Almost ready to rumble

indeed the awesome frogs already delivered all my stuff. So I spent the evening yesterday to go shopping in the Minmatar tradehub of Hek. I bought new rigs for some of my ships and other stuff that was left behind (sold) in LGK.
James shall have an Oneiros and a Scimitar (CTA fit) in our deployment station, Trebron should have a Naga, Tornado and 2 Hurricanes in the deployment station.
For my home system I prepared a Bomber for James and a Cynabal, Deimos, Proteus, Daredevil and some T1 frigs and cruisers for Trebron.
This took the better part of the evening to do. But some EVE time was left, so I decided to start bringing the CTA ships to the deployment station. This requires about 6 jumps through lowsec and nullsecurity space. I formed fleet with James and we headed out in a Naga and a Scimitar.
On the second outgate we landed on a Curse and two other ships(?) and I immediately knew that I was in trouble. The Naga was not really fit for solo combat, it's a specialised CTA ship. Does not even have a point. To make things worse, the large shield extender was offline, because my clone had no powergrid implant (currently training advanced weapon upgrade 5).
Two of the pirates forced me though the gate, where on the other side (of course) 2 more were waiting, the Curse also followed. To my surprise both my ships managed to warp clear before tackle could land, just to land on a Tengu on the outgate.
To make a long story short: one jump out from the Nullsec gate, where I probably would have been safe, my luck ran out and the Naga got tackled. James was in warp though. I briefly thought about bringing James back, because my opponent were only a Curse and a dps ship. But 2 seconds later a Maelstrom battleship landed on me and I decided to safe at least the Scimitar.
I gave the Naga the command to align back to the gate and turned on the MWD. I only was disrupted and webbed but not scrammed. Then I switched to James to jump him out into Nullsec.
When refocusing on Trebron I noticed that the align back to gate command somehow did not make it to the server (I hate how that sometimes happens) and I was still 18km from the gate, with shields failing. All that was left to do was getting the pod out, which I managed.
140 million down the drain.
What could I have done better? Several things:

• travel fit the Naga or solo combat fit it. Have a plan beforehand.
• not warp on like a fool from gate to gate when chased. Safe up somewhere or at least try.
• Make sure your commands got through to the server.
• Not bring two CTA ships at once. Use 1 cloaky scout and 1 deployment ship. Takes double the time but is safer.

Could better preparation have prevented the loss? Probably. I underestimated the danger and I was tired of doing hauling, fitting and stuff. I wanted to get it done finally. And I paid for it. Cocky, lazy, dead....
On a sidenote: I really really hate deploying ships that are not really solo combat fit manually. How are you guys without carriers doing it? Or do all 0.0 peeps have carriers? As soon as AWU5 is finished I will start on it again...need to make serious ISK first though. I have not much left (now 140 mill less even...must get new Naga...)

The Frogs are awesome

As I mentioned yesterday, I got my stuff moved out of LGK (NPC Nullsec). I did this using the services of a third party: Black Frog.
Black Frog is the Nullsec / Lowsec service of Red Frog, which offers freighter service for Highsec. There is a third, called Blue Frog.
In the Link above you find a price calculator, which you must use if you want to use their services (highly recommended!).

So what's the deal? Why three different ones?
Black Frog: They move up to 320000 (or even 360000) m3 of freight, with a maximum collateral of 5 Billion. It won't get cheaper if you move less than 320000, so make sure you can fill a freighter. They operate in Nullsec and Lowsec and for a typical contract with the full collateral you pay around 150-180 Million ISK.
Red Frog: They operate in Highsec only, maximum collateral is 1 Billion. So, you most times won't be able to fill their maximum accepted size. But they are really cheap. With maximum collateral and 20 jumps you pay around 17 Million ISK.
Blue Frog: They are like Red Frog, but accept higher collateral for a higher price.

Black Frog already fulfilled my contracts, yesterday I found all my stuff sitting safely in Hisec. I immediately created 6 Red Frog contracts for letting it be moved to the closest Highsec system to my new Nullsec home. There are good chances that they already delivered when I come home today.

I absolutely recommend their services. Don't transport your stuff yourself. Use those guys. Seriously!
It's riskfree for reasonable prices. Let the pro's do the hauling ;)

Moving time!

finally I decided to keep playing Eve, I really would miss my corpmates and the game.
So I ripped out all the rigs from my 35 ships and repackaged them.
I sold some stuff, so that 2 freighter loads of stuff and ships remained. Contracted everything to Black Frog for moving it out. Probably I lost 1.5 billion ISK, could be worse.
Also I moved medical and jump clones for James and Trebron to my new home. I am looking forward to some pew pew in my new alliance as soon as I am settled in.

I think I am done

On logging in yesterday, I noticed that my corporation has joined Against ALL Anomalies in the Drone region. All my assets are still in LGK and I have no carrier.
Also I never intended to leave En Garde or AAA. My mood was pretty bad yesterday, I still have not decided what to do now. Options are:

1. Leave Nullsec and join faction warfare
2. Try to get into an other En Garde or AAA corporation
3. Try to join Tr0pa de elite, Lee Chanka's corp. I always enjoyed flying with him and he might even remember me if I am lucky
4. Stay with my corp and move to the Drone regions
5.  Quit Eve

At the moment I must admit that I might chose option 5.  What would you do?

edit: why do I want to leave? There is a reason that is not to be found in the above text. The reason is: in the past (in text based MUDs)  I had to deal with developers that were playing themselves and they were giving their characters unfair advantages. I have the feeling this is also true for EVE. Many devs seem to be involved in the CFC or HBC. More than once did this show in the last months.
And this here incident is unacceptable for me. This is unprofessional and childish if it was done on purpose.

Our universe is too small

Recently I read that some capsuleers think that the New Eden universe is too big. Too many starsystems for too few players.
I totally disagree. For my taste it is much too crowded. In fact I think that the overcrowded universe is the singlemost significant reason why the EVE population does not grow. It cannot sustain more people.
Let me elaborate:
The first few weeks when you start as a new player, everything is fine. You do your tutorials, you do the epic arc and then probably some missions, mining, or production.
But then you want to try other features. Most probably exploring is on the list. There you will soon notice that there is a fierce competition for the sites in Highsec. You won't make as much money as with running missions. Much too few sites for too many explorers.
You think about lowsec then. But everytime you travel there, you die horribly without achieving anything. You actually might enjoy this first PvP experience and roam there more often.
But mining or exploring in Lowsec is in my opinion not advisable. Chances are high that you will be probed out in no time and killed. If lowsec were just bigger, chances would be better to find a quiet corner to make some money in.
So you continue with missions, but it gets boring. Sooner or later you will think about maybe moving to a wormhole. A C1 or C2 probably either for you alone or with 1 or 2 friends. I think you know what I say next: they are all occupied already. Wormhole space is also too small.
So what now? Nullsec might be your next option. You are in for a big disappointment.
There are many alliances that want to own sovereignity Competition is fierce. But there only two powerblocks now (in fact it is only one) that conquers all the space, even if they do not need it. It is true that many of the systems they own are empty and unused. You still can't have any (if you don't want to rent from them, or join a 50.000 man block).
If the universe were much much bigger, at least 5 times the current size, then many more alliances (and small ones too), could have their own space. Noone would want to conquer all.
So in the current state many players will leave after some months or maybe after 1-2 years, because there is nothing to do. Nowhere to grow into. If you don't want to stay in empire and grind missions...and who would want that?
So this is why I think that New Eden is much much too small. What do you think?

Know where you are...

Today I was zipping around in my Navy Comet frigate, exploring our new deployment zone and looking for ways to cause trouble.
I found a Northern Coalition cyno frigate on a station and shot it. And promptly got popped by sentry guns. Lowsec dooooh. I was too long in 0.0 I guess, I really totally forgot the sentry guns.
Bad trade, a comet against a cyno ship. But well, shit happens.

Still tanking it

Just a short status report about my progress in World of Tanks:

• Tier 5 artillery (Hummel)
• Tier 6 Heavy Tank (KV-1s)
• Tier 8 premium tank (Super Pershing)
• started with a scout recently (Leopard)

I could go faster, but I enjoy the above machines a lot, so I am not really hard pressed to go up the tiers faster. It was pretty quick anyway ( I guess).

Eve you say? James' subscription has run out. Trebron ist skilling up to carrier. But I am not sure if I want to farm the ISK for the skillbooks and the ship. Because I am a bit unsure how to progress. Nullsec is broken, HBC and goons "are winning" by creating a huge blue napfest and I want no part of that. Sadly they don't even recognize what they are doing...calling it a meritocracy for example.
Faction warfare or maybe wormholes sound interesting.

tl;dr: Eve hiatus not finished. Staying with WoT for the time being.

Lesson learned...the hard way

I managed to get my Proteus ganked.
In a rather idiotic way I must say. I was perfectly aware that I was scanned out and I already warped out twice. But liked an idiot I came back, because what danger can those 3 ships be?
I was able to tank them very long, but not forever. I could not do much damage because I was tracking disrupted, had no drones left and was generally misfit for PvP.
Lessons learned:
- don't PvP in a PvE ship even if you have a point.
- don't use a Proteus for PvE
- don't fit railguns on a Proteus.

This being said, I will not be posting for a while, because I am playing World of Tanks :)