EVE – Page 31 – A Pixel Nomad

Organizing All the Things

It’s really no big surprise that one of my favourite things to do in EVE is to organize. Whether it’s my ships, their fits, my hangar, or industry – I spend a lot of time sorting through things and organizing them. Last night I decided to focus on the ships. I stripped those I’m not actively using so I could take better inventory of what I have, and I wanted to make sure I had complete fits for those I do use. I know I could just share items between ships but I’m not really a fan of that (plus I end up losing / forgetting things). I’d like each ship to have its use and fit it for that use. I’ve also been thinking more about WHAT ships I’m using, and how expensive they are vs. other ships that might be able to handle the same things that I’m already handling. Especially if I’m going to risk losing that ship. In 3 more days I’ll be able to fly the Tengu again (I can already fly it, but I’m waiting on some weapon skills) but the Gila has been great at handling what I need it to handle and it’s not nearly as expensive when all is said and done. I also have a myrmidon, and the Dominix (which I believe I was going to upgrade to a Sin, I have the blueprints for one, at least). Then there’s a catalyst, and even a tristan rounding things out. I’ve got a prospect I’m hoping to take out gas huffing (finding gas has been a difficult task for me as of late) and there’s the venture, too if I want to go even cheaper.

It’s better for me to practice and learn in these less expensive ships, and then when I feel more confident I can start using the better ones. My EVE tasks are not exactly limited, even by using a less expensive ship, and it should give me some experience and confidence.

Industry is going pretty well, I have lots of drones and ammo for sale each day, and they’re moving even though I’m not selling in Jita (I really didn’t want to make all those jumps just for a handful of ISK, I’d rather sell closer to home). I haven’t managed to get my R&D faction up yet, but I know if I just plug away at it slowly the faction will come. I keep getting distracted by other things in space (like that escalation from yesterday).

As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself, and fly safe!

Day 12 (Still Flying)

I’ve fallen into a comfortable routine in the mornings now when it comes to World of Warcraft & EVE. I check my industry, put new stuff in if I’m able to, check my PI, and then do a bit of ice mining until the two belts in my system are depleted. Once a week I travel to my PI planets and shuffle bits around, and once a week I head to the market to re-list and sell. In between all of that, I’ve started ‘ratting’ which basically just means killing NPC (I kill the ones I find in anomalies / signatures). In 4 days I can start flying my newly fit Tengu (hopefully an improvement over the one I was flying in 2015) and in the meantime I’ve been flying a perfectly apt Gila. I did end up losing a Helios this week to a data site when some very nasty NPC spawned and 1 shot me. Helios is not an expensive ship though so I replaced it and moved on. Ships are just ammo, as the saying goes.

For the past week I’ve made more ISK than I’ve spent, so that’s good. I’m experimenting with industry quite a bit, seeing what sort of markets I can find myself in. I’ve also joined a corporation, although I am not entirely convinced that they’re a good fit for me I think it’s more to do with being awkward and not necessarily a ‘them’ thing. For now I continue to lurk and learn, and explore aspects of EVE that I know I enjoy.

A fight in Perimeter

To start things off, I have to say that as a newly returning player to EVE, I have absolutely no horse in this race. I was not a part of the political reasoning to this battle, and I had not even heard about it until this week when someone posted a few PSA about removing items from the structure. There are, of course, two sides. I learned the basics. An alliance put up a trade building in highsec, a few months later CCP changed the rules so that you can no longer do this. As time went on, some drama ensued (as it does in EVE) and one side decided this structure should cease to exist – because it was funding a few large nullsec corps (though from my understanding at the beginning many people were benefiting from it and then things changed) with highsec earnings as they would collect tax. This war would have permanent side effects since you can no longer place this building, and honestly, as has been said a few times over the course of this battle, it’s not actually about removing the building – it’s about the story. You can read about this really long feud over on TAGN, who explained it much better than I could since he has way more experience.

Anyway, at one point there were over 5.1k people in local. It was INSANE. Probably one of the best (and by far the largest) events I’ve ever seen take place in a video game. I learned many new terms, like TiDi, and that it was not in fact lag, but TiDi that slowed actions down so that the servers could cope with so many players being in such a concentrated space. EVE became a literal spreadsheet game, almost turn based. I’ve honestly never seen anything like it before. No one enjoys when TiDi happens but everyone adapts and goes along with it because let’s face it, a space battle with 5000+ people is something to talk about. That’s how I felt, at least.

It took over 5 hours, but both of the structures fell, and I learned things like how timezones play an important role in these battles because of the way TiDi stretches out the fights. I lurked in a few streams, and listened to the community, something I truly enjoy doing. The community of EVE is.. unique. Friends and enemies alike came to twitch to chat, which I wasn’t expecting.

It feels like I came back at a great time to be able to watch this happen, and while I know EVE isn’t all sunshine and roses (anything but) it was still a neat feeling to be ‘part of’ something on this large of a scale. For now, it’s back to my quiet area of space to scan down some more relic/data sites.

Compression is the Way to Go

I’ll be honest here, most of my ship builds are *ancient*, the Tengu fit that I used to use was from 2015, and the game hasn’t exactly stood still while time marched on. Some people have a lot of fun playing with different fits, but me, I tend to stick with one until it’s no longer viable to stick with it or until I lose the ship and need a new fit.

That’s how I found out that there’s a new fit I should be using when it comes to mining with the Orca. Especially ice mining, which I do in my home area quite frequently.

One of the banes of ice mining is that it’s SO large and takes up an incredible amount of room. That is apparently no longer the case if you can fleet up with an Orca (or other ship that can fit a compressor, there’s a few types). So I trained the skills, picked up an industrial core, and an ice compressor, and now all the weight of ice mining is a non issue. It has never really been that much of an issue for me in the past because I live in the system and dropping off the ice hasn’t been a big deal, but I can see the appeal. There’s also a lot of regulars who ice mine in my home system, and I’ve gotten to know them over the past week. They’re pretty friendly, offering to fleet up, offering advice on more up-to-date fits, and just chattering. I explained I was newly returning after a long break, and they completely understood (one of them mentioned that they had also just returned after a 10 year break).

It’s not exciting (well, unless someone unsavory pops by) and it’s not huge amounts of ISK, but it’s certainly better than regular mining in high sec, and my home area has quite a few ice fields to pick from. Yes, there are 20+ of us in there at any given time, but I’ve been enjoying this low key aspect of gameplay. It gives me time to read through the Rookie Help channel and get familiar with my new corporation. Plus I’m close to home, in case I need to log off for RL or I have a sudden urge to explore a new signature. I understand that mining is certainly not for everyone, but for now, this is exactly what I was looking for.

The Wrong Place at the Wrong Time

I’ve been killed more in EVE this week than I have in the previous 12 years I played – and that’s what feels like it has changed (to me, at least). Yesterday caught me off guard. I plotted a route some where and one of the sectors it had me go through (even though I do have ‘high sec only please’ turned on the mapping – was 0.4, which was in the middle of a huge war that I absolutely had no place in. I wasn’t expecting it at all (in hindsight, I should have probably expected it). 0.4 is lowsec, and dangerous even on the best of days, let alone days when there’s massive amounts of people all over the place (hello weekend).

Now, ideally, I could have just turned around and left right back to the safer side of things, except I wasn’t expecting a bunch of people to be RIGHT there all pew pewing at one another – so I panicked, and of course just sat there like a lump on a log until I was blown to smithereens. Bye bye Tengu 2.0. I think the kill thing said I was shot by 7 different people. Nice. Thankfully I was not carrying around anything of value this time around.

The famous motto in EVE is to never fly something you can’t afford to replace. I know this, and I could afford to replace it, so I did. I decided to go with a different fit this time around though and it’s going to take me a few days to get my skills up to snuff (14 days, in fact). In the meantime, I decided to get some ice mining done. Nice, quiet, high sec ice mining (just watch out for the diamond rats). After, I did scan the sites around my home hoping for a WH with a gas site, but I didn’t have any luck. I did find a high sec relic site, but it had less than 100,000 ISK worth of stuff, gross. I still stand by the opinion that being in WH is far safer than being in lowsec.

As always, happy gaming – no matter where you find yourself.