With another recent change in management and the lack of plans and activity, it seems that it might be time to move on to something else. I’ve tried my best and suggested stuff we could embark but the progress is non-existent. TGIND has a bunch of great folks and I wish them well.

Directed Mica to make a formal application to a PvP corp and hope to hear news soon. After 47 days in Empire, 0.0 beckons again.

Excellent guide to hiring mercenaries. We used Malum Crusis last year but good to know more about the hiring process.

http://podlogs.com/declarewar/?p=170

Just got news from the lab techs running the Arazu and Ishtar invention jobs! 3 Arazu and 1 Ishtar are now ready for production.

2 more Ishtars are being invented but chances seem slim.

T2-007 has also ended with 57.14% success for a total of 400 modules. Worst performing this time was 200mm AutoCannon II and 425mm Railgun II with 30% each. Surprisingly Armor Explosive Hardener II came up to 90% success. Its really like rolling a dice and waiting with dread when you hit the “Deliver” button.

Communiqué from K (research associate I knew from Core Complexion)

Hey Jar,

Just wanted to let you know that the research POS is up and running. We managed to get a good deal on a Shadow Control Tower and have anchored labs and defenses in a quiet corner. Let me know what you need and I’ll get started on the copies. Best of luck with the T2 program! Sending you a photo of the POS (did they upgrade the shields again?). Looks fine doesn’t it?

K

Excellent News! I met K while working at Core Complexion and he expressed a desire to start his own research facility. This sounded like a great idea since my lab access got cut off when we pulled out of 0.0 and having to endure Empire lab queues was a bad experience. Now the T2 process can be more efficient with BPCs being churned out at a faster rate. With some training, K can also take on some of the workload in the invention jobs and I can focus more on the corp programs.

T2-007 is putting along after I made a mistake with one of the traders and forgot to get sufficient Mechanical Engineering Datacores. The 425mm Railguns were left sitting in the hangars while waiting for new datacores to be delivered.  The rest of the jobs went smoothly with 55% success rate providing a spread of 330 T2 modules to work with.

After gaining Gallente Starship Engineering IV, I reactivated T2-005 to begin Arazu (Recon) and Ishtar (HAC) development. 9 hours to go before the lab techs tell me if they were worth the ISK. Mica has been pressing me to send these new ships so that he can start testing them out in the field. Hopefully I’ll see some success in invention as it will bring us a step closer in providing fitted combat ready ships.

Finally! QEN for Q1 2009 is going to be released next week according to this dev blog. Seems they decided to skip 2008 and only gave us some numbers of Orca last year.

If you love charts and want to know how many ships are destroyed in PvP each month, hop on over to "I didn’t want that ship anyway” by CCP Diagnoras.

More Dilbert humor :

Here’s a slightly different version than Jar’s boring places visited post. 

I’m about 11 months young and have seen a lot more action that the boring mining and production that Jar is so fond of. As a military man, the thrill of undocking and getting in a good fleet is what I look forward to.

Most of the places I’ve visited, Jar will probably never visit as they were during fleet roams. As you can see though, New Eden is huge and there is still a lot to cover.

The time in Sylph Alliance saw some nice roams to Derilik, Curse and Stain with Providence and Catch being the active defence areas. Some very memorable fights were in F9E-KX (first Double Doomsday!), HED-GP and ERVK-P with Ushra’Khan and Against All Authorities (when i see –A-, I’m glad I insured my ship). There was also a Scrapheap Drake fleet that attempted to mess around with Providence and got sent home (not very accurate picture as there was a lot more kills/losses).

After we left to form Nova Invicta, an attempt was made to settle in the Outer Ring (lots of production folks were excited coz that’s where the exhumer BPOs are sold). Unfortunately, after a few days (now fruitless) of making tactical bookmarks, we were told to pull out due the to increasing conflict between Dead Man’s Hands (allies) and Avarice. This very short lived adventure marked the visit to Syndicate and Outer Ring.

The quick trip to Pure Blind just last weekend with Agony Unleashed’s PvP Basic class saw quite a bit of T1 mayhem. Over 70 in fleet with some insane ewar setup saw a hostile casualty list of 5 Battleships, 1 Battlecruiser, 1 Assault Frigate, 1 Covert Ops, 4 Heavy Assault, 1 Recon, 2 POS Modules and 4 Pods. The jump gate bug didn’t help much for travelling but I look forward to a longer roam during the Wolfpacks class in a few days (will write a complete account of the two classes after Wolfpacks).

What’s next? 0.0 beckons and hopefully we are able to resolve some corporate and alliance matters so that we can make a move back. I’m not too fond of running missions and be at the beck and call of agents in Empire. There’s currently lots of hotspots with Querious and Etherium Reach seeing lots of action so hopefully we’ll find something there

Kirith Kodachi started a new meme asking people where they have been in New Eden.

Here’s my journey (not terribly exciting as I’m heavily into mining and production)

I’m just slighly over 1 year in game and as you can see, having only been with TGIND has somewhat limited where I’ve travelled. Most of my purchasing work is outsourced to associates who almost never travel beyond the market hubs and thus I seldom need to travel to the crowded Jita area. In fact, only time I’ve been to Jita was during early days when we were war dec’d and we were advised to relocate to a safer system in The Forge.

In terms of corporate history, Gallente space is our primary area of operation and during the time with Sylph Alliance, Providence and Catch regions was mostly where we saw action. ERVK-P is probably my favorite station to spin ships while Mica is out having fun

What’s Next? The alliance is currently mulling over prospects and hopefully some decisions will be made soon about 0.0. It’s been some time since we left 0.0 and a disastrous attempt to move back in the Outer Ring with Dead Man’s Hand saw us getting caught in a crossfire with Avarice and a bunch of other hostiles. Mica had more experience there as I chose to stay in Empire to revisit some agents. I would also like to visit the Minmatar area to get in touch with some agents just to have a change of environment.

* Understanding the map : Small yellow means few number of visits to big red means LOTs of visits.

Other travels

• Kirith Kodachi – Eve Meme! The Places I’ve Been…
• Wensley – Where I’ve Been
• Mynxee – New Eden: Places I’ve Been
• Melindhra -The Places I’ve Been
• pjharvey -Places I’ve been
• Shrike Juk – The Places I’ve been
• Shae Tiann – Journeys in Eve
• Manasi – Kirith asks…Manasi answers II
• Kyle Langdon -Where in the World is Kyle Langdon?
• Pod Pilot -Eve Meme! The Places I’ve Been…
• Letrange – Where I’ve been
• Karox Lominax – Where have you visited

Welcome to the eighth installment of the EVE Blog Banter , the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here . Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month’s topic comes to us from Ga’len at The Wandering Druid of Tranquility. He asks: “What new game mechanic or mechanics would you like to see created and brought into the EVE Online universe and how would this be incorporated into the current game universe? Be specific and give details, this is not meant to be a ‘nerf this, boost my game play’ post like we see on the EVE forums.”

Ship Boarding!

Part of the unique ability in the X-Universe series of games from EgoSoft was the ability for the player to script almost every action in the game. Some truly ingenious scripts were released like Carrier Commands, MARS fire control and ship boarding using marines. Now if we could use the NPC passengers in EVE Online for this purpose, it would make ship capturing a possibility instead of destroying a ship every time and looting it (such a waste of good resources).

The conditions for this to work is that Marines or Mercenaries need to be in your cargo hold for this to work and the target ship can also stock similar personnel to defend his ship. Obviously new skills and support skills needs to be trained like “Boarding Crews” etc and passenger transportation would actually be useful (Personally I have exotic dancers and spiced wine on board my ships).

Sample logs as you activate a module that sends a raiding party onto target’s ship when their shields fail (it would be great if we had an Ion cannon weapon which only affected shields?):

Marine Leader : “Approaching airlock… activating cutting lasers … we have a good seal.. get ready men!”

Loud bangs and Fighting ensues and after some time, the experience of the crew and the defense crew determines if the target capsuleer should be expelled from the ship and sent home.

A quick search for “Salvage Tug” on the Features and Ideas Discussion shows a lot of people wish there was a new class of ship to enhance gameplay. With ship boarding, it’s conceivable that boarded ships are then towed away to a station for re-use or profit.

Of course, the exotic dancers on board should be claimed

Other Banters:

2 days to go! With the current lull in alliance activities, I’ve decided to go back to school and get a fresh perspective on fleet formation and tactics. Was introduced to the school while reading two articles at Eve Tribune titled “Back to pvp Basics” and “Destroyers”. While I’m no slouch when its comes to fleeting up during days in Sylph. It has been over a month since I last saw action. Running missions for SOE has been great for my wallet but when the mission rats are unable to hurt my Dominix, its time to hunt some capsuleers.

After a rushed sign up for the limited spots in the class (only 50 are allowed), I managed to register for PVP-BASIC [BASIC - 2305091800] and PVP-WOLFPACKS [WOLFPACKS-3005090030]. The course materials has just been released and I’ve gone through the well written materials that is great read for new players or as a refresher course. I’ve made sure that the basic skills are met and took time to train up skills for the destroyers class that is held next week as I’ve neglected some of the training for it.

The basic class will consist of using T1 frigates in a Hydra fleet. I’ve decided to go with the Incursus since it is the T1 version of the Ishkur which I’m fond of flying. With spare ships and hydra ewar fittings (ecm, webifer, tracking disruptors, dampeners, scram, disrupt) all ready, I’ll be ready to set out for Nonni where the course will be held. Just need to remember to use a new jump clone before I fleet up for the class.

I’ve always been fascinated by the ship names in Eve in particular those of the Gallente variation. Kyle Langdon has compiled a very useful reference here. My favorite ship for its nimble tackling duties is the Ares (Interceptor): God of War (Greek). Unfortunately, the Megathron and Dominix which I often fly doesn’t have an equivalent.

*Update*

Kyle has another great post about Minmatar ships here.