Struggling for survival...

As I mentioned, I left EVE after a while of living in null-sec.  When I returned, I found my corporation basically a ghost town.  No one was logging on and it was just me.  Since I play EVE for primarily for social interaction, I had to think about what I should do next in the game.  I decided to pour my efforts into getting involved in Eve University, initially as a guest lecturer and eventually as a faculty member.  I was starting down that path when one of my corp mates showed up in chat.

He and I discussed the sorry state of the corp and what we would like to do.  We discussed leaving, but also talked about sticking around and trying to reinvigorate the corp.  After a bit of back and forth, we felt that abandoning the corporation that we had spent so much time in was not appropriate, so we decided that we would try to resurrect the corp from the ashes.  Apparently, Phoenix wasn't a part of our corp's name for nothing!

We contacted some of the directors by text to get ourselves promoted to director so we could recruit, set tax rates, close offices, etc.  With our new authority, we lowered the tax rate (from 99%), consolidated our operations in a few stations and started a hard recruiting effort.  Much of our recruiting was done in local, chatting with unaffiliated pilots who happened to be in the area.  We also got some interest from our recruitment ad and spamming recruitment chat.  Not having to explain the 99% tax rate made recruiting MUCH easier I can tell you!

We slowly built up the corp until we regularly had 5-8 people on at once.  Not great, but better than the 1 or 2 it had been.  We also got the web site back in working order as well as the forums.  Things were getting better, but were still not good.  And the biggest thing was that while we were being successful at reviving the corp, we still had no idea what we were reviving it for. 

My purpose in the game was simply not to let the corporation die and nothing else.  Once we had used the defibrillator and brought PPL back from the dead, I started to ask myself why I'd gone to all the trouble.  Yes, we had some people logging on at the same time, we had posts going up in the forums, we had a bit of chat in corp, but we were all working independently and really had no shared goals other than making some personal ISK.  It was great that we were able to at least avoid PPL's death, but PPL's life after being saved wasn't that great.

At this point I grew disillusioned again (as so often happens to me in this game) and took yet another break from EVE, although not a very long one.  And what happened next is a story for another blog post.

That didn't last long!

Well, as you noticed, I resubbed then never posted again.  It's been so long I can't exactly remember how things went with the new alliance, but here's a rundown.

• I moved out to 0.0
• I got involved in lots of CTAs to bash POSs
• I lost interest
• I unsubbed again

I know there was a lot more to it, but it just wasn't scratching my itch.  Anyway, I'm back again and A LOT has changed.  I'll be writing here what happened since my last post and where things stand right now.  I can tell you that I'm having more fun in the game these days than I've had in a LOOONG time.  But that's a story that will have to wait for later.

I'm back (again)

After a extended time away from the game, I started getting the itch again.  This led me to my corporation's forums where I caught up on the latest goings on.  After quite a few months of renting in 0.0, my corp leadership had recently made the decision to join a new alliance with a slight twist: instead of renting, we would actually be joining the alliance and forming the industrial backbone of the operation.

This sort of approach has always been of interest to me, so two days ago I downloaded the client and yesterday I signed on again for the first time in probably four months.

Anyway, not much to report from last night, but I'm back!

First impressions of null sec

Well, we've been in null sec for about 2 weeks and things are going pretty well. We've had a quite a bit of fun and excitement out here, including:

• An SBU being dropped into our main system we had set up two days. We managed to kill it before things got too ugly
• Getting hot dropped by a titan while we were jumping a jump freighter to our POS. The JF managed to jump back out before it could get destroyed (phew!)
• Mining like crazy with the alliance to get our our industry level up (I love mining...)
• Playing cat and mouse with a cloaky for a full evening. The cloaky got the better of us, unfortunately, but I didn't die...

We are getting a lot more participation from some of our corp mates who had drifted off as well, so on the whole, I'd say 0.0 has been a big success so far.

OMG! He's back (for another week or two...)

Yeah, I've been gone from blogging for awhile, I'll admit it. But that doesn't mean I can't come back, and that's exactly what I'm doing now. Things are starting to get interesting in my corporation, and this seems like a perfect time to start doing a bit of blogging again.

As far as what's been going on for me, I've recently celebrated the following milestones in my EVE career:

• Been to 0.0
• Been podded
• Learned to fly my first capital ship
• Learned to fly my first T2 combat ship
• Been promoted to a "leadership" role in my corporation

In my personal life, I've gotten a new job, sold my current house, found a new house in a new city, and made arrangements to move my family halfway across the country

I'll keep this posting brief, but look for more in the future.

EVE Online and the eternal noob

Something that amazes (and confounds me, quite honestly) is how EVE can regularly make you feel like a rank beginner. It happens to me all the time. I've been playing this game for over a year and a half, but I regularly run into things in the game that I simply have no idea how to do.

It happened most recently yesterday when a corp leader asked me to stop reacting one item and start reacting another in one of our POSs. I'd been tending the POSs for a while now, so this seemed like it should be pretty easy, but it actually turned out to be quite a bit more complicated than I expected. Now maybe this was more difficult than it needed to be, and perhaps CCP could have designed this feature to be easier, but on the other hand, the fact that you do have to put a bit of thought into things and that the game won't hold your hand is one of the things that make it fun.

Other areas where this has come into play for me include scanning, planetary interaction, and POS management. I'm sure there are many more that will pop up as I continue playing the game. And quite honestly, I look forward to it!

What I've learned about high sec mining...

Not too long ago, I got ganked in high sec while mining. In fact, I've got a draft post that I just haven't finished describing the whole sordid affair. Anyway, I've learned a few things about high sec mining from the experience:

1. If you can, use an Orca so you can avoid jet canning. The way that griefers can kill you without getting CONCORDed almost always involve cans, so generally speaking, no cans, no grief.
2. If you do jet can, pay attention to your overview. The bad guy can't can flip if he isn't close to one of your cans.
3. If you see someone approach your can and get within 2500m of it, it's best to just consider that can gone. I would not try to salvage anything from it and would just leave. Remember, he wants your ship, not your ore.
4. If you are going to ignore the 3rd thing I've learned, then always grab stuff out of your can all at once, and only after making sure the can is not yellow. He will be sitting there with the can contents open, and the second he sees something disappear, he can drop something in, flipping the can and making you the thief the next item you move.

I'm sure there are tons of other rules for high sec miners, but these are the ones I learned from my little adventure. If you have any others, I'd love to hear them.