I had my passive targeter running, locking up a Thrasher, when all of a sudden over the intercom, “Tony!”

Sigh, I unlock the ship and scoop the contents of my jetcan into my cargohold. This kill is not going to materialize.

[Read more of this post →]

For my 100th post, I reflected on the past few months and the anniversary of my character’s birth!

I hope it is enjoyable.

—

“Life is all about timing…

The unreachable becomes reachable, the unavailable become available, and the unattainable… attainable.

Have the patience; it is all about timing.”

—

Renewal

I called my headquarters to ready a clone for my jump. In preparation, an expert attendant modified my clone’s skull to match the five slots for implants that I would soon require.

Zap, and instantaneously all of my thoughts, feelings, and memories flooded into the fresh, and still nude, body. I see everything in a shade of blue, instead of the usual green and as it the clone fluid drains around me it disappears also.

“Welcome home Mr., uh…”

“Tony, just call me Tony.”

The young attendant, I am guessing no more than 25 years old, set a towel and some plain clothing down on the bench in the room. I step out of the cloning vat and dry myself off the viscous blue gel. Now that the attendant had made his way back over again, I asked him a question.

“Why is the cloning fluid blue this time? Hasn’t it always been green?”

“No, simply it was because your body just had special operations done on it, let’s see…” He looked at his datapad, but before he could answer, I interrupted him.

“Yes, for the insertion of 5 new implants.”

“Standards, I’m gonna shoot for?”

“Aye,” And with that I was dressed and left the facilities.

Mental Notes

The cloning complex was on the 200th floor of the station, close to the top, while my personal quarters were located over a hundred floors below on 69. Ha, it is still a funny number, and I smiled.

“Door closing in three, two, one…” Pshhh.

I took a seat beside a beautiful young lady on the eletrain as it took my down by every 10 stories. She was reading an Amarr propaganda book, something like a “Pax Amaria” or such. I had no regards for it so I didn’t take note.

Instead of absorbing in another successful person’s conquers in New Eden, I began to think about my own endeavors. Where should I take it from here?

After almost a year graduating from the School of Applied Knowledge, I can fly T1 Caldari ships up to the battleship equivalents, as well as Gallentean ships. I am also quite capable at piloting T2 Caldari ships up to the frigate variants.

Ah, my reflections led me to remember my first corporation’s CEO, Mz Cynide, and the ship he flew was the Nighthawk.

Ding! I snapped out of my reminiscence and looked at the level indicator on the eletrain’s wall. It read floor 70 and I almost forgot all about my destination.

“Doors closing in three…”

“Ah shi…” I leap out of my seat and sprang out onto the station platform just in the nick of time to get off the train. Behind me I heard giggles and then a soft pshhh and when I looked, the young lady had stopped reading her book to laugh. Her smile was beautiful.

I took for the stairs that would lead me down to the housing level. As I trot down the ever descending staircase I decided to begin studying on how to fly the Nighthawk.

Here we go; level 69 and I opened the door to the hallway.

Christmas

My housing was not complex, but it was not just a rectangular room either. Not long ago I moved here and I purchased this room with my hard earned ISK for about 16 million. It might not be a large purchase to some of the people out there, but considering I am only 3 jumps from the university, it was a hefty price for most.

I browsed around my living room and by glancing out and up through the window, I spotted a few ships hammering on each other. I could identify from their tags there were from the same corp so I didn’t bother to watch the rest of the fight.

The search continued as I looked for my keys to my safe. I should really keep it in a better place.

But soon I found it, lying beneath the sofa where there was another key and my dumbbells. Heh, they must have been down there for quite a while, but who would need them if they’ve gotta handle ships all day long?

The safe in my bedroom unlocked with a soft click and within I looked for my new, well you could say, “Christmas presents” for myself.

After receiving one from my agent, I decided to purchase the rest of the set. I mean why not take advantage of the skills to make my other skills level up faster? With the most expensive, the Memory Augmentation – Standard, I only had to spend another 50 million to get the rest of them.

My safe was small sized room holding all of my valuables, but it took no time to find this set of prized possessions. I put them in a glass case on top of a table.

Bzzz.

Looks like my surgeon has done a great job, the chips slid smoothly into their slots allocated in my skull with no problem. I took some reliever meds just in case if something would happen, I can with stand it for sometime to reach the emergency ward.

Voids And Connections

There had been a few times where I could not remember anything that I had learned recently; some of the days I was just dazed and confused. I am guessing I must have been podded somewhere and had forgotten to update my clone to hold my memories. I won’t be making that mistake again anytime soon.

This short vacation I took gave me some well needed rest to think and reflect.  I still allotted time to study my ships and the market everyday, but this trip was more on seeing the universe.

Without coms to anyone but my corp mates, I traveled through several regions looking at sights, experiencing new things, and just plain having fun.

Once I arrived home again after about a week of traveling, I took another trip to pick up a blueprint I purchased, and that itself was another 50 jumps there and back, but the memories and discoveries were well worth it!

Studying Like A Keener

As I stood in the refinery and manufacturing plant of the station, with loud buzz saws cutting beside me and the hissing of pneumatic drills bursting in the air, my work was near completion.

I was in the depths of the station trying to get some rare minerals out of the alloys I had collected from the rogue drones that patrolled New Eden’s free space.

From what I figured, if I can refine each type of compound with a specific quantity, I would be able to minimize my losses and retrieve the most out of the rarest minerals.

While waiting for my minerals to cool down, I read my book, Advanced Hydromagnetics Physics and Engineering. It was interesting to read because it talked about the make of delicate items and materials, mostly shield systems and subsystems.

I pursued these studies of understanding quantum physics and hydromagnetic physics with the hopes of lead me to be able to upgrade standard modules into something much better! But my daydream was interrupted by another Caldari man.

“Hi, sorry to bother you, but um… I see that you have some background in quantum and hydromagnetic physics, and um…”

Urg, hopefully this guy can spit it out already. But it really irks me when people want help, but explains their problem in a way that you must first decipher what they are really saying to actually do a thing about it.

“I would like your assistance in this small project I’ve been working on… I have some materials here and, well as I was saying… Can you help me improve this item?”

“Sure, I would be glad to help!”

Hidden Talent

I inspected the item and realized that it was a shielding module. Then I took a look around at his workspace and saw that he had the wrong materials to work with. I went back to my own workspace and brought back some datacores, a data interface to refer to, and some minerals and shield emitters in case I needed them.

After three hot hours spent in the lab, I was able to fix his problem and improve upon his shield module. He sent an image to someone over his datapad, presumably his supervisor, and turned to me.

“Hey I really appreciate all of your help! Maybe we can do this again sometime soon? But anyways, my officer says I’ve got to get going. See you around!”

What? He was just going to ditch me like that after I spent my free time working for him and using more than a million worth of my own in resources? No no no, he has got to learn that time equals money in this hard world.

I grabbed his arm as he brings the cart of modules around and he stares at me.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

The ambitious man tried to rip free from my grip to grab his gun but the butt of my pistol came down on his head before his arm even came close to this weapon.

Nice try buddy, but not this time. And I wheeled the cart to my workplace.

After closer inspection and research on the Galnet, I discovered that I had produced 10 items that were considered to by specialized tech 2 shielding modules. Great news because I had never knew I could do this!

“Hey Mitch, can you give me a quick price check on one Medium Shield Extender II?”

“Hold on a second… 1.2 million to 1.5 million is the price that someone is selling it at here in this station, and it seems like the store is pretty busy. You want one?”

“Nah, I want you to help me sell them.”

—

“I would love to start things off with a big bang.”

—

Profit Days

With all of my free time spent on getting copies of these shield extenders modified into tech 2 versions and then manufacturing them, I was able to make a profit of more than 5 million ISK every batch of 10!  This was going to be a good supplement to my missioning and selling income!

After I had a few more tries going at inventing these tech 2 items, I began to get tired, again!  This shows how hard us pod pilots work.  The blueprint copying was going slower than a titan and I discovered that if I could make my own components, I can be much more efficient in my productions and earn with a much bigger margin!

To complete these task though, I needed to setup a researching POS.  Mhmm, I thought to myself.

“Hey Ark, can you pull up and tell me what my standing with the Caldari State is? I hope after missioning all this time they are up around 6 or 7.” I asked my agent.

“Ah, close guess, but no.  You are at 5.3 currently.”

“Damn, so close.” I wanted to anchor a small POS in my home system that had a security status of 0.6. “Do you know if there is anyway to…”

“Bring it up to 6? Yes, actually, I have a mission that the tops’ have given me.”

Yes, this was my lucky day! “Uh, ya, I’ll take it.  Tell me who and where, and I’ll take care of the rest.”

That was so cliche…

A New Start

I still haven’t setup my POS yet.  Standings are just under 6.  My mood was unhappy and I was sick of rescuing that damned damsel!

Still, I kept at it trying to impress those corporates to try to get some attention from them.  More of these missions I ran for my agent and in preparation to throw down the POS, I said goodbye to my old corp.

It was not easy I’ll tell ya; first I had to sign a bunch of contracts and papers before I could leave, and then there was the resignation letter.

I always knew I would have to leave my corp someday, but never expected it to had been that day.  I had stored a copy of a general letter and throughout that week I had modified it to become my own.  With all the documents handed in, it was goodbye to The Reservoir Dogs.  I won’t be missing them, only because we have a shared office and communications channel to party with!

Without wasting anytime, I started a new corp in from my personal headquarter’s station and rented an office there.  It was not too expensive, compared to the like of the ones in Jita 4-4.

A stylish but still professional name was given, and from that moment on I was in Cosmic Euphoria Inc., after I had registered in the CCD (Concord Corporation Database) of course!

Exploration And Killing Evil

I always kept the shared channel between a few close friends open now, because it is the only way to communicate with Saft, Zoe, and my other buddies.

One morning, after I had worked out, washed, and eaten a meal of breakfast, Saft sent me a message for us to go do some exploring.  I told him my probing skills aren’t up to snuff yet, but he claimed that these complexes were setup with a beacon, signaling that anyone can go.  He was already in his Harpy blasting the Guristas, and asked for my assistance.

Since I also had a Harpy, I fitted it with 4 powerful 150mm railguns and a decent active tank, and proceeded to join his fleet.

On arrival in the first room of the complex, we turned on our afterburners and charged for a can.  After 40 kilometers were put behind us, he opened the can and found a “Scratched N’ Dented Keycard” that was labeled to be used for the acceleration gate beside us.

“I got my sensors are linked in and ready to go.” I proclaimed to Saft.

“Alrighty, activating the gate in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…” At that moment, I saw the small Harpy slung into the darkness of space.  I hurriedly activated the gate also and was pulled back into my seat.

Inside the next room, it was full with lowly frigates.  It was a shame to have to kill all those lives, but what can I do right? We quickly cleared this room as well and blew up a giant asteroid to reveal another can with another keycard for the gate in this room.

This time I took the card, initiated a countdown, and was thrown into the final room of the plex, with Saft right on my tail.

—

“Some might say the world is made up of only 4 elements: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.

Those forget there is also a fifth element, and generally it’s called Surprise.”

—

Hello Hello There Wonderful

“Overseer detected. Retrieving additional data.  Ship: Condor class frigate.  Identity: Retired Mining Veteran.  Faction: Guristas. Support, 20 Bantam class frigates, 5 Moa cruisers. Bounty: 200,000 ISK. Rating: easy to medium.”

The advanced computer installed with every Caldari ship pulled up all relevant data as soon as it detected the overseer.  I was not expecting this, a deadspace overseer? This could mean all kinds of things, faction drops, bounties of large proportions, the exotic loot, and the list still goes on.  Well, none of that is true besides the faction drop.

After a few frigates locked onto me, I snapped out of my dream.  By the time I had locked back onto them, Saft had all of them down into structure. After these guys were down, I immediately shot at the retired vet with my long range Caldari Navy iron charges.  Good use of LP!

Expectantly, he locked back at me and charged for my ship; wrong move by him.  When his frigate approached me straight on, it made itself much easier for my guns to aim for and hit.  Less than 2 volleys and the vet’s ship popped like a balloon.

Since I had all the aggro, Saft was already beside the wreck looting it.  I trust him, so I aligned to a gate waiting for him to grab everything.  He got out without a problem and I also jetted out of there. The whole time I heard his scream of joy and excitement.  We must have gotten something good!

Once we both docked in the station, I ran into his temporary hanger, and I almost literally ran into his hanger, door that is.

Right there beside the minuscule frigate was a container with two pieces of equipment inside that I have never seen before except in movies and through contracts.  It was a Pithi C-Type Small Shield Booster and a Pithi C-Type Small Shield Transferer!

I wanted to do a little dance, but I did not want to look suspicious to the other people in this shared hanger.

Money Honey

“Hey Tony, I just noticed that you have a lot of junk in one of your storage bins”

I looked around, and there was my top officer.

“Ah no worries, I mean that pile of junks have never failed to slow us down when we need something thrown together real quick right?”

Now he was looking at me with a red face. I felt bad to had embarrassed him. The corp channel was empty, which meant that no one was around to to anything. I had no need to go talk to my agent, so rest assured this was free time.

“…But I it wouldn’t hurt to haul them off to Jita and do some house cleaning.”

It was rare for me to be so spontaneous, and especially for this kind of task, but nevertheless, I commanded the crew to load up the Badger and gave them all some small spending money.

But hey, it was a chance for me to make a rather large purchase, my own small tower. If I could buy this and have it in my hangers, I would probably be much more motivated to run perform some more tasks for the State!

Ship Exchange

“And ya, that’s why I am training for a Retriever at the moment.”

Saft spoke to me about his mining expeditions. Great, I absolutely love talking about mining, sarcasm.

“Oh ya, well you better setup more cans around the belt while you are still flying the Moa.” I suggested to him in the restaurant.

Zoe chimed in, “Well hey, it is only going to be another two or three weeks until I can get into an Orca, then there won’t be any need for cans.”

Mhmm, I wondered, where would Zoe get the cash to get an Orca, and since when had he started training for it? Ah well, it would be another 20 days for me to get it after my current plans for the Nighthawk.

“Ah yea, that would be cool. Maybe then I’ll bring my Rokh out and mine as well!” Sarcasm.

“Yea, I was flying with this other Orca,” Zoe took another sip of his beer, “And I was able to access the corp hanger…”

As they rambled on, I checked my datapad and finished my desert and put some ISK cards down on the table to cover my bill.

“Well I will see you guys later, gotta go run some small errands with a buddy. Anything you guys need?”

They looked at each other and shook their heads. Alright, gotta go.

“Wait, can I borrow your Rokh and give it a run mining? Eight lasers doesn’t sound too bad.”

Sure why not, just let my beloved ship go to do the most boring tasks. But hey, if Saft really wants it, then alright.

“Sure, I’ll link you my encryption and such later and I’ll get it setup with laser twos.”

So it was settled, the ship will be sent to his hanger through the maze in the underbelly of the station.

I was tired, but as a capsuleer there were still things to do and people to see…

Things to do, and people to see…

EFT has led me to rediscover the potential of a ship that, if you have read some of my reviews, I didn’t like so much.

It’s the Raptor.

After the speed changes of Quantum Rise, I felt that since assault ships are now a pretty viable PvP solution, the Raptor could also do some good stuff!

So I opened EFT up once more and loaded the Crow on and pulled the Raptor besides it.  The damage on the Raptor was twice as much as the Crow.  Though it does have it’s downfalls, once it gets into web range, it slows down a lot!  But I found a good setup and tested it with some of my corp mates.  The Raptor could turn out to be a very nice PvP ship; it can take down a Moa in just a few seconds!

Looks like a re-review of the Raptor may be coming out in a little while.

Oh ya, the assault ships I was talking about, Mechanic V finally finished training for me this weekend and the Harpy I bought before the price jumped I was able to get in!  Looks like another ship for me to review as well, I can’t wait.

Both of these ships have been revitalized by QR and I think we will be seeing a lot of them flying around now (and some of us already have seen more of these).

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:

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!