Ready...Set....GO!

"Mik....what'cha doin?"

"Nothing really. Just pokin my nose around in the cov-ops, seein what hidden treats I can find," I replied to Promephius's message.

"You interested in going on a roam? Got a small fleet together looking to go get some action."

"Yeah. Sure. Where y'all headin?"

"Not sure yet. We're just forming up. Thinking of going and taking a peek in Sarline to see what UFO is up to and then possibly 0.0 or just a local security roam throughout Solitude."

"Sounds good. What ship type you need me to bring?"

"Bring the Buzzard. We could use a scout. In fact, why don't you head over now to Sarline and poke your nose in there, see if UFO is up and about."

"Not a problem, mate. Already en route," I smiled as my ship entered warp.

I haven't really had any real experience or time in the buzzard frigate when it comes to combat but with the up-coming war, I was more than willing to gain some experience before it became truly necessary. Unfortunately, on the roam, I learned one very noticeable lack in my skills. I've gotten pretty proficient at tracking down the various exploration sights with the new probing system but it seems I still require a LOT of skill training to effectively use recon probes.

As an example, I had narrowed down to a 15 degree radius with my directional scanner a ship sitting in a safe spot somewhere between one and two AU away from me. Given that information, I launched recon probes in that direction to try and get a lock on his location. However, even with him never seeming to move, I still couldn't even pick up his signature with my probes. Oye vay, definitely something I need to work on and fast.

On the other hand, I got a lot of time in yesterday practicing sneaking up on targets that I did find. (without the aid of the probes.) This is something I definitely wanted a bit of practice on before the war really got started as its been discussed me assisting in keeping watch on all known wormholes in the w-space region we intend to secure.

As most can imagine, securing a w-space system is a bit different than securing a piece of nullsec. With the constantly shifting entrances and exits, getting the proper ships in to neutralize the intruders and their POS is proving to be quite a task. It's being done, but it's a slow process. For obvious reasons, at this time I can not disclose to public knowledge how we intend to do this or what we're using to do it but again I refer back to my previously written statement, the invaders are in for a very harsh lesson...

The other aspect is that with the entrances also constantly shifting, it can be a chore to keep an eye on what's coming in and out of the system. It's not like your normal nullsec system where you might have one or a few known gates that you could easily camp. And given no subspace communications beacons telling you who and how many are in system, intel gathering is a tad more difficult. Instead your forced to completely rely on your directional scanners.

But either way, right now, it's almost like a race. They know we're there. They know about our POS just as we know about theirs. I'm sure they also understand the rarity of this particular system and they already know from a couple small skirmishes some of our guys already in system had with them, that we mean business. So now it's a matter of who can get their stuff properly secured before the other. As of right now, all we've seen is a few industrials, a couple falcons, a few battleships and some other small toys. Let's just say, for a system of this value, they'd better have something else up their sleeve or be willing to lose a lot.

It'll most likely be this weekend or so that I begin moving some of my own gear into the system. Come the following week, it'll be more preparations. However, for myself it will mostly be taking pleasure in harassing them. Camping any discovered entrances/exits. Attempting to cut off their supplies by destroying any industrial haulers. Making hit and run attacks on any of their ships attempting to mine the belts or gas clouds. POSSIBLY aiding the sleepers during any combat activities they attempt.

Basically, the system and its resources aren't going anywhere. So until the other corporation is obliterated or at least withdrawn, it's to be our number one priority.

For now though, it's just a matter of winning the race.

There Will Be Blood

I've yet to read about it from any other place so who knows. Perhaps we'll be the first?

Basically what I'm talking about is declaring war on another corporation/alliance over a particular w-space we've set up shop in. Whether we have this war officially sanctioned by Concord or not is still up in the air but likely we won't as this is over W-space. Not K-space. Let them do what they want in K-space. And Concord has no jurisdiction here so why should we care about that aspect. All wormhole passages lead to seriously under managed systems so engaging them outside the W-space will likely not be too much of a problem either if it comes to that.

The reason for this war is simple. This particular w-space has shown lots of potential since its discovery as we've been able to mine nearly every type of asteroid known to the eve universe as well as some of the most elite and rarest of gas clouds. Sleepers there are very tough admittedly but the ship bonuses from the nearby spatial anomalies have been astronomical. This could be perhaps a very rare find and we intend to protect it. However, it seems a Russian corporation has found the w-space as well and has already started setting up shop with their own POS.

Needless to say, when your talking a wormhole that could easily rake in billions for the corporation, someone else setting up there just isn't acceptable. So war it is. And as of right now, from what we're seeing....the intruders are in for a very harsh lesson.

-ML-

P.S. Before you say it, yes i do still feel bad for the Sleepers but at the same time....money talks. :)

Solitude Isn't So Solitary Since Apocs Systems Start

Haha, I made a tongue twister! Say that 5 times fast! :)

Anyways, there is a point to my journal entry title. Ever since the appearance of wormholes, and the system wide changes to the probe and scanning computers on board all of Eve, traffic in solitude has really begun to pick up. I've been hearing news from other pilots across New Eden about how their areas, once busy have now started to grow quiet. They may wonder why when network wide systems report 40 to over 50 thousand pilots online quite regularly now.

Well I'll tell you why.

Ever since the appearance of wormholes, yes, pilots have been spending more and more time in them. I almost feel sorry for this sleeper race as it seems not just one or two factions have turned their eyes towards them, declaring war and mercilessly slaughtering them. Instead, it's nearly the entire population of Eve! Every race, every corporation nearly, from Solitude to Molden Heathe and the systems between and beyond, have been rushing head first into wormhole space. Some to mass murder the once nearly unknown Sleeper race, others to strip their systems of all it's ore, minerals, and gases. It's the human population at its prime. Like locusts, they swarm. Consuming every valuable resource in their path before moving on to fresh grounds and doing it all over again. Again, my heart goes out to these "Sleepers". Maybe someday someone will step up to defend them.

On that note, the appearance of wormholes forced the aura network to make some changes to the original scanning/probing system. And since then, the term explorer has begun to lose it's meaning. Now, nearly everyone is capable of becoming one in a very short period of time. For this reason, finding a radar site or a magnetrometric site that hasn't already been pillaged and looted is becoming more and more difficult. Especially in Empire. So where do all these people go once they realize how immense their competition is?

Perhaps you guessed it. Solitude.

Okay, perhaps not just Solitude but basically any pockets of generally untraveled space, like Solitude, has become awash with immigrants. When my corporation first moved to Solitude, there were systems where I could (and did) sit and mine for hours without ever seeing a single soul. I could travel through areas of space, often 5 or 6 jumps or more before seeing more than one other person on the local communications network.

Now....well now I might as well be living in Empire again. Low sec is still not quite as active as many of the Empire systems but I think that's only because the low sec denizens haven't caught on yet to whats happening just beyond their normal prowling grounds. I couldn't begin to describe the number of times now I've passed through the low sec systems with 3 or 4 mining barges or exhumers on scan, doing a mining operation in some hidden asteroid belt. Or ships running around in the belts with setups purely designed to take down the local "rats", not too worried about other capsuleer ships. The only real threat is the United For Order alliance which is really just a nuisance than a threat. At least to my corporation. Many other corporations I see in the area have little to no combat skills and run at the first sight of a UFO pilot in low sec local. But UFO has perhaps pushed a few too many buttons.....

So anyways, yes, I have appeared to have hopped on the exploration bandwagon myself. I've gone in wormhole space a number of times now, solo even, but mostly just to look around, take photos, that sort of thing. I've also been mining, salvaging, and very shortly hacking various other sites I'm able to scan down. Unfortunately, to say I was seriously considering turning explorer before news of the scanner changes started spreading would only fall on deaf ears now. Mining was just becoming so mind numbing and now that I'm in the Hulk with most high sec ore t2 crystals, all I need is transports and freighter skills and I'll be done as far as I'm concerned with my mining skills. After that I intended to turn explorer and start finding the hidden sites. You know, be the "prospector" that I was trained to be by the academy!

Oye...I think I'm done ranting now.

-ML-

I Found One! ...wha....Damnit!

So yesterday evening, things were rather slow around the home base. A lot of the corp mates were just finishing up with some corp ops and although I generally mine every Wednesday evening as a part of my own contribution to the corp, I just didn't have it in me. I'd spent so much time at the desk earlier that day, doing paperwork and other menial tasks that I just needed to do something entertaining. So in my pondering, I overheard a few people talking on the blogger channel about probing and so that got me thinking. Here I am with a few decent probing skills, a launcher, and a hefty load of probes.....and I have yet to even track me down one of these elusive wormholes that have been appearing as of late all over New Eden. I currently have the skill to fly a covert ops ship but still have a couple days before I'm able to actually fit the cloaking device. Because of that, I haven't actually purchased a covert ops frig so instead just headed out in a Probe frigate. Sides, I wasn't actually planning on going in....I just wanted to find one.

The new probing system I must say can be a bit confusing. In some ways its exciting and I love the fact that scanning is SOOO much faster as well as being able to recall my probes. I'm going to have to do some research into the skills though because currently, I'm not clear on what use it would be to train any skills further in terms of probing. I did have some difficulty tracking things down but it was more of just learning how to manipulate and comprehend the results from the scans. As well as figuring out the best method to narrow things down.

It seems that as long as you recall your probes, they can be used over and over again. They don't appear to be like the mining crystals where after some use, they eventually expire completely. With this in mind, I generally was sending out about 4 or 5 probes. And recalling them when needed. And yes, I did have to recall them a couple times as it took me more then the roughly hour long time period to scan things down.

Reality is I should have just gone and read up on what my fellow writers have written about the new probe system but was determined to figure it out on my own. Sometimes its just the best way I learn things. (Plus it keeps my hyperactive mind occupied)

So after a few rather unsuccessful attempts, I finally managed to figure out how narrow down the scan to give me the accuracy of 100%. Unfortunately, it landed me at a ladar sight being called a Glass Nebula. Really it was nothing more than an abandon research facility. Okay, possibly useful to others but not to me. So moving on.

Next item I scanned down ended up being some ruins of...well...something. Drones had ravaged the place and it was really nothing more than a pile of floating space debris. There was a lone rogue drone hanging about that attempted to attack me but I restrained myself from ending his seemingly lonesome misery, as something in my gut was just screaming bait. Besides, I really wasn't carrying any serious offensive systems anyways.

So moving on again. I'm now in my third system. I send out a single probe with full scan range set. Bam! Four unknown hits. Certainly one of these has to be a wormhole! With this in mind, I now launch three other probes and send them out in various directions, with mediocre scan ranges, but close enough to each other to overlap. I did this until eventually I narrowed down one of the signatures. Lost it a few times but would easily reacquire it and try again. I couldn't begin to describe how excited I was when it popped up on my scanner "Unstable Wormhole".

Quickly, I warped to it and immediately sent out word to my fellow corpmates. Seems I'm the first within the corp to have actually found one. Quickly a couple other guys hop in their ships and as soon as we're fleeted up and sitting near to the wormhole, we give the signal to enter.

I know...I know... I wasn't planning on actually going through it but I could almost see temptation in the depths of that wormhole, motioning with her finger to come to her. Sides, we were just too excited by the possibilities...as well as being the first in our corp to say we were in w-space. So...with an immense feeling of both excitement and nervousness, in we went!

*Wormhole cleared. Checking navigation systems......*
.........
........
.......
......
.....
....
...
..
.
.
.

*Region: Aridia*
*Solar system: Pahineh*
*Security Level: 0.7*

What?!?

Yep. That's right. We travelled through a wormhole from a high security system in Solitude to a small pocket of high security in the Aridia region. Basically right next door to Solitude! I honestly didn't even realize the wormholes would do that. But guess that proved that wrong. So with a slight damper to our excitement we jumped back through the wormhole and headed home. So it wasn't to w-space....but hell, I still found and had my first wormhole experience and I can definitely say, they look wicked as hell. (although my corp mate said it looked like the butt hole of the universe......hmm......)

-ML-

A Whole New World

So I got home yesterday and logged on Vent. A lot of my corp mates were on and told me they were already logged into Eve. Cheers to CCP for actually being on time! On the downside, it was then I learned how enormous the download was for the patch. However, taking me back to the upside, my computer downloaded it faster than I've ever seen it go, averaging about 1.5mb/s. Go speedracer! Go! :) I think the actually installation of that patch took longer than it did to download. But finally, perhaps no more than 30 minutes after getting home, I was logging in.

At this point, after having gotten my first impressions of this new update, I have to say wow! The whole aspect of flying Tech 3 ships doesn't really interest me at this point, and the travels into wormhole space will come soon enough (still got a few more days of training on covert ops) but all in all this was a real visual desert. The planets, the asteroids, the various ship module effects, the warp bubble, the stargate jumps....I could keep going on and on. In some ways I really did feel like I was playing an entirely new game. All of the visual upgrades being absolutely a huge step up from previous graphics.

The new fitting screen - absolutely gorgeous. The ability to save fittings is a huge plus for the game as well as the skill queue which I think everybody is in agreement on. Seems if you have the role within the corp, you can save the fittings as well to share with the corp which is great when preparing for fleet ops. It would often take us forever to get everyone setup so the fleets are well structured, having to read off and wait for the other person to fit it.

Also, they made some changes to the way the notifications appear on your screen. Changes I feel make it SO much easier to track. I'm specifically referring to the weapon damage taken and given out. It's much easier to read as well as once I get used to the colors, I won't have to watch it so closely to know roughly how much damage I inflicted.

Okay, so negatives.

First, I honestly wasn't that entirely impressed with the visual look of the warp tunnel. The squiggly lines to me look a bit cartoonish. It's not really bad, just think it could have been made to look just a little better.

Second, whatever happened to all the stuff I'd been hearing about being able to readjust your attributes every 6 months? Seems either I was hearing it wrong or they made a last minute change and its now set to where you can only change them every 12 months. To me that renders that tool almost completely worthless. I mean seriously, 12 months of game time really is an extensively long period. I don't see it as a complete fail, but fairly close to it. Yes, I still used it of course. When I'd joined Eve, I knew absolutely nothing about what the attributes meant, what good where they and which ones would be more important to me than the others. So my attribute points where spread out almost completely even between all the attributes. By the time I'd gotten it all figured out, I'd gotten far enough into the game with this character, I just didn't feel like starting over completely. With the skill points readjusted, this will open up a whole new world of possibilities. It made a drastic change on my evemon plan times! Now it might actually be more feasible for me to train up a few decent combat skills with this character whereas before, doing so meant incredible amounts of time that seriously take away from training industrial skills. Also, industrial skills have gotten significant improvements in training time as well. That Orca and freighter I've been wanting to trained for? By readjusting attributes, I've cut so much time off it was astounding.

That's all I have for now but I truly look forward to getting home from work again this evening and seeing what else I can discover. Might just take the probes out and see if I can track down myself one of these wormholes. (not that i have any intention of going in yet but still curious to see one plus see how well my character can probe with what skills I have.)

-ML-

Home Sweet Home?

In writing my last posting, I came up with a thought.


Figured I'd just throw out a topic for the journalistic pilots of New Eden. I think it'd be interesting to hear people tell about the region they live in and more specifically why they and/or their corp have chosen to live there. I realize some may not be able to go into much detail for security purposes on an open journal like this, but I'm sure telling of what region you live in won't hurt. We have pilots from all over Eve, and as I've learned even in my short time as a pod pilot, life can be quite different from one region to the next.

So fire away! :)

A Life of Solitude

So I apologize for not having wrote anything in what could be construed as a rather lengthy bit of time. Things within the corp have been quite busy and I've been spending a lot of evenings in the belts around Solitude, pulling in the ore to raise money for various goals in regards to wanted/needed ships and modules. To add in on top of that, the corp itself has been quite active in running a lot of mining ops, low sec (and even 0.0) ops, and mission ops. We're currently seeking out other corporations and alliances around the Solitude region to create a sort of larger network both for shared intel as well as to create a strong group that will both help and back each other in actually putting the region of Solitude on the map. The corp directors really have some brilliant ideas that are starting to see light of day and may well create a viable market in the region.

Up until now, the purchasing of many goods was as nearly as expensive as buying goods in nullsec. We hope to change that. No, things will not nor never will be as cheap as you would find them in Jita or perhaps even some of the other major trade hubs but that's just something that isn't logistically possible. Jita is for the most part surrounded by high sec empire space. You can travel to and from most places in empire without ever crossing into unsecured low sec or even worse nullsec. With the thousands upon thousands of pilots located and operating in empire, the supply of goods is always there. However, with so many being scared to traverse long distances through lowsec, places like Solitude will never become heavily populated until something can be done to make lowsec passage less intimidating. And we both know that of course will never happen. In addition to that, the academies are all in empire, constantly spitting out new pilots nearly every day. So basically, empire will never be the empty void that Solitude is.

Let me give you a brief description of Solitude.

Solitude is its own little set of high sec systems surrounded by a turbulent area of space. Within only a couple jumps, one could easily find themselves in Syndicate even, a very dangerous section of nullsec filled with gate camps from numerous alliances and corporations. Due to its sovereignty being held by none other than The Syndicate, it is not exactly a place of interest for the larger nullsec alliances like Goonswarm and the former BoB alliance (now known as Kenny or something like that I believe). So instead, its left to the smaller groups to set up shop and perhaps get some nullsec practice in or just reap the benefits of being able to kill anything that moves, without taking hits on their empire security status.

However, even if one is to avoid nullsec, getting to Solitude can still be a very dangerous journey. Although you won't have to worry about a gate camp involving warp bubbles like you would in nullsec, gate camps along the route are still a major problem. The journey to Solitude without traveling through nullsec takes you down a lengthy pipeline of about 15 to 20 jumps I believe with numerous choke points. Fortunately at this time the pirate population is relatively minimal but in lowsec, every individual whose path you cross is a potential pirate, even if they aren't tagged by Concord as such. So flying your standard freighter or hauler through is definitely dangerous, if not utterly suicidal.

Now yes, a lot of the combat pilots in my corp do go hunting in the lowsec areas surrounding Solitude. And yes, they often come back saying they didn't find a damn thing to kill... but at the same time, unless they're in a decent sized fleet, they still for the most part avoid certain systems in the route to empire. (unless of course they're feeling rather frisky....or really bored...)

Either way, my point is that logistically, if you're a corporation made up of "younger" pilots, or pilots with only a small amount of experience, then like nullsec, Solitude is not for you. If your like our corporation with a varied mix of younger and older pilots than it becomes possible as the older pilots can form the basis for the logistics of living in Solitude, supplying or helping the younger pilots get their gear and ships from empire to the high security space of Solitude safely. Though in truth its still slightly uncommon to find a fresh pilot out of the academy in Solitude.....definitely not in the mass numbers you'd see flying around the space lanes of Empire.

What all this is saying is that I like Solitude. I like the fact that I can sit in a high security system for hours and never see another pod pilot. Not even on the local system comms. I like the fact that here, we can actually make use of the standings system much like you would in lowsec or nullsec but it not actually being either of those. I like being able to easily glance at the people in system and know whether they are a friendly or known enemy, for as time goes on, the list of neutrals to in the region goes down....unless of course a new alliance or corp moves into the area. Basically for the corps objectives, its a great place to make home and stage our operations out of.

-ML-