Am currently halfway through the book and it’s great ! it’s very nice to read about the background of the various races and their internal struggles as well. One question though: Are the Amarr really as evil as depicted in this book ?
I was planning on posting some kind of review here, but the Mahogany Finish blog has already posted a thorough review at http://www.mahoganyfinish.org/ that i certainly agree with.
Found this little gem on YouTube :).
Does anyone know whether exploration is still worth it ? I am reading some mixed reports on the Forums. I trained up the skills needed for it a while ago, but never got around trying it out.
Ombey has created a wonderful map for those participating in Factional Warfare. It’s a first draft, you can comment on it on his forum !
http://ombeve.freeforums.org/fw-map-pack-first-draft-t67.html
As I wrote earlier I dusted off an old Minmatar Character to participate in the Factional Warfare. So far it’s often been fun, when we’re chasing wartargets and / or getting ready for big fights. But also sometime boring, taking a few complexes in a system and waiting out the timers isn’t really the most exciting thing Eve has to offer. A patch a few days back also decreased the standings gain for each takeover quite abit. Furthermore you get less standings gain the higher your rank is. I am now around 6.9 with the factional warfare corp. The minmatar standing will come in handy though, they have some very nice (regular) Mission Agents, and the offers from their LP store are a lot more interesting than those from the Caldari corporations.
Anyway, I was in a few nice battles the past week or so. Last friday CVA came to aid the Amarr cause. After a lot of cat and mouse, our scouts had found out they brought a BS fleet assisted by Guardians. The names of the guardians were notted down as primaries, and after a pretty long battle we won ! Several of their Battleships and a command ship went down, while we didn’t suffer as much losses.
A few days ago, there was a similar fight, but in that one I was totally lagged out. We warped into thirty or more amarr ships at a gate. They almost all had their drones out, which didn’t help much. My screen simply froze as my Rupture entered the grid, and by the time I was back I was halfway thru my armor. I managed to release my drones somehow, and they got me on two killmails, dissing out over 1000 dmg ;). But a few seconds later I was totally in hull and my ship about to explode. And I was in that state for more than two minutes i think. Then all of a sudden my pod was in a belt (i had frantically been clicking the warp button). So I missed most of the fight, but I think they lost several heavier ships and we lost mainly frigs and cruisers. There sure were a truckload of wrecks at the gate. Earlier that day that same fleet had decimated the minmatar rag tag fleet of rifters and ruptures, so it was a nice revenge. Unfortunately I missed that one.
I haven’t suffered many losses, just a bunch of ruptures and few rifters. especially to pirates I must say. Last night just wasn’t my evening though. I flew back to Rens in my Cyclone (already had that one for quite a while) to refit and get some extra ammo, while a fleet was forming to get rid of some pirates in Dal. Unfortunately no one had mentioned they were sitting on the Amamake gate, and i was pretty stupid for not asking their specific location. So I just jumped through that gate and almost got away, but someone locked me and scrambled, almost when I was warping out. I popped a short time later.
But that wasn’t all. I had already parked a few ships in Dal, so I picked up a rifter and proceeded to Huola. I had seen enough of Dal for the moment so I wanted to join another fleet there. A few jumps away I noticed a Trasher that was battling another soldier of the Minmatar, so I tried to help out, but wasn’t the smartest idea. The guy’s T2 artillery (amarr flying a Minnie ship :(), dealt a lot of dmg to my lone rifter and there I was in a pod again.
I ended the evening by flying back to Rens and setting up two additional Ruptures to be blown up later ;). I noticed the Cyclones are only 20mil now in Rens, so I might be keeping one on standby as well, if we ever need something a bit bigger. I can also fly a Typhoon, but not sure I want to throw that out there at the moment :).
Do you have people in your corp that have an avatar that makes you think you don’t want to meet them in a dark alley ? Or they just creep you out ? I know Rakeriku has at least one ;).
Make a similar blogpost on your blog, or if you haven’t gotten one, link a pic on flickr or a similar service to round em all up ;).
By this time Darieux was an old man, his gaunt body in a bad state due to too much time in zero gravity. Yet his spirit was still strong and he was unwilling to give up now that he’d managed to reach his destination. Satisfying though it was to be in the Ouperia system his situation was still dire as the prospects for any kind of rescue were absolutely none at all. His fate lay entirely in his own hands and the only option was to try to construct the stargate all by himself.
Recently I read some Factional Warfare reports on squirmishes and fleet battles between Gallente and Caldari in a system called Old Man Star. I wondered why this system has such an odd name, and my question was answered by this excellent story on the Eve-O site. If you’re even remotely interested in Eve’s Lore, I’d suggest you read it, it’s a great story :). I am wondering though when it was written. The url has july01-01 in it, though I doubt it’s from 2001.
The overall quality of the stories lately has gone up considerably, and so have the fun newsarticles. I am anxiously waiting the arrival of the Eve Novel that has been shipped by Amazon, if it’s as good as the Eve Chronicles lately, it should be a good read !
BTW another favorite of mine is ‘a boy and his slaver‘, very nice artwork on that one as well. You can find that also on the Eve Chronicles archive.
To the left is my Minmatar freedom fighter that has enlisted in the Factional Warfare. Especially the first few days were a lot of fun. I roamed around in a few smaller gangs and some bigger fleets. The bigger fleets were a new experience for me. There were some good FC’s, and only one mediocre one. The mediocre one was bad, because his orders weren’t clear, his mic didn’t work properly so fleet chat was all ‘Uh what are we warping to ?‘ ‘what system are we in ?‘ etc ;).
In the first few days I lost a few ships, three ruptures and a stabber. Only one was actually lost in a gang battle. Got picked off the gate while catching up with a gang by an Abbaddon, and two ships were lost to pirates.
But the last few days the war has gone a bit stale. We have mainly been capturing a lot of complexes and the Amarr seem to have given up. Which is understable as their morale must have hit rock bottom. Minmatar gangs all over their low sec space, we have more numbers and also seem to be a bit better experienced at pvp. Think a lot of alts signed up for the Minnie fleet. While capturing plexes, make sure to have a magazine or books at hand, or catch up on some blogs, as it takes up to 20mins to capture one and it can be very boring. The standing boosts and the titles are nice, so I hope it’s worth it.
I tried a few missions as well, but they’re not worth it, unless you’re in a gang of a few similar ships. They’re very hard to solo, especially in a pvp fit. The rewards are awful at the moment, they might get a bit better over time, as I assume a lot of them fail, raising the reward. It’s just a shame you don’t get any loyalty points for capturing or defending structures, that would make the loyalty store a lot more interesting. At the moment I can’t see the general population grinding 80k lp for a faction frig, with this mission system in place.
Anyway so far I think FW is a moderate succes. There is a lot more going on in Lowsec than usual. Whether things will stay this way over time, we’ll have to see…
A new version is available on Ombey´s site at http://www.ombeve.co.uk/.
Version 3.5 includes the new Caldari / Gallente region Black Rise !
Usually the Downtime before a patch is pretty boring, but this time you can follow the latest developments in the Factional War at the Eve News page !
CCP have really outdone themselves this time by creating all these cool stories :).
Is a-coming ! The servers will go down in the night and might be up on wednesday, but don’t hold your breath. Already tried some FW on the testserver, and it was fun, but that’s also because of the cost of all modules being 100isk ;). I am thinking of dusting off an old account, I haven’t used since 2006 that holds my Minmatar freedom fighter and enlist him in the Minnie fleet. Otherwise, as both my characters are in an alliance and not willing to leave it, FW is not for me. Which is a shame as it would have been a fun sidegame.
Anyway, I have been busy in game, nothing very spectacular. Mainly ratting and a little mining in Wicked Creek. I build a Raven from recycled loot and some mining, which makes live somewhat easier. Jumped back to empire friday when it was a little hostile in WC and got some business done there. Flying around collecting datacores and selling them off.
I saved a few for my own invention stuff, and managed a 3 out of 3 attempt of an Invulnerability II Shield. If only I would have know (well I could have checked) that this thing needs quite a few expensive parts. Still hope to make a profit on them, they sell for around 2.2mil around Sivala. My stack of Ballistic Controls II is almost sold out now, and I am all out of Hammerheads II and HobGobs II. I even sold too many, when I needed a few I couldn’t find any anymore and had to invent a few BPCs for own use ;).
Met a few suicide camps on my travels around empire for the best deals, as you can see by this screenshot :).
!!! DONT FORGET TO SET A LONG SKILL !!!
