Shut down

I don't think I'll continue blogging in the near future. Maybe I'll continue someday, but as of now, I just can't see myself continuing on.

As of now, there is no commitment to continue this blog. I won't erase it, but I don't plan on making any further posts.

Thanks for reading to those that have been.

Wow!

Well, real life has it's full grip on me. School has ramped up just a bit before finals. Haven't been on hardly at all for the last week or so. Hopefully this won't keep me occupied much longer, but we can just take it a day or so at a time. I'll be sure to keep you updated!

Cruising along

Things are moving along nicely. Omnimodus Op is gathering a solid foundation, information is being disseminated, and people are meshing together nicely. Always good to see things coming along smoothly. If I am not in game, I'm out of game gathering information. Lately, I've been doing some more mining, both to contribute to the corp, and to gather the minerals needed to start building some Hurricane class battlecruisers. I think I got a good deal on 5 run BPCs, but I'll know for sure once they are built and sold. :)

This month has been very busy for me, but the stress has been the healthy kind. The news that Tyrannis has been pushed back till the 26th of May and the PCC seeding on the 8th of June is welcome news to me. Making sure a monumental feature such as PI is released in a functional and useful state is very important to the majority of players.

Sorry for a delay in posts, I'm trying to post more frequently, at least twice a week.

Quick update

Well, May has started off all right. Omnimodus Operandi has been launched and is now open for business. Ops start today, and our research and manufacturing infrastructure is in place. Recruitment is beginning, as well as several corps in place to join the alliance which will be formed in short order.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of running a couple of level 4 missions with our new friends and I look forward to continue to do so. Target calling and cooperation went well, and I only screwed up aggro once! Luckily, no one lost anything, and it was me who drew full room aggro in Mordus Headhunters. After warping out and back in, it was smooth sailing. Our next mission was Angel Extravaganza, which was even easier until the bonus room. Let's just say, we couldn't complete it. After several tries, I had to go as my play time had come to a close.

If you have experience, or want experience in all things industry and are looking for a home, send an Eve mail to RobinLocksley or myself. We are a laid back, real life first corporation, and will continue to support that as the alliance comes into being.

CSM Voting

Right now, the voting is happening for CSM 5. I did it, so should you! Go vote and help your player voice get heard.

Okay, enough of that. I and my alt voted. As you'll see, there are only a handful of well articulate candidates (in English at least). Several candidates didn't even take the time to post a quick statement of their platform in the voting page. I don't care if they have the best ideas, the best personal webpage/forum thread. If they can't take the time to fill in the block that CCP gives them, why would I think they are capable to take my issues to CCP?

I think it is humorous that their seems to be this public outcry of the CSM as a popularity contest. REALLY? I hate to break it to you, but that is what running for any office is. Campaigning is an attempt to raise your popularity. If you aren't popular, you won't get votes. It is as simple as that. The question that needs to be asked though is what makes someone popular?

Wealth, experience, the ability to communicate ideas and respond to others, charisma and more often then not, a similar line of thinking as you. These are some of the more obvious traits that all politicians develop and seek.

There are always people that will just select anyone, for no apparent reason, but those people are lazy. At least take the small amount of time to read a tiny bit of information out there. That is the whole reason the internet was built right? Proliferation of information that would otherwise be hard or impossible to obtain. Be sure to correct me if I'm wrong.

All I'm trying to say is vote. If there are no candidates that mesh with your tastes, then go ahead and abstain. While I don't agree with actually having an abstain button, go ahead and push it. But remember, running for office is a popularity contest. If I thought I was qualified (read popular), I'd run for 2 free trips to Iceland too! (remember that in the future!)

More changes

Well, while I'm hauling my stuff all the way across the universe again, I thought I'd post about some of the upcoming changes.

Upon leaving PfH, I was quickly approached with an idea to help form a new corp and alliance with like minded people. I promised to think about it, and I have given it some serious thought. I am currently moving my key assets across space now. Again...

I will not delve into too many details, as I am not sure how much I can say yet, but soon a tower will be anchored, the recruits will pour in, and the several corps committed to join already will form under the alliance banner. When Tyrranis hits on the 18 of this month, we will be ready for it as an alliance and begin to exploit those planets!

Here's to new adventures, some responsibility, and hopefully success!!

April in review

I haven't done a review before, so I guess now is a good time to start. April has been an interesting month play wise, and a milestone skill wise.

At the beginning of April I wasn't playing much, and wasn't too interested in playing. But as the month progressed, I began to play more and started really concentrating on missions to build my wallet back up to acceptable levels. At the same time, my former corp and alliance began a new campaign into the north in which I had no desire to participate in. As the month came to close, I found myself questioning whether I should still fly with them as it wasn't what I was interested in doing in game. So I said goodbye, and left Pilots from Honour and the great group of people behind.

April also saw me pass 20 million skill points. Taking Diplomacy to level 4 to repair my Gallente standings saw me to 20,016,487 or so. Earlier on in the month I finished Rockets V and Heavy Assault Missiles to IV along with a couple other missile support skills to IV. Some of this for my mission drake, and HAM was for a Sacrilege that I decided I wanted to fly, yet discovered that I am not yet ready for. I also finished Tactical Shield Manipulation IV finally, so tech 2 hardeners are the order of the day!

I'm not yet sure what May will bring, but I think that raising my raven skills up as well as finishing up some skills towards a Hulk will be in order. My alt is still skilling up for an Orca to help with logistics and mining when I decide to do it. I think that will occupy the entire month, most of it will be dedicated to Mining Barge V.

This is Th0rG0d's pie chart of skills, taken up mostly by gunnery and spaceship command:


Included in those large chunks are skills allowing me to fully tech 2 fit Caldari, Amarr, and Gallente HACS except for the Cerberus and Sacrilege. I don't have sentry drones for the Ishtar either. The summer should clear out those exceptions, as well as tech 2 projectiles, but I don't think I will include Minmatar cruiser V in there for a while. I think battleship skills will round out the rest of the year, as well as some leadership and corporation management skills. But all this is still speculation as nothing has been decided upon for my future in New Eden.

Changes

In my last post I mentioned that my corporation was possibly under alliance scrutiny and that things might be changing. So I took some initiative and responsibility for my own actions (or lack of) and dropped roles and said goodbye.

I am not an active PvPer, don't plan on becoming one soon, and am still going through a fluctuation of interest for Eve as a whole since my return. Freeing myself from the stress of being part of an alliance and freeing my corp of my unproductiveness I think will go a ways towards relieving some of the burden I feel while playing this game. I do have a current option on the table that I am seriously considering that will mesh with what I am doing, so we'll see how that goes.

In related news, I caved and purchased a Raven class battleship to start running level 4 missions. My first one went well; charged with destroying the Duo of Death, I quickly dispatched 2 Gurista Ravens and their webbing drones. My next mission, The Assault, went quickly south despite following the guides on how to run missions and survive. I bailed and am letting the mission reset before I try again. Luckily, I have 5 more days to attempt to finish it. In the meantime, I headed south into Gallente space to run some missions with a new friend to gain some experience and build my Gallente standings up.

That went extremely well, despite the fact I only had enough time to participate in 2 missions with him. We slaughtered some Serpentis scum with the combined might of our Ravens, our drones tearing through the small stuff, and our cruise missiles quickly dispatching their Megathron and Dominix class battleships. With my target painter, we even decimated their battlecruisers and cruiser hulls. I think I can say that neither of us are quite used to coordinating our attacks, but time will rectify any bumps that we are experiencing.

To all those from -PfH- that read this blog, thank you for all your help and support, and may you stay strong and rise to the top of heap! See you in space. o/

Time flies

Sitting here mining out asteroids in a mission, I realize that I haven't posted much lately. Really, there is not a whole lot to talk about it seems. But I have been running quite a few missions, getting my standings up with Spacelane Patrol, and earning some isk along the way. I've set a personal goal of 15M isk per day. So far, I have been meeting that goal, but I am not doing it the optimal way seeing as it is taking me about 5 hours to obtain that. Running level 3 missions is not as effective as running level 4s.

I have been putting off running level 4s, but I may need to go ahead and make the transition. This week I'll have a full T2 tank on my drake, Sucker, but I think I'll have to switch over to a raven to be effective in level 4 missions. But that means an alteration to my skill plan, and get cruise missile skills up to at least level 4 and Caldari battleship to level 4 as well. I've been putting that off for almost a year now, instead focusing on the cruiser class ships and weapons.

And to top it all off, the raven and it's fittings are going to set me back 100M easily. Wonder how quickly I can get that back? A week, maybe 2?

On top of these happenings, it seems my corp is preparing to rip at the seams. There has been a lack of participation during alliance ops that has been noticed, and only the few regulars doing corp logistics as well. I for one am guilty of this, PvP and 0.0 wars just don't seem to be my thing. I am still unsure of what direction I will take, and how soon, but I may be flying solo here shortly. Whether I'm kicked before I make up my mind and drop myself will remain to be seen.

In more news, the test server, Sisi, will be getting another update this week, so I will probably be hopping on later this week to see what kind of changes were made.

The last few days

have been going fairly well in New Eden. I have begun to play a bit more, running missions and some very basic trading. I have set a goal of earning 14M isk per day, anything more is an added bonus. That is not all I have been doing though. Regardless of whether I am active in game, I am always active on the forums. Following announcements, player feedback, trends, trolls and flamers, and all the accompanying tidbits that comes with an active forum community.

PI feedback from Sisi is echoing what I have been posting here. Of course, there are always people who enjoy it and don't mind the tedium, but there is quite a lot of uproar about the tedious micromanaging, the lack of proposed features, and the general UI complaints that Eve is famous for. The clock is ticking, with less then 4 weeks to release, and I have my doubts. Hopefully, the final numbers will get adjusted and implemented soon so that people will be able to make finalized plans before this goes live.

There is some other news though. A few days ago, a thread started about a capsuleer who was able to appear right next to you, without showing up in local or on the directional scanner, and gank your ship right out from underneath you. Of course, the usual trolls came out, but things began to get more serious. Apparently, The Monkeysphere, of Pandemic Legion, has been using an exploit to kill macro-ratters (people who use programs to control their ship while not actively at the computer) for some time. Discussions began on other forums, namely an active Russian community forum, and they were quickly able to duplicate this exploit. As usual, with the community in a very vocal outpouring, CCP seems to have begun looking into this matter, but as of yet I have seen no actual official response that this is the case. Needless to say, I will be following this closely as exploits do have a serious negative impact on the Eve population.

More Sisi

Well, I've been playing around with Planetary Interaction on the test server. After a lot of forum reading, spreadsheet viewing, pin dropping, I can say that I am thoroughly disappointed.

It seems that the round circles are in fact the graphic for these Planetary Command Centers, Extractors, Processors and Storage facilities. Yeah, you can click on them and up pops a nice floating view of whatever you happen to be working with, but overall it is meh. Linking these circles (pins) are dotted lines that, once routes are set up, move in the direction the route is going.

Hold me down, I'm getting blown away!..........or not.

I guess an argument could be made that we are still too far away to view the planet surface that close up, but still.

On top of this, the UI went from fairly straight forward to pretty damn complicated. Right click is no longer your friend (even though Eve is almost entirely based on this one mouse button!), and menu selections are hidden from the obvious place to look. Eve gets quite a bit of flack about their poor UI, but this is not a step in the right direction at all.

One more annoying feature is the dreaded time delay for everything. Like changing ships in station, if you want to do anything quickly, it will not happen while managing your colony. Currently, there is no session change timer indicating the amount of delay left, so you find yourself spamming the submit button (which is still poorly placed!) to see how long it will be before you can continue on building, scanning, linking, and routing.

Speaking of the submit button, why the hell do we have to confirm all of our actions? Sure, some actions would be nice to confirm, like pin placement, but linking, routing, really?

I don't think that I will participate in PI when it goes live. It is dull and tedious. I am just not interested in more tedium. It isn't even fun to look at. Being promoted as something akin to SimCity, it falls flat. Tyrannis? The only tyranny here is the fact that CCP is forcing someone to partake in this because it is going to replace the NPC seeded items that are necessary for many other tasks in Eve.

On a brighter note, the new Scorpion model is beautiful, and hopefully Eve Gate will deliver it's promise to be an efficient communication tool outside of the client.

Hanger stuffs

More blogger memes!! Yay! Well, since I haven't been playing much at all, just changing skills, and I haven't posted in quite awhile, I guess I'll take part. Okay, what was it again? Oh yeah, "What's in my hanger?"

Let's see, well, I've pretty much let go of stuff I don't fly, so this will be a short list.
1. Drake, Sucker, for that unfortunate need of making isk...
2. Ishkur, Thing, fit with a setup I found being touted as a high sec war-machine...
3. Enyo, packaged nicely, as I just haven't found a good use for it, nor a fit I am comfortable with.
4. Harpy, Feral Might, fit with 75 IIs and MSE. Not flown yet.
5. Arbitrator, Traitor, currently being used for exploration and salvaging.
6. Vexor, Vivacious, also being used as an exploration platform.
7. Thorax, Axe III, recently refit for PvP as a glass cannon. Sadly, unused....
8. Vengeance x2, still in the trade hub waiting for roflkets to be fixed with the upcoming expansion..... I hope!
9. IN Slicer, cleverly named Executioner(actually, I couldn't think of anything good) with a semi faction fit recommended by a corpmate. Not sure when this will actually get flown, but it looks cool!
10. Lastly, an Ashimmu, Fervent Mantis, just waiting for me to be able to afford to lose her in combat.

Notice the lack of core combat ships, no BSes, and no combat BCs either. Seeing as how I never flew them when I did own them, I've liquidated those assets. With no isk coming in, frankly, no isk can go out. Maybe when I get my desire to play back, my hanger composition will begin to change. Until then, skill changes will be the order of the day!

Better late then never

So I haven't posted in a while. While contemplating my future in Eve, with the start of the new school quarter and my lack of desire to do much in game, my renewal date rolled around. I wasn't sure what I was going to do till I had just 2 hours left... I ended up renewing for 1 more month. I have started a bit of trading, and there is another war coming up later on today. We shall see what this month holds and make another determination then! In the mean time, I'll keep you up to date on the happenings, and keep this blog alive....

Signatures

Well, I am throwing another hand in another pot. I am not an art guru, in fact, I suck horribly at art and design. But I don't feel like paying a large sum of isk to have a forum signature done up by someone who doesn't. Without having the proper tools, here is what I've thrown together:



Any good, or should I trash it now?

More changes announced!

CCP Chronotis has published a new devblog on some more changes coming in Tyrannis. Finally, a rebalancing in loot drops, drone alloys, and some ore changes for low sec. While I am hardly the full on industrialist, nor claim to understand the complete process behind these changes, I have followed the numerous posts on EveO forums about the changes needed to improve income from mining. Players have asked for a mining and loot drop rebalance for as long as I've been playing. It is good to see CCP responding to their player base and listening to the good advice that some have been giving.

They are also making insurance a dynamic system that will automatically self adjust to market changes. I'm not going to go into too much detail, you'll need to read the devblog for that, but this is very exciting news. This will remove the mineral basket floor and give the market to the miners. At least, that is what is predicted. While it won't get rid of suicide ganks, like some seem to think, it should make ganks where little to no profit is to be had much more rare. And as the insurance adjusts to the market, the payout on the hull shouldn't make the ganker money as they are now with certain ships.

The other positive effect is that T2 hulls will get a small boost to payouts. Still not coming close to compensating for a loss, but 40% is much better than 10% or less. Same for T3 hulls, but not subsections. And it looks like supercapitals, titans and supercarriers, will get a measly 1% or so of value to make their losses even worse for the respective pilots.

At the end of the day, more great news for Tyrannis, making May seem further and further away!!

The near future

Well, I am about as unmotivated as I've been in this game. I am seriously considering taking an extended break. I have a new quarter starting this week, and I've done nothing in game for the last couple weeks worth mentioning. One roam, a little side manufacturing job (which I've transfered responsibility to my alt), an attempt to get back into mission running, and bought a couple ships. Ships that I can't afford, and currently serve no purpose to my skills at the moment.

Funny thing is, I just came back from a forced break of 8 months. In fact, this isn't the only game I'm feeling down on. I've hardly touched Halo: ODST, which my wife generously purchased for me as a welcome home present, and Modern Warfare 2 has been sitting there staring at me as well.

I guess we'll see where this week takes me................

Eve Gate Alpha Test

Eve Gate, formerly known as COSMOS, is now in the alpha test phase. Not all features are implemented, and the settings aren't yet active, but you can log in look around for yourself. The devblog here gives more information. They pretty much want as many people as possible to log in to help stress test it. Log in, try it out!

P.S. If your account wasn't active when the most recent Sisi mirror was taken, 11 of March, you will not be able to test it.

Site seeing

Since I dipped my hand into manufacturing rigs, I thought I'd set up another salvaging Arbitrator (my favorite hull!) and get back to scanning down anomalies and other exploration sites and start obtaining my own salvage on my own again to supplement my buy orders. It really is interesting, fun, and gets you out and about into out of the way systems. The first couple of systems were empty, but eventually I was able to scan down a Blood Raider anomaly and a radar (hacking) site.

The anomaly was devoid of rats.... And the hacking site had 3 cans to hack, 2 of which were empty (already done?) and the third yielded crap not worth my time.

Here are some pics of the anomoly:


I don't know if you can see by the shadows, but the solar arrays are facing away from the sun. Whomever built these did a poor job!


Just for your info, the Arbitrator is a little over 300 meters in length, or about a football field long.


Here is the now defunct stargate. Not sure why construction wasn't finished and abandoned, but maybe they couldn't generate enough power with those poorly aligned solar arrays!

Trial run

So I am making a trial run on manufacturing. I've decided to start making rigs. Well, one rig at the moment. With generous figures for the costs of the salvage, I figure I can make a bit over 100K isk per rig. But I placed some competetive buy orders, and they began filling faster then I expected. I might have to start placing more buy orders. They work better then expected. But anyway, this is a begining, to see where I end up. If it all works out and my profits are more then my projections, I might be on to something here. I'll keep you updated!

It's been a while....

since I last posted. Not much has been happening though on my side. A couple days ago I decided to move a clone back into Caldari space where I have access to level 3 and 4 agents. I was tired of running weak level 2 missions where I was at not earning any real isk for my effort and time. And actually, that is all I have done since my last post. Oh wait, no, I did participate on a roam.

For a whole 45 minutes, 30 of that waiting for others to get in fleet. I should have remembered that despite setting up the time and date 2 days in advance, people still are never ready at the given time. I wasn't really planning on going at first because I knew I'd be leaving soon, but I decided I was there, ready, and might as well get my feet wet again. Once we got moving, it was good. Right away, we came upon a Legion (T3 cruiser!) on a gate, but failed to hold him, and missed him on the other side due to our over-excitement. That kill would have been nice to have. But soon, I had to go, and logged off.
When I came back on, I initially thought I was going to roam on back, looking for something that my poor little Merlin might be able to take on it's own. That was when a Morsus Mihi scout in a Taranis intercepter hopped in system. Knowing that he would tear my little frigate apart, I quickly made my way to my out gate. Right as I jumped out, local spiked to 30+, and the chase was on! As luck would have it, I was able to stay just in front of the intercepter and his gang, and made it back to blue systems. I continued on to my ultimate destination, and apparently his gang decided to camp the blue station instead of pursuing little ole me. Needless to say, it got the heart pumping again!

As I look back on that, despite running scared, I realize that situational assessment is as important as bravery. Could I have stayed and engaged the Taranis? Sure, most likely it wouldn't have ended well, but I would have gained a bit more experience. But getting ganked and raped by a large gang isn't the best learning experience either. So yeah, here I am rationalizing me tucking tail and GTFO!

Here is a little scenery to look at while you laugh at me, the Hookbill, Bentbeak, I bought a year or so ago and got reacquainted with upon returning to my old stomping grounds: