Drones are dead, long live Drones

Let me present this screenshot from EVEMon:

In just over 5 hours 30 minutes Advanced Drone Interfacing V will complete and that will mark the end of training Drone skills. Finished, Done, The End.

Unless they add new Drone skills and I really don't think they will. Actually I think they might want to cut the power of Drones further... but I digress. That is a post for later.

It's taken me nearly a whole year, at 2700 SP per hour, to complete the Drone skills and this skill, which is pretty much, no it is useless but it does round off the whole category and it makes the first that I've actually completed on this character to V:

Of course this achievement will occur during the early hours of Friday morning my time and, whilst something special, there is no way I will be awake.

So this post will mark it and I shall then move on to the depressing Navigation skill as they are woeful on this character.

Trolling with POCOs

I've never really had much interaction with POCOs or other structures aside from POS'es. I know my way around a POS, most of the permissions (and pain associated with that) and how to do most POS related things.

I learnt something new today thanks to Trinkets Friend.

Have a read of the story, it explains much of the background and more importantly the hilarious trolling to that has gone on. Sure the eve-mails have flown but I've never, ever, heard of using POCOs as a method to troll someone.

Genius.

Scylla is released

March 24th Scylla was released without any major issues although 12 hours later there appears to be one really obvious defect. Kill an NPC ship and if it doesn't have loot no wreck appears, if it has loot the wreck appears.

Anyway well done CCP on the release and *golf clap* for the really silly NPC wreck bug.

Patch Notes can be found here and feedback here.

I'm not really exicted about Scylla, aside from the nerfing of the SkyNet play-style and Download On Demand there isn't anything that I feel makes this worthy of being a release.

But that's me. Your mileage will vary.

PSA: Refuelling your Jump Freighter

I've had to make a few jumps this weekend to move a lot of things to high sec and it is only as I return to my home for the final time that I realised how close I was to being stuck in the middle of nowhere.

This is the fuel bay of my Jump Freighter after I finished my final jump, damn good thing I don't have any more to do right now.

Remember people, refuel your capital ship AFTER every jump and keep those tanks topped up.

Failure of a Torpedo Delivery Service

I've been a little too busy recently and I have neglected my wormhole alt, I will be addressing that but I have kept up to date with goings on and it appears that a group have decided to camp our wormhole and "inflict suffering and loss" upon us.

In reality it seems to be a camp by a dozen or so bombers with light/medium cloaky tackle and much failure. Don't get me wrong, they have gotten a kill or two but these have been as much failures on our part as success on theirs.

Trolling Level V Completed

Today however they failed whilst attacking one of our members and lost a ~200m ISK Bomber which resulted in the following missive being sent:

Dear Solvenaria Azionchenkov, 

Thank you for your attempt to deliver torpedoes to me. Sadly for you, the quality of your service is sub-par and your torpedoes are wholly inferior in quality, clearly made by illiterate children in some broke-ass third world country. Therefore I am exercising my consumer rights by returning your torpedoes, with interest.  

In future I will take my munitions delivery via Danoz Direct, because they come with a free set of steak knives.  

Regards, 

Miskoranda

I have corrected a few, minor, spelling mistakes but otherwise this is as sent and is just brilliant. 

I will be logging in more often now my work load has reduced and this type of humour just makes me think I've found a corp that I can be myself in.

Victor(ieux)!

Serenity vs. Tranquillity took place today, yesterday or even tomorrow, depending on your time zone and it was great to see the best of the Chinese server versus the best of Tranquillity .

Camel Empire were Tranquillity's representatives and apparently have acquitted themselves superbly. I did not see the matches nor have I been able to see the replays (as of yet) but in a best of 5 setup they won 3-1.

The win secures for the players of Tranquillity the Victorieux Luxury Yacht whilst Serenity will never see this ship.

The Matches

JesterTrek on Reddit posted a great summary of the matches (and I will reproduce here but the content is his):

Match 1: Serenity Fleet Typhoon comp v. Tranquility Ishtar comp. Serenity wins 5-3. TQ kills all the tackle, neither of the Fleet Typhoons, which were hull tanked and used Rapid Heavy Missile Launchers.
Serenity takes first blood 1-0.

Match 2: Serenity Cerb/Cynabal comp v. Tranquility Ishtar comp. TQ wins 5-0 in a pretty straight-forward dunk.
Tourney tied 1-1. 

Match 3: Serenity Cerb/Cynabal comp v. Tranquility Confessor/Damnation comp. TQ wins 5-2. Malediction spiked in the first minute, excellent damps from Niart in the Maulus, but then Eshnala/Confessor and Niart got missile-eaten very quickly. TQ pulled it back together and slowly beat Serenity in a war of attrition.
TQ up 2-1. 

Match 4: Serenity Hyperion comp v. Tranquility Astarte/Heretic comp. Man mode activated. TQ wins 5-0. Heretics eat Stiletto and Rifter (the frigs pretty clearly underestimated them). Rail Hyperions tank fairly poorly but is balanced by pretty poor damage application from the TQ team. First Hyp visited the Edge of Glory, baited there by Sturm in the Exeq (nice!), followed slowly by the Caracal and second Hyperion. So the match went on a long while but was never in doubt.

Both TQ and Serenity players were excellent but in this battle TQ have prevailed.

Victorieux Luxury Yacht

The ship that will be released to TQ in the future is something special, designed to avoid interdiction as well as possessing the ability to fit quite a decent tank and, most wonderfully, a covert ops cloaking device.

Released statistics for the ship are available at this post on Reddit but in summary:

• 50% bonus to warp speed and warp acceleration
• Immune to Interdiction Sphere Launcher, Warp Disruption Field Generator and Mobile Small, Medium and Large Warp Disruptor
• Can fit Covert Ops Cloaking Device
• High Power Slots 1
• Medium Power Slots 1
• Low Power Slots 4
• Medium Rig Slots 3

Wow.

This ship is going to be very good for covert ops or even recon use, and that's just from the role bonuses. Add in the ability add a shield tank via rigs, scram/point in the mid and speed tanking modules this could be a very real threat in fleet situations.

Some theorycrafting I've seen have suggested that this ship could even be fit to have a warp speed of 9/10AU per second and an align time equivilent to a travel interceptor fit (2 seconds).

A new ship is good and I'm going to be looking forward to updated EFT/Pyfa releases when I can have a play with this ship.

A Few Small Things

A few updates on how things are going and what I'm doing in EVE Online. These don't warrant a full post themselves but the information may be interesting to those two or three of you that do read this.

The Reddit Effect

I don't get a lot of traffic and I'm fine with that.

I (primarily) write for myself and for a small number of people who seem to like what I do write (I haven't had complaints that I'm aware of). However I posted a link, as a reply to someone, to the Confessor post I recently did on Reddit and I saw first hand what the Reddit Effect is.

I had nearly 6 times more traffic in a 24 hour period than I normally do and, from that, hopefully I gained one or two new readers. 

So if you did come in thanks to that post, Welcome :)

Moving Time

Apparently I was not following some rules. I disagree to the exact details but I'm not going to get into an argument on the internet about it.

I've been told I can no longer use an alternate system (when my primary is too busy) for my jump freighter. As a result I decided to move all my assets from the system in question, including combat ships that were there in case I was able to get in on a capital kill.

It took me two days but I've finally moved all the ships out and I finally got to fly a Bowhead in order to move them the few jumps to their new home. That was fun.

Milestone Passes

I passed a new milestone last week my total worth according to jEVEAssets passed 200 billion ISK. I didn't notice for a couple of days I think because when I did it was 203 billion. 

It's a milestone, now I need to turn the assets that form the bulk of that into ISK so I can invest in new projects.

Super Characters

Today, in bit over 3 hours, marks the time my last character will finish training for the Aeon super capital ship. Due to the increased number of pilots for sale, the price changes and (most of all) the upcoming changes to Sovereignty in Summer 2015, I don't think there is any point in training super-flyable characters for sale.

It's been fun but time to move on and do something else. If the Super Capital market changes in the future (anything is possible) then I may return, I have my guides and notes to remind me what to do but for now this income stream is being shut down.