I am not dead

Not by a long shot, anyways.

I've just really had nothing interesting to blog about until about a week ago.  Seriously, nobody wants to read about how I went in and fucked up some rats in another mundane level 4 mission, or why I refitted my Tengu with HAM's instead of HML's and how much more DPS it puts out that way.

Fortunately, I've been doing some less mundane stuff since then.  Got back into Invention for like, the third time, except I have a helper for invention who's leeching off a corporate POS so I don't have to pay those fees.  We started out making Miner II's, and are in the process of moving to Modulated Strip Miner II's.  But that'll be another post for another day.  I also joined forces with some people from reddit, first to find a redditor trapped in a wormhole (also another post for another day), and then joining a fweddit fleet after being blown up by them (yet again, APFAD).

No, today's post is about highsec exploration.  I hear some of you laughing already.  Well I'm not badass or rich enough to take my scanning Tengu into lowsec to run sites there, so I make do with highsec exploration.

I originally used a Vexor, fit for scanning:

[Vexor, Sexploration]
Medium Armor Repairer II
Damage Control II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Drone Damage Amplifier II

Cap Recharger II
Republic Fleet 10MN Afterburner
Analyzer I
Codebreaker I

Salvager I
Sisters Core Probe Launcher, Sisters Core Scanner Probe I
Medium Remote Armor Repair System I
Medium Remote Armor Repair System I

Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I
Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I
Medium Anti-Explosive Pump I

Warrior II x5
Hammerhead II x5
Valkyrie II x5

I had decent success with this ship.  After a couple of duds and dead ends, I managed to get a rare escalation from an Angel Refuge anomaly, to a 5/10 DED (Angel Repurposed Outpost).  I knew my Vexor couldn't take it, so I switched into my mission Tengu and went to go blast some rats.  Second room has web towers, so I had to warp out a few times before finally being smart and grabbing Javelin HAM's to take out the towers and frigates.  I ended up getting a Gistum B-type Medium Shield Booster for my troubles, not bad at all.

Eventually, I ended up getting tired of losing drones and having a shitty tank, so I ditched the Vexor and refitted my Tengu.

Here's my current fit.  You can yell at me about it in the comments if you'd like, just keep in mind that I didn't want to buy a whole 'nother Tengu for it, so I just switched a sub and some modules.

[Tengu, Highsec Exploration]
Caldari Navy Ballistic Control System
Caldari Navy Ballistic Control System
Caldari Navy Ballistic Control System

Gistii B-type Small Shield Booster
Gistii B-type Small Shield Booster
Dread Guristas Shield Boost Amplifier
Explosive Deflection Field II
Republic Fleet Target Painter
Codebreaker I
Republic Fleet 10MN Afterburner

Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Scourge Heavy Assault Missile
Sisters Core Probe Launcher, Sisters Core Scanner Probe I

Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I
Medium Hydraulic Bay Thrusters I
Medium Warhead Flare Catalyst I

Tengu Electronics - Emergent Locus Analyzer
Tengu Offensive - Accelerated Ejection Bay
Tengu Propulsion - Fuel Catalyst
Tengu Engineering - Augmented Capacitor Reservoir
Tengu Defensive - Amplification Node

It's probably a terrible fit.  For those who ask, I don't have a Salvager or Analyzer fit because highsec mag sites are worthless.  My modus operandi for scanning nowadays is basically this list:

1. Jump into system, hit ship-board system scanner for anomalies.
2. If Anomalies are found, warp to first one, Refuges before anything else because of the chance of escalation.
3. In the last anomaly, start dropping probes while killing stuff, and start scanning.  If no anomalies are found, skip Step 2 and drop probes while aligning to the next system.
4. Ignore wormholes, mag sites, ladars, and grav sites.  Warp to each site as it's scanned down if possible, keep scanning while running the site.
5. Jump to next system, go to step 1.

So with that in mind, I've had a good couple of days recently while scanning.  Two days ago, while snowed in (I live in the midwestern USA, so we got hit by snowstorms over the past week and it's still flurrying outside right now), I entered an Angel Lookout site, got the Domination spawn, and was rewarded with a Domination Warp Disruptor.  Later that day, while scanning my way through Heimatar and Metropolis, I came across several radar sites, one of which dropped a BPC for the newly-introduced Medium Ancillary Armor Repairers.  The medium size were at the time selling for 20m each in Rens, and the BPC had 3 of them.  Since I was feeling nice that day, I sold the BPC to a corpie for 35m.

Yesterday, I ended up scanning many systems, and ended up with several radar sites and rated/unrated DED complexes.  The radar sites netted me several decryptors, two MJD bpc's, two Target Spectrum Breaker BPC's, and a XLASB BPC.  The complexes netted me a Gistii B-type Small Shield Booster from a 2/10 that I let my friend run for me (too lazy to downship from Tengu), a couple of cheap Domination resist hardeners, and a pair of Gistii A-type Small Shield Boosters, one from a 3/10 complex and one from a escalation.  Total profit was around 500m for about 4 or 5 hours' total playtime, compared to one of my corpmates who, with an Orca, a Hulk, and a Covetor, made about the same amount mining over the course of most of the day (at least 12 hours+).  Take that, highsec miners.

And today was probably the best day.  Logged on after class, scanned out the system I live in, immediately find a crappy drone complex, a radar site with one decryptor worth about 5mil, and an Angel 4/10 (Angel Cartel-Occupied Mining Colony).  The 4/10 is fast becoming one of my favorite sites, as I can run in, kill everything in sight in the first room, then blitz the Domination Excavator Battlecruiser in the second room, loot it, and leave.  So I did the same this time, and when I got to the Domination Excavator, I was greeted with a total of 4 Gistum C-type modules, which alone was enough to make me wet my pants just seeing all those little blue-cross corners.  While looting, I had to ditch the Overseer's Personal Effects (not that those are worth that much anyways), and didn't bother looking at the modules till I was safely in station.

That's a Gistum C-type MicroWarpDrive, Gistum C-type Kinetic Deflection Amplifier, a Gistum C-type Medium Shield Booster, and a Gistum C-type Adaptive Invulnerability Field.  Plus some loot from radars that I had yet to sell.

So all notable loot from exploration, off the top of my head, with prices that I sold them for:

Gistum B-type Medium Shield Booster - 500m

Domination Warp Disruptor - 165m

Gistii A-type Small Shield Booster x2 - 190m Each, 380m total

Gistii B-type Small Shield Booster - 95m

Gistum C-type MicroWarpDrive - 98m

Gistum C-type Medium Shield Booster - 311m

Gistum C-type Adaptive Invulnerability Field - 380m

Various Decryptors from Radar Sites - 64m

Various BPC's from Radar sites and Faction spawns - ~50m

Altogether, I've basically paid for my Tengu all over again, which makes me pretty happy in the pants.

So that's my past week or so.  Next post will be either detailing my invention process, or exploration process.  After that will be the tale of J172751.

Fly it like you stole it,

PG

UPDATE:

Shortly after writing this post, I found another 4/10 two systems over from home, ran it, and got a second Gistum C-type Adaptive Invulnerability Field.  Sold that one to a corpmate for 400m. \o/

It's been a while, but...

... I felt like I should make a post for Retribution.

So, despite there being finals week for me, I decided to test out some of the new features, specifically, the ability to buy killrights.  I was dicking around outside of Piak III Caldari Navy Assembly Plant station when I saw a Noctis undocked that had a killright on him purchaseable for 20mil.  So I decided to wait for him to return and get in a mission ship so I could follow him in my Tengu and kill him.  His noctis came back after what seemed like ages, docked up, and then sat in station for like half an hour, so I decided to sit outside station in my Manticore while cloaked and wait.

Ages later, he decided to undock, so I followed his Hyperion two jumps over to Nonni, where he warped to a mission off the gate.  Not to be deterred, I found and bought an Expanded probe launcher and seven probes with which to scan him down.  Four scans later, I had his location, and had warped to it in the Tengu, though nobody was there and dscan showed that he wasn't getting within range of the site.  I decided that in order to give him time to warp back and start shooting rats again, I would go back to Piak and grab my Manticore, fitted for limited tanking with a Medium ASB, and hoped the nerfed ASB would still keep me from dying to his drones.

Warped back to the bookmark I made, hoped he wasn't checking d-scan as I confirmed that he was in the last room of whatever mission he was running.  I warped into the room about 30km from him, and got decloaked immediately by mission rats, which meant I had to immediately power towards him and hope he didn't notice soon enough to warp off.  He didn't, and I got within overheated scram range.  Repeated ASB pulses kept the damage from the drones off long enough that, even with his reppers, he soon exploded to my torpedoes just as the charges in the ASB ran out and my shields disappeared.  I left the room in armor, coming back with the tengu to loot everything else.

I then sent a nice mail to the person who originally had the kill rights, and logged off for the day, satisfied that I had finally gotten a kill and something to actually fucking blog about.  Wooo \o/

Hai guise, my name's Planetary Genocide...

... and I never update this damn thing anymore.

Really, that's probably my fault.  I haven't been online as much, and what I have been online for has been turned into blogposts for the Fighter at the Gates of Hell blog... though I suppose I can always give an OOC-writeup here for anyone who doesn't really enjoy in-character pieces.  Or if you think my in-character pieces are terrible, which they probably are because I tend to not write in-character as it is.

I did manage my first highsec ransom though (this is going to be on Gates of Hell later, depending on when MB decides to work through the backlog), which is a bonus.  Flying around Minnie highsec, I decide to visit the starter system of Hadaugago for shits and giggles.  First day, I faced off against some duder in a t1-fit Rifter who wanted a 1v1.  Kicked his ass and gave him his stuff back, had a nice chat in local, no big deal.

The next day, I visited a belt and saw a dude mining into a jetcan in a Scythe... of course, I had to flip him, and he immediately warps out, in such a hurry to get away from me that he even leaves his three mining drones on the field.  I grab those, and dick about when he comes back.

In a Hurricane.

Uh oh.  I leave for the station, when a battleclinic check shows a shitfit cane loss.  I head back to the belt just as the Cane lands on the station, warping to the can that I had bookmarked.  Sure enough, the dude comes back... in a Mammoth... which proceeds to flip the ore back and align to warp out.  Hoping he doesn't have warp stabs fitted and giving him a bump for good measure, I light him up and he explodes. Wreck is looted, shot the rest of it that I couldn't take, and I proceed to laugh to myself for a good minute.

Until he lands again in the Hurricane, which makes me laugh a little bit more, especially once I realize that he's rocket/medarty fit with no webs.  I beat down the shields and start in on his armor, when he convos me telling me that I've won and offers a 10m ransom.  That's obviously not enough for a Cane, and a couple of rockets urges him to up his offer to 50mil, which I accept and let him go.

It was a pretty productive day that day, I think.  I also managed to sell my Tornado BPO for more than I bought it for, so that combined with the ships I had made from it on the day it came out means I've finally turned a huge profit.  I still have the Talos BPO, so if anyone's interested in that, or knows someone who is, drop me a mail and we can work out details.

-PG

The Fighter at the Gates of Hell + other crap

First off! In case someone somehow manages to read my blog before getting to Miura Bull's blog, MB has started a new blog project.  The blog's name is the same as the title of this post, "The Fighter at the Gates of Hell", and the general concept is that eight pilots, all members of the Black Rebel Rifter Club, submit posts that are in-character blow-by-blow accounts of their various fights that they get into as part of the daily life of a Black Rebel.

I'd plug the blog regardless, but I'm even more inclined to do so because I, Planetary Genocide, am one of the contributing writers... so if you do start reading that one, make sure to look out for the occasional post of me getting my ass blown up in epic style!

The blog can be found here: http://projectfighterx.blogspot.co.uk/ so go ahead and check it out!

Now, on to my actual activities in EVE... I haven't done much since my last real post.  I did find some time to go on the first part of the weekly Ganked roam hosted by RvB and (not) FC'd by Mangala Solaris and his merry band of bads.  We set out from Reisen, spamming local along the way, with the theme being "You're in the Navy, mate!"  This meant that all ships were Navy or t1 variant of navy ships, with all ship names having "mate" in the name in homage to the wonderful mate war between RvB and NCDOT.  Of course, this means we roamed up towards NCDOT space.  Spent some time being chased by a large Tengu fleet with a veritable fuckload of logi, we killed a couple of their bubblers (I managed to whore on a Flycatcher and his pod), but then I had to go due to RL calling.  I thus gave my Navy Osprey to a fleetmate who had lost a ship earlier in the roam, had him pod me back to Heild, and logged for the night.

I also managed to turn a profit on 80 Procurers produced using a BPO and bought minerals... at a cost of approximately 2.55mil to produce each one and selling each one for around 9m, with the BPO itself costing 475m.  I originally meant to produce 100 and thought I had bought the minerals for the same, but apparently not. Oops.

Anyways, now I'm just waiting on the folks at Red/Black Frog to move my shit into Heild and then I'll be able to post more interesting stuff about getting blown up like the bad I am.

-PG

I should never be allowed near photoshop again.

Getting back in the swing of things

So, after having resubbed via PLEX using Hours for PLEX a couple days ago, I decided to finally kiss highsec goodbye.... for the most part... so after August 8th and the 1.2 patch i'll officially be not giving a fuck about sec status.  I've joined up with the badasses of the Black Rebel Rifter Club and can hopefully live up to the name.

"But PG," I hear, "why after August 8th?"

Well there's the matter of the patch increasing the material requirements for Procurers, which has driven the price up considerably.  I bought a BPO and enough minerals for 100 of the things, since right now they cost 2.5mil at Jita prices to build.  it'll take 5.5 days to build all 100 of them, but once the prices change to reflect increased costs i'm going to sell them for massive profit.  Even if I sold them now I'd make a profit, and that's including the BPO cost.

But just because I'm still in highsec doesn't mean I can't go ahead and ruin someone's day.  I'm currently based in Jakanerva (closest available factory slots with no wait time to Jita), which as a .7 Caldari system has its fair share of new players mining the belts.  I fitted up a Rifter on my last trip to Jita and brought it back with me, thinking to have fun with the locals.

It took a while to get back in the swing of things, but eventually I remembered how to open D-scan, find non-renamed Retrievers, and narrow them down to a particular belt.  A bit of fumbling about with the Unified Inventory and suddenly, Sizter Sinister's jetcan was mine.  Unfortunately, he pulled his three Hornet I's and warped out.  :(

So I went to another belt where a Hulk, a Retriever, and an Itty III were loitering about, clogging up the spacelanes with their damned "livelihood".  They too had Hornet I's, which somehow in my mind made me think all of them plus Sizter were the same corp, even after I had checked manually.  Derp.  They all warped out too, but Sizter had a Rifter on scan so I warped back to where his can was, saw the Rifter was rockets + 125mm's, and charged.  He warped again :(

Just as I warp off to go to another cluster of belts, "Sizter Sinister's Thrasher" appears on d-scan.  I come back and a noob-named Hookbill is there as well... this is where I learned that Sizter was not in the same corp as the other three, when the hookbill locked me up and the thrasher put arty fire into the side of my poor frigate.  I warped off, docked to restore shields, and found out that corp aggro was due to run out in a minute but I still had 15 minutes of aggro on Sizter, so the hookbill couldn't interfere.  So I undocked after corp aggro worked up, warped to the belt, and charged at Sizter with Barrage and CN Scourge rockets loaded for bear.

The Hookbill aggroed me and I didn't see a CONCORD message :( but then his pod appeared a couple seconds later and I was all sadface that I didn't get on the mail.  The thrasher was a close fight because I was stupid and orbited at barrage range instead of switching ammo and orbiting close, but I don't care because with the judicious application of overheating and a couple of overheated rep cycles the Thrasher exploded gloriously with me at 70% structure.

I even took a picture.  for posterity.

A good start in my return to space.

Now, where did I put my PLEX...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I hate being grounded.

Even as a kid, I spent hours devouring Galnet news reports of the exploits of the immortal capsuleers.  Old alliance tournaments, wars that saw the entirety of outlaw space burn, heists worth unimaginably large amounts of isk, it had always seemed like the ideal life for me.  Everything on the ground was just so boring compared to the wonder that was the stars.

So I joined them, became one of them.  Shortly after I turned 16 standard years old, I was accepted into the Center for Advanced Studies to undergo capsuleer training and implantation at their station in orbit around the twelfth moon of the fifth planet, an opportunity I jumped at.  I mean, who wouldn't? Even flying a training vessel for the first time, those crappy Velators that everyone start with, the ones that get handed out like candy to children, was an experience unlike any I'd ever had before.

I've come a long way since then.

The voice from the comm snapped me back to reality.

"Uh... come again?"

An exasperated sigh came from the comm.  "I said," groused the female voice, "that the hangar report just came in.  Everything you gave to me for safekeeping is still there, including your stupid goddamn Tengu that you never shut up about.  Once your implants and bank account are reactivated, I'll transfer your money over to you."

That was Anna.  Anna Lynne Larson, if one wanted to be formal about it.  Probably one of the few friends I had left, she had been living it up preying on other capsuleers in the less-secure areas of Gallentean space.  A "pirate", as it were.  She'd also been holding all of my stuff for me during the bureaucratic mix-up that resulted in my pilot's license being revoked for the past few months.  I had gone three months without flying, three months with dormant implants in my head, three months of sitting in a small rented room waiting for the paperwork to catch up so I could fly again.

"Thank you dear," I replied mockingly.  As she rolled her eyes, I added, "and don't knock Princess Luna.  I'm pretty sure she's the source of every Hurricane you've flown and gotten blown up ever since you could fly the damn things."

"Whatever.  Oh, and one more thing, apparently CONCORD is going to make you buy a license extension anyways.  Have fun with that."

With that parting shot, the hologram winked out, signifying the closure of the comm channel.  Just as I flipped back to an oddly titled news report ("The Mate War"?  Really?), a message ping came in letting me know that I had been granted access to my hangar and assets.  A quick check revealed that everything was indeed in place and that I once again had access to the knowledge stored within my implants.  Five minutes later, and my wallet was down quite a bit of isk, but my license to fly had been restored.

"Fucking finally..."

And as I settled into the familiar embrace of the capsule, I thought:

I fucking hate being grounded.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

tl;dr I'm back

... I can't do this anymore

Massive fucking burnout.

I'll see you all sometime later, but for now I can barely make myself log in to change skills.  Lololol.

SKOORJ FEWREE MISSEL

Over my winter break (which is set to end in a few days, I'm already back in the dorm because I have stuff to do on campus sunday and I had left my second monitor there), I looked through some of the market data and production shit for T1 stuff and came to the conclusion that with the exception of the Tier 3 battlecruisers, current mineral prices (highest buy order in my region, which is lower than the buy orders in Jita or Dodi) mean that making T1 shit is just not profitable enough in the volumes I'm working with, even with researched-to-optimal BPO's. As such, I stopped putting up buy orders for minerals and am putting any sort of T1 production on hold until I can get a Hulk alt or something to use for this sort of thing.

Instead, I've turned back to Invention and run a couple numbers for myself, and have come to the conclusion that I want to start producing Scourge Fury Missiles again, because fuck yeah Tengus and Drakes and carebears who fly both. It turns out that the T2 component used in them (Graviton Pulse Generators) cost quite a bit more than it would take to buy the moon goo and blueprints and build it myself, so I decided to go shopping and picked up the following:

Graviton Pulse Generator Blueprint Original: 4,500,000.00 ISK
Nanotransistors x 10,000: 60,000,000.00 ISK
Titanium Carbide x 110,000: 12,960,200.00 ISK
Phenolic Composites x 34,000 (meant to buy 35k, oops): 24,795,235.30 ISK
Plasmoids x 15,000: 4,769,850.00 ISK
Watching my wallet drop by just over 107mil total: disheartening.

I was so close to 2bil at once, too! And now I"m down to 920mil because I paid 882mil collateral so that I could research an Orca BPO for someone. At least I'll get that back, plus an Orca at cost. :D

So anyways, after picking everything up and either ferrying it back to Scheenins myself or having Red Frog move it, I decided to put in some invention jobs. Except I could only put in one because I had several copying/ME research jobs going already and I don't have a research alt because I'm IRL poor. Fuck. Once I threw in the invention job, I tabbed over to Excel and built a spreadshit:


To clarify, the numbers on the Rocket Fuel are the cost of the Plasmoids used per unit + export tax for the Rocket Fuel itself. I'll get to the import tax thing later.

So anyways, right now, I have the Graviton Pulse Generator researching to ME10, which should save me 2 whole Titanium Carbide per run (yay!) and thus an increase of 100k profit per 10-run BPC (yay!). Also, I don't include invention costs since A. I've already paid off the interface, and B. I have two research agents that produce both Electronic Engineering and Rocket Science datacores for me, which means I'm not paying for those. \o/

I think the limiting factor for me on this production right now is the amount of Rocket Fuel I can produce per day, since I'm doing highsec PI for this cause I'm a lazy scrub who doesn't want to go to lowsec and have to haul everything between systems. At any rate, with current Jita buy prices, my spreadshit tells me I make 22.28mil profit per BPC, which I'm rounding down to 22mil even to account for the PI import taxes on Plasmoids and Electrolytes, and taxes in market, plus any other stupid shit little fees that I usually overlook. However, since I"m having Red Frog haul my shit up for me, which cuts about 8mil out of the profit per haul I make, I'm going to be moving massive numbers at once so that I don't have to pay 8mil off every single bpc I run.

Only time will tell if I can keep this going and make a profit, but it's a start. 5 BPC's should put me at about breaking even after buying the materials I did, and those materials will last much longer than just 5 BPC's... not bad for a lazy-ass industrialist who hates effort.

EDIT: Research on the GPG BPO has put my costs down a little more, and now I have 10k extra each of Phenolic Composites and Titanium Carbide.. I can use the Phenolics on the actual scourge fury BPC's though so yay for me! Also, I realized that there's a lava planet one jump over that I can use to mass-produce Plasmoids, so I'm going to do that instead of buying it. yay again!

Bored and fucking around

Once I figure out the UV mapping on the Tengu's subsystems I'm going to try and put Kaalakiota stripes on it... because I really don't want to wait until CCP releases ship painting anyways.

Yay for tri-exporter and photoshop.

Also, Corp logos!

EVE: Templar One Pt. 1

So, for those of you who care about things like backstory and in-universe lore, the newest EVE book (Templar One), by CCP TonyG, is out. Same author as Empyrean Age (but not as Burning Life, which is good cause EA was, imo, the better of the two), some of the same characters are introduced, but the story itself takes three years after the events of Empyrean Age, for those of you who read the book. If you haven't read the book, as of right now, you're not really missing out anything regarding Templar One; while some of the characters are the same, knowing exactly who they are and what they did in the first book is just a bonus.

Another interesting feature of the books that I have yet to fully explore is that at the beginning of some of the chapters, there's a QR Code (and a website link for those without smartphones/QR scan apps/patience) that will give additional information on related concepts, places, ships, items, or other lore in the EVE universe. For example, the first chapter has a QR code and link to information about the EVE Gate, which can be found here. Chapter Four has a schematic for the Myrmidon Battlecruiser, which I will link once I've finished the entire book and can compile all of the links together.

Watch this space for a review later.

Assault Frigate balancing!

So, this is a cross-post from /r/EVE on Reddit:

Here is some stats taken from latest Chaos client cache. This is first iteration of long-awaited assault frigate rebalance and things will/may change (just like with tier 3 battlecruisers).
Retribution
+200 ArmorHP +15 CPU +1 Med-slot
Amarr Frigate Skill Bonus: 10% bonus to Small Energy Turret Cap Use per level 5% bonus to Small Energy Turret tracking speed per level
Assault Ships Skill Bonus: 10% bonus to Small Energy Turret Optimal Range per level 5% bonus to Small Energy Turret Damage per level
Role bonus: 50% reduction in MicroWarpdrive signature radius penalty
Vengeance
+10 CPU +1 High-slot (utility)
Amarr Frigate Skill Bonus: 5% bonus to Rocket Damage per level -5% bonus to Missile Launcher Rate of Fire per level
Assault Ships Skill Bonus: 5% bonus to Armor Resistances per level 5% bonus to Capacitor Recharge Rate per level
Role bonus: 50% reduction in MicroWarpdrive signature radius penalty
Harpy
+10 CPU +200 ShieldHP +1 Low-slot
Caldari Frigate Skill Bonus: 10% bonus to Small Hybrid Turret Optimal range per level 5% bonus to Shield Resistances per level
Assault Ships Skill Bonus: 10% bonus to Small Hybrid Turret Optimal Range per level 5% bonus to Small Hybrid Turret Damage per level
Role bonus: 50% reduction in MicroWarpdrive signature radius penalty
Hawk
+10 CPU +1 Med-slot
Caldari Frigate Skill Bonus: 5% bonus to Missile Launcher rate of fire
Assault Ships Skill Bonus: 10% bonus to missile velocity and 5% bonus to shield boost amount per level
Role bonus: 50% reduction in MicroWarpdrive signature radius penalty
Enyo
+200 ArmorHP +10 CPU +1 Med-slot
Gallente Frigate Skill Bonus: 10% bonus to Small Hybrid Turret Damage per level
Assault Ships Skill Bonus: 10% bonus to Small Hybrid Turret Optimal Range per level 7.5% bonus to Small Hybrid Turret Tracking Speed per level
Role bonus: 50% reduction in MicroWarpdrive signature radius penalty
Ishkur
+1 Low-slot
Gallente Frigate Skill Bonus: 5% bonus to Small Hybrid Turret damage 10% bonus to drone hitpoints per level
Assault Ships Skill Bonus: 10% bonus to Small Hybrid Turret Optimal Range per level 5m3 Drone Bay Capacity per level
Role bonus: 50% reduction in MicroWarpdrive signature radius penalty
Jaguar
+1 Low-slot
Minmatar Frigate Skill Bonus: 5% bonus to Small Projectile Turret Damage per level 7.5% bonus to Small Projectile Turret Tracking per level
Assault Ships Skill Bonus: 10% bonus to Small Projectile Turret Optimal Range per level 5% bonus to Small Projectile Damage per level
Role bonus: 50% reduction in MicroWarpdrive signature radius penalty
Wolf
+200 ArmorHP +10 CPU +1 Low-slot
Minmatar Frigate Skill Bonus: 5% bonus to Small Projectile Turret Damage per level
Assault Ships Skill Bonus: 5% bonus to Small Projectile Turret Damage per level 10% bonus to Small Projectile Falloff Range per level
Role bonus: 50% reduction in MicroWarpdrive signature radius penalty

I like this. Though I'm surprised at the MWD sig radius penalty trait, I always thought AF's were AB ships?

Letters from Local

[03:11:05] Commander Derpy Hooves > Man, no implants... what kind of scrub flies with no implants
[03:15:03] Poru Padecain > One who keeps getting his face smeared across deep space.

Touche, good sir. Touche.

Did CCP Fuck something up?

So, I went and suicide ganked a Retriever in one of the newly buffed destroyers, a Catalyst. Fit was 8 Anode Light Neutron Particle Accelerator I's with 3 t1 magstabs, because it's a fucking retriever. Also 5 shots of CN Antimatter. I had the guns overheated and grouped, and preactivated, so I warped to my alt and let fly with the blaster shots.

I ended up doing 80 damage or so per shot of 8 grouped guns, ran out of ammo before he even got out of shields, and exploded. What the christ? 8 light neutrons with faction antimatter should NOT be doing only 80 damage per volley, so I petitioned CCP to look into the grouped weapons calculations since I bet the client was reading it as a single weapon instead of 8 grouped ones. Haven't had this problem with any other ships.

Back to my cool story (bro), the Retriever pilot, Whitehouse, had an Orca with him, and he ejected his ship and warped off, ostensibly to store the Retriever or something. And it would have worked had he not had the ore he mined still in his cargohold, preventing the ship from being stored. Sadly, Commander Derpy Hooves did not have the skills to fly a Retriever, so I did the next best thing, I warped PG's pod back and hopped into the Retriever.

2011.12.09 02:20:00

Victim: Planetary Genocide

Corp: Pegasus Empire

Alliance: HumAnnoyeD

Faction: Unknown

Destroyed: Retriever

System: Scheenins

Security: 0.5

Damage Taken: 1493

Involved parties:

Name: CONCORD Police Captain / CONCORD (laid the final blow)

Damage Done: 1493

Destroyed items:

Hammerhead I (Drone Bay)

Expanded Cargohold II

Dropped items:

Azure Plagioclase, Qty: 2035 (Cargo)

ML-3 Amphilotite Mining Probe

Expanded Cargohold II

Warrior I, Qty: 3 (Drone Bay)

Plagioclase Mining Crystal II, Qty: 2

Modulated Strip Miner II, Qty: 2

Sure, it's not a killmail, but I still got the strip miners before the Orca could scoop everything, and as a bonus I got to board the ship before his pod did, so he came back just in time to see me get his Retriever CONCORDED.

Also, I defended a coalition pos today but that wasn't anything interesting, mostly consisting of repping the pos, getting aggroed, getting my tengu out and the single wardeccer running, and then going back to repping the pos with about 10 other coalition members. That's basically it for now.

Obligatory Crucible post

There's not much I can really say about Crucible that hasn't already been said, but I'll say my piece anyways because repetition ftw.

Really, the biggest point for Crucible for me is that CCP is finally doing the little things (for example, Team Papercuts) that will make people happy, and it seems to be working in that FHC and Kugu are full of bittervets who are grudgingly admitting to resubbing because EVE might become good again.

Having new player-designed ships doesn't hurt either, but I couldn't give less of a damn about those at the moment because of cool things like the new warp effects, the new backgrounds that actually show star brightness variations based on the distance, gates that point to where they're going, etc etc etc... (don't give a damn about engine trails though. Sorry oldfags).

I don't have any ideas for small features they could add to Crucible so I'm not joining in that most recent blog banter that's been popping up... I just wish they had fixed blaster tracking a little bit more than they did.

That having been said, it's been a nice week for me personally. I got back into Somer.blink again since they're near the 70t mark and expected to hit it around Thanksgiving, and in the process I've finally taken out more ISK than I've put in, as well as winning two promos (TWO!) in the span of 4 days. This has put me a couple hundred mil short of 2bil in the wallet, which is a pretty big deal to me because I'm used to being poor in pretty much every MMO I play.

I also have a beta test key for SWTOR that will be for the testing after thanksgiving so I'll be doing that for those three or so days, except to take a break and run a frigate tournament for the corp. I've also gotten into invention again so that I can produce my own Scourge Furies (50k missiles per BPC whut whut) at a much cheaper price than buying them off market, even with the damned Graviton Pulse Generators being unavailable anywhere near me except some backwater system two jumps out of Dodixie.

Also, I recently acquired a Daredevil after having trained up t2 light blasters, and let me say that it is a BITCH to fit non-faction, if I want to have any resists on my tank I have to offline the magnetic stabilizer so I have enough CPU for a t2 EANM, but with the coming blaster changes I should be able to at least fit neutrons instead of ions to make up for that gyro a little. I've been using the DD in lieu of my old Jaguar that was in Anna's possession until recently to run the easier cosmic anomalies and the 1/10 plexes scattered around the general area.

OH yeah, one more thing. Those of you who follow the EVE Online page on Facebook may remember this little gem that was posted after they introduced the Oracle in the shiptroduction dev blogs. Well, I thought it was one of the more awesome things I had seen, so I went into the SiSi files with Triexporter and grabbed the Oracle model to put into 3ds Max. After hours of cleaning up the model, de-triangulating it, and sealing up the open edges that were all over the place, I managed to modify it to look like this:

Of course, now it's just a problem of making it... I imported the file into Pepakura Designer and it looks like a bitch, a couple of the pieces don't even fit on one page for the size that I want this thing to be, so I'm probably never going to actually make it unless someone with a CNC machine decides to let me borrow it... haha... fat chance.

But the general design was that the input plug was going to be hidden in the back under the big plate that makes up the Oracle's front, and the power and volume buttons would be in the two thrusters at the bottom while the sound would be coming out of the four thrusters in the middle. I was hoping to be able to just build the shell of the Oracle and then transplant the guts of some old computer speakers into it but, well...

Yeah. If I ever build it, the few readers I still have after not posting for a long time will be the first to know.

Anyways, I'm off to try and make 2bil before next monday, so fly it like you stole it.

o/

New Blog Banner!

I finally decided to suck it up, open up photoshop, and learn how to make basic shit like banners and forum gif signatures. The fruits of my most recent bout of labor can now be seen proudly heading up my blog page. Isn't it awesome?

I'd do a background but oh god the :effort:.

Lessee... background nebula screengrabbed from SiSi, portrait obviously from portrait capture. The Cheetah drawing is based off one of the images on the EVElopedia entry page for the ship, lineart and quickndirty coloring-in done by me, same with the engine trails. Fitting window of warp core stabilizers is also from the game, and everything else is me messing with overlay, dodge, burn, opacity settings on layers, and stuff.

Tier 3 Battlecruisers: My take on them

Ok, so I've had some time to think about these after playing with them on SiSi, and I figured I'd let anyone who doesn't have the time or inclination to get on the test server know what these are all about.

Let's start with my favorite: The Talos

The Gallente Talos

Obviously enough, the Talos is a dps-heavy blaster boat. It's able to fit a full rack of neutrons plus a decent armor buffer, MWD, and dual webs if either you have perfect fitting skills, a powergrid implant, or an ACR rig, and it still has room for a damage mod. My skills are shitty so it might just be me but, with Battlecruisers IV, neutrons (even with the hybrid balancing) can barely track a BC-sized target that's been dual webbed while you're orbiting any closer than 2000m unless you're going less than 100m/s. I've figured out that my standard orbit should be somewhere around 2500-3k meters to get the balance between tracking and applying DPS.

However, range control on the thing is excellent, as to be expected from the dual web fit. Even without the 90% webs which, frankly, were massively OP, throwing two meta or t2 webs on there drastically improves the ability to keep your target where you want it. The only thing, as with most blaster ships, is getting into range of your scram and web without being killed on the way, as the tank is paper thin compared to most BC's. I dueled a friend fit in a Tachyon Oracle, he warped in at 70km and was both faster than me (due to him having no tank except 3 trimarks) and obviously he could hit me at those ranges. On the other hand, I managed to land on top of a sniping Tornado, and had taken him down in about four or five volleys, before winning a DPS race vs an AC-fit Tornado as well.

On the other hand, the Rail Talos (which I will of course be calling Railos/Ralos from now on) combined with the railgun upgrades can match the Oracle in range (though not damage) with tech 2 425's and Spike. That same friend in the Oracle was sniping at FFA1 and was surprised to find himself getting sniped back by a Talos, and the thing that killed me after those two Tornadoes died was another Railos fit. So yes, it's doable, but not if you suck like me.

Lastly, yes, you can and will be able to suicide gank with a Talos, faction ammo and meta neutrons with all damage mods will let you chew up a Hulk easily.

The Caldari Naga

Personally, I think this is the coolest-looking of the new BC's. Sadly, that's one of the few things going for it as it's probably the worst of the "true Battlecruisers" otherwise. 6-C local on the testing server was filled with moans about split weapon bonuses, gimped powergrid, and inability to fit t2 torp launchers. I personally found it hard to fit 8 siege launchers, a microwarpdrive, and an LSE II without having anything left to work with, and several fits were posted that had to downgrade to MSE II's because of it. Still, it puts out some decent alpha (over 5.5k volley with Bane torps with my bad torpedo skills), and it's decently quick. Also, you get to giggle when you confuse people by referring to your Naga as a "Tornaga".

Of course, there's also the Blaster Naga (Blanaga/Blahnaga) or the Rail Naga (Ranaga/Failnaga). With the optimal range bonus, this makes blasters actually interesting as you can hit with antimatter past 10km (I was hitting someone at around 15-16km, though not particularly hard), and Rails make the Naga an easy ship to snipe with. I still hope that CCP drops the hybrid bonuses for the ability to fit Cruise launchers and give it a second bonus to torps, but that's just me.

Also, the Tornaga would be great for POS bashing.

The Minmatar Tornado

The Tornado. Possibly the best ship out of all of them, though as I can't use large projectiles or large lasers I haven't been able to compare. But I have been volleyed from full power to half armor by a glancing shot from an Artynado, and Artynadoes orbiting the field at 90-100km generally only got engaged by other ships similar to it, or Tachyon Oracles (Tachyacles XD). From what I'm told, it's impossible to fit 1400's on it without fitting mods, but 1200's work and do horrendous alpha strike (something like 11k, I hear), and it can hit anything that's not orbiting it at closer than 30km. Getting up close to one requires that you be faster than it (already unlikely) and that you manual fly so you don't get alpha'd out of the skies faster than you can think "OH GOD ARTY".

AutoNadoes on the other hand, are a little like toned-down versions of the Talos's in-your-face-dps-MOARDAKKA style. Obviously, there's more range to work with, meaning that more often than not, your effective DPS is higher than a Talos's unless the target is being dual webbed. But a decent-sized welpfleet of ACnadoes together with t2 gang links and Logistics would have a much easier time taking down capitals than the current doctrine of Hurricanes with neuts.

Yes, the Artynado will get two Alpha shots off against a Hulk in .5 space. It's basically a cheaper arty mael as far as suicide ganking goes.

The Amarr Oracle

I don't have an in-game screenshot of this one in my hangar because A. I can't fly it, and B. I'm too stupid to remember to screenshot one from the info screen. Sorry. There's a good image on Jester's blog and on tgl's blog linked to the right of this post in one of the sidebars.

So, the Oracle. Sniping boat to the extreme. Almost all the fits I was fighting against/getting killed by were Tachyon fit, because apparently the Oracle can fit full rack of Tachs no problem. Tachyacles are fucking ridiculous, as stated many times they can get up to 190km or more in range and still strip your shields and chew up a little armor in the first volley if you're an armor tanker. Again, I don't fly one, or use lasers at all, so I can't tell you how the fitting goes, but it's probably a decently easy fit.

And I've not seen anyone using a Pulsacle yet, so no comment on those.

So that's my take (however bad I am at EVE) on the new ships. I think I'll end with the fact that somewhere in the Singularity killmail database is a CCP Habakkuk Talos lossmail with my name on the involved parties. Fuck yeah.

To quote tgl3, NEW SISI UPDATES WITH AWESOMENESS!

You can go look at his post here if you just want to see things.

I'll be back later once I've tried out the Talos (hopefully they mirrored recently enough that I can actually fly the damn thing without having to retrain Battlecruisers III -.-) and the Naga and the Tornado (without guns on the Nado, sadly).

Watch this space.

Edit: 16:48:45 Combat Your group of Modal Mega Neutron Particle Accelerator I is well aimed at Orca (Orca), inflicting 3534.4 damage.

That is all.

Also, tgl3 is always primary. And I managed to take down a Tornado that warped too close to me, followed by the other one that had autocannons fitted, in my talos. Before dying horribly to an archon.

oh snap, was that...

..The Naga?
From the last art video:



It certainly isn't the Talos or Tornado as far as I can tell, and I remain firmly convinced that the Amarr Oracle will use the model from the second contest, the Mentor Battlecruiser

e: Further in the video they show the Mentor model so it's definitely going to be the Oracle.
ee: I found the entry they most likely used for the Naga: here

IMO the Naga model is a little bit tall but the video makes it look like they slimmed it down a bit so I'll just wait till the official devblog.

Current Events. And stuff.

The only reason that this has the PONIES tag is because the Stabber's name is Princess Celestia.

Anyways, this is basically a "What the fuck has Anna been doing for the last few weeks? Let me tell you" post. She's been doing jack shit, really, because I'm terrible and have been using that account's training queue on Commander Derpy. So those who follow this blog know that the Yarr Collective alliance is no more, mostly due to Gray Sail being useless and White Sail being shut down (by me). In addition, Black Sail, the remaining corp, has moved to a new system, the system of Jan, which means we'll be seeing a lot of RvB coming through \o/.

So I logged on Anna today meaning to get myself and my stuff to Jan, and FricktheTurtle is on, in station, and has a Thanatos. Whooo! Now I don't have to spend 90mil on two black frog runs! I quickly negotiate for him to do a second run, providing the cyno back to Egg with PG.

He gets to Jan, jumps through to Crielere, and docks up, while I undock and cyno up in a Kestrel. He undocks, forgets about the undock timer, and I get blown away by a Hurricane on the undock. :(

So while Frick's laughing and I'm bitching at him for forgetting the session change timer, I head back to Dodixie to pick up another cyno generator, and a special ship. I head back in my speshul ship, stopping in Aurcel to pick up the ozone that I had leftover after the POS unanchoring, and cyno up. Again.

This time, Frick comes through almost immediately, so now I have to sit there for 10 minutes hoping not to die. So of course, bingfa sunzi (who killed me the last time) undocks his cane again, so I preemptively lock him up and ready everything I got. He returns lock, then runs away while saying something in local that I don't understand.

So I'm pretty happy about that, until Ken Plante lands on me in a Machariel just as Frick undocks with the rest of my stuff and jumps out. He gets my Blackbird into armor before I can return lock and jam him, but jam him I do, and I keep him jammed all the way out of my lock range (and his optimal) and he warps away. \o/ yay for ECM!

So I manage to survive my cyno cycle (and Frick picked up the Kestrel's cyno generator for me) and get the Blackbird back to Dodixie, and I tabbed back to Anna to get my stuff, then went out in my Stabber, Princess Celestia. I helped Frick's alt end his cyno cycle early (hehe), then noticed a 13-day old from the State War Academy in a Vexor, still named after him. *squee*

So I d-scan him to first belt, warp, but he's moved on. D-scan him to second belt, warp, he's moved on. I don't even bother scanning the third, I just warp straight to it, and land just as he's leaving. I warp to the fourth belt, see him warp off to the next one, and let Frick know that I'm heading to the one after him and to come with me. I get there, Frick gets there, Synvisyble Gray doesn't show up, which makes me think he's watching d-scan for incoming pirate faggots like us. So, I oblige him, telling Frick in his Harbinger to stay in the belt while I warp to the belt that Syn went to. Sure enough, I pass him in warp, and as I land, Frick notes that the Vex landed pretty much on his face, and he gets point just as I turn around back into warp.

Thankfully, the dude wasn't stabbed, so it was all over but the pretty blue light. I missed the pod, but got a good drop; two meta 4 150mm railguns (Prototype Gauss) and the Internal Force Field Array (meta 4 damage control) worth around 10mil on the buy orders. I hand Frick the guns, his Cyno generator, and half the money from the DC sale, and log for the night.


Fly it like you stole it!