That's not how I remember this ending

There's really no good way to start off a new post when it's been five years since the last one.  Life moved on and I didn't spend much time thinking about EVE over those years.  Sometimes an article would pop up in my news feed about something major that happened in the game.  That would spur some nostalgia, but not any interest to log back in.  That's because this WH adventure was a last ditch effort to enjoy EVE similarly to how I had for many years, in dangerous space doing risky things.  But it's always more fun with friends, and when the solo adventure became too much for me to maintain, I packed it in.

Looking back and re-reading everything I wrote, I initially judged this experiment a failure, because one of my goals was to earn enough ISK for a T3 Cruiser, and I didn't.  But as I was reading, I remembered that wasn't my only goal.  These are the goals I had as the experiment progressed:

#1 Find a good wormhole to live in.  Completed
#2 Successfully move in.  Completed
#3 Setup PI to manage fuel needs.  Completed
#4 Mine some ice in a Shattered WH for fuel needs.  Completed
#5 Bring in a Research Array and use it.  Completed
#6 Fund a T3 Cruiser Purchase.  Failed

Beyond that--once I decided to abandon the adventure--the final goal was to pack it all up in the wormhole and leave it where I could resume it later if I wanted.  The blog entries say I did that, my memory says I did that.  But about a year ago when I logged in on a whim, my character data did not agree with my memories.

I have four characters across two accounts.  Three of those were in the wormhole when my accounts went inactive, and Niskin was in his L4 mission hub.  Upon logging in last year I found Niskin was untouched, but the other three characters were now in stations.  Two were in the ships they logged off in, one was not.  This was odd, but not devastating, since the most important ship (The Orca) was accounted for.  Still I wanted to understand what happened, so I read patch notes and searched the forums for any kind of explanation.  That resulted in nothing, so I gave up, uninstalled EVE and moved on again.

Then last week an old friend sent me this article about the Orca pilot that lost hundreds of billions in cap ship BPO's and other things.  That reminded me of my far less risky use of the Orca to move into the wormhole.  Within a day I had re-installed the EVE client and by the second day I had re-subbed my main account.  I wanted to know what had happened with my characters, and see how EVE had changed in the last five years.

All of my original thoughts on what happened were centered around the changes that were made to starbases.  I figured something happened where the changes they were making conflicted with my situation and that I was moved to a station because of it.  But as I got back into the game and learned more, that theory didn't explain why the other two pilots weren't in w-space anymore, and why one wasn't in their ship.  After some further thought I settled on what I believe actually happened, the Alpha and Omega Clone changes.  Two of the ships these characters were in required an Omega grade clone, and both accounts were inactive.  The third character was in an Alpha clone ship fitted with Omega clone mods.  Though it's odd that this was the character who ended up in the station in an Ibis.  I eventually found that the ship (a Drake) was there in the station with her.

I could be wrong, but this explanation is the closest fit to the results I'm seeing.  Still it leaves me in an unfortunate situation, I lost J150533.  Bob took it from me, probably because I made fun of him a lot.  Lesson learned, do not poke fun at the gods.

Having sussed all of this out, the next question was what to do?  I had a month of paid time on the account, and no goals.  Looking through the interface, PI caught my eye.  I was still setup in the wormhole on multiple characters.  Initially I thought, "oh crap, I have to get back there to shut those down."  Mainly because I was struggling to use the interface properly and hadn't seen the option to tear them down.  Then I found it, the button that could free me from these installations and open the slots back up.  On the way to click it I inadvertently moused over the part that estimates the value of what you have in the installation.  I hesitated, then pondered the idea for a bit.  I didn't have to find the wormhole again, but I kind of wanted to.

That's when the rush of thoughts began.  Do I really want to do that?  Is it even really possible in the short term?  Would I be able to keep a character in there this time if I found it again?  Basically I would look at using the wormhole as a resource instead of a home.  Keep an alt in there in an Alpha grade ship and use that to get my main in when I wanted to collect PI or resources or run sites.

I was mostly decided and preparing to try when I discovered that even a Prototype I Cloaking Device is not an Alpha grade mod.  What would happen if I left an alt in the wormhole in an Alpha grade ship with a Omega grade mod on it?  That seemed to be enough to get the Drake moved to a station previously, so I wouldn't expect anything different this time around.  Still I'm curious to see if I can even come close to finding it, and there would be some reward for doing so with my PI spoils waiting for me.  So I think I will at least use some of my time to try.  Probing can be fun when you aren't burned out from it.

Beyond that it's just a big question mark.  Do I want to get sucked back into EVE and do the MMO thing for a while?  Possibly, if I can find some fun options that work with my limited playtime.  I have a month to think about that and get re-acclimated.  I will say that the game looks beautiful these days.  It always did to some degree (the ships at least), but everything is so much more polished now.  The UI is responsive and less fussy.  I like what I'm seeing so far.

One major difference is that I've never had a decent computer to play it on in the past, but now I do.  With a newer processor, lots of ram, and a video card that isn't totally outdated, it's nice to crank up the settings and really enjoy the view.  Anyway, if anybody actually ends up seeing this, thanks for following my story.  Sorry it ended so abruptly.  Fly safe, maybe I'll see you in space. o/

Summertime Slacking

So I had the goal of pulling this w-space adventure off over the Summer, but alas Summer has consumed most of my time, and little has gone on in space.  Niskin is relaxing in his mission hub.  Having run all of one mission, and having let one expire.  He hopes to do better in the Fall, which is only a few weeks away...

It's not so much that I love Summer, in fact I get cranky when the temp gets over 75 degrees F and the sun is out.  But I'm married with children, so I don't always get to determine the plan.  It's not all family stuff though.  I've been out to the gun range a lot, which is a recent development.  I shot rifles and shotguns as a kid, but only a pistol once, 20 years ago.  So upon purchasing my wife a gun and taking her to shoot it, I got a little hooked.  My current job has morphed in such a way that I get to do both IT functions and  help with gun/ammo sales, safety instruction, and various other gun related things.  It's turning out to be pretty cool, but the new hobby is taking up a lot of my personal time, and money.

The kids are gone this weekend and the wife has to work on Sunday, so there could be some missions worked in there somewhere.  It's gonna be a few weeks before I venture out into w-space.  Summer is still in full swing, and I might go kayaking next week!

So that's what I forgot

Skills, two of them to be exact:  Hull Upgrades and Capacitor Management

What that means is that my placeholder alt is sitting in a Cheetah which is full of low slot modules he can't use.  The Inertial Stabilizers aren't a huge deal, but the Micro Auxiliary Power Core (MAPC) is.  Without that I can't turn on the MicroWarp Drive.  So essentially he's flying a CovOps and the only two modules that are active on it are the Covert Ops Cloak and the Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher.  It's enough to get by, but not optimal.

At this point there's not much I can do.  The account has lapsed and is no longer active.  Eventually I may re-up it for a month to deal with that, we'll see how things are going.  But now on to my main goal, the next adventure!

Plans are in motion, a ship has been purchased, along with most of the fittings.  I'm probably going to need some supplemental income to launch this adventure though.  I can buy the rest of what I need, but will be flat broke after that.  My main concern is insurance, I'll need Platinum for this because chances are pretty good that I'll get blown up and will need the payout.

So I'll probably take a day, possibly this Saturday while the wife is out with "the girls," and run some missions, collect datacores and anything else I can do to pad the wallet.  Then I should be prepared to start the adventure in the next few weeks.  I'll be running some test maneuvers in High-Sec first to ensure my plans are viable, but I think I'm going to try this even if they aren't.  The maneuvers involve finding targets, but the alternative is letting the targets find me.  Either way it's going to lead to a fight, but I'd prefer the version where it's on my terms instead of theirs...

RLS: I sit too much

That is actually one of the reasons I pulled the starbase down.  I sit in the car on the way to work, then 8 hours of mostly sitting, then driving home, then sitting at home.  Playing EVE is unfortunately less comfortable than sitting on my couch watching Netflix.  Despite the best efforts of my Aeron Chairs, both at home and at work, the couch still wins when I want to relax.

Really I should be out walking/exercising, and I do once in a while, but not regularly.  Sometimes I just stand, so that I'm not sitting.  Reading things like this really opened my eyes to what I needed to change.  That made it harder to play EVE.

I'm looking into getting a Kneeling Chair to see if that helps.

I'll have a new game-related post up in the next few days, hopefully.

And now off to do something where I'm not sitting...

A fitting exit

A while back my wife realized I was getting billed twice a month for EVE, of course she thought it was a glitch because I didn't tell her about the second account until that point.  So I explained the purpose of it, and that it would only be active for a short time.  That helped light a fire under my butt to get moving.  At that point I had only logged in once to scan for an exit and hadn't had much luck.

So on June 1st at 22:02 EVE time, I logged in and took a shot.  The first thing I noticed was a Mobile Depot on scan, this was the first activity, or space-trash, that I'd seen since I packed everything up.  I bounced around the system in the Prowler but nobody was around.  Then I proceeded to scan, but with poor results.  There were 30+ signatures in system and a ton of them were gas sites.  I gave up after finding a Q003, frigate hole to null, and realizing I couldn't jump the Prowler through to bookmark the other side.

A week later, on June 8th, I logged in at 22:41 EVE time.  This time I was a bit more optimistic.  There were maybe 12 signatures in system, and a good portion of them turned out to be wormholes.  I found my E545 static null connection, a Z006 frigate hole and Z647 medium sized hole, both to w-space.  When the fourth connection showed up as a Wormhole on the probe scanner I wasn't sure whether I'd be exited or disappointed.  It could have been my N062 static C5 connection, but it wasn't.  Landing on grid with a new connection is always fun, watching to see what code is on that wormhole... Hello K162!

I started this adventure by going through a "reaching the end of its natural lifetime" wormhole from high-sec.  I guess Bob decided that was how I would end it also.  I didn't know how long I had on the original entry hole and I didn't know how long I had on this exit hole either.  Thanks Bob, for keeping things interesting.

End-of-life wormholes get my adrenaline going, getting trapped on the wrong side never fits into the plan.  So I jumped and bookmarked the other side, quickly jumping back and logging off to find out how far away the alt was.  The exit led to Antiainen, a high-sec system in Lonetrek.  The alt was logged off in Charmerout in Essence.  With the auto-pilot set to "shortest distance," the route was 16 jumps, mostly through Gallente/Caldari FacWar Low-Sec.  This also meant I had to pass through the dreaded Tama system, specifically the always-messy Nourvakaiken gate.

With the invisible clock counting down, I started warping and jumping as fast as I could.  The route through Low-Sec was mostly quiet until Tama and the Nourv gate which featured an ongoing battle, as usual.  Jumping through as fast as as possible, I continued into High-Sec and on to Antiainen.  After arriving in system and initiating warp to the wormhole, I took a deep breathe.  There was nothing I could do now but wait and watch.  Moments later I landed on grid with the quickly-pulsing wormhole and jumped through.  After checking to make sure I ended up in the right wormhole, I logged and switched to Niskin's account.  Not wasting any time, I jumped the Prowler out.

It was finally done.  Sure I hadn't put the alt in the Cheetah yet, but after cancelling the account I still had nearly a month left active.  So I would come back to that later.  With a quick reversal of the route the alt took to get into the wormhole, I returned home to Charmerout in the Prowler.  Once again passing by the endless battle at the Nourv gate in Tama, happy to have my Covert Ops Cloak doing all the heavy lifting.

Project "I guess I need an alt" is nearly complete.  Now I think it's time to hit the Market and do some shopping.  That is one thing I've missed while hiding out in w-space, shopping sprees!

The Flu

I didn't realize it had been a month since my last post until I went to make this one.  The last two weeks have been terrible and I didn't touch EVE at all during that time.  Luckily my training queues were more full than I realized and no time was wasted.

Just over two weeks ago I started getting sick, mostly coughing, and I figured it was just a cold.  Within a few days it was obvious that something more serious was going on, the symptoms had moved into my head.  I stopped at a clinic thinking it was something antibiotics would solve, but that wasn't it.  I had the flu, and not the 24-hour bugs that some people think are the flu, the actual flu, which is like a really serious cold.  Over the course of the next week I barely ate, tried to take anything I could that would address the symptoms, and missed a few days of work.  By the second week I was down 10 pounds, and showing up for work each day, but I was still miserable.  Finally, by the end of the second week, the last bits of the symptoms were gone.  I felt well enough to start thinking about things other than sleeping and blowing my nose.

That was this past weekend, and I took the opportunity to log into my accounts and check on things.  The alt is proceeding nicely, he's about two weeks from being able to pilot a CovOps and scan with reasonable effectiveness.  Since the ship he's going to fly is in the Ship Maintenance Bay of the Orca, already in the hole, I'll likely get him in there before the two weeks are up.  He can remain logged off until he's ready and I can give him the ship in space, so that shouldn't be a problem.  That also means Niskin can exit the hole sooner.

Niskin is closing in on level 5 for some skills that I plan to use in the upcoming adventure.  He'll also be hitting level 5 on the Minimatar Strategic Cruiser skills shortly after.  I was never actually able to decide which ship would be best for solo roaming, so I decided to pick one to try first.  That ship is not a T3 Cruiser, mostly due to cost.  I won't reveal what it is yet, but I have selected it and will be building it over the next couple weeks.

Once that is done I'll find a wormhole to jump into and begin the adventure.  Where it will go from there, I have no idea.  I'm excited about the prospect of roaming wormholes and not necessarily caring which one I end up in at any given time.  Also, the idea that there won't be any required upkeep is appealing.  Solo-PvP scares me for sure, but my hope is that even an epic-fail could lead to a good story.

Everquest Interlude

If you've looked at the Legos with my kid page you know from the Kunark Cloth Map on the wall that I'm an old Everquest die hard.  Little did I know, back in 1999, that one day I'd play this game with my son.  He's almost 10 years old and we've played Minecraft and many other games together.  Out of all those, EQ is the one that really makes me happy to play with him.  Sometime in the last few years I let him get an account and he mostly just goofed around in newbie areas, not leveling past 12 or so.  Then one day he was old enough and familiar enough to group and do something coordinated.  It didn't take long for his Necro, and my Enchanter, to level to 44 together.  We went to a variety of zones along the way, finally camping out in Trakanon's Teeth on the way to Sebilis and ended up going inactive at that point.

That was sometime last year, but suddenly he started talking about it again recently.  I got us setup again and we logged in to head to Sebilis.  My friend from high school, who I played EQ with back in the day, was going to try to join us with his 47 Beastlord, but schedules did not work out.  So my son and I decided to try Sebilis, just the two of us.

Necro+ Enchanter is already pretty good, but the addition of mercs has simplified filling out a group when trying to do dungeons with big multi-pulls.  We both use Fighter mercs which works pretty well.  If the Beastlord makes it next time, he's got a healer which would make us incredibly tough.

Anyway, my son and I click the red and black glowy ball in the floor and zone into Sebilis.  The first two mobs are red and yellow.  With Mezmerize and Slow they both went down quick and easy.  So did the next two, both red.  We worked our way up to the door at the end of the entrance hall, fighting the last two mobs.  Then it happened, the last mob hit 20% and ran, snare had failed.  It started a 5+ chain of a train.  Somehow not immediately dying as two cloth casters in a sea of red and yellow cons.  I told my son to follow me and I headed for the exit, thinking suddenly to check if the zone was empty.  A quick "/" told me there were 40 people in the zone, I hoped for a Trakanon raid, but as I opened the door to the exit hall I saw three or more people standing there.

As quickly as we arrived we were off again, running back to the entrance hall.  My son informed me that my merc was dead, which was good to know.  My son has Gate memorized at all times but I still needed to memorize it.  So I did that real quick and told him to get out.  We managed to kick some butt, start a huge train, not kill anybody and not die.  You gotta love that.

The next day we went back and got level 45 in that same hallway.  Just as we got past the door, where we got in trouble the day before, my older son came in and I had to talk to him about real life stuff.  Playing an Enchanter properly while discussing the finer points of being a truck owner is not an easy thing to do.  Fighting by the big rock between the entrance and exit halls, we got some wandering adds.  So I made the call to gate out.  My son always argues, he thinks we can fight it out.  Maybe we could, but it's EQ and managing not to die still makes me feel good, even if the penalties are nowhere near as bad as they used to be.

Back in EVE things are still progressing.  Niskin will be remapping for Perception/Wisdom tomorrow, finishing up T3 training and whatever he needs for the upcoming roamer mission.  The alt is still filling out basic skills, but I'll be picking up the last ones he needs tomorrow.  I don't have an ETA on the swap yet, but I should know soon.