Category: Empyrean Age

The battle of Kamela

Lately I haven’t been very active in Factional Warfare. The whole thing got a little stale at least on the Minnie – Amarr side of things. And much to my surprise we had a huge battle that lasted for almost an hour Wednesday night. One of the most amazing things in my eve career to have been a part of.

Some people died several times and came back in new ships ! I was happy to keep my rupture alive. Fitted with artillery cannons so I was able to keep a distance, dealing out some damage that way. Had to warp out several times, one time with 20% armor or so left.

The official forums has a thread, but it’s a bit polluted with the standard Whine, there is a nice report on the Heretic Public board at forum.heretic-nation.com.

Minmatar War Update II

Just as things were going a bit stale lately in the factional warfare (at least on the Minnie side), the Amarr seem to have upped their game. Whether someone finally took the lead, some new corp joined their war effort, or something else, I don’t know. But they seem to be better organised and actually engage their enemy. And last night they were busy getting their own low sec systems back.

What they do now, is have battleship heavy, remote repping fleet, which is supported by ECM. It’s very hard to break for the minmatar fleet, even though we outnumber them, we usually show up in rifters and cruisers with the odd battleship. Last night we assembled a better fleet, but the whole thing was a bit disorganised, and we suffered some losses.

Amarr morale was up after that fight as all of a sudden they were all over their own lowsec. I did some factional warfare missions in a small group and we were being chased around quite a bit, which was an interesting change. Only thing we lost was my kestrel, so it wasn’t too bad ;).

An interesting turn of events, of course I will keep you all up to date on new developments !

EVE: The Book Review

Am currently halfway through the book and it’s great ! it’s very nice to read about the background of the various races and their internal struggles as well. One question though: Are the Amarr really as evil as depicted in this book ?

I was planning on posting some kind of review here, but the Mahogany Finish blog has already posted a thorough review at http://www.mahoganyfinish.org/ that i certainly agree with.

Minmatar Warfare Update

As I wrote earlier I dusted off an old Minmatar Character to participate in the Factional Warfare. So far it’s often been fun, when we’re chasing wartargets and / or getting ready for big fights. But also sometime boring, taking a few complexes in a system and waiting out the timers isn’t really the most exciting thing Eve has to offer. A patch a few days back also decreased the standings gain for each takeover quite abit. Furthermore you get less standings gain the higher your rank is. I am now around 6.9 with the factional warfare corp. The minmatar standing will come in handy though, they have some very nice (regular) Mission Agents, and the offers from their LP store are a lot more interesting than those from the Caldari corporations.
2008.06.29.16.26.55
Anyway, I was in a few nice battles the past week or so. Last friday CVA came to aid the Amarr cause. After a lot of cat and mouse, our scouts had found out they brought a BS fleet assisted by Guardians. The names of the guardians were notted down as primaries, and after a pretty long battle we won ! Several of their Battleships and a command ship went down, while we didn’t suffer as much losses.

A few days ago, there was a similar fight, but in that one I was totally lagged out. We warped into thirty or more amarr ships at a gate. They almost all had their drones out, which didn’t help much. My screen simply froze as my Rupture entered the grid, and by the time I was back I was halfway thru my armor. I managed to release my drones somehow, and they got me on two killmails, dissing out over 1000 dmg ;). But a few seconds later I was totally in hull and my ship about to explode. And I was in that state for more than two minutes i think. Then all of a sudden my pod was in a belt (i had frantically been clicking the warp button). So I missed most of the fight, but I think they lost several heavier ships and we lost mainly frigs and cruisers. There sure were a truckload of wrecks at the gate. Earlier that day that same fleet had decimated the minmatar rag tag fleet of rifters and ruptures, so it was a nice revenge. Unfortunately I missed that one.

I haven’t suffered many losses, just a bunch of ruptures and few rifters. especially to pirates I must say. Last night just wasn’t my evening though. I flew back to Rens in my Cyclone (already had that one for quite a while) to refit and get some extra ammo, while a fleet was forming to get rid of some pirates in Dal. Unfortunately no one had mentioned they were sitting on the Amamake gate, and i was pretty stupid for not asking their specific location. So I just jumped through that gate and almost got away, but someone locked me and scrambled, almost when I was warping out. I popped a short time later.

But that wasn’t all. I had already parked a few ships in Dal, so I picked up a rifter and proceeded to Huola. I had seen enough of Dal for the moment so I wanted to join another fleet there. A few jumps away I noticed a Trasher that was battling another soldier of the Minmatar, so I tried to help out, but wasn’t the smartest idea. The guy’s T2 artillery (amarr flying a Minnie ship :(), dealt a lot of dmg to my lone rifter and there I was in a pod again.

I ended the evening by flying back to Rens and setting up two additional Ruptures to be blown up later ;). I noticed the Cyclones are only 20mil now in Rens, so I might be keeping one on standby as well, if we ever need something a bit bigger. I can also fly a Typhoon, but not sure I want to throw that out there at the moment :).

Factional Warfare So Far

QanatasTo the left is my Minmatar freedom fighter that has enlisted in the Factional Warfare. Especially the first few days were a lot of fun. I roamed around in a few smaller gangs and some bigger fleets. The bigger fleets were a new experience for me. There were some good FC’s, and only one mediocre one. The mediocre one was bad, because his orders weren’t clear, his mic didn’t work properly so fleet chat was all ‘Uh what are we warping to ?‘ ‘what system are we in ?‘ etc ;).

In the first few days I lost a few ships, three ruptures and a stabber. Only one was actually lost in a gang battle. Got picked off the gate while catching up with a gang by an Abbaddon, and two ships were lost to pirates.

But the last few days the war has gone a bit stale. We have mainly been capturing a lot of complexes and the Amarr seem to have given up. Which is understable as their morale must have hit rock bottom. Minmatar gangs all over their low sec space, we have more numbers and also seem to be a bit better experienced at pvp. Think a lot of alts signed up for the Minnie fleet. While capturing plexes, make sure to have a magazine or books at hand, or catch up on some blogs, as it takes up to 20mins to capture one and it can be very boring. The standing boosts and the titles are nice, so I hope it’s worth it.

I tried a few missions as well, but they’re not worth it, unless you’re in a gang of a few similar ships. They’re very hard to solo, especially in a pvp fit. The rewards are awful at the moment, they might get a bit better over time, as I assume a lot of them fail, raising the reward. It’s just a shame you don’t get any loyalty points for capturing or defending structures, that would make the loyalty store a lot more interesting. At the moment I can’t see the general population grinding 80k lp for a faction frig, with this mission system in place.

Anyway so far I think FW is a moderate succes. There is a lot more going on in Lowsec than usual. Whether things will stay this way over time, we’ll have to see…

Factional Warfare

Is a-coming ! The servers will go down in the night and might be up on wednesday, but don’t hold your breath. Already tried some FW on the testserver, and it was fun, but that’s also because of the cost of all modules being 100isk ;). I am thinking of dusting off an old account, I haven’t used since 2006 that holds my Minmatar freedom fighter and enlist him in the Minnie fleet. Otherwise, as both my characters are in an alliance and not willing to leave it, FW is not for me. Which is a shame as it would have been a fun sidegame.

Anyway, I have been busy in game, nothing very spectacular. Mainly ratting and a little mining in Wicked Creek. I build a Raven from recycled loot and some mining, which makes live somewhat easier. Jumped back to empire friday when it was a little hostile in WC and got some business done there. Flying around collecting datacores and selling them off.

I saved a few for my own invention stuff, and managed a 3 out of 3 attempt of an Invulnerability II Shield. If only I would have know (well I could have checked) that this thing needs quite a few expensive parts. Still hope to make a profit on them, they sell for around 2.2mil around Sivala. My stack of Ballistic Controls II is almost sold out now, and I am all out of Hammerheads II and HobGobs II. I even sold too many, when I needed a few I couldn’t find any anymore and had to invent a few BPCs for own use ;).

Met a few suicide camps on my travels around empire for the best deals, as you can see by this screenshot :).
Concorde Much ?
!!! DONT FORGET TO SET A LONG SKILL !!!

Empyrean Age on the Horizon

CCP had a huge surprise this week for us Eve Players. This weekend this upcoming expansion will be on the test server. It will mainly focus on factional warfare. I didn’t realise it was this close already to being released. Together with the expansion, the first eve novel will be out. There is a new page that includes wallpaper and a trailer over at http://www.eveonline.com/empyreanage/index.html.

Looking forward to even more stuff to do in Eve :).

Update: Oops forgot to include the Devblog !