Excuse me if this reads a little bit rushed, but I had gotten the blog banter topic mixed up with last month’s! Please, continue reading.

Welcome to the nineth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by 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! Check out the other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

Last month Ga’len asked us which game mechanic we would most like to see added to EVE.  This month Keith “Mandrill” Nielson at I Am Keith Nielson proposes to reverse the question and ask what may be a controversial question: “What game mechanic would you most like to see removed completely from EVE and why? This can get quite heated so let’s keep it civil eh?.”

[Read more of this post →]

Skills

Over the last bit I have learned how to operate all shield related gang links. Right now I am training towards the mining gang links in anticipation for the Orca.

My plan right now is to finish some miscellaneous skills like overheating and then adjust my attributes for training missiles, spaceships, and guns related skills.  With this it seems the next year of skills are set for me!

PvE

Big news in this sector. My friends and I have started to run level 5 missions. So far we have completed 3, but only because the going does get quite tough!  They hand out good bounty for how long it takes; about 12,000 each for 45 minutes of work!

I am still working on more of those missions in a minute videos so there will be some more of that too.

In the spare times, I am trying to find some exploration sites but to no avail I just keep seeing wormholes. Keeping a log for escalations is my top priority right now when I do these sites.

PvP

I have attempted to do some PvP in my favorite frigate, the Incursus. So far I’ve killed a Merlin and lost two of it. I’m seeking more targets, so things should get more exciting!

Industry & Trade

Things have slowed down. My limited supply of invented BPC is killing my money flow. Less successes means less money earned, meaning more time needed, equaling in more money used.

My store has opened so if you want to purchase anything feel free. It is free delivery! I am at the same time researching a lot more blueprints to try to open some more doors.

Wealth

Wallet floating at 2 billion straight as I try to figure out what to do. I still have to set money aside for the line of Minmatar and Amarr ships I will buy, plus I am trying to fill my hanger with an Eagle, Rokh, Megathron, Blackbird, Crow, Ferox, and any other ships I don’t have but I can fly.

I don’t want to risk my new Brutix trying to do PvP with it because I know I will lose but it would be fun to scrimmage.

Other than that, there is only about another 100 million on the market and 50k LP points; hopefully that can convert to a smooth 75 million.

Question

Now it is your turn, what have you been doing?

A big thanks and congratulations to those who participated, the next time I am in need for some good art I’ll make sure to start another contest.

Prizes

1. 10 million ISK
2. 5 million ISK
3. 2 million ISK
4. Single run Rokh BPC valued at 1 million ISK
5. Single run Rokh BPC valued at 1 million ISK
6. Single run Scorpion BPC valued at 750 k ISK
7. Single run Scorpion BPC valued at 750 k ISK

I deviated a little from the announced prizes.  The reason for this is only because I received 7 screenshots that were all wonderfully done.  I was a little disappointed by the lack of entries while there were 2 weeks to submit photos, but it was nice to have some readers participate.

I chose to use all of them in the new headers, and each winner will be contacted to pick up their prize!

Winning Shots

#1 By ZeSparrow

#2 By Yargok

#3 By Koori

#4/5 By BlankStare

#4/5 By Ix Forres

#6/7 By Andrius Victor

#6/7 By Morphisat

Feburary 9, 2009 >> April 6, 2009

This is a long one that has been long overdue.  Lots of pictures so enjoy!

Skills

Well the NH has finally finished its training.  I still need to get heavy missiles up to 5 to be able to use T2 launchers but right now there are more important things to get over with.

Coming up on my plan is to get my alt to be able to produce more efficiently.  That should take about 2 more days from today.  After that it is back on with my main to get his leaderships skills over and done with so he can move on and start cross training for Amarr and Minmatar ships after my Gallente cruiser skill reaches level 5!  I want the Ishtar!

I will be doing some optimization to my skill plan to get max efficiency from a lot of these perception based skills as I will also need to train up lasers, artillery, and more weapon skills in general.

PvE

With the prowess of the NH I have definitely done some missions.  I sped through them with no problems.  In fact, if you have not noticed, the HD camera drones I purchased are doing good work.

Since my Caldari standings are at 9.95 already I decided to start doing missions for different corporations.  My first pick was Spacelane Patrol but after a look, most of their agents were too far away.  I took another gander at the available Caldari corps around and saw that Corporate Police Force had a level 4 agent in my home system.  Wonderful!

Before I began working under another corp I used my free time to cash in the loyalty points with the CN and was able to sell everything I got for a cool 200 million.

Aside from missions I did some extensive exploration for a little bit.  I went into wormholes, found some hacking cans, did some unknown encounters, and met a pirate.  I recorded the events of the unknown encounters and hopefully I will have time to analyze what went right and what went wrong, then releasing the logs for you to see and learn from my mistakes!

Let us talk about WHS (wormhole space).

While I do find the prospect of finding exotic ores in WHS to be exciting but the dangers involved are just too risky for me right now.

Some people are such idiots that they do not perform any research before taking on huge tasks it surprises me.  These guys brought in a POS in this WHS, which is fine.  What stunned me is the fact that they also brought a Cyno Jammer Array and even took the time to anchor it!  The ships they had with them were 3 industrials and 1 Harbinger.  At that moment I really wished the WH I came in was not close to collapsing!  Looked like they were going to stay for awhile too!

The amount of exploration, feelings of fear, feelings of intrepidity, and the jaw dropping backdrops WHS has to offer simply rejuvenated my desire to play EVE.

PvP

PvP action is lacking.  Lately I haven’t even had a good theory craft session about it.

Industry & Trade

While the pew pew side of combat PvP is lacking, I am doing a lot of competitive market trading.  Well not trading per say, but selling a lot of my stuff and then buying more to keep up with my production lines.

I am building a lot more T1 items to sell these days because the amount of volume being moved is just incredible.  I attribute this fact to the release of Apocrypha; so many people are exploring and fit T1 because they are afraid of losing their ship in unknown space.  Things like guns, missile launchers, ammo, and drones all sell pretty good right now.

My POS is still standing (and hopefully will remain standing).  It looks to be a good investment though it does get very annoying that I have to go refuel it and that is just a pain.

Wealth

As production increases with skills and the market being so whacked as it is, I am taking advantage of all that I can get.

After spending about 360m on the Nighthawk, selling a bunch of faction stuff, and ISK being so fluid all the time I broke the billion mark and now sitting on 1.5b.

Talking about so much money brings me back to the olde days, when it was nessessary to fly 10 jumps just to save a million and scourging the market for 10 minutes to save a few hundred thousand.

On the market is another 150m waiting to be sold.  I don’t worry too much about prices because over the week everything gets sold and when I relog on the weekend I’m good to go.  Ah, I like being a weekend warrior!

Question

Now it is your turn, what have you been doing?

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.