Ombeve

A pulsing tone dragged me from a nice dream. Gaining in volume every 3 blips, it was getting seriously annoying and I finally awoke, taking a moment to orientate myself. It was the scramble tone of Alliance comms. Quickly, I mentally shook myself and looked at what was going on. Seems an emergency op had been called, something about AY-24I, which was owned  by Chaos Theory. Hmm.

I ran down to my hangar, nodding to other pilots on the way, got into my pod, and was inserted into Now?, my Apocalypse Battleship. They had requested sniper Battleships, so while I was prepping the ship, I ordered a Cap Recharger to be removed, and an extra Sensor Booster to be put in it’s place. Then, I was off.

Negotiating the Jump Bridges to take me to our mustering point took a few minutes, but I had plenty of time to spare as pilots arrived from all over Catch and Providence. The Titan that was to bridge us into AY- was already waiting impassively- it’s bulk is so damn intimidating, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to them.

After about ten minutes the FC decided we had enough, and an unseen cyno was lit in AY-. The capitals disappeared in a series of flashes as their jump drives ignited, and all sub-caps interfaced with the Titan’s bridge, which thrust us some light years away with incredible precision.

We arrived hot. Normally, we arrive at a friendly POS and then move on from there, but as we jumped in, I heard the FC tell the carriers to start repping the cyno ship as soon as they arrived… which meant it was under attack.

Sure enough, as my external cams resolved the scene, we had landed at a CVA TCU, complete with a well populated CVA POS. A thrill of excitement ran through me, this could be quite a fight. Although we had slightly more numbers, and also carriers, we had a POS firepower to deal with. I hoped our logistics were going to be on the ball.

A couple of CVA support ships were outside the POS, and they were lit up immediately. I didn’t even bother trying to lock them as I wouldn’t be able to in time before they either escaped to the shields or got killed. However, an Apolcalypse piloted by Saladus was outside of the shields for some reason and was primaried. I got off on shot on him before he was destroyed, my guns missing completely… which was a poor start due to my inexperience with Laser Crystal types. I decided to let my engineer take care of the crystal loading, I’d learn it later.

A minute later, we were told to warp to the station, where a group of hostiles were (incidentally, Paxton Federation who had kept out of Sov Warfare during the downfall of old Providence, and thus had been spared having their systems taken, were actively taking part in this landgrab by CVA. -A- had also just handed back D-G to them, so this was an interesting turn of events). A fight kicked off as soon as we landed. Bubbles were deployed, hostile or friendly was irrelevant- bubbles have no masters and treat everyone the same. Once we arrived, Chaos Theory were able to undock and join the fight on our side

A Vagabond piloted by Nea’Gogu Faiantaru was called primary, but he either warped out or docked, or something as he disappeared. The ships we faced were mainly sub-BS, so the order was given to spread points and fire at will. A few of us picked on the first Guardians we saw, as they had really been the bane of our lives and are expensive ships not to mention being a force multiplier. The Guardian went down quickly, then the Vagabond appeared once more just as I was starting to chew on a Zealot which must’ve warped off.

Quickly locking the Vaga, it was taken down within seconds as there wasn’t much left on the field so it got a lot of attention. I got a good hit on another Zealot that managed to get away after landing about 120km off us, well away from our support but in range of my Beams.

After a few minutes, we warped back to the TCU/ POS and started to attack the TCU. We were bombed by a couple of plucky Bombers, but our support was on the ball and caught them eventually. Continuing to hit the TCU, some hostiles came at us in ones and twos- whether they were warping to the POS without harmonising their shields and landed outside, or whether they were just coming out of the shields, I have no idea.

We switched attention to the POS’s warp disruptor which was proving to be a pain in the neck and quickly incapacitated it. I was really glad at this point that I no longer brought Tempests to these types of ops, the Apoc with quick crystal changing and ammo-less turrets was a much better option.

It was incapacitated in short order…then all hell broke loose. CVA/ PXF moved out of the shields and it was on.

Primaries were called this time, they had a lot and we had to be methodical. First was an Armageddon, Tashio Taifune. All around the lumbering Battleships were support ships on both sides engaged in their own battles. Battleships concentrated on the bigger ships, support chased other support and when there was none left, nipped at the heels of larger ships. As my overview was filtered to only show enemy ships, it was very easy to lose track of a battle this size, so you just concentrated on targets called. I sometimes wished I could watch these battles in a covert ship so I could appreciate the deadly beauty of such hostilities.

Ships were split open, venting gas, flames and bodies into space, inert drones flashed and disappeared as they bumped off shields and were rendered into heat and energy. Laser beams split the surroundings, projectile and hybrid ammunition blasting at supersonic speeds into shields, into armour, into structure. Pods appeared and warped off, escape capsules of non-capsuleers quickly escaped the melee to live and fight another day.

To my irritation, I saw damage notifications appear- it seems a flight of Warrior IIs was chewing on my shields.

[ 2010.04.25 14:20:23 ] (combat) Warrior II belonging to Dagnar Yarg heavily
hits you, inflicting 21.4 damage.

Quickly looking for the ship piloted by Dagnar Yarg, I saw with a smile it was a Drake. This meant I could have a good certainty of hitting him. I locked him, but carried on with killing the primary target, a Guardian. However, got the following as my target locked on the Drake dropped:

[ 2010.04.25 14:20:42 ] (notify) You failed to target Drake, they are within
range 30000.0 m of a Force Field and with you being outside of it, it is preventing
you from holding a lock on them.

Meh. However, his drones were still attacking me…not sure how that was even possible, but there was no time to cry about that now. Next target was a Raven (a Raven?), and my Beams got a nice hit:

[ 2010.04.25 14:21:10 ] (combat) Your group of Mega Beam Laser II hits Rorin Cutter
[CVA](Raven), doing 2181.3 damage.

Hmm, nice. I got 4 huge hits on him, and he was down. His fit was curious for a Raven, but I am no expert with Ravens to be honest. The bloody Warriors were still attacking me, and I locked them (eventually!) and set my own drones on them. That seemed to do the trick and they withdrew back to their master who had come out of the shields. As luck would have it, he was primaried and went down quickly.

Now I was starting to get hit by a couple of Battleships:

[ 2010.04.25 14:24:28 ] (combat) Mega Pulse Laser II belonging to cubeick hits you,
doing 1105.1 damage.
[ 2010.04.25 14:24:30 ] (combat) Paradise Cruise Missile belonging to Atomn hits you,
doing 330.6 damage.

Hmm. I found the Scorpion first, the one firing Cruise Missiles. Locked him, and saw he was into low shields already (no-one likes ships that can jam you), and let him have it

[ 2010.04.25 14:25:31 ] (combat) Your group of Mega Beam Laser II is well aimed at
Atomn [PXF] (Scorpion), inflicting 1390.1 damage.

He jammed me, not surprised. In the meantime:

[ 2010.04.25 14:25:47 ] (combat) Medium Beam Laser Battery belonging to Ordo Drakonis
heavily hits you, inflicting 1140.1 damage.

So now the POS gunners were having at me. I was starting to feel a little bit victimised, but was holding up OK. The logistics guys were well on the ball and replenished my shields very quickly

A minute later, my systems unjammed themselves and I lit up the Scorp again. He vanished shortly after- I assume it warped off as it wasn’t down as a kill. I was starting to get hit from all sides, and seeing as I wasn’t warp scrambled and the logistics team were probably already hard-pressed, I warped out to a belt in a cluster I was already aligned to. Immediately, aligned and warped back into the fray and within a minute:

[ 2010.04.25 14:29:26 ] (combat) Medium Beam Laser Battery belonging to Ordo Drakonis
places an excellent hit on you, inflicting 2061.1 damage

OK, OK, I get the message I’d have to live with it. In the meantime, we were killing a Rokh which warped off, so we switched to an Abaddon that was scrambled. It was at a perfect range for my guns and it finally exploded. It was all over bar the shouting by now, and after helping kill a final Oneiros, we switched to killing the TCU. After it became clear CVA & PXF were withdrawing, Dreadnoughts were cyno’d in ( some carrier pilots switching) and we put the POS into reinforced. The landgrab was over, and it had been a good fight.

Props to CVA & PXF, and to our logistics guys and FC/ command.

My first Blog Banter in a long time, and it’s a tough one! As always, here’s the preamble from CrazyKinux himself:

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?

So, not many women play Eve. Or do they? Even CCP don’t know. After all, how many people pay to play via other means than credit cards in which gender could be ascertained. With PayPal and plexes, to name but two other methods of payment, no-one has any idea.

I was at the last Fanfest in 2009, and it was absolutely male dominated. But there were only 2000 or so players there, out of a subscription base of ~300k (and I’m guessing at that), and I would imagine that most women who play this game do it incognito and wouldn’t dream of going to a Fanfest.

There is no doubt Eve is a male dominated game, but you could guess that by the fact it’s science fiction based. Without wanting to be sexist (I’m really not!) there are certain ‘norms’ that we can accept- men are more likely to watch scifi, and play scifi games, and less likely to watch Sex and The City. Whereas women tend to love Sex and The City and would probably avoid films like Serenity like the plague.

More importantly, how many women try Eve, then find it unappealing, unexciting or just plain not for them? How many guys do the same? I feel the game shouldn’t be changed to appeal to women, because Eve is the Eve we all love. Why should women be courted to play this game? Unless you’re the sort of weirdo (or very young teenager) who doesn’t know how to act around “girlz on the internetz!!!1″, it shouldn’t make a jot of difference if the person you are flying with has a willy or not.

I’m not sure how you could in fact change the game to appeal to women, as I have no clue, outside of my own experience, what women would look for. In my experience with ladyfolk, they like games like Tetris and Zuma, games you can pick up and put down without any worrying about persistence, skill grinding/ changing and suchlike. However, I do acknowledge there are a lot of ladies playing games like World of Warcraft, which has cutesy graphics and no real loss if you ‘die’.

Maybe girls have a lower tolerance for games like Eve that are complicated? I don’t mean they are less intelligent than guys, just that when they relax and play a videogame, they don’t want to be bothered with loadouts, POS refuelling, running gatecamps, CTAs, dodging pirates, local smack and generally spreadsheets online. They want to relax and have fun, and I suspect a girl’s idea of fun can be very different to the average Eve player.

I would love to know how many ladies try the game and stay, and try the game and leave- and why. Of those that stay, how many actively PvP and how many prefer PvE?

It’s probably not scifi that is the issue. Consider FPS games such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series and Battlefield 2/ Bad Company series- they are not scifi, indeed are modern day, but I would guess are male dominated also. How come? Again, sweeping generalisations have to be made- women don’t like conflict in games? Their twitch skills aren’t as good? They are put off by guns? Something else?

I suspect video-gamers in general are mainly male (for now, but I think this is changing), because men are less bothered about being ‘geeks’, as they are (in the main) less bothered about their image, and more likely to have mates who are also gamers. A girl who games is unlikely to have many mates who also game, and so could be left out of social activities because she is busy gaming. Women are much more image conscious, and more likely to avoid being labelled as a ‘geek’

I am rambling a lot, but this is a complex subject and cannot easily be tackled. To summarise, I feel this is not an Eve problem, but a video-games problem. However, the Wii can be directly credited with bringing a lot of women into the video-games arena, and there has to be follow through, especially as laptops are more affordable. No longer are people consigned to the ‘computer room’, and being with other people in the lounge, even when gaming, has to be more appealing.

I could talk about this for hours as I find it very interesting, but it’s more of a sociological issue than just Eve.

TL;DR- don’t change Eve to get more girls involved- it doesn’t need it, and it wouldn’t make any difference. If it did, you’d end up losing a lot of guys as Eve’s core gameplay would change, and not for the better.

Other banters (will update as more are added):

1. Is EVE a man’s world?
2. Sorry, No Pink Spaceships Here Please
3. EVE Blog Banter: Chicks ‘N Ships
4. Eve Blog Banter: The Girls Who Fly Spaceships
5. It’s not about fluffy bloody Kittens people!
6. Space Boobies Are Bad, m’kay?
7. Special Blog Banter: I Like Girls
8. Special Edition or making Eve More Casual
9. I wish my wife played EVE
10. Is there something special about women?
11. CK’s Blog Banter
12. The Female of the Species
13. EVE Online Can Appeal to Women By Adding Casual Content
14. Blog Banter: The Ladies
15. Women Who Want EVE
16. Tech 2 stilettos
17. New Eden doesn’t need to change for Eve – Adam needs to get over himself
18. EVE Online and… women (sorta)
19. Think Outside the Spaceship
20. EVE’s monthly banter – Women, women, women
21. Girls Just Wanna Have… Guns!
22. Draco Horizons (Blog)
23. Don’t change Eve for me!
24. Where Are Teh Laydeez of EVE?
25. Where Are All The Wenches?
26. EVEquality: The Rise of the Female Gamer
27. Women? In MY SPACESHIP? Is she from Mars as well?
28. Blog Banter: Captain Kirk Hates Eve
29. The Female of the Species
30. The Ladies of New Eden
31. EVE and the X by X Genetic Succession Unit
32. Sociability V
33. Girl on Girls in Space
34. What women want (in Eve)
35. Time Is On Our Side
36. Roc Appeal
37. Women in EVE
38. Getting In Touch With Our Feminine Side
39. It’s a woman’s world (they just don’t know it yet!)
40. Women in EVE – Can it be done?
41. You’d Rather Be Playing The Sims, Right?
42. Blog Banter #17 – Women in Eve
43. How To Get The Betty’s
44. EVE: WTB girls?
45. All about EVE
46. Ladies to the gunfight
47. Hell hath no fury
48. The Ladies of New Eden (An Analysis on How Men are not from Mars, and Women are not from Venus)
49. EVE Blog Banter 17: The Ladies of New Eden
50. The Ladies of New Eden
51. Getting ladies to play Eve Online
52. Why Don’t More Women Play EVE??
53. Getting Girls to Play EVE

The training implant in my head sent a tiny electronic pulse to my brain, informing me that the latest skill I had been training was now complete.

I now had a much better understanding of Large Tech II Beam Lasers, something I hadn’t really bothered with before. Lasers didn’t need ammo, sure, but they were limited in the damage types they could do, and as I am a Brutor, I had stuck to projectiles and flying scrapheaps.

However, every time I’d been in fleets, the Apocalypse was always very well represented- considering that there were statistically less Amarrian capsuleers, it seemed that a lot of pilots had cross-trained the golden Battleship, and large laser skills also.

The idea of not needing ammunition when POS bashing was quite appealing, so now I had the ability to bring Tech II Mega Beams to the party, I wasted no time in buying and outfitting one in Agil. I followed Alliance guidelines on how to outfit it for a fleet operation as I didn’t have any idea how cap hungry large Beams would be. I also made a point of hiring an Amarrian for the chief engineering role, he had a lot of experience with Apocs and would no doubt be of use.

A couple of hours later, we all met up at the arranged system for the start of the operation. This week had been dubbed ‘Hell Week’ and so we pretty much knew what to expect. Providence was on it’s last legs, hardly any of the former alliances remained, and only CVA and Paxton roaming gangs were causing us any problems. U’K, Against All Authorities (-A-) and the others allies were going to clean house once and for all this week.

Around 150 or so Battleships, logistics and various other support ships mustered around the Titan that would bridge us into our first target. The next few hours went by in a whirl of shooting POS modules- specifically the Cyno Jammers and scramblers, then the Dreads and Motherships came in to do the heavy lifting as we went to the next target. Rinse and repeat.

I quickly found that the huge power demands the Mega Beams made on my capacitor was no sustainable. I quickly asked the Chief to work out how many I could run and be cap stable. He came back almost instantly- five of the eight permanently, six with an eventual draining of the capacitor. I groaned, irritated by this news. I would be running six guns as long as i could, then drop to five. Annoyingly, I had maxed my capacitor training, I knew how to get every drop out of the ship!

We had a small break from the cycle when a Paxton fleet was reported nearby- as we were heading that way for our next target, it was a good target of opportunity. It was a mixed fleet, BCs mainly but also BS and HACs. We got word our dictors had bubbled them the other side, and the fleet had aggressed, so we jumped in. With that much firepower at our hands, the only delay in ships dying was finding and locking primary and secondary targets.

A lot of the enemy jumped through, but some were caught the other side. Quite a few of their smaller ships got away, but the final tally was:

Abaddon
Apoc x 2
Domi x 3
Drake x 4
Ferox x 1
Harby x 1
Oneiros x 1

I took some satisfaction in us killing that gang, as they’d been flying gangs like that a lot recently and had been very frustrating to go up against.

Back to the POS bashing. We didn’t have any concerted attempt to stop us, some POS gunning, but nothing much. Everything planned had been reinforced. We’d be back to finish the job when they exited.

I docked up finally, and was very satisfied with the Apocalypse. I did make a couple of modifications to ensure I remained more cap stable for the next time- the Chief seemed happy, which was good enough for me.

I leaned on the railings that bordered the edge of where my hangar met the docking bay and gazed in awe at the Loki that was being assembled in front of my eyes. Nanobots invisibly worked alongside engineers to expertly put the frame together. When that was done, the subsystems I had specified were bolted on, configured and tested.

Normally, I’d never bother watching a ship being assembled, as I’d seen in a million times and it didn’t really hold the same level of interest that it had originally. This was slightly different, as it was a Strategic Cruiser, and my first. The highly configurable ships were a lot more affordable then they’d used to be but were still expensive toys that weren’t a great deal better than Heavy Assault Cruisers. Still, I had an excess of money due to some good investments I’d made and so why not.

I wanted to splash out on some faction modules for it that could only be obtained from dangerous parts of 0.0 where the higher ranked pirates and their fancy equipment were. These modules had invariably been improved by the engineers out there, and were much sought after and thus, expensive.

However, I had to travel to Jita for them. In the meantime, I ordered up some stock T2 modules instead which I’d resell when I got to Jita. I got into my pod, and was placed into the ship that I’d decided to name it Phlegethon.

Interfacing with the ship felt subtly different, somehow deeper… it was difficult to put into words. I felt more at one with this ship than any other I’d flown

It was a fine looking ship in this configuration. I could definitely see a Thrasher in there somewhere! The twin blades on the front gave it a menacing appearance.

The trip to Jita was uninteresting, we have no wars on at the moment, and although the trip took me through Rancer and Crielere, two of the most dangerous LowSec systems, I wasn’t unduly concerned. I have escaped Provi instalock camps before, and I doubted any lowsec campers would be any better. Also, there were no bubbles in lowsec.

I bought the modules I needed in Jita, fitted them, then headed to Y-MPWL to join an alliance gang that was playing with a few CVA…let’s hope I don’t lose this before the paint is even dry!

Y-MPWL system – when I powered down here last ‘night’ for some rest, the system was dead. It was quite weird, Y-M had never been dead when it was under CVA control, there was always many pilots in the system….either camping, hiding or doing Jove knows what.

After I had woken, I ran through start-up sequences, bringing the ship’s reactor back on-line. The crew, previously on a skeleton shift, were similarly roused and we all got to work. Outside, my camera drones picked up the bright running lights on the outside of the Rupture as they were switched on.

While final nav-comp checks were being run, I noticed local channel was packed with blues. I queried a pilot at random, and I was surprised to see it was Agony Alliance. We must’ve blue’d them in the past couple of days. Funny world we live in.

I noticed our alliance voice comms channel was very quiet indeed- this usually meant they were synch’d to Against All Authorities comms as there would be a CTA on. I queried this, and sure enough, there they were. It appeared they were in support ships in D-G area… sigh. It was never near where I was! I made it approximately 11 jumps to join them, so wasted no time.

I warped to the Kari gate, just to get eyes on where I assumed Agony would be. The warp took a very long time as I was in a deep safespot, but eventually I dropped out of warp 300km from the Kari gate, skimming a warp disruption bubbled as I de-accelerated. They had two large bubbles anchored on the gate, and the camp looked well organised.

I moved on. A few jumps in to the journey, I arrive on the outgate, just in time to see it flash. A new red appeared in local- a Darkside. alliance member. There was a pregnant pause before he decloaked…it could be a fat juicy hauler, or more likely, a combat ship. It was the latter- an Ares appeared and I jumped out…. and appeared in G-AOTH as two more Darkside. ships landed on the gate. Unfortunately, an Onyx Heavy Interdictor and a Lachesis.

Oh crap.

The Lach would no doubt have a Warp Scrambler fitted, and with the extended range would be able to shut down my MWD from where it was. I had no choice but to run back for the gate if I wanted any chance of survival. I waited for my electronics to reset, and then decloaked and ran for the gate. They both locked me, the Onyx bubbled up, enveloping my cruiser. As my MWD thrust me toward the gate, only the Onyx was firing at me. Clever.

[ 2010.03.29 18:29:37 ] (combat) Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile belonging
 to Mr Dima hits you, doing 696.6 damage.
[ 2010.03.29 18:29:42 ] (notify) Mr Dima [-D-](Onyx) has startedtrying to
warp scramble you!
[ 2010.03.29 18:29:43 ] (combat) Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile belonging
to Mr Dima hits you, doing 245.3 damage.

My shield warning screamed at me as they failed. However, I was armour tanked, so I knew I’d make it. I saw a flash as the Lachesis jumped through back into ZQ-.

OK, stage one complete. I could  run away from the Onyx, but not the Lach, so I would have to re approach the gate the other side once more. Sure enough, the Lach had decloaked already and was waiting for me, 13km away. I was reasonably sure my armour would hold while I slowboated to the gate. We’d soon see.

I broke cover and dashed for the gate, MWD blazing. I was locked…and only disrupted, not scrambled. My MWD kept running. I was surprised, everytime I’d come up against Lachs, they always had Warp Scrams, almost like they were a standard fit. Well, I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth and kept on running.

[ 2010.03.29 18:30:09 ] (notify) DonSlonik [.-D-.];(Lachesis) has started trying to
 warp scramble you!
[ 2010.03.29 18:30:14 ] (combat) Caldari Navy Thunderbolt Heavy Missile belonging to
 DonSlonik hits you, doing 696.6 damage.
[ 2010.03.29 18:30:23 ] (combat) Caldari Navy Thunderbolt Heavy Missile belonging to
 DonSlonik hits you, doing 563.7 damage.
[ 2010.03.29 18:30:25 ] (combat) Warrior II belonging to DonSlonik barely scratches
you, causing 25.7 damage.
[ 2010.03.29 18:30:25 ] (combat) Warrior II belonging to DonSlonik misses you
completely.
[ 2010.03.29 18:30:25 ] (combat) Warrior II belonging to DonSlonik lightly hits you,
doing 28.8 damage.
[ 2010.03.29 18:30:25 ] (combat) Warrior II belonging to DonSlonik hits you, doing
38.7 damage.
[ 2010.03.29 18:30:25 ] (combat) Warrior II belonging to DonSlonik heavily hits you,
inflicting 43.7 damage.

Aaaaand I was out. As I reappeared in G-A, I was greeted with 20+ ships all sat on the gate. Meh, looks like my luck had run out. Running for the gate wasn’t an option, and so I aligned and crossed my fingers. The Rupture, made more sluggish by the huge armour plate I had strapped on it seemed to take an age to get into warp, but it did. For some reason, they hadn’t caught me. I wasn’t convinced they’d even tried, I don’t remember seeing any targeting attempts, but I was using every ounce of willpower to urge the ship into warp so wasn’t really watching.

I let the Agony guys know about the Darkside. gang, and was told in reply that they now had about 160 ships at their disposal and were on the hunt. I finally caught up with the -A-/ U’K mixed gang in 7MD, and warped to meet them at a safespot. Within seconds we were told to warp to the T-R gate where we engaged a Paxton gang who jumped into us. The FC ordered us to MWD toward the sun, but this spread us out a lot as we were in a varying range of ships, and primaries were hard to apply damage to. They also had 3 logistics ships.

I did what I could, but I eventually met my doom, courtesy of the Darkside. fleet who had turned up while we were fighting PXF. I love Drakes. Still, got my pod out, been quite lucky with this clone!

I had been away for a long time- months even. Looking back on the last entry I made here, it was almost exactly three months ago and we’d been killing Sylph Strategic Cruisers.

Shortly after that, I had a call from one of my close friends- a mutual close friend was very ill after being involved in an accident around Pator I, and wasn’t expected to pull through. I immediately left Catch and went to be with him and his family. That is a story for another time. Suffice to say he was a true Brutor warrior and didn’t succumb to death’s inexorable pull easily. I didn’t plug into GalNet once during my time there, instead I threw myself into helping out his family with various tasks.

As I got off the inter-orbital shuttle on the Republic Fleet station above Pator V, there seemed to be a barely perceptible buzz in the air. I paused, took a deep breath, shut my eyes and mentally re-entered the kingdom of the pod pilot.

I made my way to the eLockers, and retrieved my GalCom tablet, strapping it to my wrist. It made a subdued chirrup, warning me of a very low charge. I tutted and made my way to the nearest bar, a small place called “24/7 /V”. I knew there’d be a charge point there and I could do with a drink while I caught up with exactly what’d been going on in New Eden.

The bar wasn’t very busy, which suited me and while my tablet charged and I sipped my Blinkade I started the catch up. Scrolling through page after page of text, watching newsvid clips, I was stunned. It seemed that Libertas Fidelitas (LFA), one of the Providence alliances (see my primer here, which is now utterly obsolete!) decided to make a land grab for the F9E-KX system in Catch- this is a border system between Providence and Catch. It has switched hands a few times, the last owners were Against All Authorities (-A-) but they’d lapsed their claim for a few weeks. It was considered a neutral buffer zone, though this opinion differs depending on who you speak to.

Anyway, LFA made a grab for it and took it. Hostilities started on a low level, then a CVA led operation was mounted against HED-GP, a few systems away. HED-GP is a major -A- system, and so not only was the attack a  bold one, it was carrying a message. The timing of the attack was a double blow for -A- as they were busy fighting Goonswarm (now disbanded, but that’s another story), and it was considered a less than honourable thing to do. CVA had launched Operation Deliverance.

Goonswarm was disbanded around the same time, and it left a rather annoyed -A- to bring it’s considerable attention toward the Providence Bloc. It retook F9E, then moved into D-GTMI, the next system along, and with assists from a few alliances, of which U’K featured strongly, took the system over a few days of fighting. There was a huge capital ship fight on the 28th January in D-G, and this proved to be decisive in breaking the back of any organised resistance from the ProviBloc. A lot of ships and lives were lost that night. Paxton Federation, who were the owners of D-G, paid the initial price for CVAs folly.

-A- offered peace terms at that point to CVA, but they were rejected on the 3rd February. The war machine that was the combined force of -A-, U’K, Systematic-Chaos was now turned full force on Providence. One system after another fell, CVA publicly stated they hope we’d get bored and give up [ooc- can't find linky, if someone can provide it, would be hugely appreciated as I like being able to source!]. 9UY was taken- this was the spiritual home of Ushra’Khan, and retaking it was a major moment in our history- the rise and fall and rise again was completed.

Round about the same time, Atlas Alliance decided to join in on our side, and started to apply considerable pressure on the KBP area which belonged to Sev3rance (-7-). Providence was burning, pilots were fleeing with or without their assets, firesales were being contracted in the many fallen outposts.

Strange bedfellows were being made. Genos Occidere who were traditionally blue to U’K (indeed I had flown with them several times) and red to the ProviBloc decided to throw their lot in with -7-  and joined them. They didn’t like the direction Providence was taking as it would affect their roaming through and shooting people, so decided to do something about it. They were, as expected, very worthy opponents and skilled pilots and inflicted a lot of damage on U’K and allies. Yesterday morning, they left -7- shortly after KBP fell. -7- still hold space down in the KW- corridor, so it will be interesting to see what they do. Without a JB network to make travel there from KBP simple, I can’t see them holding it for very long.

I gazed at the new map of Providence, and was amazed at the huge changes. The ProviBloc’s much vaunted Jump Bridge network, the scourge and envy of U’K pilots was in tatters. Sylph Alliance had disbanded and was no more. LFA had fallen out with CVA, their membership dwindling to 200. Cold Steel Alliance (STEEL) had withdrawn completely and suddenly, leaving their constellation with fuelled and operational POSes and sov claim units. These structures have been removed and a new face to Providence has taken the constellation- Sodalitas XX. Presumably they are friends of -A-.

Aegis Militia, who I quite liked as they never smacked in local and always fought with spirit, have had their space and membership decimated. They only have 125 members left, from a high of over 800 two months ago. However, they still hold a couple of outposts and I think they might well recover. It seems that Paxton and Aegis have survived the onslaught by not entering the war of words.

I clone jumped to Curse Watchtower in F4R, and, as I had been out of a spaceship for some time, I decided to ease myself back into the fight and boarded an old Rupture I had hanging around. After some modifications to the weapons systems, I flew out to see what it was like in Catch and Providence. The answer was…quiet. The KW- pipe was deserted, not a camp in sight.

When I got to QR-, local channel incremented by one, and the out-gate, which I’d just arrived at, flashed. I orbited the gate, primed weapons and mods and waited… and an Ares appeared at 17km from me. We locked each other, and warp disrupted each other. I knew he’d go at range, so I set my Warrior IIs on him and MWDd toward him. My Warriors quickly caught him and started to chew on his shield. The gate flashed again and a Taranis appeared- he was Agony Empire alliance also… and I knew there’d be more. Ah well, I’d take something down with me. I knew the Taranis had to come in close to use his blasters (unless he had rails, which would be a terrible fitting), and sure enough, in he came…

I recalled my drones, and at the same time, scrambled the ‘ranis and hit him with my medium neut. My drones attacked him, my guns strained to keep up with the nimble ship. I landed the occasional hit, trying to keep his transversal down but i cursed my 220s, wishing they were 180s. He obviously didn’t have an afterburner fitted as well as an MWD, so that was good. My shields collapsed quickly, and now a Hound and another Taranis appeared. The Hound’s torpedos were hurting a lot, which was a shame as if it was just me and the inties it could’ve been a longer fight.

The pinned ‘ranis wasn’t shooting my drones which was good, and eventually he stopped firing completely- I assume he was capped out. As such, he couldn’t repair either and we both entered structure at the same time…and I started praying my guns would get one final hit to help out the drones…sure enough:

Your group of 220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II lightly hits Fassin Taak [AGONY](Taranis),
doing 223.7 damage. 

It was enough. He exploded just before I did, and I warped my pod out of there pronto. There’s something very liberating fighting in such a cheap ship, you really don’t care who you engage. And you get insurance worth a damn! I made a mental note to look over my fit and make some changes- smaller guns, bigger armour maybe. Again, I’d forgotten to overheat my guns, I can be an idiot sometimes.

Anyway, it was great fun, even though they got the loot, I felt I’d won that engagement

[OOC- I have tried to keep this recounting of what's happened in Provi/ Catch factually correct and neutral so if there are any glaring factual errors, please let me know! ]

“Docking request accepted“, intoned Aura, my ship’s onboard AI. The Vagabond I was piloting was tractored into my hangar in V2-VC2. As I shut down systems, I started to pick up alliance comms chatter, and I left the radio systems online. It seemed that a Sylph gang had been spotted down in ‘southern’ Catch, far far away from their home area. That was curious. What was more curious was that they were in a mixed BC and Strategic Cruiser gang, mainly Tengus and a Proteus. What was the most curious thing was that they were apparently engaging a local Centus pirate stronghold.

It was like a red rag to a bull, and a fleet was hurriedly arranged. I didn’t have many ships in V2 other than a couple of Tempests and the Vagabond (I had been moving ships from F4R, but I find it incredibly boring). The FC knew that I was reasonably good at scanning and wanted to know if I had any ships with probes on. I replied in the negative. However, an alliance mate, Conlin, told me he had a Pilgrim Recon ready to go and I could use that. I quickly had my pod removed from the Vagabond and transported to Con’s Pilgrim. The main fleet had already left, but I’d catch them up.

Powering up the Pilgrim, I quickly re-familiarised myself with the Amarrian technology and took in the fitting. As expected, had a couple of neuts, armour tank, tracking disruptors and plenty of drones. Good to go. I undocked and quickly flew to QETZ-W, where the majority of the fleet was holding. The FC ordered me into WFC-MY, and I jumped. Sure enough, there they were. I quickly decloaked, MWD engaged (so I wouldn’t be stopped recloaking by the probes I was ejecting), ejected four probes and recloaked. Malchick was in a prober Rapier in system already, but although he found a plex, it was empty. I wasn’t sure what had happened with this as I had yet to arrive.

While I commenced scanning, I figured there was no way they’d be caught. I knew a few of the pilots from previous encounters, and they seemed to be no idiots. They’d see U’K in the local channel and be on their guard, scanning periodically for the Combat Scanner probes which unfortunately show up on scan.

However, as I narrowed down the scan time and time again, 5 seconds seeming like an eternity, it seemed they weren’t going anywhere. With a chirrup, the scanner announced a 100% hit and I engaged warp to them at 20km as I had no idea what I warping into. Alerting the FC, I told him I was WDA. He gave some commands to the others while I gave my full concentration to dropping out of warp.

My overview fills up with ‘stuff’. So much stuff. I quickly filter out the junk and breath a sigh of relief as my cloak holds due to not being too close to anything. Sure enough, three Tengus, a Proteus and a Drake are giving the local Centus a fight. The sheer amount of missiles in space is staggering, the Centus have about fifteen battleships pouring out a stream of cruise missiles. They seem to be concentrating on a Tengu piloted by Lamanesco, so he would be the primary.

I announce I’m there, and I tell the others to jump in and warp to me. I decloak and try to lock up Lamanesco, but as usual get the “[ 2009.12.24 17:36:41 ] (notify) You cannot perform that action at this time as your systems are still recalibrating after the use of a cloaking device.” for about 10 seconds. It’s an agonisingly long wait, but clearly they aren’t paying attention or they’d have seen the probes. As such, none are aligned and I get a disruption cycle on Lamanesco’s Tengu and align out. I am well aware that they have a lot of firepower at their disposal and I am in a relatively frail Recon. I have to stay within disruption range as the other haven’t arrived yet. I spit out some ECM drones and put them on Dr3twa, but meanwhile Lamanesco lights me up, and:

[ 2009.12.24 17:37:07 ] (combat) Caldari Navy Thunderbolt Heavy Missile belonging
 to Lamanesco hits you, doing 1221.4 damage.

Ouch, my shields buckle to 50%, but as I am armour tanked and they are using EM missiles, I am not sweating….yet.

[ 2009.12.24 17:37:08 ] (combat) Centus Dread Lord misses you completely.

Oh, you have to be kidding. Some of the Centus are firing at me now?! Ungrateful gits. It’s a long 30 seconds before the fleet arrives, and now another Tengu is also hitting me with heavy missiles. Fleet arrives and more disruption is applied to the Tengu. I can now get out, my AI is blaring a warning as my shields collapse completely. My cap is mysteriously empty after I initiate warp, perhaps I’m being neuted, but my armour is now being seriously eaten into as I am for some reason not going into warp. Finally the nav computers kick my ship into warp and away from the melee… at 25% armour. I realise I only have a small armour repairer on board, but I can pretty much keep it running permanently.

I hear that Lamanesco’s Tengu is down already. I dump some cap boosters into my straining capacitor, cloak and warp back at 50km, my shield recharging slowly. Disruption is spread as Dr3twa is the next target. Let is be said we are taking quite a beating at this point. Our gang isn’t massive and nor is is particularly heavy on DPS, but with the concentrated fire of the enemy and the damned Centus spreading their fire around, we are having to warp out and back again. Due to experience and not panicking, we are able to ensure we are keeping the enemy pinned and unable to warp where possible.

As I sit at distance, I see Dr3twa is taking a colossal amount of fire from the Centus now. I can’t offer much more to the fight, as the Proteus has disappeared and there is nothing left to tracking disrupt. I decloak and MWD toward Dr3twa who is about 70km from me and well away from my drone range, but in this time, he explodes in a blue flash. We lose Tagami in a Merlin at this point, who got primaried and vapourised. He quickly heads back to V2 to reship into a Rook.

Smikes69 in the Drake is the next target, but we fail to get a point on him as everyone is really spread out by now, and the Drake, Tengu and Proteus warp off and come back, trying to get their loot from the wrecks. We soon see why. The fight peters out now, they are unwilling to risk more (understandably). I ninja loot the wrecks under heavy fire from the Centus who seem to be in a ball of rage the whole time and fill my hold with some lovely loot:

Quite a haul, at the time I had no idea how much the faction stuff was worth.

Back to business. Smikes69 in the Drake is still in system, so I pop out some probes in a safespot and as I have asked the gang to either cloak or assemble in one place I quickly spot a ship where it shouldn’t be. Narrowing down, I prey it won’t move off before I can complete, and ascertain it’s a Drake. I ask if any of the Drakes in our gang are not where they should be… no, they’re all in one place. Weird, as the Sylph Drake pilot isn’t showing in local comms. Oh wait….no…..surely not…. we think he has shut down his ship’s systems to avoid being probed. Normally, this works fine, but not if you’ve recently been in combat due to the electromagnetic build up of combat systems on the hull. You have to let it dissipate first or you can still be probed.

Sure enough, I narrow down, warp to the Drake which is effectively dead in the water. I apply warp disruption and put my drones on him, calling in the rest of the fleet. I can’t imagine what the Drake’s crew must be feeling, their pod pilot has doomed them. As the Drake’s shield collapses, I see tiny escape pods shooting away from the stricken BC at all angles as the crew decide enough’s enough. The Drake explodes but there isn’t anything spectacular in the wreckage.

We spend the next ten minutes chasing the Proteus, but he has a cloak fitted and there is no point trying to find him. I head back to V2 to drop off the loot.

I have to say that although they were silly to get caught, they did have courage to stay and fight. Also, they said “good fight” in local afterwards, which considering their ISK loss, was sporting. Interestingly, I think without the Centus being there, the fight would’ve been a lot closer and we’d have taken more casualties. As our FC put in his AAR:

“As a sidenote, the Sylphies had guts, and they stayed on the field and fought but we had better coordination. Fleet cohesion and discipline won the day. Point rotation was critical, as it allowed us to keep them under constant fire, while we could get out and back.”

Great fight. I need to get me a T3 ship soon

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