Catching Up

Huo Lung > Do you comment on like every other kill of yours? You need to just resume blogging. :P

Fine then, I WILL. :P

In fairness, it has been just about three months since I've posted anything updates of my own life in internet spaceships. In that time, we've had a ton of stuff happen in-game, a lot of which I don't even remember clearly enough to comment on. Thus, in lieu of a wordier post with all the things I normally include in my blog, I'll just list a few highlights of the past three months as a Black Rebel.

• March was a relatively slow month overall, thanks to some RL concerns I had come up for the first few weeks. March was also the beginning of R1FTA's holiday to my old stomping grounds of Citadel and Black Rise lowsec, the native habitat of the Caldari and Gallente militias. There wasn't a whole lot of activity for me thanks to my absence, but I did chalk up a kill during an engagement with a Crusader in my Thrasher, notable as my only solo kill of the month.
  
• April wasn't much more exciting than March in terms of the amount of PVP I engaged in, but it does stand out as being the first time I participated in a supercap kill. Full story is over at Dirty Protagonist's blog, ain't no sunshine. (Read it if you haven't already, it's funny.) Apparently Friday the 13th is bad luck after all...
  
• A few days before our Nyx kill, Peri Simone lead the weekly "Target Everyone, Somebody Fire" roam out of Heild on a Tuesday night. As we'd sort of expected, the trip ended with a skirmish with Gunpoint Diplomacy, and R1FTA didn't fare as well as we'd hoped. Spirits were somewhat low, but the Rebels were determined not to be outshone, and during a second round (in which Peri handed me the reins) we gave RANSM a GF. (Note: The battle report is kinda messed up because the two fights happened in the same system, despite being an hour apart. The final score for the second round was three Ruptures and a Thrasher killed, while losing two Ruptures, a Stabber Fleet Issue and a Jaguar.)
  
• The first two weeks of May opened with a couple of activities I don't normally avail myself of - Hulkageddon ganks and POS bashing. There was also a Jaguar which I hero-tackled with my Rifter (and survived!), an optimistic young player who engaged my Ishkur on a gate (and ended up being my first above-class solo kill), and a hilarious 2v2 guest-starring Naoru Kozan of the Tuskers (after which the Daredevil and Thrasher pilots refused to undock while we were in system). Of course, since this blog simply wouldn't be complete without one of my own fiery deaths, I'll include an account of my fourteen-minute frigate 1v1.

I do feel obligated to write a post about the upcoming FW changes at some point, since so much of my own PVP career has been as a member of the Caldari militia, but I'm quite frankly trying to avoid it - so much has already been said about FW in various venues that I'm not sure I can add anything new to it, and I feel a little too out-of-the-loop to be confident that I'd know what I was talking about. (Which I suppose has never stopped anyone in EVE before, but...) Still, I'm once again trying to renew my commitment to posting here regularly, so hopefully you'll see more out of me in the future.

In the meantime, fly dangerous! o/

FC Review: 21 February 2012

This post was originally put up on the Black Rebel Rifter Club's corp forums, as part of a series of weekly roams entitled "Target Everyone, Somebody Fire!" organised by a corpmate looking to gain more experience running gangs. Last night was the second in this series of roams, and I stepped up to FC for the event.

Start time: 22:00, including Rifter combat and general lazing about by the FC
Route: Heild > Otosela > Amamake

This week's episode of TESF, titled "This Can Only End Well!", was guest-hosted by Dian Lung. There were a number of excellent killmails to be had, but unfortunately, many of them were at the FC's expense. :P

Anniversary

Almost two years ago, I undocked a ship with the intention of using it to PVP, without any idea what I was doing. Realising this milestone has made me reflect on the changes that have come over the past two years, and the people I've had the pleasure of meeting and flying with (and sometimes against). PVP is mostly a social activity for me, so I think it's appropriate that I take the opportunity to offer my thanks.

The RANSM has been offered and paid...

Hey all, sorry things have been quiet from me lately. It's been longer than I'd intended since my last post. I don't even really know how to describe what's been happening over the past few weeks. I've been dealing with a ton of RL health issues, and as a result I wasn't online regularly for practically that entire time. (As a measure of how sick I was: I started a three-week skill train, finished it, and left my account not training for a good four days after it was done before I realized I needed to log in and change it. Yeah, THAT sick.) Before all the RL stuff happened, I was starting to feel a bit of a creeping malaise regarding EVE, but I couldn't figure out why - I'd left factional warfare, joined a new corp, was making a solid attempt at being a "serious" pirate (or at least a "not sure if serious" pirate, as I imagine Sulei would say), and things were generally pleasant. I didn't know why I was still feeling unsatisfied when everything looked good.

A Pirate's Life For Me

About a week ago, I came to the realization that I needed a change of pace in EVE. There were quite a few reasons for my decision, stemming from both my own preferences in the game and the environment that seems to have taken hold in Caldari-Gallente factional warfare. (The explanation of the whole thing is long and relies on people having knowledge of the current FW scene, so I'll leave it out.) Eventually, I decided that I'd hang up my State Protectorate badge for the third time and look for other opportunities.

Huo and I talked about our next steps at length; I mentioned not too long ago that he'd joined the pirate corp Meatshield Bastards, and while he was enjoying the PVP, the inconsistency of being a US time zone player in primarily EU-based corp was starting to take its toll. He wanted to continue lowsec piracy-style PVP, and I've been more and more interested in the field myself of late. The decision wasn't without its hiccups - we had a couple of significant differences of opinion on exactly how we'd go about the next chapter of our lives in EVE, but eventually, we came to an agreement.