Less Planetary Interaction, More PvE and PvP

I was flying one of these hull-tanked Megathron battleships.

Our Sunday night roam led into a great battle where we teamed up with RDraw and temporarily with CalMil in order to whale on some guys that had just left the Snuff alliance. Kirith wrote about it here - our fleet lost 5B of ships and killed 16.4B. Our job was to land after the main forces had engaged and take out their five repair ships. Props to the brave pilot who got us a warp-in so we could land right where we needed to be.  I got out with a nice chunk of loot too, some of which I'm using for PvE. I could've got more but my cargo was full and I forgot that I could transfer some of the cheaper loot INTO the wreck with the juicy loot in order to make room for said juicy loot. I'd already done one jettison operation and couldn't do another in time. I left with my fleet before the CalMil guys decided that the temporary truce was over.

PI Sales

I have been watching PI prices at Jita and slowly selling the stockpile of 13,000 P4 items I have accumulated over the last couple of months. The prices are mostly drifting slowly downwards, except Sterile Conduits which has climbed. Broadcast Nodes had been holding at 4.4M each but just this morning dropped to 3.6M. I haven't seen any notable spikes in price so I'm going to push the remaining stock out faster and take my profits. I'm also still considering what to do with my PI setup: I'd like to set up a much less labor intensive scheme. I'm still doing well on High-Grade Ascendancy implants so I need to at least keep making Gel-Matrix, Cryoprotectant and Synthetic Synapses.

Besieged

I solo'd my first Besieged Covert Research Facility! After watching this video I modified his fit a bit and tried the first Besieged site I found in Fliet. I wasn't watching my sentry drones and lost one. I went back to station for another, and to strengthen my tank, which had been failing. This took a while and by the time I got back and repositioned myself the site timed out and vanished.  But I tweaked the fit a little more and the next night I ran another Besieged site. Success! Shitty loot (9M isk) but I cleared the site.

UPDATE: THIS DOESN'T WORK!  I'll leave it here in case you want to try tweaking it. Mordu's Legion actually do omni-damage, (the advice in that link is good!) hitting you wherever you are weakest. It worked once for me, maybe because the first wave had only two battleships, but the two subsequent tries both failed. I tried increasing my tank with a second ENAM and a Reactive Armor Hardener, but my reduction in DPS meant I couldn't finish the site in time.

Here's the old incorrect advice and fit - 

Here's my fit - I'm going to try dropping the ENAM and putting a Thermal Hardener (or maybe a second Kinetic), since Mordu's Legion do 70% Kinetic, 30% Thermal. It'd be nice to fit two guns too. I may put a deadspace armor repper in place of the tech II version I'm using.  This fit is cap-stable at around 40%.

[Ishtar, Ishtar - Besieged Covert Research Facility]

Drone Damage Amplifier II

Drone Damage Amplifier II

Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

Damage Control II

Medium Armor Repairer II

Centus C-Type Armor Kinetic Hardener

50MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive

Phased Scoped Target Painter

Cap Recharger II

Omnidirectional Tracking Link II

Small Remote Armor Repairer II

250mm Railgun II

Drone Link Augmentor II

[empty high slot]

Medium Sentry Damage Augmentor I

Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump II

Warden II x5

Salvage Drone I x5

Garde II x5

Ogre II x2

Hammerhead II x2

Hobgoblin II x1

Hornet EC-300 x5

I'm continuing to assemble ships to be ready for various PvE sites like that one. I've sorted out my best probing ship so I can scan cosmic sigs down faster, I want to have ships ready to roll for 3/10, 4/10, 5/10, various wormholes and of course our corp doctrine ships, of which I have plenty already.

Lastly I want to try some solo PvP - I found a couple (Jalep) of good (Solomon - I love this one!) Atron videos that I intend to start with. The Atron's falloff bonus is a really useful tool that doesn't get used effectively by a lot of pilots.

It Begins!

Trade - PI

Well, I'm excited!

I logged in a few nights ago and some had bought ALL the Broadcast Nodes on the market. They usually sell for ~2.5M each, but this deep-pocketed individual bought the lot and  listed them all at 9.75M. I quickly put a few hundred up for 8.7M and started checking the other P4 products. I assumed other sellers would quickly list theirs too, the question was how far down would the price go? (Note to the deep-pocketed guy; it's hard to corner the market - you can't do it with an item that people create by the thousands every day)

As you can see from the sales below several other P4 items had decent price spikes too and I managed to sell a few.  They have all settled down somewhat today, but my aim/hope of getting 3M each for the "big" P4s and 2M for the "little" P4s seems achievable.

A day or two after writing this part of the blog, the prices spiked again. I sold more Wetwares for 4.9M, Sterile Conduits for 1.9M, Broadcast Nodes for 4.9M and 3.8M. Prices continued to fall; at time of writing they're above their pre-spike prices. Power Cores and Integrity Response Drones haven't spiked at all yet, which is interesting. I've sold about 1000 P4s at most and still have about 13,000 to go -- I'm definitely betting that prices will increase after the Citadel launch.  If I'm wrong about that, well, I'm pretty certain prices won't be lower than they were before so I should be able to at least break even.

The market for P4s is an interesting place. You're betting on interacting human psychology, between sellers who make them and buyers who want to build Citadels and other stuff. Will buyers who want to build Citadels jump in now and buy what they need because they think the price will go up later? Or will they think that sellers will flood the market and push the price down, and be content to wait a while? And will sellers put their goods up for sale now to make a quick sale, or wait for eager hordes of Citadel constructors to beat a path to Jita after April 27th?  And, of course, they're thinking about what other people like themselves are doing too: buyers thinking about other buyers, and sellers thinking about other sellers, and trying to get the best deal by outsmarting everyone else involved.

I have listed a few hundred for sale at quite high prices in each of the products I have. If there's another surprise buying spree, I'll make the sale and be happy with those profits.

Turning to Jump Freighters, Nomad and Rheas have had a good price spread recently and I flipped a couple for 400-600M profit each time. However the gaps have all closed and they're not worth trading at the moment. 

My investment in plex isn't working out at the moment; I have about 35 of them, purchased at regular intervals during the long slide down from 1.2B to just under a billion now. I'll just consider it a long-term bet; when they next spike up I'll sell a few, but I'm going to keep buying.

My total value, cash, escrow and goods is sitting around 180B right now.

Trade - Rat Loot

One consequence of the recent module tiericide is that two of my best trades are dead: I used to buy Faint Epsilons and Phased Muons, which are dropped by our local rats, for about 1.3M-1.5M each. I'd use public contracts to move them into decent sized piles, with other stuff, and ship them to Jita where I'd sell them for 3M or higher, during spikes. Imperial Navy Major Insignia I tags were also really good, buying for about 1M in my home region and selling for over 2M at Jita. I'd throw in low-ball buy orders on meta 4 jammers (BZ-5, Enfeebling etc) and between them I'd get some very good profits.

Tiericide made the modules worth very little, and the price of that tag has dropped a lot. I'll keep looking for something else to trade, but there doesn't seem to be much profit in buying pirate loot in region-wide buy orders and shipping it to Jita any more. I tried doing this for the various Disruption Field Generators that our rats now drop, but the price spread is not great and they're 50 expensive-to-ship cubic meters each, versus of the tiny tags. I'll keep checking, though, especially for opportunities in tags.

Combat

We got into a doozy of a fight last week, teaming up with a GalMil/CalMil fleet to take out two Archons, two Vindicators and a Bhaalgorn. My killboard got 7B of green on it! 

I got an escalation to a 5 of 10 difficult Serpentis site, the Hydroponics Corp. It was too far away for me, so I gave the site to a corpmate of mine. Thus began his six (?) hour saga. It cost him a Stratios and a shitload of travel time, leaving and entering the site, which was 140AU from the gate, as he tried different tactics to handle the final room. Eventually he upgraded to a Dominix and succeeded in clearing the final room. The loot fairy was kind and he made enough to cover the cost of his Stratios, but I think he's swearing off PvE for a while!

Other

I'm building some T1 rigs again; I might as well name them here and see if that affects the market :) Small Particle Dispersion Projectors cost 19K to make and sell for 120K. My old favorite, Small Transverse Bulkheads cost about 150k and sell for 220k, which isn't a huge profit, but they sell fast.

I did quite a bit of Project Discovery - enough to get the SoE combat suit for my two main characters. I'm really glad they added this to the game and I hope the results we give them are considered good. The interface is a bit annoying and the tutorial has some problems, but I believe they're working on revising both those things.

I had loaned 5B isk to a corpmate who wanted to set up a PI operation. He'd borrowed money from other friends before and paid it back, so myself and a few others pitched up to help him out again. He made monthly payments, then paid back the principal after just a couple of months. If you can find someone to help out, and you trust them, do it! And if you want to build up trust from people you intend to scam later, smart small and work up to the big con! :)

Lastly, I was very pleased to get an in-game email from someone telling me that they really like this blog and that the ideas I share here are valuable to them. It's always nice to get confirmation that you're helping people get into Eve.

Living Next Door to Brave

We're finding out what it means to have a disgruntled former child star living next door. They visit, break your stuff and attract the attention of seriously well-equipped ne'er-do-wells.

Brave Newbies left nullsec a little while ago and some of them pitched camp in Heydieles. Over the past few days they put some of our POCOs into reinforce. Last night we showed up to repair one and they sent a few Tornados to harass us as we did so. Just as we were about to upship a cyno appeared and a Snuffbox fleet poured out: a lot of Proteuses plus a Phoenix.  We called for help from our friends in Rdraw but the most we could do was take out the small cormorant fleet that Brave had on-field and watch as our POCO went down and a new one was put up in its place. *sigh* I made a lot of money with that ol' POCO, she was a good'n.

We've had things our own way in Fliet for a long, long time. We moved in in December 2013 and haven't been seriously threatened since then. But this new combination of Brave plus Snuffbox is worrying; I guess we'll see what comes next and also if we have any friends with sufficiently big ships to push back.

Edit: Next day, the same thing happened. Another POCO came out of reinforce and we showed up to defend it...and Snuffbox's Proteii poured out of a cyno.

Billy Daniels' tweet sums it up pretty well.

I may be changing my PI setup anyway -- I've found that it's getting really difficult to buy the P3s I need to assemble into P4s.  I had set aside one planet for making P2s into P3s and that is going well enough that I am planning to expand that operation to other worlds. I think I can make more profit by having a P2-P3 operation running steadily, versus the occasional P3-P4 run.

My First Solo Kill!

from flickr user Stephanie Sicore

Fighting For Fliet

We have been defending Fliet from a quite determined push by the Caldari, wherein they got over 50% system control, mostly achieved during the AU/Russia prime time. It took us two to three days to get it back down to stable. During the effort I build ships for the corp, contacted galmil to ask for help (thanks Thanatos Marathon!) and joined in plexing fleets.

It was an odd fight in some ways. The actual Caldari militia pilots largely disappeared by the second day, leaving a pirate corp called Mad Pixel Collective to harass us as we deplexed. Had the Calmil left a couple of frigate pilots in system they could have actual plexed too, making our job a lot harder, but I'm glad they didn't. We tried to make the pirates lose interest by using cheap ships, mostly with warp core stabs in the lows, and running away, and I think that might have worked.

It was close to the end of this battle that I got my first kill, and its a doozy. I killed a Confessor (80M Tech 3 destroyer) in my Algos (13M, T1 beast, no links, implants or drugs)! The killmail shows another pilot on the kill, a corpmate of mine, but that was damage from an earlier fight. This fight was definitely just me and Iga Angel.  I had gone to a small plex and Iga landed right behind me. I assumed he would follow me in so I dropped my 2 Hammerhead II and 3 Hobgoblin II drones, pre-overheated and activated All The Things and as soon as he landed he was hit with my blasters, web, scram and neutralizer. I also had 400M armor, damage control II and a small armor repairer; a pretty standard solo Algos fit.

I started taking a lot of damage fast, as expected. I was orbiting him at 1500m. My friends were reshipping and my hope was to to stay alive long enough for them to arrive. To my surprise, though, once I got through his shields he dropped fast. My friends were surprised when I yelled "I'm winning! He's going down!" as I saw his structure going faster than mine, and he soon exploded. I'm very, very happy with that!

We talked about his fit on comms for a few minutes, concluding he was set up for kiting and just hadn't been able to get away from me in time because my scram shut off his MWD, and he'd perhaps forgotten to switch to defensive mode. I pulled 12.6M in loot from his hull, which is what my ship was worth; a nice symmetry there in this David and Goliath fight.

I really, really, really wish I had the video running for this fight, but it'll have to be a pleasant memory instead.

Trading

I had a huge score when someone, either drunk or with very specific needs, went on a Jump Freighter buying spree. I sold 4 JFs to them for a total of 28B ISK. The sales history for the four types of JFs show 15 of each sold that day, which must have been this guy.  I still have five left to sell, but this is a very nice start to my new investment plan of regularly buying plex instead of jump freighters. There's a principle called dollar cost averaging, investing gradually over time to "smooth out" lumps in the prices. I've started a bit heavily and bought 8 plex, but I plan to buy 3 or 4 a month.

If you have the order slots available it's worth leaving items up for sale at a fairly high price. You never know when a huge sale like this will come along. I've had some other items surprise me in the past.

I've sold most of the datacores that I'd accrued, as each flavor had a price spike that I was able to take advantage of. The latest was Gallentean Starship, which went to 150K for several days. If you're lucky you can shift maybe 5000 during a spike, so if you want to try this, maybe start with a 2-3 thousand. You can often buy them for about 100K at Jita.

Bits and Bobs, This and That

Narcotics Warehouse, India

Refuge --> Narcotics Warehouse

My main activity of late has been testing how quickly I can run Serpentis Refuges so I can find lots of Narcotics Warehouse escalations (difficulty 3 out of 10). I can then run those with corpmates or solo, or give bookmarks to corpmates if I'm unable to play.  I'm now running the Refuges with a Vexor Navy Issue; the five sentries with three Drone Damage Amplifiers make short work of them - about 2 minutes each. The escalations are up to 10 jumps away, so I take my railgun Algos there with 3 warp core stabilizers to give me a reasonable chance of avoiding gate camps. Once there I make a safe, deploy a mobile depot and put my fighting shoes on. I'll put both my fits at the bottom of this post.

Here's why I've chosen this combination of sites: Refuges are plentiful in highsec and often overlooked. They can be run quickly and seem to have about a 1 in 9 chance of escalating. The Narcotics Warehouse site has four rooms and the first can be bypassed by having a Traffic Management key in your cargo. That means anyone who probes me down and wants to chase me will have to clear the first room themselves, or know the site and go get a Traffic key too. That gives you a nice buffer of safety, unlike other sites where interlopers can reach you immediately. I think this will produce a really nice results, having a 10M isk ship producing 30-100M of loot per site.

So last night I ran two of these sites and it was a very interesting experience. I took a blaster-fit Algos Ane (a low sec island in the middle of Essence) and Aeschee. I thought Ane would go easily, but locals seemed to know and hate Aideron, naming our CEO, a present and a past pilot and insulting them. I figured this wasn't going to go well, and it didn't. They probed me down, so I refit my warp core stabs and left. They even tried to catch me on the other side of the out gate. Back in highsec I saw another Refuge so I ran it, got a nice, and quite rare, 70M Shadow Serpentis loot drop!

Here's where I had a brain fart. The route to Aeschee took me through the Genesis region; just before jumping into Villore, a know heavily gate-camped system in Essence, I decided that dropping my 70M of loot in Genesis was inconvenient (because I use public contracts to move loot around) so I'd just take it to Villore and drop it there. And I forgot or didn't care that I was not wearing my Warp Core Stabilizers. This was really quite stupid. I jumped into Villore and got caught by a Garmur and Legion. I'm just glad the 70M loot didn't survive - hah! If I'd had my stabs fitted I'd have slipped away. Next time, fit the stabs and avoid Villore if at all possible.

I was expecting Aeschee to go badly too: it's Shadow Cartel's home system and a Sisters of Eve mission hub; how could an Algos go undetected for 15 minutes or more?  Luckily my Narcotics site and my safe spot were both out of dscan range of everything in system. I ran the site (badly, as it turned out) for about 30 minutes and never saw anyone on dscan, let alone scanner probes. I picked up about 30M from this site.

Why did it take so long? The idea of putting blasters on the Algos didn't work - I had imagined the rats all swarming close my ship, but they stayed a little too far away, even with Null ammo. I had to leave at one point because I couldn't tank the incoming damage. I'll switch back to railguns for the next attempt, keep my distance and pick them off.

Fightin' 

I joined an RDraw fleet that was running Faction Warfare level 4 missions in stealth bombers, we had a slow start but eventually got rolling. Gallente pilots usually have problems running FW missions because the Caldari rats use jammers, but the jams were defeated by having large numbers in fleet. We accepted missions in a limited area of the war zone to minimize travel - five people requesting them, came up with about 20 missions total, yielding about 65k LP at the end, which I've already spent on high-grade spur implants that trade nicely at Jita if you're patient.

I also helped with RDraw attack on a Carpe Noctem Gila fleet, I derped and warped to 0 in my Griffin but got on 2 kills worth 1B isk :) We won the fight and the FC kindly directed dps ships to send 2M to each logi and 1M to each ewar, which was a nice way to do it. Next time, warp at range!

Trade

T1 rigs are making 200-300k per unit profit, up to 300% profit in other cases, and various datacores and PI items all had price spikes...I made a killing. I spent the 800K LP I earned running FW missions a while ago, and those items are all sold too. I'm pretty sure I've reached my 100B net worth target, so whee! for that. I have 8 Jump Freighters again, but 20B cash to go with it this time and the prices are healthier. I'm holding out for higher prices yet :) I also found some skillbooks to trade using eve-central trade finder - it's nice to have a trade where one of the prices is fixed in stone, since you buy them from NPCs.

I found a nice way to help new pilots: I created a buy order for tritanium in a starter system and I'm sending 5M to whomever sells to me. I figure only actual new players will be mining in the perpetual "Asteroid Remnant" anoms in those systems...though so far nobody has written back to me.

Speaking of writing to me, I got an email in-game from a pilot who moved some of my public contracts around. He wondered what the hell I was doing and was it some sort of scam?! I guess not many people use that technique :)

Fits Used

This is a very tight fit, and is the next variation I'll be trying. Downsize it by swapping the MWD for an Afterburner, 125s for 75s or removing the Salvager. Rig to taste.

[Algos, Narc Warehouse]

Drone Damage Amplifier II

Damage Control II

Small Armor Repairer II

Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I

X5 Prototype Engine Enervator

Sensor Booster II, Scan Resolution Script

125mm Railgun II, Spike S

125mm Railgun II, Spike S

125mm Railgun II, Spike S

125mm Railgun II, Spike S

125mm Railgun II, Spike S

Salvager I

Small Nanobot Accelerator I

[empty rig slot]

[empty rig slot]

Hobgoblin II x5

Hobgoblin II x5

Hammerhead II x1

--

This is the Vexor I used before getting a VNI for the job. It's almost as fast and will do fine. See my earlier posts for usage.

[Vexor, Highsec Anom Runner]

Drone Damage Amplifier II

Drone Damage Amplifier II

Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

Damage Control II

Medium Armor Repairer II

Omnidirectional Tracking Link II

Tracking Computer II, Tracking Speed Script

Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron

Sensor Booster II, Targeting Range Script

250mm Prototype Gauss Gun, Antimatter Charge M

250mm Prototype Gauss Gun, Antimatter Charge M

250mm Prototype Gauss Gun, Antimatter Charge M

250mm Prototype Gauss Gun, Antimatter Charge M

Medium Hybrid Collision Accelerator II

Garde II x3

Hammerhead II x2

Hobgoblin II x3

Hobgoblin II x1

Hammerhead II x1

--

Here's m'new baby: 760 dps, leaning heavily away from tank and into gank. The VNI can only fit two guns and is NOT bonused for gun damage, so I went with 3 DDAs and only 1 Mag Stab.

[Vexor Navy Issue, High Anom Runner]

Drone Damage Amplifier II

Drone Damage Amplifier II

Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

Drone Damage Amplifier II

Damage Control II

Medium Armor Repairer II

Omnidirectional Tracking Link II

Tracking Computer II, Tracking Speed Script

Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron

Sensor Booster II, Targeting Range Script

250mm Prototype Gauss Gun, Antimatter Charge M

250mm Prototype Gauss Gun, Antimatter Charge M

[empty high slot]

[empty high slot]

Medium Sentry Damage Augmentor I

Medium Drone Scope Chip I

Garde II x5

Ogre II x2

Hammerhead II x2

Hobgoblin II x1

First Experience with Wormhole Combat Sites

I had a great time with my Aideron Robotics corpmates last night! We run regular "Money Monday" fleets, where we look for PvE content and hope for sweet loot drops. It's a good formula and I'd encourage other corps to try it too.

You scan down all the signatures you can find and make corp bookmarks for the combat sites that are worth running. If you find a wormhole that doesn't have a recent history of activity (i.e ships getting blown up), probe down all the sigs inside it too. We even check where the exits go to in case there's good content there.

We used a Dominix battleships with remote armor reps, an Oneiros for more reps, Exeq Navy Issue and a couple of other ships. It was the first time I'd actually flown my Dominix, so the fit needed a little tweaking between sites. It was actually quite a juggling act to attend to the health of my drones, repping my fleet mates and dealing damage to the Sleepers...I was a bit awful at first and lost five drones pretty quickly. But I only lost another two through the rest of the night and got the hang of pre-locking them all, plus staying still in space so I could pick up my sentry drones as needed.

We only netted about 250M for the night, which wasn't great considering we did about ten sites in the wormholes and two Serpentis Phi Outposts (difficulty 4 of 10). The Outposts both let us down terribly: a meta 4 warp scrambler and an ordinary 200mm railgun! That was a surprise.

It was a nice way to spend a couple of hours, chatting with corpmates, and learning some new ship/drone management skills.

--

On the trading side, my Jita character is having a lot of success! I've sold two of the four Nomads I had, for 6.5 and 6.6B. There's been a nice spike in T1 rig and Planetary Interaction prices, so I've been cashing in on that.

Life Speeds Up

Life Speeds Up...then it goes away

Faction Warfare Missions

I've had a productive couple of weeks lately and I think there's enough material to tell a story or two. I have been out with friends and run Level 4 faction warfare missions, earning about 360K lp in two sessions, totalling about 5 hours. The second set of missions we run seemed to be cursed from the start: my friend undocked his Proteus and the Eve server crashed. When he logged back in he found himself on the station undock, but luckily nobody had attacked him. We set off on our route and suffered two more disconnects. Most of the first missions were mine and we happily blasted through them, noting how quiet the systems were. "I've probably jinxed it now!" said my buddy.

Yes. Yes he had.

When we warped to his mission in Asakai he found a Succubus on the gate, waiting for him. He got scrammed...I landed just behind him and jumped into the mission. I wondered if he could use the acceleration gate too, but it seemed that being scrammed prevented him jumping in with me. I pressed ahead, getting into the field of rats, wondering if I should bounce out and go help my friend.

As in many engagements, the question arises, "whose friends will get here first?"...presumably our attacker had allies coming and we had nobody...but wait! Who just jumped into system?! X Gallentius, a well-known Galmil FC. I quickly convo'd him and asked if he could help. He said yes and we waited...my friend's armor was going down and a Pilgrim had landed to help the Succubus. He was being neuted too, and it was starting to look bleak.  Still no sign of our blue buddies landing.

Into structure and a couple of galmil began to arrive, but it was too late. The Proteus turned to wreckage, but the Succubus and his friend were scrammed and destroyed. The gal-bros were kind enough to send some ISK to my friend to help pay for his next ship.

My luck held and I completed my sixth and final mission on my own and headed back home, where we turned in our missions and collected our reward.

Jita Trading and PI

My Jita alt has added some Planetary Interaction skills so I could take advantage of a low-ish tax rate on a good set of POCOs I found near Jita. I did a little math and found a setup that I think will work. I screwed up my first batch and sold them for one-tenth the cost I was looking for, but I'll make that back shortly. I'm using the Customs Code Expertise to lower that tax rate even further. I'm sticking with the same setup I have in Fliet, buying level 3 PI materials and producing level 4s. I could have tried going from level 2 to level 4 but that's frankly more logistics that I care to deal with. Three-to-four will make me about 80-100K profit per unit produced, which I'm perfectly happy with.

The jump freighters I bought are on the verge of returning to higher prices so I can finally sell them. It was an interesting experiment, but too slow to be worth it. I'm going to return to the quick flip, even if the profits are lower.  Some of the other items I've been stockpiling have just had a nice price spike so I'm trying to offload them now.  I've also written a piece of software that will be capable of watching that information for me, when I get around to writing that part of it.

Undocked

Suit Up! From flickr user Tom

The stars aligned and I spent three glorious hours zipping around Oto, helping pew-pew 51 Templis CALSF ships into dust before losing my Catalyst (3M isk ship with 16M loot in the hold...smrt!). Our fellow Gal Mil corp "Rapid Withdrawl" put together a sizeable fleet of cheap but effective Catalysts and we cut through their even cheaper Cormorant/Kestrel/Merlin fleets, with the odd

We close a few plexes and kept our eyes several pirate Snuffbox capsuleers that harassed both sides. They dropped fighters on us a few times, giving us the chance to kill a couple of these super-drones. They were using the soon-to-be-history "Skynet" technique, which I'd never seen in action before. Unfortunately our fleet booster lost his 400M links ship, a Loki, but in fairness Snuff also kill the CalMil booster ship too, a few minutes later.

I tried repeatedly to get my video software to record but it was in flaky mode and insisted that it couldn't. Dang it.

I'm starting to tire of industry a bit, but I've begun writing a program to help me find the juiciest opportunities. Eve Online has an extensive API that allows programmers to access price data, so I'm doing what hundreds of people have already done: write a glorified spreadsheet that will identify stuff selling cheap/expensive etc. I'm using Delphi XE7, a language for which no shared libraries exist (AFAIK), but it's been easy to write my own after having watched several videos on REST/XML support in Delphi.

Battalyst Fleet Part Two

Hendrik has posted this excellent video of our fearsome Battalyst fleet in action, with the highlight being the last fight, in which they tear apart all comers.

If you want to be in such fleets, apply to Aideron Robotics.

High-Stakes Roaming in Brutix Navy Issues

French vs British at the Battle of the Chesapeake

We've been trying to get enough qualified pilots to field a Brutix Navy Issue fleet and last night we finally got the numbers.  We took out our BNIs, supported by Oneiros and Exeqs for reps, plus scouts and a smidgeon of other support roles. I think it's the most expensive roaming fleet I've ever been in, pound for pound, and there were some jitters at first. But we worked them out and went out looking for a fight.

We ran into a nice Templis CALSF gate camp in Heydieles, this Gila, Hyena and a couple of Caracals. It was very satisfying to take out that Gila at range. After docking up in Fliet we heard that some GalMil allies had found an Orca on a gate in Indregulle. We jumped into our disposable Catalysts and went to help kill it. It turned to be a bait Orca, equipped with a cyno generator! He jumped in a fleet of mainly Proteus ships, but it was too late, and their numbers too low. We killed the 700M ISK Orca, losing our disposable Catalysts -- an acceptable trade :)

We re-shipped into our BNIs, hoping to catch the Proteus's and their support ships. As we undocked, though, there were two ships watching us.  One was an Orthrus, a very juicy cruiser. Our FC had us all overheat guns and lock/fire at the same time, hoping to blap him before he could warp out....it *almost* worked! He was in low structure when he finally managed to warp out.

Our BNIs arrived at Indregulle just in time to see the last Proteus warp away, so we didn't get a fight there. We headed back to Fliet with lots of happy discussion on the night's events, when someone found a Harbinger that had been around our area for a few days making life hard for our smaller ships. We sent in a reasonable force to engage him and point him, then jumped in our hungry BNIs to finish him off.

After that, we DEFINITELY docked up the BNIs, imagining that we'd be hot-dropped if we stayed out any longer.

That was a really fun night of Eve, with one fight flowing into the next, and quick re-ships.

Sadly I didn't get any video because my recording software had an identity crisis.

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In trade news, I managed to nurse my buy/sell orders for most of the day at Jita; I was curious to see if would make a difference in the volume of trade I did. It did so, but unfortunately not in anything very valuable: apparel/tattoos/cybernetic arms continue to be pretty elusive. But I bought and sold a lot of other stuff and got good deals on the PI inputs I need, a lot of equipment I use to build ships for the corp.

How not to fly a brawling Vexor

We got into a rather fun fight in Akidagi last night, with Templis CALSF. I died just as we were breaking their tank and taking control of the fight, so here's a look at the first half. It was really exciting, high pressure stuff! Our logi said several of them finished in low structure.

But I made a lot of mistakes; I pointed out a couple in the video subtitles but I've been shown a couple more by our CEO. So in the interest of educating brawling Vexor pilots, here's what I have to work on.

Our Vexors' main drone flight is 2 Ogre IIs, 2 Hammerhead II and 1 Hobgoblin II. Mine also had a Minmatar jam fitted.  Ideally I should have launched drones on landing (waiting till the warp-in was completed!), and tried to jam a Minmatar target. Scythe would have been best, but the Sleipnir I eventually picked was good too. I'm not quick about recognizing the race of ships above cruiser.

Secondly, I spend a lot of time trying to fly to the primary targets as they are called. This is not how I should be flying. My drones should be sent to the primary, but I should have picked my own target to orbit at 500 and hit them with my guns, scram and web. Ideally, make sure nobody else is doing the same to your target, so you're keeping as many enemy ships pointed as possible.  I've heard our FCs give these instructions dozens of times, but I didn't properly absorb the lesson.

(Update: Or not. Sometimes it is better to fly to the primary, MWD on, and burn through it. When the "spread points" command is given, that's when we start looking for other targets to lock down.)

By not noticing my drones hadn't launched, and spending a long time not firing my guns, I missed out on applying a lot of damage.

Lastly, I should have broadcast for reps when all those yellow boxes appeared. I did notice it happening, but I didn't want to distract our logi squad from the repping they were already doing. They said afterwards, just broadcast and we'll get to you if we can. At the very least they'd have time to have me locked up and ready to send reps when the damage started landing.

And on the killmail-whoring side, I had the Loki targeted for the whole time and didn't actually do anything to him! So I missed out on that 200M+ ISK killmail, not that it matters.

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On the other side of the game I'm continuing to build Catalysts, Comets, Enyos and Atrons for the corp. My pet wish is that CCP add a "rename your ship to match the fitting name" in the fitting window, so each ship automatically gets renamed. I've already sent it up the usual flagpoles and I hope CCP Punkturis sees it sometime soon - it seems like an easy change and a good time saver.

My PI operations have slowed down, but I'm still acquiring the P3 inputs I need when the prices are low, then building the P4 outputs, then selling them when P4 prices are high. I'm sitting on a good cash buffer, so I don't need to chase PI quite so hard any more.

I just completed Gallente Cruiser V, so I'm a short train or two away from the Proteus (FW missions!) and Ishtar (kill all the things!).

Enter the Batalyst

It was a fun and profitable couple of hours in Eve last night. I started by running a couple of plexes in once-more-Caldari-held Heydieles and got a nice chunk of Loyalty Points. I've been spending my LP on high-grade implants. They sell very slowly, but are worth up to 8000 ISK per LP, more than four times what I usually consider a good conversion rate. I'm not in a rush to get the LP converted to cash, so this may be a good way to get the most bang for my buck. Check the fuzzwork lp store for a list of possible targets.
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I've recently been building large amounts of Small Transverse Bulkhead I rigs for use in our cheap hull-tanked ships. Last night I had my first opportunity to actually fly one; a 3M ISK Catalyst that we call the Batalyst (here's one).

You can see a brief video here. We ran into a small frigate gang and we took them apart pretty quickly. I picked up 20M in loot afterwards, on the promise that I spend it bringing more of them in from Jita, which I will do.

We had flown past a 16-ship CALSF cruiser fleet during our travels and they were headed to Fliet, looking for a fight with us. Corp members logged in to bring up our numbers and we took our cruisers out to meet them. The results were...one-sided (see 2:55 to 3:00 AM 2014-09-04). We lost no ships and killed 12 of them. Here's a video from Keewee Maleewi in a neuting ship, a perspective I haven't seen before. I flew logi anchor in this fight and I'm happy to say we kept everyone repped and in-range.

Twenty Kills

Not Exploding

I've had a run of luck lately and last night I racked up my twentieth killmail (August 10-20th) in a row without losing a ship. Perhaps this means I'm excellent at Eve?! No? More likely I err on the side of running away, or fly ships that are too small to be primaried, or I'm name-tanked. Either way, it's a pleasant milestone to hit and I was flying everything from Derptrons to a Vexor Navy Issue.

Somewhere in there I popped a capsule worth 243M.  He was a neutral, unfortunately, so it cost me quite a security status hit - I'm -3.3 now. I locked him during a fleet engagement and didn't notice he was a capsule until I pointed him and got off one cycle of guns (Light Neutron Blasters I). He was still alive when I dropped my point but someone else finished him off. I don't have any reason to go to highsec any more, except to attend to my factory in a small highsec island, but I still don't want to be able to be engaged freely by anyone that sees me, so I need to avoid crossing the -5 line. But neutral pods are soooo tasty!

Update 9/1/2014 -- His killright on me has been made available for 50M ISK.

Bargain Shopping

I took a look through the collection of cheap contracts (under 5M ISK) available at Jita and had a fun time discovering a few bargains.  Check out the "multiple items" contracts, you may find someone clearing out their hangar and pick up, say, a large collection of fully-researched frigate BPCs for 1.5M. A few days later I sold just one of the dozens I bought for 1M by itself, almost paying for the whole transaction.  This isn't any earth-shattering new gameplay, of course, but it scratches an itch of getting something for next to nothing :)

Everythings Coming Up Iskies

From flickr user Jeff Babbitt

The past few days have been pretty action packed for me! There was a grand fight (two capitals were lost, 5 Archons dropped in at one point) in Abune during which I lost my Exequror; I'd burned moved away from the gate and when the order came to crash the gate I was a bit slow in following it. Being the last one on field the guys from Templis and Overload Everything finished me off. BUT that was just the start of the fun! One of our scouts kept eyes on the gate and reported the victors left the field and didn't take the loot...there was loads of great loot just floating around!

I jumped in my travel-fit Imicus and while our mostly Irish gang (God, those guys are fun :) !) were talking about the capital wrecks I grabbed 50M ISK of stuff from the wrecks nearest the gate. I flew back to Fliet and dropped it off. Comms reported visitors from The Irukandji had come to loot too so I jumped into an Atron (our cheap 1.5M Rinzler fit) and headed out to drive them off. We succeeded in doing so and the looting continued: I put 25M ISK of stuff in my Atron and went back to Fliet. I grabbed my Imicus again and put another expanded cargohold in the lows, returned to Abune and grabbed another 30M of loot and drones. I even had a chance to salvage an elite wreck for a bonus 4M ISK of goodies.

That was my first time being in a rich, juicy loot field with good protection and every expectation that we'd clear the field. It felt very satisfying; I hope you get the chance to do it too!

The next night Aideron joined a Galmil fleet which flew out to Nennamalia for a POCO defense; we fought a huge Eagle-based fleet on a gate and , unfortunately, we lost. But I got on 4 Gila kills (1.6B total) with my Vexor Navy Issue, and survived the fight. I think my name being further down the alphabet (so-called "name tanking") has really helped me survive more than my fair share of fights.

And that brings me to last night, when I did a bit of everything and had everything go right. It was quiet on the fleet front, so I did a bit of exploration. I found a relic site in Abune and the first can had 8M ISK of T2 salvage. The rest of the site was not so juicy, but I still got 10M of loot. I had d-scanned Fliet on the way out and saw a lot of T2 drones floating in space so I decided to go and rescue them. I used the new Sisters probe I'd bought to go with the 8 combat scanners I'd looted from the Abune fight and in about 10 minutes I'd picked up 20M ISK worth of drones; most of them were in one cluster, which made it easy. See this video which explains how, if you'd like to try. I really recommend it as an activity for new pilots: you learn d-scan and probing skills and make a good amount of ISK (for a newbie, of course :) )

A friendly fleet entered Fliet while I was taking care of some industrial stuff, so I joined them as they rushed into a FW plex to take on five Punishers and 3 Navitases. We lost three (four?) ships during this encounter, but my name-tank held and I flew through the fight without a scratch. I helped take out all the ships except one. Watching the video I can see a couple of mistakes, though...I didn't have all my weapons running when they could have been. My default orbit was set to 25km instead of 500m...maybe that helped keep me alive?

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Industry: The new UI is nice but is missing a critical piece of information. I'd like to be able to see how many science and manufacturing jobs I can run WITHOUT having to either go to the jobs tab and count the existing jobs OR pick a blueprint and select manufacturing/science-jobs to see the jobs counter display. It's the first thing I consider when deciding what industry stuff to do; what CAN I do right now? All that black space you see when you launch the industry screen is just wasted.

I'm still supplying the corp with ships; the best seller is the aforementioned Rinzler, which I sell in two-packs for 3M ISK. The process of fitting and contracting them has way too many clicks, and I hope CCP revises this soon. The "Copy Contract" function won't work for me; it doesn't recognize that the contract is for a fitted ship, and it will just try and grab a hull and loose modules to assemble. Here's a simple thing they could do (CCP Karkur!) - a bulk ship naming function would be great. Let me select several ships and give them all the same name. Maybe also add a checkbox to the fitting window that, when checked, will rename the ship to the

One More Second

From flickr user Sean T Evans

I still have video/text to post about the last half of my Eve immersion week, but real-life is keeping me too busy for that just now, sorry. But I did have a really cool couple of hours in Eve last night, which seemed to have a different flavor than what I usually get up to.

It was a proper small gang rolling stream of fights; nothing unusual for most people in low-sec, but it was different from what I usually see. I usually log in around 9pm as our regular fleets get set up, and we form a fleet big enough to scare off smaller groups of one or two enemies. This time, though, I logged in at 6pm and there were only 2, 3 or 4 of us at a time, in cheap Tristan/Incursus fits to start off with and no logi. Later someone added a Maulus and Dramiel to the mix as this pesky Garmur pilot kept putting pressure on us to step up our game.

We ran several plexes in Deven, taking four or five fights across a couple of hours. I got some valuable PvP lessons (mostly by losing, of course) and watching the videos back (I record with Overwolf) and seeing where I could improve. In two of the three fights I lost I could see where I made a mistake that cost me my ship.

In one encounter with the pirate Garmur pilot, I was able to to warp out with a smidgeon of structure and armor, just as a war target Cruor joined us in the plex. In my haste to Just Get Out, I warped to a stargate which, of course, did not let me jump through. Unfortunately for me the Cruor had followed and he caught me as I tried to warp away again. I feebly engaged him and got in a few shots before going down. Luckily for me, the Garmur had also followed us, and he killed the Cruor, so I got on the kill mail :)
The other memorable fight was with the same Garmur, who came into our novice plex with 1 minute to go on timer. He fought the 2 or 3 of us, down to just me. With ONE SECOND left on the timer the rat respawns, halting the timer. I quickly decide that if I can just kill the rat I'll get the LP for the plex which more than makes up for the probable loss of my ship, so I send drones and guns after the rat but, under pressure, choose to chase the Garmur instead of closing on the rat. I don’t even notice there’s a few seconds where the Garmur loses his point on me, so I could warp out, so I neither escape nor kill the rat and claim the Tier 4 novice plex LP.

Having video of these events is very useful and I'd urge everyone to install Fraps or Overwolf or whatever works for you and review your fights.
Overall got good fights, 56000 LP (and with Gallente Starship datacores fetching almost 150K a piece, these are worth about 150M ISK!), got on 76M of kills (Cruor), lost 20M ISK of ships and at one point correctly executed a maneuver to web/scram the Garmur as he entered the plex. Had another of my fleetmates been in range too, we’d have double webbed and finished him, but he was able to get out of my web range...since I forgot to overheat my MWD. There's always something, isn't there?

On top of all that I got to have a nice chat with some corpmates I hadn't spoken to yet and do the usual discussion about Eve (making ISK, comparing fits etc) that is always enjoyable and educational.

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Trade/manufacturing is going steadily well. The arrival of Crius doesn't seem to have affected PI prices much...if anything they've gone up slightly, so I'm putting out small buy orders for m'lovely P3 inputs to make m'lovely P4 outputs again. I'm also buying faction ammo (for small charges buy around 300 ISK, sell in the high 500s) and have sold off most of my datacore stores. It's interesting that Gallente datacore prices are so high, considering we're in Tier 4 and the market should be flooded with these things by now. Selling doctrine fits to corpmates through contracts is a good steady business and I'm keeping my T1 rig production lines going flat out. My total assets across two characters is around 18B ISK now, which is starting to get comfortable :)

A Week of Eve: Day One and Two

My family are out of town so I have more time than usual to play Eve. Here's some notes on the first couple of days. Today is Day Three, and so far it's not a good one: my air conditioner is broken (90 degrees outside), I locked myself out of the house after leaving the other car at the dealer to be serviced, and my video editing templates are gone or screwed up.

Day One: Before work I popped over to our local asteroid belts for a spot of ratting. I took my trusty kiting Algos, rigged to apply about 250dps with drones alone, while I sit at 70km away sipping tea.  I found what I was looking for, a Clone Soldier and deployed the drones. To my surprise, I started taking damage! I tried to move further away, and he managed to chase and get closer to me, hitting me all the way! What happened?! I recalled drones and got out with a scrap of armor remaining. I repaired and tried again with the same result!  A little googling revealed that Clone Soldiers got buffed in the last patch: they move faster and hit further out. Small kiting ships can't do the job any more, sadly.

That evening I joined in on small gang roams around Fliet. We found a cruiser gang, and came back later that night and had a big ol' fight in Iwisoda. We lost 3 Exequrors right off the bat, and 1 Vexor but our DPS wore them down and we eventually killed 13 Caracals and Ospreys (here's one kill). The chase to hunt them down took a while and the best part was Marcel's palpable glee when our scouts reported them going into Iwisoda, a dead-end system.

Here's a moment where our three remaining Exeqs saved a Vexor from the edge of destruction; I burned out two reppers because I didn't un-overheat them. I know I suck at logi :) Luckily the fight was swinging our way at that point.

Day Two:  I've read recently that the nullsec powers are bored and have started to come and play in lowsec.  Today I found out it's true.

Overload Everything fleet taking out our POCO

I started the evening with some plexing in Heyd: it's nice to get some LP again since the Gallente militia are in Tier 3.  We then did POCO defense in Fliet and after a few minutes some visitors cyno'd in:12 Abaddons, 2 Loki, Proteus, 2 Archons and an Armageddon Navy Issue from alliance Overload Everything! We warped away and our shield repping Scythes tried to come back and get some last-ditch reps on our poco to slow them down, but we were alpha'd off the field quickly.

Overload Everything quickly destroyed our POCO and set up their own. When their Archons and Abaddons separated we tried to tackle the Archons while we hit the Abaddons with Vexors, but the battleships warped off as soon as we tackled the Archons. We should have, in retrospect, hit the battleships first, or as close to simultaneously with the Archon tackles as we could. We sent out scouts to try and find them, knowing their Abaddons would be slow to move around using gates, but we couldn't find them. Then we noticed there was an Erebus in system!  This meant that not only had they used a Titan to bridge in, they'd used another to bridge out. That's some serious firepower!

After they'd left the system we stayed in our Vexors and started hitting their new POCO. They came back in Ishtars, with Zealot, Scimitar, Lachesis and Huginn for support and took us on. We sent them packing, including this 245M Ishtar and 179M Scimitar piloted by one of the Overload Everything guys.  I think our inclusion of jams on our Vexors always surprises people that haven't fought us before!

Here's video of that fight...we need to have more pilots in small ships to apply tackle and keep their bling on the field so we can kill it. If you're a new player and wonder what's your place in battles like this, watch the video and notice the end, when we're unable to keep the enemy on field: you could have been there to help us! :)

The slightly mood was considerably lightened by this hilarious Firetail which arrived at the end of the fight. 217M ISK of random stuff, including Snowball and Fireworks launchers...we'll take it :)

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We continued our recent run of structure bashing/defense ops in Heyd, attacking a POS and putting into reinforce. On the way back we ran into a Gila fleet on a gate, but most of our fleet had warped off. We lost a Vexor Navy Issue and a Talos, but killed a 511M ISK Gila.

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My security status is dropping and I might just let it slide for a while. I don't have much reason to go to high-sec, except to the island next door for occasional manufacturing, and at only -2.2, I'm not in danger of being blocked from there anytime soon. My PI operations are at a halt, as planned, and I've got plenty of stock for selling Tristans and Algoses to corpmates through contracts: I've sold five so far.

Defending the Head of Kirith Kodachi

A bouncer does his work, from Wikimedia

On Sunday night Aideron Robotics partipated in the "Bring Me The Head of Kirith Kodachi" event, wherein our corpmate Kirith sacrificed a carrier on the altar of content creation. Aideron pilots would act as a defensive force, trying to extend the event as long as possible.  We actually fielded two carriers, which repped each other (I think?) as our 40-strong fleet of Vexor Navy Issues, Mauluses and other assorted ships did our best to take on the attackers.

Video from Aeonicentity

We did too well! The first wave of sniping Cormorants were seen off with Warden sentry drones. The next wave of Caracal cruisers, plus support ships, were taken out with Gardes. Things get a bit blurry here, but I'm pretty sure there was a third wave of something...I fired at a lot of Ruptures. We had some tracking issues and when the opportunity came to dock up we did so, and added some Hammerheads to our drone bays.

Nervous laughter rippled around the fleet as the remnants of the last wave warped out - "Did we hold the field?!" Yes! Our carriers were still healthy and our pilots who had lost their ships had the chance to re-ship. We had been expecting a visit from Pandemic Legion carriers and other heavy ships, so our survival was a surprise!

I think at this point the FCs decided to downship to our regular brawling ships, to give the attackers a better chance. One of the carriers docked up, leaving Kirith alone, with us, to face whoever came next. A Brutix fleet arrived and there ensued a long rumble. I was in an Exeq and got a lot of repping done until I lost my ship. I came back in another Exeq and continued repping; I was actually repping Kirith when he finally went down. And dammit, I forgot to get on that killmail!

(BTW This is all from memory, since my video recording software decided that Eve is unsupported, and I might have to come back later to revise this timeline.)

My thanks to the shield logi that kept me alive several times through this fight! I think that might have all been from the carrier?

My finally tally was 52 kills (see Jun 29th, around 01:00 AM and 1 loss (an Exequror). That includes 12 final blows, a lucky surprise since I was doing comparatively little damage. Our corp suffered 6B in losses, including the carrier, but made 7B in kills! Fliet was reported to have seen 835 kills in the time we fought; dotlan says 1031 in 24 hours, so that's feasible.

Lessons Learned

I learned....wow....lots! Firstly, I couldn't figure out how to switch my drones using the carrier. The Fed Navy Gardes in my drone bay wouldn't leave, no matter where/how I dragged them and if used the carrier's Fleet Hangar or Fitting Service. The need to refit on the fly was a lot more important than I realized. Just before we left our POS to begin the event we heavily refitted our Vexor Navy Issues. Also during the fight the order came several time to switch between Gardes and Wardens, for short/long range work. Our neuts didn't get much use except when we were ordered to neut out a group of Scythes.

I also got into a jumpclone for the first time, just before this fight, in the event that I got podded. I don't know where most of the loot ended up; I think there were some loot-grabbing specialists following the battle; we scooped up what we could.

All in all, that was a really great night of Eve! Thanks Kirith!

Newbie Consensual PvP: A more structured environment is needed

I introduced a friend to Eve Online recently and his experience has been interesting to watch. He joined my lowsec corporation, Aideron Robotics, quite quickly and got frustrated with how outmatched he was when it came to PvP. He wanted to PvP, it's probably the most interesting feature in Eve, but he couldn't use T2 guns, drones or tank, so he lost several ships while barely denting his opponents. He couldn't get on comms to co-ordinate with other corpmates due to his home environment needing to be quiet during his play times.

At first glance this seems like an unusual situation: a newb coming straight to lowsec who *also* can't effectively fleet up with other people. But while talking about his situation we came up with an idea.

High-Sec Battle Arenas

This isn't the first time such an idea has been proposed: we found a post on gamerchick42 and would like to expand on her ideas.

PvP is an important, and arguably the most entertaining, part of Eve Online. But the new player experience focuses entirely on PvE missions, with no incentive or direction offered to new players to try fighting each other. The existing dueling system makes you guess who is, or is not, ready for a round of consensual PvP, and also leaves you to guess whether your skills are a match for theirs.

Simple Version

We propose the creation of Battle Arenas, permanent structures in high-sec systems where pilots seeking consensual PvP can go. They will use a variety of filters to try and keep the fights evenly balanced. To keep it simple, and new player focused, they only allow frigates to enter.

They will be entered through acceleration gates that filter players based on skill levels and total skill points, and only two players can be in an Arena at the same time. When the fight is won, the winner is warped out and the next players can enter. The winner will receive a prize of some kind (nice loot? ISK?) and the loser gets either nothing or a smaller prize.

The quality of the prize could be determined by the difference in skills between pilots. If you managed to take down a better pilot, the prize is better. Also the losing player could be awarded prizes based on how much damage they inflicted on their higher-skilled opponent.

Risk Vs Reward: Working without a Net

A new player may not want to risk their precious ship for a thrill, so we propose a safety net. If you want to have a safety net, you are guaranteed not to lose your ship. The fight will end when the one ship is takes any structural damage. But if you win, and had the safety net on, you get no prize. If you lose, you still have to pay for repairs. If the safety net is OFF, a loss will mean the loss of your ship, but victory will mean a good reward is coming your way.

Grading on a curve

The math involved in working out how close in skills two players must be in order to have a good fight is probably horrendous. It may be to difficult to create enough filters to ensure that ONLY evenly matched pilots face each other in combat. We don't want space to be littered with arenas each with a player waiting a matching pilot that may never arrive.

Instead, maybe let ANY pilots face each other, but when in the Arena their DPS and Tank get buffed/nerfed to make them more evenly matched. Not EXACTLY even, but enough to make the fight be always interesting and always winnable by either party. I don't know what the numbers should be here; say a 25% difference in DPS/Tank? This could also be an option that both players must agree to for it to take effect, and it would also affect the quality of the prize.

Further Enhancements: 

Fleets
An enlarged arena could allow up to, say 8 vs 8 fleet fights, with the fight not beginning until both sides have a balanced number of ships and pilot skills.

Tutor

An Aura-like tutor could teach you the basics of PvP piloting: slingshots, range dictation, looking at your opponents ship to determine weapon type. Perhaps "missions" would be available, where the player would demonstrate their ability to perform these maneuvers against an NPC opponent. If its possible to help a player identify problems with their fit, that would be nice too, and maybe it could even suggest how to fly their ship.

High Score Tables

The game could keep track of relevant statistics: your win/loss ratio, damage inflicted etc and make the results public. Corporations could watch the results to identify promising young pilots and make bids to draft them into their corps. The prize for beating a particular player could be based on their win/loss ratio.

Different Game Modes

1 versus many, winner-stays-in-till-they-are-dead, NPC ships present etc.

Viewer Participation

Matches could be streamed, viewers could bet on matches (with the house taking a percentage, thus creating an ISK sink), viewers can offer their own prizes to the participants.

Automatic Cameras

It would be great if the match was visible from the viewpoint of some well placed virtual cameras, which dynamically changed the point of view in response to events in the arena. This is what would be streamed to viewers, along with ship statistics as the match progresses. Perhaps some trusted viewers could also be commentators?

We all remember the cold hands and heart-pounding action you felt the first time you went into combat with a real person, with real stakes on the line. Shooting red crosses just isn't the same. We think that Eve Online should have a rich and complex way of teaching PvP to new players and encouraging them to try it out, in a way that doesn't frustrate them and clean out their wallets.

Objections

Some players may suggest that Eve should be difficult. They're proud of the learning curve; it filters out the unworthy. But CCP, I believe, see it differently. CCP Rise's "New Player Experience" presentation at Fan Fest 2014 said they are re-thinking the whole new player experience, and I must assume they want new players to join Eve, engage with other players, subscribe and stay.  Getting those players into PvP and into player-run corporations will be a big part of that effort.

* My thanks to Allca Quisper for kicking this idea around with me.

Outnumbered in Oinasiken

I can't think how I forgot to post this here! I worked really hard on this video, learning a lot of new (for me) techniques. This is a great fight we had on March 30th 2014, in which we lost no ships (except an Atron, piloted by a new pilot) and killed eight out of sixteen enemy ships. Our five Vexors (cruisers), two Algos (destroyers) and 3 Exeqs (cruiser repair ship) took on not only a larger fleet, but they also had several battle-cruisers on their side.

If this kind of fighting interests you, please use the links on the right to check out Aideron Robotics, the corp I'm proud to fly with!

Keep On Keeping On

Life in Eve has continued in the same vein, one that I'm very happy with. My main character has over 10M skill points now and can do some serious damage with guns. I'm getting a lot of his main skills up to level 4 now, taking a little advice from the ISIS system and also from our corporate doctrine fits.  My sideline activities of Planetary Interaction and T1 manufacturing of items for our doctrine ships has settled into a good rhythm. I've filled out my P.I roster in Fliet. It's now the three barren worlds making P4 items, a coolant planet that I supply with water (it only has to make its own Electrolytes), and a world making a couple of P2 inputs for another guy in corp.

We took a couple of cruiser fights last night against Eve University. We were on our way to another system when we ran into E-Uni on a gate in Fliet, but that engagement didn't go our way. Their numbers increased, our logi couldn't hold up and the gate guns hit us pretty hard. Also one of the Vexor pilots in our fleet, a non-Aideron pilot, refused to fight them because they were "blue" (excellent standing) to him! He was ejected from the fleet shortly afterwards; if you join a fleet, you're committing yourself to help them. You can't land in a fight and refuse to shoot, especially if it's a tough fight!

We lost about 300M ISK of ships, but re-shipped, added more logi and more focused ECM and re-engaged them in Nag. After some interesting cat'n'mouse by both sides trying to get the fight started to our advantage they fly into us at the sun. And we won! We killed 6 Vexor Navy Issues each worth about 100M ISK. I have some video from the fight which I'll edit and share with you soon.

Lost Drone Retrieval

In my solo time I've been making note of systems which have a lot of lost drones in them, as we fly through them on roams, and returning to those systems in my "Hawkeye" Imicus to find those drones and rescue them. Poor little guys, trying their best to help you and left cold and alone in the dark.  I picked up about 15M worth of T2 drones in a relaxing hour or so. It's an exercise that combines d-scan and probing, so it's good practice.

I fly to a safe spot in the system, launch probes and cloak up. Then I use d-scan to work out roughly where the T2 drones are, within a 60 degree cone, and their distance from me; the tactical display is useful here, to make sure you're searching the sky thoroughly. Then I probe that area starting at an 8 AU diameter. You could bring salvage drones too, in case you find any T2 wrecks (i.e those with "Elite" in the description, which give you Tech 2 salvage, potentially worth millions each)

[Imicus, Hawkeye]
Nanofiber Internal Structure I
Co-Processor I
Co-Processor I

Limited 1MN Afterburner I
Scan Acquisition Array I
Scan Pinpointing Array I
Scan Rangefinding Array I

Prototype Cloaking Device I
[empty high slot]
Expanded Probe Launcher I, Combat Scanner Probe I

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

To Do List

Like many other people I've made an Eve To Do document that I update as ideas and opportunities come to me. For someone like me with limited time to play, it helps to do what I can in advance. For example, for my PI work I needed to know how much of each input to load into the launchpad during a supply run. I did that math when the opportunity arose, then when I was able to actually get into the game, I did the run without any doubt about what to do. Similar work should be done with manufacturing - it's a spreadsheeter's dream - to make sure you're building the right thing. I also keep notes on which of my sales orders are running low so I can schedule more production in advance and move the goods when the opportunity to log in next comes around.

Tales of The Blindingly Obvious, I know, but hopefully this helps someone better plan their activities in Eve.