Battleship…ur doin it wrong.

So…I’ve been loving this Armageddon thing.

I saved more than intended for my first battleship, the Apocalypse – less drones, but it did have the missle tube, which I thought was cool, and it was more of a sniper ship, that fit with my usual missioning buddies sniper Megathron.

But since we lost both my Apoc and that Mega in the war, we went back to the drawing board.  My buddy had already been working on a Level 4 Solo Dominix fit, and he just went ahead and used the insurence payout he got to finish it out.  Me, I ended up with the Geddon, for simplicity and cost sake.  But I do way more dps and tank way more dps than I did with the Apoc.  Think that might be an indication that I either a) didn’t have the skills or b) didn’t have the right fit?

Might be wrong, but he still does more dps than my Apoc did...

 

So the last week or so I’ve been pacing through Battlclinic, talking with other pilots, using EveHQ.  And spending some money this time – something I really didn’t do with the Apoc.  The end result has been satisfying.   We took it out on a level 4 a few nights ago – the Domi, my Geddon, along with a Raven.  A minute later my buddy said “man, those new turrets sound…evil.”   I zoomed in close – and they did.  They sounded like frickin lazor beams.  It was coooool.  Sorry, little boy and his toy moment there.   But also, I was destroying people.  800…1100…1400…the damage numbers floating across my screen were great.   After the mission they were eager to test me out, so we did a little shooting back and forth.  The Domi held up well, but that’s to be expected with dual repping going on.  I was ahead of his repair curve, but we could tell it would be a really drawn out thing.  The Raven was the most suprising.  I guess because Amarr does EM/Thermal, I was ripping the shields of the Raven very quickly.

The downside is that I can’t engage beyond 50km, and I really need to be within 20km to open up my best dps.  After some discussion, while the ship already had an official name, the corp has decided to call it the shotty, short from the sawed off shotgun description we agreed was pretty accurate for it.  If I can get Weapons Upgrades finished and Advanced Weapon Upgrades started though, it will open up a whole new world of pain with that boat as it would free up space for better armor and allow me to swap for a dps or optimal range rig.

FE trial should end either today or Monday, so expect a post/review on it Monday.  Alganon I confirmed I am under an NDA and the  game doesn’t launch until Dec. 1, so it will be a while before you see anything about it.

We're Doin' It Right.

War’s End

It occurred to me, as I play through these two Betas – ok well one trial and one beta, that I hadn’t gotten around to telling you what happened to end our little war.

The day after that whole double cross went down, I logged back in, to do some mining and moneymaking so that I could restock my lost ships.  I was greeted with a host of corp mail that came as a bit of a shock.

 

The corp that had war dec’d us had withdrawn it – the war would actually be ending early.  On top of that, our corp leader had received mail from their corp leader:  they would be setting us to blue and had invited us to participate in pvp ops with their crew (we got invites into their fleet organizing channel a few days later as well).  With the mail came praise for our “coolness” and skills.  We had – impressed them.

In the days since then, though I have not been able to talk with the ones we battled that night to confirm this 100%, our understanding is that it was not a planned double cross.  It was more along the line of “OMG I’m going to lose my Faction-equipped Sleipnir to a bunch of noobs, come help quick!”  Yeah that Sleipnir out there, turns out it didn’t have anything on it that didn’t start with “Republic Fleet.”  They had clearly underestimated us, and it did not want to pay the price.  And…I can’t blame them really.  That Sleip had to have been worth over a billion ISK with the gear that was on it.  If that had been me, I would have been screaming for help too, deal or no deal!

In talking it was probably the best thing that could have happened.  Remember our corp goal?  Provide weapons and ships to low sec pirates – be a sort of black market arms dealer?  Well, with a little investment and a week of war, we have accomplished that with one of the bigger pirate corps in the area.  And as we do some pvp ops with them, that blue status will hopefully begin to spread.

To celebrate, we spent all day the day after the war closed mining and rebuilding.  My wallet is at pre-war levels, and the only thing I’ve lost in net is trading down from the Apoc to an Armageddon, and that was my choice, not because I couldn’t have had the Apoc.  Well, I still need to rig the Geddon as well, but still, a small price to pay.  The next step is to grab either an Assault Ship or an Interceptor and do some pvp ops.

The hesitation – and the downside of this?  We may find that its not a good thing to be the buddy of the biggest bully on the block…

Double Cross

First off, an apology.  I didn’t get a single screenshot last night.  In my defense, I was too busy getting absolutely pummeled.  Basically, this is how last night went:

Basically, everything they did this week thus far was a lie, to get us to go to sleep so that they could issue a full fledged beat down.

We had a Sleipnir and Taranis off station, the usual camping duo, and had been working on fits to take them down.  We had it down on paper when they both logged.  We told them we were ready, but they demurred in the face of wife aggro (so they said).  We took the ships out, and our one T2 pilot brought his Sleipnir out and we tried out our tactics.  We were wrapping up and docking up for the night when the Taranis pilot reappeared.

She was impressed at how quickly we were adapting, and hovered just outside our range on station, so we knew she was calling in the troops.  We stayed close by to see what they would bring, eyes on the gate into system.  Sure enough, another Sleipnir appeared.  We all docked up except our newest pilot, in his brand new Hurricane, who somehow, and I’m still not clear how, got himself  aced and limped back in his pod (I *think* he had warped off and was trying to warp in at 100 to catch the Taranis, without telling us what he was doing, and arrived, unfortunately, about the same time the Sleipnir did).  That blew our setup to hell and we had to go back to the drawing board, all with them doing their usual friendly but still irritating smack talk.  Our new pilot (as in, less than a month old) asked if he could collect his loot.  Up until now this had not been a problem with them, but suddenly it was.  In addition, a Scimitar had shown up, and they were complaining it was five to three.   Our corp leader, being diplomatic and contining the friendly banter we had been engaged in all week, offered to fight 3v3 if they let our rookie have his gear back.  They dumped his gear just outside the dock and we took a minute to finalize our plan before we undocked in unison.

It was their Sleipnir, Scimitar, and Taranis vs. our Sleipnir, Megathron, and Prophecy.  I was going to bring my Apoc, but the truth is my skill set now lets me squeeze more DPS out of the Prophecy.  The strat was simple – the Sleipnir was fitted with its usual autocannon compliment – and three heavy neuters.  The Mega had its usual rails – and a hold full of ECM drones.  The Prophet had its usual pulse lasers - and  a tracking disruptor.

It worked like a charm.  The Taranis went down in a blaze of glory within 60 seconds.  She got enough of the ECM drones before she popped to allow the Sleip to lock onto me and start pounding.  We shifted to the Sleipnir, and his shields started dropping fast.  My Prophecy was in armor, but he was so locked down that he wasnt able to shoot at me again.  And thats when all hell broke loose.

An Ishkur undocked from the station, flown by one of their pilots, who apparently had docked it there beforehand when none of us were on, and he was waiting in a neutral alt for the signal.   He crapped all over the ECM drones in no time flat, and the double cross was on in force.  I called my brother out but their wasnt much the Rifter could do other than draw fire.  With the ECM off, the Sleipnir started pounding me again and I didn’t last long.  I docked up in a hurry, not certain how far the double cross was going to go (we had refrained from podding during the war by mutual agreement).  I was pissed as hell though, and the Apoc was undocking 30 seconds later, about the same time a T2 fitted Thorax from their corp joined the fray.  We pounded the Ishkur down, but we knew it was a lost cause and decided to bail.   The Mega went down finally and I couldnt quite finish off  the Ishkur before I died.  I tried to warp off, because we apparently had either confused or damaged their only remaining tackle device, but somehow I had drifted into the station itself, and battleships do not unstick easily.  I tried to dock but I was scrammed and webbed and for some reason, when I hit the docking button it gave me the “your being squeezed out, it will be another 30 seconds before you can dock again” – (thats twice now this week and EVE glitch cost me a ship).  It didn’t take long for my pod to go.

Just when we thought that maybe theiy weren’t griefers after all, just a corp that liked PvP, they taught us another invaluable lesson.  I’d warn you off, but even putting their name here would be too good for them.  Local chat was…difficult.  With griefers, if you complain too much, they get off on it, and then we get another week of war dec status.  If you say nothing, they get pissed, and you get another week of war dec status.  So we tried to be proud and gracious and not too sore about it.  But it was hard.

There were some bright spots though.  When I undocked the Apoc, I became the new primary, and so our corp leader’s Sleipnir managed to escape.  And both my ships were insured.  Don’t get me wrong though, it hurt.

My Apoc, Dead by Sunrise, was fully rigged, and no insurance payout will cover that.  And since I don’t have a JC, there went my +3 implants, all five of them.  But, we fought hard, and we did the best we could with what we had, and we made sure they understood that, because that will probably be the only thing that keeps us from getting griefed again.

The good thing about EVE though, is that unlike other PvP games I’ve played – trying to “be a hero” does have its rewards.  I didn’t have to undock with my pride and joy, and I was the only guy who lost two ships and got podded.  I went all in and laid it all out there for my corpmates, and they are saying thank you – the corp leader is building me a new Prophecy in return for saving his beloved command ship, and my buddy is giving me a spare set of +3’s that he had acquired from storyline missions, since he has a JC and uses +4’s these days in his non combat clone.

I’m still not sure what to make of the evening though, both tactically and just in terms of my feelings.  Alot of that may have to do with the fact that I laid it all out in another sense too – I’ve only had three and half hours of sleep.  So perspective may not be soon in coming, at least not until I get a chance to sack out.  On the bright side, I don’t really need to log in the next two nights until the war dec is (hopefully) over.   ‘Cuz I don’t really have any more ships to lose!

Mid War Update

Well I’d like to tell you about the glorious battles and all, but we haven’t had any you see.  Where to begin…

First of all, while some of the people in the corp may be griefers, the truth is we’ve gotten along well with a number of them, chatting in local and exchanging good fights and so on.  It became apparent on the first evening what a mismatch had been set up.  Your talking about a guild with 42 on its rolls  to our 15 (good rule of thumb I’ve learned for EVE – divide corp membership by two to determine how many active pilots are really there).  In addition, pretty much all of the one’s who have been blockading us in our home station can fly and equip T2 pvp craft.  That list for our corp includes two, and one of those is me, and while I can fly them,  I can’t (for the most part) fit T2 weaponry on them, so…

Been seeing alot of these lately? Chances are, you're at WAR!

So the first night, about 8 of them sat outside our station, complete with command ship, interceptor, and several battlecruisers and ECM type ships.   We fed them a few frigates and at least two battlecruisers, but it was clear how one sided it was.  Later that night though, my brother and I caught the interceptor pilot napping alone outside our station.  We undocked at the same time, side by side Rifter and Punisher to see what we could do, but I wigged out and redocked.  Why?  When I hit F1 for guns, nothing happened.  And when I looked bottom right on my screen…they werent there.  I panicked and docked, thinking I must not have put them back on from when I was playing with fits earlier and cursing myself for the mistake.  But they were on!  For some reason, the icon for the guns was buried on the second row of icons, three deep into it.  Shift-F3 basically.  I got back out just as my brother’s Rifter went out in a blaze of glory.  The interceptor pilot, seeing me emerge again, warped out.  Leaving his two T2 drones behind.  I had just finished dusting the second when he returned.  To his credit, he didn’t run but still went toe to toe with me.  To my credit, I had him to about 10% of his structure left when I popped.  I was webbed and scrammed next right next to the station though, and I docked my pod before he could complete the kill.

GF’s were exchanged in local, and I haven’t seen that pilot since.  I think he was thinking the same thing my brother and I were…if I hadn’t had a bizarred EVE malfunction, he would be dead, and we would had had some bragging rights for bagging him.

Since then, the station camping has been sporadic, and often in chatting with them, they will back off their T2 behemoths and fit out T1 frigates, cruisers, and battlecruisers, and we will go out and have 1v1 or 2v2 battles.  They’ve won more often than we have, but the experience for our corp, well, I’m not sure you can put a price tag on it, because it has been invaluable for us to begin to get live-fire pvp training. 

All of this has led me to a conclusion though – I badly need a jump clone if I wish to continue doing this.  I have +3 implants all around, which aren’t too bad to lose, but enough to make me wince.  My standings the current NPC corp we mission for hover around 5, and my next in game goal is to get them to 8 and get myself JC capable.  This is interesting for me because really its the first in game goal I’ve set for myself that didn’t involve money or flying a new ship.  That’s a refreshing change of pace…I like it.

Three Way Showdown

A few nights ago, someone in our little crew had a brilliant suggestion.  With my brother trying to be a Rifter loving pirate, we should loadout some frigates and do some pvp for real.   So we finally carved out some time.  And I had the best time I’ve had in awhile.

Of course, being the trouble maker I was, I knew I wouldn’t bring a Rifter.  And my buddy caught on quick and showed up in his Dramiel.   That might seem unfair, but my brother, with his focused training regimen, has quickly ascended to fitting some t2 gear to his Rifter.  With Gallente Frigate 5 and now Amarr Frigate 5 under my belt, I had a choice.  But I decided to stay true to my new Amarr love and fit a Punisher. 

And I won.  Again…and again…and again.  the only time I lost was when my buddy had switched out to his repping Domi and was repping bth my brother and I at the same time.  He stopped finally, but my brother had just reloaded, and I had only a few rounds left.  So I had to stop and reload and he didn’t.   Granted, against the t2 autocannons it was very, very close.   And I’m not sure my buddy quite has his Dramiel fit perfected yet, but still, it was something to be proud of.

And it made me wonder.   Everybody I’ve heard of always lauds the virtues of the Rifter as the best T1 combat frigate (I’ve seen some minority arguments for the Tristan though).   Why not the Punisher?  Is it the lack of the third mid slot?  I can see where that would be problematic against other pvpers who would try to disengage  if they fell behind.

It also gave me a solid “Eureka!” moment.  I didn’t realize that I had all the preqs done for Assault Ships.  I mean I think I knew but I didn’t quite know.  You know?  Anyway, I need to train my gunnery skills a bit more for t2 weapons, but…well it was so fun, I gotta get me one. 

But which one?  With two maxed out frigate skills…do I go:

Enyo?  Ishkur?  Retribution?  Vengeance?

I’m leaning towards the Ishkur (I had solid drone skills) but I love the look of the Vengeance and the armor resist bonus (also what I love about the Punisher).

Taking your input….nnnooow.  Ding.

Annoying Kids

So the merger continues to go fairly smoothly.  We’ve pretty much mothballed BB-I, and set up some alts to watch over it.  We plan to drop leave corp today and join the one we are merging with tomorrow.

Plans for our first POS are progressing.  All the components are bought, the trick now is just deciding which moon we want to make our own.  And when to set up to escort for that pesky hour of anchoring and onlining.

But one thing is not progressing.  One thing is regressing.  The other corp has a new member.  Who says he’s 17, but judging from conversations I would guess is more around the 12-13 age range.  Which should be fine.  I deal well with teenagers.  And annoying, loud-mouthed, ADD, types in all caps ones I can usually tame and get on track.  But this one…

This one knows how to push everyone’s buttons.  The whining, the kiddy speak, the bragging, the “pet me please, cuz I did something marginally good” mentality.  The assumptions that if we are online, we must be online to play with him.  We must be online to help him accomplish his goals.  Because whatever else we are doing in the game is inferior to what he is doing.

We’ve come close to assining his continue presence in the new corp as a dealbreaker on the merger.  I should have more patience and be more of a mentor I know.  I think maybe because EVE has so few people like that, it makes it that much harder to deal with them.  In WoW, it was a given – that person was going to be in the game, every night, and probably in your PUG, so you just did what you had to ta get by.  But here, you are not braced for it, and its hard to know just how to balance your reaction.

Especially when, since its EVE, there is a possibility that guy is an alt whose only purpose is to spy on and disrupt your operations.  If thats true, so far its working.

But, in an attempt to rally my patience, and in honor of this guy driving me nuts, I dug deep into my psyche.  And remembering this made me feel better.  Because now  I can give all of you a window into my world while reminding myself how I should *not* act (despite the title, it is quite SFW):

 

For those of you who don’t remember the cartoon: in a nutshell, it involves Chester repeatedly getting Spike into trouble by confusing the harmless Sylvester with the lethal, recently escaped from the zoo Black Panther.  Hilarity insues.

Corporate Mergers

I need to break out my blueberry almond martinis, as we successfully negotiated a corp merger last night.

So my five capsuleer BB-I corp will be merging with an eight member local corp to give us more staying power and more market power.

As the weeks have unfolded, we’ve really found a niche in industrial dealings, and have run a few ops with this other corp for mining and exploration.  We’ve both benefited from them, and get along well with the other people, with one exception (a new player still learning not to talk all caps).  The goal is to become a neutral arms-dealer outfit for the current locale.

"The gun is free, but the ammo will cost you..."

Which will tie in nicely with my brothers new series of short stories for submission that will have a Casablanca flavor too them.

We are currently in the process of sorting through our junk.  BB-I will effectively get mothballed with my alt back in the CEO chair.  But we need to figure out whats going with us and what’s not, and who gets what.

Oh, and we also have to anchor our new POS.  Business is good….

EVE Alts Take Pay Cut, Film at 11.

I’ve always said I didn’t want an alt in EVE.   Too much work – the headache of training them, of alt-tabbing in and out, of upkeeping skills…not to mention doubling my cost for playing the game for the sake of what amounted to a luxury item.
But CCP knows how to make a tempting offer, don’t they?  The Power of Two offer, which EVE has rolled out several times over the history of the game, seems to be back.

$50 for 6 months.  That’s hard to argue with…

6 months for 49.95

Having that extra account at your disposal is sometimes indispensable. It can help turn the tides on a difficult mission or turn a taxing task into a more efficient venture. A second account also means more places you can be at once, which makes monitoring the markets easier and reduces travel time. Trying out new and different skills Extra firepower on missions An extra hauler for miners A tag along salvager There are plenty of reasons to have a second account, and right now the biggest one is the Power of 2.

Offer valid only for newly created accounts. Existing accounts (trials included), active or expired, do not qualify for this promotion. Power of 2 may not be combined with other offers. Subscription of the new account will automatically renew after the six month period. Renewal will occur at the regular six month subscription price. Offer only available for Credit Cards and Direct Debit. Offer expires October 17th, 2009.

I wonder how this actually works.  I mean, my brother is thinking of starting play again….what if I start an alt account for him.  Then he gets to play for six months for almost half price.  Hmmm…then I would have a living alt, and all the headaches I mentioned above would go away….

Pardon me, I have some quasi-evil musing to do….

$22 A Month Subscriptions?

My wife called in last night to fight over a $20 service fee we had been charged for our account dropping too low (it hadn’t – our account minimum is calculated using savings and checking, not just checking…morons) and also noticed next to my $14.95 monthly gaming fee to EVE that there was a $2 or so “International Service Charge” attached  to it.  Round two on the phone started, and ended with Wachovia refusing to take that one off, claiming that they were withing their rights to charge us extra for having to exchange currencies, and that they were surprised it was so low - the lady claimed the charge should have been more like $7 a month, and would be so in the future.

Now, we’ve already established that Wachovia is capable of deploying morons – and actually, I’ve known that for some time because of other issues I’ve had.  So I’m not entirely sure I have been told the gospel truth here, so I did some digging.

*Real* ISK.

First of all, I found out that ISK doesn’t stand for Interstellar Space Kredit.  It stands for “Iceland Krona” in the international banking scene.  And that Wachovia charges a 3% international service fee for converting currency.  So I did some quick math:

$14.95 x 1.03 = $15.40 -$14.95 = $.45 in service fees.

Nowhere near $2 or $7 either one.

Add to this my confusion over CCP itself.  While they are originated in Iceland, they also have offices here in America, and so I’m not sure what kind of exchanging needs to go on at all.  And in their FAQ page, while they list all sorts of additional charges that one might get hit with, one for converting currency is not on the list.  And costs are listed not only in Euros, but also in USD, along with this sentence:

Prices are listed in Euros and US dollars. You can use the services of Yahoo Finance to convert the US dollar/Euros to your local currency.

Bold is mine.  This would seem to indicate that CCP accepts two kinds of currency – Euros and US Dollars.  So what is going on here?  Well…I have two weeks until my sub is up.  And I have at least one unpleasent conversation with Wachovia that will be taking place.  I do have some options though. 

At the very least I will be switching banks.  I cannot tolerate incompetence and/or swindling.  The economy is too bad to reward companies that fail in the most basic avenues of knowing their own policies and customer service.  I may also switch my sub over to Discover, though I don’t  know yet what their policies are either.  Hopefully this will not mean EVE costing me $22 a month to play.  I enjoy the game, but…

Anyone else out there ever have this problem?

Anyway, expect an extra post this week so I can regale you with the insanely underhanded way in which I won my first ever Twilight Imperium game.  And no, I didn’t cheat…

Taking the Long View

I lost myself in EVE skill land last night for a bit, with EVE Mon sitting open on the desktop as I alt-tab’d in and out of the Level 4 mission I was helping with.  In some ways, this was a good reminder of just how far I’ve come in EVE. (Which reminds me, though it deserves a full post – it is my firm belief that the interface in EVE HQ was designed to be as user unfriendly as possible.  I used it for so short a time I didn’t even bother telling you I had switched.)

I want one...

With skills, I tend to fetch a cool idea from thin air and move into it, as I have done with Cov Ops.  But as I play I have found some gaps in my skill training.  I can fly battleships – but I could use another couple of weeks to fill out the skill set better.  I have Cov Ops at 4, and have the modules I need, but I have only a minimal rating in probing and its secondary skills.

So I sat down last night and set up a skill plan that will last a few months.  It will fill out the remainder of my learning skills to 4, get me set up for T2 gear for frigates and cruisers, all with an aim towards setting me up for command ships and then carrier training over the next year.   I’ve been way to excited about getting new ships, and not nearly excited enough about being able to utilize them to their fullest capacity.

Anyway, as I wrapped all this up and got more fully into our mission, I realized we were fighting a faction I hadn’t seen before, the EoM – Equilibrium of Mankind.    And they were driving really slick looking versions of Amarr ships.   Anyone know if I can get one of their ships via contract or specialized LP?

ETA:  After some additional research, it seems they have no LP, agents, or sov.  But they make up for it with pretty badass paint schemes…