Fanfest 2017

Pulling the trigger. See you all there.

Daily Incentives

Have the recurring opportunities gotten people into space and driven conflict? I'm not sure about others but it has for me. There have already been a few encounters with other WH dwellers that were hunting or avoiding being hunted that I would not have interacted with if I had not been traversing our chain to get that sweet sweet 10k sp. They haven't lead to kills but they have lead to bits of excitement. 

In one case the site running Raven I tackled jumped the hole and when I followed he was with 4 more of his brethren and so I noped out in my lone svipul.

In another case I found Exit Strategy camping my way back in and got to evade bubbles and people trying to decloak the Endurance my indy alt uses to kill belt rats for the daily.

In many more cases I log in to kill the rats for the bonus sp and end up talking to and doing stuff with my alliance mates. It's pretty easy to sucked in even if you logged on with the intention to only play the few minutes to get the daily done. 

I don't know if my experience is representative of the eve population as a whole but I can't be the only person this is working for either. 

Roaming in the Warzone

We took out a kitchen sink shield cruiser fleet this week. I use the term cruiser fleet somewhat loosely since one of the alliance mates decided to bring a "flagship" in the form of a Machariel he bought that day. I decided to dual box and bring a Sabre and a Caracal.

We formed up in Solitude and started to make our through Syndicate heading towards Cloud Ring. My Sabre did plus one duties since I had warp speed rigs and could bubble up and catch things ahead of the fleet. A couple jumps out I found an VNI using anchored bubbles to catch people. He starts to move out of the bubbles and I quickly tackle him and call for the fleet to come in. Unfortunately, his drones hit pretty hard and I go down just before logi can get reps on me after landing. RIP Sabre.

I head back to reship as the fleet pushes on. I catch up and we finally get into cloud ring and try and catch some miners and ratters but they POSed instead of warping to the now bubbled station. We press on and on the other side of the gate we find a smallish camp. Similar sized to ours but mostly T1 cruisers to our 50/50 mix of T1s and HACs. I bubble up their fleet and jump back through the gate and bubble that side as well while also following targets on my Caracal. A rupture comes over and starts to plink at my Sabre.  So I come back through and refresh the bubble before haviong to bail again. We're doing well taking down a trio of Arbitrators and a Vexor when I see a Barghest landing with a couple HACs. I start to call out contact when I then see a 40 man Svipul fleet belonging to the Culture landing in my bubble.

I call out what I see and the FC calls to disengage the fleet. Most of our guys make it out but the Flagship Machariel is tackled by the first fleet and goes down swinging against many many tactical destroyers. During this time my Sabre gets infinite pointed by an Onyx and I try my best to shake him but finally the Svipuls come back to finish my 2nd Sabre off. I might have been able to slip away if I wasn't splitting my attention and getting my Caracal off field.

We then extract the going long way home in order to not get in between the Svipul fleet and whatever onjective they were going for. All in all it was a good day. We won some and lost some and our Mach pilot had a blast even if that ship didn't last as long as he had wished it would.

The Process is the Point

I've found out in the nearly two years I have been playing eve that I find planing to be more fun than the execution of the idea. I love coming up with a goal and taking those steps to achieve it. Gathering supplies and setting up a base. Creating my own little own home wherever I happen to be at the time. That might be in low sec or a wormhole or in my current case Solitude.

So, that is what I am doing now. Gathering my ships and POS modules for an extended stay in the far reaches of the Gallente Federation. We've caught yet another wardec which has put a damper on starting up my industrial operations but I do have my JF pilot out of corp so I can still do that leg work while putting the mining operations on hold. My little plan is a bit more ambitious than past plans but I should be able to work on it at my own pace while still joining with alliance ops in the region. So, bit potential things in the future but right now I'm enjoying putting everything in place.

Moving In

So, I have started to move into our new home in Solitude. We're not abandoning our WH but we're doing more content and more roams and such in k-space.

Overall, Solitude is an odd place. It is a high sec island but logistically it operates like npc null or deep low sec since it is seperated from the rest of Gallente space. To this end I bought an Anshar jump freighter.

I have found having my own JF is really useful but also terrifying to fly. A 7+bil investment is not something you really want to lose from a silly mistake. So, I double and triple check the situation before undocking and making a jump to my next system.

It's odd that flying a transport ship in EvE can give me bigger shakes than any other game.

Pilgrimage

Our wormhole chain opened up to Canard last night, Being just three jumps from New Eden and the Eve Gate I decided to go see it for myself since I had never been. There is a sort of quiet solemnity there. Many people before me have dropped cans. Some are advertisements. Some mementos. Some are messages to lost love ones. I found it very touching and a bit sad.

Sometimes Things Just Fall Apart.

So, the big op didn't work out quite as we wanted. This is how it started...

The alliance found Wolf Rayet C6 and decided to run it in thrashers and T3Ds. We ran some sites and then the residents decided to drop a carrier into the site and escalated the site. Well we weren't going to take that sitting down. So, we brought in Ishtars and reinforced their tower.

Now, my previous post is the next day with us getting forces in and trying to set up another tower to stage out of. The previous tower wasn't properly stronted and came out of reinforce at a time we could not defend. So, second tower it is. This was just the start of our bad luck. And lack of planning didn't help. But snap decisions to try and evict a Russian corp out of their C6 is pretty much our thing.

Anyways, No Fun was camping the entrances and sniping our scanning ships as the connections all went EOL and collapsed. So, we have a couple guys in the hole with no scanning ships trying to find a way to get more people in with the second tower. So, one guy is scanning in a mammoth and another in a phobos and we get a chain back out. Of course this chain is full of camping stealth bombers and sabres. But we get stuff in and set up the tower but someone forgot the stront again. No worries, we can make a run and get more.

Well, this is when the neighbors in the C5 we just opened up decided to YOLO a shield tanked Nag into a Wolf Rayet and start shooting our new POS before moonwalking out. The tower quickly goes into the 2 hours of reinforce the stront we had gave it. Now, the Russians wake up and grind down that POS with their caps. End result is we have no POS and random dudes just logged off in space.

The next day we extract and find a way out and back home while evading the Russians camping the holes and setting up bubble traps. I find a way out through a frig hole and get my two characters that I brought out into null where I quickly find a C2 into a C3 back into high sec.

So, op was not a success but we did learn some lessons about wormhole sieges and the value of proper planning. But don't worry, this didn't dent our confidence and we're back on another deployment. One that has been a bit better organized.

The Command Room

So, sitting in what has become the command room in the alliance teamspeak server. We have big things happening in the next few days that I'll be able to report on after it's done. Op Sec and all that. Needless to say we decided to jump both feet into something before checking the depth of the water. Which of course is the Dredd way. So, keep tuned and I'll have more to report.

Arms Dealers

Been a long time since the last update. I'm going to try and be a bit more dedicated to writing. Gotta get past the idea I have to post only really interesting things. I like reading about people's average days in eve so maybe someone else will as well. So, here goes...

We've become arms dealers. Our fearless leader threw this up on eve reddit. We unloaded a good deal of our stock on hand of T3 dessys today with more in production right now. So, a lot of planning and hauling was done by the alliance. Hands down I think this is the best way to monetize wormhole life. By taking the gas and salvage to the next step of T3 production you add an enormous amount of value. That is not counting the billions in blue loot we've pulled in. The machine this alliance has become is impressive.

We buy the mats from line members so they get paid then run the production and the profits go to the alliance warchest. The end result is individuals get wealthy and have some ISK in their pockets and also the alliance has the funds to provide 100% of the ships for our PVP fleets. Also, free skill books and a ton of PVE ships to hand out to members running sites or gas harvest.

From what I can tell this is a rarity in EVE. An alliance that really does go all out in making sure its members have all the tools to maximize their daily activities. All we need is for people to undock, make ISK, shoot our enemies and basically have fun. By having fun they get paid and the alliance gets paid. It's not top down or bottom up income. It's a back and forth of people supporting one another which creates a lot of buy in.

So, this started as a what have I been up to and turned into an explanation of our alliance's philosophy.

If this sounds like something you'd like to be a part of check out www.dreddalliance.com and/or talk to a recruiter in game.