Explosions!

Since this blog is about EVE Online, and the vast majority of the pilots I currently fly with are in the game for the "pew pew", I thought I'd give a summarized version of the spaceship murder I've recently been party to in the name of "good fites".

• A hat trick of firsts: my first night in R1FTA, my first kill as a member of that corp, and my first killmail as a member of the corp, all on the same Myrmidon.
• A brawl with RANSM at the Angel Creo-Corp plex in Heild. This was actually a series of four separate engagements: Haerod's Enyo and Duke's Wolf popping Dirty Protagonist's Coercer while my Jaguar and Ris' Enyo took Totera's Thrasher down (later joined by Haerod's Tristan and Aliaksandre's Rifter). Second, a group of us jumped on Titus' Bellicose after I had reshipped into a Stiletto. The third fight was a larger frigate and destroyer brawl that spelled the end of the same Jaguar that had killed Totera earlier. Finally, a little later that evening, I had a 1v1 against SneakyBadger's Thrasher that I lost by the skin of my teeth (Sneaky was at 6% structure when my Retribution popped). 
• A pair of 1v1s with Naoru Kozan of the Tuskers where I lost a Retribution and a Jaguar. Due to the comments left in the second lossmail, I suspect the surprise pointing incident was arranged by Jaxley. :P
• This Vagabond aggressed my Retribution on the undock of our home station while I was typing something to a corpmate. Though he managed to burn 40 kilometres away in the time that it took me to dock and reship, it wasn't quite enough to escape my Lachesis' point range.
• Unfortunately, not everyone who offers 1v1 fights has good intentions. This particular pilot offered a "friendly" duel in a Nighthawk, showed up on field in a Daredevil (which stood far less of a chance against my Hurricane's 720mm guns), and then proceeded to call in a gaggle of friends to gank my poor battlecruiser. I was miffed about the entire affair for about half an hour, but after that, it was more hilarious than anything.
• On the generous invitation of my friend anf fellow Woman Gamer of EVE Shalee Lianne (who sounds SO CUTE on comms!), I spent a few hours camping gates in The Forge lowsec with her and her corp, Imperial Outlaws. Among the results were a Talos (my first tier 3 battlecruiser kill), a Lachesis and a Ferox.
• Last but certainly not least, the only explosions to come out of a brief venture into Innsmother with my partners in crime Huo and Judge. We had just returned from a tour of 0.0 featuring some module lag shenangians and a frustrating lack of kills. On the lowsec gate from L4X to Skarkon, I saw a gate flash, and what popped up but a Vindicator? Unfortunately, contrary to Cyber Ten's assurances, it did not end well. (Despite that, though, we had a blast - pun definitely intended!)

While I try not to dwell too much on killboard stats, I'm pleased to note that in the past eight days since joining R1FTA, I seem to be on my way to setting personal records for both kills and losses - I'm currently at 21 kills for the month (with a record of 53 in March of 2011, primarily due to participating in the Wensleyday Roams), and 12 losses in the same period (with a record of 14 in March of 2011, likely also due to the Wensleyday Roams :P).

I certainly won't claim those as examples of prolific PVP activity - I know pilots who pull in as many kills in an average-to-busy month as I have in my entire four-year EVE career - but if I maintain the pace that I've set for the month so far, it'll represent significant changes in both the quantity and quality of my fights in New Eden. I'll discuss that in more detail in a separate post, so if you're interested, keep an eye out!

Rebel Yell

Lots of stuff going on since my last post, which probably isn't that surprising, given that it's been three months (ish). For the sake of keeping this entry relatively brief, I'll go through the broad strokes rather than minute details. Apologies in advance if things seem a little disjointed as a result.

Look ma, I'm on Sov Wars!

As fate would have it, a mere day after I started writing blog posts again I was contacted by Shalee of Sovereignty Wars to see if I'd be interested in doing an interview. I'm sure you all know how well I get on with the opportunity to ramble at length about anything, so I was more than happy to accept!

Direct link to the interview is here.

Frustrational Warfare

With a post title like that, I think I've succeeded at both banishing any confusion about what the topic might be, and losing the interest of a significant portion of anyone who might read this blog. Since I've already managed to accomplish two things with this post, I reserve the right to present the rest of the content in an utterly pointless way. :P

My perspective on Factional Warfare is admittedly narrow; I haven't spent a great deal of time in the FW environment recently, and I've never really ventured into the Amarr-Minmatar side of the conflict at all. If you're interested in getting a broader view of things, I'd highly recommend a blog written by my awesome Amarr counterpart and fellow gamer-chick Shalee Lianne. You can find it over at Sovereignty Wars.

WARNING: This is going to be a long post, even compared to some of the wordier ones I've written here. I won't be offended if people don't read the whole thing, so don't expect me to come out and randomly start quizzing people on its contents or anything like that.

Back with a snap-crackle-pop!

Every time I'm away from the game and intend to come back with a vengenace (or more likely a Jaguar, but I digress), my burst of enthusiasm lasts for all of a week before some sort of external influence takes its toll. So, rather than loudly proclaiming how I'm ready to turn internet spaceships upside down, I'm just going to say that I'm here. Maybe the universe won't see it as a challenge that way.

Still, I can't say my EVE life has been entirely uneventful. I haven't made too much of a flap in the areas that I'm typically involved in, but I've slowly been getting myself re-adjusted to EVE. I don't know if I'd go so far as to call the happenings "exciting", but for the sake of putting a post up for the first time in ages, I'll share a few details here.

What is a Carebear?

If you're at all familar with my background in EVE and in this blog, I'm sure you can agree that I'm eminently qualified to write a post on carebears. (Yes, you may start laughing now.) Admittedly, a lot of the thoughts in this post come from the fact that since I started writing this blog, I've seen myself as less and less of a carebear than I have in the past. Eventually, it lead me to wonder exactly what defines a carebear in the EVE sense, specifically in the context of lowsec PVP.

My thinking on this topic started a few months ago while having a chat with some of the ladies in the Women Gamers of EVE channel. We were discussing different types of ship fittings, and without quite realizing what I was getting into (the fits were related to highsec missions), I started offering a few points before realizing that I'd absent-mindedly been thinking along the lines of fitting said ship for PVP, rather than PVE. The response of one of the ladies in question was, "Yeah, Dian, but you're mostly a PVP pilot anyway."

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!