July 2024

Suitcase Challenge Day 71/90: Bye bye Porpoise

stargrace July 16, 2024 No Comments

It was bound to happen sooner or later. I was mining in an anomaly with a retriever & porpoise combo on (what was until then) a quiet day – and suddenly someone showed up on d-scan. Normally, I don’t constantly run compression on the porpoise because it makes the ship a sitting duck that cannot move until it’s out of siege. I turn on compression only when I have to, and I check first to make sure for the minute or so that I can’t move, all is well.

This time it was just bad luck on every front. First. I attempted to warp off to a safe, but I didn’t confirm anything and instead was looking at my other monitor moving the retriever to a different safe. Turns out, the porpoise might have been out of siege, but I didn’t actually warp her off grid, so when the attacker showed up, I was basically already dead – but it didn’t have to be that way. The porpoise is tank fit, with 97k EHP, and drones. There was just 1 person on me, and it was taking them a LONG time to do any damage, in the meantime, my drones were hacking away at them (warrior II), and I thought if I could just swap the retriever to another ship, I might make it.

Unfortunately, it did not happen the way I wanted it to, and I lost the porpoise. Thankfully, this ship is really not THAT expensive, and in a bonus event, the compression pieces both dropped as loot, and those things are HUGE, so unless you have over 3500m3 of space, you can’t just haul them away. The attacker even left my frozen corpses behind so I grabbed those. I flew in with a hauler, grabbed 80m worth of loot that they had to leave behind (including my compressed ore) and aside from the loss of the hull, it still ended up being an ISK positive day. For now I’ve decided not to bother replacing the porpoise, I know I can compress with the Orca, but I rarely uncloak it these days because I’m terrified of the ISK loss. The cost just seems to keep going up – when I bought my first one it was 450m and now they’re well over 2b just for the hull.

Compression is a big deal when you’re mining out in space. Ore is huge and awkward, and ideally you want to remain out on the grid as long as possible. It was only a matter of time before I lost some ships, I’m just glad it wasn’t any worse than it was.

Fly your way o7

Equinox? Not much ‘rejuvenation’

stargrace July 14, 2024 No Comments

Equinox has not been good to most of the players of EVE. What was hyped and praised as a ‘rejuvenation’ of nullsec, has been met with a lot of drama all around. Player numbers over the past few months have lowered – which is expected in summer months, but not quite to the extent that we have seen. The steam reviews have also recently been bombarded by negative ratings, in an effort to make CCP pay attention. I’ve been reading reddit stories of skyhook robberies, nerfs to ratting anomalies, systems that can no longer support any sort of isk generating content (ie: not enough workers, or power), nerfs to mining anomalies and an overall reluctance to convert the systems to the shiny new (you’re not forced to at the moment, they will auto swap sometime in November, is the speculation). Once you swap you are unable to revert the change. Even if you don’t personally live in nullsec, a huge portion of the active population of EVE does, and these changes will trickle down and affect everyone over time, no matter where you live. There’s arguments about Pochven and WH faucets, and an overall feeling of frustration.

Personally, I’ve always been a ‘let’s wait and see’ player, and I like to think that game developers (given enough time) are smart enough to be able to turn things around, but I’ve also never really experienced an expansion in EVE before, and I’m not sure about this one since so much of it doesn’t relate to anything I personally do, directly. I’m concerned about the trickle down effect, more expensive ships, less players around, those items do affect me.

I’m also not naive enough to think that CCP can please everyone, especially in this sort of a game. I do think they (CCP) need to remember that it’s supposed to be fun, and if you remove all of that fun, you need to replace it or people will leave.

I guess we’ll see what happens in November.

Investing (a bit) in the hauler

stargrace July 12, 2024 No Comments

I have a fair number of characters in a Wormlife Freeport doing planetary interaction these days, and they fly some cheap epithal ships with an “oh shit” fit, but it only has 8k EHP or so – and when the new hauling ships were announced, I was interested. The T1 version, a squall, is affordable, and has the same space as the epithal, but can fit missiles, and has way more EHP. I like the cheaper epithal for wormholes, but decided to upgrade my marketing character (who is also my hauler) to a squall, just to see how I liked it. I’m not invested in quite all of the skills that I need yet, but so far, flying it is pretty comfortable and I like the illusion that I might be able to defend myself from a ganker or two. I don’t plan on taking it anywhere fancy, but since I never know what HS connection my WH is going to have or how many jumps away it is going to be, I wanted something that could withstand a few jumps.

I’m not in love with the appearance of the ship, it’s like a double stuffed Orca (thicker, but same length), in a pale grey. I’ve dragged around a billion ISK worth of PI in it so far, though I also know flying the ‘new’ shiny is just asking for attention to be drawn to yourself. Thankfully I’ve got all my instant docks and undocks set up for most of my routes, and I think the entire fit including hull came to less than 50m ISK, which isn’t that bad in the grade scheme of things. We’ll see how long I can keep it alive. The epithal on the other hand, is under 5m ISK, but feels like I’m flying in a tin can that a can opener has partially opened already.

Anyone else have strong feelings on what you fly?

Mining my Very First Moon

stargrace July 11, 2024 No Comments

I’m not sure when moons and moon mining came to the game, but I do know that until now, I’ve never actually mined one before. A giant laser fractures a piece of moon, and then a timer counts down (days long), and then eventually that fractured piece splits into little pieces that you can mine. Some moons are more valuable than others, this one that I’ve been mining at is a R4 which is apparently not that great, but I was still just excited to be doing something I’ve never done before.

I believe what you do with moon goo is process it and then use it for reactions – but I’ve not gotten into those, either. I also can’t compress this moon goo, and it’s huge and awkward, so I have no idea what I’ll end up doing with it. Maybe I’ll start getting into reactions. I hear there’s lots of profit to be made with that but you need to do some research and have some capital to get started. It’s something I can look into, in any case.

Things have been blissfully quiet lately. I bought a second porpoise so that I wouldn’t have to keep swapping my ships around between characters. I’ve been contemplating a 3rd account (Eep) because things in EVE tend to escalate the more accounts you have. I’ve been doing well with two, and I enjoy multiboxing on this level, but there’s always that little voice urging me for just a little bit more.

Now, what am I going to do with all of this Butumens and Cinnabar.

Fly your way! o7