Return

It has been seven years since I posted something to this blog. I imagine most people who read it back then thought it had died like so many other Eve-related blogs are want to. Truth be told, it did die. When I returned from Afghanistan back in 2013 I didn't really have the desire or drive to play Eve again despite missing flying around New Eden when I was out there. 

After a few months of keeping my sub up and skills training but not playing I did return to Eve. Some friends I'd known for a long time in another gaming community invited me to join them in Nullsec and enjoy the "real Eve". So, I left the Tuskers and went to Nullsec, joining Sabotage Incorporated which is/was part of EXE. Overall I enjoyed my time in Null. I didn't really play as much as I could have but whenever I did log on there was always something going on. Part of Nullsec life is the politics, intrigue and huge wars that are fought out there but none of that interested me in the slightest. I was loyal only to my corpmates and mainly did my own thing, much like I did in lowsec when I flew under the banner of the Tuskers.

I think the biggest highlight of my time in EXE was going to NPC Null and harrassing Fraternity for a couple of weeks in cloaky ships, disrupting their PI and blowing up their ratters. It was a basic gameplay loop but it was fun. 

After a while of flying with EXE there was a huge war over sov. To this day I have no idea who the big players were; I vaguely recall The Imperium and the Honey Badger Coalition being two of the big names but I honestly don't know. Like I said, the realpolitik side of living in Null didn't interest me. Anyway, I think my "side" ended up losing as one day a call came out to evacuate everything you owned in Cloud Ring so I packed up all my stuff and dumped it in one of the nearby lowsec systems.

With the war all wrapped up a bunch of my corpmates in QQ either left EXE or decided to take a break from the game. I too felt little desire to keep playing now that most of the dudes I flew with were no longer logging in and slowly drifted away from Eve again. Present Me is thankful that Past Me left my sub running and kept a bunch of skills training. I'm now nearly at 120mil SP and can fly most subcaps at max, or near enough max skills, which is nice.

So that brings us to now. Why am I posting this short history to why I stopped playing Eve? Well, I'm back ingame! A week ago I had a random desire to reinstall the client and see what was going on in New Eden. For some reason CCP thought I had 10 days of Omega Time on my account and so I've been flying around trying to burn the rust off. And I am definitely rusty!  There have been so many changes to Eve since I last played and I'm still getting to grips with some of them. Regardless though the game has got me hooked again and I think I'll be sticking around so I thought I'd reboot the blog for a couple of months and see if anyone bothers to read it. 

This post has gone on for a little longer than I intended so I'll cut it short here but I have a few ideas in the works which I'll go into in future posts. For now, I'm back to doing what I enjoyed most in Eve - being a lowsec pirate. Drop by Hevrice sometime and I'll show you some 200mm diplomacy!

- Cable  

New Eden Withdrawal Symptoms

I've been in Afghan for two months now with another four to push. It's going fairly quickly but there are things in life that I miss; my fiancée, proper showers, decent food, and New Eden.

We have fairly good WiFi out there and in my downtime I've pretty much been scouring the Eve-O forums, Tusker forums and reading the usual blogs and whenever the router throws a fit I load up Pyfa and make all sorts of fits. Eve is the only MMO I play and apart from putting a few hours into the latest single-player RPG the only other game I play religiously is Battlefield 3 (soon to be 4 - roll on October!).

It was great to be able to keep up with fanfest and a lot of the content shown was awesome. I think I'm going to have a shock to the system when I get home in Autumn and find that the game has changed in many ways. Gate-fires look amazing, the new scanning system looks amazing and all of the other tweaks CCP are making look great. They really are focussing on Internet Space Ships which no one can find fault with.

Having spent a lot of time Pyfa-warrioring there are a lot of ships and fits I'm eager to try out when I finally undock in Hevrice again. I'm able to keep my skill queue going at the moment so Cable is going to have 6 months worth of unused skills at his disposal and a lot more ships opened up to him. I'm looking forward to getting back into my tried-and-tested Vengeance fit as it's a joy to fly and I've only ever really lost them to complete derps, like engaging Hawks under sentry guns or by getting blobbed.

My drone skills will have come a long way by the time I return so I plan on buying a few Myrm hulls to take out and do some solo pvp with. The dual-rep fit is well-known for being very hardy in PvP but there is a pretty solid 1100dps gank fit I'm eager to use.

I've also come up with an 105k EHP bait fit for the Gnosis which I hope to put to good use. With HG Slaves you get a whopping 150k EHP and seeing as everyone wants a Gnosis kill I think it could be used to get some good ganks.

I'm also looking at getting into Recons too. The Pilgrim looks like a fragile but very fun ship to fly. I remember warping into a FW plex a few months ago and having one uncloak on me. Fortunately another Tusker was in system and we succeeded in driving it away, though the kill would have been sweeter.

All in all, I'm looking forward to logging back in and getting my yarr on.

You Can Always Bet On Stupid

I've just submitted an anecdote of mine as a True Story for the competition that CCP are currently running. It goes back to August 2011, when I was still a kitten in the galaxy I've come to cherish.

Prior to becoming a Tusker but after my stint in RvB I was sort of at a loss of what to do. I knew I wanted to get into PvP in a big way but was still dipping my toes into the various aspects of Eve Online.

I would retell the tale here, and in fact I might do at some point as the True Stories format isn't really the way that I would go about setting the scene but I'll let you guys have a read about the storm I whipped up in a carebear corp before I settled down in lowsec for good.

You Can Always Bet On Stupid - A True Story by Cable Udan

Fly reckless o7

- Cable

Summer Sun!

"Immortals are never alien to one another."
- Homer, The Odyssey

I've found myself with a fair amount of free time recently and even though I can't actually play Eve I've been following the fanfest and reading the forums a lot in recent days. Doing so has lead to great withdrawal symptoms and I'm itching to get my yarr on. Unfortunately I won't be back in the UK until mid-September now which sucks a lot so I'll be whiling away my time making shit fits in Pyfa and perusing the forums.

I'm very much looking forward to the Odyssey, the summer expansion even though I'll be late to the party. The "new" scanner looks incredible, as do the revamped warp visuals; Eve is just getting more and more beautiful. On a side-note, if you haven't already done so post in this thread about CCP implementing high-res textures. They've allegedly said they'll do it if they garner enough want for it. And I do want!

Navy Battlecruisers seem pretty cool as well. My only bug bear is that the Fleet Issue Hurricane seems just like it's pre-nerf but with some more EHP. That sucks considering the additional price tag it will undoubtedly have. I just feel that the other Navy BCs have significant stat increases than the FI Cane, though that's probably down to my bias towards Winmatar.

The addition I'm looking forward to the most though is the Tags4Sec system. I think this will revitalize what many (and oft-time myself) think is a dying lowsec. No more will I have to trawl through FW plexes hoping that the Incursus inside isn't a stabbed farmer but instead can go back to belt pvp, best pvp! It'll be great to prey on carebears ratting to make moniez selling the tags and other pirates wanting the tags for themselves. I've been -10 or close enough for ages now and even though I don't feel restricted in my playstyle I'm very much looking forward to getting my sec up so I can antagonise carebears in highsec.

Odyssey is shaping up to be an excellent expansion.

As always, fly reckless o7

- Cable

Hiatus

First of all apologies that this post has come late. I had set it up so that it would be auto-posted at the end of March but it looks like it didn't happen. Cursed technology!

Anyway, my posts here have/will stop until sometime in October. I'm currently in Afghanistan playing in the sand and generally asshatting around. Due to this I don't have the time/energy/resources to actually play Eve though I'm still keeping up with the latest news and such (Odyssey looks awesome).

I'll be back home for a couple of weeks of R&R sometime in July so will be around yarring the space lanes so might have time for a few posts during my stint back in the UK but will cease again once I return to theatre.

I'm due back at some stage in October so normal service will resume then.

Fly reckless o7

The Tuskers Deathrace 2013!

Filling the post today is an advert for what is shaping up to be a terrific event! Rixx Javix, a fellow Tusker and all around  nice guy evil pirate has organised and is presenting the 2013 Tuskers Deathrace, which does exactly what it says on the tin.

Starting tomorrow - Saturday 16th at 17:00 Eve time - the Deathrace consists of a no holds barred pursuit across the most lethal low and null security systems that makes Jason Statham look like he's at a junior school sports day. Racers will form up in Dantumi and then be given the first of four locations to race to. The only rule here is kill or be killed (well, sort of!)

There are literally billions of ISK worth of prizes in various categories and it's looking to be a pretty awesome event. I heartily encourage anyone to get involved and race. What's the worst that can happen?

For more detailed info on the Deathrace go to Rixx's blog where you'll find out everything you need to know to get in on the race!

The Little Ship That Could

In between going on roams and popping people I tend to get distracted and either park on a gate in a sebo'd Cane or sit ship spinning. Last night I was watching some TV and decided to go out as bait in the newest mining frigate, the cute little Venture.

Because I abhor mining there were no lasers in sight and I'd fit up as follows:

[Venture, Surprise Buttsex!]
Damage Control II
Medium Shield Extender II
1MN Afterburner II
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
200mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet Phased Plasma S
200mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet Phased Plasma S
5W Infectious Power System Malfunction
Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Small Core Defense Field Extender I
Small Core Defense Field Extender I

Warrior II x2

This little baby can pump out almost 97dps and has a pretty impressive EHP of almost 5k, which isn't bad considering it's a mining frigate. I've seen some people fit blasters but to get them on they sacrifice the neut which is something I decided I wanted to keep.

Anyway, I warped to the top belt in Hevrice after renaming the ship to impersonate a positive sec status neutral in system. And then nothing...

                                                             and nothing...

                                                                                                                   

                                                                                                                              and nothing...

Other Tuskers were getting into frig fights all over Hevrice and just as I was about to warp to station and reship to something combat-worthy Rixx Javix announced on comms that he'd tackled an Ishkur on the sun but his Algos was going down quickly. Other Tuskers responded to the call and I asked if I could bring a Venture onto the killmail. There were laughs and everyone was happy so I warped to Rixx at 0.

Moments before landing though the mighty Tusker announced that he had been asploded and that the Gallente assault ship would probably get away. I was the first to land on grid with the Ishkur and Rixx's pod and immediately overheated my scram as the enemy pilot tried to get away. No such luck for Dischordant though as my hero Venture held point long enough for Kaal Redrum and Rob Mason to arrive and dish out some real damage.

I escaped the fight in 43% structure and there was much hooting about the Venture dealing out 11% of the overall damage.

Gf's were given in local and I then docked up, leaving my Venture bloodied but satisfied.

- Cable