War is (boring as) hell.

Greetings dear readers of my blog (and the third guy who just showed up). I have to say that the new empire war TRAPS is involved with is boring as hell, to say the least. Our latest target corporation Kinetic Vector [KVEC] has quite successfully vanished from known space: only a small portion of the 100+ members are online at all, some in their HQ Hedaleolfarber (Molden Heath) with some random wanderers in Gallente space. Yesterday saw the camping of Trossere gate for maibee, a Domi pilot, who was finally killed in Vittenyn. It is fair to say that I am disappointed in [KVEC] for not bringing more to the fight and this will only help to prolong the war. My only hope is that our CEO will declare another war soon, which would keep us in shape for the duration of [KVEC]-inactivity. They will come out and play in the end, I am sure:)

Hopefully I have more joyous things to tell you next time!

More PVP!

And so I have - after much contemplation - come to the conclusion that I want to take part in an Empire war. So much so that I have resigned my position of Alliance Chief Diplomat and director [HGR] and joined the ranks of the infamous [TRAPS] aka The Really Amazing Players.

I tried to steamroll the idea of an Empire war into the [HGR] ranks but with no success. It seems to be so, that in order to get all peeps actively behind a common goal, you have to cunningly disable their other activities. In the case of [HGR], where people whine about the lack of prospect and joint operations and where PVP would do much good to train the young "padawans", an Empire war is the best option because it neatly rules out the possibility of Empire carebearing. Thank goodness this is obvious to all members and no explanations have been needed so far:)

So... a new career for me. First 5 days after joining no action - the sixth day I engaged a LostSheep Inc. n00b and her beam laser/missile/projectile/shield boosting/armor repping wonder-Hurricane (tm) outside a Pimebeka station in my Blasteranis (name ruthlessly copied from Ka Jolo - see the link for his blog on the right). Unfortunately I was unable to bump the Hurricane off docking range with my Taranis, so it was a dock-undock-hide-and-seek. I would have required just a bit more time to chew through her tank with my set of three Light Neutron Blaster II's and two Hobgoblin II's but hey - you can't win every time.

Luckily there is a new war coming active today afternoon EVE-time, this time against Kinetic Vector [KVEC], a decent enough crew of peeps that I know from a past life when we were all in the Freelancer Alliance and roaming the rich systems of Deklein. I am actually looking forward to this war as I predict we will get our money's worth with this lot:) I am soooo looking forward to breaking the cherry of my newly bought BS's.

Oh - btw - I scored my first kill in a long time, YAY \o/. I originally set out to test the shield tank of my Broadsword against sentries and headed for Old Man Star (0.3) which is usually filled to the brim with wannabe-pierats just waiting to be podded, and I was not mistaken this time. As I entered the system there was a Tristan pilot at the gate with a slightly negative sec status - seemingly just afking there. I made some safespots in the system and started to scan for possible pray. Nothing:( Eventually I went ratting with the intention to either get a faction frig to cover my wasted time or getting some sucker to steal my loot. However, everybody seemed to be afk at stations or missioning, hence out of my reach. Finally I decided to warp to the gate to maybe get a sentry tanking test and swell enough - there was the same guy - Shane Schofeild - in his Tristan at the gate! I initiated my target lock sequence but the bugger woke up and warped to a belt like a rabbit into the grass. Well, I thought to myself, let's see this to the end - and warped to the same belt. There he was 30km away - he had started fighting belt rats like there was not a worry in the world! Unbelievable tosser! I locked him pronto and caught him with my ~30km warp disruption field generator, moved close enough for my five 425mm AC's to start the pounding on his ass - *snap & crackle* there goes the frigate, followed by *pop* there goes the pod:) Damn, it felt good! Long time no pod. Actually it felt way better than bad sex :D After much rejoicing I proceeded to loot the wreck - nothing to write home about but loot nevertheless. I have to do this more often:)

Now that there is a war coming active I hope to have more to write, so stay tuned...

Invention v2.0

Another try at getting some sweet T2-gear invented, this time I gave a go to EANM-invention. OK, so the invention required - as usual - a meta item (Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane I, which btw is 100 cbm in volume; a real drag to haul to the POS-lab), A data interface (Occult data interface for an Amarr job, such as this), a max run BPC, Nanite and Hydromagnetic datacores (2 of each) and a decryptor. I got my hands on "Sacred Manifesto" with relatively low cost, so thats what I used.

The invention itself took only 1h 15mins - not bad. And behold - a success!

Great news! You were successful in producing a new Tech II blueprint! You're happy with your success, for succeeding this job was far from certain. Blueprint details: Blueprint Type: Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II Blueprint Number of Runs: 12 Material Level: -3 Productivity Level: 0

Now, my last invention - the Jaguar AF - and it's manufacturing costs in mind I calmly start to study the details of the newly invented Tech2-BPC:

Well, 12 runs is not exactly instant bliss, but way better than my 3-run Jaguar print. What worries me here is the low ME of -3, meaning a wasteage of 40%. Now what remains to be done is the market study of components needed for manufacturing and calculations of cost-efficiency.

Invention

Hurrah & dibi-di-doo! I have so far managed to produce 3 Jaguar-class Assault Frigate BPC's with 3 runs each and a Wolf-class Assault Frigate BPC with 9 runs in it. Invention 4TW! Or what? Having done some market analysis on the prices of the stuff needed for T2 production, I have come to the conclusion that in order to make any profit one must manufacture the components too, so the component BPO's (abt. 5M isk each) have to be purchased and studied too. For example, the Jaguar BPC I got from invention requires the following components (amount):

Deflection Shield Emitter (56) à 39,000 isk = 2,184,000 isk

Construction Blocks (56) à 470 isk = 26,320 isk

Electrolytic Capacitor Unit (42) à 15,074 isk = 633,108 isk

Fernite Carbide Comp. Armor Plate (56) à 10,800 isk = 604,800 isk

Nanomechanical Microprocessor (28) à 12,184 isk = 341,152 isk

Laser Sensor Cluster (28) à 30,000 isk = 840,000 isk

Nuclear Reactor Unit (56) à 150,000 isk = 8,400,000 isk (!)

Plasma Thruster (42) à 41,000 isk = 1,722,000 isk

R.A.M Starship tech (4) à 30,000 isk = 120,000 isk

TOTAL = 14,871,380 isk

Market price of a Jaguar = 12,000,000 isk

The above calculation does not even count in the price of the small amounts of various normal minerals that are needed for manufacturing, (Morphite among others) nor the costs of the invention itself i.e. datacores, decryptors, data interfaces and Rifters used as a meta-item etc. Of course these prices are Domain market prices, so some reduction may be possible if stuff is bought from Jita or Rens.

I have to say, this really calls for a proper cost-efficiency calculation on my part. If I can't reduce the price of those components enough, it's best I just keep on buying my ships from market as a regular Joe. Damn, what a downer... no sudden riches in invention, it seems.

Activity!

Wow! It sure is nice to have an alliance chat with the liveliness that was witnessed on the evening of 19th Feb:) A total of 18 alliance members chatted actively as we had the new corp moving their gear from Minmatar space to southern Domain, where we have been active for a good while. Silent-I.K.Y members were cruising down to low-sec in their haulers and [LSL] kindly provided the scouting services needed. Yours truly was FC with Hyperion which had last been seen in Frarn, engaged in killing the same guys it was now escorting - life has it's twists and turns, eh?

Everything went as planned - well... if not counting one of the Silent-guys afking in a Hulk on Mamet (0.1) gate of all things (dear-oh-dear). Apparently he had decided all of a sudden that it was time for tea (those Brits - crazy peeps:)

To top it off for the evening the guys had a decent kill too. Way to go - alliance killpoints as a "house-warming gift".

The Alliance grows

Only a short while has passed since the formation of our alliance. The original founding corporations [HGR], [FEN] and [LSL] have been joined by a corporation which has only recently been put together when a former war-target of ours - Chaos Affliction - split into several smaller groups. I can't for the life of me remember the name of the new member-corp *slaps self* and besides it's downtime so I can't go and see the stats either:) [edit: The new corp is called SILENT-I.K.Y. and I wonder if it stands for silent-I-kill-you:)]

Anyway, it's really nice to see our alliance grow and these new blokes really gave us a run for our money in the war and put up a respectable fight, especially given the average character age, which is way lower than ours. With each joining corp and player we come closer to reaching our main goal of getting a home system of our own.

Let's see where the dice fall:)

Enough with the POS business!

After four months of POS-caretaking, ice harvesting and hauling various commodities to be used at POS operations I thought to myself: "This can't be all there is". I expressed my feelings to my associate Lex Diaboli, who had been a great help in keeping the POS running and with whom I had done some lvl4 missioning too. He was not too happy about my decision to halt the operation and move to (supposedly) greener pastures. Thanks to a loyal partner for all the help, but I had to move along.

During all my time in [KAR] and [FEN] I had kept contact with a handful of the peeps I worked with in Erasers. One of my closest [ERAS]-friends, Camcalen, had also had his cup filled to the brim with the unsatisfying Erasers protocol and had formed a corporation of his own, The Howling Griffins. I had followed the development of the corporation from the start and had been idling on their public communications channel from the beginning. Somewhere along the way I helped Camcalen by making a full set of max run missile BPC's and thus we started to talk more in detail. It wasn't long before he asked for the first time to join [HGR]. At this point I was pretty bored with all the carebear shit and was ready to try something new. I told him I would wait until my last ME/PE/Copy jobs would be ready from my POS and I would then take it down and join his corporation. Just a short notification here: I never terminated my own corporation but named an alt as its CEO and it is still running, though in more or less"desk drawer" -mode.

Today, after some 9 months ín the service of [HGR], after 2 POS adventures (one in Providence and one in Detorid), after loosing 2 jump clones with +4 implant sets + HW's, we are back in Empire space. We had a quite a successful two-week war against a corp called Chaos Affliction who were allegedly can-flipping SOB's and generally pestering the newb's in Heimatar hi-sec. All in all the war gave the corp the enema it needed: peeps were all scattered throughout the known universe doing their own thing and there was no mutual goal or operations. The war gathered us all once again under the corporate banner to fight the enemy. A lot of our members had had absolutely no PvP-experience before this war and this rather succesful war boosted the morale and self-confidence of all the members, I would say. At the end of the war we also received reinforcements in the form of Eugen Ladder, a fighter and experienced FC who had joined a different corp some time earlier in search of more PvP-action but was now ready to come back and retake his position as a respectable damage-dealer with his notorious Megathron-class battleship fitted with second generation hi-power blasters. The Howling Griffins Killboard shows the degree of his devotion:)

The Howling Griffins has recently formed an alliance with two other corporations: Fenris Polaris [FEN] and The Legion of Steel Lions [LSL]. The newly formed alliance is called "The Polaris Syndicate" [HRR]. What the future holds for us is unknown but we do know what it is we want: a place of our own where you don't have to pay anyone for ratting or mining rights and don't have to take shit from no-one. Of course, this means we have to be prepared to fight for our dream and I am certain we shall do so. I sincerelly hope we can rally up all the members to form a working community, all doing their bit for the common good. Thumbs up!