Have you heard of the news lately? Or perhaps you have something to share on the topic? Here are some links to the news and speculation around EVE lately!

• Capital ships in high security space

I personally don’t see why there is a big fuss over this. I know Chribba is a very important person to the EVE community, but once again, it looks like if you whine about it enough and have a 30 page forum thread, you’ll get what you want. I still see a way that this gives those people an advantage over us; they can not be suicide ganked, while the rest of us still can?

• Ambulation is coming

Now this is a topic I don’t mind to talk about! Personally, I can’t wait until ambulation arrives so we all can walk around and actually see how big our ships are. I remember seeing a picture back when I started to first play that a Minmatar Rifter is as big as a 747 jumbo jet. So imagine that, but against a Rokh or even if you see your carrier in the station. But a question I have is what about having a mothership or a titan around? Then it would be really awesome if you get to see a shuttle animation. Though some people complain that then it would take a bit of time for the animations to work and therefore take more time to switch between ships. And I agree to that, to a certain extent. Other people are saying that people will now just sit inside stations during war-declarations and its going to slow down their business. But I guess we will have to just wait and see…

• Customizable ship exteriors

These would be really nice to see. I mean I don’t mind seeing a fleet of regular ravens flying around, but I would really love to see decked out ships with various colors. Just changing the color scheme of a ship would be good in my opinion.

• More changes to speed and it’s outrage

Currently, another hot topic of discussion.  And if you have read my blog posts just a little bit back, I bought a nice little Crow interceptor.  This speed change thing isn’t really working in my favor.  I would like to see how this will all work out; either “CCP caves and does not change anything on the topic of the speed adjustments” or “CCP steps up and strongly feels that this is a necessary change”. I am not saying that I like being nerfed, but I am curious as to what the developers will say.

• The new and improved EVE store is here
  
• Ship models on sale

These models look pretty cool, but are way too expensive for my budget. If someone reading this does buy one, please tell me how it is. I would love to see some bigger pictures too!

A thank you to CrazyKinux for some of the links and info, he is the one I look for to catch up on EVE news.

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:

This ship has rekindled my spirit to fly small ships again. It gave the the thrill to be able to dodge missiles and bullets. The ability to make someone really steamed when you bump them out from the asteroid they are trying to mine and prevent them from jumping into the next system.

In the fleets and gangs of low-sec space you will almost always find one or two interceptors. And among all those ships you will likely to see the Crow. It’s definitely a ship with great potential. I say potential because just a few days after I could fly the ship I met a pilot who knew nothing about fitting it. What good is a ship if it’s not used by someone incapable of flying it?

I should mention that this ship isn’t really used for missions or PvE. In fact most interceptors shouldn’t be use in missions. Complexes, yes; missions, no. Interceptors are for those 1 vs 1, 1 vs 2 , and occasionally the 1 vs 3 battles. If there is anymore enemies fighting you at a time you will indubitably die.

Why? It is because your speed and transversal velocity is your savior, they are the game mechanics that allows you to be able to negate a lot of the damage from missiles and bullets. And since transversal velocity is high when you are at a higher speed in your orbit around the target, the opposite will occur to other opponents, which then means that they can hit you. And then kill you.

Also as a side note, most interceptors will have a hard time going against a well tanked cruiser class ship so don’t try to engage in a battle against a battlecruiser or battleship. Try to aim for targets in smaller ships.

Several drawbacks with the Crow are it’s low hit points, orbit must be dead on, and ease of countability. The ship isn’t meant to take the full damage of 10 cruise missiles or torpedoes. So while it heads to the target, that is when it is most vulnerable. And in order to prevent that damage from getting through your shields you also must get into the right orbit distance so you can scramble the others engines, fly as fast as possible, and try to negate most of the damage the other ship is throwing at you.

I am loving my Crow and so far it had been awesome to pilot it. Time to join the ranks of the solo pilots.

[expand title=Technical Specs:]

• 10% bonus to kinetic missile damage
• 5% reduction in signature radius
• 10% bonus to missile velocity
• 80% reduction in propulsion jamming systems activation cost
• Tech 2 ship – Increased thermal damage resistance
• Default targeting range is 36 km with 4 locked targets
• Velocity is 425 m/sec with 0 m3 of drone capacity
• Shield hit points is 528 and recharges in 625 seconds
• Power grid is at 35MW, 150ft of CPU, and 400 calibration points
• There are 4 high slots, 3 medium slots, 3 low slots, and 2 rig slots
• 3 slots for launchers and 2 for turrets[/expand]

[expand title=Can't Touch This:]

• 3 Standard Missile Launcher

• 1 1mn MicroWarpdrive
• 1 Warp Disruptor
• 1 Cap Recharger

• 3 Overdrive Injectors[/expand]

[ratings]

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!

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!