Just a quick post to show I’m still alive.

Here’s the new Eve Expansion video, for you to watch during downtime.

Enjoy!

Those of you former residents of Norrath will remember the Everquest progression servers. These were servers that were launched in 2007 that started with no expansions applied. There were no Vah-Shir, no beastlords or any of that nonsense. The tunnel in Commonlands was the one and only auction zone. Then after a number of weeks they unveiled Kunark. A few more weeks pass and then Velious is released. After that, Luclin.

I want that for Eve.

You could copy your character over just like Singularity and then the premise would be for two weeks you’d be in a different early phase in Eve. You’d start out with ONLY tech 1 ships. If you had a Destroyer or *gasp* a cruiser you’d be the bringer of mass explosions.

Then Castor is released and tech 2 frigates are in the game along with modules. Conquerable stations are sprinkled into 0.0.

Two more weeks pass for Red Moon Rising and exhumers, force recon ships, command ships, interdictors, and capitals are added in.

Next, Revelations. Boosters, rigs, and scan probes are in.

Reveleations II brings us level 5 agents, sovereignty changes, and Amarr balancing.

This is where it gets frozen. Think of all the possibilities, tactics, and ship build craziness you could implement along the way.

Want your interceptor to have two microwarpdrives? Go for it. That NOS DOMI OF d00M? Go nuts. Apocalypse with 7 heat sinks and no stacking penalty? It’s in the cards. Or maybe the 4km/sec Typhoon is your style.

The rest of the fits that you haven’t taken out for years are all on the table: ECM Scorps, Sniper Tempest, Thorax with 8 heavies, plated claws, damp-arty-rapier. Whatever suits your fancy.

Bring it on!

I recently had the opportunity of having quite a bit of extra isk in my wallet for once.  Usually when I get close to 100 million in my wallet I snap and buy some sort of unnecessary ship. Or worse, hatch a harebrained money making scheme like selling +5 implants in 0.0.

This time I got the shopping itch and decided it would be fun to buy a faction battleship. I only really have the skills to fly a Navy Apoc or a Bhaalgorn, so I went with the Apoc. All the other ships I’d embarass myself in and probably get blown up by an NPC somewhere in empire. The Navy Apoc has twice the shields as well as an extra lowslot.

As it turns out I was a little short on isk, so I borrowed a couple hundred million from a friend (who charged me 5% interest). What can go wrong with this plan, right? I’ll be making money twice as fast because of the Navy ship, yeah? I was using a cheaply fitted Dominix with tech 2 drones previously. So I dumped the Domi and went to work. I made my own CCC rig and fitted it up quite nicely with Tech 2 Megapulse and lots of cap recharge and resistance plating. The single LAR2 seems to do the repair job nicely. With the extra lowslot I put in one more Capacitor Power Relay 2.

I began cranking out the missions for the Sebestior Tribe until I got to one of the best agents available. Now that I finally have the ship, I have the standings, and I’m in positon I can start grinding the isk.

I will say it’s been a couple of weeks and it will probably take a couple more weeks to break even on this endeavor. But EVE is a long term game and it will pay off dividends in the end!

I finally paid off my loansharking friend. Or so I think…

I finally got around to training recon ships. Right about the same time, my corp decided to drop out of factional warfare in favor of harassing a nearby 0.0 alliance. As it turns it it’s an alliance of about 400, which sounds menacing compared to our 50 or so active players. But the enemies’ percentage seems to be about 75% carebears and 25% pvpers.

The tactics that we started employing were roll in heavy with remote rep battleships with ECM support and a dictor bubble. This would get them all fired up about having a slugfest. Once that fight is over roll in the next night with small groups of cloaky recon gangs. These gangs would run through their gate camps and go straight for their carebearing systems.

This does two things – it keeps the enemy on their toes, not knowing which type of gang is coming their way. If they guess wrong they’re sending battleships against recons, or maybe even worse for them, recons against battleships.

The great thing about the recon playstyle is once you get a few good bookmarks and start figuring out how to scan their systems down, you play on your terms. Need to go afk for a couple hours? Cloak up in a safe. You’ll still be freaking out some of their miners and ratters who see you in local.
If you do it right you’re shutting down part of their industrial and isk-making backbone for a while.

Once a target of opportunity presents itself, then you can commit to the fight.