Ombeve

Props to CCP for a trouble free patch implementation (so far), and OMG:

and the same picture, slightly altered…

Gorgeous! Some of the moons look amazing now too More no doubt to come!

Karn Mithralia, CEO of my corp NKB and ’scourge of Providence’, shared a story with us earlier. He told us that  pilot Jakooni, of Fidelas Constan (FCON), had sent him with a rather amusing message:

2009.11.30 15:21
Delivered to your offices in Ipref are:
50x Metal Scraps – to repair your ships
50x Quafe – for celebration
50x Spiced Wine – for more celebration
50x Spirits – for double extra celebration and hopes that you’ll be too drunk to shoot at us
50x Tobacco – so you die fas… erm, for celebration
100x Pax Amarria – for enlightenment
245x Freed Slaves – for whatever perverted things you do with these
100x Prototype Cloaking Device I – for you cloaky b*****ds

Enjoy and happy birthday \o/

It’s always nice to see the funny side of our ongoing battle, and FCON are always respectful in combat. Big salute to FCON and thanks for the ProtoCloaks >

What is arguably one of the biggest patches is just around the corner, and CCP have now released the patch notes. By biggest, I mean game changing of course- the sov changes are extremely wide reaching and will cause some huge changes to alliance ’sprawl’. I have picked out some highlights (only in order they appear on the patch notes):

• Corporation, alliance and militia fleets can be registered into a fleet finder, this will allow people to look up your fleet and join it without an explicit invite from the commander – I think this is an excellent addition. As good as Alliance self invites are, this is a step more sleek.
• There is now an “apply to join” button on a player corporation’s show info page. You are no longer required to fly to the office to join a player corporation – about time, the current process is really unwieldy!
• Damage notification plays a warning sound whenever your shield / hull / armor drops below a certain threshold – nice idea, can’t think of a practial application for it yet, perhaps if you’ve suffered from a moment’s inattention while watching X-Factor Certainly can’t hurt to have it included.
• Planets and Moons in EVE have received a complete graphics overhaul. Brand new stunning graphics and high resolution textures have been added throughout New Eden – sexy.
• It is now possible to view the content of containers and ships remotely. Note that you can not view the contents of password locked containers – about time! Very handy addition to the game, saves us flying 49 jumps to see what’s in that container…to find out it’s empty.
• You will now autojoin your fleet again if you connect within 2 minutes of being disconnected. You will not enter your old position within the fleet however – excellent
• You can now report players as ‘ISK Spammer’ from the right click menu of a character in chat. This will remove all their messages from that channel and report it to the GM’s - good idea, but may be misused by idiots clicking on anyone, and then suck up GM time to investigate
• The old EVE mail and mailing list system got replaced by a new and better one. It can be sorted by date and much more! – woot!
• We have replaced the old in game browser (IGB) with a modern version based on Chromium – awesomesauce!
• The Naglfar has a new bonus: 5% bonus to Missile Launcher rate of fire per level of Minmatar Dreadnought Skill. In exchange, the Naglfar has lost its bonus to projectile rate of fire – they trying to steer it into a missile boat?
• All projectile weapons have been rebalanced so each tier (long range/short range, small/medium/large) have more consistent attributes and the increase between each tier is more defined – this is going to be VERY interesting, especially to all us Vaga jockeys in U’K.
• The Tech 2 ship component composition has been changed – have no idea what this is going to do… prices up, prices down, who knows? Certainly not I.
• When opening the character sheet you will no longer see the typewriter effect in the character information – the text will be displayed instantly – GOOD!!
• Ballistic Control Units now correctly apply their bonuses to missile damage - err what? You mean they didn’t before?
• Tech III ships equipped with an Interdiction Nullifier subsystem will no longer be stopped from warping by warp disrupt probes or warp disruption field generators - I predict a lot more people will now fit these. Although you only had to re-initiate warp, it was still a PITA.
• People who really fail at PvP can now navigate through their loss mails beyond the first page – lol
• Aggression timers will now be updated, when undocking. There will be a warning message, when trying to undock with an active aggression timer in high security space – doesn’t affect me really, but no doubt handy for those people it does
• A metric ton of fixes

All in all, some good stuff. Exciting time to follow I think, especially for us in Catch and Provi. With any luck, the patch will go smoothly, but set a long skill anyway- you know the score

The Navitas eased into warp yet again. I checked the nav HUD yet again…18 jumps to go.

Earlier, I had been browsing GalNet, and thought I’d check on my Hound that I’d been forced to leave in C-J6MT about 4 years ago. At the time, I’d been in Lotka Volterra, and we’d been fighting a losing battle against a revitalised Red Alliance. I’d had to abandon the Hound in the evacuation, and swore to myself I’d collect it one day.

Fast forward some years. Every now and again I’d check the status of C-J, and it was always in Red Alliance hands. However, this morning, I checked again and I’ll be damned. Last month, Atlas had taken it off Red Alliance. As Atlas were blue to us, the chances are I could dock there again and re-take ownership of what was my oldest surviving ship.

So, I grabbed the first ship that I had in my hangar, fitted a MWD and a couple of Warp Core Stabilisers, and prepared to set off. Before I did, I stopped myself. This Hound was pre-upgrade, when they weren’t able to warp cloaked… in which case it would’ve only had an Improved Cloak fitted. I had a spare Covert Cloak in my hangar, so I got that loaded and off I set.

The journey was reasonably uneventful, some reds, mainly blues, but I trod carefully, never warping directly to gates if there were other pilots in-system. Warp core stabilisers wouldn’t make up for a vapour thin tank.

The final obstacle was actually being granted permission to dock, but that was cleared with no issue. I didn’t want to waste any time while the route was clear, so stayed in my pod. I contacted the Docking Manager, and asked to be transferred to my Hound.

“Ah, welcome pilot Ombey. We did wonder when someone would claim that ship, it’s been here for a long time. We’ve kept it ticking over, and it’s in good condition for you” he exclaimed.

I thanked him as my pod was lowered into the Bomber. I interfaced with the systems, and as it came online, I chuckled to myself. I had two Cruise Missile Launchers fitted, along with two 200mm ACs. I am not sure what I thought the ship was back then, but …. heh. Midslots were packed with tech 1 Sensor Boosters, and the lows were sensibly fitted.

I interfaced with Boundless Creation’s portal, and updated the ship’s mainframe and firmware. This took about ten minutes, and when it was complete, I had errors and warnings about mal-fitted modules. Namely, the Cruise Launchers. I had the ship stripped completely and the warning messages disappeared. Fitting the Covert Ops cloak and MWD from the Navitas, it was good to go. I put the Navitas on the market at the station, no point keeping it, and left.

The journey back was similarly uneventful, the ability to warp cloaked was an extra layer of comfort. After being around for so long, I was curious as to how long it would last in the charnel house that was Catch/ Provi.

Yes indeed, today is the 5th birthday of Ushra’Khan alliance, the oldest surviving alliance in the game. There has been an in-character post made in IGS and an OOC one in CAOD. Nice to see the many positive responses from our in-game enemies.

I have only been around in U’K for one of those five years, but have enjoyed my time there immensely. Although things aren’t perfect (they never are in any alliance), you never have to fly very far for combat and there are, on the whole, a great bunch of lads and ladies.

A very interesting time for Providence and Catch is around the corner, so we look to our sixth year with great interest!

I awoke late in the station’s afternoon cycle, feeling fresh and alert after a dreamless sleep. I splashed some water on my face, then checked alliance comms. One of our FCs had called an ad hoc op which was starting in …. 10 minutes! He wanted sniper HACs, so this was the perfect opportunity to take out the Zealot I’d bought some time ago but not used in battle yet.

I made it into my capsule and then into the waiting Zealot in good time, as usual with these ops they never actually start on time due to the array of “what ship do you want”, “I am 3 jumps out, hang on” etc. calls. I had the training to fly all the races Recons and HACs, and T2 equip them, but due to the nature of what we face on a daily basis, the Vagabond is always the best HAC to use, and as I am very familiar with the Rapier, it’s the Recon of choice (and arguably the most useful, everyone hates it when people run back to gates!).

As a result, I have spent very little time in Amarrian ships. The sub cruiser size Amarrian ships I have dabbled with, but usually a Minmatar ship can do the job and is also faster. Speed keeps you alive around Catch/ Provi. However, the Zealot is an excellent sniper ship, and if it had a utility slot for a cloak, I’d probably fly it more.

The fleet gets underway, and we are told we are going to help defend a reinforced POS and that they are expecting enemy ships to try to finish the job while it’s being repaired. We fly a few jumps, then hook up with a very imposing Amarrian Titan who bridges the fleet into Stain- ZH-KEV.

It turns out the POS at the other end of the bridge belongs to an alliance called C0ven. I had heard of them, but not really seen them around much. Due to a standings issue, we have to warp off immediately we appear out of the bridge as the POS follows it’s programming and starts to lock us up. We don’t take any losses, and it’s quickly sorted out.

We take up positions around a the DABV-N gate in order to interdict any incoming ships, and spread out to avoid being an easy target to bombers. It seems my Beam Lasers can hit 95km comfortably with Aurora loaded, so I orbit the gate at 70km, leaving me enough range if any ships appear on the other side to me. As it turns out, we don’t have to wait long. A rather unfortunate Brick Squad Iteron MkIV jumps through after a couple of minutes. Bubble goes up, I lock him and fire. The thrum of the Beam Lasers is felt through the ship as they shoot focused light across the void, but there is less fuss than the usual autocannons I am used to.

The Hauler explodes in seconds as more people acquire lock and let loose. On board is a large-ish consignment of Neodymium. I know this is used in reactions, but I am no egghead and have no idea what it’s actually used to produce, or whether it’s worth much.

At about the same time, a Brick Squad Hound decloaks and bombs us… however, he isn’t quick enough to warp, and gets locked and destroyed in short order by a Muninn. It quickly becomes apparent there is no enemy anything headed this way, so we leave C0ven to it, and head back to F4. Our bridge back isn’t quite as conveniently placed, so we have to conventionally travel some jumps. As we traversed 4J9-DK, our scout tells us that a Rapier is jumping in from the next system. We have landed by this point, so bubble up…wait for it…gate flashes, Rapier de- and then re-cloaks. I am watching for this, and MWD over to where he was seen last. I don’t have any drones to eject in an effort to make decloaking him easier. I get lucky, and the Rapier’s cloak overloads due to the interference from my ship and he decloaks 1300m off my bow.

Suffice to say he is despatched, and we move on quickly, reaching our Titan exit with no more encounters and courtesy of a Gallente Titan (which I’d never seen up close before, so now I have seen all 4 Titans types) we were bridged back to the familiar surroundings of Catch and stood down. I was impressed with the Zealot…shame about the cloak though!

Later on, a Drake operation is called, and we roam around in a large fleet. However, CVA take particular umbrage to us whenever we do this (to be honest, I really hate going up against Drakes, so I can understand), and rolled out the usual RR BS fleet, but this time they raised 150 ships for our 40. We’d come out for a fight, and as they were using JBs to get around us anyway, we tried to make it so we wouldn’t be pincered. The fight in the end was a rolling fight over 2 systems, and we split them up slightly due to aggression timers. As you’d expect with almost 4-1 odds and many logistics in their fleet, the results were predictable. However, I felt the day was saved by the fact 0rigin and myself got a Griffin kill, the only kill on our side (high five!). I almost got my pod out of the bubble before I exploded, ah well.

My Drake’s insurance (it was actually quite nice receiving insurance worth a damn for once) covered the cost of my new clone with some change to spare. I wasn’t remotely upset, I don’t really like Drakes anyway.

Been fooling around on Sisi tonight, and am liking what I see. The new backgrounds, moons and the odd planet look really good. Improvements to EveMail are very welcome (sent mail and labels!), as is the Fleet Finder which will make joining and indeed running fleets, much more fluid.

I realise that people reading this pilot journal may not fully appreciate who’s who around the regions that we, the Ushra’Khan, fight in. In order to ease understanding, I thought I’d do a write up of who’s who in the area. Ushra’Khan’s history, and that of CVA’s is a matter of public record and better people than I have written about them, so I won’t cover that here.

When I joined U’K a year ago now, Ushra’Khan was red to Against All Authorities (-A-) and based in Utopia, Curse Region. We were much smaller than now, and invariably spent our time catching passing traffic in-/out-bound to/ from Catch or going on roams. -A- must’ve respected our bravery and defiance, as they offered us blue standings and the ability to base out of F4R2-Q, just inside Catch. This was very welcome, as we had outgrown Utopia and it moved us 8 or so jumps closer to our real enemies.

(There has been much speculation about us paying rent to -A-, but this isn’t the case and never was. I don’t think people really believe it anyway, but it’s easy to use as a cheap flame!)

Since then, we have launched attacks up the two pipes into ‘upper’ Catch and Providence- the KW-I6T pipe, and through D-GTMI, and U’K has grown considerably as people have come to like our style of guerilla fighting in small gangs. Very recently, -A- offered us two constellations in Catch, along with two stations, which we accepted as we had outgrown F4. I don’t know the reasons why they offered them to us, but they wouldn’t have done it had they not continued to respect us and what we can bring to the party.

Which brings us to the current situation:

All of the alliances in the ‘bad guy’ column are at best blue to each other, and at worst, neutral. As CVA enforce strict NRDS in Providence, this means they all get along.

At any time, we face up to 9,500 pilots in the ProviBloc. Of course, not all of their pilots have combat training, in the same way not all our own pilots do. They still can and do outnumber us, and as we have to traverse through chokepoints to get into our normal hunting grounds. Those chokepoints are: D-GTMI, which is Paxton Federation (729 pilots) space- they normally camp the F9E gate in D-G and make getting through very difficult, but they don’t tend to roam around much and tend to prefer avoiding organised gangs that come to challenge their camps. I suspect this is down to the camps not having an FC as they’re fairly easy to perform, but I could be wrong. – A- tend to delight in smashing up their camps as they are only 3 jumps from HED-GP which is where -A- hang out a lot.

On the other hand, the KW- pipe is manned by Sev3rance (812 pilots) and Cold Steel (592 pilots), and their camps are usually smaller but more organised. Cold Steel sometimes drag bubble both gates in a system, and just for good measure, drag bubble the planet nearest one or both of the gates which is where pilots warp to in an effort to avoid bubbles on the gate. Sev3rance have the outpost in KW-, which they took over from SSI who erected it in the first place and then left (internal issues and pressure from U’K). You don’t get much Sev in the area other than ratters and POS guys, unless there is an organised camp on- they can bridge down from their homespace around KBP very easily.

Once through the KW- pipe, you are into territory recently given to three new alliances by Sylph, perhaps as an effort to put more ‘meatshield’ between us and them. The new alliances have been willing to fight, but are short on numbers.

Then you’re into Sylph territory. They backstabbed U’K during our time in Providence (before my time, so don’t know the details), so they have special attention from us. They have dwindled from 1200+ members down to about 390- we’d like to take some credit for this, harassing their industrialists and combat pilots until they leave for easier grounds. They have had leadership issues as well, which has contributed to their slide into decay.

Then moving up into ‘lower’ Providence from IS-R7P, you are into Aegis Militia space. They had expanded to a high of 760 members, and then shrunk again to the same levels as they were at four months ago. However, their pilots are always willing to engage us, and are respectful in combat. They are also getting better at putting up effective camps.

Other then that, there are CVA (1365 pilots) and Libertas Fidelitas (1097, they were as big as CVA until recently) who are formidable both in terms of numbers and combat prowess. Most roaming gangs will have members of these alliances in, if not making up the majority of pilots.

Of course, not to be taken lightly are the silent, mechanical allies to the ProviBloc- the Jump Bridge networks. After much fine-tuning, they have a very impressive network (mainly owned by CVA), which means they can move around vast tracts of space very quickly. This not only aids their industrial capability, it means their ships can travel more safely, and of course, means they can bridge fleets around to try to catch us, as we have to move conventionally. As we fight on their turf mainly, they have the home advantage. We too have a small JB network ourselves which we gleefully use to great effect when our space is encroached upon, but these are rare moments in comparison.

With the amount of camps awaiting us,  most of our pilots stay in hostile space for days on end, only venturing back for resupply (or getting resupplied by friends in haulers). As we don’t have active wardecs against anyone who is really an issue for us in the area, resupplying from Agil, Esa or any other of the nearby trade-hubs isn’t too hard. However, we have, in the last 24 hours, been wardecced by Goonswarm as part of a larger picture (which I won’t go into here), so this is now something else we need to be on our toes about.

All in all, life in U’K is good- it’s fun being the plucky underdog, there’s never a dull moment. Even when you do face blobs, sure it’s frustrating, but we wouldn’t do it any differently if we had more numbers!

Our small fleet of ships pulled up on the BR- gate in IS-, regular stomping grounds for us.

“Please say that again”, said our FC in a state of suprise. None of us could quite believe it.

“I repeat, I have just killed a Corporate Hangar Array and Ship Maintenance Module at an offline POS, and a lot of ships had dropped out,” repeated Bhaddow “Abaddon, Brutix, Bustard, two Drakes, Harpy, Manticore and Raven”

His words hung in the air. “Where is this at?” asked the FC.

“CB4″ came the reply.

We scrambled, quickly re-tasking nav computers, Lord Makk was our Vagabond scout and moved to CB4 at best speed. Nothing was around to get in our way, apart from a Dominix which was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He still managed to smartbomb my Falcon’s two resident drones, the evil man.

Arriving in CB4, we warped to a gang mate who was already there, and approached the POS. It was offline, sure enough, and belonged to a corp called LIVING THE DREAM INC., part of The Golden Rule Alliance who were one of the newcomers to the area.

Most of the ships had gone, but the Brutix, Abaddon, a Drake and Bustard were left. I ejected from my Falcon and boarded the Brutix. As I interfaced with the ship, it obligingly allowed full access, and I ran quick startup checks. Sapphrine had boarded my Falcon and was going to pilot it back.

Accessing the ships log, it seems it belonged to a pilot called iamkemical, in the same corp as the POS belonged to. I’d never been in a Brutix before, and admired it’s weapon capacity. The ship was fully fitted, but had a mix of Tech One guns and other Tech Two modules. Despite my inexperience with Brutixes, I could see the setup was OK. Certainly good enough for the trip back to F4.

No-one had the skills to fly the Caldari Transport ship: Bustard. I could fly most of the ships in New Eden, but I hadn’t seen the point of training up all race’s Transport Ships. And so, we turned our guns on the inert hauler and reduced it to molten metal in short order.

Uneventful trip back to F4R, sadly, we were all itching to fight in our newly acquired ships, no matter how rag-tag they were.

After I had showered off the pod-fluid, I walked around the hulking Brutix in my hangar, inspecting it from the outside. I’m not sure if it’s a good looking ship or not, but I can see echoes of the Taranis in it somewhere. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it, but it sure as hell needs Tech Two guns and some modules switching out. I made a mental note to get some the next time I was in Agil.