Exploration

Yesterday I fitted a new strategic cruiser for lowsec exploration. It was rather expensive with over 800 millions ISK cost. All T2 rigs and a deadspace repper do this to you...
It does not need a probe launcher, because I am probing with James in a Cheetah.
As I cannot fly Caldari ships, I used a Proteus as my ship of choice. But somehow I am not convinced I did it correctly. Should I use a drone setup? Or any recommendations?

I tested it in Hisec in a Sansha site and promptly got an escalation "Nation on the rise". Which I will do today in the evening :)

Edit: I changed the subsystems.
It has a Capacitor Regeneration Matrix as engineering subsystem now and a Hybrid Propulsion Armature as offensive subsystem. Much more cap regen, Hammerheads as drones (and a flight of Hobgoblins) and four midslots (2 with tracking computers). Works much better. I did the Nation on the Rise escalation in it, the last escalation of the series in lowsec. No problems.
I was probed shortly before I finished and warped to a station after looting. Just in time, a Sleipnir wanted to get a juicy killmail.
Loot? A Sansha plate for 6 mil in the second part of the escalation and an armor plate...nothing else in all 4 parts. Not even the "endboss" dropped anything. Only a laser lens.

Weekend activities

...not much happened in my corner of Eve that would be worth writing about. As PL is still heavily camping the LGK station, I finally decided to jumpclone out both my accounts/toons.
I will install 5 (not more) combat ships somewhere else. Tornado and Naga for Trebron and Oneiros and Scimi for James. And 1 or 2 bombers of course.
PL can sit in LGK and stare at the station forever if they please. It's not my time they are wasting :)

But that was about all I did this weekend concerning Eve. I am a bit ashamed to admit it, but I started up Diablo 3 for the first time in months and leveled my Demonhunter from 47 to 54. Is it just me or has the game become easier?

It is getting old

On logging in today, I immediately warped James and Trebron to a safe POS in LGK, because I expected more camping of the station.
James was in a Hound, Trebron in a Tornado. It did not take long and a Gorgon Empire fleet (Nagas and some T3 cruisers) entered the system, warped to station and started to camp.
Together with 2 other bomber pilots, James went on a bomb run, but we failed to kill anything. I even managed to only hit the station and nothing else. Obviously I need even more practice.
A Tengu fleet was formed inside the station, as my Scimitar got killed yesterday and I have not yet replaced it, I just stayed in my bomber.
Sadly I was only able to watch most of the fight cloaked. It was a well executed slaughter I must say. Not much of Gorgon Empire survived. At least I got on a Tengu and a Crusader killmail.
After that I docked up to buy and fit a new Scimitar, in order to be more useful to the fleet. This only took me 2 or 3 minutes but exactly when I was done, a PL carrier fleet cynoed to the station and put bubbles up.
We tried to form an armor battleship fleet, but as the membercount reached around 80, the enemy jumped in more carriers. I think they were around 40. Obviously they had spies again and decided that they don't want us to undock for a fight. So they brought numbers we had no hope of fighting against. So I just ratted a bit on the other account (a concept they fail to understand, they really think we cannot play when they camp LGK) and then called it a day.
I think it is really their strategy to permacamp LGK station in the hope we get bored and disband or something? I'd bet a lot of ISK that the only ones bored is them ;) They can't really do something else while camping and we can just do whatever we want. Just not with the toons that are in the station.

Blogbanter 40: Interstellar Blood Sports

CCP Phantom has suggested a banter focus on competitive tournaments:

There is no finer spectacle in the universe of EVE Online than the explosive dance of weapon-laden spaceships in combat. The yearly Alliance Tournament is the jewel in EVE Online's eSports crown and the upcoming New Eden Open should deliver the same gladiatorial entertainment showcase.

Given the scope of the sandbox, what part should eSports play in EVE Online and what other formats could provide internet spaceship entertainment for spectators and participants alike?

My opinion on that is very simple:
eSports does not fit into the "normal" operation of our Sandbox at all. Tournaments can be done, they are fun to watch too. Maybe some lore can be written that even gives tournaments a background, so they are not so detached from every day life in Eve. Something around the lines of gladiator fights. Or an actual selection process for being allowed to switch from a mere mortal being to a capsuleer.
But even if this is done, tournaments are clearly not something everyone can participate in. There are huge barriers and one K.O. criteria that ends every aspiring young gladiators hopes at once and for all: Skills. As in training queue. You won't be able to compete, unless you wait several years to build up your skills. Or you buy a character in the character bazar. Both not really an option for everyone.

Conclusion: if eSports and tournaments shall be established, they don't fit into our sandbox. It should be on a separate server, where everyone has the same skillset. And competing should not require ISK.
Everything else would only be "for the select few". Which are exactly that: few. And thus there would be no real competition.

Dread down (and me too)

Today on logging in, the station in LGK was again bubbled by PL carriers and Navy Armageddons.
A battleship fleet was formed to clear the undock. I joined with James Kreator in an Oneiros. After undocking the enemy jumped in a fleet of Dreadnoughts. It soon became clear that we were unable to break their tanks und to make things worse, we lost quite a few battleships.
Maka told us to reship into Tengus, so James jumped into a Scimitar.
We undocked and managed to immediately kill a very expensive Revelation class Dreadnought:
Revelation Dread
TEST jumped in an additional fleet, so we were not only outnumbered, but megablobbed (again). Due to confusing and conflicting orders we started to lose Scimitars and Tengus. The killboard shows 7 lost Tengus, 8 lost Scimis and a few tackle. 
As we were facing more than 250 capitals and battleships in our fleet of roundabout 130 ships we had to dock again.
Looking at the ISK war we came out even. Good enough against those odds. If you don't count the lost battleships that is...But honestly: we should blueball them again in the future. If they don't want to fight, we shouldn't undock.
Oh, and I lost my Scimitar, but it will be fully reimbursed. At least I hope so...still missing reimbursements for two Tempest battleships and a Tornado (and a True Sansha Thermic Hardener I gave to Maka hehe j/k).

Ships delivered, good fight had

The ships I ordered yesterday evening have already been delivered and I immediately went forth to fit them. Just when I was finished, a Naga fleet was formed, which I joined.
A hostile Gorgon Empire Naga fleet with similar numbers was engaged two jumps out in DSS-EZ.
Primaries were called and ships started to explode on both sides. One of the first casualties was our FC, but the second in command was quick to take over. We were getting the upper hand though and the enemy started to disengage. Due to capacitor issues some of our fleetmembers could not keep up and we reformed on our anchor.
The enemy got reinforcements in form of a bomber wing with recon support and we jumped into MB40-4. We pulled range to 50km and waited if someone would follow.  And indeed a Thrasher and a Manticore were added to my killmails for this day. In summary I got onto nine killmails (the rest were Nagas and one Huginn). Contrary to the last engagements I was not primaried in this one and survived for a change. Good fight Gorgon Empire. We are orange to each other but still have mutual respect. Our fights against them are always fair and good natured. Overblobbing is generally avoided.

Superblob

As I mentioned yesterday, my last T1 cruiser got recently blown up and I needed new ones. Also I "invented" a frigate fitting some weeks ago, that really instantly locks bombers and covert ops frigates.
The weeks before the invasion we had many stealthbombers in our home systems, who (sad enough) managed to blow up a lot of expensive ratting ships.
The frigate fitting I created helped put a stop to that. It has a scan resolution of 2400+ and enough dps to kill a bomber. Also enough speed to not let it escape once locked and pointed. I blew up quite some bombers in it and scared off many more. I know this for a fact, because I chatted with one of the TEST bomber pilots about it (there are actually some nice people in TEST. Few, but they exist).
It goes like this:

[Atron, Bomblock]
Highslots:
Light Neutron Blaster II
Light Neutron Blaster II
Light Neutron Blaster II
Midslots:
Sensor Booster II, Scan Resolution Script
Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive
Warp Disruptor II
Lowslots:
Damage Control II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Overdrive Injector System II
Rigs:
Small Targeting System Subcontroller I
Small Targeting System Subcontroller I
Small Hybrid Collision Accelerator

It doesn't have any tank to speak of, that's true. But for fighting bombers it does not need any.
If the bomber pilot does everything correct when jumping through a gate, you still won't get him.
But the slightest break between breaking gatecloak and activating covert ops cloak and he is locked.
This is a very inexpensive and very fun ship to fly. Just be sure you do only combat ships that can't hit you as you have literally no tank.
The last one of those I lost, when trying to spiral in on two sniper Tornados from 150km away. I was only 40km away, with overheated Disruptor ready when I lost transversal for a bit and got hit...well, next time :)

Anyway I disgress. What I wanted to say is, that I also needed more of those. And I want to try a Thorax. I fly in Deimos HACs a lot, but they are a bit expensive to jump solo into a gatecamp and die. The Thorax hopefully will provide enough fun for solo roams for cheaper. So I logged an alt in and went to Jita to buy all that stuff and set up a courier contract to get all freightered to LGK. I hope it will arrive the next 2 days.
Not much else happened yesterday, we formed a CTA with 120 sniper Tornados and went to a safe POS. Then our Teamspeak was DDOSd (how low can you go?). We switched to Red Overlord comms, but our enemies did not arrive after waiting for 40 minutes and we docked up. Exact at this moment the enemy fleet jumped in with a capital fleet and bubbled the station. Spies obviously (again...how low can you go?).
Much credit to our FC, who wanted to fight anyway...(if it were my teamspeak server, I would drag those attackers to court and fight there honestly...) we switched to armor battleships, I jumped into an Oneiros with James. We undocked and tried to shoot a carrier, to no avail. After we had lost around 6 battleships we had to redock.
Also an Against ALL Authorities Ragnarok class Titan was lost shortly before downtime (or so I was told).