Low Sec Lifestyle

Part of going on vacation is setting up the house. The windows need to be opened and the house aired out. Dust covers need to be taken off of the furniture and then the cabinets and fridge stocked with food and drinks. It's a miniature move in. You unpack all of your bags into the closets and dressers, buy cleaning supplies and laundry detergent and set up a second home. At our vacation station, I was staring at my items hanger in horror. Ender had jumped all of my stuff down for me. My ships were safely tucked into my hangers and various assets dropped in as well. It was a complete mess. I have used containers for so long that I had forgotten how messy a hanger is without them. Station containers, for those who have never used them, are containers that are to large to put into any ship. They are made for station organization. Due to their logs and ability to be locked down they are more for shared corporation hangers. This does not mean that one does not tak

[Early Morning Edit: Fixed Where the story was not linking properly.] My month of writing has come to and end. I'll start undocking my ship a bit more now. When I saw the add for the Pod and Planet Fiction contest I was a bit obsessed with it. I'd wanted to try Eve fan fiction for a bit but I had no idea how it would be received. An official competition took the edge off of the 'fan fiction?' reaction. I had to ask myself why was I doing this? I'm well known not to be competitive by nature. I'm more about the trip to get where I am going. I find that the obsessions over winning and losing mar the actual experience for me. But that is the type of person that I am and it is the type of story that I write. I write about the people. They interest me more then anything else. I suck at mysteries because I don't care about the 'gasp, shock' ending. I want to consume all that is in between and beg for more. My stories started ou

Jita. It's the center of the empire. Everything comes through here at some point but not everything leaves. They call me Bizz. It fits well enough. Its easier to be named then to name yourself. Everyone knows it and remembers it. What business? The ones that makes all the ISK. Minerals, ships, dancers I don't care. Whatever makes me the money is worth the money. Like my looks. I'm ridiculously good looking. Women throw themselves on me. Men to. I have to scrape them off. It's like a dance. Scraping them against the tables as I walk by. Shedding the useless weight while looking for what's worth it. Because that's what I do. I find what's worth it to find and then I sell it again. When I entered this game I was all bright eyed and eager. I was soft. Immortality? Looks? It was worth it. But the real call was the money. I could hear the kredits sing when they rubbed together as a deal came through. I started at the Science and Trade Institute. I've foug

[ Warning: To all of those that get hives and spontaneous bleeding from the eyes when reading about industry and mining avoid this post .] A month or two ago I decided that I was going to build myself an Orca . I was counseled against it. The general theme was that the time and materials would not be worth my time and if I just purchased one I'd save ISK. My response was that none of that would be me making my own Orca and all the pleasure and success and fun with building spaceships that comes along with doing it on my own. The argument back was that I was wasting ISK. If I mined the minerals and sold them to buy the Orca I would be in a better position then if I just built the Orca. It would also take less time. The minerals that I mine and the time that it takes me to mine them are not 'free'. I understand that. I really do. I don't care. It isn't how I play my game. My idle AFK mining in a 4th account window doesn't feel like burned tim

Today I quote Diz some. We were talking about skill training the other night. I'm now almost done with Gallente Cruiser V. I've been waiting to undock my Cynabal until it was learned after long discussions on skills for the ship before undocking the ship. I've had some conversations from people who do not feel that the wait was needed for Gallente Cruiser V. Waiting isn't the easiest thing to do. It often seems counter intuitive in a video game. Yet, when discussing Eve with a new player one must often counsel them to patience. What Diz said was that I was taught to wait to skill fully into a ship. That I embraced that teaching and learned the reward of being maxed skilled into things. It may have made me a bit of a skill snob. I'm not sure. I don't think that every skill must be trained to level five. But sometimes they should be. It was a very true discussion. From that view point of reward in waiting I give my advice and opinion on ships a

I wound up in a mild disagreement upon language use when it came to labeling an action a "gank". The person I was speaking with was sitting on a gate in a thrasher grabbing pods and shuttles for war targets and outlaws. I did not disapprove of the activity. I did say that he was ganking them with amusement. "I'm not ganking them!" "You are in an instalock Thrasher on a gate killing pods and shuttles," I pointed out. "They can't fight back." "But they are flashy red." "That doesn't mean it's not a gank. I think we define what a gank is differently." And it turns out we did. He sees the war targets and outlaws to be non-innocents so except from being ganked. I see anyone in a situation where they are over powered and rendered helpless a ganked target. I told him that I did not think that he was doing anything wrong. He is not a pirate and he operates under a different moral compass then I do.

[Wherein Sugar: Talks about something she doesn’t know anything about Discusses things she vaugly under stands. Asks if WoW can learn from Eve Debates topics from another gamers blog unrelated to Eve Bad posts Overdoses on Koolaid] There is a lot of comparison about games. There is a lot of Ego as well. As an Eve player I have drunken heavily of the CCP drugged Kool-Aid . I know that Eve is amazing and I must be amazing for playing Eve. I have this incredible world view that is achieved only by playing the most amazing game ever. Or, perhaps not. I do happen to love Eve and I make sure to keep my glass of Kool-Aid topped off. But, I am not a gaming expert. I’ve never played WoW . Not because I have a problem with Wow. I don’t. I never played it because I was angry at Blizzard that WoW was a MMO and not a RTS like the original World of Warcraft . That’s all. Nothing deep just me sulking because at the time, when I first started playing games the only things I playe

It was murmured about a few weeks ago but Ender took the time (truly shocking stuff trust me) to write a corp mail that we are going on vacation so contract ships to the haulers. While THC2 is a rather static presence in Molden Heath, occasionally they (and now we) do leave. It seems to be a once a year thing for a few weeks to maybe a month. We'll roll out to one of our secondary bases and bother the natives for a while. I'll miss red space. It is currently home in a way no other place in the game is. Still, a new backdrop and some new experiences will be welcome. I don't know how long we will stay. A few weeks a month or two? As long as we find it interesting and the homesickness stays at bay. I've packed some ships and some frigs. We're gonna play in null more. I packed PoohBear the secondary Sleip, leaving Sleipbear at home. Ammo is a go, Scimi is on the way. Should be interesting times. I cooked a Cynabal as well. Sugar has Gallente Crui

I was looking forward to Blog Banter #41 after my abysmal failure to produce something that was not a ten page rant about how much I hate sports in #40. Then I read the subject matter, put my head on my desk and sighed. The topic is: BB41: Director's Cut The universe of EVE is not without its drama and epic stories, both in and out of game. Imagine a publisher, movie studio or television network asked you to prepare a pitch for a new brand of EVE-flavoured entertainment. This could be your big break, what would be your synopsis to bring New Eden to the wider audience? The problem is that I don’t watch TV. I rarely go t see movies (I think its been two years). I was caught up in those two for several days so I missed the part about a publisher. At some point I decided to revisit the topic and see if I could figure something better out. Then I saw the publisher bit and I was still like... blargh. Words I can work with. I can understand a publisher but even that needs

Today was full of intangibles. Thoughts and successes that hold meaning to me. I had two accomplishments and to some silly things. Often the discussion about what one chooses to do revolves around what is the 'best' way to do something based off of a predefined idea of best. Even in writing this happens. I have the terrible habit of becoming wrapped up in my little imagined scenes. I'll wander by when struggling and ask people random questions. In this, as I sought out others to help me understand what I wanted to write, I accidently spurred conversations and arguments in my wake. When I first composed The Cog's Pieces I had a vague idea that I wanted to flush to the surface. In some ways I was over optimistic about accomplishing this. Not being familiar with null I found the composure much harder and more strenuous then the other stories that I have worked on this past month. And then it feels funny to write about how 'hard' it can be to write.

The Rhea shifted closer to the hangar array. Delicate adjustments to the thrusters maneuvered the massive freighter closer to the tower. Thrusters, enormous on smaller ships, poured out minute amounts of energy. The ship, a behemoth in its own right drifted towards the tower. There was an odd grace to it. Its hull was silver against the deep black of space where it drifted with a refined dignity. Lash eased it down and the Rhea slowed to a stop. Coupling hoses snaked from the tower to connect to the dozens of closed ports along the jump freighter's side. The dock lights pinged green. Relieved he relaxed as the tower’s automated systems begin their transfers. He was a meticulous man, Lash. Even as he waited for the subroutines he had built to do their job one eye made sure that the fuel blocks were taken from the proper bay. With the other eye he read the status checks for the strontium clathrates levels, leery of degradation of the important reinforcement molecule. According to a