So we’ve recently been playing around with our Intrepid Crossing friends in Cobalt Edge, we’ve had a few nice roams and even got a free Rorqual (Thanks guys!), but recently it seems IRC can’t be bothered to fight, whether it’s their tactic to bore us to death, they just can’t be arsed, or I just pick the wrong roams, I dunno.

Anyway today’s roam started out in VFK, luckily there were Maelstroms available again so I quickly purchased one, got my ammo and headed on out, after rallying all gates were green until Cobalt Edge.

After waiting for everyone to arrive we roamed around for a bit as there had been reports of carriers and alike being around somewhere, they however decided to stay inside the safety of a POS shield so we had to somehow aggravate IRC to come play.

This basically boils down to reinforcing various things such as their jump bridges, stations and alike, aka your average boat op. After having reinforced various structures around cobalt edge, and even paying a visit to their staging system of E-BYOS nothing came out to play.

Well nothing, a small bomber gang did come play, they should be proud that they managed to kill a few Rifters while only losing about 8 bombers, other than that we managed to kill some idiots that were AFK in a POS by bumping them out, so nothing really exciting.

After having incapacitated another part of their jump bridge network and putting an iHub and station into reinforced we decided to go home as they didn’t want to come out and play, so my Maelstrom will live to die in a horrible fire another day.

~Xeross

So after my double frigate fail I found myself back in my home station, luckily a few minutes after being back they decided to switch to something bigger, and engage anything we find (we had back-up in case).

After getting everyone together we started chasing the same gang that killed me before that (And that was trying to destroy our frigate roam), they kept running away, even though they were outnumbering us.

We did manage to trap a few of them so I got a couple of kills so all in all a good way to end the night.

We continued to chase them around for a while, but eventually they gave up and disbanded, while we were hoping for a full on fight.

Now onto the next roam…

~Xeross

So yeah I’m probably a bit late with this post but I blog when I feel like it and I felt like writing this so here it goes.

So a while ago TEST decided to drop 14 TCUs in IT space (Well they had no sov but it was their space) right before an extended downtime.

Once the downtime was over IT filed a support ticked claiming that this was an exploit (Once they figured out what had happened), and in the end the TCUs were destroyed by a GM and refunded (Who with that confirmed that this was considered an exploit).

Now this raised quite a few questions in the community, as it became apparent that TEST wasn’t the only one that gained sovereignty during downtime and due to the fact that this has probably happened before.

Some say that IT gets special treatment by CCP, now when speculating one could state that IT probably isn’t the only one that has reported this kind of issue, but someone (From within CCP) could possibly have made a GM aware of this specific incident, again purely speculation.

On the other hand, this might be the result of the large scale approach TEST took in this assault, yet I do not see that as an excuse to undo this one and not the others.

Now if this is an exploit where do we draw the line ? Can you online POSes/structures during (extended) downtime or now, where does it end.

Now I’m not too sure where I stand on this, the way CCP has acted has its shortcomings as others “got away with it”.

This could just be seen as clever use of game mechanics, however the 6 hours (or something) that it takes to online a TCU have been implemented to grant a defending alliance the time to act upon it, and by onlining them during downtime TEST clearly bypasses this mechanism.

So in the end I guess the reasonable conclusion would be that the correct decision has (sort of) been made, however it should have also been enforced on all other sov. changes that happened during downtime.

Edit: Sorry for mixing up alliance names, fixed

So another roam with Hellfleet, we waited for everyone to ship up, had some discussions on how to refit my cruiser without a remote rep, and took off.

So we started to roam towards a null-sec entrypoint, and on our way we passed through the Tusker HQ, we thought they were following us but it was just a lone wanderer.

After a while we arrived in the destination entrypoint system, however there was a big gatecamp on the out gate so we decided to head back.

After this we decided to continue but a Morsus Mihi fleet came through with Vuk Lau in it (Probably leading it), so the fleet warped for shelter, and I decided to just hang outside the station as they’re blue to me.

After this we wanted to continue further but a Rooks and Kings T3 roaming gang was heading our way so we decided to head back toward our HQ.

While we were heading back we caught a Blackbird on a gate and decided to engage it, the Blackbird went down pretty quickly (No killmail yet) and my armor was holding up just fine even with the gate guns.

After this a Pilgrim warped in and we managed to web and scram him too, however when he was almost down a bright light appeared and a Wyvern hotdropped on top of us.

We decided to see if we could get the Pilgrim because the Wyvern takes forever to lock anyways, however me being a wuss warped out too soon, and the rest also warped out before we got the Pilgrim, it had about 30% structure left.

After this we safed up and got a report of a Drake in a belt (He was probably ratting or something) we engaged him, and then pinned him down once his shield was down seized fire and attempted to ransom.

However our friendly neighbourhood Drake pilot was a bit slow, whether his English was bad or he was just panicking out, he didn’t have enough money for the ransom, so we asked him to eject, he waited to long so we popped him.

After we popped him it turned out he did want to eject from the Drake but he was too slow. After this we held and ransomed his pod which still got us 10m ISK (2m ISK each), a small ransom but still a successful (And my first) one.

After this we decided to continue heading back to HQ and dock up, however after this someone came with the idea to try a suicide gank, so after some setting up we headed on out.

A system of one of your friends had come under attack and SBUs have been placed, the op would start at 22:00 EVE time or 0:00 local time for me.

We formed up and bridged into the target area, jumping around for a little before jumping into the target system.

When we finally headed into the target system local was quickly rising to about 900 people, of which possibly 600-700 were NC.

We engaged the enemy fleet, and the lag was bad as usual, but with the node reinforcement it was about 5 minutes of module lag on average.

After fighting for about I think an hour the enemy fleet decided it was time to leave, and we pointed and killed as many of  ‘em as we could, however due to the lag the amount of kills I made was limited.

After that it was just a matter of taking down the SBU which took way too long to even be remotely entertaining, and after that head home.

The journey home was pretty calm too, there was 1 red fleet but only a few of the slower people got caught by that.

The main fleet did try to engage them but as it was around 3am I decided I’d just speed home and go to bed. Even though we had lag and the SBU take down was boring I had fun, so all in all, another successful event in my opinion.

~Xeross

Recently I’ve been playing EVE not as much as I used to, this mainly because of the fact that you mostly PvE when you’re on a lot, so instead I’ll just tag along with any PvP ops I can find, this is one of them.

After forming up we decided to head into ev0ke space to see if there was any action there. However before we got there we got reports of a red roaming fleet in NC space, and we decided to head there.

Upon arrival in NC space it seemed that the roaming fleet had left and we missed the fight, though we were near Cobalt Edge (My old home), we decided to pay them a visit.

Upon entering their space and letting the scout do, well, some scouting they managed to gather a fleet of around 70 people if I recall correctly, so we decided, even though we were outnumbered, to take on the fleet and see if we could do any damage.

After some jumping around trying to get a tactical advantage IRC managed to drop upon us a bit unexpected. As soon as they landed I should have warped off, but for some reason I don’t recall I didn’t warp away in time, and my Rifter was lost.

After trying to do some damage our FC decided to cut the losses and try to get the remaining ships out alive, though most had already been lost a small part of thie ships was saved.

The remaining forces decided they still wanted to continue roaming so I decided to check if I could dock at a RAZOR alliance station to buy a new Rifter, unfortunately I couldn’t so that meant the roam was over for me.

So even though I lost my Rifter before I could even hit anything I had fun, even just roaming around chatting on Teamspeak is better than the repetitiveness of EVE”s PVP.

Well now to wait for the next PVP op which will probably be the next time I play EVE.

~Xeross

Tips/comments on how to improve my battle reports are appreciated, of course you can also write normal comment for this post

Captain’s log the 6th of January 112yc, 20:31.

Today was a good day, I’m still flying solo in my Rifter and slowly gathering more knowledge and experience about fighting other pilots.

Today I undocked to continue my journey through low-sec looking for some fights, however I didn’t accomplish this today, though I did get my first kill.

While travelling through low-sec I got into a system and found a lonely Mammoth together with a Retriever in an asteroid belt, as I neared them I locked them and opened fire, however the ship’s systems warned me I was in CONCORD secured space, slightly confused I checked my navigation computer and found that I was in Empire Space, so I cancelled the gunfire.

After making this discovery I tried to think of a way to still get the kill, and that’s when I spotted some wrecked Guristas ships which my ship indicated where killed by their drones. So I approached one opened it and ignored the “This is someone else’s kill” warning.

After this the Retriever warped of and I requested a convo with the Mammoth pilot, he accepted it and I asked him if his friend had any drones left (And if he could send them after me), he said his friend didn’t and I decided to wait for him to come back.

After a few minutes the Retriever pilot arrives back in a Caracal, I quickly targeted him and started orbiting him at 500m distance, I activated my afterburners, damage control, webber and warp scrambler. He started firing at me and so I also started firing at him, after a while it seemed that I was at the losing hand, my shield were nearly depleted and his halfway through however, after a while his armour started burning up a lot faster then mine and it looked like I might win, after a while we were both in structure but fortunately his decreased faster then mine and a few seconds later his ship exploded.

So after this I decided not to destroy his pod and send him back to the clone vats as that would make CONCORD take actions against me, I warped to a safe place in the system and waited till I could dock again. After this I docked and now I can proudly say I made my first kill.

After that I continued to roam low-sec and thought I had scanned down a Bantar, however upon arriving at the site all that was there was a Jaguar that locked me and so I lost “Rifter II“, after this I went back to get “Rifter III” and continue my roam but I haven’t been able to scan down anything interesting after that.

Now I’m docked in a station in low-sec and resting to continue my journey tomorrow. I’m also thinking about joining the Blood Money Bootcamp which is opening their doors for new recruits the 17th of January.

And finally I also got some more notes regarding PvP, I’ve updated “Attachment A” of yesterdays log.

Computer, save secure file, end recording.

Barrage = Medium range, slow tracking speed, not suited for orbiting at low ranges

EMP/Fusion = Good for short range orbiting
EMP=Shield, Fusion = Armor

Stations and Gates have guns that fire after you’ve killed someone, cooldown of 30 minutes.
Under a certain security status they will also attack when you just engage someone.

6/1/112yc Update

When one opens someone else’s wrecks or containers and he/she attacks you you are free to destroy this person’s ship.
One minute after such a fight you can dock at stations again and you can also jump to other systems again.

Barrage is optimal at 1100-1500m and EMP/Fusion should just be at 500m orbit

So far I’ve tried mining and mission running, so I thought why not put together a PvP Rupture if I ever need one. So I’ve asked around a little and apperently Garmon’s Rupture is a good fit. So I’ve looked at my skills and downgraded everything that I didn’t have the skills for so I can equip it.

Low Power

Gyrostabilizer I
Damage Control II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane I
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane I
1600mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I

Medium Power

Stasis Webifier I
Warp Disruptor II
10MN Afterburner I

High Power

4x220mm Vulcan AutoCannon I
Small Unstable Power Fluctuator I
Small Diminishing Power System Drain I

Ammo

1000xPhased Plasma M
1000xEMP M
1000xNuclear M
1000xDepleted Uranium M

I’ll use one kind of ammo per autocannon and will upgrade any item when I have the skills to equip it. I hope you’ll leave some comments and suggestions.

Regards, Xeross