death race 2010

ya so I entered. I know what strategy I am going to use, but not which ship. swift, fast and evasive is my trade mark, but I don't want to get caught in a ship with a paper bag for armor. hmmm, what to do?

yes this is meant to confuse you, I can properly fly, fit and pilot almost ever ship battleship class and down, just not sure which way to go.

EDIT: I mean I can pilot all my race's ships. But I can also fly T2 minmatar frigates.

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Blog Banter

I also am electing not to participate in the CCP vs. CSM blog banter. I don't find this discussion interesting in exactly the same way I don't find Windows vs. Linux discussions interesting. The discussions are usually full of bias and prejudice and often have little bearing in facts.



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My ship broke

Egad, battleship rats are rough on Catalysts!

Low Sec Hulk

Yes that's right. After much thought and deliberation as well giving up time after time, I finally have come up with a low sec hardened Hulk setup. In fact I have two sets of fittings for different circumstances.

Due to the safer nature of the Orca setup, I  recommend moving hulks into, out of, and around low sec in the Orca's Ship Maintenance Hanger with the Hulk agility maxed. (2x T2 Istabs and 2x T2 Low Friction Nozzles). The agility fittings provide a 4 second align to warp which if you are on your toes is most likely safe and suitable for safe mining so long as you follow proper safe low sec mining protocols (bookmarks, distance from belts, etc). Not everyone can do this though, and so here I have two setups, the one briefly described above, and the one that follows.

The following setup is safe for busting through gate camps as all my low sec hauler setups are, but they have an additional training componenet to make the setup work; Thermodynamics. Overheating your Y-S8 Hydrocarbon After Burner gives you just enough boost to push you past the minimum 75% warp speed needed to go to warp as you decloak. It's tricky getting the fittings on, and it requires fill Engineering Skills training to make it possible.

Highs:  1x Improved Cloak II
Mid: 1x Y-S8 Hydrocarbon Afterburners
Lows: 2x Micro Auxiliary Power Core I
Rigs: 1x Low Friction Nozzle Joints II, 1x Ancillary Current Router II

How you chose to fit your other slots is up to you, maybe if you sprung a few more ISK for Micro 'Vigor' I Core Augmentation variation of the power core, you could give yourself even more power grid and fit some extra shields, ECM Bursts or whatever. I choose to fit for max evasion so anything that gives me an extra slice of time to get away, I fit it. That's shield extenders, ECM Burst, ECM Drones.

Now, the procedure. Although it's nearly identical to the Occator and Orca and just as those two ships have slightly different operating procedures, so does the Low Sec Hulk.
1. Align to warpout.
2. Overheat Mid Rack
3. Start Afterburner
4. Initiate Cloak
5. Turn of Afterburner
6. When AB is EXACTLY 75% complete, turn off cloak (this gives a half second of extra AB boost while decloaking before actual warpout occurs.
7.Immediately hit Warp.

This procedure is exact. It must be followed precisely to maintain invulnerabilty between decloaking and warping out. You will gain a few percent of AB boost between decloaking and when your AB cycles down, and that pushes just past the minimum warp velocity. Any deviation from 75% increases the amount of time while decloaked, and leaves you vulnerable.

I am very happy to present these Low Sec Hulk Fittings, and I hope you find them to be of good use.

Yours Truly,
Escoce


EDIT: For those of you who haven't thought about this yet, you can carry a third strip miner in your cargo hold, get to where you want to mine, dock up, refit stripper and Istabs. When done, redock refit Cloak and Power Cores and AB to move to next system. You are using bookmarks to undock right?

Fail Dec

So my corp, and thus my alliance was wardecced yesterday by an 11 member highsec wardec Corp called Deaths Right Hand and run by a fellow named BravoFoxtrot and has perhaps 3 truly active war fighters.

Guy, do your homework. We live in lowsec. 1) chances of ever running into one of us again is rather slim 2) we live where everyone and their whole families are trying to blow us up every chance they get.

Do you really think we care about you?

With utter disregard,
Escoce
United Trade Syndicate


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I Am Escoce

Welcome to the eighteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the
monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by none other than
me, 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 to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out
other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!


On May 6th 2010, EVE Online celebrated its 7th Anniversary. Quite a
milestone in MMO history, especially considering that it is one of the
few virtual worlds out there to see its population continually grow
year after year. For some of you who've been here since the very
beginning, EVE has evolved quite a lot since its creation. With the
expansion rolling out roughly twice a year, New Eden gets renewed and
improved regularly. But, how about you the player? How has you gaming
style evolved through the years or months since you've started
playing? Have you always been a carebear, or roleplayer? Have you only
focused on PvP or have you given other aspects of the game a chance -
say manufacturing. Let's hear your story!



I am Escoce. I have always been Escoce. I do not have alternate identies and Escoce grows and deals with the consequences of all my actions, whether that is doing well on the markets, mining asteroids, busting gate camps with more vocal bravado than normally recommended or not. That is who I am and who I will always be within New Eden.

If one wishes to read all the details of my history they can start at te beginning of this blog with post #1, because I have kept a loosely organized journal of my goings on. However, I'll try to sum it up briefly with what I think the greatest changes are that I have made.

I started out very timid, mining asteroids in the cistuvaert system. I was afraid of getting lost and didn't even jump out of the system for at least several days. I had no idea how detached one really is from their home system. I think I made my first excursion out of Cistuvaert when there was no asteroids left to mine. I had no choice but try another system. I found one next door called Aidert. I minted for a bit there, and learned about NPC pirates and I got my little frigate blowed up if I recall and I became scared of 0.6 security systems. I tried to stay in cistuvaert as much as possible since I didn't know of any other 1.0 systems near by (remember I was a newb who had no idea how small geographically or astrometrically the game actually is to a more experienced player). I ran into my first player pirate can flipper from Whiskey Pete's Dry Cleaning, and got my butt handed to me. Later when I could fly a vexor, which I used for mining I also started carrying flights of drones and I ventured out into aidert once again and let the drone take care of the rats while I ignored them.

The same can flipper showed up, flipped my can. And I went ahead and sicked my drones on him. I actually almost had him, he was deep into hull before I went pop. Ah well I felt pretty good for the try, but I was still mostly broke as new miners typically are. So I started again with the frigates. I graduated to industrial ships and when I didn't have time to mine with 1 minute cycles into cans, inwiuld park my uterine of various grades over time next to the asteroids and jus let the laser fill the cargo bay before thenroids went pop. It was still really slow progress. I could barely afford new skills let alone ships.

Anyway I kept in mining until I could fly and mastered mining with the hulk. I went into debt to get the hulk sooner, but had to work hard to pay it off. All that work soured me to mining. I was so sick of mining.

I figured i could still deal with minerals since I know what they are worth and I sold my hulk and used the capital to start buying minerals in Arnon and its neigbors and selling them in Oursulaert and Jita if the price warrented the longer trip. As I could afford rigs, I fitted them (this was when they were still one size and ultra expensive). My Iteron V was gradually become more costly than an obelisk, but it was a little at a time. After about six weeks of all night back and forth, I was about halfway togetting a freighter.

I ended up borrowing a billion isk from a total stranger (believe it or not), and I bought my freighter, realizing after the fact that I still had 4 days to go to complete Spaceship Command that I needed to train Advanced Spaceship Command so I could fly the darned thing. So anyway started hauling with the freighter and the ISK started to flow. Over a period of a few weeks, I started carrying mining equipment to Arnon to sell as a loss leader to get the miners working in Arnon and neighbors to stay put and mine more rocks for me. It worked. I started pulling 3-5 freighter loads of tritanium out of that constellation every single day since people don’t like hauling Trit. It takes more time to haul the Trit to Oursulaert than it does to mine an equivalent amount of ore for the other minerals.. After some time it dawned on me that the names of the people dumping minerals on my buy orders were rather random looking and I realized I was buying Macrod minerals. I filed a petition saying that look, I wasn’t doing anything wrong, but I think I am buying illegal minerals in a legitimate manner. The GM told me so long as I procured them in good faith at a fair price and I wasn’t buying them for something like 0.01 ISK, that I was safe and thanks for the notice. Well that combined with my internet connection going out for 10 days or so, the whole market collapsed. I tried to restore the mineral market, but my steam was gone, and it was no fun and a constant trade war with the other people who moved in while I was gone. So I changed everything and became a low sec trader.

I had trained for bigger and better ships, and I started flying occators through low sec to pickup minerals I bought with region wide orders than I could get cheaper than staying in high sec. I hauled those minerals for cheap out of low sec (for a fair price, just a better price for me). I did just fine with that and the extra margin made up for the loss of volume. I stopped trading tritanium because now it wasn’t worth it for me to haul it anymore since I couldn’t use my freighter to pick up minerals in low sec, and I started hauling the higher valued minerals (Pyrite was never good for trade for me). With the fit I had with the Occator, I was pretty much invincible with the shield extended up the wazoo and I carried WCS in my cargo hold in case I found a heavy gate camp to bust. I did just fine with ammo bouncing off of my shields until I went to warp until I ran into my first Heavy Interdictor in low sec. I didn’t know they could use their Warp Distruptors in low sec with a special script, but I learned it that day. All low sec operations halted while I figured out how to make this work again. I finally developed the Invulnerable MWD/Cloak/Warp for the Deep Space Transports. I haven’t lost another Occator since.

Every since then, I have been figuring out how I can draw more people out to low sec to reap the benefits of low sec, and increasing available space for all pilots by spreading out a little and all the other benefits that go with that…more targets for pirates, better targets that are harder to catch and so more fun to hunt, safer grounds for the industrialists that aren’t too carebear-ish for low sec. I began developing “safest” fits for industrial ships like mining frigates, mining barges and exhumers. I started an alliance meant to foster this education and use of low sec (which is still very much in development due to lots of spring time outdoors AFK from many alliance members, but mostly me).

Finally, the piece de resistance, the low sec Orca fit I recently developed and wrote about. I have been using it to bust camps with great confidence and non-chalance since, moving tons more stuff through low sec than ever before possible without a jump frieighter (requires alts or cyno team mate and 5 billion isk for just the ship). It can be flown solo, and carries roughly half the stuff the jump freighters can carry. Good shit!!! My mission is to continue to help develop low sec, write an article for E-ON magazine describing how to fit, fly and behave as an industrial based character in low sec in order to survive and thrive. I will continue to be very vocal about the benefits of being in low sec and how one can fly there safely if one follows the basic rules of low sec piloting. One might even be safer in low sec than in high sec if one considers that they let their guard down in high sec. I honestly can say that since I have lived in low sec that I have lost more ships in high sec than I have in low sec…all because I drop my guard.

That’s who was a timid miner afraid of leaving his home system to become, low sec trader, low sec developer, low sec industrial educator and crazy ass pilot finding ways to make the big ships safe to bust camps.

I am … Escoce



Participants:
CrazyKinux's Musing: The Heroes with a Thousand Faces
StarFleet Comms: Life. Evolved.
A Carebear's Journeu: This Carebear Thinks He Is Developing Teeth
The Elitist: Our ventures in EVE
A Mule in EVE: From a guppy predator
Travels of the Ronin: Evolution and Adaptation
The Ralpha Dogs: The Past Through Tomorrow
Where the frack is my ship: A journey, not a destination
I am Keith Neilson: 7 Year Itch?
Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah: Evolution Me
EVE Opportunist: A long history of a short time
Roc's Ramblings: Things Change
Guns Ablaze: Onwards and Upwards
EVE On Real Life: Haven't you grown up yet?
More as they get published...

[Delicious Tag: eveblogbanter18]


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Reverse petitions and hulkageddon

I know CCP has ways of detecting macro-mining pattern in the logs if they are made aware by a player that points out the potential offender in a petition.

Well I have a good though unlikely to be implemented way to wreak worse havoc on macros.

The reverse petition in conjunction with hulkageddon. A police force of volunteers who roam the belts in search of baddie-bad micro miners. When a potential macro is found, a special type of petition is filed, which grants immediate immunity for what would ordinarily involve CONCORD intervention. The macro hunter would reap the rewards of the drop, and gain a sec-status boost just like they were ratting. Now of course mistakes will happen, and there is a way to deal with that too.

The reverse petition filed will flag the pilot with something like a convo request popup, but clearly a warning of impending doom with a countdown. If they do not acknowledge the accusation within say 15 minutes, the accused is criminally flagged with a standard counter and anyone may freely dispatch their ship (but not pod). Alternatively, the accused could be flagged only to the petitioner.

The method to avoid abuse (macro spamming), would be to limit the number of petitions each pilot may send between down times, as well as limit the number of petitions a pilot may receive. If either number is exceeded, then the petition fails and the miner is safe from both explosion and safe from macro spam.

Also, the same pilot cannot petition the same accused more that once per down time regardless of how many petitions either has left.

So this still opens doors to problems of abuse. There are ingame ways to prevent this. Firstly, a faction should be setup, one lime CONCORD but specifically for combating macro miners. Individuals or corporations would have to join this faction in a similar way to the militia for faction warfare. Trial accounts would be ineligeble, and there should be a security standing minimum requirement.

If the pilot makes a mistake and the accused was not using macros which a review of the pilot logs will reveal, and the pilot just had to go afk for some legitimate reason ( which he doesn't have to validate, he wasn't macroing after all), and files a petition, the the macro hunter would be forced to pay the replacement cost of the ship and all it's mods and cargo contents (crystals for instance). As well the macro hunter would suffer a security status just as if he killed a pilot under ordinary circumstances. If the security status falls steeply enough due to repeat mistakes, the pilot is unable to file the macro hunter petition until sec status is returned to acceptible levels or enough decay time occurs to nomalize the sec status they have now, say measured in days or weeks. If sec status falls below minimum entry requirements, the member (or Corp if it's a Corp membership) gets booted from the faction. So corps would be very careful to monitor their members or risk Corp expulsion.

This system would help improve the proposed goal, by ensuring only legitimate macro hunters would be interested and that they would be careful of who they mark as macros.

I know there are still holes, but in general what do you think?

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