Trust in your armor but remember...

"But when a stronger man than he shall come upon him, and overcome him, he taketh from him all his armor wherein he trusted, and divideth his spoils." - Luke 11:22 King James Bible

Since I've been on vacation I've been putting an absurd amount of time in EVE - even by my standards - but most of my efforts have been leaning towards perfecting drone and armor skills.  Gameplay has consisted of transport runs, spending a large amount of time docked, trading and making "Rules of Acquisition" jokes in my head, and carebearing the living shit out of L4 missions.

When on combat missions I try to adhere to a checklist that I've developed over the last few months.  Simple stuff really:

• always have an escape plan, preferably more than one 
• align, align, align
• only commit to combat when I have tactical advantage
• I tend to rely on range and speed.  With my current skills and gear I have an effective combat range of over 120km (which puts me well out of range of 75% of the NPCs I come across) and can juice my Ishtar up to 599m/s
• I only "Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!" aka launch attack drones when I have tanked the aggro.  No sense in letting my expensive drones get whomped on for no reason.
• I still strongly adhere to my own rule of "cap stability above all else".  This is part of the reason I lean towards a passive armor tank.  If I can run all the equipment I have without having to run out of juice or keeping an eye on cap during combat.
• Minimize risk, maximize reward.  Rule of Acquisition #125 "You can't make a deal if you're dead."  Screw that "Fortune favors the bold" malarkey.
• Never go AFK when you're undocked.  Okay, I'll take a pee or grab a beer while in warp.  Sometimes.
• "The problem isn't that you're paranoid.  It's that you're not paranoid enough."
• Never rely on gear when skills would suit you better.

This last maxim has been on my mind lately since I nearly lost an Ishtar during a mission.  As an armor tanker (can't always rely on speed and range when a half dozen battleships spawn within twenty-five klicks) I often say a well-worn Warhammer 40K line, "Look to your battlegear and it will protect you, as your armour guards your life."  If you think that's dorky you should hear me recite the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear when I'm running cargo through lowsec or in a situation like this:

"I will not fear.  Fear is the mind-killer."

Granted, that engagement wasn't that bad since I had tactical control of the situation but the unknown can always happen (a la "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.")  The engagement I almost lost my favorite ship in involved a large number of frigates and sentry towers that spawned less than five klicks from my position.  I was careless and on the back-foot and for a split second of blind panic I saw my armor melt under withering fire and get into deep structure before my warp drive engaged, whisking me to the closest station.  Now before you EVE players take me to task for not consulting eve-survival.org first, I prefer not to use that site because I feel it takes a large element of risk out of missions.  I enjoy not exactly knowing what I'm heading into (caveat: I usually decline Amarr missions simply because the risk is too high for my tastes) and relying on myself to keep my ship in one piece.  Hell, sometimes I'll scout a site with a shuttle first (especially if I can't come in at range).  It's part of the fun for me.

So why my new concern about battlegear and having to rework some of  my approaches to combat?  Primarily because of my near loss but secondly because I recently broke down and purchased a Dominix.  She's actually not as ugly as I thought she was gonna be but she handles like a box of turds with four broken shopping cart wheels.  If I had been in the Domi when I got short-range jumped I would have lost an expensive ship.  She just doesn't handle well and her speed is garbage.  However, she's a monster tank.  I've read some shop talk about how tough she is and can weather a huge amount of punishment.  That being said, I don't trust her as my battlegear.  Then again, I've been truckin around in a HAC for at least six months and feel really comfortable in cruisers and maybe it's time to shake myself up and try something new.

Another downside to the Domi, and a core issue that's keeping me from moving to the BS, is the painful (nearly pathetic) target lock time she has - against all ships.  It must be similar to the differences between the Enterprise and the Defiant.  Frankly, the Ishtar is a far superior drone boat, considering bonuses, speed, smaller signature, base resistances suck, etc. etc. etc.  However, I like taking the Domi out for a spin because she's such a big moosey and she can really be a jack of all trades.  She can effectively tank while drones dish out the DPS and run salvage in combat.  Not the capabilities of a Marauder but still...

I'm continuing work on my Domi and if I get her to where I feel I trust her I'll post a fit here.  Hope all of you are well.  Fly safe.  o7

Vexor, Vexor, Vexor, Vexor, Ishtar! Ishtar!

Finally I am one day away from getting into the Ishtar!  From what I read on EVE-fail and Memoirs of a Carebear I should be in for a good time.  Happy fat kid hand clap glee.  I'll post pics when I finally take it for a spin.

EVE Online: the trial ends. Thoughts and an interesting sci-fi concept.

Scoville Bessler ends her fourteen day jaunt in New Eden on a high note, or least a fairly decent middle range note.  I've learned the basics, picked up a few tricks, made some contacts, blew up and salvaged a shit ton of pirates, droids, and Caldari and a couple of Amarr ships here and there.  As a member of the Gallente Federation, currently at war with the aforementioned realms, I haven't met any Caldari or Amarr yet but I don't like what they stand for - the Amarr in particular are a bunch of religious fanatics with a society based upon slavery (though there are also some Machine worshippers that make me happy in my 40K place).  Caldari might as well be called Randians. 

I've got a nice little system of mission grinding/salvage/and sales going on.  I've starting saving salvage for a buyer who constructs her own ships and sells them.  Yeah so I'm a sanitation engineer & junk peddler.  What?  My primary focus with Sco is getting her skills really up to skill before venturing too far astray.  That way I don't have to waste too much money on new ships and gear. 

Once I get my paycheck I might sign up for a month but I'll have to juggle finances first.

The interesting concept I began thinking about a day or two ago was a discussion I had in-game about my avatar Scoville.  Someone asked me if she was a man or a woman.  I replied that Scoville is a woman but that I was thinking of starting a male alt.  The person joked that they weren't sure, in a very polite way, because Sco had both masculine and feminine qualities in her portrait.  Then that conversation was over and we all started goofing off again.  Yesterday, while I was out making deliveries, I was glancing at the conversation box and some people were joking about how few actual women played the game and a lot of women chimed in that they did but then some guy pointed out that a lot of men have female avatars (the guy who was joking with me about Sco) so I jumped in and quipped, "Yeah and sometimes you just can't tell."  Then it kind of hit me that a society - so deeply based around clones and cloning would or could have radically different notions of gender, gender roles, sexuality, etc, etc.  Granted these are still human societies and some rely on cloning and cybernetics more or less than others additionally humans can still be born naturally.  It's not clear what direction I'm going with this, might be aimless rumination.  In anycase I involved myself in the conversation about clones (in particular Sco) potentially not really being concerned about gender, I wanted to make an "Orlando" reference but people probably already think I'm a weirdo.  Especially in the case when a clone in the case of capsuleers (pilots in EVE) have a clone waiting in case of pod death - you're grafting a personality into a body (read the article, it explains the concept much clearer than I can).  So in any case now Sco identifies as herself first, clone-status and gender-status are other people's concerns not hers.  How very Intaki of her.

And that's the end of EVE crazy talk for the time being.  Classes start up soon.  The weather is getting hot.  Hope you are all well.

EVE Online - Day 1 of 14: The return of Scoville Bessler

EVE Online - the MMO set in space - that isn't Star Wars or Star Trek.  I remember hearing about this game about the same time I was thinking of starting Warcraft but as we all know I ended up going with WoW until I got bored.  I'm also bored with all the games I currently own and I have until Tuesday to wait to get my grubby paws on L.A. Noire (narf, narf, narf).  So after some poking around on the world wide web I decided to give the free two-week trial of EVE Online a go.

After roughly forty-five minutes of installation (I watched an episode of SVU and ate take away in the interim) I was able to create my character.  I went for my standard Scoville Bessler female template only in EVE Online I spent nearly an hour tweaking her look.  I have to say that EVE has the best fucking character design template I have ever seen.  Seriously.  The level to which you can tweak your character's looks (including excellent scars, aging, and freckles!) is impressive but the ability to manipulate your character's expression is top-notch.  I managed to give Scoville my common expression of the Red Hook brush-off combined with smirk.  I hope I can a pic of her for you folks. 

Now the downside of such awesome character design is that you are only creating your portait.  Your in-game thingie you move around and interact with the 'verse with is the ship you helm.  At the point I am at, I don't have much in the way of ship customization, so basically I'm driving around space in the equivalent of Plymouth Horizon.  Wheeee!  Sigh.  However, I am also thinking of sticking with my crappy ship and just tricking it out with cool tech.  Por la Raza!

So, how's trucking around space?  I'm still in the tutorial but it's kind of cool.  It's a gorgeous game, which is good because I spent a lot of time autopiloting back and forth on training missions.  However that time in transit actually was pretty helpful because there is a galactic shit-ton of stuff to read, look at, and star maps to examine.  I hope I can actually do some exploring with out total risk of being turned into space dust.

One thing I have to say I really dig about EVE is the openness of the class system in that, there is no class system, no levelling per say, it's all how you play the game.  You build skills, talents in order to do what you want to do.  Additionally EVE seems to be pretty solo player friendly, which is always an upside to me.  I also dig the fact that the game world is player driven and created - to clarify a lot of corporations are player run and they dish out missions.  Neat.  I'm looking forward to playing some more tonight.

Add:

I've done a bit more searching around and reading of guides, watching official tutorials on teh youtube, and I'm starting to feel a little daunted by EVE.  I think I might be getting that "this is gonna be addicting" feeling.  IDK though, the monthly fee is $14.95.

Add 2:

Jesus - this Fleet Commander is awesome.  This is watching South Koreans play Starcraft.





Impressive space combat:

New MMO new lingo, what the fuck is "carebearing"?  I like "ratting" as a term for hunting NPC pirates.

Yeah, I think I'm just gonna stick to flying below the grid and not get involved with any intergalactic conflicts.  Hmmm...now should I be a bounty hunter ratter?