Yearly update

Second post of the year already!

My Eve play is on a hiatus and has been for almost two years now. I have no goals so no real reason to log in except to keep my skill queue active and collect goodies every now and then.

Lobotomizing alts gave me enough ISK to keep my two accounts subscribed through 2017.

But yay! I did achieve my goal of getting to the number one position in number of level 4 skills.

Still spending way too much of my free time playing computer games but these days it is World of Warships that has my interest as it offers me the PVP experience that EVE fails to deliver.

• Quick entry into action, no need to spend ages fitting up ships and then traveling to a combat area.
• Not as twitchy requiring fast thinking and reflexes, WoWs allows for more time to react.

Still alive

Still alive, brought back by expiring accounts and skill extractors.

Logged in to vote for the CSM as well. Was not going to but saw Joffy Aulx-Gao online so decided to vote and show my support.

Since I could still vote with 3 accounts I voted:
Account 1: Joffy, Foo, Gorski, Nash
Account 2: Joffy, Gorski, Gorski, Nash
Account 3: Foo, Joffy, Gorski, Nash



As I downsized to two accounts I also took the opportunity to lobotomize unused skills from my alts turning those skillpoints into 30 PLEX and 30 billion isk.

Another alt was injected with a skill injecter to instantly give him armor rigging skills to fit bulkheads.

Still waiting for EVE to introduce free-to-play with accounts that simply don't train skillpoints.

New Books

In preparation for my summer vacation and as a nod to Scalzi who manages to post stacks like this every week.



Nemesis and Anvil of Stars are childhood books that I now purchased for myself.






Skin Game should have been in the stack of books but I already made my start on this one.




The books I just finished.

The exception is Severian of the Guild which I have owned for several years but I stopped reading halfway through in the past. Still waiting for a good time to pick it up again.

Sir Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett passed away on 12 March 2015, aged 66.



As with Iain M. Banks before we knew this was coming but the news still came unwanted and unexpected. My condolences to the family.

Terry's legacy and creations live on though and will keep us smiling through the dark times to come.

Roy Orbison

This morning when I woke to my radio alarm clock playing Roy Orbison's 'You've got it'.

This evening I wanted to come online and play EVE tonight but instead I looked up the song and spent two hours reading his wikipedia page and associated links plus youtube videos of his songs.



Roy Orbison - Running Scared
Roy Orbison - You Got It
Roy Orbison - Only The Lonely
Roy Orbison - Oh, Pretty Woman

ninja edit: title corrected...must have been in a hurry to get some sleep.

EVE: CSM 10 voting

 Really late this year but still in time that I am allowed to vote at all.
http://community.eveonline.com/news/news-channels/eve-online-news/introducing-your-csm-x-candidates/
77 eligible candidates

Only 2 candidates that failed to pass the security check, one of which was Trinket’s Friend. http://localectomy.blogspot.nl/  (who I think would have made a decent candidate, shame he was refused candidacy because of unknown)

Vote Match if you have trouble matching candidates to their platform.
http://match.eve-csm.com/

CSM Wire
https://sites.google.com/site/csmwire/home


My candidate shortlist:

1.    Mike Azariah - Placed first on my ballot even though he would fit between Gorski and Psianh in how high I rate him. Because I want him on the CSM and think he needs first round votes to pass the threshold most of all.

2.    Sugar Kyle – Because Sugar.

3.    Gorski Car – Heard good things about him, I like his blog. Why do I stil think of him as PL? I included him, just to give him a chance to proof his place on a real CSM. Was going to place him 5th in my list but moved him to third place for the same reason Mike is nr 1, Afraid that 5th place will be too low to actually get my vote to count for him in any way.

4.    Steve Ronuken – Based on blogs and recommendations, not because I have any clue on his worth and value.

5.    Corbexx – Based on blogs, recommendations and mainly his wormhole income rebalancing efforts.

Then things start getting difficult because names are often associated with corps/alliances I don’t support or are unknown/new faces.

6.    Endie – CFC, recommended by lots. He won’t need my vote but I’ll give it just to give off the signal that I’d prefer him over Sion.

7.    Manfred Sidious – PL, as Endie he gets in just based on recommendation by blogs I read.

8.    Psianh Anyvander, tainted with the Noir name. Since Gevlon and Noir had a falling out that name no longer has a positive connotation for me. (Noir Academy is not Noir Mercenaries and Psianh is a person, not the organization but the taint remains, I am just too lazy to try an overcome my bias.)

Honorable mention

9.    Jayne Fillion – community stuff, wasn’t there some controversy he was involved in with bomber’s bar?

12. Chance Ravinne – unknown new. RL job in marketing.

13. Ashterothi – unknown new.

15. June Ting – Brave.

11. Bam Stroker – community stuff. Only thing I heard about was the Down Under meet. Either he gets elected by his real suporters or not.

14. Ariete – unknown wh.


Little things: 
Last post I read before making my own:
http://eve-prosper.blogspot.nl/2015/03/hari-seldon-for-csm.html

Endie/Sion/Thoric: Does the CFC really think the best possible CSM includes 3 CFC members parroting each other?

Incumbent CSM members about other incumbent CSM candidates?
Here I noticed Mike did not get all that many endorsements.

What is wrong with your list?
You mean the shuffling at the end and no nr 10? Sion would have been nr 10 on my list but was removed so I was left with only voting list of 14. Decided to place Bam/Ariete further back on the list when doing the actual voting.



Other CSM voting recommendations:
Nosy Gamer
http://nosygamer.blogspot.nl/2015/02/the-nosy-gamer-endorsements-for-csm-x.html

Sugar Kyle
http://www.lowseclifestyle.com/2015/02/csmx-lists.html

Corbexx (CSMX candidate)
http://corbexx.blogspot.nl/2015/02/csm-ballot.html

Steve Ronuken
https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/2015/02/24/csm-x-ballot/

Rhavas
https://interstellarprivateer.wordpress.com/2015/02/24/csm-x-election-recommended-voting-slates/
https://interstellarprivateer.wordpress.com/2015/02/22/csm-x-full-endorsements/

Rixx Javix
http://eveoganda.blogspot.nl/2015/02/csmx-official-voting-endorsements.html

Kirith Kodachi
http://www.ninveah.com/2015/02/ninveah-csm-x-endorsements.html

Gevlon Goblin
http://greedygoblin.blogspot.nl/2015/02/csm-10-recommendations.html

Lockefox/John Purcell
http://eve-prosper.blogspot.nl/2015/02/csmx-endorsement-list.html

Neville Smit
http://nevillesmit.com/blog/2015/2/24/my-votes-for-csm-x

Jakob Anedalle
http://evechecklist.blogspot.nl/2015/02/jakobs-csm-ballot-recommendations.html

Mynxee
http://outlawinsouciant.blogspot.nl/2015/02/csm-x-thoughts.html

Wilhelm Acturus
https://tagn.wordpress.com/2015/02/25/choosing-the-tenth-galactic-student-council/

Marc Scaurus
http://justforcrits.com/csmx-endorsements/

Psianh Auvyander
http://psianhauvyander.blogspot.nl/2015/02/gonna-shed-tear.html

Jeff Kione
http://evealtoholic.blogspot.nl/2015/02/csmx-endorsements-from-eve-altoholic.html

Bobmon (CSMX candidate)
http://evenews24.com/2015/02/25/bobs-corner-my-votes-for-csm-x/

Pyrodante
http://thelemicascension.blogspot.nl/2015/02/csm-endorsements.html

Proclus Diadochu 
http://diogenes-club.blogspot.nl/2015/02/csmx-endorsements-and-voting-slate.html

Feyd Rautha
http://evedarklord.blogspot.nl/2015/02/my-top-csm-picks.html

Niden
http://crossingzebras.com/editorial-my-csm/

And a link back to the past:
CSM9 voting post
http://razielwalker.blogspot.nl/2014/04/eve-csm9-voting.html

CSM8 voting post
http://razielwalker.blogspot.nl/2013/04/csm-elections-are-live.html

CSM8 pre-election candidate list
http://razielwalker.blogspot.nl/2013/03/csm-8-pre-elections.html

EVE: 2014 goals review

So how did I do?

Get into a carrier.
Completed, even lost and replaced one already.
http://razielwalker.blogspot.nl/2014/12/eve-how-to-lose-carrier.html

Isis, certificates and skill training.
Completed, I have all the masteries I wanted (for Raziel everything subcap caldari at IV except for stealth bombers) and stuck with my goal of training existing skills over injecting new ones.
Last week I was less than a month away from training all existing skills to at least rank 4 and I finally caved and bought 40 new skillbooks to inject.
http://eveboard.com/pilot/Raziel%20Walker/

More research/manufacturing.
Completed, While involved in T2 manufacturing this is limited to inventing and building a couple of thousand T2 modules every month for my alliance.
I bought more blueprints, researched more blueprints, actually build almost as much as I could get materials for in nullsec where my two indy alts are located but profit was still limited compared to trading. More profit can be generated by using a freighter service and selling implants and faction modules on the local market.
The state of my blueprints two months ago.

Wealth and asset increase
Total failure, I actually have no idea of my current value but I'd estimate it around 25-30 billion isk equally split between assets, wallet and sell orders.
On the other hand, I have no real pressing need or desire for more weatlth or assets until I want to pay for my own station.

Ghost sites
Total failure, haven't run a single one.

SoE Ships
Total failure, the only missions I completed this year where the epic arcs. I do have an astero and stratios but those were bought on the market.

PVP
And not to annoy Drackarn but I might just try out this FW thingie. After all, he keeps writing about those plexers earning 100m isk an hour.
Incomplete, no actual progress has been made in getting more excited about or feeling a desire to engage in pvp.
I actually spent one or two months training up an alt to fly a cloaky venture for some button orbiting and ran about half a dozen small sites. Stealth bomber missions are probably a better option if you want to do FW for isk. And if you are into FW for the pvp then it's better to invest your training time in a pvp frigate instead of cloaky WCS button orbiters.

Bonus goals
While I did participate in two ganked roams and was the victim in a bombers bar run the number of social events I attended was less as intended. There was always an excuse not to participate. Not interested today, not enough time to prepare, wrong timezone, expensive training clone.

http://razielwalker.blogspot.nl/2014/03/eve-ganked-108.html
http://razielwalker.blogspot.nl/2014/02/eve-ganked-103.html
http://razielwalker.blogspot.nl/2014/01/eve-incursion-fleet.html

2015 lookout
No real goals yet.

Looking to go back to three accounts as soon as I feel I can live with only three training queues and without the option to log in that extra scout.

Going to sell of more unneeded assets so I am more flexible when relocating. Going to put my characters more together doing fun projects instead of spreading myself out with characters in high sec, null and wh space.

EVE: How to lose a Tengu

This week marked my first PVE loss to rats in 1155 days.



The mission: step 2 of the minmatar epic arc, The Cost of Preservation.

As I warp into the mission area I spot my target, a single gallente cruiser. As soon as the target is locked missiles are on their way and I engage my afterburner to close range. Before my target goes down two waves of ships spawn, together they amount to about a dozen battleships and cruisers accompanied by half a dozen frigates.

Within a minute the first frigate and two battleships are down and then I turn my attention to the four NPC frigates that by now webbed me and in particular to the one that was pointing me as well. The webs took away my ability to speed tank so my shields were beginning to drop.

Because my fitting lacked webs and target painters my ship has trouble applying damage to elite frigates so they usually took just as long to take down as a battleship but I never had trouble killing them before.

Except this time after the frigate went below half shield it started repping itself and even after I overheated it repped to full between volleys. Not that much later I was in my pod looking at the wreck of my ship.

After getting through the 'WTF just happened' phase I jumped into my hawk to pick up the dropped items. The next step was picking up my Golem so I could complete the mission. Since NPC's only point but don't scram I could always use a MJD to get out or relocate if my tank was not up to the job.

For the rest of the mission chain that was exactly what I did.

Fitted with shield resistance modules supplemeted by MJD+MWD for mobility my golem would warp into the mission area. After getting into position I'd enter bastion mode and drop a mobile depot and tractor unit. Switch out the prop mods for two target painters and optionally a webifier to better apply damage. When shields dropped low a shield booster and amplifier were fitted and I'd rep back up to full.

Another 11 ( out of 15) small combat drones gave their life trying to kill small red crosses.

EVE: NCDOT alliance update

EveNews24 published an article about the NCDOT alliance update, the purpose of this SOTA appears to be an effort to show the rest of EVE what elitist douchebags make up NCDOT. The CFC rises in my estimate just for being on the other side.

This article is also a good example of why I am not a member of a 'pvp' alliance.

http://evenews24.com/2015/01/08/leak-ncdot-alliance-update/

Highlights:

• Deployment OUT of Querious anyone found there after we leave im going to have you purged for being a blood sucking piece of shit. 
• Don’t be that guy I get made an example of for being a fucking jew.

How dare anyone live in your own space. During deployment your POS-es don't need maintenance and there is no longer any need for logistics or keeping the local market supplied?
Does this mean everyone is NC. is a bloodsucking pvp parasite that only exists by the grace of renters that perform all industry your alliance needs and pay for all your SRP programs?

• Everyone in NC. is required to have both a Dreadnaught and a Carrier they should be located in Querious
• Everyone in NC. should be working towards owning a SC or a Titan and current pilots who own them should NOT be selling them regardless of what you think to changes CCP make!

Capital pilots only, but leave your capitals at home and don't dare touch them.
If you own supercapitals just remember, it's a space coffin and final dead end in a pilot's career. Don't you dare treat your own personal assets as if they actually were your own.

• Everyone should now be on IRC and should have the channel “northern_coalition” open at all times
• Over the next five days you need to take this time to make yourself some ISK to cover some ships we are going to make you buy in another part of space.

Mandatory OOG tools because what is a slave driver without his whip.
Yes! 'Jew' some isk now, get purged for the same activity next week you blood sucking piece of shit.

What should an alliance be instead?

• Mandatory defense ops to defend your own assets and interests are fine. Mandatory deployments to find goodfites for fun when players have no interest are not.
• Hand out a free ship and you can tell me what to do with it, don't force me to pay for it myself and then retire the doctrine after I undocked that ship just once while only paying out 50% of the ship + fitting cost if it dies.

-note: CFC uses the same language and awoxes blues that rat when ops are going on just the same-

After reading this article I assume the CFC will deploy the 'Reavers' SIG to Querious since it should be empty. Then make sure NC. has to choose every day between clone jumping home for a defense op or stay on deployment.

EVE: Background

Not my setup, not Rixx's setup but a obviously someone appreciates the works of Rixx. Might not be such a bad idea to show visitors to my house some of the art of EVE. I happen to have a very nice piece of empty wall just left of my computer.

Unfortunately I do not consider the drake to be his best wallpaper and it doesn't even have a WCS sticking out somewhere.

EVE: LMeve screenshots

As Raziel I do industry for the corporation/alliance, the tool we use to keep track of this is LMeve.

Lmeve tracks activity and allows you to reward players for performing industry jobs for the corporation.


Tracking of corporate inventory:


Buyback calculator:


Keep track of market orders:


The sheet I am mostly interested in, this task pane shows assigned jobs and what materials are required. Since my part only consists of performing invention and T2 manufacturing all I have to do is log in, check assigned tasks and create the relevant industry jobs in EVE.

If any materials are missing from the production input hangar I just send a mail to our industry director to remind him and within a few days the missing materials will be restocked.


In EVE itself I only have access to the production in put hangar, I can't even see the contents of the containers requiring blueprints but it's still possible to install jobs from the industry window and see a list of all corporate blueprints.


Download link: https://github.com/roxlukas/lmeve
LMeve was developed by Lukas Rox of Aideron Technologies

First snow.

We haven't had a white Christmas in a very long time, so of course it starts snowing the night after.

View from my bedroom window:


View from my bathroom window:


Garden, designed for minimal maintenance.


2013Christmas tree:

2014 Christmas tree:

EVE: ISIS progress

Ever since the introduction of ISIS I have focused on training up existing skills and masteries to level four instead of injecting new skills. While the ISIS sheet is finally starting to look better I am starting to regret ever injecting all those science and ore processing skills.

EVE: How to lose a carrier.

Yesterday evening I was once again made aware of the fact that multiboxing and complacent behaviour will be punished sooner rather than later.

First the relevant killmails and 'battle report'.

Battle report: https://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=26571232
My lossmail: https://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=26571232
My killmail: https://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=26571160



As this was my first day of vacation I had been online all day ratting with my Thanatos.

My initial setup was having a thanatos, rapier and vexor navy issue on grid but by the time the hotdrop occured I had changed from having all my ships on the same grid to three ships in three different locations, thus lowering my awareness and response time.

My shiny new thanatos was happily killing rats.
A noctis was cleaning up cleared sites.
A retriever was mining away in an anomaly.

My attention thus divided between three clients I was not paying enought attention to intel and local channels. At the same time I noticed Seterinthia was back in local I also managed to read the all-important line in chat which mention she had not left system earlier but logged off.

Moments later she appeared on grid.
Since I assumed I was not going to warp off in time I dropped a mobile depot (my custom had been to align to a safe at 75% speed except for today because I had changed tactics and been dropping MTU's)

But either the mobile depot was killed by the bombers before it even came online or it wasn't visible on the overview (imported earlier that week from corp chat but I hadn't verified what was showing and what was hidden).
In any case I was unable to refit to WCS or tank. Shields were already gone to rats so the bombers only had to melt through armor/hull of my completely untanked carrier. (Guess what, earlier that day I had replaced a trimark armor pump with a capacitor control circuit because everyone knows cap is the most important thing in Eve, not that it would have mattered much.)

Maybe if I had an alt ready next door that I could have cyno-ed out in time before getting pointed?
I had full fuel bays and also had a cyno fitted to bring in reinforcements but without tank there was no time to even think clearly about the options left to me.

So after all hostiles were on grid and shooting at me I offered a GF in local since I knew there was nothing I could do to prevent my demise. I had hoped my gecko's would kill at least some hostiles but they only managed to kill the single prospect that tackled me.
It didn't help that my drones were just killing off the last rat of the wave as the hostile appeared spawning three frigates that assisted the hostiles in tackling me. The rats did manage to kill two bombers so they were more effective as I had been in defending me.

• Make sure hostiles are gone from your system and space before returning to your favorite ratting spot (add hostiles as contact so you can see them log on and off).
• Pay attention to your screen(s).
• Stay aligned if in a carrier.
• Make sure your overview is correct.
• Don't ignore local and intel.
• Be in fleet
• Be on teamspeak
• Have your emergency response plan ready for execution.
• If not aligned drop a mobile depot for immediate GTFO refit.
• Have an alt next door ready to light a cyno.

Carrier has been replaced already, had this happened in the morning I would have been royally pissed off but by the time I was tackled I think the carrier just about paid for itself.

• Basic insurance paid out about 500m isk.
• Looting the MTU after battle returned about 250m in isk.
• A GFSP had dropped Pith A-type Large Shield Booster, Pith A-type shield boost amplifier, 22nd tier overseer effects and yet another rattlesnake BPC
• About 10 hours of ratting earning between 60-100 million isk per hour.

Although this will delay buying a second carrier...

For comparison, my previous loss to hostiles killing my ratting ship was in january were I lost a harbinger https://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=21317874 (yes that was a pve ratting fit).

Edit:

• Would a target breaker or ECM burst have made any difference?
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb74vVwDJtg

EVE: Evesterdam 2014

Slightly behind original schedule because it took me months just to get over how I look when exposed to sunlight.

CCP Falcon and CCP Leelo.


Bobmon in the spotlights


CCP Guard


Corebloodbrothers


Prize handout at the end.


Had a great day (except for the part at the end where I got really sick and had to throw up after drinking an orange juice thus missing out on what promised to be the best presentation of all, the Hulkageddon talk by Helicity Boson.)

The venue was pretty basic but was just big enough to handle the crowd.
My camera showed its age once again by making pictures that would make my cellphone weep, maybe my own fault for not wanting to use a flash all the time because I find those distracting.

Many thanks to Deirdre Vaal and everyone else that organized, hosted and contributed to the event. Cya all next year.

Edit: missed uploading some pictures

Compagnietheater where the event took place


Bobmon and CCP Leeloo


Deirdre Vaal in the Gurista shirt.


CCP Guard and CCP Falcon watching the crowd enter for the first presentation.

EVE: Standings grind

Gevlon Goblin calculated he saved 55 billion in broker fees by having good standing with the Caldari State and Navy.

Just by doing the circle courier mission and datacenter tag deliveries MoxNix at Merchant Monarchy raised his standings with the Amarr and Caldari factions by quite a bit.

My interest is in having good standings with all factions so derived standings and diminishing returns mean that completing storyline missions is no longer a valid option to increase faction standings for me. To confirm I completed one storyline mission.

Corporate and faction standings before completion of the mission.


Corporate and faction standings after completing the mision.


Gain: Amarr Empire +0.05, Caldari State +0.03
Loss: Minmatar Repbulic -0.07, Gallente Federation -0.03

To repair the loss I completed The Blood-Stained Stars and chose gallente gaining +0.43 standing with the Gallente Federation. Completing the amarr epic arc increased standing with the Amarr Empire by +0.57.
To compare, SoE arc consists of level 1 missions. The empire faction arcs are level 4 equivalent. All epic mission arcs can be completed every three months.



As a side note, I'll be visiting the Evesterdam event.
http://evesterdam.com/ and https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=357173

EVE: Blood burner mission

With the Hyperion update came the new burner missions and I was curious enough to give them a try. After half a dozen random level 4 missions (in Amarr space) the Blood Raider burner mission came up.

The mission warned me that the enemy was a cruor that webbed, scrammed, neuted and liked to orbit at 5 km range while burning me to a crisp with his lasers.

So for my first attempt I went with a capless tank and weapon system in the form of a hawk. When you lack CPU for the fit you want you can try to come up with a new fit or you can just throw isk at the problem.

The abundance of faction mods below should tell you my approach.



It seemed as if I was capable of tanking his damage but since I also seemed unable to to break his tank I decided to bail out. I dropped a mobile depot, refitted with 2 WCS and warped off like a bear.

Since I have multiple accounts the easiest solution was to bring in reinforcements to add dps. Picking the Jaguar hull expended all my creative thought so it's rather similar to the hawk fitting since the tank seemed solid enough.

 

The Jaguar was tanking the Cruor the entire battle so I was going through cap boosters rather fast but with two ships on grid there was plenty of damage to burn through his armor fast enough.

Other players have completed these missions using single ships so obviously there are better ways as mine. Two youtube videos by other players featuring the same Blood Raider pirate :

Rail Daredevil that kites outside of neut range.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnTftBzEyts

 Autocannon Wolf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RJYHQnA49o

EVE: 5 years

Today marks my 5 year anniversary in EVE!



Just about to graduate from the normal subcap ships to capital and jump drive capable ones and by the end of the year I hope to have settled in a place where I can spend the next five years.

It's still a battle between Civilization V and EVE Online every night though.

A night at the movies

Yesterday evening I went out to see Maleficent, a new take on the story of Sleeping Beauty. The first few minutes I was wondering if this was a real childrens movie and just as with Godzilla the introduction takes a while but both were very enjoyable movies that I could bear to see again to see if I can catch more references to the original canon material.

Two other movies I went out to see recently are Edge of Tomorrow and X-men: Days of Future Past. I missed the first two minutes of the X-men so might go see it again, that will also give a chance to make up my mind on whether I found it a good movie or not.

Rating these four movies for entertainment value:
1: Edge of Tomorrow
2: Godzilla
3: Maleficent
4: X-men: Days of Future Past

Angelina Jolie is the reason Maleficent takes the third spot. Time travel and memory loss are the reason the X-men are at fourth place but perhaps a new viewing would change my mind. (Pathé gold card so flat fee to see unlimited movies).
It's been a while longer since I saw Captain America and Spiderman but those would probably take 5th and 6th place respectively. No idea where I would place the Lego Movie but I remember that movie as a lot of fun as well, definately better as 'A million ways to die in the West'.

What I did in my vacation.