Category — Ships And Weapons

Today is a big day, if not bigger than yesterday. My agent in the Caldari Navy is certainly on to something…

Hurry crew, we must complete refitting the ship by 18:00 hours to meet up with the rest of the support fleet! Hey you, foreman Henderson! I need you to run the fitting check list, and don’t be afraid to check it twice as we have no room for errors. This is our chance to go big and earn big!

“Yes sir! Cruise missile launchers, 5 of 6 online; 3 of 5 loaded. Drone link augmentor, wired and synced…”

Please call all aboard captain Arnie! I will be in my office to finish all the paper works for this mission and finalize the contract with Arkiras Airilen so our deal holds tight. Set destination for the rendezvous point and send a request to Scotty for a priority two permission to undock.

As the smoke clears away from the hanger pit and the Raven is revealed, the crew hustles to get the final preparations completed. Some even stayed here for overtime making repairs or replacing the overheated ship modules. Captain Arnie is optimizing the engines and the hum of the 7 Magpulse Propulsion Jets slowly takes over all other sounds there is.

Now undocked and in warp to the Kamokor gate, I made an announcement to everyone on board. “…this deadspace complex is not much more dangerous than the one we faced last night, but you need to remember that all the ships from yesterday’s support fleet are doing their individual assignments, just like us. So we need to be on top of our game! Intel provides detail of 3 Megathron classes battleships, 6 cruisers, and the amount of frigates in the 10′s range. This really is enemies abound… Good luck and may we fly safe.”

Ironic, isn’t everything?

We arrived at the hidden gate into an unauthorized Roden Shipyard in Caldari space. I contacted HQ one more time for a go and they have not swayed from their original statement; engage at your own risk. I thought how nice it would be for all to receive a nice bonus and was sure the battle hardened crew could handle what we were expecting…

“Captain Arnie, please warp us and engage on whoever fires on the Blacktide.”

Twenty minutes later we had half of the cruisers done, more than 8 frigate kills registered on the drone logs, and the Megathron battleship into hull damage; he won’t last long. Hahaha. Just as we finish off all of their cruisers the transmission technician picks up a signal from both of the Dominix classed ships signaling for help. She tried to intercept and scramble the waves, but it was too strong to jam and too long to break.

The clouds distorted.

3 battleships descend from the blinking astronomic anomaly along with 6 cruisers and then finally 4 other interceptors locked us down. Man I wished we had reinforcements at the snap of two fingers.

“Admiral, our shields are taking more damage than we can handle; the alpha damage alone from the neutron Megas would are spiking into the shield. We need to get rid of them first!”

“No! All drones lock and engage the navy interceptors! Now damn it! I also want all power diverted to maximum shield boosters, overload them if u must! Set all cruise launchers on tag B Thorax as soon as we can achieve a lock!” As this is happening, the shields are draining steadily. I figured it was the blaster Thoraxes doing most of the damage – note to self: train the flight crew to judge total hitpoints and total damage on view. One Thorax gone, one interceptor gone, still warp scrambled! And that Megathron we took down into hull is repairing his armor.

“Call for backup from the Corp, if not then local! Catalysm cruise on the damaged Megathron ASAP and keep hitting the interceptors with the drones! Arnie I want you to align to a station in half of the needed time and as soon as we aren’t scrambled, get us out of here!”

Miscount.

All the interceptors are now gone, and we still aren’t going… “put the metal to the pedal Arnie!” By now I was yelling hard, my throat dry. That’s when I ran to the windows and saw I had missed 4 other frigates that could be warp scrambling us. “Awe jesus…”

“Shields 7%, armor taking damage… Shields gone, armor at 88%, 64%, 33%. You better get in your capsule admiral! This ship is going to blow. I’ll overheat everything and hold them off, there’s no point to fight a losing battle.” The sirens sounding and panic growing, I unfortunately agreed, and right after I readied the egg, a violent blue explosion occurred and I warped off. Having a moment of silence I thought about what the whole crew and I have gone through in the past…

Captain Arnie, the best pilot I’ve had. His ability to tune ships for agility was of an guru and his tactics were often used to solve the ever occurring conundrums in New Eden. He could not afford a clone, but I was required to take a DNA sample of everybody on deck; least I could do was arrange that in the Navy for him. I’ll see you tomorrow Arnie.

A stupid decision on my part.

It’s time to sell sell sell. No insurance means nothing to fall back on. The new crew will be hard to find, harder than the modules, if we were want the most skilled and will be paid the least; and start running the new Raven with the minimalist crew requirements and at most basic modules.

But now I need some time to rest up; hoping that these missions we do are really helpful to the State.

Even before I got my Crow, lately it’s just been a lot of cruising around in belts looking for Guristas and doing some small complexes that are not empty. I guess it’s fun for the first bit while, but then it gets really redundant.

Then I tried to spice things up by flipping cans, waiting for can flippers, and taking wrecks hoping someone would engage in a 1 vs 1 battle with me. So far that hasn’t been working out very well either.

Other than that, here is a small list of past events:

• Had scouting help from Zoe for a hauling route through some low sec systems to retrieve my order of tritanium with my Badger Mark II.
• Almost got a kill in Akiainavas (Moa) with my Crow but he got out of warp scramble range, which is 24km, for some reason. Almost had him, he was down to 20% hull. Then we were able to recruit a new corp mate who is an active miner.
• Me and Zoe joined in on a mining operation with our good friends over in the Kul corporation and at the end, Saft surprised me and interrupted me when he brought in his cloaked Manticore.
• Then our corp did some little PVP and had some fun flying our ships
• The corp did a few missions for fun times.
• Went and tried to gang flipped cans. We first tried to lure other people to us by dropping our own can with minerals in it. Not a lot of people tried to steal our containers so we stole from others. Very good operation for a first fleet flip.
• Received another new corp mate
• Back to level 4′s with Saft, Zoe, and Busta. Yay!

Ya, that’s what I do, besides throwing up some sell orders and contracts.

I also wanted to share with you guys on how things have been going and to present to you some of the beautiful scenery of EVE online!

Jita:

Missioning:

Can Flipping:

Ratting

Mining:

Ah, weeks of training do pay off in the end.

As I wake up to another morning in New Eden, I felt ready for what was to come today. This morning I quickly finished all my necessary tasks, filling out contracts and orders so I can have more time to spend with my new beauty.

Once lunch was taken in, I strolled down to my new station hanger. It took a week for me and the crew to move everything into it. I pause at the control panel and select ship storage 8. The floor in front opens and cycles through my other ships; the Rokh, Caracal, Raven, an empty slot where I used to put my Drake, 2 shuttles, and a Cormorant destroyer; until finally the gleaming black frigate rose into view.

Only four or five members of the crew was around at the time since this ship was meant to be piloted by a single person. They looked with interest and when the door hissed open, I stepped in to get to know the cockpit better. Sitting back with the manuals in my hands, I thought to myself that anyone who doesn’t read up the instructions on these things must be real idiots.

This time since the ship was so small, I personally fitted the ship up myself in about an hour and when all of that wad done, then ignited the propulsion systems. Wow this thing has power. Crisp voices flowed through to the tower controls as I asked for undock permission.

Once out in space, everything seemed much bigger to me than before. I sent out into Corp com a message about the Crow and took her on a test flight. The nearest Gurista filled asteroid belt is in Umokka; just 2 jumps away. Plugging that coordinate into autopilot I noticed the ship had an overpowered warp drive that slung you into warp at 3x the speed of most other ships.

It took no time to find a small gang of Gurista frigates and I initiated the test you the ship’s systems and capabilities. Optimal orbit range is 25km; 19.5km for warp scramble. As Bloodclaw missiles fired off in succession, it did not take long for those frigates to become scrap metal. I noticed my shields remain at 99% and checked the log. Amazing! The gang of 3 had only hit me for a total of 13.7 damage.

As I got a bit restless from a day of playing with my new toy, a fellow Corp mate hits me up for some friendly PvP in a nearby system. I’m always one for those and next thing I know, we were at a isolated planet with a few ships. They were in wonder when my T2 frigate glided into their visuals.

In that gang of ships, there was a Ferox, Kestrel, and a Caracal. As soon as we took out of each others’ cans, we engaged in some 1 versus 1 battles. It was obvious I could take the Caracal and Ferox’s shields down, but I did not want to use a lot of missiles, so I stopped after a full load was unleashed. They, however, did not scratch my shields more than 3%.

Through that little combat training exercise in the new ship, I think I may have convinced some people to train up for an interceptor now!

It was getting late, so I payed a station owner in that system a small fee and docked up for a night, and slept in my Crow.

Make sure to submit to the screenshot contest! It ends soon!

I am always trying to update the website to make it better.  Even if it is just spell checking the little things, rearranging items or adding new features.

So this is a contest, if you wish, to contribute your art of EVE to the website.

All you need to do is send me a screenshot that is at least 865×180 big.  The I will crop it into the correct size and find a point of interest on the picture to place that image into the header of the website.

The image may be anything from a large capital fleet ganking a smaller fleet, your ship mid-warp, a beautiful mining scene, or anything else you may think of.

Winners will not only receive their picture on the top of the web pages, but also a prize of 5 million ISK.

Remember, it is the level of detail, quality, and aesthetics that I am look for!  At the end of this, I will clear out some of my older pictures for the new ones!

Thank you.

Rules:

• Each person may submit 2 screenshots, anyone more than two will be disqualified
• Each screenshot must be at least 865x180px
• Send your pictures to tonglil@Hotmail.com with your in-game-name
• Once the results are announced, the grand prize winner will receive 5 million ISK and their winning picture on rotation in the header of the website.
• Second prize winner will also have their picture featured in rotation and receive a Scorpion blueprint copy worth estimated 1 million ISK in game.
• Third prize winner will have their picture in rotation and receive a Ferox blueprint copy worth 500 thousand ISK in game.
• The contest closes on August 15, 2008 and the results will be announced on August 16, 2008

If you have any more questions or comments, please reply to this post.

So training to level 5 in Caldari frigate took 10 days with some implants in. Now I must train for electronic upgrades to level 5. Yesh, how long will it take to get a stealth bomber?

Anyways, sorry for the afk-ness. I was on vacation for the past week. A little journey into the Canadian Rockies.

Before I left, I set 17 orders of large quantities that could be considered to be fairly expensive in the marketplace. Now that I have returned, the wallet got a boost from 30 million to 110 million. How the heck did that happen? I estimated I wouldn’t have had a profit of 40 million. But 80 million, 2x, that’s cool!

Now with that money I will be able to afford a stealth bomber, maybe go do some level 3 missions. I haven’t done those since I lost my Drake a few weeks back. Oh that Drake will be missed.

After getting a Manitcore, my plans are to start the training for an interceptor. It’ll be another long training session, ugh.

A Rokh in a rock.  Hehe.

Remember the day when 7 capital ships, 7 carriers, were lost by Quam Singulari?

Those 7 capitals went down with the help of 80 to 90 hostile ships. If you tried to go get a glimpse of the action, that would have been all you got; a glimpse, before you were sent back to your clone.

The lag at the time was utterly terrible. Just for me to jump into the Tama system meant waiting 5 minutes on the Nourvukaiken side of the gate for it to hurl my ship into the action. When my screen became interactable again, i found myself about 10,000km away from the so-epic-battle.

So I war to 0 on the gate in case I had to make a dashing escape from any flashing reds shooting at me. The screen stutters and lags as we move closer to the star gate. In a few quick seconds, just enough time for 2 screen shots, I find myself back in Todaki where my clone is installed. Well that was fun, I guess?

Didn’t really see much, but that’s okay. The 2 screen shots aren’t bad after some detailed examining.

Later on that day I joined another fleet of 70 ships, ranging from shuttles to battleships. Our objective was to engage a group of gate campers that was about 30 ships big. But when we got there, the intel changed.

About 10 more ships arrived. Thinking that it was no biggie, we engaged and managed to destroy a few Dominixes and Megathrons before 3 carriers managed to cyno in. We couldn’t dent their shields very much so it was time to retreat and move to another system and regroup. Now if they wanted to cyno in again, we would know and they would have needed to use about 80% of their capacitor, rendering them vulnerable.

At this time, I needed to go, so I left the fleet and headed back to Nourvukaiken with my Merlin. As I safely dock back into my station, I thought about the days’ encounters and realized I saw about 10 capital ships. Not bad.

But seriously, Tranquility really needs some upgrades.

This is a guide for all those of you who absolutely love to flip cans get free minerals that took ages for someone else to extract. But beware, this tutorial is filled with some humor!

First of all, these are the stuff you need:

1. Hauler ship
2. Quick small ship
3. One or two giant secure containers or even a general freight container
4. 0.8 or lower system with lots of jetcan miners
5. Safespot that only you know in that system
6. Guts (I really hope you have guts, or you should go see a doctor)

Instructions:

1. Go to your safespot, drop off and anchor your cans and containers. Make sure this spot is your own and no one else knows of it.
2. Bookmark this spot, never delete it!
3. Fly your hauler ship to the safespot, eject, and fly back to your other small ship.
4. Go fly your small ship and look for jetcaned cans of mineral.
5. Once you spot your can, go to it and flip it so it’s contents now belong to you.
6. To do this, you fly up to the can really quick, jettison something, like a mineral you stole previously or a piece of ammo, or even better yet, your bookmark for your safespot (no, I’m just joking, don’t do that).
7. Now bookmark your can.
8. Open up the other person’s jetcan and grab everything into your own can.
9. Run away!
10. Warp to your safespot and sit tight for a few minutes, preferably until the aggression countdown wears off.
11. Get out of your small ship and hop into your hauler.
12. Warp back to that can and pickup it’s contents.
13. Warp back to your safespot, drop everything into your container.
14. Wash, rinse, repeat…

That’s how it’s done, follow those easy… 14 steps and you can steal ore faster than you can say, Badger Mark II, well not literally of course.

When I try to explain this concept to some people at first, they don’t understand why we setup a safespot and not go into a station. Well person-who-asked-this, it’s so we can shave off about 10 minutes waiting to dock and undock (again, sarcasm).

I hope you have fun and aren’t warp scrambled by some nano’ed mining interceptor.

[ratings]

On 23:13:00 EVE time, a fleet of about 60 State Protectorate pilots engaged an enemy fleet of about 50 pilots, or so we had thought. Once we got there, about another 30 to 50 ships jumped in through and lagged us up.

This is what the fleet started out like, about 90 people.

Our plan was to go around back door from the Caldari high security space into Tama. There was hostiles in the only Tama station and we wanted to trap them inside and snipe/kill them off. 10 minutes later and we arrive. Things didn’t go so well because there was a neutral spy following us and another spy in our fleet. Most of the people inside that station escaped. We started to chased them down and was able to pick off one or two.

Later, we reach Heydieles and our recon says a fleet is parked on the Old Man Star to Villore. We decide to go after these guys and got the fleet ready. By that time when we got to the destination, we only had a little above half of the people remaining.

The battle was not the best I have ever had. It lagged like hell! I did not appreciate it because you would always target the wrong thing or shoot at something that wasn’t there anymore. Everyone zoomed out to try to reduce the lag, but more reinforcement ships just keep jumping in from the Gallente side. Now we were just trying to get those that we could.

Our fleet commander was still calling the primary targets, and we were able to successfully take some ships down. In the end, I helped to kill these guys:

• Victim: Kadean
• Location: Old Man Star
• Corp: Elite Underworld Special Forces
• Alliance: None
• Ship: Dominix [Fitting]

• Victim:Parmenides Elea
• Location: Old Man Star
• Corp: Wrath of Fenris
• Alliance: None
• Ship: Dominix [Fitting]

• Victim:Lucas Avignon
• Location: Old Man Star
• Corp: Avignon Associates Inc.
• Alliance: None
• Ship: Dominix [Fitting]

If you want to see my full kill board, please visit here.

Here is to the cool people that stuck it to the end, I salute you!

Corewin, CRUSH BOSS, Cuthbert Drake, Ecky Ptang, Kazabet, Lord Erebos, Marcuz Griffin, Ray Rosny, sakura okami, Splunk jamma, Tzu Wu, and Xanath Fireheart

Gallery, enjoy!

I took a journey with a few fleets over the past week and so far I would say they have been successful. We would jump 7 or 8 jumps and try to kill any war targets we could find on the way. Once we reach our destination, we would then sit on top of the gate for 20 to 30 minutes, waiting for prey to fall into our traps.

The fleets I was with starts out with about 60 to 70 guys, but on the way there, we would always lose about 10 or so people. Most of the time due to lag or them not following the fleet.

As I have also learned over these past experiences, our fleet commanders need to be smart and energetic. They needed to know how to asses the situation.

Yesterday, we sneaked deep behind enemy lines to capture about 20 complexes. It was one of the best times I have ever had in low security systems. In the end, we ended up with just about 20 people in the fleet after most of the people had to leave. I was able to rank up my State Protectorate status to a Second Lieutenant.

Among our fleet, we had 20 frigates, 30 or so cruisers, and 10 other sized ships. The few Raven pilots were our clubs to fend off and scare off any major enemies.

The whole time during these operations I flew my trusty Kestrel bomber. Fit it for going as fast as possible and doing as much damage as possible, I could blast any NPC pirates guarding inside the complexes. The FC was very determined and had a goal, to capture every complex we came to. He would send the frigates to the minor complexes, the cruisers to the standard complexes, and the battleships to the major installations.

In just 2 hours, we had captured 20 of these rooms for our faction.

But in the end, I had to stop my journey and retire for the night. I bid farewell to the rest of my gang and headed for my safe spot for the night.

May my journey continue tomorrow.