sense of transporting personal and food to the station like a POS requires. Instead, just having control of a planet is in itself providing the fuel for maintaining the outpost. I am also not suggesting POS’s become obsolete as they will still be needed for moon mining, capital construction and their other current uses.

Now to control/colonize a planet, it would require constructing colony stations on the planet’s surface. The larger the colony, the more capable it is of withstanding an attack such as with shield systems and weapons emplacements. For an attacking group, shield systems would need to be bombarded by the dreadnoughts as suggested in my previous story, at which point ACS’s, or Atmospheric Combat Ship, would then be able to fly in and assist the battleships in destroying the various weapon emplacements. ACS’s is what the players are of course responsible for piloting. Many suggest FPS (First Person Shooter) combat in the way of foot soldiers via dropships, but I disagree with that. We are pilots. Not foot soldiers. However, I do agree it would be great to use FPS when piloting the ACS’s for a reason I will explain later. I also suggest using some sort of timer to define how long it takes for the NPC foot soldiers to infiltrate and take control of the colony. This is activated by any ACS who comes within a set distance of perhaps the colony’s main command bunker and can only continue counting down while the ACS’s are present on the planet’s surface. If they are all killed, or forced to retreat, then the timer is stopped and eventually resets after a certain length of time. The length of this timer’s expiration could also be dependant on the size of the colony.

To maintain a colony, one would keep in mind that various planets provide various resources. However, to sustain the colony, there will be other resources that particular planet can’t produce on its own. This is what you will be required to provide as ‘fuel’ to keep the colony active. This would be utilizing roughly the same mechanic that POS’s use in fueling their systems. And that ‘fuel’ is already available on the market under the commodities tab in the form of food, personal and medical gear. So very little change would be required in that regard other than making the commodities more useful than they are at present. Basically, instead of NPC’s providing those commodities on the market, players would now be responsible.

Okay...so looking towards Empire and the PVE folks, planetary missions could be gained from NPC colony agents to defend an outlying village or something of that nature from pirates or other colony factions. Courier missions would be to bring some resource or…dolls…to another colony on either the same planet or a different planet. Point is, there could be a whole new set of missions to be had from ‘Colony Agents’ that would or could involve just ACS piloting or take you planet hopping from one to another.

For the Faction Warfare pilots, much of the same mechanics as 0.0 space would be used but instead of fighting for your Alliance’s sovereignty, you’re fighting contested systems/planets for the control by the race you’re fighting for. Again, the previously mentioned timers would be utilized for this task which as I understand (though I’ve never fought factional warfare) is something they’re fairly familiar with already.

Lastly, the switch between an ACS and a standard space craft would require either one, the presence of a station or outpost, or two (for the nullsec folk) the presence of a mothership, carrier, or the hanger module added to a POS. ACS’s would not be warp capable. Thus, to use them at a particular planet would involve carrying that ACS via a regular spaceship from one hanger to another. Without the presence of a POS, outpost, station, carrier or a mothership, a person can not just simply leave their spaceship and hop into the ACS. What I’m also suggesting in regards to the motherships or carriers is the ability to ‘fly’ aboard another player’s carrier. If the ship gets popped, then yes, ALL players aboard lose whatever they have on the ship, as well as get ejected into space in their pods to live or die on their own account. (Do you trust that carrier pilot’s skills? Mwhahaha!!) Either that, or increase the size of the carrier’s hanger bay for pilots to store their spaceships while piloting their ACS.

The ACS's themselves would come in various sizes. For a class 1 ACS, the smallest, you would need skill level 1. For class 2, skill level 2. And so on up to level 5 which would grant you access to fly a class 5 ACS. The actual size of the ACS's would be relative basically to the size of a drone. Class 1 ACS equivalent to a small combat drone up to Class 5 which would be equivalent to a fighter. (if not looking exactly like a fighter even) This is where newer players would TRULY be useful to have, even in nullsec as an ACS would be just as easy to get into as a frigate. Though perhaps make it a rank 3 skill. Also, like drones, the larger the ACS, the higher damage output it has but at the same time, the slower it moves.

Anyways, as for pirating…well, I’m sure pirates would be able to come up with a plethora of new ideas. :)

So yes, these ideas might actually be at first glance a bit wild and cause a major change to the current game mechanics in place…but then again, just the idea of leaving space and actually flying within the atmosphere of one of those thousands of planets we see regularly would be an enormous change to the game face.

So that's my story and I'm stickin to it! \o/

Tears in Nullsec

2009-08-10T18:42:00.002-04:00

"Begin recording...

"So these past few days have been a whirlwind of activity...so brace yourself as this might be a bit long...

"To start with, I'm now out in Nullsec (and no, I didn't get popped on my way out. In fact, I've yet to lose a ship, knock on wood). Life out here is certainly everything and at the same time nothing like what I expected. Even the feeling you get flying around, calling systems with no real name but rather a series of letters, dashes, and numbers, as home is just....well....odd. Tactics are also a lot different really than those I'm used to in Empire. Understandable of course given the extra tools available for use, but I find it interesting how those few extra items make combat a completely different animal. I've also learned a few things already in regards to my skills. There are certain skills that I've learned are essential for living and surviving in 0.0 that I never really put much consideration towards while living in empire.

"For instance, as a 'younger' pilot living in nullsec, instead of having spent so much time training to use an assault frig, I think I might have been better off training up to fly an interceptor. Not saying assault frigates are bad by any means given they lead up to using a heavy assault cruiser....but perhaps it would of been better time spent learning to fly an interceptor well rather than the assault. With that ship, I would be more useful, or at least feel more useful, in large fleet ops, than I do trying to pilot a battleship I know I'm far from being able to fly appropriately. So my personal suggestion to all the younger pilots looking to eventually live in 0.0, learn to fly the interceptor. You'll be happy you did."

*a slight pause as she reclines further back into her seat, her mind going distant for a moment as she contemplates the events over the past few days*

"Anyways...I'm rambling.

"Also, forgive me if I don't get all the details right as things were a bit of a rush and thus quite a blur for me.

"I believe it was Thursday evening that I finally arrived at the designated location. I'd made the trip in my cov-ops frigate with pretty much nothing but my ship and a few changes of clothes. All of my personal and gear had been contracted to the corporation for transport but had yet to arrive. No real concern but it meant there really wasn't much I could do at that moment. I did take the frig out for a little roam around the area, to familiarize myself with the surrounding systems as well as to set up safe spots and other useful bookmarks. Besides that, I believe things were rather quiet that night, though I had a number of things to get organized in regards to my computer files and communications equipment, so I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention to comms.

"Friday, however, was a completely different story. My gear had arrived sometime over night. Props to the corporation's logistics folks for the rather expedient service. I actually was impressed at how quickly it arrived. I still had a number of in-station duties I had to tend to but otherwise I worked a bit on getting my ships set up. Of course, as many know, moving can be such a trial. It was while directing the maintenance crew on what modules to install on what ships that I realized how much equipment I'd managed to forget. So yay! Another 4 or 500 mil down the drain on yet more gear....

"Fortunately, before I'd left empire, I was at least smart enough to hire on a hauler pilot. She's a Minmatar who'd recently escaped from Amarr captivity. She'd bravely lead a small group of slaves to take control of a Bestower industrial ship and piloted it back through hostile territory to the safety of Gallante space. I'd heard about her through an acquaintance and was quick to track her down and hire her on full time as my empire asset manager slash transporter. And so far she's been doing a phenomenal job flying the very same hauler she'd 'acquired' during her escape.

"Anyways, I sent her the list of items and then sat on my butt waiting for them to be delivered. There was an op that went down that evening but with the missing modules, I just didn't have a proper ship ready and had to pass the opportunity up. Instead, I headed out in the cov-ops again and sat around watching traffic at a heavily traveled gate. Comm log showed me a fellow writer and alliance mate, Manasi, had passed through the system saying hello but I think I'd fallen asleep in my pod when he'd passed. Oops! Sorry bout that Manasi!

"So okay...that might have been Friday... though it might have been Saturday as well. To be honest, as I said before, things are a little hazy for me.

"Either way, Sunday finally came around. That was when I finally got my first chance to go out on a fleet op with the alliance as well as some friendly 'blues'. It seems there was another alliance called Brick Squad that had been annoying my new employers for a fair amount of time. What this B.S. alliance doesn't seem to comprehend is that when a mosquito continuously bites at a giant, eventually it's going to get swatted.

"Now...truth is they're no small alliance themselves. And I don't completely disregard their combat capabilities. However, they definitely didn't prove anything to me this past weekend other than to show off their ability to google insults from the comfort of a station.

"ANYway......Sometime earlier, my alliance had put a station into reinforced mode. Sunday morning, the station was scheduled to come out of reinforced and a fleet was formed to take it down. For this op...I was (or so I thought) ready.

"We undocked from our staging base and formed up around a titan. At this point, I'd like to stop and say wow! I mean, it was my first time seeing a titan and I gotta admit, it was truly a sight to behold. I knew they were massive... but seriously, no picture can truly define the shear size of the thing. Seeing it for the first time was truly a moment I'll never forget.

"But okay....before I get distracted again.... once the fleet was formed, the titan activated a jump bridge, allowing us all to jump from our home system into the enemy's home system.

"At this point, I'm not going to go into too much detail for security reasons but through a coordinated attack, we easily destroyed the POS with minimal losses incurred by, forgive me, ignorant pilots. I was fired upon myself at one point and was easily able to warp away, replenish my shields (never even touched armor) and warp back to rejoin the op. So how some people lost their ships is beyond me when I, a rather young pilot, can so easily survive.

"Now this is where I gotta throw in my two isk on the completely undisciplined chatter in local comms from the 'fearsome' Brick Squad. If your POS gets attacked and put into reinforced mode, you know they're likely to return and you also know almost precisely when. You ALSO know they're not going to show up with just a handful of ships, especially being such a large alliance! For instance, a comment was made in regards to Manasi's entry about the whole engagement by one of their members, that I think had so many holes in it, it was comical to say the least. As I basically said earlier, don't cry your tears when you continuously poke at us and we finally grow tired enough to swat back. I mean seriously..... again.... they pretty much knew exactly when we'd be returning and yet they stood by and did nothing but talk shit while hiding away in their holes.... Gotta love tears in nullsec.

"Later that day, we went back to harass them some more. We basically sat around their entry gate while still, again, they hid and pretty much did nothing. Occasionally a stealth bomber would warp in and drop a bomb on our fleet. Big whoop. I'd say only only about 50% of their bombs even hit us, and those that did barely scratched our ships. OCCASIONALLY, they got lucky and i think we lost maybe one or two frigates but that's it. On the other hand, we destroyed a number of their ships in the process.

"So.... to sum up, it really was a very entertaining day. For myself personally, I had a lot of revelations about my own ship fit, to include how horrible my range is. I can currently only fit T1 large hybrids. Not completely horrible I guess, but when you take into account all I currently had to use was antimatter charges which have a serious range decrease..... well... needless to say, the range we were at to the tower was out of my reach. I made a couple shots but realized I wasn't going to hit shit, so instead just focused on helping by repping my fleet mates when needed. Sucked I couldn't add to the dps being laid on the tower but ahh well, it was still good to fly with everyone.

"End recording."

Here's Your Sign

2009-08-04T08:43:00.002-04:00

"Begin recording...

"Just a quick update to say all my gear has been staged for the move. I'm quite proud of myself really for how much I accomplished yesterday. Came up with a few decent fits for the various ship types I have, bought all the turrets as necessary and found good deals on ammo for those turrets. I did buy a few rigs for the battleships (big ouch) and got everything transported out to the station where I've been instructed to stage my gear. On top of all that, I was able to clean my living quarters from top to bottom!

"So now all I gotta do is set the courier contract up and get my own arse out there. Fortunately, my crew already has the ship I'll be using prepped and ready for launch. I need to get some laundry done tonight but once that's finished, I'll finalize the paperwork, jack myself into my pod and off we go.

"Now, with my luck, watch me get popped as soon as I enter the very first nullsec system on my journey out there.... There's a rather famous comedian named Bill Engvall who does a series of jokes that always end with 'here's your sign'. If you haven't heard of him, look him up. Really great comedian. Either way, think if I get popped in the very first nullsec system, that it might fall within that category? Shoot, wonder how many pod pilot moments could end with 'here's your sign..'"

*slight laughter*

"End recording."

A Hole In My Pocket

2009-08-03T15:45:00.002-04:00

“Begin Recording…

“I think I’m almost prepared. Only a few more ships and gear to be moved and I’ll have all my equipment staged for transport to my new corporation’s base of operations.”

*A pause, as the sound of a terminal can be heard.*

“1.1 billion…. That’s the total amount so far I’ve spent in just two days. Maybe to many that doesn’t seem like too much, but I’m certainly no old school pilot with a wallet bursting at the seams, or a hanger full of modules and gear built up over time. That kind of isk would make more sense if I had been buying a carrier or some other capital ship….but no, nothing quite as grand. What it amounted to was although I did purchase about 10 ships, a variety of hulls, Most of the isk went into a large variety of modules to fit on those ships and then some. Ironically, the only things I haven’t gotten yet are the weapon turrets themselves for the ships (figure a ton more isk) and I’d like to get a handful of rigs (another ton of isk). This is where a lot of playing and searching will come into effect as I try to figure out the best setups with my skill levels to fully utilize these ships. I don’t want to over extend my purchase of rigs. Rather I only want to purchase that which will work best for the ship setups I come up with. News has been made that the engineers have figured out a way to streamline the rig construction process and make simpler rigs for smaller vessels. I’m no industrialist, so I don’t know the full details….. but as I understand it, it will basically make buying rigs for frigates, cruisers and battlecruisers a hell of a lot cheaper than what’s currently available on the market. So why spend all my isk on them now?

“Working on setups for these ships won’t be easy for me either honestly, given that a number of the ship hulls are of the variety that I’m not accustomed to. For instance the HACs as well as the battlecruisers. The HACs I’m not used to simply because it really wasn’t all that long ago that I first gained enough knowledge to fly them. The battlecruisers I’ve been able to fly for a long time now, but just never saw the need. They’re not the type of ship I’d use for doing missions, nor are they the type of ship my last corp utilized for roams. So I just never got one and fitted one before. How much use they’ll see from me in 0.0 I honestly don’t know but some reason I couldn’t resist the urge to get them while I was on my little spending spree…

“Anyways, I figure everything will be finished and ready for transport either tonight or tomorrow night and I’ll be setting eyes myself on the new home system no later than tomorrow night. I just hope I don’t make the freighter pilot choke when he sees my cargo manifest…

“End recording.”

Ready....Set.....CRAP!!

2009-07-30T16:31:00.002-04:00

"Begin recording...."

*the tapping of a holo pad can be heard as she punches in various numbers and figures*

"So I've run into a conundrum..."

*A sigh as she seems to be contemplating the results of her entries*

"Frankly.... as is obvious, there's a lot about living in nullsec that is going to take some getting used to. Logistics is ENTIRELY different than what you find in Empire. Need a ship? Sit down at any terminal and within moments, you can generally find it and usually not too far away. Of course, depending on how far your willing to travel, you'll have lots of options to get it for a competitive price. You don't have to concern yourself with having someone else get it and move it for you. You want it, just hop in a shuttle, or even just your pod if your bold enough and go get it yourself. But living on the edge of the universe takes just a bit more effort and foresight.

"So it was asked of me yesterday what ships I had. Or rather what ships I intended to have transported out to my new corp's base of operations....

"Thing is...I don't really have any ships. Okay...actually I have a hanger full of ships. Just none that I can utilize well. Take the Megathron for instance. In my opinion, I'm really only skilled enough to use it for agent missions at this time. In that beast, with the support skills I already have, there isn't a single level 4 mission I can't solo. Besides that, I have and can fly the Ishtar and the Deimos, though still lacking the ability to use t2 heavy drones, sentries and worse....t2 medium hybrid turrets. In other words, I'm not able to fully utilize it's capabilities in my opinion. So that basically leaves my cov-ops and my assault frigs, both of which i do have the skill training to utilize well.

"So okay, some may say, 'your a combat pilot! why are you lacking so bad in gunnery skills?!' To which my answer is and always will be, what good are using the tricked out blasters or railguns if you can't target far enough away? or fit the modules that'll keep you alive to fire off more than your first round? In other words, I've been so focused on training all the skills I believe to be necessary support skills, that I've put my gunnery skills to the side just a bit. Reason for this is that after I get my support skills to the level I'm happy with, I intend to have the doc's do a neural remap of my learning implants. This will drastically change my ability to train my skills in gunnery and drones at a very fast pace. So not only will I catch up with my peers in their gunnery skills, but will fly by them while already having all the needed support skills.

"Sure, there will be lots of support skills that I won't have maxed out. But after doing the numbers, I only have about 30 more days left of training with my current attributes before I'm able to use pretty much every t2 module under the stars besides industrial stuff such as T2 mining lasers, capitol ship stuff and of course those in the category of weapon systems. After the neural remap...it won't take too long to get those weapons though. So sure, I may lack a bit in other support skills, skills that don't give you access to better tech but instead just give bonuses to those modules, but that I don't mind. That will come with time. Call me odd if you will, but to me its just the idea of being able to use em.

"I have deviated a bit though. My old friend, and corpmate once again, Prom, can be quite persuasive. The bastard..."

*laughing lightly she continues*

"Basically, I only have 9 days of training to use t2 heavies. This will be quite useful for ratting in 0.0 as well as fleet engagements so as I said, with a little persuasion from Prom, I decided to go ahead and finish it. With my T1 medium and large guns, I won't be of major use in fleet engagements really, but it will at least put me up a step and....well....make me feel at least a little better equipped.

"Once I get that, it'll be back to the support skills again. It's hard for me to deviate away from something once I got my mind set to it. I mean, maybe it's not the right path to take in my training but ah well. Only about 30 days left and it won't matter anyways.

"End recording."

Children and Snakes

2009-07-29T12:44:00.003-04:00

Region: Aridia
Constellation: Ombil
Solar System: Balas
Planet: Balas I - Moon 11
Station: Inherent Implants Biotech Production

"Begin recording"

*momentary pause*

"Few things to report today...

"First I'll start off with that I lost another Ishkur. This one to a force recon that I never saw coming. I was running a small anomaly in a dead end system, saw the pilot appear on the local communications channel, kept my eye on the scanner...but somehow, I never even saw his probes. Really don't know how he located me, but I'm of the opinion my scanner was experiencing technical difficulties. Either way, he was a corp mate of another pilot I'd shot down earlier that day in a Rifter. Found the Rifter sitting idly at a planet and was able to warp in right on top of him. His friend in a Megathron came to help but was far too late. Seems the Amarrian force recon pilot came for revenge of his comrade...

"Either way, when the recon appeared, I tried to run again. I'd just finished clearing the site of its defenses and was checking wreckages for anything of value. When he appeared, I quickly engaged the ship to warp out, but forgot my afterburner was still engaged. When accelerating for warp, it takes a lot longer to reach that 75% of top speed to get into warp, given your higher max speed allowed by the AB. Suffice it to say, he had his disruptor on me long before I could reach full speed. I still tried to burn away but my AB versus his MWD prevented that from happening. By the time I gave up and turned to engage, it was of course far too late as I was now under the fire of both him and his companion in a Myrimidon.

"Yet another moment that could have easily been avoided... Either way, I was not upset in the least about it and offered a congratulatory 'gf' in local. The Myrimidon pilot was the same pilot that had tried to get me before in the Mega and was cordial in response. The recon pilot however was a complete moron, feeling the need to be completely rude from the start because I'd tried to run instead of fight. I mean seriously...a less than one year old frig pilot against a 6 year old recon pilot (in terms of pilots license) AND a myrmidon?? Give me a break.

"Anyways... I'd considered going back just the harass/annoy the hell out of the guy since he wanted to claim it was 'their' space and be a fucking rectal ranger about the whole thing... but frankly, I'd rather be flying and combating against adult pilots rather than undisciplined children."

*slight laughter*

"Can you tell I'm a little wound up about it still?"

*clears her throat*

"So...moving on. I purchased a new ship and decided to travel into the deepest parts of lowsec. Taking a long look at the maps, it's my opinion that the region, Aridia, seems to have the most low sec systems than any other. In fact, it almost appears the entire region is made up of low sec with just a few spots of high sec here and there. So that's where I am now.

"I did a bit of recon yesterday evening and I think I've found me a few good spots to hunt. One system seems to be chocked full of industrialists. If I can catch em right, I just might be able to snag me a few good kills before they gang up and force me out. Which won't be any concern given my last bit of info to enter.

"And that bit would be I am now a member of Silver Snake Enterprises, part of the alliance, Systematic Chaos! Yep, my app went through and I logged on the aura network this morning just long enough to see the 'welcome package' in my inbox. Basically a butt load of files to go through. Not that I care. I mean, this will be my first nullsec corp and I'm quite excited about it. I've had my moments in nullsec but to actually live there... Again, very exciting to me.

"Some say nullsec isn't what it's cracked up to be. Others say its WAY better than empire. I say to each their own and the only way to form a real opinion is to actually go there yourself. So who knows, maybe eventually I'll return to empire. But for now, definitely excited to give life in 0.0 a try.

"End Recording."

Always a Bigger Fish

2009-07-22T09:18:00.003-04:00

“Begin recording…”

*Long pause followed by an audible sigh*

“Log file 07.21.111.

“Sometimes I just don’t know when to consider something a victory or a loss…..*the sound of something banging can be heard repeatedly* “…stupid!…stupid!…stupid!….”

*finally silence can be heard again for a long moment before being followed by another sigh*

“I made a critical mistake today. Perhaps it would have resulted in the same end result…but upon further investigation, I don’t think it would have... Either way, no matter what the end result would have been, I made the unwise choice…

“I was sitting in Orfrold, a 0.2 system in the Metropolis region. I had just barely missed catching a pilot with a bad security standing and had instead ended up being engaged in a rather interesting conversation with him. His name was Gorkus Dante and it seems he was giving up his pirating ways, having decided to join the Minimatar militias in their fight against the Amarr scum, like his father before him.

“I feel for him. His passion to join his fellow brethren in their fight was strong and I wish him all the best. As I told him, I can’t deny having considered doing it myself from time to time. Seems the Gallante militias are seriously lacking given the cataclysmic loss a short time back. But as I also told him, my eyes right now are set on nullsec. Maybe if and when that flame is squelched, maybe then I’ll return to help my own people. With me…ya never know…

*a small laugh*

“Anyways, I’m getting sidetracked…

“As I was sitting there chatting with him and browsing through some of the local gossip on the Scope network, I noticed two ships appear on the scanner. Both were Punisher class frigates, Amarr frigates. I watched them for a bit, checking and seeing that both their pilots’ license being quite new. In short order, I found them ratting in a belt and warped in at 100km out just to see what they were up to. It became clear immediately they were ratting… together. After having warped in, I turned the ship about, heading the exact opposite direction and switched on the afterburner. I watched local for a bit, first thoughts being this to be a trap. Finally, after much consideration, and once my ship was far enough out, I gauged the distance they were to the belts central beacon and turned the ship once more and immediately put it into warp. I figured, two pilots with that little experience, surely I could take them quick enough even if they were bait. If they weren’t bait, maybe they just didn’t consider me a threat given my positive sec status. Either way, given my lack of targets in the 50 or so jumps I’d made over the past few days, I figured why not.

“Suprisingly, when I’d warped back to the belt, I’d hit it just perfect. It easily put me well within scram and blaster range. Unleashing the drones, I set to work on the first Punisher…

*Long pause*

“Something felt…. odd…. about the whole occurrence but my focus was on killing em quickly and getting the hell out. I knew without question that whatever didn’t get destroyed when they went down would be worthless to me, so I wasn’t concerned about hanging out too long. I was there for blood and blood alone.

“The first ship went down quite fast and I quickly turned my attention to the second. It too went down rather fast. And that’s when I made my very critical mistake….

“Still basking in my revelry over having down my first two ships solo, I hadn’t even noticed the Vexor class cruiser, flown by Zeasier of The Bastards pirate corp, warp in. Didn’t even notice him closing on me. I was so lost in my excitement, I failed to realize I was still being targeted and even worse, failed to realize I was taking damage. So that was stupidity number one…

“By the time it did dawn on me, the Vexor was well within range, his drones already ripping away at my armor. Here was where I made mistake number two…

“I was scrammed of course. And of course there was no way I was going to get enough distance to escape it before my ship collapsed under the combined fire of his turrets and drones. But stupid me continued in my attempt to flee when instead I should have turned and engaged. A Vexor is a deadly foe against any frigate, even an Ishkur like the one I flew, but not impossible. If I had turned to engage, I might have won. I’m not experienced enough in one on one combat to say with absolute surety, but I believe I could have. I’d barely taken any damage from the two frigs and had nearly 2 full fleets of T2 hobgoblins and T2 warrior drones still at my disposal. As it was though, I’d panicked. I’d made a horrible decision of recalling the drones and attempting to burn away in order to leave…. And as a result, I lost the ship….

“Do I feel bad about it? Frankly, no. I don’t.

“After doing a bit of research, I’m pretty confident in my belief that at least one of those Punishers was bait for the Vexor. I can’t say that for sure, but gut feeling, and a few clues, points in that direction. Is that an excuse for losing the ship? No. I should not have lost the Ishkur. Complete lack of combat experience is what cost me the ship. I certainly have a good skill set imprinted in my brain to pilot the assault frigate well. Sure, there’s always more training that will make me even better but as I stand now, skill wise, I’m a very competent pilot. Where I lack is in experience, in my actual combat experience.

“If I’d been paying more attention. If I’d not got so caught up in the moment of having made my first solo kills. If I’d turned to fight instead of turning to run…. Lots of ‘ifs’. Point is, I’d let my excitement get the better of me and having lost my cool, I’d made irrational, and slow decisions.

“But again, do I feel bad about it? Still the answer is no.

“I learned a number of lessons with this engagement. All of which I know will help me grow. I made mistakes that next time I swear will not happen again. But of course….I’m sure I’ll be awakened to even more lessons in the future.

"Either way, as they say in the local comms chatter…. ‘GF’ and ‘fly sa…. Wait…..never mind that crap…..

“YARR!!!!”

Valuable Cargo and a Suicidal Run

2009-07-08T08:54:00.005-04:00

Region: The Forge
Constellation: Kimotoro
Solar System: Jita
Planet: Jita IV - Moon 6
Station: Caldari Provisions

Selina smiled as she stood watching from the station hanger's viewing deck. Below, she could see the hanger crew working to unload the 'cargo' from giant Megathron's cargo bay. Even now, safely docked in her usual station hanger here in Jita, she still couldn't believe just how easy it was to get her ship out of Solitude and back into main empire. They had encountered not a single thread of opposition in the roughly 15 or so jumps through lowsec. Not that she was complaining. She laughed again as her thoughts went back to the look her maintenance chief had given when she'd told him her intentions back in Octanneve. Sometimes she just wished she had a camera implant.
___________________________________________

Region: Solitude
Constellation: Elose
Solar System: Octanneve
Planet: Octanneve III - High Orbit
Station: Duvolle Laboratories Factory

"You want what?!?!"

"I want you to strip the Megathron of all its current modules. If the ship is attacked by anything of significant threat, our chances will be slim we'll make it out anyways," Selina said, shrugging. "And besides, at this point I could care less honestly if I lose her. I just want out of Octanneve. Out of Solitude."

Taldak, her maintenance chief, looked again at the list he held in his hands, his mind still in numb shock.

Lows:
1600mm Reinforced Nanofiber Plates I
Damage Control I
Large Armor Repair I
Energized Basic Adaptive Nano Plating
Armor Explosive Hardener I
Warp Core Stabilizer I
Warp Core Stabilizer I

Mids:
100mn Microwarp Drive I
Cap Recharger I
Cap Recharger I

Highs:
-empty-

He recognized all the gear on the list. It was all cheap junk they'd salvaged from the wrecks of the various missions they'd been running for the local Gallante Customs agents. Most of it was, for the most part, worthless junk in terms of gear for a battleship. But to think she actually intended to use it?? And furthermore...no weapons of any sort?! Slowly he looked back up at her. Surely this pod pilot had truly lost her mind. He knew she was crazy before, but now she must have really lost it.

"Miss Selina, I..."

"Look Tal, nobody but me will be on this ship when it undocks. I'm flying this one solo. I mean, I have absolutely no intentions of engaging anyone during this trip and in fact will be running or avoiding contact at all costs. So I say again, if the ship gets blown....oh well. The insurance I have on this thing will be enough, with some left over, to buy a new one anyways." She gave him her puppy eyes. "Besides, it might turn out to be a fun little adventure."

Taldok bit his lower lip in thought as he stared at her than just smirked, shaking his head. "You really are insane," he playfully mused.

She beamed at his words. "Yeah. I know. Fun, isn't it?"

"Oye vay...," he said before laughing. "Alright. We'll get her fixed up and ready in no time. Obviously shouldn't be too hard or take too long."

Selina laughed once more before turning to head off towards the pilot's lounge when a thought struck her. Glancing over her shoulder, she gave a devilish grin.

"Oh. And Tal. Do me one other favor?"

"Sure. What's that?"

"Know that package labeled 'A Lot of Money' we've had sittin in the hanger collecting dust?"

He nodded, a grin spreading across his own face to which she gave a wink.

"Yeah....throw that in the cargo hold will ya?"

"Will do Miss," he said laughing as he watched her leave. "Will do."

Killin Time is Killin Me

2009-07-06T10:25:00.006-04:00

Region: Solitude
Constellation: Elose
Solar System: Octanneve
Planet: Octanneve III - High Orbit
Station: Duvolle Laboratories Factory

Selina sat on her cot with her back against the wall, twiddling her thumbs....literally. She'd spent the past weekend running missions for her 3 agents, trading off to the others when the currently given one didn't suite her. No way was she going to digress to being an errand bitch. "'Pick me up some smokes. Get me dancers for a wedding. Transport the janitors. Take out our garbage,'" she mocked in a quiet mumble. Even then, what missions she did take nearly bored her to tears. Throw the right resistance plates on and there wasn't a mission task she couldn't do in a solo Megathron battleship. All the faction ships were so predictable, it was pathetic. In fact, it was only a few hours ago that she'd just returned from single handedly tanking the incoming fire of 5 other Megathrons while instapopping the incoming frigates. Cruisers took a few extra shots but what she didn't kill before getting too close for her 425mm Prototype I Gauss Guns to hit....her lowly tech 1 drones finished off instead.

Okay, so there had been a couple of harrowing moments. But the reason was really more of being just because she'd gotten so bored in doing the missions, she'd make silly mistakes like going out with the completely wrong resistances fitted to the ship.

So....if that is so boring, one might ask why not go hunt for targets in lowsec. Well she had......and found absolutely nothing as usual. With most of her ships pretty much stuck in Solitude, cut off by a large swathe of low sec from the more populated areas often referred to out here as 'Main Empire', she was a bit hard pressed to just leave them everything behind. But that meant having little offered little in the way of lowsec hunting without traveling a good distance. In fact...as time wore on, the temptation to make what might be a suicidal run from Solitude to Main Empire in her battleships grew with each passing day. Fit the things with warp core stabs, a nice passive tank and well....maybe some drones and.....well....just go. Ship is insured so if by chance it goes poof, oh well. Minor loss really. Most of the expensive modules, such as the gauss guns mentioned earlier, can be packaged and transported separately, in smaller faster ships. Maybe throw some of the cheap junk in the battleship cargo holds just to mock anyone that might by chance actually destroy the ship.

Still twiddling her thumbs, she muled the thought over in her head. Finally, setting her jaw, she pushed herself off the cot and activated her comm, paging her newest assistant. "Miriam."

"Yes miss?"

"Wake the maintenance crew. I've got some work for them."

When to Fight and When to Run

2009-07-02T21:10:00.000-04:00

Region: Aridia
Constellation: Anama
Solar System: Zayi
Planet: Zayi X - Moon 7
Station: Pend Insurance Investment Bank

Helping her climb out of the capsule, Selina's personal attendants quickly threw a blanket over her naked body. Slowly, they guided her unstable form to a nearby cot within the room and guided her down. She shivered uncontrollably, her teeth clattering noisily against each other. The attendants knew though that her trembling had nothing to do with the temperature in the room. In fact, they were nearly all shaken up pretty badly by the very recent event. So close had they all come to death, that any man or woman who didn't carry a desire for it trembled now as their beloved pilot did. To see her so shaken now, even with the knowledge that she would in essence live on, being cloned back at their homebase while they were permanently erased from existance....it made them love her even more. It was a reminder that she was just as human as they with real thoughts and real emotions. That she did care for the lives of her crew and ship.

It had all happened so quickly. The blare of the warning sirens. The sudden jolting of the ship and the deafening sounds of impact as missile after missile had smashed against the armor of the Thorax cruiser, comically named Flying Dildo, tearing chunks away with each strike. The automated computer voice called out over the corridor speakers, "All hands. Battlestations. All hands. Battlestations."

What was hoped to be a leisurely cruise back to homebase after visiting the place where it all started. The birthplace of all that was Eve. The solar system known as New Eden. In an instant, the cruise had turned from one of leisure to a desperate fight for survival.

The ship's crew captain entered the logistics deck in a flurry.

"Status report. Now!"

"We're under attack sir," exclaimed the navigations officer in wide eyed fear.

"Well no shit we're under attack you twit! Now damnit, can somebody with half a brain cell tell me what's going on?!"

Immediantly, the ordinance officer stood to attention even as the ship rocked under the impact of yet another missile. "Sir! We got two bogies inbound! A heavy interdictor, ship class Onyx, and a command ship, class Nighthawk!"

The captain's knees nearly buckled at the news. Immediantly he knew they were no match for the two attackers. Their chances against one of those two were slim. To be confronted with both?

"Pilot status?"

"I'm fine captain." came the computerized voice of the pilot encased within her capsule below the very deck they stood on. "Prepare all hands for combat."

The captain spun his head in surprise towards the pilot status monitors, the closest connection they had at present with the capsuleer besides her voice over the speakers. "Prepare for what?!"

"You heard me captain. The Onyx has us scrammed and ONLY the Onyx is attacking. We jump back through the gate and you can be assured that command ship will follow along with possibly what was a third attacker we passed at the gate. So we have two options, engage now against the Onyx, a cruiser sized vessel in hopes of breaking free, or jump through and be faced with a battlecruiser sized vessel and a second possible bogey. Personally, with the neuts, I like my odds against that cruiser."

The captain nodded. It really didn't matter whether he agreed or not. What Selina said, went without question. Immediantly he turned. "All hands, prepare for combat! Deploy drones. Cycle the blasters, prepare to active neutralizers as soon as we're in range!"

Standing behind it, grasping the rear of his command chair, he watched out the thick windows as the ship rocketed towards the Onyx, blasters now spitting bolts of federation anti-matter against the powerful shields of the Onyx. Just as instructed, once range was achieved, the neutralizers kicked on, reaching out to grasp the Caldari vessel with its viscious assault. Immediantly the crew braced themselves as the hulls of the two ships slammed into each other. Immediantly, the ship pivoted about as Selina guided the vessel to align towards a random celestial. Having opened fire, she knew the stargates would not allow her to pass but right now, anywhere even in system was better than here. Seconds passed. Seconds that felt like hours as they waited breathlessly in hopes of a break. As the ship entered structure, warning sirens going off as sections of the ship were torn open, exposing areas of the ship to the vacuum of space, each man felt the claws of death reaching out to them. Each one watched their lives spin before their eyes as often does before one passes to the next life. And when the space outside them suddenly began to stretch in the usual sign of entering warp, not a breath could be heard.

It took them all a moment to realize what had just happened. To realize that the swirling lights they now saw were not the blur of death, but rather the blur of warp space. They had made it. Their ship had broken free of the Onyx's grip, catapulting them away from their near doom. They had left their drones behind... but the loss of computer controlled scraps of metal versus living flesh and blood.... It was a loss they were more than willing to accept.

They were of course not out of the fire yet. In essence bouncing off the celestial, they entered warp once more, guiding them to a safe spot they'd made along their path of escape. It was unknown if their attackers had probes but it would at least be some form of safety until they could once again pass through the gates. They all knew as well the two attackers were not leaving any time soon either given they'd both opened fire on their ship.

Soon, the armor had been nearly restored and the standard amount of time had passed. Quickly, Selina urged the damaged ship into warp once more, bolting for their exit stargate. As soon as the ship was through, she turned the ship towards the nearest station and urged it quickly into warp. Just in time, the stargate faded away into the distance just as they saw the local comm list screen grow with the entrance of their two attackers. Run, and try to get ahead and away? Or dock up and wait for them to leave? Selina chose the latter. One brush with death was enough for one night.

Sitting in the station now, recovering from their near death experience, the comm screen lit up with the face of one of her attackers:

Aiden Emmagan > ;)
Selina Starfire > :) gj btw earlier. nearly had me
Aiden Emmagan > ;)
Aiden Emmagan > okay you pay aiden emmagan bounty on the head (roughly 36mil) and we let you fly :)
Selina Starfire > LOL, or i just call it a night and go to bed like i should be doin. :P
Aiden Emmagan > tz tz :/
Selina Starfire > while leaving my char logged in just to annoy ya :P
Aiden Emmagan > ;)
KingSmash > gn8 ;) fly save

Pay a ransom?? Were they serious?? They had their chance and they lost it. They screwed up. And yet they still believed she would pay a ransom now that she was safely docked?! "Psht.... move along and find someone with a little less intelligence, with a little less patience and a little more fear boys," she thought to herself with amusement as she finally rose from the cot and offered to buy all the crew a round or two down at the station bar and maybe catch a flick or somethin while they were at it. Sides, they prolly had some time to kill...

A Little History Can Change Today's Decisions

2009-06-25T13:32:00.006-04:00

Region: Genesis
Constellation: Ekrin
Solar System: Sheroo
Planet: Sheroo X - Moon 3
Station: Sisters of EVE Bureau

Selina dropped her duffel bag on the bed and powered up the suite's terminal. The room, even for its usual stale, recycled air scent, smelled even more stale than normal. Long had it been since she'd last set foot in here, but after packing up and leaving her vacation home the previous day, she knew it would be the best place for her to go in order to deal with her large and vastly spread out assets. Generally, she prides herself on being a fairly organized person, keeping most of her gear neatly distributed as needed between only a handful of stations throughout the galaxy. However, organization certainly was NOT one of Mikolan's strong suites. Upon receiving the inventory list of all the gear and ships he'd contracted to her, she'd nearly popped her jaw out of place. There was gear everywhere! From one end of empire to the other.

Ah well...what better way to reacquaint herself with the pod life than to fly from station to station, selling and collecting as she went, and NOT avoid the shortcuts through lowsec? She couldn't help but grin at that thought.

As the holo-screen of the terminal flickered to life, her favorite source of news and information about the happenings in all of Eve loaded up. To her, no better method of getting real, personal and in-depth news of events around the universe could be found then to read it straight from the personal journals of the very pilots who flew the galaxy. And "The Eve Online Portal" certainly made a great central location to find those journal keepers.

Today, as she scanned through the recent entries though, one in particular caught her eye. An entry made by a mercenary corporation called Noir, who had reprinted an article which basically chronicled the history of nullsec space. As she read it, her interest peeked once again. THIS was why she'd once been so heavily interested in moving to Nullsec. Sure, it was politics. But the politics of Nullsec were, in her opinion, much more entertaining then the entirely political wars of Empire. Empire's wars were mostly fought behind the closed doors of the leaderships and politicians. Battles were waged more by words than by their militaries. Sure, you could join the militias but that really was just a tool. You became nothing more than another capsuleer basically running missions for the numerous corporate agents. Unless things had changed since she'd went on vacation, it seemed the battles fought by the various militia groups had little to no impact on the over-all scheme of the Empire wars.

Nullsec on the other hand was an entirely different beast. Nullsec was controlled, operated, and defended by capsuleer pilots. Yes, there were talks behind closed doors. In any war, there almost always had to be. But the focus was on territory owned, or sovereignty...and the only way to gain that was through the vigilant efforts of the pod pilots involved. Each individual pod pilot could make the difference in who controlled what out there.

Besides, after reading another entry made by a pirate named Shae Tiann in an all-female pirate corp called the Hellcats, it was pretty evident Goonswarm had become determined to piss as many people off as possible. To bully anybody and everybody. And if joining the corp her friend had been pushing her to join meant she could help snuff out that growing ego of theirs, she was all for it.

Glancing again at the long inventory list, Selina gave a frustrated sigh. But of course, first things first...

A Little R & R

2009-06-09T16:28:00.003-04:00

Selina sat down at her terminal with a quiet sigh. A cool breeze off the nearby ocean water blew it's way through her open air cottage. Outside, the local insects sang their eerie tunes to each other, a constant chorus of chirps and buzzing that to many, the sound came together in what is often thought to be a very entrancing music, the whispered words of the sirens hidden within, lulling the weary traveler into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Besides being a bit out of the way from the usual war scarred or overly populated planets, it was one of the reasons she enjoyed coming here. Many referred to it as a place where one could go and live out a Second Life, free from the corporations and governments and all the political battles that were fought far above and beyond in the depths of space.

Sitting on the veranda, she keyed up the terminal, punched in her access codes and waited for the usual beep to notify her it had started recording.

"Begin personal log 59730-86-571."

She paused for a moment, eyes turning to stair out over the waves crashing over the sandy beach nearby.

"I'm starting to lose track of when it was I last breathed the recirculated air of a spaceship. When I last felt the warm goo of the capsule... To be honest, it feels good. I know of course I'm going to have to return again, and soon, but for the time being, I've been enjoying my much needed vacation.

"I've already made contact with some of my old co-pilots. Things within the corporation have really appeared to have gone to shit. Some predicted this, others denied even the remote possibility of it. I sort of saw it coming, saw the degeneration of spirits within the corp and out of frustration, decided it was time for a vacation. Now, as I begin looking towards my return to capsuleer life, I'm learning a lot has changed.

"My old mentor, Mikolan, has resigned his pilot's license entirely. He contracted me all his assets, much of which i can't even use given they're Minmatar and Caldari operating systems (of which I know so little about), mining gear and whatever else he had collecting dust in hangers spread out across New Eden. He also sold his clones, pulling in a hefty 3.7 billion of which he gave me 3.5 of that. I guess 200 million is enough to retire on? I don't know. Personally, I have no intentions of doing that myself any time soon. So with the 3.5 and whatever I make from selling off his assets....well, lets just say I'll be pretty well set for awhile.

"And it's a good thing too as I also just resigned my position within the corporation. Not sure yet what I'm going to do from here though. I need to take some time to sort through the pile of ships and gear I have, sell what I'll never use, trash what I can't sell, inventory what I intend to keep...etc, etc. After that...I don't know. I've got a friend out in 0.0 wanting me to join up with them. Guess they're currently at war with the Goons and could use the extra set of guns. Another old friend submitted his application to them yesterday in fact.

"Strange as it is for me to say though...I'm not sure I'm ready for that yet. I would no longer consider myself a fresh pilot, a rookie or any other newbish name one might come up with...but then I'm far from being a seasoned pilot as well. Truth is, I want to experience it all. Well...okay. Not all. The whole manufacturing and trading side doesn't interest me in the least. And after having watched the rather boring and mundane activities Mikolan went through with the whole mining bit...umm...yeah. That's not for me either. No surprise to me that he retired so soon. As for exploring, yes. I fully intend to train up those skills as I could certainly make use of being able to find the hidden plexes, archeology and radar sights. (Could REALLY care less about the wormholes unless it takes me from one side of New Eden to another perhaps for some little travelling adventure.)

"I'm done with the high sec, empire corporations. I've come to the conclusion that any corporation, who spends more than 75% of their time in High Sec is a complete waste of my time. Not saying they're bad people. I mean, some one's gotta build the guns and ammo for the rest of us to blow each other up with. It's just that I'm not a productive type. I'm the destructive type. The blood of others is my drug. The death and explosions I creates the energy that drives me. And the more I get, the more I want.

"So I have a few options I could consider.

"One, I stay solo and just hack out my own existence. Fighting and killing anything that I cross paths with. Of course this is a rather lonely and difficult road but challenges are something I thoroughly enjoy. But I could easily see that becoming rather boring and tactically difficult in such a vast universe.

"Option two is to join my friends in nullsec. That is of course given I am accepted by their corporation. I'm sure with their endorsement, I could get in though and my desire to go live in nullsec is quite powerful.

"Third option. Join the Gallante militia. They're always in need of pilots. And especially now with the latest news I've picked up on regarding their horrible losses against the Caldari. But empire politics really don't interest me. I never have been much for being just a pawn in a political war machine.

"That leaves, the fourth, final, and also very tempting option of turning pirate. Normally, I'm the one going after the so-called 'blinkies' but yet...to be one... To actually live that life I read so much about in the public pilot logs... To truly live by my own rules... Damn, it's so tempting...

"So I don't know. As I said, I have a lot of gear I've got to get sorted first before I have to actually make the decision, so there's no rush. But soon...soon the time will come and it's certainly something I need to think about.

"End log."

Leaning back in her seat, her eyes briefly went distant as she pondered over all she'd spoken. Finally, after a lengthy moment, she breathed in deeply the cool air blowing in off the water and let out a sigh. She really should get back to work on going over the inventory lists her accountant had sent her but...eh. "What's the rush," she thought as she grabbed her surfboard from beside the door, she struck out across the sand with a wide smile. "Work can wait for just another day..."

A Week of Blood

2009-03-20T09:53:00.002-04:00

Selina dropped on the thick couch within her apartment at the headquarters station. The past week, beginning with the previous weekend, had been a whirlwind of activity both good and bad and she had a feeling this weekend would be no different.

It started off on Saturday with the decision being made for the fleet to head into one of the wormholes that have been popping up all over the place since... Well... Anyways, it was a chance for the corp to get a feel for fighting this ancient race known as Sleepers. They had gathered a fleet of about 15 ships, a mix of battleships, battlecruisers, logistics and such and struck out towards the previously located wormhole. Once inside, various complexes were scanned down, patrolling Sleeper gaurdians dispatched, wrecks looted and salvaged.. All in all a very successful op with barely a scratch on any of their fleet's ships.

It wasn't until the call was made to return to the wormhole and head home that the op hit a bit of a snag.

A decision was made to first jump a couple ships through the wormhole back into known space just to make sure there weren't any surprises on the other side. Once that had been accomplished, the rest of the fleet was ordered to approach the gate and jump as well. First one then another disappeared through the wormhole.

"Captain Froulia, commence wormhole jump."

"Umm....I'm sorry Miss Selina, but I cannot process your request."

"Captain Froulia, that is not a request. That is an order."

"I understand Miss, but there seems to be a problem."

Selina mentally ground her teeth. "And just what would that..." her words cut off as she stared at the wormhole ahead of her. She hadn't noticed it before but strange fluctuations began emanating from the anomaly and growing quickly. And suddenly, as if it just never was, the wormhole was gone.

Immediately the comms lit up in a frenzy. Half the ships had gotten out but the other half were now stuck. The horror stories she'd heard from other pilots had just come true. Immediantly the FC demanded order. A reordering of squads was created, those in known space and those still in wormhole space. As a rule of thumb, the probe ship was intended to be last to leave and thus immediantly went to work, seeking an alternative exit, while the squad in known space started the trek home. Eventually of course an exit was found through which the remaining fleet was able to get through. An even better turn of events was that the exit brought them within only a few jumps of the corp's operations base for cyno jumping carrier and jump freighters.

So that was Saturday.

Sunday, a fleet was formed to go on a rather lengthy roam. All in all, about 20 pilots showed up for the roam. For the most part it was a smooth journey, but the only kill being a pirate in a Megathron who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. After returning to the home base, a majority stayed together and decided to go harass the local bullies in the region. Unfortunately, the fleet ended up losing two Raven battleships in return for killing one of their Megathron battleships. It was a slightly bad decision on the fleet's part for being so far away from the bait ships.

Either way, for the night, it was a 2 for 2. Not really good but acceptable. As for Selina personally, she realized then she really needed to get someone working on shortening the time of her battleship's targeting computers as she was beginning to feel like she was always a step behind everyone.

As for Monday, she did take that day off. Relaxing just a bit and getting some paperwork and other things in order. Tuesday, herself and a couple others headed out to see what could be found. They ended up finding a crow interceptor who definitely gave them a short run for the money. However, with her trio gang spread out well enough, all it took was one bad mistake and the crow met it's demise.

The following night, while herself and her corp mate, Promephius, decided to go check out a couple active systems in the area, they came upon an ally who was attempting to narrow down a couple of unwelcome visitors from the nullsec regions nearby. Fleeting up with him, they were eventually able to catch them at a planet and within short order, separated one from his battlecruiser while the other, in the Caracal cruiser, escaped. Unfortunately, it turns out the ally was quite drunk and just being an absolute punk in passing along the killmail if he got it. Claims he never got one, though he didn't seem to know where to look no matter how many times it was described to him. Of course there is the possibility the pilot ejected. Either way, seems it will remain a mystery...

Finally, yesterday, Thursday evening, Selina had set out flying wing with Promephius. They hopped around a couple systems within Solitude, tried to bait/catch a couple of blinky pirates but not having much luck, made the decision to head towards empire some 20 hops away. Destination was Mara, a system well known to be active with pirates. However, they decided to split up slightly with Selina taking the slightly shorter route through a few low sec systems. Upon jumping into the first lowsec system, she was greeted with a delightful small surprise.

A number of pirates had set up a gate camp. Immediately her mouth began to water, looking at all the juicy targets on her radar. Too many for herself in her Incursus, even with Promephius nearby in a Vexor cruiser, but it definitely gave her hope of some action that evening. Moving on, she finally came to Tama, another well known pirate system. Sure enough, subspace communication beacons reported an average of 20 to 30 pilots in system, with numerous ones marked by Concord as shoot on sight. Passing word to Promephius, the decision was made to hang out for a bit and see what could be found.

Spotting a couple of assault frigates in a belt, Promephius gave the word he was warping in. Selina got a tad confused by which belt he'd called and aligned to the wrong one but as soon as he relayed he'd found them and was engaged, she immediately set her navigational computers to warp to him. Unfortunately it was a delay that probably cost them the kill. Quickly they primaried the Wolf. For a moment, things were looking really good...but then the inevitable happened. Out of warp came 2 more elite frigates, a stabber cruiser, and a short distance off a Falcon uncloaked. Decision was made it was time to bail out. Unfortunately, they already had Promephius locked down while Selina alone escaped. At that point, all they could do was sit and laugh as it took nearly a full 3 minutes for so many ships to chew through his armor, him unable to do much of anything except spam the warp command given the Falcon had him completely jammed. Finally, of course, the ship's structure gave way and although he would've normally escaped, there was a slight delay in his pod systems which ended up costing him the life of his clone. (Of course a petition was filed to the systems engineers...though they both knew it would probably be for the most part ignored and blamed on pilot error)

So all in all in had been a pretty decent week...though Selina was definitely itching to get her own killmail...

"Ah well, sleep is a waste of time anyways," she said with a quiet grin before standing, grabbing her jacket and heading for the hanger.

Death's Lessons

2009-03-09T09:22:00.006-04:00

Solar System: Uosusuokko
Region: Lonetrek

With a start, Selina snapped her eyes open and screamed. The searing heat in her head roared down her spine and through the rest of her body. She strained to sit up but only to find her body tightly strapped down. This caused panic to flow through her even further as she began to flair wildly in an attempt to free herself, screaming uncontrollably. Only when her head felt like it was spinning out of control did she begin to subside. Her eyes began to blur, the room appearing like liquid. All around her stood faces of whom she didn't recognize. She could see their mouths moving but the blood rushing through her head drowned out any words they spoke. And soon, consciousness left her entirely once again.
___________________________________________

"Fleet stand by. We have a Drake inbound. Bubble up. Tacklers in the ready. Weapons hot," called out the fleet commander.

Selina panned her camera drone around to watch the gate. Very shortly, as called, the gate activated, the white blaze of light tracing across the sky. She turned her attention to her overview in excitement, waiting for the battlecruiser to decloak and make its run. Holding its cloak for as long as possible, it eventually gave way and the ship turned about, determined to reach the gate before it met its demise. But almost as soon as it appeared, the interceptor was upon it, its webber slowing the Drake's momentum considerably.

Quickly Selina broke orbit from the gate. She knew if she wanted to be truly effective on this one, she was going to have to get closer, her blasters seriously limited in their range. Already her drones were deployed and rocketing towards the ship, their own guns blazing away at the Drake's shields. Somewhat unfortunate for her, the target went down considerably fast under the fleet's assault and she was only able to get off a couple shots before the ship erupted in a massive explosion.

It was enough however for her to break out in pure joy as she knew that was going to be her first real kill on the corporation's killboard. However, it was just as she was about to express this to her fleet members when suddenly the voices on the comms went absolutely berserk.
__________________________________________

Selina slowly opened her eyes. For a moment everything was a blur of colors but with a little effort, things began to take focus. She was in a clinic, that was for sure with all the medical gear lying about, the various monitors beeping away beside her. Slowly she attempted to raise herself up when a man in a lab coat appeared beside her.

"Don't get up. Lie still for a few more moments while I do some checks first, okay?"

His voice was soothing though firm.

She tried to speak, but managed what sounded more like a croak, her throat and mouth being so incredibly dry. He smiled and motioned to someone else in the room who quickly came forth carrying bearing a glass of water. Her first few attempts at drinking the liquid failed miserably as more of it ended up on her face and neck then it did her throat, but eventually the dryness subsided.

As soon as she was satiated, the tech stepped forward once again, checking her vitals and other readouts. Seemingly pleased with what he saw, he lightly patted her shoulder and smiled warmly to her. "Your going to be just fine. Just lay here and rest as long as you need. And there will always be someone right outside the door if you need anything. Okay?"

She nodded slowly, shifted a bit and before they had even left the room was out once again.
________________________________________

"Tempest is primary! All hands, focus fire on that Tempest!"

"Taking heavy damage, warping out!"

"I'm being primaried! Need shields!"

"They've got 3 bubbles up, we're pinned down!"

"I'm being jammed! Anybody got that Falcon?!"

"I'm down. Oh shit! They're targeting my pod!"

Selina stared in near shock. Her mind continued to try and process all that was happening around her as the lights of lasers, guns and missile explosions illuminated the darkness of space. So far her Dominix had gone unscathed as she had yet to be primaried by the attacking fleet but the flight of neuting drones had already done there work and she knew it was only a matter of time before they turned their full attention on her now nearly defenseless battleship. She had already turned her ship about and was burning full power towards the edge of the warp bubbles but was already beginning to realize she was never going to make it.

Suddenly the ship rocked violently as an explosion pummelled the side of her ship. It was soon followed shortly after by jolts of blaster, laser and projectile fire. Her shields dropped fairly quick and soon her armor under the massive onslaught. Already she had ordered all hands to abandon ship. She only hoped that they would make it before the inevitable happened...and more importantly that their escape pods would make it out of the fray as well.

Suddenly the ship's computer started chiming, "Warning. Hull breach in Sections six, nine, and twelve. Warning hull breach in..."

"I know! I know! Just shut up and get us the hell out of here," she yelled back at it. However with no shields nor armor left to protect the ships fragile structure, the attackers weapons tore through the ship.

"Warning. Explosion Imminent. Jettisoning Capsule."

Though mentally detached for the most part from her body, she still felt the violent jolt of the capsule as it jettisoned from the ship, perhaps less than a second before the ship exploded like the grand finale of a fireworks display. Immediately she began spamming the warp command as her capsule blazed its way towards the edge of the warp bubble but before she reached it, she heard the warning pings of a ships target lock.

Selina silently cursed her killer, vowing her revenge as first one then a second shot ripped through her pod...
________________________________________

Having finished dressing, Selina made her way down the corridor, stopping at the clerks desk to finalize the paperwork.

"Tech Chief Croden here will escort you to your ship ma'am," said the desk clerk as she signed the last form. "Hope we don't see you again too soon," the woman tried to lightly joke but Selina only snapped a look of venom at her before turning to follow the tech.

As they neared the hanger, the man glanced over his shoulder. "She ain't much Miss, but she'll do the job. I assume you have another ship prepared elsewhere?"

She only nodded in response as the door slid open and there sat the Velator rookie ship. Unfortunately, she had never taken the time to get the forms completed to have her clones moved to Solitude. Definitely something she was going to have to fix once she made the 40 odd jumps home....

Get Some!

2009-02-27T08:21:00.002-05:00

Solar System: Maire (0.7)
Region: Solitude
Sovereignty: Gallante Federation

With her back against the wall, eyes closed, Selina sat in comfortable silence in the booth across from Jassiel. About an hour before, she had shut down the engines of the Thorax cruiser, letting the ship drift silently in space while she detached herself from her pod to join her friend in the ship's diner for pleasant meal. For once she'd actually finished before Jassiel, an oddity since she was usually pestered crew members, many of which had never seen her before in person and simply wanted to meet her, to be able to tell their friends and family back home that they had the fortune of not only being on a ship piloted by a capsuleer but to have actually met that capsuleer in person. It was an honor that most would never experience.

At first Selina thought this to be a little over blown. She initially didn't think of herself as anything special. So she took some test back in the day. So what? It wasn't some immensely difficult test that she had to spend years, days or even hours studying for. She simply walked into a medical testing facility, lay'd quietly on a examination table while they poked and prodded her and ran numerous scans, sat through a lengthy session answering odd questions given by some clinically too-efficient head shrink, and filled out a few standardized forms. Again, so what?

Yet, when you compared the number of pod pilots flying about to the billions upon billions of people in the universe of Eve....well, it really began to put things into perspective. Never mind taking into account that even if a person were to pass the initial tests, most never survived in the pod for more than 2 weeks. It was known to every pilot that the initial two weeks were always the trial weeks. It seemed to be the point at which the body either chose to adapt to the rigors of the pod...or just sputter out of existence. It was for this reason that most pilot corporations did not except any pilots below that mark.

Just as Jassiel was finishing her meal, Selina having done so a short time ago already, the krono on her wrist began beeping the notification sound of a skill upload completion. Tapping it, a holoscreen materialized above it, showing her which skill had completed. At once her face lit up in what could almost be described as a more feral grin than excited one. Jassiel could only tip her head, curiosity forming in her own eyes at what the devilish pod pilot could be so wickedly excited about.

After taking a few seconds to switch out the skill "book" from her training implant near the back of her scalp, she finally turned her eyes towards Jassiel, the grin having never subsided in the least. "Seems we have a bit of shopping to do."

Jassiel smiled but the look of confusion remained. "Is that right?"

Nodding, Selina rose from the table. "Have all hands report to stations. Notify the crew of Poison Seed to have the Incursus prepped for the low sec run to Jita and to be ready for launch by the time we arrive at station." Pausing for a moment, her face twisting just slightly as she worked some thoughts over in her head. Reaching over, she plucked the pen from Jassiel's breast pocket, grabbed a napkin from the table dispenser and began jotting down a few items. "I want these modules and gear loaded into its cargo bay as well to take with us," she said before sliding it over to the woman across from her.

Taking it, Jassiel peered it over for a moment, glanced at Selina, looked back at the list, back to Selina and was just about to look at the list again when the realization hit her like a Dominix without an e-brake. Quickly she stood, already activating her comm link with the bridge and relaying the commands given to her. Selina stood as well, both girls quickly rushing from the dining facility towards the capsule chamber.

When they reached the ready room, Selina was quick to disrobe as Jassiel prepared the pod for pilot reinsertion. As she began lowering herself into the pod goo, Jassiel reached out and lightly touched her. "Can't resist asking....which model are you planning to get?"

Selina laughed lightly before giving her a wink. "Definitely the Ishkur my dear Jassiel. As if there was any other choice..."

Flexing Muscle

2009-02-23T07:52:00.005-05:00

Selina sat quietly listening to the chatter over the comms. Only perhaps an hour before, she had been presented by the corp directorate with a rather pleasant addition to her hanger, although temporary, to which she was now linked in and ready to go. The feeling of being in control of such a large ship was a bit intimidating at first and she had to remind herself time and time again that it really was no different controlling the Dominix class battleship she now sat in, compared to the little frigates and cruisers she had become so used to. But they needed heavy hitters and since she had the skills, it was suggested she finally put 'em to use.

It was so strange to see the reports she'd received from her engineering and weapons officers. The amount of firepower the ship was capable of spewing forth, the amount of damage it was capable of taking...it was certainly an intimidating ship indeed.

Strangely enough though, it wasn't the first battleship she'd received this past week. Parked nearby was another battleship that now belonged to her. The hull of a massive Megathron class battleship glistened in the lights from the hanger. Another imposing sight indeed. If the Dominix didn't intimidate her, and hopefully her enemies, the Megathron certainly did. However, reality is that both ships would stay parked in the hangers majority of the time. She'd purchased the Megathron for the sole purpose of doing high level missions with some of her corpmates until she was capable of doing them herself, and the Dominix battleship was given to her by the corp solely for the purpose of lowsec corp operations, such as the one she was about to embark on.

She was quickly brought back from her thoughts though as the call went out over the comms.

"All ships, commence undocking procedures."

Immediately Selina did one last pre-flight check before radioing control tower.

"Control, this is Big Momma requesting departure clearance to undock"

"Big Momma, this is Control. You are cleared for undocking procedures. Fly safe out there."

"Roger that Control. See you again in a few hours."

"I'll hold you to that."

Selina inwardly smiled as she disconnected the control comm and switched to the on-board ship comms. "Jassiel, notify the crew captain he is cleared to undock the ship."

"Understood Selina."

Almost immediately her vision went dark as the camera vision from the hanger's "eyes" disconnected. For a short while there, all she was darkness, a very disturbing feeling one might add, as the ship exited the station. This was a job left to the crew captain since there were a number of procedures and too many safety codes and red tape for a pod pilot to simply navigate their way out amongst all the other incoming and outgoing traffic. One could almost think of it like in the old days of the massive ocean vessels navigating through the harbors, where a heavily trained harbor master would board the ship and basically take command to navigate the ship down the narrow passages to its port. Either way, as soon as the ship had exited the hanger, her own camera drones were deployed and her "vision" once again returned, along with her control over the ship.

Already a fair amount of ships were amassed outside the station. Ships ranging from battleships, battlecruisers, logistics, force recons, and electronic warfare. Surprisingly, no small frigates but then they weren't particularly necessary for this op which would explain why she was in a battleship herself.

After a short moment, once all the ships had undocked and were now sitting idle outside the station, the fleet commander called for silence on the comms and began his run-down of operational procedures and the purpose and goals at hand. Basically, the fleet was headed back to main empire, engaging any pirates that were unfortunate to find themselves in range of their guns. Once in Empire, they would then be meeting up with another group, to include an Orca, a capitol industrial ship. From there it would become an escort operation to safely bring the Orca the roughly 20 jumps through low sec to their base in Solitude. With any other group, that might have been a nerve racking occasion. But with the magnitude and power of this fleet, it would take one hell of an opposing fleet to even consider engaging. For those who weren't already in a significant fleet, they would see the Orca on the scanners, but it would take a lot of very fast coordination to get a fleet together capable of engaging the escorting ships... just to take out the industrial ship.

After the brief spiel from the FC, and a quick report from the already deployed covert recons along the intended route, the FC gave the order to align for the first gate and shortly after they were on their way.

For the most part the trip to Empire was rather uneventful. There was one moment, about half way at a certain choke point, where a rather large group of pirates had set up camp, attempting to get some kills on any random travelers. The fleets recon reported the various ship types and after very short deliberation, the go-ahead was made for a battleship to jump in as bait. Sure enough, the pirates engaged at which point the rest of the fleet jumped through the stargate. As soon as she'd regained her senses from the jump, Selina only had enough time to scowl as the pirates quickly disengaged and ran. "Pussies!" she mentally screamed as the last of the pirate ships disappeared into the distance. Though yes, they would have most likely been decimated, their numbers in comparison to her fleets were fairly even and it would have certainly been an interesting fight. The recon was able to track down one of the pirate outlaws to the nearby sun and the fleet immediately warped to its location only to find the ship 100km out and with the appearance of the fleet near to his location, he once again turned tail and ran.

So with the pirates obviously not wanting to stand their ground, the order was given to move out and continue on.

Within due time, the fleet reached highsec Empire once again and docked up at the only station in system. After a short wait, the Orca and its small contingent arrived. With a quick check of its modules and systems, the fleet once again undocked and gathered outside the station. Instructions were reissued, checks were made to insure everyone was understanding their roles and the operational procedures and shortly after, they were back into lowsec, their headings taking them back along the same path they'd just basically cleared.

When they reached the system where the pirates were, sure enough, they were still present but with the arrival of the fleet, it seemed they had paid attention and wasted no time in retreating back to their safe spots. Thus the fleet passed with Orca in tow, all the way back to Solitude without a single confrontation. A successful escort mission accomplished.

As Selina approached their headquarters, the fleet having broken up shortly after they'd reached high security space in Solitude, it gave her a moment to reflect on the event. Granted pretty much nothing had happened and she hadn't gotten to fire off even a single volley, which did sadden her a bit, it was good either way to see yet another successful op by her corp and one that made her proud of the pilots she flew with. And she could certainly say she looked forward to flying with them more and more in the near future.

It Is What It Is.

2009-02-16T08:56:00.002-05:00

Selina slammed the data disk down on her agent’s desk, her eyes blazing with fury. "Here's your god damned disk,” she sniped at him.

Slowly the man looked up at her. He’d seen her act this way countless times before and had numerous times considered dropping her from his list of capsuleer clients. She was fierce and short tempered. She was a firebrand that would easily light up at even the smallest attacks. If she wasn’t forewarned ahead of time….or better stated if combat wasn’t her reason for going out on a mission, you could always expect her to return with a face as red as her hair from anger. But undeniably, she was good. So good that even with all her tyrannical bullshit, he’d still hire her time and time again. “So what happened this time,” he asked wearily.

“I arrived at your damn coordinates, which, by the way, are the crappiest coordinates I’ve ever been given. I mean come on! Fifty kilometers out?! If I hadn’t decided to take my frigate, it would’ve taken me all damn day just to get to the station. I mean, what if I was in an unarmed shuttle? What if I…..”

“Alright,” he snapped, raising his hand to stop her. “I get it okay? My coordinates were a bit off. I’ll try to have better for you next time. Now….you was saying? What happened?”

Selina glared at him for a moment, not pleased at all about having been interrupted but chose to let that one slide…till later perhaps. “Like I said, I arrived at the coordinates and started burning towards the station. I get to roughly 30km out, when next thing I know, ten damn Serpentis ships drop out of warp right between me and the station. Speaking of which….seems they obviously had been given better warp coordinates…”

Rolling his eyes, he does a quick glance over of her and shrugs slightly. “Well it seems you made it out just fine and with the disk even, so I don’t see why it was too much of a probl…” quickly he cuts himself short. Too late of course. He knew better than to say that as immediately she goes off on yet another tirade. The girl’s range of insults and curses knew no bounds. Sometimes he wondered if that’s all she did at night was think up more insults to throw at people. Some were actually quite hilarious. Others were pure viciousness. And yet others were so riddled with foul language, every dead Gallentean mother was probably turning in their grave.

But finally, after what seemed like an hour, she calms enough for him to finalize the deal with her. He initiates the payment sequence for the agreed sum to which she checks immediately. Seeing the isk amount now showing in her account, she flashes her most award winning smile, as if she’d never raised her voice in her entire life, and politely excuses herself. He can only do his best to smile at her in return as she leaves. But as the hatch closes behind her, he already has the bottle of Thukker scotch in hand.
___________________________________

Waking the next morning, Selina plopped herself down at her desk. She grimaced at the slight reflection she saw in the monitor before switching it on. Checking her mail, she saw that the intended op into nullsec had been cancelled to which she was a bit surprised but wasn’t too concerned with either way. She was a bit suicidal but she wasn’t a complete maniac. She was well aware that any trip into nullsec around these parts was pretty much a one way trip. At least for that body. In fact, so far she had yet to visit the clone vats. Not once, in any combat engagement, had she not been able to get her pod out. Truth is, what she couldn’t understand was how some people managed to get pod killed as often as they did. Just keep your head and stay aware of your surroundings. Be aware of your damage remaining. Be aware of your heading. And spam the warp like mad. It really wasn’t that difficult. Perhaps it was shell shock that made pilots sit there for too long? She didn’t know. But either way, she was on a good run and had no intention of ending that any time soon. Besides, she kind of liked being in the body she was originally born into. The longer she could hold onto it, the happier she’d be.

As she was reading her mails, she decided to flip on the open comms. Promephius, one of her corporation’s fellow combat pilots was in the process of putting together a small group of cruisers and frigs to go hunting in lowsec space and immediately invited her along. Of course she wasn’t about to turn that down! She quickly hopped into the shower to rinse the grime away and upon exiting, sent a message to her attendant, Jassiel, to get the Incursus ready for launch, threw on her favorite robe, wrapped her hair in a towel and finally ran to her hanger. A couple of people couldn’t help but stop and chuckle as she rushed past them in all her barefoot glory. Most had seen her around often enough now that they were fairly used to her antics. In fact, they were more used to seeing her in her thick wool robe, barefoot, then they were used to seeing her in regular garments.

Arriving at her ship, the lead tech immediately handed her a load out spec sheet to which she made a few adjustments before handing it back. He quickly checked it and smiled before running off to get the changes done asap just as Jassiel appeared at the hanger’s entrance. Together the two women boarded the ship and headed for the pod center. By the time the requested ship modifications were completed, she was linked up within the pod and had her camera drone coming to life. It was only a few moments later that the ship was exiting the docking tunnel, headed into the blackness of space, ready for a wild ride of death and destruction. A battle for life and death. An area in space where it’s kill or be killed. Shoot or be shot. Fight and die, or run and live. A landscape of wrecks and frozen corpses. A dark canvas of laser beams, blaster flashes, and missile trails.

And yet, some four hours later it returned to that same docking tunnel, not having seen an ounce of combat.

Love it or hate it, welcome to Solitude.

Moving to Bigger Fish

2009-02-12T07:20:00.004-05:00

Pushing the throttle to max and engaging afterburner, the Incursus screamed straight into the mix of roughly 20 rogue drones, hybrid blasters spewing forth their destructive trails of light. At first they scattered like marbles, surprised and confused by the sudden appearance of the ship in their midst. But when the realization sank in, the angry drones fired up their own weapons systems and carelessly launched themselves back towards the intruding frigate. It was at this point, another drone appeared in the fight, having launched from the bay of the ship. Now, between the frigate and the advanced tech2 drone, each blast of their weapon systems exposed the internals of a rogue drone, removing them instantly from the skirmish. One by one they were reduced to floating piles of scrap metal. However, with little thought for their own survival, the drones continued their onslaught. Eventually they chose to call for backup but like their former brethren, those reinforcements were also made short work of by the invading ship and its drone counterpart.

From the initial attack of the frigate to the fiery explosion of the last drone, it was all over in a matter of about 5 minutes. Space once again settled into its cold, lifeless void as the frigate recalled it's drone and warped away.
________________________________

"Control, this is Incursus frigate, Poison Seed, requesting docking clearance."

"Docking request accepted, Poison Seed. Please relinquish all controls of your ship and you will be towed to your hanger."

"Roger that Control. Powering down."

As her camera vision went dark and her mortal body's senses returned, Selina reached behind her head and unplugged the wire leading from the pod to her implant. Planting her feet firmly on the bottom of the pod, she thrust herself upwards through the thick pod goo to the now open hatch where her seemingly too thin attendant, Jassiel, waited with a dry towel. "These flights are getting a lot shorter Miss Selina," Jassiel said with a bemused smile that barely creased the corners of her lips as Selina wiped the goo from her body.

Selina returned the smile with slight roll of her eyes. It wasn't from annoyance towards the girl. No. The girl was right. The missions, the targets, the objectives....it was all becoming too ridiculously simple and monotonous. The agent she worked for just never seemed to have anything more challenging. In fact, half the time she felt like she was running the same mission she'd done only the day before, sometimes only hours before even. To top it all off, the pay was definitely not going to make her a very rich pilot any time soon. "Yeah....perhaps its time we moved on? Find ourselves a new agent to work for..."

"It certainly wouldn't hurt Miss Selina. The crew is getting restless. A lot of them joined or trained to be a crewman so they could travel, see what there is to be seen in the depths of space. Shoot. Most of the time we go out, we only take the Incursus. I mean...I know its definitely perhaps more than enough even for these missions we've been running, but it means majority of the crew are left behind to occupy themselves until our return and more importantly until it's their turn to go out with us."

Selina wiped the last of the pod goo from her skin and handed the towel back to Jassiel as she made her way to the shower, the girl following close behind. Stopping just short of the shower door, she bit her lip as she looked back at the girl in contemplation. "Alright, alright...I'll do a search on the aura network later today and see what I can come up with," she spoke as the girl grabbed another dry towel from the storage compartment and laid it neatly on the bench just to the side of the shower door. "I mean...you're right of course, we're definitely ready now to work for someone that will offer us better missions. Missions at a slightly higher level than what that drudge we've been working for can offer..."

Jassiel looked up at her with a small gleam in her eye. "My thoughts exactly Miss Selina...my thoughts exactly."

Ready for More

2009-02-10T07:59:00.003-05:00

Selina sat cross legged in the thick recliner she'd had placed in her hanger. Some thought her a little odd in that regard when she could have been relaxing in the more comfortable environment of the pilot's lounge or some other fancy place within the station or even aboard one of her ships, but it just wasn't her way. She preferred the smells of the hanger, the smells of oil and burned metal from the welding torches. She liked feeling always in the mix of things whenever her ships were involved and this was the best place to do it from. So after much disputing and haggling with the hanger's safety coordinator she got her way and was allowed to keep the recliner amongst the other gear staged off to the side of the hanger.

Sighing, she looked up from the neocom pad. She'd been plucking away at the damn thing nearly all morning getting her assets in order, setting her skill uploads and reconfiguring them for the most optimal training time, reading and responding to personal and business evemails, making sure her finances were in order, purchasing ammo and whatever other equipment she'd be needing soon and going over standing transactions with the various factions and corporations. As if taunting her, she watch as one of her corp mates flew past her hanger at that very moment, on his way out the docking tunnel. But it wasn't just a longing to be out in space. She could have her crew mustered and on-board within minutes if she so desired. No. That wasn't it at all.

Selina had started taking missions in the low sec areas surrounding her corporations little high sec pocket. Many of her corp mates thought she was a little crazy for doing so and suggested some alternative agents in high sec where the risk was greatly reduced...but that was just the problem. To Selina, without the risk, it was tedious and a tad bit boring. In fact, every time she flew out to complete this mission or that for her low sec agent, she was actually hoping a pirate would come swooping in thinking he'd get an easy kill. Using a method that made doing the missions a bit longer, she was utilizing guerrilla style combat by swooping in just close enough to take out any stray mission targets before running back out, with hopes of drawing some more of the targets away from her original warp in location. The mindset behind it was two fold. First, to keep damage taken from the mission targets to an absolute minimum and second, to stay far enough away from the warp in point that it'd give herself time in the event of a pirate appearing, to determine if she'd have a chance of killing them or not. If not, she simply warped out. If so...well then game on. The distance would give her the time as well to switch out the ammo in her T2 blasters to the high quality stuff she always carried, acquire a target lock, burn in under full afterburner, engage her webber and scram and finally release her drone as her blasters opened fire. Soon she would be doing this in an assault frigate which would only increase her chance of a successful encounter.

Aye, its what she longed for and figured if she did it often enough....her chance of such an encounter would only increase 10 fold. Sure, she could just go out and try to hunt them down but at least this way it was much more constructive as at the same time she would be getting some work done for the agents in the region and making a little bit of isk in the process. Pity for them when they found out too late that she wasn't really there at all for the mission... Soon she would have t2 medium blaster capabilities. So at that point she might even consider bringing in a cruiser. Although that assault frigate was definitely a temptation she was hard-pressed to ignore.

Either way, she smiled to herself as she went back to working on her neocom pad. Aye, even with her blood lust raging, she maintained her patience. She knew her time will come....oh yes, her time will definitely come...

Sleepless Thoughts

2009-02-05T08:22:00.005-05:00

Selina sat in the darkness of her quarters for some time just listening to the sounds of the station around her. With no sun to rise or set, no day, no real night, time seemed to be almost meaningless in space. A person eats when they're hungry. Sleeps when they're tired. The "9 to 5 job" is no more than an ancient relic of a phrase from times all but forgotten when space flight was a very exotic affair. Now, what is perhaps millenniums upon millenniums of years since, the perpetual machine of man had no real end. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, it was a constantly churning beast. And yet, as if to offset the seemingly endless cycle, a system had been put in place long ago to give a momentary break. One hour each day, the immense aura network that drove all of New Eden would shut down. Story is that its to give the system a momentary break where it could cycle through and purge its memory of the day's trash or reload fresh data for the next 23 hours. System updates also took place if there were any and eventually the network would once again be reestablished and the universe would carry on as usual.

The strangest part, and something that always perplexed Selina was where is Aura? Perhaps its like the relic known as the internet, there was no real location. But then that can't possibly be true when Aura herself will tell you that she has a vast amount of neural links as if she is some sort of physical entity. She (and only being referred to as a she because it has a she voice) controls everything. The market system, the corporate and alliance control systems, the inventory and asset management systems, the communications systems, everything was managed and linked by this so-called Aura. Seemed just a bit intimidating really.

Selina shuddered a bit as she thought about it. If there is a god in all of Eve, this Aura would certainly have to be the closest thing to it. Maybe she'll do a search through the chronicles and information channels to see what more she can learn of this mighty "god" named Aura.

But now wasn't the time. Now was the time she was supposed to be sleeping and instead found herself, for reasons she couldn't quite gather, sitting here wide awake, staring at the darkness of the room surrounding her.

Finally frustrated with her inability to sleep, she rose from her bed and threw on her robe. Passing the need for shoes, she slipped quietly down the hall, doing her best not to disturb the others in the corporate HQ's sleeping quarters. Not really knowing anywhere else to go at the moment, she made her way to her hanger's viewing platform, looking out at where her Vexor cruiser sat suspended. It had been a long journey through a lot of low security sectors to get to this new HQ but she was glad she made the trip. As she'd neared the borders of the high security area where the station was located, she had begun taking note of the pilots in the systems and what corporations they were attached to, what sort of security statuses they held, making note of those that were obvious pirates and those that, although they seemed legit on the surfaced, still gave off a vibe of trouble.

Though the low sec systems were relatively quiet, there was still enough here to keep her thoroughly entertained. A few pilots had some pretty decent bounties on their heads, of which she was more than happy to relieve them of eventually. Aye, she laughed quietly to herself as she could already feel the tugs of all those bounties just flying around out there, waiting to be collected. Of course, she knew that a lot of those pilots would be far above her in skill and experience but after being issued her first "insured" clone, her last ounce of regard for her own life went right out the airlock. Yes, she now had implants, implants given to her by a fellow corpie but that really just made her fight harder. Either way, a pilot not afraid to die was a dangerous pilot indeed.

It was just unfortunate however that most of her ship's crew were not aware of this. The way she saw it, there were billions upon billions of people spread out in the universe and a vast majority of them dreaming of flying aboard a ship with a pod pilot at the helm. So many in fact, that if she were to get destroyed, it would take no more than the time it takes to reawaken in a new clone, as it would to find a new crew. And though petty to her, the pay she gave them for their services compared to that of which a normal ship would pay or some medial job planet-side or in a station....well...they knew the risks.

Selina smiled and gave a slight, flirty wave to one of those crew members now as he passed the window, guiding a lift stacked with ammunition towards the cruiser. Locking eyes with her for the briefest of moments, he turned a few shades of red before quickly looking away. She laughed softly for a moment at this. It still tickled her how regular folk got so jittery in the presence of pod pilots.

After standing and watching the workers for a few moments longer, she finally turned and with a small sigh, made her way back to her quarters. Still a few more hours before she had to be up. Might as well try and get at least a little more sleep before her busy day starts...

Dieing to Live - Pt 6

2009-02-02T12:50:00.004-05:00

“……
…Weapon Systems…...Online…
…Propulsion Systems…Online…
…Navigation Systems…Online…”

The computers voice rang in her head as it went through the standard start up checks. Normally it would be much quicker just to let the Aura system do the start up checks but Selina liked knowing through both visual and vocal confirmation that all systems were operational. As much as the pod pretty much made her a part of the ship, being able to feel out each individual system as it came online made her, in her own way, a more coherent part of the ship. Not to mention as well that every microsecond in this upcoming engagement could count towards success or defeat and knowing, or rather feeling, the capacity of every system would determine the course of events with each of those passing microseconds.

“…All systems are now online and fully operational.”

Slowly the view from her camera drone came into focus and she could see her own ship sitting silent in the depths of empty space. She had always loved this feeling of being outside her ship. Loved the open space freedom it gave her to look around at all that was happening around her rather than being limited to the constricted views of the ships thick windows. But no time for that now. Must stay focused.

Bringing up her overview, she selected the predetermined tab that showed her nothing but stations and other ships within the area. She then did a quick double check to make sure the proper ammunition was loaded into the weapons systems before aligning her ship to the moon in which her target would soon arrive. And she didn’t have long to wait.

Right on time, her scout notified her that a transport ship had arrived at the remote station and as the datacard had informed her, no escorts were accompanying the ship either. Quickly she fired up the warp drive and in just a short moment her ship was dropping out of warp near to the station. Immediately, she started the targeting sequence and activated her blasters to begin firing as soon as a target lock had been acquired. The on-board computer notified her that by doing so, she was committing a criminal act and the consequences of such. Selina only smirked and dismissed the notification, refocusing on the task at hand. The small, light transport ship quickly began taking evasive action, turning to align itself to warp out as it was still too far from the station to dock but it was not fast enough. Coming within range, her target lock acquired, Selina’s blasters opened fire on the vessel just as she activated the warp scrambler as well. As her blasters started cutting into the ships armor, she could already see the escape pods jettisoning from the sides of the ship. It was at about this time that the Concord ships started to arrive.

The ships locked on to her faster than she could blink and opened fire. With only the first volley, all of her shields and nearly half her armor was stripped away. But she was prepared and just as she had calculated beforehand, the hauler went up in a massive ball of light as the gases within it found their way into open space….only moments before her own ship became engulfed in a fierce explosion, violently shaking her body within the nearly indestructible pod. However with her mind in essence detached from her body, felt none of it, allowing her to stay focused and quickly engaging the pod’s warp drive. As the warp bubble engulfed her, it was then she finally gave a mental sigh of relief.
__________________________________________

“Did you get him?”

“Aye, we got him. That was a lot of escape pods to sort through…but we got him.”

“And the others?”

“Dispatched as instructed. The rest of our payment?”

“Sending it now.”

“Alrighty…then it seems we’re finished. You’ll find him, as requested, in the hauler’s cargo bay, orbiting Imya II. And if you ever need help with anything again, by all means. Let us know.”

“Will do. And thank you.”

“Not a problem. Been a real pleasure.”

The comm clicks as the communication link is ended.
__________________________________________

Selina stood before the door of the cargo hold breathing deeply, preparing for what lay beyond. She had planned so long for this. Everything had gone perfectly. But now, here she was about to face him and it was now that she began questioning herself whether she even could. It would just be easier to open the cargo bay’s airlock and let the vacuum of space sort it out.

Before she could dwell on it any longer and possibly talk herself out of it, she bit her lower lip and swept her hand across the access pad, the door sliding open before her, the sound echoing across the enormous, and for the most part empty, dark expanse of the cargo bay. Selina nearly laughed at the dramatics the hired hands had staged for her as she entered. About 100 feet away, the solitary man seated in a chair with a lone spotlight placed between the door and where he sat, preventing him from seeing any who might enter. Tied securely with electrical wire to the chair, his hands bound behind him, he did his best to lean to one side, attempting to catch sight of whoever it was that had entered. "Who's there," he called. "What the frack do you want with me?"

Biting her lips she moved forwards, closing the distance but stopping behind the light shining in his face. She stood for a moment silently, looking him over in complete disgust. He was the same man she once knew but the years in prison had done little for his appearance. Dark circles beneath the eyes, deep creases in the skin, even a couple small scars from probably some random prison brawl or another. His hair was matted and dirty, or what little was left of it. To Selina, he appeared to be a pale shadow of the once proud man he was.

"Talk to me you piece of shit," he yelled, spittle grotesquely flying from his lips as he spoke.

She waited a moment longer as he struggled a bit, attempting for what was probably the hundredth time to escape from his bindings. The hired help certainly seemed to have done a good job though as his attempts were clearly futile, the bindings barely budging. Finally she stepped from behind the light, letting just enough of it shine upon her to allow him to see. He narrowed his eyes and looked her over. "Who the hell are you?"

Selina tipped her head at the question. For a moment it surprised her that he didn't know who she was but then she was still a girl when last she'd seen him. She contemplated the answer to his question as well. No, she was not Selina Vallete, the girl whom this man had contributed in creating. Just as she no longer saw him as her father. He was a virus that had taken her mother, a disease that had to be eradicated. She was the antidote.

"Long ago you murdered a woman," she started.

"Yeah? So? What the hell do you think I was in prison for," he spat back at her though a slight look of questioning crossed his face.

"Yes, you were tried for your crime and sentenced for the killing of that woman... but you have yet to pay for the cruelty, for the torment you brought upon your own child. Your time to pay for that crime has come."

The man narrowed his eyes, attempting to gain a better view of the woman. Slowly the realization came to him "Selina..?"

In silence she nodded, letting the realization sink in to the man's brain. "Oh my god Selina. I am so sorry," he pleaded. "You are right. What I did was horrible. I can't even imagine how much I must have hurt you. I've wanted so much to apologize to you. To beg you to forgive me. When I saw you in that courtroom, saw the way you avoided looking at me, it.."

"Enough," she yelled, cutting him off. "What you did is unforgivable. Prison isn't good enough for you. Hell is where you belong."

"Selina please, forgive me. I'm not the same man I was then. I wish I could take back what I did but I can't."

At this she smirked before turning and walking to a crate nearby she'd had loaded before this little operation. "Your right, you can't take back what you did. So for that reason, you will have to pay for it. As I said, prison isn't good enough for you. Hell is where you belong. But since I don't believe in a heaven or hell, I'll just have to make due with what I can." She opened the crate and withdrew a mobile IV unit. Wheeling a cart over next to him, she placed the unit on it and withdrew the needle.

"What are you doing?" His eyes looked between her and the needle in both confusion and fear.

She grinned as she twisted his arm a bit, finding a vein and plunging the needle in. "In about 20 minutes here, the microwarp drive will activate and the ship will leave orbit. Its heading is the system's star. Not really sure how long it will take with just microwarp to get there but let's just say awhile. Of course, I would hate for you to die of starvation prematurely or have a heat stroke too early before it even gets close enough to the star and you miss out on the rest of your journey, thus the IV. For awhile the ship's systems will of course compensate for the heat but eventually, the closer you get to the star, the systems will begin to malfunction...at which point, you'll basically be slowly boiled. Like I said.... if there is no hell, I'll make due with what I can."

The man stared at her wide-eyed. "You can't do this..."

Laughing, she leaned in close. "Unfortunate for you, I can and I am."

She then leaned over and gave him a gentle kiss on his forehead, leaving a dark imprint of her lips from the lipstick she wore. "Eventually the starfire will consume you and you will die....when you do, perhaps then I can truly live." she whispered before briskly turning, leaving behind his pleas then curses.
__________________________________________

As her ship sped away, Selina willed her eye, her camera drone, to pan around and watch just as the freighter's microwarp engaged, thrusting it free of its orbit and catapulting it towards the distant star.

"Goodbye......father..." she mentally spoke to herself in a murmur as she engaged her own warp drive, quickly leaving the system behind, fully ready now to make a name for herself in the vast universe known as Eve.

A Wormhole in My Head!!

2009-01-29T13:31:00.003-05:00

My apologies to the slow conclusion of this short introductory story but wow am i having some serious writer's block. Don't you just hate it when you have everything for the most part planned out in your head and then you get close the end of something and BAM! You suddenly realize something just don't quite fit right and now your left pondering what you can do to fix that recently vacated space?? :)

Plus, real life is a bitch sometimes and can just keep you busier than you prefer being...

Dieing to Live -Pt5

2009-01-14T15:24:00.001-05:00

"And you're sure this will do the job?"

The hanger mechanic rolled his eyes. "For the last time, missy, yes. It won't last for too long under heavy fire but should be long enough to take out anything lightly armored before going down as well. I don't know what you plan on ganking, and frankly, I don't want to know but it's not the first time I've fitted a ship for this purpose. So trust me when I say, it WILL do the job."

Selina smiled and handed the man the credit chip, a chip holding nearly the last bit of isk from her bank account. Some jobs certainly can be a burden on one's bank account, but this was the one job that she would pay out for over and over and over again if it needed to be done more than once. Hopefully though, it wouldn't have to.

As the mechanic gathered his gear and scurried out of the hanger, Selina approached the ship, an Incursus class frigate, and ran her hand along its smooth hull. It was a small ship but quick and agile. Those two traits alone were exactly what she was needing for this little personal op of hers. And as with the usual gank, the vagabonds she'd enlisted through the help of the agent were already geared up and ready in their hauler. None of them were pod pilots, but for this civilian hauler, it didn't really matter anyways. They just needed to be able to do what it was they were hired for.

Yes, everything was definitely ready...
____________________________________________________

Selina stifled a slight yawn as she reclined in a small bunk aboard the frigate. With all but the basic life support systems powered down, she'd taken the time to detach herself from her pod and get comfortable reading some of the latest chronicles on the Neocom network. She loved the stories told there about some of the trials and accomplishments of other, sometimes famous...sometimes not, pilots of the universe known as Eve. She also enjoyed reading the various news stories from Scope, the largest and most well known news network. She really had no real interest in which side was winning which war though she read that too. Yes, she was trained to be a combat pilot for the Gallente military forces but she just wasn't sure it appealed to her much. Besides, after today, it would be questionable whether they'd even want her in their silly little military machine.

The most recent talk though throughout all the networks was the possible discovery of wormholes. A lot of it was still being clouded in secrecy but some news had slipped out about them having already begun exploration of the wormholes and bringing back prototypes of some new technology being already dubbed as tech3. However, as with most new technology and discoveries, lips were being kept locked for the time being with the occasional bit and byte slipping out here and there. The only thing that had been made officially public was the announcement that all would be made known in roughly 2 months time.

Really though, it was no concern to her. Most likely it was all technology she was nowhere near capable of using as she could still barely grasp the concept of most of the official, already available, tech2 gear. Besides, it seemed that all the really grand stuff ended up in the hands of the warring corporations on the outskirts of the galaxy before it ever reached the empire metropolises. Of course, the good aspect about that was by the time it did reach empire, it generally seemed to be a lot less expensive. But again, no concern to her…especially with her near empty bank account.

Selina was about half way through a particularly interesting chronicle when the ship’s computer voice broke the silence, telling her that the predetermined time had been reached.

Taking a deep breath, she leaned back against the bulkhead and slowly exhaled. Already she could feel her nerves lighting up, hands trembling ever so slightly. Everything was set. Plans had been put into motion. Things were flowing like clockwork. And most of all, she had already calculated the most likely end result and fully believed she would accomplish what she came to do. But still…nothing could soothe her nerves from what was to be her first real combat situation.

She had waited for this moment for so long, much of her life being focused towards this one event, the thought that it was finally upon her just chilled her to the core.

But chills or no chills, nerves of steal or nerves of butter, nothing was going to stop her. Absolutely nothing.

Slowly she rose and walked through the small, empty frigate to the hatch in the floor where her pod was contained. With one last look out the thick observation window with her own human eyes, she stripped off the robe she wore, exhaled deeply and lowered herself into the pod goo, the hatch automatically closing behind her, sealing her in.

Dieing to Live - Pt 4

2009-01-06T14:02:00.004-05:00

Selina rolled her eyes and sighed deeply. So tired was she of all this blah blah this and blah blah that. She swore that if the person still lived who came up with the idea of these long, boring graduation ceremonies, she would shoot them as soon as she got free and back in her ship. She glanced again at her Neo-pad, looking over the agent information shown on it. It was her first agent and she couldn't help being just a tad excited about it. Her first agent and her first step towards making a name for herself. Plus it meant real work, real targets, rather than flying around shooting unmanned scrap heaps they called training vessels.

As soon as the so-called, ceremonial terms “class dismissed” was given, she was off to the hanger like she was being chased by a dozen blaster yielding cartel. While most lingered in the auditorium, hugging their families and friends, bathing in the limelight of being the most recent graduates of the Academy, Selina was quickly stripping and hopping into the warm goo of her pod, the hanger crew having already prepped the ship for launch. Even before receiving confirmation to undock, she was already on her way out, the control tower basically cursing at her over the comm’s for being so impatient.

Miranda, the name she gave her ship’s on-board computer, inquired as they exited the station if they were to head towards the Isikemi system to meet up with her agent. Instead Selina smiled and shook her head. “No Miranda. We have some other business to attend to first…”

“And what would that be Miss Selina?”

“Set a course for the State War Academy in the Hageken system. We have somebody there I need to speak with first.”

“As you wish,” the computer responded. In a mere second the course popped up on Selina’s HUD and after selecting the first stargate en route shown on her overview, she engaged the warp drive, more than ready to leave the Academy she’d spent so many months in behind her.
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Fidgeting a bit in the booth where she sat at the predetermined café, Selina waited for her acquaintance with as much patience as she could muster. She’d never met this man face to face before but he was referred to her by ‘a friend of a friend of a friend.’ Bunch of rubbish she knew but he was known to be good at what he did and charged considerably less than most agents like him. However, he was already nearly 45 minutes late and her patience was growing thin.

After waiting yet another 15 minutes, she was finally fed up and was just about to stand and leave when out of nowhere, a man appeared at the table, plopping himself ungracefully into the seat across from her.

“G’day beautiful,” he said with a smug grin. “Needin some company this evening?”

Selina narrowed her eyes at him. With her patience already run thin from having waited for her no-show guest, she had even less for some sex-starved moron hitting on her. “No. I’m not. Now piss off.”

“Aww…now that’s not a nice way to talk to a man who just might have something you want.” Leaning back he gave her an overly zealous wink.

Smirking now, Selina stood and leaned towards the man. “The only thing I’d want from you is to either leave…or die.”

At this the man grinned as he reached into his jacket pocket. Selina, thinking him to perhaps be pulling a weapon, was just about to spring upon him, ready to pummel him to a bloody pulp when he withdrew his hand holding a small data card. “You sure that’s the only thing?”

Stopping herself from killing him anyways just for making her wait so long, she plopped herself back into the seat across from him. “You’re late.”

“Nay, I've been here long before even you arrived.” He leans towards her, his voice lowering. “You can understand that in my business, you can never be too careful. I've been tracking you since you first arrived in system. Had to make sure you were legit and not some damn cop.”

She smirked at him and leaned towards him as well. “Well I’m not…now is that what I want,” she asks, pointing to the card in his hand.

“Aye, it is. I've managed to have your man scheduled to be relocated to another system. No questions about how or why. That’s my business. Inscribed in this data card is the times and route to be used during this transfer. What you do with that information is your business.”

“And the individuals I requested?”

He grinned. “Young thugs from a local planet near the station where you’ll be pickin them up. No attachments Cheap. Just as you requested. You can pick them up at the time also given on the card. You just dock at the given station and they’ll be there waiting for you. Given prior agreement, once they are aboard, you will have their services for 24 hours. Should be all the time you need. Any more after that and it’ll cost you extra. Either way, they’ll get the job done.”

She nodded before reaching to the take the card. Immediately he snapped his hand away. “I do believe we had an agreement,” he stated, his eyes narrowing at her.

Selina smirked, rolled her hand and produced a credit chip. “40K, as agreed,” she said, dropping it on the table between them before snapping her arm out and snatching the data chip from him.

The man smiled, took the credit chip and stood. “Well then, seems our business is done here. So as you pilots like to say, fly safe,” he said, tipping his non-existent hat before heading for the exit.

She didn't even watch him leave. Instead she sat for a long moment, her eyes glued to the data chip as if it were some awe inspiring trinket. Slowly, a sly grin began to form at the corners of her lips, her mind playing out the planned events once more in her head. “Not much longer now….not much longer….” She softly mumbled to herself before standing and making her own way to the exit.

Dieing to Live - Pt 3

2008-12-31T10:05:00.008-05:00

The girl sat on the edge of the seat, grinding her foot into the metal plate of the tribunal's floor. Gilly sat motionless beside her, holding her hand firmly as they waited to be escorted into the court room. The girl was 14 now, 8 years after that fateful day her father had taken the life of her mother before her very eyes. Eight years of horrible dreams and a vicious hate growing within her. Numerous times in the past, her father had sent letters and vid messages asking to see her, to talk to her, and every one going unanswered. Now his parole hearing had finally come and after much pondering and a little persuasion by Gilly, she'd decided to attend.

"Selina Vallete?" She bit her bottom lip and rose, turning to follow the Concord officer through the doors into the court room. He led them to the front row behind the desk of the prosecuting attorney and motioned for them to have a seat, telling them the proceedings would begin shortly. Barely a breath of time had passed when the side door slid open and in walked her father, escorted by two other Concord officers, his hands securely bound. They locked eyes for the briefest of moments before her own eyes narrowed and she turned away. Soon after the judge entered and the court was in session. Selina heard little of it as her mind drifted off but when the judge's anvil smacked down, announcing the court was dismissed, she was more than happy by that time to get the hell out of there. Numerous times throughout the hearing, she could feel the eyes of her father looking over to her, but not once would she return his gaze. And when the judge ordered his parole to be revoked for another 5 years, she did nothing but grin silently to herself.
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Selina spun round, grabbed the woman by the hair and slammed her face into the lockers. Blood spewed everywhere from her broken nose and the gash in her forehead. She released her and let the woman drop to the floor nearly unconscious before turning to glare at the other two women standing near. "Anybody got anything else they want to add?" They both stared wide eyed at their friend and slowly stepped backwards.

"I didn't think so," she said before grabbing her gym bag and stormed out of the locker room. She stopped for a moment outside the door and contemplated where to go. She knew it wouldn't be long before they came looking for her. Yeah...probably not the smartest move to assault the station commander's daughter. The way she seen it though, the bitch had been asking for it for weeks now and at this point, with graduation being this very weekend, there were no possibilities of anyone, even the commander, from stopping her from graduating. But that didn't mean they couldn't make her last couple days hell.

Turning on her heel, she headed for her ship's hanger.
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At the age of 17, all students are given the opportunity to undergo the medical testing necessary to determine whether a person is eligible for becoming a pod pilot. The tests of course aren't always accurate as at times there are still potential pilots who never wake after their first neural link session with a pod. For the most part, however, that potential is very small. Having turned 17, she wasn't sure she even wanted to be a pod pilot but with a little prodding from Gilly and some of the other foster girls, she finally relented and soon found herself anxiously awaiting the results from her recent testing.

As she walked in the door that evening, having returned from school, she could tell immediately that something was up. Not too hard to do really when the entire house was standing at the door with a large cake and a lot of large smiles (although some strained by jealousy). And dearest Gilly just couldn't keep the news of her passing the tests any longer than she had to.

At first she was hesitant. All this time she had been focusing her studies on eventually becoming a medical physician. She'd always had a fascination with the human body and even more so knew there was money to be had in the advancement of clone engineering. But a pod pilot? Besides the usual fame and money in being a pod pilot, there was a lot of other benefits. Take for instance the idea of being in control of some really big guns! And the more appealing aspect, being in control of your own destiny.

But after much deliberation, the decision was made. Pod pilot it would be.
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Selina grimaced at the double beep of her ship's neocom informing her she had an incoming transmission. She paused for a moment when she saw the colonel's name, already guessing why he might be contacting a lowly rookie like herself. However, unless she wanted to turn pirate now, figured it'd be best to acknowledge the incoming communique.

"Selina Vallete! I swear to all Eve I'll have your head for this! What the frack do you think your doing assaulting the Admiral's daughter?!"

Selina smirked. "Me?! Assaulting her? With all do respect sir, her and her little companions have been assaulting my personal mentality nearly since day one of my training. And if I'm not mistaken sir, it's in the interests of the Academy to take care of their students, so as not to put them through any additional mental stress until they are properly trained to handle the rigors of the pod. They have been.."

"Bullshit Selina! Absolute bullshit and you know it! You've talked your way out of every punishment in the past and because of your pending graduation, you know you'll escape punishment for this one as well. Your nothing but a starfire Selina. A starfire ready to explode. Well I hope your as resourceful as your mouth is because you have just been docked half of your graduation bonus as well as graduating with a -1.0 sec status. How's that suite you Miss Selina Starfire?"

Immediately, the communication was terminated.

Turning her "eyes" towards the stars, she mentally grinned from within the confines of her pod.

"That suites me just fine Colonel.....just...fine...."

Dieing to Live - Pt 2

2008-12-27T08:39:00.006-05:00

Selina kicked the door to her room as it closed and with a huff, dropped roughly onto the bed's mattress. She couldn't believe how narrow minded her professors could be. How was she expected to learn the ways of a combat pilot, told to use her head in figuring out the best way in taking down a fleet of unmanned training frigates, when she was cut short time after time by 'regulations'. What was so wrong when she started shooting the training control tower?? She had it down to about 50% structure by the time her instructor arrived and intervened. She tried to claim she wasn't intending to destroy it entirely, just enough to where most of the tower's crew would evacuate, thus the unmanned ships would shut down automatically with nobody at the remote-control station within the tower.

Just before the appearance of her instructor's Dominix battlecruiser, she could already see numerous escape pods jettisoning from the sides of the tower.

Unfortunately nobody was siding with her. Not after she'd completely annihilated the mining colony last week, a station that still had survivors in it when she was told to neutralize a rogue drone threat. She barely survived damnation only because nobody could prove her wrong when she claimed the drones were originating from within the station....given there was no station remaining to investigate... Okay, so even she wasn't entirely sure that's where they were originating from but they did stop appearing after the station's destruction!

Now here she was, being forced to stay within the confines of her room until 'suitable punishment' could be decided upon. They even had two guards posted outside her door, citing her general tendency to disobey simple orders that she decided she didn't agree with. Fortunately, she didn't have to wait long before the door slid open and in walked her instructor.

"Selina, I swear on my own pilot's license your going to be the end of me. If I have to argue one more time for them to let you finish your training, I'm immediately going to follow suite with my own resignation. Already they're saying that at the rate you're going, with your 'overkill tendencies', that they're wasting training time on what may turn out to be yet another rogue pirate. We're not training pirates here, we're training combat pilots. And as a combat pilot, there are certain regulations and policies for engagement that you must learn to adhere to. Understood?"

Snapping to her feet, she quickly swung a mock salute. "Sir! Yes Sir!"

Rolling his eyes, he stepped out of the path to the door. "You're free to go....but again, do at least try to be a little more....considerate...of your targets. Okay? You only have a few more days of flight time before your graduation. Until then at least, please stay out of trouble. Please?"

Giggling like a little school girl, she paused as she passed him "I promise," she says before sneaking in a quick peck on his cheek and bolting down the hall towards the hanger. What better way to relieve the stress of bureaucratic bullshit then to go on a nice flight around the system?

Dieing to Live

2008-12-14T11:44:00.004-05:00

Another teardrop fell into a growing pool of liquid sadness. Curled up tightly, the little girl did her best to stifle her sobs, squeezing her plush doll tighter against her trembling body. The building seemed to shudder as yet another object was thrown from its place in the room beyond the door of her bedroom. The screaming and the shouting continued for what seemed an eternity. No matter how regularly this same scenario took place, it still ripped at the heart of the little girl. But today something was different. Today the arguing outside her bedroom door seemed more intense.

Slowly the little girl slipped from her bed and crept to the door. She could hear the fear in her mother’s voice, hear that same voice as it became strangely muffled. The little girl hestitated for a moment. Something wasn’t right. Something out of the ordinary. Her father still continued to yell, his usual drunken slew of profanity and curses making little sense to her but yet this just seemed….different. Soon curiosity won over fear and she slowly drew open the door. Her mother’s eyes widened as she locked eyes with her daughter, her scream muffled by the steel barrel stuffed in her mouth, just before….
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Selina snapped upwards from her bed, a scream barely escaping her lips. It took a moment but her senses slowly calmed to the point of realizing where she was. She wiped the sweat from her brow and fell back again upon her pillow. “Time,” she nearly yelled.

“Zero three twenty three,” the cold metallic voice of the neronet computer responded.

Damn, just a little over a half hour before she had to wake. Not enough time to get back to sleep and too long before she really had to be up. Clicking her teeth a couple times in frustration she sat up and propped her pillow against the headboard. “Screen,” she called before a holographic image materialized before her. Checking her data log, she made sure the skill training was still in order, checked for any outstanding contracts, mission logs, transaction summaries….but nothing really of interest. Even her email was rather quiet with little but useless junk from the school’s news net, most of which didn’t even pertain to her. She even checked the various comm channels she monitored for anybody of interest but found none she was in any mood to talk to.

Rising from her bunk with a sigh, she crossed the room to the sink and flipped on the small overhead vanity light. A slight grimace formed on her face as she saw her wreck of hair, yet another symbol of restless sleep. Locking eyes with her reflection, scowled at it. “Get yourself together girl…” she mumbled.
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“Seliiinaaa! Selina!”

Grumbling at the sound of the house mother’s calling, the girl checked herself one last time in the mirror and frowned, her eyes staring at the reflection’s chest. “Any day now would be nice….” she nearly whispered before turning to head out the door.

Bolting down the stairs, she nearly collided with the elderly woman, the one all the girl’s referred to as Gilly. Though at times a bit of a nuisance in the eyes of the girl, Gilly was a very kind woman, always giving and rarely expecting anything in return. She cared for every foster child as if they were of her own flesh and blood and saw to it they were never in need, that they always felt loved. As the longest residing child in the house, the girl had become one of Gilly’s favorites. Always respectful, always caring for her other “siblings”, Gilly was sure the girl would someday turn into one very respectable Gallentean…..if only she could release the poor girl of her demons that haunted her every night.

“Where have you been child,” Gilly quipped at the girl. “We were supposed to be enroute to the shuttle station to pick up the new arrivals 15 minutes ago!”

“Sorry….I got sidetracked…” the girl said as she grabbed her cloak from the hallway closet.

“Well whatever it was, it could’ve waited I’m sure. As wonderful as you are, you just can’t ever seem to be on time. Fashionably late right?” the old woman smiled, the girl smiling in return. “Now… are we ready?”

“Yes ma’am,” she said, grabbing the usual welcome gifts from the entry desk and rushing out the door after Gilly.
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Briskly walking down the corridor, Selina checked her timepiece and grimaced. “Wake up early, get to class late….good one Selina…” she thought as she stepped up her pace. Stopping at the door to the classroom, she took a deep breath, preparing for the possible berating of her flight instructor, before pushing the door open.

Nothing.

The room was empty. Not a single student or instructor in sight. “What the….” And then it dawned on her. Today was the field trip to the mining colony in sector 6-K8. She smacked herself in the head repeatedly as another student passed her in the corridor, shooting her a strange look. “What?!” she snapped at the too-thin male, her eyes narrowing in a feral, cat glare. The man just shrugged and carried on with himself, turning the corner at the first intersection.

Glancing at her timepiece again, she knew she’d never make it to the docking bay before they would likely be launching. Slapping her hand against the wall in one last release of frustration, she started down the hallway in the direction of the docking bays anyways. “No use in going back to my room,” she thought.
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Garrick smirked, dropping the med pack on the table before plopping down in the seat across from her. “You know, if you didn’t lose your temper so quickly and get into all these fights you do, you’d prolly have gotten that scholarship you been wanting so bad.”

“Shut up,” the young woman grimaced as she pulled a vial of healer gel from the pack, snapped the top off and rubbed the cold goop across the cut on her forehead.

“I’m just saying….you want to get into medical school so bad, you need to show you actually care about fixing wounds rather than making wounds.”

“You know what Garrick,” she fixed her cat glare on him.

“What?”

“Eat shit,” she snapped a half second before launching the rest of the med pack at his head. “How’s that for temper, you little pricked punk.” With that she stood and walked out of the diner and yet another of her growing line of ex-boyfriends.

So infuriated by the day’s events, she turned down the nearest alley, wanting nothing more right now than to just get away from people in general as much as she could in such a busy city. And so deeply immersed in her thoughts, little did she realize that she was not the only one that turned down that alley. When she was about half way down the alley, it was then she suddenly found herself being shoved forcefully to the ground. Large, rough hands grabbed her by the wrists and attempted to hold her arms behind her as a deep voice hissed in her ear sexual obscenities that would make any respective citizen cringe. Unfortunately for her assailant, his timing couldn’t have been any worse.

The mood she was already in was like a standing pool of gasoline, the words of the man being the match. What transpired after that point, she would never remember, as a mad rush of adrenaline overcame her mind, sending her into a rage even she didn’t know she had. And when it finally passed, her blood cooling in its aftermath, she found herself standing over what once was a man but was now no more than a mash of blood and mangled limbs. His face so beaten that when the authorities found him, they were only able to identify him through DNA tests.

The girl stood in horror over the body. For a moment, she tried to convince herself that she had only passed out, that some unknown hero had come to her rescue. But looking around, seeing no soul in the alley with her and feeling the open cuts on her fists from the destruction of her assailant, she knew the truth. And as her ears picked up the sounds of sirens approaching, she did the only thing she could think to do.

She ran.
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As the door slid open to the hanger bay, she smiled seeing her favorite mechanic hard at work on the rookie ships, prepping them for the class’s upcoming first solo runs. And what will be their final day in the Academy before being sent out into the deep unknown of space.

“Hey there Brockis! How ya doin?”

The giant man turned his head to peer at the Selina, his face contorting into the exact opposite of what she normally saw when they would see each other.

“An wha’ da hell are ye doin ‘ere miss? Ain’t ye supposed ta be on that there field trip yer instructor had planned,” he asked in his usual mess of slurred words. Many of the students often joked that he ate just as much grease as he used on the ships he babied with skilled hands.

“Yeah….I was. But I was late and missed the shuttle.”

“Hmm….cap ain’t gonna be ta happy wit ya.”

Selina chuckled. “Yeah….you’re right. But what’s a girl gonna do?”

Brockis smirked and shook his head. “Always such a trouble maker ya be. Which is why I be reckonin yer gonna be one hell of a fine pilot.”

Flashing her most award winning smile, she approaches him and ruffles the big man’s hair. “Thank you Brockis, no kinder words could be spoken.” She then turns and looks over the small rookie ship. “So they gonna be ready for us tomorrow,” she playfully asks.

Scoffing, he stands straight, throwing his shoulders back in attentive pride. “Miss…these beauts is gonna be ready to take on da worst. Don’t ye be worryin yer perty little head wid dat nonsense.”

Selina smiles as she runs her hand across the smooth hull of the small ship. It wasn’t much for a first ship but it was a start nonetheless. For that reason alone, she was more than excited for the day when she would first set out in the little ship. It was one step closer to her eventual goal….just one more step….

“Aye, tomorrow is gonna be a good day,” she thinks with an inward, sinister smile.