And... 20!

I've held off posting until I had 20 deaths on the clock. And now I have them! At the moment i'm at 100 kills to 20 deaths, so a 5:1 kill:death ratio, which isn't too bad I don't think. The Tuskers have had a massive contributing effect to my kills with my wolf getting 28 kills to it's name before finally popping. So then...

Highlights:-

- Affording a Wolf, then losing it. These ships are loads of fun, and definately worth the expense. Next time I can afford to fit one i'm getting another.

- Flying a Thrasher. Even though I only got a few kills before losing both of these, they had no tank at all and full gank. So when they did get targetted, they pretty much died. But still loads of fun to fly, might try a gank coercer next.

- Fleet fights with the Tuskers. Alot of these fights are basically just jump in and hope, which suits me perfectly. I've lost a couple of ships from baits or "blobs" going wrong and having another fleet land on top of us, but we always took a couple of them with us.

- Watching Ka Jolo get primaried, just because it's Ka Jolo. They even brought a Thanatos to make sure he died.

- Commanding a Fleet for the first time. I've never FC'ed before being in The Tuskers, and now i've done it twice. It's a good experience getting a kill as an FC, though i've got a few people sent to their deaths, but it's a learning curve and there's only 1 way to learn.

OUCH

Alexia Morgan has started her Open University for Celestial Hardship (OUCH) and has quite a few members learning the ways of null-sec now. But she needs teachers! Check out the following recruitment posts and see if you can help out! Recruitment for students has been put on hold until January because there's not enough teachers to meet the demand!

Alexia's Blog Post.

Alexia's EVE-O Recruitment thread.

Tuskers Bloggers

Turns out there's a few people in The Tuskers who blog. Go check them out:-

Onslaughts of an Outlaw - Jaxley

The Bald Buccaneer - Bourreau

Do I Dream of Electric Sheep - Rael Valen

Life Among Pirates. The Romance and the Reality - Romeo Blakstorm

Rifter Drifter - Wensley

Your Money or Your Life! - Tuskers CEO Ka Jolo

Also there's The Tuskers Public Relations blog with posts from a few Tuskers.

I'll do a proper post at some point. Possibly in the new year, who knows? Until then...

Fly Safe.

- Noir Avlaa.

100!

I've hit 100 kills in EVE now! Hurrah! About a day after Kirith Darkblade hit his 100 as well! Here's the lucky guy who gave me the 100th kill, thanks!

In other news, Alexia Morgan has started the Open University of Celestial Hardship, or OUCH for short. I went on about this in my last blog post, and now that it's up i've added my help and will do so when possible. Read up on it, help out, it's a worthy undertaking and by no means will it be easy for Alexia. So good luck!

So recently I've been killing a lot more than I've been losing. The last loss on the board was a Rifter with 16 kills under it's name, now I'm flying a wolf with another 17 so far, but you won't notice that on the kill:death ratio as I only update it when I lose a ship. I've got a lot more kills now and I've got the Tuskers to thank for it. I did a bit of fleet warfare before but never like in a pirate corp, and it's a lot of fun in here doing fleets. This is definitely the move I should have made a long time ago because it's definitely worth it.

So far I've earned a nice ransom of a POS thanks to another blogger Cyberin, over at Hands Off, My Loots, who joined the Tuskers recently as well. I've been in a fleet with 00sage00, and I've helped kill Spectre3353 who kept coming back for funsies! I'm at 34 kills so far this week, and I'm loving every minute of it.

So until I lose my 20th ship...

Fly Safe.

- Noir Avlaa.

OUCH

Fellow blogger Alexia Morgen from Punishment is putting together a new group in EVE called "OUCH", the Open University of Celestial Hardship. The point of it will be to train new players how to survive in null-sec and low-sec, by operating completely in null sec.

Unlike the EVE-U this means getting involved in fleets, roams, alliances at a starter level and learning the hard and fast rules of EVE. And I fully support it. The EVE-U is based in high-sec, and thus the members will rarely be in danger, where in OUCH the player always has the potential for danger, and so will learn hard lessons pretty early on in the game when the loss isn't that much to worry about.

I learned the hard way. I started EVE, read the Piracy 101 guide, strapped a missile launcher, scram and web to my Inquisitor and went straight out to low-sec space to forge a name for myself, and I would have loved to have some support with me to teach me the works, even if I do solo most the time. I've learned my lessons the hard way like most people in EVE, and as such i've learned them first time usually. The element of danger adds alot to a learning curve, if you don't do A then you'll die. If you forget about B then you'll die. etc.

I agree there should be a some way of learning if not in a safe environment, then in a structured environment. Hopefully people will join the corp and will die. But dying is a lesson that must be learned at some point, and I hope it's learned first time how to avoid being caught like that again, or what targets to go for with certain ships and such like. How to scan down ships and see if a ship is scanning you down will be immensely valuable knowledge to learn from the beginning, learning to warp immediately if your ship is destroyed to avoid being podded. Learning how to fit an effective PVP ship and what ships are used for solo, support, RR, tanking active or passive/buffer, the list goes on.

EVE is a hard game outside of Empire space, and players need to know how to survive, and the best way to learn is to actually try.

I'm going to wish Alexia good luck on this venture, as it's one of the better enterprises any capsuleer can undertake, sharing knowledge without expecting a reward for the services. I'm going to try to make donations every now and then to help this, and hope others will do the same. Now I just need to figure out where to make any donations :D

Fly Safe.

- Noir Avlaa.

10 losses closer and a new environment.

I've lost 10 ships now in my "50 losses" campaign. Honestly I thought I'd lose them faster, and the first 4 ships went down with only 1 kill. So in the next 6 ships I've got 23 kills, which I think isn't too shabby. So then, here's the highs and lows so far:-

The fail fit Abaddon. - Yes. That's right. Quad tank. Don't know how it didn't win. We found this sitting at 0 in a belt, and after taking out it's drones I just kept it pointed while backup arrived. We thought it might be bait. Turns out it was just fail.

The hide-and-seek Blackbird. - We must have spent the better part of 2 hours chasing this, and when we finally caught it, it jammed 1 of us and warped out from the other point with it's stab as a third was warping in. So a couple of hours later it turns up again with a small fleet. Well there was a couple more of us on at the time, and we just thought what the hell, let's get him this time. I only lost a cheap punisher on that one, and damn it was worth it :D

The newb Maller. - This guy was 16 days old when I found him ratting in a belt, so it took me all of 0.001 of a second to decide to go for it in my Rifter. I forgot that Maller's could be a pain to take down in a frigate. Nothing to do with the damage, he didn't hit me once. But it took 3 reloads and over 10 minutes to finally kill him, and I was even trying to ransom him at the same time, for less than the market value of his ship, but hey, maybe he likes spending more than he could. Shame I couldn't catch his pod as well.

The suicide Punisher. - I lost this ship during a roam with 3 others. We'd scanned a megathron down to a belt, and were debating whether to engage or not. We knew it was most likely going to be bait considering where we were, and we knew we'd most likely die. But no one was in anything particularly hard to replace, and we'd not found anything after a couple of hours roaming. So hey, why not see if we can take it down before his support takes us down? So 4 frigates aligned, warped and started unloading into him. We got him into armor when the support arrived, the first of us popped when we had him down to about 60%, another popped very quickly after. I think we managed to get it to about 30% armour before we were all popped, laughing all the way back to Aldali.

That was one of the most fun engagements I've ever had. We all knew it was suicide, we all knew that we could get podded, we knew that there was a very small chance of actually popping it, yet we didn't care and just went straight in. 100% pure fun, and we even got the "gf"s over local :D

The mistake. - This loss was the stupidest mistake I've ever done. I entered the system and saw a neutral Merlin sitting 10km from me. So I moved and sat on the gate. Me being flashy red and him not meant I had to try and get him to attack, so I targeted and set up an orbit without my afterburner on, don't want to give away too much do I? Well he warped away, then returned a minute later and decided to engage. It was a pretty even fight for the most part. He got through my shields quickly enough, but was having trouble with my armour, I had trouble with his shields, but his armour was starting to go quickly. Then a blue exited warp and started shooting me.

I was quite confused now, so I opened up a conversation with the pilot and asked what he was doing. Turns out he was with the Merlin, and that apparently I wasn't blue to him, turns out I hadn't been set blue to his alliance yet which I thought I had. But after a short conversation we all disengaged and apologised, and straight afterwards a myrmidon exited warp. Instead of aligning and warping I just brought up his pilot info. What I was thinking I don't know, I mean, I had no shield, my cap was low after the fight and my armour was only half repaired. So yeah, the myrmidon pretty quickly killed me. And I can't even say there was nothing I could do. There's always something I could have done, such as not just acted like a fish in a barrel. That's the worst mistake I've done so far, but hey, every mistake is an opportunity to learn.

The Tuskers.

I decided it was about time to join another corp again, and after searching around the forums, reading various blogs and asking a few people, I applied to join The Tuskers. The way they operate looks exactly like how I operate, and a look on their kill board shows a lot of them use Frigates, Cruisers and Battlecruisers. So there's no massive 0.0 capital fleets to worry about, no BS required roams to trouble my skill points with, and a lot of kills to be had.

Well I've been accepted, and given a proper welcome from Wensley of Rifter Drifter in a Dramiel, who promptly relieved me of my Rifter shortly after arriving in system to hand in my application. Was a good fight that don't think I could have won, I got him to 50% armour when I popped, and a Ferox finished him off shortly after, so I still got a final kill mail from Hartcraft's Revenge.

But that's got to be a pretty good welcome for a pirate corporation, kinda sets the mood for things to come :D I'm just waiting on my stasis period after leaving my own corp to end so I can officially be part of The Tuskers now, I think a lot of fun times are coming :D

That's all for now.

Fly Safe.

- Noir Avlaa.

Over 9000!!

Quite a bit over 9000 actually, I hit 6million skill points at some point today, for some reason I've had 6mil as a milestone... Next is 10mil. Most of my skills at the moment are for frigates so it's definately time for a change, I think I'm going to finish a couple more skills then move onto cruisers properly... I can fly cruisers, just not all that well, but it shouldn't take me too long to get the skills half decent :)

In other news I'm sporting an 18-7 kill-death ratio in my 50 losses 'campaign'. At the moment I've got a rifter an a harbinger with 3 kill for the harbinger and 5 for the rifter each that haven't died, but that's bound to happen soon enough. I'm thinking of getting an assault frigate when my harbinger pops, that sounds like lots of fun. :D

Fly Safe.

- Noir Avlaa.

Move out!

I've finally come to the conclusion that the system(Aldali) and surrounding low-sec area of space I pirate in isn't good anymore. When I first located myself there it was great, but now it's got 2 alliances that are constantly in fleet, and others who I pirate with sometimes who live in system with me, and less traffic than travels through the area than used to.

I've had a quick look through the Ombeve 2D maps and have found a nice little system not too far away, right next to a trade hub with every facility, and as such I intend to use that system as my new home. It's also a nice bottleneck system from high-sec to low-sec.

Scouting out the area now to see how easy it's gonna be to move my stuff there and if it's worth it, but so far it looks promising, hoping that the local pirates aren't already in the system in abundance...

In other news i'm up to 7 deaths on my 50 losses, with 10 kills attributed. I've got most of my kills in the last few ships that have been lost, so i'm going to try work my way up to at least a 2:1 kill:death ratio.

Fly Safe.

- Noir Avlaa.

50 fights

A few weeks I read one of the articles from Alexia Morgan over at Punishment. Second time i've linked that blog in 2 posts, but it's one of the blogs I read fully more than others, instead of just scan reading.

The jist of the article if you haven't read it, or clicked the link, is that people become to attached to their ships in EVE. Even though the ships are just a tool for achieving a set goal. That said, the post challenges anyone to have 50 fights. No less. And maybe die 50 times. But at the end of it, stop getting so attached to what is essentially a caveman's club. Some clubs are bigger, some are smaller and the wielder is more agile with it. Who knows, it's a club. A piece of log. Just because it's made from metal and flies through space doesn't change the fact that you try and get one better than someone else's to hit them harder.

Well i'm gonna take up that challenge, even if i'm taking it up a bit late, and i'm going to put it instead of having 50 fights, have 50 deaths. So make sure I die 50 times. Build 50 ships, go out, pick some targets, and try to win. But if I lose, the hell with it, dock up and grab a new ship.

So here's the rules i'm going for:-

1. Once a fight has begun, you either win or die. Pick or don't pick targets, but don't ever disengage.
2. Getting podded doesn't count as a loss.
3. All kills must be accounted for, and for this i'm adding a new side bar with each loss, value, kills/ransoms attributed to the ship and date on it.

Only 3 rules, all are easy to stick to. I'm going to try and mix the ships I use up a bit. So far i've lost 5 ships, 3 rifters and 2 punishers. I'm training for Cruiser and Battlecruiser skills so soon i'll start adding those losses when i'm ready to start using them, as i'm not going to use a ship i'm not properly trained for just for the sake of adding a loss.

Let's see if anyone else starts this up aswell, hopefully it's going to be bags of fun.

Fly Safe.

- Noir Avlaa.

Pick the pen up again.

I've had a bit of writer's block lately, so instead of forcing myself to write something, i've just left it until I had something to say that I could put down.

Alexia Morgan over at Punishment is asking what people do out of EVE. Easy enough, got a form and everything, so why not. I've already spoken somewhat about myself but i'll put the whole hog on here, no reason why not:

--------------------------------------------------------
Your character name:

Noir Avlaa

Your real name:

Lawrence "Lol" Pickford.

The country you're living in:

England - Liverpool to be exact.

How old are you:

20, birthday is 16th May.

What kind of work do you do:

I'm a professional games tester for Sony. That doesn't mean I know anything and my opinion accounts for nothing. All I do is test the game, therefore any opinion about the game after i'm allowed to talk about it is still null and void, as my perception of the game will be skewed. So don't ask me :P

What other hobbies or interests do you have:

Left 4 Dead aswell as EVE really. I go round to a mate's house every Wednesday or Tuesday and play card/board games like Magic, EVE Conquests, Game of Thrones. Though Magic seems to be winning if I go on how much we play it. Which is alot.

I go drinking on the weekends a bit with whoever's about. And if there's not many of us it's usually me going and meeting a new group of people to hang out with for the night... it's more fun when nothing's planned I find :) Anyone in Liverpool drop me a line and let's get drunk :D

And if you're wondering why I have "Lol" in the middle of my name, it's a nickname i've had since I was about 2, not because of "Laugh out loud" :P

Do you have a personal blog or non-Eve website you want to share:

Nope, this is it folks.

--------------------------------------------------------

Everyone else's turn now :).
Well time for some EVE talk, and lately i've had quite a lot of bad luck. I've lost 2 rifters, my tank punisher and have been podded, in 2 days of roaming. This is my worst streak so far, and even if they are cheap ships, it's annoying. Luckily I only use +2s and have 3 jump clones with implants in waiting. And it did provide me with an excuse to jump 45 jumps away to move my clone to a more favourable location.

I've had 1 kill though, but it was only another Punisher. So now i've bought another Rifter 45 jumps away from home in low-sec, and am moving through the sea of space to get back, hopefully without another loss, but we'll see shall we? Hopefully my luck will turn, i'm almost out of cash and could do with a nice ransom or 2 soon, or i'll have to put a proper amount of time into my mining character, and that's just boring to me.

Fly Safe.

- Noir Avlaa.

Grounded.

It appears while I was docked up and resting in Aldali my Pilot's License ran out of time. So now i'm scrounging around the station doing a bit of trading until I can afford to renew it. Early estimates say i'll be back on my ship in about 9 days, with a 1 day margin of error. But they're just quick estimates I threw together, not exactly accurate.

Also finally got around to updating the Blog Pack list on here, it's had the old one on for a while and figured while I have some spare time i'd sort it out.

So until I can get back out this station, Fly Safe.

- Noir Avlaa.

Out of Capsule.

Well not much to say at the moment, thought i'd throw up an update anyways...

Well as the heading for this post is "Out of Capsule" you may have guessed that it's about my life outside of EVE, but first a little back story...

I made the decision when I started EVE that I wasn't going to take it seriously, that real life activities are always going to come first and that I won't get sucked into a "serious" corporation which requires me to login 60% of my waking life to sit outside a POS for 2 hours cycling lasers.

I made this decision because I know I have an addictive personality, and i'm a heavy gamer, or was. When I played World of Warcaft I was on it from the moment I got home to early hours in the morning every day. I'd skip going out with friends to raid, and I even told my girlfriend at the time that I was busy and wasn't coming to bed for a while... which is *always* bad. So yeah. I decided i'd not let that happen again, so where I enjoy logging on and blowing the hell out of a miner, hunting newbie cruisers and suiciding against 3 year old players in a Raven, if someone invites me out i'll stop the fight, wait for GCC, go to home base and log out. If i'm far away i'll just dock in a near station and log out... and so far it's worked out well.

I have a few friends and corporations in game that I can roam with or duel or get stuff hauled to me. I have enough kills and activity to get satisfaction from the game, and generally the subscription is definately worth it.

But this post is about real life, not EVE so much. As i've said in a previous post i'm a games tester, a good job, pays low but pays the bills, easy enough, and i'm good at it. I'm not sitting here boasting about my "uber skillz" as a gamer, or how "leet my epeen" is or whatever. I'm good at games, i'm a very good tester, and I know how to do my job very well. Easy as that.

Some may think i've got an amazing job as a games tester aswell, which honestly it's good. But since i've started I can't come home any more and play FEAR until I go to bed, or sit on Halo on a Friday night until the early hours of the morning. Counter-Strike is just another FPS and Fable is just another Action-RPG. Mainly this is because at work i've been through countless games to test, for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for just over a year now. After that amount of testing games just aren't the same as they used to be.

Now I don't mean I don't like games, the complete opposite. I love games, gaming, reading about games, playing games, writing about games(here :P), watching upcoming games, reading fiction made from games, basically everything to do with games, I love. It just means my perceived view of games has changed alot. Instead these days I prefer technical exercises games. Games which are complex, require alot of though, or try something new or different, push the boundaries, have a twist not common to other games.

The games I like to play these days are games like Fallout, with it's nice little side-quests and gritty but beautiful world; Oblivion where the path isn't laid out before the player and to this day i've never completed, but have just gone around doing various guild quests, side quests, just running through forests, I like the scope of these games with their open world environments; Mirror's Edge with it's free-running, where it isn't perfect but the flaws are acceptable, the design might be simple, but the execution is what matters and it's great. And that's to name a few.

Of course EVE is missing off that list but I think everyone will agree it's quite obvious what I like about the game from a technical perspective, so I won't go into it... yet

Well 2 days ago we got told the head count in our room in work is to be cut down. I've been there a year but it's always been on 3 month rolling contracts. I've stated I don't want to be made permanent and there's reasons for that decision which I don't know if I can discuss or not, so I won't. But there's 28 of us in there, and they only want 10 to be left. They're opening up a late shift for another 10 but that's still 8 going, and I can do the late shift but it'll mean getting a taxi home every day, which is just a pointless waste of money and a ballache really. So we're anxiously waiting to see who's going to be left after the cut. I think i'll be alright, but hell, nothings for certain so...

Well as such i've been spending alot of time writing up my CV and Covering Letters for 2 jobs. Only 2 jobs i'm applying for, both still in QA, 1 in games for another company, 1 in software for yet another company. Both pay more and maybe I needed this push to actually go for them, but yeah, I can write bug reports like a demon, but after 2 days i've only got the games company CV and letter written, and even then the letter isn't quite finished. It's a shame that I can help anyone else out easily enough with their CVs but the moment it comes to my own i'm useless. Oh well.

Well wish me luck anyways if you want, i've got to get back to typing this all up, even if I do want to go chase some carebears and drink their tears.

Fly Safe.

- Noir Avlaa.

Rifter Dreams

Why, oh why, did noone ever forcefully beat into me how good the Rifter is as a frigate. I like my Punishers, I like them alot, but the sheer amount of damage a Rifter can put out at speed is amazing for a Frigate. During my time offline I trained minmatar frigates to 5 along with small projectile turrets and various other skills, so now I have a fully t2 fitted rifter worth about 12 mil.

God this thing is lethal though. When I first put it together I was using republic fleet EMP in it and orbitting 500m-1000m, while testing it on a friend... and I got whooped every time... He gave me some pointers and now I try do fast orbits between 3-6k with Barrage S... And I pretty much won every time, easily.

So far the only thing i've caught with it was a Retriever though, it was mining in a belt in my home system, and didn't warp out when I warped in 30km away from it, his own fault really. I tore it apart quickly enough and caught the pod, then tried to ransom, to be told to just pod him. I thought it didn't work like that? :P Ah well, podded him anyways and now i'm sitting at less SS with my Rifter deflowered.

I'm working on getting the skills to make a passive tank Punisher at the moment. Trying to get it to 10k Effective HP with decent damage output. Just gotta wait 11 more hour for the last skill to be high enough to fit everything, then it should be a great little trap ship :D

Not much else to report really... am trying to get a job on more pay IRL and atm i'm utterly broke until the 28th when I get paid again, so at some point my subscription might run out lol, time to get as much in before then as possible I suppose hehe.

Fly Safe

- Noir Avlaa.

Back online

Hoorah! And now i'm finally back online! I now have a nice new PC and internet set up in the new house after nearly a month of being offline without a PC... fun times. But throughout the month i've been updating my skills at a mate's, so now I can pretty much get a fully fitted t2 rifter out, aswell as a few other skills i've managed to hit 5 on, not bad :D

Well I only logged on briefly tonight and nothing really happened except me saying hello again to friends, probably won't be on tomorow either as it's games night at a mate's place... so until thursday!...

Fly Safe.

- Noir Avlaa.

Still offline

So yeah I'm still without a pc or Internet... Starting to do my head in now. Minmatar frigate is now at level 5 with evasive manouvering(spelling?) training to level 4... I've had to phone a mate up to logon and update my training schedule until I can get on. I forgot to inject autocannons before I went offline so I've got to find a way to grab that at a mates to start training it to 5, same with assault frigates... But it can't be long now until I'm back up and at least the times not going completely to waste.

In other news the blog packs been updated, I'll update my list when I can get to a suitable computer .. But one post really stood out for me, check this out - http://00sage00.wordpress.com/2009/09/13/having-fun-in-eve-online/comment-page-1/#comment-211 -the idea of a pvp iteron 5 I find hilarious, defnately gonna be fitting that at some point for some bait ganking in belts :D should be fun. As he said, the LOL factor would be worth losing it if I got even 1 kill haha.

Fly Safe.

- Noir Avlaa.

Busy busy.

It's been busy for me lately, I'm meant to be moving at some point, I've taken time off work for it and it's lucky I did, looks like I'm getting the keys 2 days late. Sigh. Oh well.
I've been at my mates quite a bit over the weekend aswell generally geeking it up. Went round and played alot of Magic: The Gathering, I've got an evil white deck that seems to work against most other decks at the moment, slowly changing it over time... We also got some Arkham Horror, Game of Thrones, Memoir 44 and of course EVE Conquests, where minmatar beat my amarr pretty quickly :/
Mainly due to the fact that I'd made a mistake early in the game and it cost me for the rest of it, ah well, live and learn.

In EVE though I'm trying to hit the -10 security status, which is taking longer than I thought it would. Currently I'm around -8.4 which is not bad considering I'm 3 months old and only using t1 frigates I reckon, could get it done faster probably but I'm still quite happy. I've now got 12 punishers sitting in my hangar full fitted for me to burn through and I'm training for rifters as I've heard that's where all the fun is.

That's it for now, not a major update, just something for now, if I'm moving I dunno how long it'll be until the next update, I can do them on my phone (like this one) but without EVE that's pretty pointless :p

Fly Safe.
- Noir Avlaa.

The hard way.

The past few days have been, as the title says, the hard way. Quick catch up, my old Corp joined sylph, I quit and founded Magpie Enterprises, I'm still based in Aldali and Jeni and I'm roaming around the region avoiding gangs and traps and killing anything else I can.

So I was waiting for my 24 hour wait period to finish so I could quit Corp, I had maybe 3 hours left while I was sitting in aldali, I didn't want to roam while in Corp as sylph alliance is on a nrds policy and I didn't want to mess anything up for the Corp. So what to do? Could spend some time on my mining character, but mining is boring for me and I can only stand it in 30 minute chunks.

Hey I know! I've heard other of bloggers playing eve online hold'em, why not try it? Asides from the fact I know nothin about poker, and that I'll probably lose alot of isk to it, and I'll be playing mainly against people who know what they're doing. But hey, lets go for it. 10 minutes and 60mil worth of chips later I'm playing in the newbie room, I spend an hour there and make as much as I lose, iv got the rules down and it's quite fun. But now I'm not playing anyone, hmm, lets raise the stakes and join a higher priced 6 player game.

Needless to say I ended up 30mil down a few hours later. 1 last try before I jump back into my punisher. New game, 10mil buyin, lets play this cash out. I lose a few hands down to around 5mil then get an ace queen in my hand. Pay enough to see the flop, ace queen in flop! It goes down to me and 1 other, I go all in with him and end up around 12mil in chips. Not bad.

Next hand, a pair of 3s, not too shabby. Nothing in the flop for me, I bet anyway. 5 mil in with nothing on the 4th card, the stakes go so I have to go all in to stay in. Go for it. Last card goes down, it's a 3! Inwent from around 12mil to 45mil instantly! 65mil total wiry of chips, I'm up from where I started!

Needless to say, I got cocky, I've now lost all 60 mil. I'll go again when I get enough from ransoms to top me up... Speaking of ransoms..

I logged in and spent around 1 and a half hours solo roaming. I found a courcer rafting but it jumped out before I got it within scram range. I decided to end the roam and head home, mustn't be my day for it, when low and behold a bestower and a coercer appear on scan in my home system of Aldali. I check them out and they're both on 3 day old characters mining in a belt.

Well they are in my home turf, warp in. I land 10km from the bestower as the coercer warps out. Lock, scrammed and I start shooting. I get him nearly to hull and stop shooting, open a convosation with the pilot and state simply "1 mil and you can leave with your ship", he asks me to stop, which as he's new is understandable, I repeat the ransom again and wait 10 seconds, when his friend returns. Sigh. Killing newbies isn't big or clever, but he should have accepted the ransom.

The coercer isn't a threat to me at all, who can fit one properly at 3 days? I wait until it targets me before I move, he might not shoot me, who knows. Nope, he shot me. I state simply in he chat I had going "your friend's actions have just killed you both". Sure enough, 2 minutes later they were both corpses in my cargo hold.

Guess they learned the hard way. Maybe I should add to my Corp info or my bio I honor ransoms in case it'll help matters. Oh well. Nearly at -8 sec now.

Fly Safe.
- Noir Avlaa.

So long.

I've bit the bullet and resigned from my corp, and am moving my assets to Jeni to etch out a living pirating with my wingman Havamar for a while. I decided the NRDS policy of Sylph just wasn't for me and thus the best move is to leave my corp.

I've not got a bad word to say about Paradigm Council. They're a great corp with alot of variation in ages, skills, play styles etc and I couldn't have picked a better corp to learn EVE PVP with if I tried. I started with them wondering how I could possibly help, and where I can't really help much in fleet battles the roams I had every now and then were fun.

Testing my fittings out on BATMorpheous helped me alot, ajc supplying punishers to me when there were some in the hangar, good job I was pretty much the only one in corp using them. Lex Fasces sorting out fleets when we needed them, and the various others on hand helping me progress my skills.

Anyways, off to play Poker

Fly Safe.

-Noir Avlaa.

Cool your jets hotshot!

Well we're now in an alliance, Sylph to be exact, and most people in the corp have relocated to Sylph space. The Alliance has ended the war with The Happy Spacemen and we're on our jolly way to nullsec wars.

I don't mind all this, but the 1 thing that is making me wonder is the NRDS(Not Red Don't Shoot) policy that Sylph has. It suits them fine and that's fair enough, but I entered to be a pirate. There's going to be plenty of reds to shoot, but again, i'm a pirate. I like being a pirate. My blog says i'm a pirate. And now i'm not allowed to pirate.

I'm wondering what my options are here. I could stay for a while, see what it's like, have some fun shooting reds, gain some sec status and lose a few more Punishers in the process. Or I could move to Jeni, start a 1 man corp and roam around pirating again with the normal peeps, mainly Havamar, and see how that works out.

I didn't really expect to have to make the decision at all, for now i'm gonna stick around in Sylph but at some point I wanna go round chewing up cruisers in a Punisher and ransoming newbies for all they've got, and i'm not allowed to do that now, which puts a big spanner in the works.

Maybe this whole NRDS will be fine with all the reds that pass through Sylph's systems... I just don't really know. Moving to Jeni to carry on roaming seems like the best option to me at the moment, but I like my corp and the people in it. Could always just get them to set me blue and then go for roaming anyways. Both options have alot of downsides and upsides so I guess i'll just see where the wind takes me.

In other news, i've lost another Punisher after dueling a 2 year old character in a cruiser, I didn't count on him having a neut fitted but ah well, it was a good fight even if I did only get to armour.

Fly Safe.

- Noir Avlaa.

Phoneblog

This is the first blog I've done yet from my phone, the formatting might turn out a lttile different but i think it will be fine :)

Now, to business, it turns out while I was offline the other day, The Happy Spacemen, who we're at war with, issued us a ransom of 1bil to end the war. I think they think we're a bit scared or intimidated by them, but we didn't accept, and thus their alt Corp has now wardecced us. I've no idea what they're trying to prove but it's rather funny, in Corp we're debating whether to join an alliance and end this war quickly, or fight it out to the end, no holds barred. I'm all for fighting, but we'll see how it goes.

Fly Safe.
-Noir Avlaa

It's a hard way to earn a living.

I've only logged on briefly today, maybe about 2 hours in total. Nothing much was happening when I first got on, a couple of conversations in the corp channels was about all. One of which though was about Apocrypha 1.5 patch coming on Thursday, and more specifically about the Faction Warfare bonuses coming with it.

A few of us seem very interested in it. When I say a few I mean me and 1 other guy so far, with maybe a few more that a possibly interested later on with a bit of a push. But because of the mechanics of it we can't stay in corp, so we've got the channels available to others to join which most members in the corp are part of anyway, so if we do decide to break away and do some Faction Warfare for a bit we'll just set standings positive and join a joint channel, basically still in corp with each other without still being in corp. Say a sub-corp for the Factioners among us.

Naturally i'm going to be aiming at Amarr, style before substance and all that, but to do anything I need to get my standings up with the Amarr Empire. I did a few missions when I first made the character but nothing much as I quickly went to piracy and started forging out a life there, found a nice casual PVP corp and hey presto, I was rolling through low sec in a decent Frigate.

The other guy in corp interested was about to jump away for some missioning, I requested to join, and 6 jumps later in an Omen and a Zealot we were blasting our way through a level 3. Except after any sort of PVP it was frankly boring. We mopped up pretty quickly, decided we didn't want to do another and so I headed straight back to my home system to check on how things were.

Another 6 jumps back I was on familiar turf, and hey, an Omen on scan in one of the belts. Time for some piracy. I debated whether to go in my own Omen, which I was already in, or risk switching to a Punisher. I stated the target in corp chat and promptly received warning from 2 of the pilots not to engage. Apparently our lovely war tactics are making The Happy Spacemen (GH3Y) use some new tactics, one such is logging into a neutral character, sitting it in a belt and baiting us.

Well I was still tempted, so I decided to use a Punisher, told the corp I was going for it anyways in a Frigate and tried to take a few bets on my survival, BATMorpheous put down 1mil on me surviving and killing the Omen, I had 1mil on the same, noone bet against us so that was some potential easy cash down the pan. Maybe next time. I undocked, aligned and warped. Damn. Wrong belt. Try the only other candidate it could have been. Bingo. I landed 1500m from the Omen, there was 2 drones 11km away which I thought was his, turns out they were just leftovers from someone else.

I quickly got the scram and started my orbit at 3km, turned on the afterburner, the NOS and my lasers and started chewing through the guy. On my way into orbit he starting unleashing missiles at me. What's that? missiles on an omen? There's only 1 slot, where's the lasers? But no lasers came. By now I definately thought it was a trap and at any moment I was gonna get pointed while war targets came into the system, but nothing. The guy's just new and exploring, lucky me. I got through his armour just as 2 war targets came into system.

Panick time, I wanted to finish this fight quickly before I got scanned down, i'd figured out this guy wasn't bait. Let's try a quick ransom. I opened up a convosation with him and got a lovely opened of "Jerk's like you are what ruins the game for other people"... What a great way to greet a guy who's just stopped killing you and has started a convosation. Either way, ransom. I instantly shot back "5mil or you lose your ship"... Apparently he only had 2mil, which I then ransomed off him even offering him a way out of the system. 20 seconds later I had 2mil more ISK and he was warping to a high sec stargate.

My first ransom, nothing massive but a ransom nonetheless. I'm down to -6.9 sec status, I don't really care too much about it so maybe i'll try this ransoming more often, i've managed to damage Harbingers before in my Punisher, Drakes seem to be alright depending on how much tank the target has(or doesn't as I prefer) and drones bother me but if the pilot's ship can't hit me, I kill the drones pretty quick while keeping the target pointed, so I might try this more often to see how much profit I can make out of, considering i'm quite new.

Next thing is to figure out how much to ransom ships. I'm thinking of classifying it. Say Frigates for 600k, Cruisers at around 2-3 mil, Tech 2 frigates at say 15 mil as the insurance on them is shoddy, same with all t2 ships, charging alot of ISK on them because of insurance values on the t2 ships being bad. I'm thinking maybe roughly 75% of the ship's base value on the market at the time. Maybe 60% if 75% proves to be too high, not sure yet. I'll be making estimates anyways instead of using a calculator, I can work estimates out pretty quickly mentally so that should be fine.

Any thoughts on it leave a comment, dunno how many read this blog atm but any input's welcome :)

Shoutout to Paradigm Council though, and BATMorpheous as he asked so nicely, check the bounty on him! :O

Fly Safe

-Noir Avlaa.

Test

Test

DUST 514

Wow. I'm literally shell shocked. For those who haven't heard the news, check it out here.

http://www.eveonline.com/pressreleases/default.asp?pressReleaseID=60

CCP Games are making an MMOFPS for Consoles that will directly link to EVE Online as it is. The new game will be the wars that go on planetside that the main EVE game doesn't see. I've no idea how but i'm willing to hazard some guesses.

There's alot of ways interaction between the 2 games can be accomplished. With the Factional Warfare and Storyline progression at the moment there is alot of room to add on-planet fighting which would add to the story line.

The way i'd like to see it done is say Faction 1 is trying to gain control of System 1 with Planet 1 in it, and Faction 2 is obviously defending, alot of the fighting must be planetside, because they might Faction 1 might gain control of the skys, but no resources will be gained if Planet 1 is still controlled by Faction 2. This is where the new MMOFPS comes into play, the obvious solution would be the 4 factions in EVE transferred to the new game and the players on the ground will fight accross the planet for resources, once a certain point is reached a faction can claim victory and the planet will belong to the victors.

Now this means the Attackers will obviously need to pour more troops into the planet, where the defenders will have whoever's there now and any backup from other systems possible, which will be hard as a hostile fleet will be in the way. The amount of players per battle would depend on supply lines, there's already "Militants" cargo so the amount of attackers on the ground could just be the amount of militants brought in through faction missions in EVE.

I've literally only just seen this so alot of ideas are swimming around my head without being able to phrase them properly, but I cannot wait to see this implemented. I used to play PlanetSide and I loved it, this looks like it could be much better with ease.

Fly Safe

- Noir Avlaa

Another day on the job.

I've been off work for 3 weeks recently. I like to think of it as a "Mandatory Holiday" but basically I was fired for 2 weeks so my company could still technically claim I was contract staff and get benefits off the government. But i've had a holiday out of it and have managed to pour alot of time into EVE. So it's not a bad thing really :)

That said, I was back in work today on a new contract, thus i'm not going to be as active on EVE, still active enough to contribute but not as active as I have been, so that means less kills generally, but I can live with that.

Seeing as i've finally gone below the -5 security status (skipped -4 and -5 completely going from -3.5 to -6.6 in about 10 minutes) i've decided to make another account for a miner/hauler/trader character. The benefit of this is that i'll be able to use it to generate cash, to spend on pirating, which will lose cash on the whole for now. Sustainable pirating is what i'm after now, and now i've not got as much time to play EVE, it'll be alot easier. Which is a good thing. Enough about that though, mining bores the hell out of me even if it is necessary.

I finally learned how to fit a MWD earlier today, and not a moment too soon! 20 minutes after the MWD was attached to my Harbinger a war target appeared in system in a Drake. So I undocked ready to scan, and there it was, looking at me and a corp mate flying another Drake. Well let's not waste time, I hit the targetting, webbed him and started shooting away, only for him to dock up. Well that was pointless. Oh well, next time maybe.

Apparently he'd been undocking and docking for a while now, just getting my corp mate to get a couple of shots off before he docked again. Better sort this out, I know that's just annoying, i've done it myself for that reason. But i've read up, spoke to people, seen this sort of thing countered, and so I move into position about 10km above the undocking area and wait. Low and behold the war target undocks again. I slam Approach and activate the MWD, knowing I had well enough time to reach him before he could dock up. I turned on all my lasers, hit him at about 1000m/s and bounced him a good distance away from the station, and kept on bouncing him away.

Dirty tactics, maybe. Cheap tactics, probably. Winning Tactics, defiinately. The moment I hit him my corp mate was slamming missiles into him, I hit the web and my corp mate hit both a web and a scram. The war target was crawling back into docking range, not fast enough. Half way back to the station my corp mate hit him with his MWD activated aswell moving the target further away again. A minute later we had him at hull and that was that, the fight ended swiftly and we bagged an easy drake kill.

This war so far has been a very enjoyable war. They declared on us, are spending 50mil a week on it, and so far we're only giving them kills which don't really cost us too much. Every loss we sustain is relatively cheap, whereas every kill we get we see that it's costing them quite a bit. We're about even on kills as far as I can see, but on ISK lost they're far, far ahead. Not sure who's decision it was to only allow them to get cheap kills, but it's working so far and it's alot of fun for us. Soon the war must be over, even if they inflict a higher kill rate that us, we're killing more ISK than them, and that surely must count for something and make them wonder if they made the right decision wardeccing.

Who knows, they say they declared war for fun. If that's the case then they've succeeded with me and it means money's no object, which means it might go on for a good while longer. And that's fine in my books, not sure about others in the corporation who can't mine, and I can see that this must be quite bad for them, and as such I hope the war ends pretty soon so we can get on with business the way we normally do. But when the war's over I hope I see this corp about when i'm roaming, because they're good at what they do, most the time when they take a loss it's against superior numbers. I've said it in a previous post and i'll say it again now, I applaud this corp for their skill and manner in which they've been composing themselves. There's rarely a case of them turning up and screaming abuse over local, they're civil, decent, skillful pirates(though they deny that fact :P ) and they're making a me have alot of fun so far.

That's all for now though, bed is calling my name and i'm not one to ignore that.

Fly Safe

- Noir Avlaa.

Good Morning, Good Afternoon, Good Evening.

As I find myself learning new things in EVE, when to spam the warp button, that the fight is never over - only paused, what fittings can be easily swapped out for a great difference... I still don't know why people are so bitter about losing a ship. I can understand being a bit annoyed, even angry, but I can't see why they fail to note that it's possible they set themselves up to lose it.

I mean, I know losing a ship is a bad thing, time, money and effort have gone into saving up, buying and fitting the ship. And to have someone blow it up for fun is probably frustrating. But surely people can acknowledge that maybe they shouldn't have taken it ratting in low sec, or that maybe they should have put a stasis web on instead of the extra cap booster. Every time a ship is lost, there is a lesson to be learnt, sometimes it isn't obvious but it's always there.

For example, earlier today I logged on, performed routine checks and saw 2 new players in local. Asides from me they were the only ones in the system. So I called in my crew, jumped into my pod and put it in my Punisher, the latest in a long line of lost frigates. I started undocking procedures and moments later I was looking at the golden clouds in space surrounding the system. But there were more important things to do than admire the view, so up came the system scanner, set to maximum range at 360°.

*Ping* 2 contacts on scan. Instead of trying to refine I jumped straight to the 5° scanning range and pointed it at the first cluster of belts. *Ping* Still showing on scan. I checked what they were piloting, a Coercer and a Cormorant. Now I do like being wreckless, jumping into fights where the chance of survival was small, and the potential gain was mediocre, and if I win all i'd gain is a document with the pilot's name and a damage report. But this was maybe a bit too much, i'm all for taking anything up to Cruisers if they're on their own, but 2 destroyers, I had visions of 1 gaining range and picking me off while I was busy with the other.

Well, I wasn't about to let them stroll in and start ratting, so I brought up the comms menu and had a look for any friendlies nearby. There was 1 friendly that was able to help a few jumps out. I told him where the prey was and what I knew about the pilots and he told me he was on the way.

Waiting. Patience is a pirate's best friend, but when I know where the enemy is, I start to get an itchy trigger finger. Too long to wait, I told the backup I was going for it reguardless, hell, I figured if I lost my Punisher I had 4 more fully fitted waiting for me at the station, and it's not like they're expensive. I set my Punisher aligning with the belt. "Ship is Aligned" I heard through my implants. The shipmaster was anxious I could tell. He knew his life was expendible to me, but I got him because he's borderline insane, and very good at his job. He applied for the position solely for these moments.

I saw the asteroids before the Destroyers, as the Punisher was coming out of warp. The tunnel stopped, i'd come out of warp a mere 8km from one of the Destroyers, and just as the other started to fall apart from the guns of a Sansha Lord. I was in luck! I immediately targetted the pod ejecting from the broken Destroyer and had him pinned down, seconds later the pod was history and I could focus my efforts on the remaining Destroyer.

I turned and began to get into scrambler range when it disappeared. There was a moment's silence while I replayed the events, how could I let it escape me! I was so close to blocking it's escape! But escape it did, or so I thought, 10 seconds later it reappeared on top of me. Alarms were going off in my head, I was targetted! The idiot came back! I primed my focused lasers, equipped Multifrequency charges and set a fast, close up orbit. Scrambler was in full effect and I started tearing into his shield with the lasers while taking down his capacitor with my small nosferatu.

What seemed like seconds later his shield was down and I was starting through his armour, the Sansha Lord had just targetted me and while I was moving too fast for him to cause too much damage my pulse started racing that little bit faster. Seemingly out of nowhere came the friendly in a stealth bomber and started tearing into the armor with me. Not before long all that was left was the charred remains of the Destroyer. I looked around trying to find the pod, there it was! Lock target! Locking... Locking... Locked! And scrambled! The pilot hadn't been quick enough to warp away, and now he was paying for his error! Moments later my lasers screamed through his pod tearing it apart like it was made out of paper, now all that was left was the Sansha Lord, no point in leaving anything behind.

So we quickly killed the Sansha Lord without too much trouble.

Now during that whole thing not a word was spoke with the 2 doomed pilots, no ransom was offered as I deemed it to be pointless, no ISK was offered to stop me killing the ships. But right at the end as I locked the second pod, I got a nice "Thanks, newb" in local chat.

This brings me right back to my point at the top of this post. He knew the risks of coming into low-sec space, there's a big warning before he jumps telling him things like this can happen. If he didn't want to run the risk, there is literally thousands of missions that he can take that keep him in high-sec space. Ok he might be new, but when I was new and I saw that message for the first time warning me of the danger, I stopped, turned around and found somewhere else to go, I only risked it a bit later when I figured i'll end up going through at some point anyway so why wait?

I can honestly understand him being a bit miffed at losing his ship, but if it was insured then he's just lost time, if his clone is backed up properly, as is taught in the tutorial these days he'll just be in a different location, and if he didn't want to get blown up and podded, he should have stayed in high sec space, or fit his ship differently just in case. It is possible to rat in a PVP fitted ship, it might be a bit different, but it is easily possible, and then when someone turns up to kill you, you will have a fighting chance to stop them.

I don't know, just my thoughts on the whole "But why did you kill me" thing. I killed you for 1 simple reason. "Because I can".

All in all though this has been quite a good day for me and my corp. In total i've got around 8 kills to my name, around 3 of which are solo in my trusty punisher, best day for kills i've had so far, and none of them were war targets either... Though now i'm confined to low sec space for a while, my sec status didn't like today at all, but hey, i'm a pirate! Savvy?

Fly safe

- Noir Avlaa.

PC vs GH3Y day 2

Well it's been a fun, full day for us lot. I'll start off where I left off last time, I logged on just after downtime and went through the usual checks. Checked my mailbox, read updates within the corp, greeted the various channels i'm in and checked local. Turns out when I got podded I'd left my clone in a station where I first tried roaming, 27 jumps away, with no backup nearby and my jump clone with 12 hours remaining.

I though "How bad can it be, I must've left something lying around here I can use" so I checked my assets, and low and behold I still had one of my first fully fitted Inquisitors 1 jump away in the next station, splendid. I redid my clone, bought a shuttle and set off, buying new implants along the 27 jumps back to the home system, cursing myself at every jump for not relocating my clone when I moved.

The trip back was pretty uneventful, no war targets in sight, no normal targets in sight, and not much else besides. It just took a bit of time I hadn't planned on, and I knew it was my own fault. But I digress.

So I finally hit the home turf with a few corp mates in the station, I warp to station and ask to dock, which is promptly granted, chat with the corp for a bit, fit a new punisher, help a few others fit their ship and undock. We were on orders to stay by the station in case of war targets who were camping the other side of a gate leading out from our home. We weren't going to pursue them on their side, so wait we did, when suddenly we had 4 targets just 10km from us.

All we had out at the time was a Myrmidon and my Punisher, no match for what we saw. A quick glance told us all we needed to know to dock up and sort a fleet out. We now had 4 Battleships outside the station waiting, a Scorpion, Armageddon, Megathron and Apocolypse. It was a bit frantic for us from that point, we threw together a fleet. "ECM AND DAMAGE" was broadcast accross the corporation "PRIMARY IS THE SCORPION, PRIMARY, SCORPION". Within 10 minutes we had a 12 man fleet, with a Dreadnought, Carrier, A few Capitol ships, with the remaining in Battleships, Battlecruisers and a Stealth Bomber who was outside waiting from a distance, feeding us information. We sorted out the undocking order, and piled out of the hangar bay doors in quick succession. What followed was quite simply the easiest kill i've had so far.

The Scorpion was targetted and scrammed, jammed and webbed within seconds, we quickly tore through the shields, followed by the armor, the repairing was doing little impact against the onslaught, and then a flash. The Scorpion was destroyed, the pilot warping away as fast as possible while we shifted focus.

We got the 3 remaining quickly pointed down and began spreading damage among them, all shields were down at the same time, the Battleships aligning and frantically trying to warp. It paid off aswell, the 3 of them managed to get away, 2 of them pretty quickly while the 3rd got away in hull.

We might have won by numbers, but we don't play fair, we don't try and provide an even fight, we win where we can, however we can, and if we can't, we give them as little as possible. There are no "clean" tactics in any PVP in any game in my opinion. The winner won because they did something the other person didn't, everyone has the chance to do the same, just because we did it and they didn't doesn't make us bad at PVP, if anything it makes them idiots by not doing it themselves, if they care that much.

But the battle ended with the "gf" over comms, joking with the other side afterwards and there was smiles all round. The opponent knows we "blobbed" them, they know we didn't give them much of a chance, but they knew that we could do that and accepted the risk, and still kept their cool when we did. Hat's off to you in The Happy Spacemen, i'm thoroughly enjoying the scraps, fights and battles we're having, and the attitude has always been polite and good natured.

Next time though, the crusader's going down.

Fly Safe.

- Noir Avlaa.

My punisher.

Thought i'd show my punisher a bit of airtime, loving this ship so far, I know it's not the best t1 frigate to PVP in but it's definately up there. At some point i'm going to train up skills so I can use a Rifter properly, but that's in the distance for now.

So here's one of my lovely Punishers, this one's fresh as i've just lost the last one in the war against a Crusader, apparently I gave him a fright when I shot back at him instead of panicking and dying easily, still died but I liked the shock I gave him when I ate up his shield. And he still got the pod kill on me, which is a shame but I knew I was going to get podded at some point, better to get it over and done with while my implants aren't rediculously expensive.

I've just got to try and get 1 kill out of this machine before it showers my screen with stardust and leaves a nice smear on the nearest space station. Hopefully that won't happen but hope doesn't win fights ;)

So far on my fittings i've still got a few skills to train up before it's done properly, but they've been good to me so far, and still a helluva lot of fun to fly, so who cares what's on it? This is what I have so far:-

Nothing spectacular, still need to replace the guns with t2s and the inertial stab with an EANM II, but as I said, it's still alot of fun, and still feels great popping someone in it, even if it's not that often ;)

-Noir Avlaa.

We are at war gentlemen.

We've been wardecced by an ex-mercenary corporation, for fun apparently. Well most of us think this is great, though our corp isn't a PVP corp, we're quite a casual corp based in 0.4 space in Domain. We have quite a few pirates, including myself, but also a few miners and mission runners, so the war's not exactly the best thing for them. But it's happened, may as well use them.

We're on the second day of the war now, we've seen what they can do, they've seen what we can do and most of the fighting is in our home system where we've pulled everyone back to and helped them fit ships for encounters. Losses are pretty even so far, they got a few kills on the first encounter, we've had a few kills since then, including a lovely ishtar kill while we were all in frigates. It was keeping out of range for the most part and sniping, but it kept coming in closer every now and then, turned out to be a simple case of wait for it to start coming in close, then go like a bat out of hell into it's predicted path and scramble it, it lasted about 15 seconds once we had the scram on it and it looked glorious. Apparently the owner was quite pissed at this and hasn't got much in the way of funding left, you risked it and it didn't pay off, better luck next time.

Alot in the corp as i've said don't do PVP, and there is only a small number of pilots who have been doing it long enough to know what they're doing in fleet warfare, which leaves more of us who don't really know that much about it, myself included. We're trying to treat it as a learning curve, for example, I decided to fit out a harbinger to sit by the big guns and take out frigates that came too close and ECM drones if they used any. I figured it would be better to let the big guns do the long range damage, as they'd have better skills and ships for the task. I got a few drones but that was all, so i've refitted for range for the next major encounter, as for now we're only using frigates.

I should really start taking screenshots I think, i'll try and remember when i'm fighting to hit the button.

Time to jump on and roam a bit I think.

-Noir Avlaa

First blog.

Well i'm new to the whole blog thing, but after reading quite a few i've decided to give it a go, why not. So this blog's going to be about my POV on the pirate's life, I may not be as "hardcore" or skilled as other pirates, but that's not the point is it?

So to start with i'll let you all know that i'm 2 months into my EVE career, I mainly fly cheap Punishers while training for better ship. I only get t2 when it's cheap and I play for fun.

I started off as every newbie would, doing the first string of missions, getting a few new ships, experimenting in high sec space with different loadouts before realising I had no idea how to fit ships properly and taking some time online looking around at how other people fit ships, why modules are fit on one ship and not another etc etc. And now I can fit a decent ship as far as I can tell.

So with that in mind, I checked out how to fit frigates, saw which build I liked the looks of, swapped out expensive t2 or t2 I hadn't got the skills for for t1 and took it out for a spin. To start with I liked the Inquisitor, I thought "Hey cool, missiles, I can keep a good range from anything and do some decent damage with these!"... Turns out I was a bit wrong, where I thought missiles would be a good route to go, I hadn't really checked out the Amarr ship bonuses, and soon found it was a dead end route for me and i'd wasted a couple of weeks going down it. But every set back teaches me something, so after fumbling around in an Inquisitor, I moved to the Punisher.

This, as it turns out, was a much better idea. At the moment i'm running it with 3 pulse lasers, a nos, AB and scram and some armor. I have about 3k effective HP with a SAR II and rarely run out of capacitor, and i've had a few kills in it so far.

I figured I couldn't really learn much solo, where the learning curve would be much steeper than if I was in a corp with people to ask how to fix my wrong-doings and get answers which would hopefully stop me blowing up spectacularly next time.

So far I don't think i've been doing too badly. I've got on the KM for more than i've lost, apparently i've destroyed more ISK than i've spent. I loot most of what I kill and sell it, and I still do some ratting from time to time. I've read the Piracy 101 guide and learned all I can and I try my best to follow it, now it's just down to experience, I even managed to get a Raven Battleship to half shield and tackled it long enough for a friend to turn up in a myrmidon and help me kill it, though it blew up at around 20% hull and denied us the KM :(

I've found I tend to be rather gung-ho with my punishers, throwing them into fights even though I know the chance of me surviving is small, but to me that makes it all the more fun, if I manage to bag the kill, it's against the odds, and against a more experienced pilot, or a pilot in a better ship.

I have to say piracy in EVE is probably the most fun i've got out of a game before, and i've played alot of games. It's a funny feeling when i'm locking someone down while they're ratting, or they're trying to align in time to warp away before I get my scram on them, knowing it's another person who might be panicking because all they've seen is someone locking them in low sec space, trying to force them to make a mistake, changing my attack according to what they do. EVE's PVP system is possibly the most simple and the most complex at the same time i've seen in a game, and I love it.

Anyways, if you read this, i'll be running around Domain and Kor-Azor low sec newbing it up and screaming my way through fights, maybe i'll give ransoming a try at some point, i've heard it's a good way to make profit if I can pull it

Fly Safe.

- Noir Avlaa