EVE

78 Days in Signal Cartel

stargrace June 24, 2024 0Comment

I know I mention it from time to time, but I don’t really make a lot of posts about my days in Signal Cartel, mostly because I don’t want to accidentally cross over into any credo breaking territory. Our stance on all eve players, no matter where they hail from, is neutrality. As neutral as we are, it is (quite often) not always reciprocated. We can defend ourselves in combat – but we do not ever instigate, or perform activities that would lead to putting our neutrality in question. So far I’ve found this corporation fantastic. We basically all just do our own thing, and meet up occasionally for events / classes / every Sunday for ‘coffee’. There is no pressure, as long as you partake in and love activities that involve exploration.

Besides roaming jspace looking for data / relic sites, I help tend the eve scout caches that you may have seen strewn about in systems. These cache include a probe launcher, some probes, and sometimes ‘hugs’ which is just a little extra item to cheer up anyone who might be lost and need our services. Basically, we help people who forget to bookmark exits, or who have had a wormhole roll before they could get back out, or any other manner of being ‘stuck’. We use a co-pilot called Allison who helps us out with all of this, and I’ve really been enjoying my time in the corporation so far. It’s quite different than a ‘typical’ corp, which honestly works perfectly well for me. Some times I don’t feel like being social, and there’s no pressure for that. Sometimes I’m overly social, and that’s OK too. The corporation is filled with like minded passionate people who want to help others and I love it.

We are of course also free to pursue other activities, our exploration ships need funding after all, but the majority of what we do is exploration. My Signal Cartel character also has a lot of combat training to her, but I haven’t really made use of that for some time. I might get into it more and explore Abyssals. These are Eve’s version of instances / dungeons, with quirks, of course. Any way, more about that (if I attempt it) another time.

Fly your way! o7

Bring on the Twitch Drops

stargrace June 23, 2024 0Comment

I’ve been trying to find some Eve streamers to watch throughout the day, but there’s a lot of ‘bro culture’ for lack of a better word, so it has been a slow process. CCP has offered some pretty nice rewards for watching during the weekends, and I’ve tried to make a point of catching those as often as I can. The EverMarks I could do without, but the ship skins can be traded to other players, and are usually not too bad looking. The mysterious crates have been meh – but it’s nice to get the skinr items, I’m hoping I eventually collect enough that my purchases will be minimal.

I have been working away at the dailies on my main only, I honestly can’t be bothered to do it on alts. None of them do any mining, or scanning, or manufacturing, and that makes the majority of the tasks unobtainable. I don’t think we should be expected to do all the things on each of our characters per account, and I wish CCP planned this better. Still, I AM looking forward to the skill points that I’ll get tomorrow. I’m very close to finishing up my training on drones V, and my main just crossed over into 51,000,000 skill points. My alts are all much lower than that, but that’s OK, what they do, they can do pretty well (minus that new LP farming character who is horrible. I’ll get there). As always, fly your way! o7

Suitcase Challenge Day 47: Sneaking Past Conflict

stargrace June 22, 2024 0Comment

I haven’t had very good luck lately with relic/data sites, and I think that’s because it’s the weekend. From Thursday to Sunday afternoon, EVE gets pretty busy. I’ve come to expect it (let’s not get into the player numbers since Equinox has released and the disappointment people are feeling with that) – any way, I was out exploring down the chain of WH from where I’ve set up my Orca, and happened to walk right in to some conflict going on between a tengu, gnosis, astero, and three or four other ships (maybe alts). In J164104 They were fighting on a high sec entrance and I wanted out, so while they were all preoccupied with each other I slow boated (cloaked) my way around the other side and manually flew my ship out. I checked the zkill and it was pretty populated, a lot of WH that I explore don’t have much displaying. It looks like Pillars of Liberty might be set up there, I saw quite a few deaths from their side since May 27th or so. Before that it looks like they spent some time in J144956. Which has just a huge amount of combat. The Astero in the fight made it out alive, but I saw that some others didn’t fare quite as well – an Epithal being one of the fatalities (it looked like it was empty).

I’m not a huge fan of PVP game play, but I understand and respect that this IS a (mostly) PVP game, so if someone engages with me in a WH I will at least provide them that content. My goal though is to avoid being seen / found / detected at all. I picked a very quiet WH for that exact reason.

I have been watching a really neat video from someone who lived as a ‘nomad’ and recorded his adventures, and he made some great points about picking a system to live in that I didn’t really think about and that’s making me consider changing my home base system. I was concerned about finding a system that had a high sec connection – but if I’m looking for quiet, it might actually be better to find a quiet system with a C1-C3 connection, and a C4/5. The C1-C3 systems have a very high chance of having a high sec connection. High sec connections means busier (usually). Lots of day trippers and lots of hunters. Anyway, it’s something for me to consider.

I’d like to have proximity to gas & ore, with the option of finding a high sec connection “easily” (within 2-3 jumps). My second account has been training up a blockade runner, and I think that would help when it comes to moving stuff around. I plan on continuing my PI adventures at the Wormlife Freeport, honestly that’s a fantastic set up already and I wouldn’t be able to improve on it. Their 4.5% tax is incredibly reasonable, and having others around works to my advantage – I’ve got two alts who have been living in one for almost a month now. The system is too busy for me for ‘regular’ life, but it works well for PI.

Much like real life, I just seem to be getting an itch to move to some place else. In my day to day I’ve moved over 20 times, rarely living in one location for more than 5 years. My family was military, and it was just normal to frequently move. My spouse now is a first responder, and we still move every 4-6 years. I’ve never minded this, and I think it carries over to my experiences in game. Doing ‘the same’ for too long starts to wear on me.

As always, fly your way! o7