Careless as Icarus; Falling into the sea of humility

Recently haven’t been doing so badly in PvP, securing kills alone and with friends without taking much in the way of losses. However, I should not have interpreted this as meaning I am ready to pick fights that usually would not be wise to jump right into.

zKB link: https://zkillboard.com/kill/39187069/

Not a spectacular lossmail in any way, except for how it happened.

Winning EVE and Navigation (with extra heat)

Today I was absent from EVE Online for a full day, something unheard of since my character’s birth mid-January this year. And strangely, the day I am away from it the longest, the most I get from it the game.

Now I know the cool information is hidden, but suffice it to say that these were all sell orders on items purchased through the LP store. The massive one, interestingly enough, was the one I least expected to sell, but the whole thing was bought out by one person. Incredible; the spontaneity of New Eden awes me to this day (not saying much; I’m not yet five months old). I will even go so far as to make one of my logically warped conclusions from this screenshot, and say that surely this must verify that the only way to win EVE is to not play. Your skills train, your orders sell, and you don’t lose ships! -wipes tear from eye at own ingenuity-

However, not playing does not make me better at PvP. Winning EVE can come later when I succumb to the inevitable bittervet syndrome.

Matarilluminati

Browsing ISIS and discovered the Nidhoggur from above looks like the face of a church! The Amarrians have infiltrated our ship production!

TIN FOIL HATS, ON!

Filling an infinite void.

I’ll have to give credit to Viceorvirtue (and by extension Calamitous-Intent) here for more or less throwing me into FW. The ISK question as a newbie is one that cannot be avoided. All pilots should come out of the tutorial and maybe the SoE arc (highly recommend doing this if only because you need to find a friend to finish off the last part) and answer the call of his or her wallet. Usually, this answer aligns with the path the pilot chooses to follow.

When you decide you want to be a PvP pilot, really the options are narrowed down to PvE (and at the high-end of this, incursions), FW, or getting into PvP without joining FW.

My killboard

zKillboard for me as of 26/05/2014.

Big fleets and me.

Been reading a lot about null-sec and end-game fleets lately, specifically:

Marlona Sky’s blog post.

A recent TM.C article on logistics cruisers.

And an older article on the development of sov warfare tactics.

As a newbie FW solo and small gang PvPer, I haven’t  really experienced first-hand the huge fleets of null-sec apart from the occasional ridiculously large gate camp, but here’s how I see what large-scale warfare should be like.

A fleet should be a dynamic version of a single ship; with the fleet commander as the captain. Logistics ships are the local rep modules, DPS ships are the guns, force recon and electronic support are your EWAR modules. Links and leadership skills are you ship bonuses. It’s like a 1v1 of giant scale and minute detail. Ever imagined what a fight would be like if you could choose to target your enemies’ guns and try destroy them before they can be repped? Or a fight where you could shoot at the cockpit where the captain is and try dislodge the leadership and severe the head of your enemy? That’s what a fleet fight should feel like to an FC; his fleet is now his crew members and he’s standing at the helm of a great, big power ranger mega-zoid blob of doom.

The initial weeks.

Before I forget about them, I thought I’d recall and record my first few months or so of EVE Online with a full account (as opposed to the month when I played EVE on an extended trial with a laptop that could barely handle browser games, at the start of 2013. When I finally subbed this year I deleted that character. I realise now that was a ridiculously pointless waste of SP). Already, events, decisions and skills I’ve trained have all blurred into that haze of the past. I’m almost at seven million skill points now, and what happened during the acquisition of the last six million I couldn’t possible recall, unless of course I bothered recording them in a timeline. Since I’m the strange guy that I am, I did, in The Southern Legion’s internal forums. I actually bothered to keep going until mid-April, and then simply got lazy. Anyway, here are some of the interesting (and maybe not so) things I did prior to joining T.R.I.A.D. and Minmatar Faction Warfare.

Cowardice and self-preservation

What is risk aversion? Calling people ‘risk averse’ is quite common in EVE Online, usually associated with people who do not dare to fight, or do fight but on the undock with backup close at hand. But are these people actually what we say they are?

In general, people take larger risks the larger the benefit or reward is to them if the consequences are avoided or mitigated in some way. Risk = Reward, we’ve all heard it before. If someone is unwilling to take risks, this means they’re giving up the potential rewards, and have acknowledged that they’ve lost those potential gains but are still unwilling to take the risk.

So a player who sees a fight coming, sees no potential gains in the fight, and warps off when the danger gets close in the spirit of self-preservation, is not risk averse. They saw NO rewards in staying to fight, and did not acknowledge that anything was lost from the fight. They warp off and keep their ship (as good a motivator as any), and no fight occurs.

Analysis of Prey

Some frustrations I’ve encountered today whilst seeking prey, which I probably will see much more of in the coming months.

First off (name removed):

[ 2014.05.20 09:56:56 ] * > sry, i no have skills for 1v1 yet

This first potential victim was in an Arbitrator, another T1 cruiser (I was in a Vexor). Upon warp-in to the FW medium plex, I landed within 2km of him, and he already had drones out. I thought it was a trap and he had something up his sleeve. He did: those drones were Hornet EC-300s. I managed to strip him of his shields before his drones jammed me, and he warped off, and then dared to tell me he had no skills for 1v1.

Getting serious.

I started a blog just for myself here, just for myself to write stuff and see what kind of crap I could write. Then I realised that I actually enjoyed to some extent spewing everything I’m thinking about on a certain topic onto the screen. So here I am following others to what seems to be a popular free blog hosting site, mainly for a cleaner interface so that when I do start bothering to attract readers, it’s not just the content that makes them want to claw their eyes out. Right now, though, I’m content speaking to my ‘future self’.

Anyway. As I’m sitting in an Amarrian FW system capturing a plex during the dead hours of the AU timezone (all this free LP), it’s time to continue that post on how exactly I was inspired to strive to be one of the great solo PvPers. Essentially these early posts will be my backstory. Something for potential dedicated readers to have a look at, or maybe newbies who in 5 years want to know the humble beginnings of a legend. lol.