The Worst Moments

As promised, today I tell you a litte bit about the bad things EVE has to offer:

It’s gone, all gone! My hard earned money… I love faction-frigs. I have a profound ambition to collect them. I own two Firetails, a Hookbill, a Comet and two Dramiels. To keep the signature-radius small, the best MWD you can fit is a complex propulsion mod. So I looked for some B and C-Types and found some cheap contracts 10 jumps away from Jita. I logged in my alt, jumped into a Merlin and hit the road to get those shiny little gadgets. Everything went fine. I got the contract, stuffed the items into my boot and had my hand already on the launch button. Wait. I could refit the Merlin for using it as a scout in my fav low-sec system. Ok, so let’s buy an improved cloaking device and an Overdrive Injector to make it faster. As I was in a hurry I searched for the items at the station, bought them and attached both to my Merlin. I again hit the highway to Oimmo and decided to take a little break in Jita to get a hold of some other items.
When I looked at my wallet, a flash struck me. I spent 1.4 Billion ISK recently!!!! But for what? 700 Mio. for each item I fit on the Merlin. This must be the most expensive T1 frig in the whole universe. Nice one guys! As the system wasn’t very populated, those ***** put several mods on the market at insanely high prices. Well my fellow capsuleers, his happens if you hurry and don’t pay attention to the amount of zeros. Be warned by my mistake. This loss still affects me today. I had to sell my Rattlesnake and Providence to be able to buy 2 large towers plus mods + fuel and Technetium for a Fullerides reaction in 0.0. Wouldn’t have happened if I still had the 1.4 Billion.

The usual deaths. As I told you, my trustworthy Tempest survived the whole Pure Blind campaign. Returning to Tribute we got attacked by a White Noise battleship gang. To make a long story short: We were positioned on the gate at zero, the hostiles jumped in, I got primaried and the Pest was history in 5 seconds. Actually i made a bad decision. I was aligned to the sun, when our Sabres bubbled the gate. I should have either been at zero on the gate to jump through when getting primaried (not having aggro) or mwding out of the bubble BEFORE the hostiles jumped in.

The most stupid death was me sitting on a gate at zero with my Claw, not paying attention to what happens around me. The enemy bomber uncloaked, dropped the bomb and seconds later I sat in my pod. NOOOOOOOB!

These are just a few examples of those moments where you have to scream into your pillows. I guess everyone knows them. I would love to hear your worst moment in EVE. Write a comment and let us all participate in your agony.


A Summary Of What Has Happened Recently

A lot of stuff has happened in my EVE-life recently…

THE GOODS:

The war against TRI, CO2 and pets in Pure Blind has been succesfully completed by the Northern Coalition which I am a part of. No signs of carebearing for weeks, which was exactly my kind of thing. We even declared war to AAA, Tri and friends to be able to sweep away all their Black Rise low-sec towers (at least the ones that are interesting – Technetium and stuff) without hitting a -10 sec status in one day. My corp was very supportive by donating several ships to their members, but I actually wasn’t in desperate need of supplies as my Tempest survived the whole campaign. Although my name is more or less on top of the target-list and a Pest is always a welcome prey, “Flea” had the pleasure to fight in nearly every OP that was going on, providing me with loads of…

Kills! My actual goal was to reach my 1000th kill around my first birthday on 23rd April 2010. I was even happier to reach that mark 3 months earlier. Loads of thanks to Mr.Alexsr who donated his mighty Drake to be the 1000th kill of my trustworthy Alter Ego “DocFloyd”. But after sitting in huge rusty monsters for nearly a month, I looked forward to flying in little, agile ships again. And as Doc recently learned to fly Stealth-Bombers it was time to transfer my capsule into a brandnew…

Hound. I really like this sneaky little beast. We have several small bomber-OPs running ’round Tribute, Venal and Pure Blind. Thanks Vasim for your great FCing there! He leads the fleet every evening and for a new SB pilot it’s perfect to learn to rock this baby from scratch.  Nevertheless my first bomb-kill was a solo-kill, although not really intended. I was in ROIR / Pure Blind when I got intel about a red prowler constantly hauling stuff from the Sisters of Eve station to an unknown spot. I hit my thrusters, activated the cloak and approached a spot 30km away from the undock point. After a short while a juicy red bracket appeared on my screen. The prowler. Full speed! decloak!… I hit the bomb-button and off it went. But the prowler-pilot had enough time to react as bombs travel slowly. He warped off and the projectile spread it’s deadly power into the nothingness of space, or did it? To my surprise I found a bomber kill on my KB the next day: Mr. Blind76 received the Purple Heart for being my first victim. He must have dropped out of warp when my shrapnel exploded. And as he was attacked by a POS before, his hull immediately broke to the sheer destructive power my bomb unleashed on him. Nice to have (a kind of) solo-kill on a brandnew ship-class. Last but not least, some carebearing stuff, I put up my first…

Player Owned Structure. I built it to have a more relaxed money-income, supporting my PvP-dedication. I was quite surprised that I found an unoccupied moon in a low-sec system bordering a 0.5 high-sec system. Perfect for simple-reaction products to haul to the nearby trade-hub. This way I just have to take care of fuel and mineral-supply every now and then. Great stuff and it works like a charm.

Next time, I’ll amuse you with the bad things that happened on the dark side of EVE. Fly recklessly!



Log of DocFloyd 2 Comments February 24th 2010

Killer Of The Month

Good evening New Eden. Sorry I was quite busy the last month killing people, so I didn’t have the time to write that much ^^.

Yes indeed, december was a very nice month for PvP. The NC is being attacked from two sides. Tri, Evoke and Pets from the west and Atlas / Solar fom the east. So far we could prevent an invasion of Y8R. But another big problem arose during the fights. Since Dominion, fleet-battles got even worse due to massive lag. Now you probably know that lag always was a concern in Eve, but after Dominion the party that is in a system first has actually won the fight. I lost ships in such engagements. Once I didn’t load grid for nearly an hour. When I logged off and back in the client said I was in a Pod. After 30 more minutes I woke up in TVN. I’ve been podded…

I really hope that CCP will solve this problem.  If you plan an expansion revamping 0.0 souvereignity, fleet battles should definitely be possible.

Well due to the action I received a nice alliance-wide award this month: Top-Killer. Furtheron, being the Top-Killer of my corp as well I received a shiny new Stabber Fleet Issue! I’m really looking forward to this ship. But how should I fit it? More speedy, vaga-like or with a huge armor tank? If you have any suggestions, post a comment!

So, fightings are going on. I will try to keep you updated on that. And btw. great to hear that Wensley does a step into 0.0 as well. See you on the battlefield. You are red! :twisted:

Log of DocFloyd No Comments January 2nd 2010

This Is What You Need To Blow Up My Hurricane!

Our corp is regularly roaming through nearby regions just to get that nice adrenaline rush! But today was a special day…

We made our roaming public to our alliance and got a really great feedback. We got ’round 40 mates in fleet. Mostly BCs, HACs and a few tacklers, quite a nice DPS-Output overall! First we got visited by our Varangians friends. I guess they thought this time it was up to them to visit us. Usually we are the ones to give them our more or less bloody hugs every evening. Well, our welcome was very warm indeed. The only one who died heroically was our CEO, our favourite bait. hehe!

As they logged off, we took the opportunity to make those 20 jumps to their territory, also looking forward to a possible second fight when they roam home. But to make a long story short: M3 was boringly empty and the gang chose a path through Geminate. So our FC decided to visit some other Russians ’round the corner. The Legion of xXDeathXx. They are famous for launching carriers to fight our 6 man mixed BC, Cruiser gangs. But this time we had more firepower. As we entered their station-system, a neut omen jumped through and was instantly grilled by our deathmachine. Soon after we were ordered to distribute through the system, checking celestials, belts, and planets.

One guy yelled: Harbinger in the belt. POINT! So I instantly went into warp to my gang-member. But sadly enough it was too late, the POD was already on its way out when I landed on grid.

All of a sudden, my overview revealed a beautiful red colour. An enemy Nidhoggur landed in the belt either to help the Harbinger or to play with us. I already was in warp to a gate, but once there turned around and burned back to the battlefield. In the meantime a Chimera arrived there as well. Everyone was aligned to the sun or a gate and put all their firepower on the Nidhoggur. At first we laughed, because normally they bring several other carriers as well. So no chance to seriously hit this big ship. But except of the two there was nothing on scan. And our weapon cocktail was slowly chewing through his armor. And then through his structure. We couldn’t believe it. He went down. What a victory! His friends must have been sleeping. Or his ego was too big.  Blinded by the success I loaded RF EMP S into my auto-cannons and engaged the Chimera from a 5000m orbit. His shield was nearly down to 50%, when my overview was suddenly tinted in red.

I was heavily neuted and tackled. Projectiles and beams stroke into my shields, the armor and finally structure. It was a matter of time. So THIS is what you guys need to take down my hurricane!!!?? Hehe.. I could evade the scene in my POD, so at least my implants were safe. And I would sacrifice another Cane just to get on that killmail.

What a great roam, what a great fight. These are the moments, that make EVE such a special game. Good night New Eden!

Log of DocFloyd 2 Comments November 27th 2009

Come On Shake Your Body Baby Do The Conga!

nc-conga_small

Come on , shake your body baby, do the conga – I know you can’t control yourself any longer >> Thank you Miss Gloria Estefan…

Sunday afternoon. The grand final of a NC-OP that lasted the whole weekend. Several Ewok-towers were killed ’round G8AD,  while the cap fleet reinforced nearby POSs or repaired friendly ones. Ewok was DD’ed before any action was going, and stayed docked in Evoke-Hamburg after they left in a 70-80 man pod train. Some of them played docking games, which was quite lethal to them. We killed a Maelstrom, Rapier and several Cry Havoc bombers. Last but not least, I proudly present: The incredible Sensorman, with his mighty Ibis.

But most of the time, we were just camping the station. This can be really boring. So we decided to do a little conga-dance around the station. Click here to see a bigger picture of the event! Unfortunately neither Evoke wanted to join our nice litte dance, nor Cry Havoc or Sons of Tangra showed up to be our partners. So most of us left at 0:00 ET. We got intel of a gatecamp in MH space and set our navcomputers to EC-P8R. Unfortunately the warp from the EC Jumpbridge to Highsec gate takes quite a while. So the gatecampers had enough time to deaggress and jump through when we engaged them. Shortly after a neutral Drake warped to the gate. He died quickly and enjoyed our free podding service.

All in all a day with semi-afk Eveing, but also some fun and a few kills. Back to carebearing….


Log of DocFloyd No Comments November 9th 2009

A Short Trip To CVA (That Has Been Restored)

First the big news: CVA sov has been restored by CCP! Well yesterday evening I was nearly asleep when my attention was drawn to constant x-ing ups in the NC-chat.

I asked what op the x-ing up was for and got intel, that some Morsus Mihi guys scanned a wormhole to Providence low-sec. The NC initiated a fun-roam to the location, where CVA was disbanded due to a hack resulting in a lot of juicy targets. I guess PvP-pilgrims from all over EVE were already on their way to have some fun and through the wormhole we would get a nice shortcut avoiding a lot of boring jumps. I entered my ganky-Rupture and rushed to the WH-system in Tribute. Without further delay the 50 man gang jumped through and burnt to 0.0 space. After engaging some targets including a nighthawk, we were ordered to hold as a 200-man enemy gang was waiting on the other side. After a while, decision was made to burn back just to discover that on one of the other gates another 250 BS gang was preapring for a fight. We got intel, that they were about to engage the other guys we nearly ran into earlier. We were cought between two “titans”. Life’s short: Time to have some fun. And who says the NC blobs? At least not always…

We jumped into the 250 BS gang, target calling started and we tried to get as many ships in front of our roaring guns as we could. But quickly we realized that it wouldn’t make too much sense to stay on the battlefield any longer and warped to the outgoing gate, holding. After a while a single Typhoon entered the scenery and was called primary. While our fleet was biting through his armor and structure, the rest of the enemy fleet jumped on top of us. We were aware of the fact that they would arrive soon, but the Phoon was too juicy not to engage. Still having this nerve-wracking aggro-timer I spammed the jump button. Several adrenaline-pumping seconds past until i finally made my way to the other side.

We burnt to the WH-system where we originally arrived in Providence, just to find a big surprise: The wormhole collapsed. This was the moment when the fleet disbanded as FC wanted to get Stealth Bombers to make another approach. A lot of people in the fleet weren’t able to fly them, so we set target Tribute / Vale individually and went home the long way. The rest flew to a nearby hub to buy SBs and bombs, to engage the Providencials another time.

It took quite a while to get home and by then it was nearly 1:00 ET, which is 2:00 here in Germany. Time to go to bed. But the roam was what it was supposed to be: A whole lot of fun!

Log of DocFloyd 7 Comments October 29th 2009

Holiday’s Over – A Sketch Of What Happened

I had a one-week-holiday as you might have read in my Richie Rich post. I dedicated a lot of my spare time to playing EVE and this is what came out:

  • My wallet is laughing: Including the potential sale of the Rattlesnake I am going to build, I received round 4 Billion ISK in this week.
  • Project “Building a Rattlesnake” was initiated. Will have to do some mining and ratting to collect the mins to build this baby.
  • I entered a wormhole for the first time. It was a level 3 wh, where I did one anomaly with a corpmate. Realizing that I need a better ship for these expeditions, another project was started by the both of us: Project T3
  • Last but not least and the most important thing of all: I gained a lot of PvP-experience. Roamings, gatecamps, fleetfights and pos-bashings. Details can be found here.

Edit: Last but not least I was Top Scorer of my alliance for quite a while. But in the end Midgaurd won the race ^^…

kb43

All in all I had a great time. Now losing a BC doesn’t hurt that much, so my main interest in EVE, PvP, gets an even bigger boost.

Log of DocFloyd No Comments October 29th 2009

Ritchie Rich

2009.10.20.21.18.44

It’s been a while since the last post, being quite busy in real life. But now I have holidays. One week in New Eden (and a few nights on tour with my band).

What to do in New Eden when you have a lot of time? PvP of course. But PvP costs some money and where can you get it from? Ratting for example. It has some advantages, especially if you are building your rigs and ships. As I have two accounts, Spezialistin pewpews in a drake and I, Doc, follow her with my Pew-Salvage-TractorBeam-Hurricane. This way you receive much needed materials, collecting bounties at the same time. But: Ratting is boring. Why not plexing?

I didn’t do too many plexes till now. When I flew one, I always had an experienced corpmate with me who was able to tank the sometimes insanely dps pounding on his ship. At least when flying a 8/10 or 10/10. Now it was time for me to do one on my own. Spezialistin has a heavy tanked drake with a nice shield-recharge rate, whereas I have a lot of gank on my Drake. Perfect combination. I spent the whole afternoon scanning for plexes. Quickly I found one in C-F, but it was already occupied. After losing 4 Sisters Core Combat probes due to a bug, I cancelled probing and attended our local gatecamp to blow off some steam about the loss. No luck there as well. It was time for dinner. The water for the spaghettis was about to cook. I just had the time to scan two or three systems. Although I had little hope to find something, I jumped into my Heron to scan down the pipe from T-Z to TVN. There are five systems on my way and if nothing’s there, my EVE-day is done.

First system: Nothing! Second system: Cosmic Signature… I quickly nailed the sig down. A 6/10 Guristas Fortress plex. YES! After the confirmation that the guys in local haven’t found it yet, I ordered Spezi to bring her Drake to the acceleration gate. I flew back to get into my dps-Drake. Time for a premiere: I’ll do a plex on my own for the first time. Spezi easily tanked the dps and I quickly destroyed all those Guristas, keeping the Dread Gurista BS to end. He had two nice little presents for me: Spezialistin Speaks! An escalation and a Dread Gurista Ballistic Defelection Field. Present No.1 for this day!

2009.10.20.21.18.50

A space shuttle-wreck in the Esca.2 pocket. Was Neil Armstrong here?

The escalation was in a system next to TVN, so no worries. The enemies where no problem at all. But what was that? Another Dread Gurista? Present No.2: A Crystal Omega. I didn’t know anything about that implant, so I asked a corp-mate how much it was worth. He just returned an a**hole through the coms. 8-O 980 Mio. ISK. I was totally knocked down. And do you guess it? Spezi spoke again. Escalation No.3 was in Razor-space. As they are blue to us I wouldn’t get into trouble up there, except that the journey would lead me through Venal which is quite hot nowadays.

I decided to wait until one o’clock ET, to let the area cool down a bit. After having a nice little roam with Bongalonga and L’assasine, destroying a Maelstrom in P3E, it was time to go to RZR-land. Nothing much to say about Escalation No.3, except…… Another Dread Gurista showed up. He dropped some smaller modules, worth round 30 Mio. ISK. And another (final) escalation. This time 5 jumps away in Venal. Actually it was quite a relief as I once flew a final escalation in a “Solar Fleet Dead End Station”-system with a few mates. This was quite a thrilling experience as you can guess.

After I brought the modules to a safe station, I entered FHB in Venal. Waving hello to a fellow Morsus Mihi fleet passing thorugh, I bookmarked some safespots and finally made my way to the acceleration gate. The first pocked was cleared quickly. The moment I wanted to warp through the gate, a neutral entered the system. I didn’t want to be NPC-scrambled when there’s a neut nearby, so I waited and scanned for scanner probes. After five minutes another neut jumped in. I continued scanning for ten minutes but neither a single scanner probe, nor any of the neutral ships showed up on my scanner overview. 4:00 a.m. ET! Time to move into the final pocket.

Spezi really had to tank a lot of DPS there and her shield got down to 45%. But thanks to my Drake the NPCs where down after 15 minutes. Christmas time. Let’s open the present. The Pith Officer dropped a Pith A Explosion Dampening Field and tataaaaaaa: A Rattlesnake blueprint.

dread_loot

This is what I got after opening my gifts for this years’ October Christmas!

I finally realized that I was extremely lucky with my first solo-plex! Loot worth ’round two Billion ISK dropped. Now ratting isn’t needed anymore for a while and I can let a lot of my hurricanes get popped.


Log of DocFloyd 3 Comments October 22nd 2009

Venal Is Burning – Part 1

rokhs_fleetfight

Though I planned to write about our move to 0.0, there is so much more happening right now. And I don’t want to lock you out of these thrilling experiences.

As you might have noticed: This site is called Munich Mataris, as our main characters are all Minmatars. Because the part of space we moved to is dominated by Caldaris, life is sometimes quite hard being a Minmatar when it comes to ratting, etc. So I bought a Caldari Character from a fellow player. Did I mention that after half a year I’m doing things I never thought I would when I started playing the game? Like opening up a second account or buying a character? I would have called myself a nerd some months ago. Well I am one now, a nerd for EVE.

May I introduce: Spezialistin! She has 17 Mio. skillpoints and has mainly been trained to fly Battleships and Capitals. I, DocFloyd am  focusing more on smaller ships like Hacs, Hics and the proper support-skills. On the other side Spezialistin gives me the possibility to take part in Battleship fleetfights, homedefences and PvE-operations, where a big tank and high dps are needed. And that’s what I’m in right now. Because Venal is on fire.

The alliance Circle Of Two (2nd winner of the Alliance Tournament VII) have been resetted by the Northern Coalition. It’s said that they scouted blue targets for WEPRA-corp and there might have been some other political entanglements that led to this reset. As a result our alliance “Majesta Empire” has “called to arms (cta)”  and initiated “Operation Cleansweep”. When a “cta” is called, all taxes are raised to 100%, resulting in carebears either logging off or (hopefully) participating in the op that is about to start. Next to several roamings going on ’round Venal in order to clean the area from CO2s and WEPRA guys, we also managed to shoot down one of CO2′s POS with a fleet of 140 ships. Carriers, dreadnoughts and a sh**load of sniper-battleships participated in this operation. Including Spezialistin in a Sniper-Rokh. And it was a flawless success. We even put up a new POS to claim the area and benefit from the moons there.

Yesterday evening I, DocFloyd, looked forward to the daily roaming my corp “Community for Justice” arranges. To support the efforts of our alliance, we decided to go to Venal to clean the area a bit. Our final destination was 6NJ8-V. This system is mostly inhabited by ERROR capsuleers. Our scout jumped into a nearby dead-end system, scanning for a lonely hurricane pilot while we were waiting at the gate. All of a sudden the gate-fire lit up. Our senses strengthened and QManiac instantly threw a bubble with his Eris. This must be the Nighthawk that Kalew, our scout, reported while he was busy looking for the Hurricane. What a nice target to add to my killboard. I engaged the Warp Disruptor module as well as all my guns and missile slots, waiting for our opponent to decloak.

We needn’t wait any longer. The Nighthawk appeared on my overview and the sheer firepower of our weapons was unleashed the moment the tracking computer got a positive lock on the command-ship. To our surprise the tank didn’t last very long and the Nighthawk was history in a few seconds. Needless to say that we killed the hurricane as well. The rest of our trip was quite eventless, until…

…on our way back to TVN-FM, just before we wanted to engage the jump-routine of a gate, a neutral jumped into the system. One look on my scanner told me that it was a tempest. QManiac didn’t hesitate and launched one of his deadly bubbles. And lucky (-.-) us, the Minmatar Battleship jumped right into our faces. Locked, tackled, webbed and engaged we constantly orbitted the guy from WEPRA Corp, pounding one round after the other into his plates. Right at the moment when his armor was down to one half, a Phoon and an Apoc jumped in to help their mate. “No worries”, Q said via the intercom, “first we take down the Tempest, then the others get what they deserve!” The moment he finished his last words, local blobbed. Another 20 WEPRAS jumped in. Most of them in Battleships and a few in Guardians and other support-ships. “Time to save our lovely backs“, I thought and engaged the warp-drive. Not a second too early. Two guys in our fleet didn’t make it in time. After a few GFs in local the WEPRAS dissappeared in the vastness of space. It wouldn’t be the last time we met.

The flight back to TVN-FM wasn’t quite eventful. We took a short-cut via a Morsus Mihi jumpbridge and disbanded the fleet shortly after. Trolling back to the nightly routines like checking skills, our home system suddenly filled with reds. Surprise surprise. The WEPRAS again. Quickly a homedef fleet was assembled and positioned at a POS in TVN. Unfortunately I was trapped in the station and couldn’t get out as the reds camped it. But after a short while they disbanded their camp and vanished. Boarding Spezialistin’s Sniper-Rokh the fleet quickly headed for an interception-point to let CO2′s little pets bleed. Jumping through the gate that led us to our destination, the overview quickly filled with reds. Fat and juicy Battleship-size targets for our roaring weaponry. Primary and secondary targets were called and the slaughter began. In between intelligence reported that the WEPRA operation was just a diversion from a CO2 op intending to destroy our lately erected POS. To make a long story short, this didn’t work as Majesta and NC managed to defend the tower.

Not the best days for CO2. I really enjoy the situation as there are daily roamings and fleets that give me the possibility to gain experience in PvP. And we don’t have to fly to Perrigean Falls to pewpew our favourite targets as Venal fills up with enemies. Now they are coming to us. Luv it!


Log of DocFloyd 2 Comments September 25th 2009

Elite Celebrates Its 25th Birthday

elit25years

Elite had its 25th birthday yesterday. The milestone in space-combat and trading games and predecessor of our mighty EVE. I can still remember when I was 14. I bought the game for my Amstrad CPC and initially got addicted to that sheer endless world that unfolded in front of me. I pew pewed, traded nearly every night after homework was done (and sometimes not). EVE had the same impact on me, except that now I’m significantly older with the first grey hairs, but also more experienced when it comes to girls. grinnn… So here is an original news-post from Rock, Paper, Shotgun:

…if you’re reading this in Honolulu and within 35 minutes of me publishing this. Otherwise, it was released 25 years ago yesterday. On the 20th September of 1984 David Braben and Ian Bell’s Elite shocked an shy world of 8-bit videogame heads. Really, it doesn’t get more seminal than this. Frontier Development have celebrated by making a micro-site featuring assorted Elite memorabilia plus a forthcoming interview with Braben on the 23rd (Via twittering them questions). Go See! I suspect one of RPS may weaken and do a retro piece before the week’s out. But until then, here’s something that’s testament to Elite’s majesty.

Edit: Inspired by the anniversary, I was surfing through the net in order to find a C64 Emulator just to have that little ELITE experience on my work-computer. And it worked! Here are the ressources for your gaming pleasure and a little screeny I just took a few moments ago:

emu_64_elite

The Emulator: http://www.zzap64.co.uk/c64/c64emulators.html

The game on the official Ian Bell page: http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/c64/ (funny enough cracked by The Dynamic Duo – can anyone remember them? Rofl)

By the way. Ian’s Brother Aidan (with lyricist Brian Phillips) wrote a musical about it:



News 2 Comments September 21st 2009