Let the Fires Rage

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

Prime example following.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm L-A-Z-Y

Click on the map to get a bigger version.

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

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

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

Changes in the Solar Winds

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

But okay, I’m done whining now.

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

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

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

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

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

War.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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