22 November 2016

Hit and run

The day before yesterday I logged on and the corp seemed to have snatched a Rorqual and killed him. The fleet was still going so I decided to spent my little time I had online to join in on the fun. The fleet wasn’t made up of a particular doctrine so I decided to undock my Pontifex for the very first time.

A few minutes before I was able to undock my Pontifex I was about to bring in some ships. I moved out my PI and wanted to bring in some Sabres. A corpmember wanted some Sabres as well so I was hauling 4 Sabres with fittings and a load of bubbles in my shitfit Occator (fitted according to http://www.evilswordfish.com/ his epic Occator fit). Everything seemed fine but then I jumped into the first connection. A Sabre and Sentinel  were sitting on the wormhole . Bubbles went up and I decided to burn back to the wormhole. I have to admit that I had the EVE shakes again when I saw my Occator going down in armor right before I jumped the wormhole to highsec.

Meanwhile I had Rakanishu on the wormhole as well in a PvE fit Confessor (all the bad fits for PvP coming together). The Sentinel managed to warp off as Raka was almost able to blap him to pieces (since I didn’t have warp disruptor). Since I was on comms and a fleet was ready to go to null, my corpmates came down the chain and decided to help me. I docked up and repped in Highsec. We decided to use my Occator as bait while the rest of the fleet was waiting in the next system. Bait was placed and bubbles went back up again but as soon as my friends appeared on d-scan, the ‘hunters’ decided to turn tails and run to highsec themselves. The Occator and its cargo got back safely to our home and I had a pretty sweet escort on the way.

The kitchen sink nullsec fleet was pretty amusing for the short while I was able to come. A few jumps out of the null connection our scout found a few Retrievers mining with a Porpoise chugging along. Our scout was in a Sabre so he managed to bubble all of them. About 6 Retriever went down and we got us a nice new Porpoise kill (https://zkillboard.com/kill/57371532/). After we downed that mining fleet, I had to dock back up and call it a night. Twas a short but good roam.

That’s it for now, Rakanishu signing off o7


#end of log 017#


18 November 2016

Settling in

It’s been two weeks since I moved back in with my corp and friends. Things have been pretty quiet so far, mainly because everyone is still settling in the new wormhole. I’m glad to be back with the corp, makes life in EVE so much better.

I have quite a bit in assets now in the wormhole but I still want more. So far I brought in a Stratios, Heretic, Guardian, Confessor, an interceptor, an EWAR frig and Epithals. It’s not a lot but I manage to get stuff done for now. Yesterday, I bought a rolling battleship from a corpmember who’s leaving because he misses our former playstyle (direct NS connection). I’ll probably need to get another rolling BS if I want to roll the static efficiently.

Last blog I also mentioned PI. It’s set up again and going good so far it seems. At first I started out with a lazy man’s setup. I had a few extractor planets for water and electrolytes and a factory planet to create coolant. The other planets (barren and lava) were creating mechanical parts and consumer electronics. One last factory planet made those mechanical parts and consumer electronics into robotics. This setup has net me about 600mil for 2 weeks, which isn’t that bad I think. However, I changed my setup in the hopes of getting a bit more ISK out of it, but it’ll require a bit more hauling.
I’ve changed the barren and lava planets. Now I have 2 barrens creating precious metals, 2 barrens creating reactive metals, 2 lavas creating chiral structures and 2 lavas creating toxic metals. I will also have a factory planet for mechanical parts and a factory planet for consumer electronics now. All of the other planets will remain the same. PI is netting me good ISK but I want to be able to get more ISK in-game. I have a Rattlesnake at my disposal but haven’t been able to use it yet. I need to figure out how I can do PvE efficiently in our new home. If I figure that out, I should be able to earn 1bil a month at least (I hope).

My second account has a few changes coming up as well. Mel finished training for Heavy Assault Missiles and with that, I stopped her training. I’m looking forward to getting a character trained towards a dread. I could do it on Mel, but I’d rather have a dedicated dread character. This project has a long way to go, but we’ll see! And Melanie, the alt on my main account, is 11 days away from decently flying a Nightmare for incursions. Once I saved up enough ISK to buy some injectors, I might just inject some SP to get her ready for any incursions I might be doing in the future.
Tomorrow is the big move in real life as well. Things will get quiet on EVE for a few days until I’m settled, but after that I’m going to start hunting for kills (and ISK) again!


Rakanishu signing off o7



#end of log 016#

1 November 2016

Working for the wrong family

Highsec. I must admit, I didn’t get the thrills I thought I would out of this adventure. So I moved to a certain system and starting doing level 1 missions for one of the Amarrian families. I did this so I could improve my standing and lower my tax rate in Amarr. After a while, and after talking to a few people, I realized I chose the wrong family to work for. Taxes are partially based on Amarr standing and specific corp standing it appears. The Amarr trade hub is in the hands of the Emperor family, while I was working for another family.

This meant I had to completely move my highsec outpost, since I went and lived in a system that had agents for the other family. Fortunately, it was pretty close to my current hideout, but I had to go do missions in lowsec. The lowsec system was pretty quiet so it wasn’t a big problem to run missions. However, I forgot how boring it can be to run missions. I got to level 3’s before I ran out of courage. Meanwhile, I mostly did some Blood Raider sites as well, to gather some apparel (I love them Blood Raiders, even though I blast them to pieces) and boosters for my characters.

So, after talking to E’dyn (evilswordfish) and the CEO of my former corp for a while, I decided to go back to my former corp. This decision was mainly based on the fact that I have more free time again, since most of the preparations for the move have been finished, and the fact that I was bored to death in highsec.

Yesterday, I’ve already moved in some stuff into the wormhole. The corp moved to a higher class wormhole, so that’s a good thing. That said, I burned through 3/4th of my liquid ISK by getting some ships into the wormhole, but ah well! The only thing I’m not looking forward to, is setting up my PI again. If anyone has a good setup which uses factory planets to create P3 products, let me know!
See you guys next time!
Rakanishu signing off o/

#end of log 015#

23 October 2016

Exploring the (un)known

o/
Let me start with an IRL update. A big part of the preparation to move out has been completed. Walls have been painted etc. Slowly moving in stuff and furniture and I’m expecting the bigger furniture parts by the 7th November. So it’ll still be some busy weeks with not much time for EVE but there’s a brighter future on the horizon once the move is completed!

So what’s been happening with Rakanishu and EVE Online. I decided to move out the wormhole corp I was in. It was a hard decision and it required a lot of thinking, but it’s for the best. W-space is a space that requires time, something which I don’t really have at the moment. The only thing I was able to do was a quick peek in nullsec and gather my PI resources (mainly the latter). Therefor, since I was getting a bit bored with just picking up and hauling PI, I decided to leave. I left on good terms and there’s still a possibility of me going back to the corp once everything settles down.

For now, I decided to retreat back into the (un)known: highsec space. The plan is to base myself out in a highsec system, close to lowsec. I’ll be doing missions (I know right) in highsec to get my standing up and earn some LP. But I’ll also use this as a base of operations for wormhole day tripping and exploration. At some point in the future I will bring PvE and PvP ships to my base of operations, get started with scanning down wormholes and daytrip. If I find a wh with sites to run, I’ll go back, fetch my PvE ship and earn some dank ISK. If I find some possible PvP, I will get my PvP ship and try to get some pew pew.

Another way of finding PvP will be roaming the lowsec space bordering my current home system. I’ve already encountered a miner out in an ice belt. However, I was in a PvE confessor, looking for Blood Raider sites so I couldn’t really take him out. I decided to be somewhat of a dick and shot his drones though. He warped off and I’ve sent him 5mil ISK as SRP for his drones. We actually had a chat for about 10 minutes and I got invited into his corp’s public chat.

That’s it for now. This plan is still in development and we’re just getting started. I’ve already got a PvE confessor in for missions. Plan is to get in a Paladin for L4’s (perhaps) and exploration/PvP ships as well.

Meanwhile, I’m having a blast in solo PvP with Mel Miene. Stay tuned for more updates!

Raka signing off o7


#end of log 014#

30 September 2016

Bringing solo back and slingshotting out of death’s embrace

With the previous blog post, I announced that I wanted to do some more solo PvP, well, this week was a good week. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to have a good time with my corp members due to the lack of free time. However, I liked solo PvP’ing with Rakanishu but that forced me to move Rakanishu out of the wormhole. This got me thinking  about other possibilities. I figured that my alt, Mel Miene, who’s also in the corp might be suited for lowsec FW PvP. Mel Miene didn’t really see that much action in the wormhole so far. Every now and then she was used as a scout or primary tackle but these were mostly things Rakanishu was able to do on his own. So I talked to the CEO of my corp and he didn’t mind taking out my alt into FW.

The main reason which caused this idea (of going out there solo) to pop up in my head is Zarvox Toral. I don't know if you guys know him, but he's a streamer on Twitch. He takes out all kinds of ships and blows them up gloriously in solo PvP (unless he gets blobbed). His streams are always informative and it really sparked my interest in taking out ships for solo PvP.

One of the next days, the highsec connection wasn’t that bad so I grabbed a shuttle and went to Amarr with Mel Miene. Since I’m a big fan of Amarr (and Mel Miene is Caldari, so they’re allies…) I decided to enlist her into the 24th Imperial Crusade. I immediately joined the militia chat and started to talk to some fellow Amarr loyalists. After a quick chat, I started fitting up some ships. At first I tried a Corax but eventually I went for a dual web, rocket fitted, scram Kestrel.

Quite a few kills were had, quite a few deaths were had as well. Best part of this? I had a lot of fun and didn’t even care when I lost a ship, I just bought a new one and started warping to the FW system again. Most fights I’ve had were 1v1 so far, which are the fights I’ve been looking for. This one time, I got killed by an insta-lock gatecamp but ah well, that happens. So far, it seems that I am going ISK-positive on my killboard (I must admit, I do care a bit for my killboard), but the most important part is that I’m having fun. Another great thing about this is that, I’m able to log in, do something for 15-20minutes and log back out if needed. If I have more spare time, I just try and hang out with corpmembers.




Today was a fun day as well. I decided to take out a Corax again. Though last time I used a passive tanked Corax, I now took out an active tank Corax.
In the first system I was going through, I noticed a Kestrel sitting in a small complex. I warped to the anomaly, took the gate and noticed the Kestrel sitting 5km away from me. We immediately engaged one another but my active tank was holding quite well and I emerged victorious. After docking up to repair my heat damage, I went to a system next door. I sat in a small complex when a Rifter appeared on d-scan. He warped in but he was to fast (MWD with arty kite fit) to apply my web or scram. He kept orbiting me at range at about 20km. After figuring out his orbiting cycle (it was a long and boring 5 minutes to be honest since he barely applied any damage, though after 5 minutes he finally got my in structure) I tried to slingshot out of his point range. I admit, there were a few failed attempts on slingshotting but I finally managed to land a perfect slingshot. This just happened to be at the point where a Succubus was warping in. Due to the slingshot manoeuvre I was aligned to a celestial. I kept spamming the warp button while I saw the distance between me and the Rifter getting bigger and bigger. Finally I heard “Warp drive active” and left the Rifter behind to get destroyed by the Succubus. About 2 minutes later I saw a gf appearing in local and a kill appearing on my killboard, huza!

Instead of linking every single kill/loss I had now, I’ll just show a screenshot of my killboard for now or you guys can look it up as well over here: https://zkillboard.com/character/94671858/


That's it for now. I will keep you guys posted about my solo FW adventures and WH stuff. I'm hoping to gain more experience in FW so that I'll be able to take out Cruisers on a roam as well.

Rakanishu singing off o7

#end of log 013#


27 September 2016

Status update and solo pew

o/

Last night I was finally able to join a corp roam again. Real life is really eating up my EVE time, though it’s for the greater good. I’m in the process of moving out of the parental house and go live on my own (together with the gf). It’ll take quite a bit of my free time to organize the move and get the preparations done. My irregular work schedule already limits my EVE time and now I’ll have to start painting when I’m free as well. The move is scheduled to happen mid-November and I hope that everything will settle down by December.

That said, I’m planning on improving my PvP skills anyhow. The plan is to get in cheap frigates (for now) to lowsec and try my hand at solo PvP. Group PvP is always easier, especially when you have a good FC who tells you what to do. Since I want to try and FC more myself, I figured I must gather more knowledge about PvP. Therefore, you’ll be seeing me more often in the Amarr-Minmatar warzone. I’d like to ship up to destroyers/cruisers after a while, but I’m going to burn through some frigates first before I get to that.

Before the corp roam last night, I went out to the warzone for the first time. Looked up some fittings and played around for a bit. The first ship I took out was an Imperial Navy Slicer. After a few jumps I noticed someone opened up a new plex and I went ahead and checked it out. An Algos landed on grid and I quickly took the gate so I could get out of scram range before he landed. This was a success, however, due to some bad piloting I got back into scram range and died a quick death afterwards (https://zkillboard.com/kill/56297053/) (after looking at my killboard, it seems that someone managed to kill the Algos and I got on the kill as well: https://zkillboard.com/kill/56297180/).

After asking for some nice fits in the ‘Bringing Solo Back’ in-game channel, I went and bought a Tormentor. This ship proved its worth against two opponents. I was able to kill an Executioner (first solo kill that was not an explorer or a miner, yay!) (https://zkillboard.com/kill/56297296/) and a Rifter (https://zkillboard.com/kill/56297459/) before losing this beautiful ship with two killmarks to an insta-lock gatecamp /sadface (https://zkillboard.com/kill/56298254/).

After dying, I immediately hopped back into another Tormentor and set out to kill stuff again. On this roam I managed to kill a Punisher (https://zkillboard.com/kill/56298652/) and got involved in a three-way fight. I was brawling an Incursus when shortly after a Sentinel warped in. We managed to kill the Incursus but then the Sentinel neuted my cap dry and I died (https://zkillboard.com/kill/56299009/).
After the last loss I decided to join up the corp in our wormhole for a roam through nullsec. We managed to kill some Nyx’ fighters and me and the other interceptor of our fleet managed to get a pretty nice Crow kill (https://zkillboard.com/kill/56301540/)

All in all, I had a very fun night in EVE and I will definitely be repeating this. See you guys in lowsec perhaps? Rakanishu signing off o7


#end of log 012#

17 September 2016

You kill some, you lose some. Today, I lost.

o/

Let me start by telling you guys that I had a bad idea during past night. I got home from a night out with some friends and didn’t want to go sleep yet. Main reason I didn’t go to bed at 1.30 AM my time is that I have night shifts coming up at work. So I tried to stay up as late as possible so  I could sleep long during the day and be ready for the night shift.

I logged in and set up all my PI cycles on my various characters. When I finished doing that, I decided I might do some late night hunting in my Stratios. Some corp members were online as well but not too many at this point. Never really bothered hopping on comms, which I should’ve done but ah well. After jumping through some systems I noticed this space was really quiet, so I decided to go back home after half an hour. One jump before the system our wormhole connection was at, I see a corp member jumping in local. He noticed a Rattlesnake on a gate. We kind off decided to go for it, so I jumped through, tackled it and went in for the kill.

Two mistakes were made here (actually three: logging in at night): Not being on comms and going in blind sighted against a PvP Rattlesnake. His Geckos ate right through my armor and there was nothing I could do but say my final goodbye to my Stratios (https://zkillboard.com/kill/56130108/) . Meanwhile, I hopped on comms and some other corp members arrived on comms as well. We decided to reship and try and get a fight out of him, but the Rattlesnake pilot was just playing games and didn’t want to fight 4-5 of us. One of our corpmembers lost his Gila as well, while trying to tackle the Rattlesnake at a gate and holding it until others arrived, but he got popped rather fast as well.

Anyhow, lessons were taught, lessons have been learned. Rakanishu signing off o7

#end of log 011#