Oops.

So there I was, lurking around a bit in the EVE blogiverse and thoroughly enjoying the significantly less taxing approach of reading things that other people had written. On one of the blogs - I believe it was Laedy's (congrats to her for going back to uni!) - I saw a link back to my own chronicle, the one you're reading right now. Last update: Three months ago.

The title of this post says it all.

In fairness, I've been suffering an unexpected absence from EVE for quite some time. I won't go into the reasons aside from saying it's RL-based and somewhat ongoing, but I'm slowly making my way back into internet spaceships and seeing what trouble I can cause.

I don't really have anything interesting to post here right at the moment; I've got a ton of posts I've been thinking of writing over the past few months, but none of them are anything I've gotten around to actually doing. Instead, I'll link you an article that's captured my attention recently: a guest article on Azual's blog regarding certain aspects of FCing.

See you all soon!

FC Review - 22 May 2011

So after much needling from some of my partners in crime in Caldari FW, I took the reins for a roaming gang last night. All in all it started out fairly boring - we'd initially shipped for frigates and fast cruisers and set out for Enaluri to roam the pipes toward our mortal enemies' headquarters in Heydieles. The first leg of the roam didn't go as well as I'd planned, ending in a small scrap between Oinasiken and Pynekastoh that lost us a Caracal and Enyo.

The Gallente gang we engaged was somewhat heavier than hours, with roughly even numbers but more battlecruisers compared to our frigates and cruisers, so I pulled our fleet back to the State Protectorate station in Rakapas to clear my head and allow the pilots who were based there to re-ship. While we were there, we picked up a couple more fleet members in Drakes, while losing several due to various other commitments combined with the late hour of the evening. Once everyone was ready to move again, we set out.

Just for the Hull of It

One of the recurring themes of both my PVP career and my "ooo, shiny!" approach to skill training plans is being unable to decide which ships I want to fly. Recently I took the opportunity to sit down and look seriously at which hulls I've been undocking the most. The results I ended up with were very different than I thought they would be.

Back in Action

Time goes by more quickly than I realized - it didn't occur to me that it's been a month since my last post. A surprising amount has happened in that time, and I've had a lot of things I've been meaning to write about rattling around in my head. Naturally, somehow those have never made it to "paper". I'm going to try to correct this over the next few days by putting up a few posts with what I've been thinking about lately.

One thing that's really struck me about EVE is that there's an amusing distinction between "the game" and "the community". Part of the reason I haven't written recently is because I simply haven't been in-game, due to some RL issues that are finally starting to sort themselves out. During that time, I found that I had a huge number of ideas for blog posts I wanted to write, fits I wanted to fly in-game, plans for how I wanted to set up my skill training and many other things. It was as if the time I spent away from playing the game gave me the opportunity I needed to think about the game. (Wensley, stop EFTing and reading EVE blogs and get back to work, you're taking a break for a reason. :P)

In any case, rather than turning my posts into a mass of text worthy of standing next to the Great Wall of China, I'll be breaking them up into smaller, more topic-oriented entries. I can't guarantee they won't still be long-winded - if you've read my blog before I'm sure you'll have seen that my writing is far from brief - but at least they'll be relatively concise instead of jumping from topic to topic.

In the meantime, good hunting, everyone. o/

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.

Welcome to Molden Heath

So, last night Huo and I were bored. (That isn't a new occurrence.) We fiddled around with ideas about various things that we could try doing, but nothing seemed particularly appealing - I was in a pewpew mood, instead of a bearing mood, but there didn't seem to be any non-FW blob fights to be had in the combined area of Black Rise, Placid and Essence that we currently live in. Aria was a sweetheart and mentioned that some corpies of hers from Gunpoint Diplomacy were off ganking Hulks in Molden Heath highsec. Huo was slightly less enthusiastic about the prospect than I was (as he'd participated in Hulkageddon and I hadn't), but I decided to set off for Bosena to meet Huo and see what kind of trouble we could get into.

Following a fairly amusing escape from a Minmatar militia gang in the market hub in Rens (I could've taken the Sentinel and Thrasher, maybe, but the Myrm would've broken the balance), I arrived in Teonusude bearing Huo's nano Drake. It turns out he opted to fly a Jaguar instead, while I fitted up an autocannon Hurricane. Emboldened by confidence and boredom, we set out for the lowsec portion of MH (i.e. the majority of it) to see if we could get ourselves some action.