Nomads
The corporation has moved again! and I am wondering if we are becoming a bunch of Nomads. We have moved from one end of the map to the other, and now back again.
Maybe it is for the best, maybe this is the only way we will find our oasis and eventually settle down.
The only problem this time is that our new alliance is constantly under wardecs, which has made it impossible for Dirk to carry out normal operations in Hisec.
I need to run missions to build up my researchers standings, and to build up corporation standings for industry, as well as do a huge amount of mining, which will enable me to build the store of ships that are necessary to living in Nullsec. Because of this, I have reluctantly resigned from the corporation that I helped to start up three years ago.
Although I will rejoin at some later date with a good fleet of ships, and hopefully the isk to allow me to replace those I lose, I still feel very sad.
It is not as though I will lose touch completely, as I will still develope and maintain the corp’s forum, killboard and wiki. It just feels very lonely not being in the corp chat.
I have entered one of my own corporations and will build up the standings for industry and jump clones, not that it is difficult to get jump clones these days.
I recently found a corporation that hands out jump clones to anybody that wants them, without any extra charges above the normal 100’000 isk. All you have to do is join the corporation, collect your clones, and then resign from the corp.
Just make sure that you have already trained the required skills.
You can read all about them HERE
I am at the point now when I can fly all sorts of nullsec ships, such as Carriers, Jump Freighters, Rorquals, etc., and once I have built or bought a few I will be eager to use them, which is something I won’t be able to do in Hisec, so yes, I will rejoin the corporation and bring my new toys with me.
Incarna
Incarna is well established now, and I must say that I like the captains quarters. A lot of pilots don’t for varying reasons, one of them being a hit on framerates, but I haven’t had any
problems as yet. But then each of my three main characters run on a separate computer.
One day soon I will purchase a fourth account and another computer.
At the moment I am still trying to get all nine characters up to level four or five in Research Project Management, along with the other requirements for research agents.
Some people say that it is impossible to enjoy EVE as a loner, that you have to join a corporation and play the game with a bunch of other guys, or boredom will set in.
They may well be right, but I have found that if I have set goals, I will seldom get bored while making my way to them, and lets face it, in EVE there are many, and varied
goals that you can set yourself. Some of those goals might have a very boring journey, but if you set two or three in parallel and hop from one to the other, you should be able
to have fun, and as long as you are having fun, it is a good game.
Incursion ETC.
Incursion has been here a while now and has had some small effect on my EVE lifestyle,
not least of which is the new character portraits, don’t you just love them?
I certainly do.
The changes to Planetary Interaction have caused me to shut down operations for now. I have put that on hold in the hope that The Corp will be moving to some decent nullsec space where I can get started again.
Man! nothing is ever static in EVE, I am forever moving around and changing plans.
I am still training up my characters to make use of research agents, and at the same time running missions for standings. Although this is a hell of a long process, I do believe it will be worth it in the long run.
With all my characters using agents the ISK should come rolling in.
On my third account I still had an unused character and was thinking to create another Mimatar or Caldari, but then I decided that I fancy the idea of trying my hand with “Drone Boats”, so yes, I created a Gallente. 
I am training him for a Catalyst first, so that he can run the level one missions, and then will train him for a cruiser, to gain standings for the agents.
Now normally I would stop there, as I have with my other characters who tag along behind one of my mains doing level three missions.
But this guy is a whole new Race, with all that entails, different skills, different ships, an entirely different way of playing EVE, for me anyway, so I will train this character up to be one of my mains. At least to battleship, and probably into the Gallente Tec 2 ships.
A whole new learning experience for me.
Dirk is now trained up to fly a Carrier, and I will get him one as soon as I have the isk. I’m still not sure whether to get him a Widow as well, he is trained for Black Ops and a couple of my alts are trained to covert cyno, so time will tell.
My main focus now will be to get a POS set up in a reasonably safe area, and start producing ships for the PvP guys. It is their efforts that keep the corporation in 0.0 space, and if I can make it easier for them with a decent ship replacement program, I will feel that I am earning my keep. The industrial side of the corp has had a hard time trying to make things work in a system that is a pipe for the Reds, so hopefully things will change in the near future.
Real life has settled down nicely now, I got married at the end of January, my heart seems to be behaving itself now, so will be able to get back to playing EVE regularly again and continue blogging about it.
Clear skies.
To “Black Ops” or Not
According to The Quarterly News Letter quarter 2 2010, the Black Ops Battleship has increased in popularity by 40 percent since the quarter 1 news letter, from 260 ships to 364 currently in use.
It would seem that our pilots are changing their minds about the merits of the covert ops ship, and coming to realise that it was never meant to be a sneaky pawn mobile, but rather a covert fleet tool, to be used for sneaking a fleet of covert ships into an unfriendly neighbours back yard.
I have been training the skills for a Widow, the Caldari black ops ship, for what seems an eternity. Many pilots consider the high skills not worth the benefits of these ships, but then the same pilots probably wouldn’t train for a Carrier. You might ask why am I training for the black ops, especially considering that I am something of a care bear.
Well the answer to that is because I want to be able to offer more of myself to the corp than just the industrial stuff.
I know that am pretty useless at PvP, but with this ship I could bridge the guys who are good at it into a system, cloak up until they have done their stuff, and then bridge them out again.
That, is what I believe the Black Ops are designed to do, and corporations like “Dirt Nap Squad” are putting it to good use.
Did anybody read the report of a 20 man fleet of Stealth Bombers, recon ships and a lone Widow that stalked and destroyed an Archon-class carrier? Heh, I did. 
My choice of black ops is the Widow, and not just because my character is Caldari, but because I think she is the best in her class. She has good missile bonus’s, and a 30 percent bonus to ECM jammer strength.
Missiles would be for “just incase”, ECM should be able to keep her safe until she can warp to safety.
Two cyno alts would be utilised at each end of the portal, one to bring us in and the other to take us home. Because of the incredibly high amount of isotopes required to jump ships through a black ops portal, a transport ship filled with said isotopes will come along to ensure that everybody can get back home.
All I need now is enough brave pilots, and an unsuspecting group of victims to test the plan.
Still in Limbo
Yes I am still in limbo after having been evicted from Providence, along with the alliance and our corporation.
The alliance and corporation have very nicely set themselves up in a Northern null space, and already hold sovereignty there. But it took a huge amount of PvP to get them in that position, and as you are probably aware, PvP is not my forte.
So I am currently bumbling around High security space trying out some of the features of EVE that I have never given much thought to, such as R&D Agents.
I have been reading a lot about Research and Development agents lately, which is something I passed over in the beginning as being not worth my time. But after a couple of chats with my friend Cootsy, it finally dawned on me that I was missing out on something here, that this was a way to make ISK without having to go to the office every day, or even every three days, as is the case with Planetary Interaction.
Making use of R&D agents does not come free however, there is a large amount of work to be carried out up front in order to get them to even talk to you, let alone work for you. What? Oh! You didn’t read the link above? Well to quote a part of the above mentioned link, “Rather than the usual missions, R&D agents can be asked to do “research” for you. Once an agent is working for you, you get Research Points (RP) from them to trade for Datacores (available from the agent with RP as currency) to sell or use in invention.” And better still, I quote: “It’s very important to know that the RP are generated on a daily basis, so each day your total RP will increase by a set amount regardless of whether you interact with the agent or not.”
Now isn’t that better than Planetary Interaction? And to think, it has been around for years.
The consequence of all this, is that I am training up three of my characters in the skills required, and at the same time, carrying out missions with the normal agents to get them to the required standings. I want to be able to use the highest level of agent, and believe that the time spent getting to that level will be well spent.
I will eventually venture back to nullsec and try to assist my corporation buddies in anything that is not too PvP related, although I have no objection to small gang PvP, and will gladly help make up the numbers for them.
There is even talk that we may, one day, attempt to build our own station,,,, now that is a project that would really interest me.
