The Climb

I've had rather a mixed week in real life and of course this has effect to influence my EVE Online game play but I have done some logging in as well as giving some serious consideration to where I am and what I'm doing.

Preparing for Travel

A rare business trip took me  to the city of Melbourne this week. It was a nice break and really helped sort out a number of work related issues but the biggest benefit I got was physically being unable to login to EVE for four and a half days.

This meant I needed to either organise help with my towers or leave them knowing that they'd be filled before I returned and I'd have a period where I'd have no reactions being made. Unfortunately I left it far too late for option 1 and had to go with option 2.

In the end it wasn't that much of an issue, a little production time lost but all has remained functioning.

The night I got back I sorted my towers and we're back to normality.

A Skill Queue Finishes

In 25 days my carrier pilot will finish Advanced Drone Interfacing V at which point (aside from a post on that) it will mark the end of Drone skills for him and I will need something new to train. To this end I've spent my week pondering what I could and what I should train.

I've decided to return to a Int/Mem attribute setup so that I can finish a multitude of support skills that are either at Level III or Level IV. The fact I never did them to Level V irks me and its time to clean house, so to speak.

EVEMon has been so useful for this planning as I can set filters to only show Int/Mem skills and then I just work through them adding them to Level V. Then I use the Priority attribute to make all the Level V skills appear at the end of the Plan and then its just a matter of changing the order I need skills to be done in.

Level V is Steep

The plan comes out at 12 hours shy of 700 days and that includes a remap to Int/Mem. I could remove the Navigation skills (~ 75 days) but its high time I finished them off and its only a drop of 120 SP/hour from the Int/Mem remap.

On closer examination I noticed that its the completion of the Level V skills that takes up the most time. I have a mix of Rank 3 through 10 skills that will be done and these range from 9 days up to 32 days each to get from Level IV to V.

If I removed all the Level V skills my queue would be a much nicer length of 118 days but its the Level V's I need to get. On the bright side at least I know what my carrier pilot will be training for the next two years...

The Dark Side Called

I answered.

The ice won't mine itself and whilst I don't actually need it the dark side called and I dusted off a skiff.

Mining is relaxing (to me) and its amazing how many less people there are in ice belts since ISBoxer was nerfed. I only did about 30/40 minutes in this belt but we cleared what was left and I think I mined around around 70 or 80 blocks.

War Footing

My tower came out of reinforcement around 1am AU last night. I logged in just after down time and tried to online some extra modules and empty other POS modules so the loss wouldn't be too much.

I'd spoken to a couple of people during the day from other alliances/corporations in the region and said that there might be capital ships in my system around the time that the tower came out of reinforcement. I said I wasn't asking for help, I'd resigned myself to losing the tower, but capital kills are capital kills.

I don't know if anyone did send a scout through but I provided the information in good faith because it was very probable that capital ships would turn up to finish the tower off.

The Morning After

I went to bed in the belief the tower was lost and we'd have new occupants in our system. I'd decided I would be as annoying as possible by attacking any towers periodically and, if I could, reinforce any tower when I could.

So I woke up, checked EVE mon and was a little confused to see no notifications or mail overnight about the situation. I fired up my industry tool and checked my towers.

There it was, no longer indicating it was reinforced and the stront had been replenishe (probably by my CEO).

What Next

I've started production again, losing near 2 days has sent a few of my other towers off whack and its a little annoying but I think I'll stop production for two days in those to allow this one to catch up. I have plenty of materials on hand for sale and it really doesn't impact my industry.

I'm still not sure WHY my tower was reinforced but I'll be bringing in new POS defences and ammunition next JF run. If I can anchor dozens of guns in preparation for a repeat I may be able to piss them off enough that they'll reconsider any attack. A small chance but it worked for a recent POS assault I was going to be involved in.

I'm sure there are more things I can do and I'll be speaking to other experts, people with experience in POS Sieging and Defence, and my Alliance CEO to see what we can do to protect ourselves in future (as I pay taxes to the alliance for running the towers).

Free Gifts from CCP

I ignored the post at first but a short post, on the free gift all active accounts will be getting to celebrate the CSM X election, by the EVE Hermit warranted further comment I thought.

Shuttle

In celebration of CSM X we shall be receiving a new shuttle but wait, its not just ANY shuttle its a Council Diplomatic Shuttle which is a decommissioned, disarmed Pacifier class CONCORD frigate!

This is quite cool and instead of receiving the hull every active account, on the 25th February, will be able to redeem a 10 run BPC of the ship. 

The statistics of the ship aren't very special, seems to be very similar to a normal shuttle with a 5 AU warp speed, 500m/s base speed. Interestingly though it is able to lock up-to two targets (for what use considering it can't fit modules).

Trinkets

CCP Leeloo also added this:

Every account that votes in CSM X election will also receive 10 collectible trinkets one for each council which will contain a list of all council members who served during that term. Just a little keepsake for your fond memories of every single CSM member who has served on the council over the years.

More free stuff! I like collectibles so this will be a nice addition to what I've got saved from previous give aways.

Alliance Tournament Prize

It seems to that this year the winners of the two alliance tournaments (for Tranquillity and Serenity (the Chinese server) will fight it out for another new ship (Victorieux Luxury Yacht) that will only be released on the winners server. 

War!

Well one of my towers in NPC Null has been reinforced and looks like I'll be losing not just that but the pair of towers that was part of.

They used capitals to RF the tower AND previously killed a tower elsewhere with dreads and carriers. 

It's a pain and very unlikely I can do anything about it, I can't repel fire of that magnitude!

That said, I have a couple of ideas to disrupt any fleet that comes to kill the tower after the RF period is over and I know that my Alliance will be trying to do something to harass and stop the tower being killed. 

RF Timing isn't great for me (I think its ~3am in the morning my time) but I've already come up with a few ideas on how to piss off the attackers when they return.

Tiamat Release Day

It's been a good run, CCP have released some excellent content through expansions since Kronos. Most have had one or two features that could be considered "marquee" with fixes and balancing changes around them. 

Hyperion is the only expansion I didn't get excited about but I'm going to have to add Tiamat to that now. The projectile turret rebalancing would be a distant second place but nothing else really stands ou, first would have to be the new Drifters (more below).

Drifters

The only feature I find interesting for me is the introduction of the Drifters, either a new NPC or an offshoot of the Jovian's. Further information can be found here.

The pictures we've had are very (Star Trek) Borg-like but their battleship and weapons are just plain sexy. The battleships seem rather lightly tanked but with an insanely powerful 'super weapon'.

How this fits in with the Lore will be very interesting and I'm looking forward to reading more about the Drifters, Jovians and supposition on how they are all linked in the coming weeks. 

Padding Things Out

To say I'm apathetic about this is an understatement but "free" content is "free" and at some point I'm sure to see, fly or kill the Svipul (new T3 Minmatar destroyer).

I'm sorry this is a sub-par post but I wanted to have something to record the release of Tiamat. 

The Freighter Escapes

I previously wrote how my freighter pilot got caught by a ganker in Niarja and I logged off in order to evade any attempt at ransom or ship loss.

I'm happy to report that extraction of my freighter was successful a couple of days ago and in a reasonably humourous manner.

It was suggested in the comments (by Catalin C) that I could use the Duel mechanics to allow a neutral party to web my freighter for quick escape. 

A Cunning Plan

In preparation for the extraction I watch listed various gankers and people whom I'd determined might be related to Machariel pilot. They all appeared to be active primarily outside of my time zone and would randomly login/logout in neighbouring systems.

So I devised a plan to login a few alts ready to extract at a time just after downtime. I also needed a catchy codename for the operation. The best I could come up with, after spending far longer than I did coming up with the plan, was Operation Runaway.

Avengers They Are Not

Assembled in neighbouring systems and moved in prior to the operation:

• Boosting Alt in a Damnation with Republic Fleet Mindlink
• Combat (PvP) Alt in Rapier with Faction Webs
• Second Combat (PvP) Alt in Falcon with Rainbow ECM setup
• Industry Alt in a Covert Ops ship, cloaked and at a deep safe in system

Multi-boxing WAS a bitch to setup but I managed to do it thanks to ALT-TAB, a heavily caffeinated drinks and a couple of bacon rolls.

Go Go Go

EVE is starting up...

EVE is STILL starting up...

Characters ready to go at the launcher screen.

EVE is CONTINUING TO start up...

Triple check that the launchers are in the right order

SERVER STATUS IS OK

I ALT-TAB through each launcher clicking the Login button, carefully avoiding the Freighter pilots launcher

Select the character as each Selection screen appears

There is a delay of about 2 minutes as each client fully loads and I see my ship in space.

Fleet is created, invites sent, accepted

LOCAL IS EMPTY

Everyone is out of warp and ready, make sure I cloak the covert ops and move him in a random direction

Login the Freighter pilot, invite to fleet

CRAP! LOCAL HAS JUMPED TO FIVE PEOPLE, WHERE DID THEY COME FROM?

Takes me a few seconds to realise they are all my characters.

PANIC ATTACK AVERTED

It takes a long time to warp the 1,000,000km.

Out of warp, boosts are active and the EHP of the Providence is a nice ~382,000

Start warping to my covert ops pilots. 

DAMMIT, ACCELERATE FASTER

Wait until ~30% warp speed before initiating a duel and activating my webs

Freighter warps off into the sun (quite literally)

Success and an Oversight

Operation Runaway was a total success. I (internally) let off a cheer and finish off my energy drink and a bacon roll. 

Take that fake internet game pixels and person in their parents basement*

It is only as I write this that I realised my big mistake, I forgot to bring a neutral logi to rep my freighter should it have gone badly. Fortunately it didn't...

My wife asks me what I'm so happy about, I tell her what I expertly did, and she rolls her eyes and calls me an idiot.

* - it may be true, I can't prove it is nor can I disprove it.