Work Sucks (ask Blink 182)

  It's been a tough week for me and if you happen to be attempting to log in right now you can see it may not be the best week at CCP either.  Rixx over at Evoganda has the rundown, I swear it's all true :) http://eveoganda.blogspot.com/2010/06/re-ccp-servers.html

A Change of Pace

  Today the AU-F parted ways with our alliance Fatal Ascension.  The major driving factor for this is a need to "catch our breath" among the corporation at a time when the alliance is stepping up efforts at colonizing and defending their own space.  Of course other factors affected the decision but many of them stem from the differing paces between us.  While I have been a member of Aurelius Federation (well over a year) we have struggled with the summer slump in EvE and the corporation embraces that.  With the break from the alliance we will be able to focus on the more relaxed aspects of life in New Eden and return to 0.0 living with renewed energy when the time comes.

  I am looking forward to this as one of the projects we hope to take on this summer is an extended foray into wormhole living.  It's been a long time since my last visit to a wormhole (where we lived for about a month) and am looking forward to returning.  I have heard that we can expect more visitors these days than in the past which should provide some excitement.  On the other hand there will be no 0.0 politics, proxy wars, or last second CTA's to detract from the fun of logging in when you are in a casual mindset.

  Stay tuned for updates on the WH project (still currently unnamed).

Ships with Spinny Bits

 As Rixx over at Evoganda pointed out Spinny Bits are Awesome.  I finally got my long lusted after Rattlesnake  thanks to a corp mate who was generous enough to let his go at a nice price after himself getting a Machariel.  This ship is impressive.  Even with my Caldari BS at only II until tomorrow this ship can put up a target specific tank well over 1,000 dps while those nasty little drones go out and do my killing.  My previous mission ship was a shield tank Dominix which was almost overkill on L4's already, so the Rattlesnake seems laughably over tanked in some missions.  It does draw more attention than my Dominix though as I was visited by a poor excuse for a ninja salvager last night, Lt Arsch.  After failing to beat my salvage Orca to the punch on a series of wrecks he took to bumping me around for a while, until I warped off after pulling full stage aggro and leaving him to it.  I guess he got bored of waiting for me to kill wrecks so he flew out and salvaged the furtherest one and left the system.

Some eye candy:

Going Through My Pictures

I'm not actually one to take a lot of screen caps but I found a few that I thought I'd share while cleaning off some old files from the PC:

Apparently I was once red to myself

The brief time my SB pilot was 14-0

For the record he is now 32-2 http://auf.griefwatch.net/?p=pilot&pilot=Meatay%20Speeday

The goonfleet meets bob moment

Leaving Providence:

Taking a carrier to a new home

A sad goodbye to a long serving POS 

Please don't think too much of my fit in that last picture, I was trying to get all of my useless parts out in one trip so I fitted many of them.

Melting Towers

  Yesterday we got a short notice alert about a tower smashing gang some of our new allies were putting together; more on the new (old) allies and where our alliance has decided to re-locate to later.  We are currently in the middle of a pretty major move so I really didn't feel like suiting up a battleship for the journey and subsequent bash.  So I loaded up my Nemesis and as many torpedoes as I could cram in my hold and I set off.  It turns out that is is quite fun pummeling an incapacitated POS in a stealth bomber.  Those little torpedo launchers can lay down some serious damage on an immobile target!  We ended up taking out two towers in short order before RL cut in and I just had to go to bed or risk missing work the next day (I guess I'm an old man).


  We also managed to steal a Manticore floating in the bubble and obliterate a random bomber who thought he could get some targets of opportunity.  Luckily he died a fiery death and none of our guys got hit.  Killmail: http://auf.griefwatch.net/?p=details&kill=2488

AT-8; Better than Sunday morning TV

  I am glad CCP decided to broadcast the early rounds of AT-8 for everyone to enjoy, it was a nice treat.  I also enjoyed watching the Jita-cam and I really wish someone could do this every weekend, or every so often.

  It was definitely interesting to see the unique setups that some teams brought (Death From Above for one).  The battle Badger delivering cap charges and ammo was fun, and not a bad idea since even in destruction some ammo could be still pulled from the wreck.

Death From Above ship selection (click to embiggen)

  With (what looks to be) 83 ship types fielded there was a nice selection of hardware on display.  It was especially nice to see the large number of faction battleships in action.  I was also interested (and amused) to see the effectiveness of bombers, at least in certain situations.  Of course the Drake was the most heavily fielded which is expected I suppose.  They seemed to fair pretty well; although (despite the skew caused by 34 being flown) their 41.2% survival rate shows they weren't necessarily dominate.  In fact in most of the matches I saw they had little affect except to take a long time to kill.  Their firepower and ability to run cap free did prove handy in some instances but it seemed in general they were often defeated by teams with higher outgoing damage, or other abilities.  Don't get me wrong, as a pilot I am a little bit of a Drake fan for it's versatility.  However I do get tired of being able to guess that at least one Drake will be in almost every fleet.

  I can't help but expect variations from most teams next round, although they will all likely save the big changes for the end.  I would definitely be hesitant to keep my previous setup going into another round, simply for fear of being perfectly countered.  I'm sure some teams have plenty of confidence or other reasons to stick with their current ships (HYDRA's sandbagging for example) but here's hoping we get to see more!

Airblogging?!?

I am currently on my first flight with airborne wifi and thanks to my first class compadres have been drinking a lot which is why I am blogging.

Anyway. I had to set some long training skills for Tyrannis anyway so when I return home from Jamaica I will have fighters V, jump fuel conservation V, logistics IV, and advanced weapon upgrades V on my various toons. Good times.



Fly safe and see you next week.



Ninja edit; the iPhone had some issues earlier so I am actually over Cuba on the return flight posting this.