Morphisat's Blog

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.

Revitalizing a corporation

First off a little history, Rakeriku has been around since late 2005. I joined them as a noobie january 2006 after a month of Eve University. The corp was buzzing with activity then. We had an online shop, build a lot of ships and had well attended mining ops. But after a while people moved on, and the core of the corp (about 8 people or so with alts) remained. We’re all relatively old characters now. Independent with plenty of isk to back us up. And that’s where the problem lies :).

When you’re a few months old, a mining op with a few vets is great, but once people grow older, running missions is more lucrative, and start doing that. Mining ops get attended less, people move on to other ventures etc.. So now here we are 2 years later (give or take) and corp chat has become more of a chatbox. Everybody is off to do their own thing (me included).

We did a bit of recruitment earlier in the year, but only a few of the people that joined stuck around. We just don’t have that much to offer to newer players, besides our knowledge (uhm) of the game ;).

Here are a few things we’re planning or doing at the moment to revitalize the corp a bit:

setting up a POS in hisec for research which will need maintaining etc.
pos in low sec for carrier production. This will need minerals so mining might be interesting again.
looking into level 5 agents for group missions. No experience with this yet, if anyone has speak up :). Are the systems camped by pirates or are people not bothering with it ?
looking for other corporations to join our alliance. This will get us in touch with other people we can help out or work together with.

Regarding that last point: If you’re an industrial corp big or small, looking for a nice alliance to join to minimize the wardecs, have some friendly experienced players to chat to and help out with mining and production, contact me in game and we can talk about it. Just to be clear, we have nothing against pvp, but we don’t have anything to offer pvp corporation.

If anyone can offer more advise for revitalizing a corporation, please leave a comment !

Ofcourse our recruitement offer is still valid as well (except for the 0.0 part).

Bye Bye Wicked Creek

In April our alliance started renting some 0.0 from TCF in Wicked Creek. After a somewhat rough start, we settled in and could get some ratting and mining (Arkanor and Gneiss) done, even though small gangs of bad guys (ie. Reds in 0.0 speak) entered the area.

But over the past six weeks or so, the situation worsened. There are now continuously gangs coming in and out. Clownpunchers, Bob, Pure, Goodfellows and what not, can come and go as they please. TCF defense is nowhere to be seen, and the locals aren’t strong enough to take on these organized gangs. And then there is also a few Goons from time to time, who are blue to TCF but red to most other people, which is then cause for lively debate on the security channel.

To make things worse, last month or so (or the month before) the rent was upped. From 200 to 250 a month. Plus you also have to rent an office for 100 mil a month. Our corp isn’t very big, so this was straining the corp wallet a bit. As paying 350mil a month for space you can hardly use doesn’t make a lot of sense, we decided to bail out a few weeks back. The carriers took back most important stuff (ie. nice loot from ratting etc) and we all sold off our ratting and mining gear. I guess we’re not the only ones, the market has taken a tumble now in Wicked Creek. Lots of other people leaving the area as well I assume, so no more 350mil a month for TCF.

All in all it was an interesting experience. To be honest 0.0 is not all it’s cracked up to be. I might make a blogpost about that soon. I especially find it very annoying that other people (ie. mainly the Reds) can dictate what I can and cannot do in game…

So where do we go from here ? I am doing missions, invention and some exploration in empire at the moment, and factional warfare with an alter ego. The corp is scattered about in empire at the moment, with most people doing their own thing. We have been looking into other 0.0 rental options, but haven’t found a very appealing one yet. So if you know something or can make me some sort of offer, I am all ears ;).

Eve Blog: Suicide Gank No More

The security penalties for suicide ganking will be more severe and the Concord response will be faster. Two frig will come in instantly (lag allowing) and a battleship will arrive to blow the offender to pieces. Also no more insurance payout when Concorde is on the killmail !

Not unreasonable changes. Suicide ganking used to be a pretty rare thing, but lately, for example on the Amarr -> Sivala route, you come across several camps of suiciders, it’s getting a bit out of hand. Luckily I have never been a victim of this particular tactic. Only drawback will ofcourse be the accidental shooting someone that occurs on rare occasions (cough cough).

Dev Blog: Serious Securiry
Forum response: Welcome to Hello Kitty Online

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 !

Industrialist with teeth

Found the Eve Personality test through The Ancient Gaming Noob’s Blogpost. And here’s the result :). It’s not quite accurate, but it’s close enough.

Industrialist with teeth
Take The EvE Personality Test today!
Created with Rum and Monkey‘s Personality Test Generator.

You enjoy Eve’s economic model and you find that the greatest challenge of the game lies in mastering the market. System security status is a matter of profit/no profit for you, and you always factor in the possibility/probability of PvP in your estimates. To you, Eve isn’t a PvP or a PvE game. It’s a simulation of capitalizm in its purest form, and a place where the savvy wins the day.

Dev Blog Nano No More

A new dev blog entry appeared today about a Speed Rebalance ! I guess all the nano whine nerfs on the forums helped ;).

My biggest beef with Nano’d HACs is that they dictate the fight. They run away if they don’t like the odds and engage when they think they can. Unless you use a very specific setup, they’re impossible to catch. And basically only a handful of ships are actually usable as nano ships, so that basically ignores all the rest of all the ships Eve has to offer. You have to fly a flavor of the month ship or not be able to compete at all, which isn’t what Eve is about…

Speed Rebalanced blog post by CCP Nozh

Eve-O Forum Discussion

What I really like about the blogpost is that you get a bit of an insight view as to how these balance issues are thought through and analysed. The proposed changes look good to me :).

UPDATE : Test server feedback