Checklist

Grizzled veteran runs through the checklist
from Flickr user tamara

Checklist

I seem to have become an Eve Vet :) I think it happened a while ago, but when you start drawing up checklists of what new recruits ought to know, you're definitely a vet! I did this after a couple of incidents when fleet members weren't aware of some basic concepts in fleet mechanics; I remembered that the same thing happened to me! The FC asked me to do X and I said "?" and time was wasted explaining it to me. And it was done so quickly that I didn't understand it anyway. When I learned it later it was actually quite simple and took only a minute to grasp.

I think these apply pretty widely in Eve, so I'd like to share the checklist I came up with. The idea is to keep it simple; these are the most common stumbling points that a new recruit might get wrong during our regular fleets; Bob knows I clunked into most of these and more than once. The most complex thing you learn is "Scouting 101" - how to report plexes/local population/d-scan (using eve-dingo or similar), since it is quite common for noobs to be flying tackle frigates and get asked to scout too.

SETUP

1. Setting up comms (Mumble and Teamspeak). Refer to yourself by name, not “I”. FC’s hate having to delay by asking “who is this?” when reacting to your messages.
2. Overview, especially ensuring that “in fleet”, “an ally in one or more”  and “in militia” are above “is pirate”
3. Basic Config: Set up “Z” as hotkey for “broadcast for armor”, change your ship name if needed, turn off auto-lockback and the 2950 ISK charge for communication.
4. Which of our ships can you already fly? Change skill plan to get on track.

PLEXING

5. Undock and find a plex - distinguish between available/popped plexes - know what ships can go in.
6. Warp to plex at 10, slide in (video). Orbit at distance appropriate to ship. Announce yourself as you start warp so friendlies inside (assuming they are there) know you’re friendly too. Understand that the gate can’t be bypassed. Understand that you need to be within 30km to run the timer and to be awarded loyalty points when the timer reaches zero.
7. Simple D-Scan - how to use it while inside a plex to monitor the gate (just 360 deg, 200K km)
8. Plexing: how to capture one, how to align out and escape if someone comes in. Understand if the defending NPC ship is friendly or not, and that you can't dock in enemy-held systems.
9. Tackling a target - point a ship and maintain orbit around it.

INTEL/SCOUTING/FLEET

10. Find and join fleet without asking “send me an invite?” on comms.
11. Watching Local: how many war targets or neutrals in system?
12. Basic fleet terminology: “warp to” vs “jump to”, gate is red/green, hold cloak, “anchor on me”, “ball up on me”,
13. warp to a fleet member
14. How to find/link your losses/kills in fleet chat. FCs use this to reimburse you (sometimes :) )
15. create a fleet and advertise it in militia chat (maybe too advanced for new players?)
16. using eve-dingo: get a dingo report and post URL in fleet chat.
17. Advanced d-scan: be able to scan a point (5 degrees, up to 14.3 AU away), report what you see (maybe with eve-dingo)
18. Being a scout: combines several of above skills -- going +1, hold cloak if needed, using d-scan (wide and narrow beam), watching local, maybe warping to plexes to hunt for targets, use eve-dingo to report fleet compositions.
19. Drones: Set to passive/aggressive. Use F key to direct them to attack, Shift-R to come back to drone bay. Don’t deploy until told to.

One of the nicest things about being in a corp is being able to try things like this, helping others enjoy the game and avoid some of the frustrations you encountered.

Other Activities

It was pretty quiet last night, no major push was needed, so I moved some goods around. I've got a rig manufacturing plan going in Yvangier and sell the output at three different systems. I'm going to see which ones produce the most sales; the profit is good at all of them. After setting that up I scanned Fliet's cosmic signatures and found a small Serpentis combat site. I announced it on comms and in corp chat and had three people come run it with me. At least one hadn't tried that before so I was glad I could introduce it to him. We got an escalation from it too, so if enough people are interested we'll run that tonight.

Our First Exploration Fleet Night - great fun!

After reading my Grass Is Always Greener post from last week, one of the Aideron directors made the wise decision to ask me to organize a night of alternative activities for anyone that wanted to participate. After some discussion in the forums about what kinds of exploration we could do, I settled on an exploration roam through low-sec. Last night we got into various cruisers (from memory Stratios, Ishtar, Deimos, two Exequrors for logi and several other ships, mostly dealing sentry drone damage) and went a-roaming!

We started with a data site and a 3/10 Rogue Drone Asteroid Infestation. This wasn't a lucrative site but we wanted to start with something small and safe so we could shake the dust off, work out how we'd travel as a group, call targets etc.  A couple of other combat sites were run, including a Serpentis Lookout that led to an escalation in high-sec. We didn't take that, because several of our pilots can't go there. We ran a data and relic site, then one of our two probing ships found The Main Event: Baynex found a Serpentis Logistical Outpost Not only is this equivalent to a 6/10 combat site, it also always escalates, meaning you are given the choice to take another fight with even tougher opponents in another system.

Our ships tore through these sites easily. Our two Exeqs (one piloted by me) easily repped our ships. One thing we hadn't considered was making sure the logi overviews were set up to see friendly drones, who took aggro and got damaged. We solved this by having people broadcast that drone as a target so logi could lock and repair them. Actually, now that I think about it, seeing them on the overview wouldn't help; which drone is taking damage? The broadcast method is better.

We lost no ships during the roam and spirits were high during the fights (thank you Phyridean for FCing!); I think everyone was pleased to be able to use ships they rarely undocked, and best of all, we got to use them together!

Overall we were out for three hours, got about 450M in loot, 7.5M each in bounties and a nice improvement in security status (for those that like such things :) ). It's my job to monetize it and distribute the proceeds among those present, except those who graciously declined to take a share.

While we were gone our corpmates continued to d-plex Fliet, which was down to 11% contested at midnight [Update: At 6AM Tuesday morning, EST, Fliet is now stable! 0% contested. More exploration roams!!) And, in a burst of what must have been good karma, my trader character sold a billion ISK of stuff overnight even though I didn't update her order prices before going to sleep!

Special thanks to Oreb for coming back for this event and staying with us so we could take the second escalation, even though it was ARGH o'clock in the morning in his time zone!

What Could Go Better Next Time?

We didn't find as many cosmic signatures, and thus less combat/data sites, than I thought we would. More scanning in advance would have given us more targets to pick from. We got lucky with finding the Logistical Outpost, but next time I think having three or four known combat sites would be better. This way, everyone can get in fighting ships and quickly run the combat sites in each system.  And its more fun to run a site together than it would be to split up and run them separately.

Alternatively, if you're looking for a smaller scale event, just go out and scan down some sigs yourself one night. If you find something juicy, make a corp bookmark and let your fellow pilots know. Those that are available can come and run it with you. The more there are of you, the faster it will go.

We spent some time working out what we wanted to do or not-do. Wormholes were a particularly sticky topic: when you probe down a wormhole and enter it, you get a lot of war-stories/opinions from those assembled about what kind of ships/fleets can/should go into that class of wormhole. In the end we didn't run any, but I think an exploration night should either focus on wormholes or avoid them altogether.

Despite some talk of salvage before heading out, nobody actually brought a salvager or salvage drones.  We moved quickly, so I don't know if there would have been time for the main fleet to wait for salvaging to occur. We could have had someone designated to salvage all the wrecks -- there were a lot more than I thought there would be and it probably would have added up to a significant amount of ISK. A salvaging Catalyst would have worked well. [Update: actually one of our pilots went out afterwards and looted/salvaged an additonal 19M of stuff, and that didn't include everything.]

Dividing the spoils: we're having everyone give their loot to a single person and have them work out the value and pay out a cash share to everyone who participated. You can use evepraisal.com to give a fair estimate of the value of the items in the contract before accepting it. That person would then organize for the items to be sold to reimburse themselves for making that payout. It's a good idea to have everyone contract their loot to that person, so they don't accidentally lose track of the looted items when they get mixed into their hanger.  When you do a "Trade" in station, the items go directly to the hanger...I'm not sure if you can drag them from the trade window directly to a station container, can you?

First Serpentis Phi Outpost

There was a Big Boy fleet in action last night, doing hub bashes, cynos and other large-scale things that I wasn't needed for, so I did a little exploration in our home system. I found a Serpentis Phi Outpost, a 2-room complex with NPCs in it that is rated difficult 4 out of 10. I was quite sure I couldn't do it myself, but I've seen several videos in which delonewolf runs them either solo or with his brother. I invited corp members to come and do the site with me and Yoyo and Phyridean came along for a new experience.

It went very well with nobody in any danger. I was in a drone Algos and the guys used a Nighthawk and an Ishtar; we cleared the place in about fifteen minutes. I bookmarked one wreck in each of the two rooms, dropped a Mobile Tractor Unit in the 2nd room and went back to station to get in a salvaging Imicus with salvage drone. Picking up all the loot and salvage from both rooms the total value came to about 22M ISK.

As to my own skills I'm just finishing Advanced Weapon Ugrades IV, which will let me fly our corporate Vexor fit, minus the tech 2 heavy drones. I'm then going to give my station trading alt some attention, giving her more orders to work with and lower her fees and taxes.

My First Experience as Fleet Commander

Captain Sheridan of Babylon 5 FC'ing, like I did :)

When I signed in last night our CEO asked me to take our small fleet of four pilots out in cheap Atrons and "just see what happens, get some fights, get blown up." We had free ships to hand out to people so I was encouraged to take fights and get some FC experience.

My first opportunity to get some glory was *just* missed as we undocked alongside a war target Manticore (stealth bomber) and Imicus. Our small ships could have probably taken them on, since Manticores are often fit for Faction Warfare missions running, not PvP combat. But I was too slow in remembering what a Manticore was, so they got away.

The rest of the night, about 3 hours, was very smooth. Luckily for me our targets appeared one at a time and our pilots were very quick to pin down targets of opportunity. They reported their location and we'd all just warp there and kill the ship. The first to go was a neutral Merlin in plex, then an Incursus, Ishkur (plus pod), another Incursus and a Harpy. The last was particularly satisfying for me as we'd encountered this Harpy a couple of times hovering 80-100km off several gates. He was reported as being on short scan outside a medium plex and I had a quick idea to have our pilots warp to a random distance between 20km and 100km short of the medium plex. I figured there was a chance one of our pilots would land close enough to point him...and they did!

I mostly emulated what I'd seen other FCs do on a slow night. Put most of the fleet in one plex and one or two pilots in the other available plexes, and be ready to warp to them and assist. When no plexes were available we went to a neighbouring system and did the same thing there instead. We capped about a dozen of them and lost on average one ship in each encounter.

Thanks to Marcel for pushing me into the FC chair on a nice slow night and to the pilots who made my job very easy with their initiative and understanding.
--
In other news I finally got my Epithal to the Customs Offices and liberated some of my valuable factory production. I got a shipload of Toxic Metals to Yvangier.  I'm also setting up what I hope will be a very profitable production run of an item that sells for far higher than its production cost.

My Friends Are Here

Our assault on Heydieles began again yesterday morning, and I had the honour of starting the fleet. Our main fleet commanders FCs weren't going to arrive for a while so I thought I'd try and get something started before they arrived so they'd have some pilots to work with. Setting up the fleet was easy, though I had trouble find where to set the Message of the Day (MOTD). I advertised the fleet to the Gallente Militia channel in-game and seven pilots joined in about fifteen minutes, and luckily one knew more about actual FC'ing, so I turned the fleet over to him. I stayed with the fleet for a couple of hours.

It started slowly, with us taking plexes without resistance, but the enemy soon came out to play (see Dec 22nd to 23rd). We had up to 25 in fleet and were able to control the system, running the contested status up to 27% (started at 5%) at 10PM EST. I checked again early this morning and Heydieles was at 43%! That is a FINE day's work!

I flew logi (repair ships) most of the time, but deployed a single Hobgoblin II drone, assigned to the Fleet Commander so I could get on the kill mails :) I also enjoyed interacting with the new pilots that joined us: some new to faction warfare and others new to Eve itself. I was them only 4 months ago! One guy had been in a PvP corp that saw very little action and was blown away by how many fights we got into, and won, in just a couple of hours!

Blogger Kirith Kodachi is in our corp and wrote today about limited engagement timers: worth a read if you want to avoid falling prey to station games! I was one of the two logi that got killed in this fight.

But the BEST story comes from an incident that I missed. One of our pilots was killed, then his pod held for ransom. While the attackers pressured him to pay up he played for time and then said:

"My friends are here."

And the Aideron ships burst out of warp, pinned down the bad guys and blew them up! Hence my choice of graphic today :)  (Yes those are the psychotic amoral Reavers from the Firefly movie -- what's your point?)

Socializing

From flickr user lovelornpoets

Most of last night's activities involved plexing in quiet systems, trying to rack up LP before we drop into Tier 1, which everyone assumes will happen soon.  I took my cloaked Imicus out to two systems that were under Caldari control but showed little traffic. I used this ship because I was also hoping to find plentiful cosmic signatures that might yield data or relic sites.

It went pretty smoothly, though there were surprisingly few cosmic signatures to be had and I didn't run any sites. Instead I got about 40K LP from three plexes and had some nice conversations with three of my corpmates.

I tested the Imicus and it's 4 hobgoblins against the NPC that defends a medium plex. I was getting beaten up pretty badly -- I flew too close while trying to use my gun as well. Next time I'll just kite and let the drones do their work.  Kyle came in with an Algos and cleared the NPCs for me.  I also got interrupted by a Bantam that visited us at least six times during our plexing: he'd arrive and just warp out again. I could never be sure if he hadn't refit to carry guns so didn't engage and usually cloaked up till he left. There were also visits from an Incursus and Condor(?) but they didn't stay.

When you're running plexes in a quiet system you have a lot of time to just talk, if you want to, with people. One of my corpmates is in the Air Force, just returned from a year in Afghanistan. I'd hadn't met anyone who had served there so we talked about that for a while, and where he sees his career going. Another corp mate (who made it into a small plex with 4 seconds to go!) had played the Mass Effect games on the XBox with as much intensity as I had and we talked about that too.  It turns out that my guides to exploration (here and here) had given him the impetus to try it and he was doing well at it too! That was very gratifying to hear and I'm going to set up a "best posts" section to make my best advice easy to find.

Trade

I've got a good set of trade skills that I find very useful now: Marketing, Procurement and Day Trading all trained to level 3. It means that I can create AND edit buy and sell orders up to 10 jumps away. That means I can amass cheap goods through region-wide buy orders. How cheap? In my experience it's usually less than the manufacturing price of the item.  Then I can create sell orders AT the stations where those goods are piling up WITHOUT having to fly there myself. If there is a particular system I want to acquire the goods at, I can create a buy order just for that place instead.

I simply pull up the asset list (Alt+T), find the stuff, right-click and sell it at the price I want.  There are some items, admittedly not fast selling, that I buy for 4-6K and sell for 100K. They arrive steadily all day so I consider that an investment for the future; I could sell them where they are for whatever price I can get, or I could make an effort and move them myself to a system where they sell very well.

Ship Used

[Imicus, Data and Relic Sites]
Warp Core Stabilizer I
Nanofiber Internal Structure I
Damage Control I

Data Analyzer I
Relic Analyzer I
Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I
Cargo Scanner I

Prototype Cloaking Device I
Core Probe Launcher I, Core Scanner Probe I
75mm 'Scout' Accelerator Cannon, Iridium Charge S

Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I
Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I
[empty rig slot]

Community Spotlight on Aura & Aideron

Congratulations to our corp CEO Marcel for being recognized in CCP's Community Spotlight! If you haven't used Aura on your Android device, you should give it a try.

Are My T2 Guns Cursed?!

From flickr user Lettuce

I was very happy today because I'd finally finished training the skills that would let me fit T2 guns. I decided to start the night with an experiment, putting a couple of T2 blasters on my Venture and testing how they'd do against the NPCs that defend plexes. I set out to find one, but instead found a slight change of pace - an almost empty system with a novice and a medium plex.

I checked the medium plex and it contained only two wrecks -- no NPC to kill. The timer was at 28 minutes, so I settled in for a long wait; but hey, I can wait that long for 25000 LP.  The system was, as I mentioned, *almost* empty. There was a fellow militia member having a terse chat with a non-militia player flagged as a suspect. The suspect had killed the militia guy and was ribbing him about it. Militia Guy didn't see the funny side. Suspect left the system. Milita guy must've gone off to re-ship.

I said nothing in local and from my perch 28km off the beacon I watched the timer count down. War targets came and went but nobody came to the plex I was in. I kept hitting d-scan anyway, out of habit, and around the 7 minute mark a Merlin showed up on d-scan. I didn't put two and two together (obviously it was Militia Guy) and cloaked up as is my usual practice. Militia Guy appears a few seconds later and settles into a spot 40km away from me. I decide to stay cloaked out of habit and anyway, I'd done the "work" of running the clock from 28 minutes down to this point.

The timer counts down and with 10 seconds to go I decloak. The following conversation ensues, with name changed to protect the lying whiner. Cracka Crack is a war target elsewhere in system.

[ 2013.10.12 01:59:23 ] ***** > wow
[ 2013.10.12 01:59:25 ] Message > Site has been captured.
[ 2013.10.12 01:59:33 ] Vic Vorlon > hi :)
[ 2013.10.12 01:59:34 ] ***** > what a douche
[ 2013.10.12 01:59:38 ] Vic Vorlon > huh?
[ 2013.10.12 01:59:45 ] ***** > I spent the last 20 minutes capping that
[ 2013.10.12 01:59:51 ] ***** > you come for 7 seconds and get 12.5k lp
[ 2013.10.12 01:59:52 ] Vic Vorlon > No, I did
[ 2013.10.12 02:00:02 ] cracka crack > haha i hear qq
[ 2013.10.12 02:00:02 ] Vic Vorlon > I was here from 25 min down to 7, when you arrived
[ 2013.10.12 02:00:17 ] cracka crack > go cry like a bitch to your corp or kill him for it
[ 2013.10.12 02:00:38 ] Vic Vorlon > thx cracka :)

Did you catch that? Militia Guy assumed that I had just warped into the medium with seven seconds to go, and *he* claimed to have been there for twenty minutes! If that's actually what I'd done, then I'd have been blameless, since you can't see the timer from outside the plex; it would just have been a coincidence if I'd arrived at that moment. Also he didn't notice that I was 40km away, i.e 20km off the beacon, so I must have been there already: you can't just appear 20km off the beacon. And it also meant he wasn't watching d-scan since if I *had* flown in he'd have seen me coming and could have blubbed about it some more.

Also I didn't catch him complaining that I didn't come and run the novice with him and split the LP over there, hmm? Dude, we coulda been plex buddies!

I warped out at this point to go do fleet stuff with the corp and my damned net connection dropped. I tried to join the fleet activity but suffered two more dropouts and gave it up. Bad karma, bad luck, cursed guns?

That's the first time I've been yelled at in Eve, and the first time I've had random net dropouts. T2 guns? You be the judge. And I still haven't fired the damned things.

TEST are coming to faction warfare

Approaching Storm by Jason Lacey

When I connected to Eve last night one of our corp directors told us we'd better start collecting as much LP as we can, because Test Alliance are leaving nullsec and joining the Caldari Faction Warfare effort. While the comments in that thread are mostly derisive, writing Test off as a spent force, it's still got 41 corporations and over 4600 members. They'll be based in Tamo, which is 18 jumps from our home base. Still, they'll probably spread out and be active near us, and if our director was worried about it then I am too.

I got in my cloaked Venture and went out to run plexes. I knew I'd have to take out the NPC defender, so I refit it to be as aggressive as I could make with what I had in my hanger. I ended up being able to apply 50 DPS, which it turns out was enough to handle the NPC in both a novice and a small plex. I had found a system with very few people in it and luckily nobody turned up to disturb me, so I got 27500 LP, though it took a while to bring down the NPC defenders.

Replacing/Changing the Cloaky Venture

BUT I realized I don't need to use the Venture for this any more. I had two reasons for using it: firstly I had one lying around and secondly it has +2 warp stability built in. I thought this would help me escape from being pointed. But it turns out that nobody has tried to do this, and the combat drawbacks of the warp-stabbed Venture are too annoying to ignore: it's slow, has short lock range and the capacitor empties quickly. It took one to two minutes to bring down the NPC defenders and I ran out of capacitor a couple of times. I'd have preferred to run a medium plex, but I doubted I could take down an NPC cruiser.

I'd like to have better combat facilities while still being able to cloak. It turns out that watching d-scan and just cloaking is a very effective way to stay and the warp stabilizers were never needed.  So I'll be looking to set up an Incursus for the purpose.   I had some trouble getting an Incursus fit I liked, so I may try just changing the Venture fit instead? I've used afterburner instead of microwarp drive, railguns instead of blasters and added a couple of protection rigs.

[Venture, Cloaked Plexing]
Drone Damage Amplifier I

Medium Shield Extender I
Adaptive Invulnerability Field I
Limited 1MN Afterburner I

150mm Railgun I, Lead Charge S
150mm Railgun I, Lead Charge S
Prototype Cloaking Device I

Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Small Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I
[empty rig slot]


Hobgoblin I x2

That does 43 DPS and fights at a range of 16 km and is cap stable. I might give this a spin.

Scout and Explorer

While running the plexes I listened on comms as one of our most experienced PvPers was taken on his FIRST exploration mission. This is the same player who got surprised by the difficulty of a level 4 mission a few days ago. It struck me that there are people playing this game in a totally different way than I have, going for years in PvP and never running a mission or exploring.  These two players paired up in an interesting way: the explorer would scan down relic/data sites while the PvPer ran plexes. When the sites were identified they would both enter and the PvPer would help catch the scatter cans, then they'd split the loot.  And then both players would re-enter the plexes and cap them, thus splitting the LP. The explorer would also jump ahead of the PvPer into the next system and tell him what targets were available for fighting, and the PvPer was ready to defend the explorer if needed. It was nice to listen to their happiness at discovering how well this worked!

[Update: Since they discussed this in High Drag podcast episode 20 I can reveal it was Kyle (PvP) and Ashterothi that did this.]

Tension...

Before I switched corps to Aideron Robotics, I was flying about looking for lost T2 drones. This is a fun and profitable way to pass the time in Eve: it takes about 5 minutes to pick up 2.5M worth of Tech 2 drones, if there are any around.  For a change of pace I scanned down a cosmic signature and it turned out to be a DED 4/10 "Serpentis Phi Outpost". This is a more difficult kind of room to fight in so I switched to my Algos and entered the room.

The was already a ship ahead of me, clearing pirates like there's no tomorrow.  I managed to kill 3 or 4 rats, salvaged them and followed to the next room. He'd made short work of this room too; I killed a few and the room was done.

He messages me: "do you want these wrecks and loot? You need them more than me." He has checked my pilot history and sees I'm only a 1 month old player. "Sure, thanks!" I say, and wait for the wrecks to turn blue. 30 seconds go by....and he has left the room with the wrecks still yellow (i.e he still "owns" them. I could salvage them, but not take the stuff inside without being flagged as a suspect).

I open up a chat window with him and ask if he could please abandon the wrecks so I can loot them. "How do I do that?" comes the reply.

First alarm bell: I checked his pilot history...5 years....how does a pilot with 5 years experience not know how to abandon wrecks?

I say "You need to right-click on a wreck and choose the 'Abandon all wrecks' command"

He says "OK I'll find a rat, kill him, and do that"....hmmm....that's not right. He can't just kill and abandon any random pirate, he needs to come back and abandon the wrecks in this room.  I wait a bit; maybe there's a way I don't know about. The wrecks here stay yellow and I'm worrying that new players will soon show up and start salvaging.

"I think you need to come back here and abandon these wrecks" I say.  I assume that since this is a cosmic signature, he would have scanned the room down, bookmarked it and could come back easily.

Second alarm bell: He says "Can you fleet me so I can warp to you? I can't jump back in there otherwise".

Hmmm...doesn't that mean he could blast me....yep, as I add him to a fleet the game warns me that fleet members can shoot me without any punishment. (Edit: Nope, I was safe, since he was in a different corporation.) Unfortunately I clicked past this warning too quickly to read it carefully.

So I'm waiting. My heart rate increases...what have I done!? He's taking a long, long time getting here....is he bringing friends along to get on the killmail?

I start flying away from the wrecks, in case that might help put some distance between us.

He arrives.  I turn on my adaptive shield and watch him.

*bing* The wrecks turn blue...my eyes pop open! Wow! Maybe it's for real!

I watch him some more....off you go, scoot, move along, thank you :)  He begins to move but doesn't warp....then he warps - gone!

He messages me "Sorry about being a bit rusty, I'm just coming back to the game after a long break". "No problem, thanks again for the wrecks!" I say. I offer to give him a portion of the loot if there's anything valuable in there, but he declines.

The total take was about 4M ISK in loot and salvage. I flagged him as in excellent standing and went on my way.