How embarrassing - second part

As can be read in my last post, I was still in Hisec when I logged in yesterday.
I did not have much time for playing, so I just wanted to check if we have a suitable exit, so I can come back home.
And I had luck: there was a random Hisec exit. And more random wormholes to Nullsec and C4 and C5 wormhole space.
Very good.
I undocked in my staging system (Cat in Essence) in my newly fitted Talos and headed to Amarr space. Some 20 jumps.
At the same time I went shopping with my Alt in Amarr. He bought Torps and bought and fitted a Scythe logistics cruiser. All went well and soon I was back in our wormhole with my new ships.
As there was not much that could be done with so many open connections, I decided to only check my PI planets and then call it a day.
Remember my friend, who scouted for me the other day? He was also online, but afk. One Alt in a Crow, the other in a Hurricane.
While browsing my planets I suddenly notice 3 Proteus and 1 Legion on DScan. I warn my corpmates and don't think much about it.
When suddenly those ships appear at our forcefield. Why are they doing that? The question is quickly answered. Somehow my friend in his Hurricane drifted outside of the forcefield. Like 200km outside that is. Some 15 seconds later he is exploded and podded :) Nothing much I could do alone against 4 T3 cruisers. In 15 seconds.
After my friend had finished his dinner he came back to his keyboard and into TS3..."Why am I podded!!!"...yes indeed. I don't know.

How embarrassing

After some days in the wormhole I feel quite at home. We cleared all the anomalies and signatures and set up PI just fine.
All was running smoothly until today. I only logged in to check if we have a suitable exit to go and get a ship from Hisec. I felt the need for a battleship, a neut and sentry domi specifcally.
So I was only logging in from my notebook, lying on my sofa.
As luck had it, our static low was only 1 jump from Hisec, 8 from HEK.
So I left in my pod. I noticed a gatecamp on the Hisec gate, but I would have to deal with that later. If it was still there. Fitting the Domi consumed quite some time. When finished I asked my friend to go scout if the camp is still there.
So I just made some safespots on the Hisec side within scan range of the gate and observed.
An other friend scanned for an alternative wormhole route. The friend in the lowsec system provided eyes on the gatecamp.
After a while he told me that the campers have jumped out and I am clear to go. So I did. If they are not in local and not on my side of the gate, they can't catch me.
So I jump and what happens? 5 guys decloak...and have an Arazu so I can't reach the gate again.
Perfect. Obviously my eyes is not used to local any more :D
And I died. Horribly. Very embarrassing.
Here is the killmail.

Next Try

Remember how mys hauler was shot at by a bomber pilot while I was onlining my last wormhole tower?
The guy piloting the bomber then helped us out with some modules and now he helped even more.
My friend and me were invited to join his wormhole corp. We decided to accept the kind offer and just moved in. The last ships and equipment are just arriving in our new C2 home.
In the meantime I made a bit of money by grinding Sisters of Eve loyalty points. The SOE frigates and cruiser really sold for a premium. Quite nice.

Our wormhole has new owners.

At 10:00 this morning, our Tower was shot down after only 3 days.
Very bad luck, but at least the aggressors are living in there now. So it was not only an act of violence.
We could not protect what we had, so it was taken. That's why we all like EVE so much :)
Congratulations to Repo. for a job well done and good luck in your new home.

I will move into an other wormhole now or tomorrow. More info later.

And the adventure ends

Obviously our neighbour knew something that we did not know.
He evacuated yesterday.
And today in the night our tower was shot into reinforce. We had it for 3 days only.
I heard that this does not happen often, so I wonder who did it and why.
Well it was worth a try. Somehow I don't have much luck in this game or a massive lack of skills :)

Found a hole

So as hinted before, we actually found a suitable wormhole. It is a C2 with a static lowsec exit.
There are 3 Towers in it, 2 are abandoned, but one was active.
But: dozens of signatures and sites, no PVE shipkills for 2 weeks. The tower belongs to a 6 man corp. Chances are that they are only there for the PI or for nothing at all.
So next thing you know our medium tower goes up. Somehow we will come to terms with the residents. Coexistance is definitely an option for me and my friend. We will negotiate later.
After the tower is anchored and 5 minutes left until going online, a bomber decloaks and shoots at my Iteron. As we have an exit to highsec I simply warp out. My friend stays put in  a Cane and almost kills the bomber.
We talk to him a bit and obviously he is from the neighbouring C2. We come to terms and blue each other. He even gives us some modules for the POS.
The tower goes online and we seriously start ferrying goodies.
Soon later there is more trouble brewing. A wormhole PvP corp shows up with several T3, a shield logi and a dictor. We just wait until they get bored and haul in our last bits.
We have stronted the tower, fuel for > 2 weeks, PvE boats, PvP boats, bombers, probers, salvagers and miners ready. All is fine and cozy.
Today we ran the first sites and slowly get a feel for the life in a wormhole.
I hope we can establish ourselves in there.

Getting a feel for things again

So by now I created contracts for my stuff in Nullsec. I even jumped back and flew my Proteus out the hard way. Ok, it was configured cloaky / nully, so not a big deal. But still it was 20 jumps through hostile territory.
All went well though and it sits safely in Cat now. I flew some level 4 missions, just to get accustomed to Eve again. Know what? They are still awful.
My friend Zak also resubbed and he also likes the idea to live in a wormhole. So today in the evening and will resubscribe my second account and start looking for one. Time to get things going.

Enough WoT...back to EVE

In World of Tanks I have played 12.000 matches by now, mostly in my clan "Druckwelle". My rating is ok, I played clanwars, have 4 Tier 10 tanks and enjoyed the game a lot.
But more and more the cheating servers really annoy me. It is not ok, that the matchmaker / server starts to put you more and more as low tier and in bad teams when you perform well. And that it does that is a fact. I even think it tinkers with penetration / camo / hitrate. But I cannot prove that.
Whatever....

I decided to come back to EVE and resubscribed yesterday. On logging in I found my main account deep in Nullsec in the drone regions. With a lot of assets. In a hostile station.
After short consideration I clonejumped to empire. My assets in the drone regions will be sold for cheap cheap with contratcs.
I issued some Red Frog contracts for my other stuff, want it brought back to Cat in Essence, where it all started. I will consolidate a bit, resub my other account and then decide what to do.
Options are:
- find a C1 or C2 wormhole to live in (maybe with a friend)
- make a fortune in empire (probably not, I rather make one in RL)
- back to sov warfare
- join the militia

I don't know yet. Time will tell. Probably the wormhole :)

Performance and Efficiency rating

Generally I am pleased with the way my performance and efficiency ratings in World of Tanks change over time. But there is always ways to improve. And so I analyzed my last ~500 games to find hints how to do so.
And what I found is that I have quite some games where I perform exceptionally well. Most games I at least pull my own weight in damage and kills. But there is also a not marginal percentage of games where I really perform very very poorly. No damage and no other contribution. By avoiding those abysmal games I could improve a lot, because they really pull down the average.
And I die too often. Much too often in fact.
Obviously I play much to risky in random games. And I am always willing to sacrifice my tank when I feel it could win the game. In clan companies that works, but not in random games. Because the team mates are just not reliable.
So I will work on these two issues the next weeks and see if I manage to play it more carefully.

World of Tanks progress

I still have lots of fun playing World of Tanks. I even bought a new graphics card, which pushed my fps to around 80 in "High" settings. (And I still see tracers from enemy artillerie, some guys seem to have issues with that).
In the time since my last posting, I pushed my IS-3 to elite status and now could buy the Tier 9 IS-8.
But I am a million credits short.
My most favorite tank is still my VK2801 scout, I scored a whooping 2500 EP (not doubled or so) and got my Ace Tanker badge for it (I have it for 4 tanks now).
Speaking of which: the first weeks I played I was really really awful. Bad performance rating, bad winrate. My Super Pershing was down to 40% winrate!
Now the noobmeter shows me solidly in the "good" rating for the last 500 games. My overall winrate climbs and climbs (up to 49% now and climbing), some tanks are as high as 70% already. Yesterday I even got a topgun badge for the Super Pershing. Winrate of the tank is 45% now. Still bad, but it is solidly over 50% for the last 3 weeks.
Also I began to push for more Tier 8 tanks. With tank destroyers I am up to the Jagdpanther and will soon have the Tier 8 Jagdpanther II (I prefer it over the Ferdinand).
As an artillery I have a GW Panther, but I will probably stop there, because I don't like Arty much. A Tier 6 is a must have though, because of Tank Companies.
Also I have a T-43 which will soon be upgraded to the Tier 8 T-44. In the German tree I put the VK3601 to elite status and can go Panther and Tiger now. But I will stick with the VK. The tier 8 konisch gun is awesome using gold ammo. Very fast reloading, superb penetration and good damage with gold. As a high tier in a random game you always end up with a lot of experience points and the one or other Topgun badge :) I use the stock turret, the upgraded one turns too slow for my taste.
Last but not least I started the French light tree and bought an ELC AMX (skipped the first 4 tiers with free xp). I like the ELC, you can play classic scout or play it as TD if you prefer.
Also I researched the Chinese tree up to Tier 5 with free xp, but did not buy a tank yet.
Yes, I can play Tank Companies now, because I joined the famous Druckwelle clan and I am very proud to be a member!

No EvE motivation

obviously my motivation to play EvE is near zero. Ever since the blue blob pushed us out of Catch I was at a loss what to do. I really enjoyed living there and also the PvP.
For me it was not imaginable to ever not play EvE, I was really dedicated and had a lot of fun. Not so anymore. I relocated to the Drone regions with no problems, but never felt at home. And the blue blob is knocking at our doors yet again.
When I think "EvE" I get depressed and gloomy...so I log in less and less. Probably I will let my subscriptions run out. I am vaguely interested in faction warfare, but not to the point to burn all bridges and actually join up.
Long story short: I am on Eve hiatus for the time being. World of Tanks with my clan is just so much more fun....

Just a quickie

I know I should write more, but the problem is that there is nothing going on worth writing about.
Currently I am more or less only saving up ISK for buying a carrier. I finally decided that Trebron needs one of his own, for transportation mainly. It is 20 days until he can sit in one and maybe 40 or 50 days until he can competently fly a Thanatos.
What I need are ISK. A billion for the skillbooks and 2.5 billion for the ship with fittings.
Other than that I am testing the new or revamped T1 cruiser hulls. Amazing! I really love those. Yesterday I chickened out in a shield tanked Thorax...I should have thought.
When jumping into a low sec system from Hisec, a Stiletto and a Cynabal waited on the other side. They both pointed me and drew sentry gun fire. I reapproached the gate, while the Stiletto warped clean, probably to come back afterwards, without sentry aggro. I should have pointed him. Maybe I could have taken them with the sentry guns as help. But I jumped back to Hisec like a coward.

World of Tanks - what is in my garage

~Five weeks ago I started to play World of Tanks. I would have done so earlier, but three things stopped me:

1. EVE was too much fun.
2. WoT refused to run properly on Linux
3. Gevlon Goblin convinced me that it is rigged.

EVE is still fun, but WoT is too. And as it is  in the nature of EVE that sometimes there really is nothing to do except ship spinning, it is good to have a backup game.
WoT is running on (my) Linux now. FPS is a bit lower than on Windows (strangely so). So I sometimes do boot Windows to play. But it runs.
That leaves the last point. Is hit chance and armor penetration rigged? I am not sure. Probably yes. There are definitely games where you hit every snapshot and penetrate with every hit. In the next game the opposite is true. But that is statistically not an uncommon thing to happen. So I really don't know.  As my "winning" condition is having fun (I already have a job in realtime, don't need one in a game) it is not so important for me. Because the game actually IS fun. Gevlon's winning condition is winning, even if this means grinding, being top ranked in win-percentage, owning all Nullsec etc. This is not for me for one simple reason:
If a game is won, the game is usually over. Finito.
I don't want the games I have fun in to be over. Simple as that.

But I digress :)

On starting with WoT I decided to stick with Russian and German for the beginning. This was quite funny, because right at that time the British tree started and everyone seemed to start with those. But I had a hard time against them, because they were not really new players. Anyway I had fun immediately and played far more hours than I usually do.
Now after 5 weeks I own the following vehicles (all fully upgraded):
Heavy Tank:
up to IS-3, Tier 8
Artillery:
up to Hummel, Tier 5
Scout (light tank):
VK2801, Tier 5
Tank Destroyer:
up to StugIII, Tier 5
Medium Tank:
up to Pz4, Tier 5
Premium Tank:
Super Pershing, Tier 8

The Pz4, Stug3 and the Hummel will all soon be ready for the next tier. I have done around 1600 matches in those 5 weeks, which is an awful lot for me.
The best fun of them all is the VK2801. The tech tree ends with it, there is no upgrade. And you don't need any. You will often end in matches with Tier10 tanks, but it does not matter. The VK2801 can really contribute there as a passive or active scout and/or Arty killer.
Don't ever underestimate his 10,5cm gun, loaded with HE shells. It can oneshot a Tier5 heavy tank if lucky and cause serious damage to the Tier 9 and 10 tanks. You can actually solo Tier 9 tank destoyers in it. Absolutely awesome machine, I am often sitting in my chair, laughing like a madman while driving this tank.
But it is good to play the other types too. So you can better understand how to battle each type of tank and also because each type has unique and entertaining gameplay. Sniping with Tank Destroyers (My Stug and Pz4 have the same derpgun mounted as the VK), wolfpack hunting with the Mediums, Brawling with heavies or raining destruction with Arty, all is unique and entertaining.
The Super Pershing is somehow a class of its own. Slower than a heavy tank, more front armor than most, a rather accurate and fast loading gun with medium penetration and low damage make it hard to learn. In the beginning I considered it to be totally crappy and had below 40% wins (I know I know...), but as I get used to it my winrate increases and the fun too. I actually enjoy to drive it by now and also already got my "Ace Tanker" mastery badge in it.

I am curious: what are your favorite tanks? And secondly: what do you think about the Super Pershing? Balanced? Sub par? Overpowered?

Be careful what you ask for

...in my last entry I complained about my empty killboard. Well, I managed to change that. Sadly in the wrong direction, by losing more ships.
On the weekend I attended two CTAs. They went like this:

• 45 minutes formup
• 60 minutes sitting on Titan.
• 40 minutes without action
• 20 minutes travel home

The second CTA almost got exciting. We wanted to shoot an SBU, but the enemy brought superior forces (Tengu fleet and Battleship fleet). Local was at 800.
We retreated to a safe POS. Some newcomer to the fleet asks for the POS password and some people gave it to him. 30 seconds later the Tengu fleet warps into the POS. As we were in Hurricanes, they did not manage to bump someone out. One has to simpy orbit the tower and nothing bad can happen.
Way to burn a spy. Good that he is gone.
After some fruitless dancing in the POS the enemy warped away, leaving a Tengu just outside the forcefield. Bait of course. We burned out anyway and killed him, barely making it back in before the enemy arrived yet again. Sadly I did not get on the mail. the thing exploded just as my lock resolved.
Thanks and props to our FC, who organised a Titan bridge to get us safely home.

Other than that I participated in some gatecamping that also netted no kills.

In the lowsec pipe to our Nullsec corner a "pirate" corp has set up their home, going by the name "Inglorious Squirrels". They make a habit of killing our Cyno ships. So we decicded to pay them a visit. We formed up in Hyperion, Drake, Crow, Loki, 2 ships I forgot, and me in a Deimos.
We wanted to teach them a lesson.
Of course they did not fight (they never do except they have the megablob on their side) and only did some station games. What we did not know: they batphoned some people not in their corp.
So when I aggressed a Tengu on station half a dozen battleships undocked and exploded me and our Drake. So we ended up being the ones learning a lesson.
And my last loss was a Hurricane battlecruiser. My friend Zak asked me if I wanted to help with a 5/10 Plex (escalation), 2 BCs should be enough. I agreed and came with a Cane (he was in a Tengu). I entered the Plex with him- did not really see how many rats there are because lots of structures cluttered my overview- MWDed to the rats and started shooting. And dropped into armor. And got stuck on some structure trying to warp out. And exploded :)
What happened? Well, it was a 10/10 Plex, not a 5/10. They seem to have the same name. Drone region...you still hold surprises.
Thankfully the Tengu was able to clear the first room  (but not more) and loot some of my modules.
I was too pissed afterwards to come back in proper ships and do the Plex. In Sansha space I did 8/10 and 10/10 "alone"(dualboxing) and got some pricey loot (e.g. a Nightmare blueprint). But I fear the drones would not drop any loot anyway. They never seem to do, not even the faction spawns.

I hope "my" EVE will be more fun soon, because recently bad luck and bad decisions seem to ruin my gameplay. Fun is different to be honest.

Shooting towers

Nothing much happened yesterday. We jumped ~170 T3 Batlecruisers halfway across the universe to shoot 2 POS towers into reinforce.
Well, it must have been important I guess :)
Hopefully I won't have to work overtime today, or I won't make it to today's CTA. My killboard is much too empty this month.

Patchday

Rollout of the new patch went surprisingly well. No issues whatsoever. This is definitely a first for me. I am playing EVE on Linux (and sometimes a Mac) and there were no issues with wine either. Launcher, Updating and the game itself work without changing anything in the configuration.
Up to now I can only comment on a few of the changes:
Hurricane Nerf: not really bothers me. I just ripped out one of the T2 neuts and all else is just like before. Maybe I will install a Powercore in the lows instead of a tracking enhancer and keep the two Neuts. Time will tell.

• Target circles and the new damage texts: very cool. I like this one a lot.
• NPC AIs: as I am ratting with sentry guns, I was a bit afraid of this change. But it turns out it is a non issue. No problems. In fact it has become easier, because rat Battleships will always target me instead of my drones. I don't even recall them anymore when new waves spawn. Awesome.
• New ships: I don't know yet. But I will probably use the Tristan as an AFK salvage boat (drones) in my alt. It can clean up the drone rat wrecks of my finished anomalies haha :) The new logis look interesting for roams. I was always hesitant to fly the expensive Scimitar, because I am not exactly space rich. The new logi T1 cruisers really look promising. I will have to buy a bunch I guess. Also I like the buff of the Vexor and Thorax, as I like flying those.

I am looking forward to testing all the other game improvements and new ships. The Retribution expansion is the best expansion since I play EVE. The trailer is awesome too. Speaking of which: the new aggression mechanics and the bounty system look very promising. Especially Highsec space could benefit a lot from this. We will probably see a lot more PvP there in the future.
Well done CCP!

Where I lay my head is home

It is good to have a helpful corp, special thanks to Archmedia (and his alt), who helped me greatly in jumping my ships to my new home with his carrier. It is greatly appreciated.
I did some ratting to replenish my funds and I must say that the Drone regions could really need a buff. Or I have to get used to the drone anomalies, somehow I liked the Sansha better. Well, on Tuesday there will be faction and officer spawns I heard. Good thing.
Also I was on my short first alliance roam and had a good time. I even managed to get the final blow on an Absolution and got on the mail for a Rupture cruiser.
But the best thing last: my friend Zaknafein Hinken resubbed and joined us. I am really happy about this and looking forward to more fleets with him.

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.