One year

I realized yesterday I joined Wormhole Engineers one year ago.

One year ago I was in an uncomfortable situation, my wormhole corp (Border Deepspace), that was dying from lack of activity, was finally evicted from our C2 and throw out to highsec without a clear path, at least from my point of view. Full details can be read in this post.

In hindsight, I can say I don’t regret at all my decision, and the funny thing is my old previous corp did end asking for joining our alliance, and later merging into WHEN, so I got back my old friends.

WHEN (Wormhole Engineers) it’s a special corp - probably all them are - but at WHEN, the more crazy we do, the more we laugh. There is not any nonsense about killboard reputation or similar, and the only goal is to have fun (even if it looks it’s going to south) like this battle report against an ISKBoxer fleet of proteus versus us with T1 ships, in which by the way we got down a nearly 1B proteus.

In this corp, people are not selfish, they would risk their ships to help you, they would invest their time to fly with you even if it’s a clearly whelp op, and if you add ST (Silent Terror) in the formula, anything can happen.

I have lost some ships flying with ST, but I don’t regret a single time I have done it, because he has delivered the crazy content that makes fun this corp. In the other hand, I learn a lot when Mick is FC’ing, because his calm attitude, even when things are hot. I still remember that occasion when we tried to roll our static and we got attacked in both sides.  Mick managed to handle the situation perfectly without losing a ship (with orcas in the middle) and without any sign of pressure or stress. In the future, as soon I feel myself able, I’d like to start FC’ing small fleets, I am sure it’s a great experience.

Besides improving my subcap skills and getting Kippel into the capital path (he’s able to fly a Dread now) I also enjoyed providing IT support to the corp. Those IT services cover from a Jabber server, that helped to ping colleagues for action or for support tasks; Mumble and now TeamSpeak server, in a private server; and, a forum, not used too much, but it’s there.

Probably, the best thing at WHEN, are the people, not a single one of them is a jerk, all of them are different, but good pilots, and I enjoy alot sharing my time with them and learning from them!

I clearly see myself in this corp for another year… and I'd recommend anyone to try it out.

Blogging is hard

I always wanted to blog about my experiences in EVE, that's the reason why in April I did create this blog, and in my first entry,  I tried to sum-up my past. During some months I did enjoy writing about interesting stuff that happened, taking screenshots when I saw good opportunities to write good stories, but after some months, that excitement seems to have been evaporated.

It's not good stuff has not happened. It's that has happened suddenly and I was not taken notes or good pictures, and later, spending time to remember all the details and write something that could be worthy to read is kinda a lot of work and not something I would call "fun". And at the end of the day, I am here to have fun!

Probably, the key to be a good blogger is to enjoy writing as much as flying ships, and obviously having the right skills. Probably a good blogger (basically, someone who blogs nonstop good content, not like myself) would blog about anything with the same pace, because at the end, writing is a skill independent of the type of content you write about. Having said this, I am completely sure, even for them it takes a lot of time and effort to deliver what they do.

I admire Penny (Tiger Ears) for the amount of detail she can provide in each of her posts, sometimes I wonder if she has an assistant to take notes meanwhile she fights and takes good screenshots!

Another one is Von Keigai (Deep in EVE), another wormholer who writes pretty often, and with lots of detail, and sometimes interesting reflections on w-space changes.

Obviously, there are out there tons of good bloggers, but those two, represent to me what I'd like this blog to be.

I will continue trying to find that "strength" to write, as you only improve by doing, but don't expect to find lots of content here :)

Hardeners in the space

Like anybody living in w-space, it's quite common to find offline towers, and most of them are surrounded by the mods and defenses that were deployed around the force field when they were active.

You can shoot hangars and other type of structure to try to find some loot, but you can not get any defense module if you don't bash the tower first, and that's a totally unworthy effort, as they have large amount of HP and those mods are just a few millions of ISK.

Today, I found another offline tower, but the main difference was being the first time I see only hardeners and nicely aligned to the tower. I really enjoyed the beautiful sight.

 



You wanted an U574? Take some!

Sunday afternoon, time to see what EVE will provide today.

As starters, our C4 static is gone, so I get my alt Kippel with his cheetah and send it to scan. It doesn't take long to find it. I warp to the signature and jump into.

As always, first thing do to, check dscan, nothing, so lets see what we can find in this hole. A quick look shows 24 signatures! This is going to be a long while scanning.

I deploy my Sister Probes and start scanning, some gas.... and a weak signal of a wormhole, perhaps it's the static of this system, an U574 (C6). I continue focusing on that signal and I resolve it, yes, the static, I add a bookmark and continue scanning.

Further scanning shows another U574, and another, and another, WTF?! It seems this is a bugged C4, and it's not the first time it happens according to my corp colleagues. This C4 system is connected to a lot of C6 systems so it becomes like hub for them.

C4 with bugged static

There are still a lot of signatures to resolve and as we continue scanning, we keep finding more. So far, I only have seen activity in one wormhole and an Anathema cloaking at J144420. I wait a few minutes and I decide to take a look into that system again to see what kind of activity - if any - is there.

Claiming territory

In w-space you always have the risk to have "visitors", and visitors that sometimes they are not just passing by, but they want to stay in your system, and they bring  their furniture, stuff and often friends with them.

Often the goal is just evict you, to keep the system for themselves, or just to get rid you out of the system because they have a contract, they don't like you or they think you got shinies in your hangars. I have been there and in both sides, and two of those examples you can read here.

And that is partially the reason for this post.

I start scanning and I find the static C4, it's inactive, nothing interesting in dscan. I continue scanning through the bunch of signatures and I find a C3. After resolving all the signatures, I decide to jump into the C3.

As always, meanwhile I hold cloak, I check dscan to see if they are ships in range and my surprise is the number of towers.

Reinforced POCOs at 2DWM-2

I log in and notice the Instrumental site is still in the system. Someone was mentioning yesterday in the corp channel about cleaning the sleepers from the site, so I wonder if that did happen and if there is at least the cheap C-540. Sometimes, some of my colleagues don't consider worthy their time and effort to suck that one, compared with the C-320.

I warp to the site, and confirm there are no sleepers, and still plenty of C-320. Time for Venture fleet!

I grab both ventures and I warp to the site and without hesitation, I start to harvest the gas meanwhile I watch d-scan.

A few minutes later, silent terror logs in and confirms there are new signatures in the system, and suddenly, sleepers show up in my gas site. What? I thought they were gone!

Silent terror explains me that they "return home" after downtime, so even if the site was triggered, as it was yesterday, it's like a fresh site. A new thingy learnt, and always learning. This is EVE.

So, I warp squad the ventures back to the tower, and I get Kippel into the cheetah and start to help Silent to locate the new signatures.

Besides the new static C4, we have a null inbound (2DWM-2). I jump in, and I see at least two POCOs are reinforced and their timers will end in about 2-3 hours. The locals are aware, and greet me in the channel.

Sucking some gas

Sunday afternoon, the chain I scanned yesterday it's gone, perhaps rolled. There's nobody at home, and there are new sigs, so I get Kippel and his cheetah to start scanning.

I find the C4 static as expected, the deadly data site, two crappy gas sites, and voila! an Instrumental gas site. That's the best gas site you can find, with lots of sweet C-320 and some C-540.

I finish scanning all the sigs, and jump to C4, I want to be sure there's no activity there if I want to start getting that gas. C4 looks inactive, good. Time to swap ships and get into ventures.

Before triggering the site, I broadcast through our jabber that I found the Instrumental in case anybody wants to join. I think it's kinda rude to trigger the site without giving the chance to my corp colleagues to share the good gas.

I don't get any reply, so I fleet warp my pair of ventures and start to suck. After 2 minutes in the site, Omaristos and Aymala show in and join the fleet in response to my ping.

Slaughtered

Friday evening, I have been idling and afking in the corp for a while, being busy preparing the dinner and sending the kids to sleep. When I come back I see Brother Chaplin is asking me if I can fly the webber Loki that we use for C5 escalation sites. I acknowledge, and I grab my escalations Loki, currently my most expensive ship due the three True Sansha Stasis Webifier (200m each).

I join the advertised fleet and turn on Mumble, the usual when running these sites. The fleet is formed by two Lokis (Brother and myself), Archon (Mick) and Revelation (silent terror). I have run sites with them before, so everything should go smooth.

[ 2014.05.23 22:00:23 ] Brother Chaplin Rinah > you run site before
[ 2014.05.23 22:00:26 ] Chuck Turing > yes
[ 2014.05.23 22:00:29 ] Chuck Turing > c5?
[ 2014.05.23 22:00:30 ] Chuck Turing > yes
[ 2014.05.23 22:00:53 ] Chuck Turing > let me grab my loki
[ 2014.05.23 22:01:20 ] Chuck Turing > My ship5
[ 2014.05.23 22:03:39 ] Chuck Turing > when do i come in?
[ 2014.05.23 22:04:06 ] silent terror > warp to mick now
[ 2014.05.23 22:04:14 ] Chuck Turing > omw

I warp to Mick and start targeting battleships tagged, but only 30 seconds later after arriving to the site...

[ 2014.05.23 22:04:48 ] Chuck Turing > sisters combat are ours?
[ 2014.05.23 22:05:10 ] silent terror > new sig
[ 2014.05.23 22:05:12 ] silent terror > SUI
[ 2014.05.23 22:05:13 ] silent terror > scan it

Retriever in d-scan

Another day in wormhole space... our chain was gone and we had to start to scan it again. I had already scanned our C4 static two hours ago, but did not continue further because I had to leave to solve a few things, kids stuff, they always have priority over EVE.

When I came back, Raul is in the C4 scanning the rest of the chain, I join him. A few gas sites and a C4 inbound and a C3. Raul jumps to C3 and I do to C4z.

In C4z there is an unmanned retriever in a tower, and it looks it has been there for some time, nothing else of interest in the system. We had two bookmarks in siggy for two towers but they were gone, so I update siggy, removing previous towers and adding the new tower that Elder found quicker than me.

Meanwhile, we were having a good discussion how he knew it was a C4 site without jumping in, and Raul gave me a good lesson about finding the wormhole class based on its colors. To be honest, I had read about that in the past, but I never have been aware of it, or never tried to identify it. I remembered reading about it at Penny's blog, and with some googling I found the post: http://www.tigerears.org/2011/04/24/wormhole-colours.

                Raul Itinen > c4 - very orange + Green
                Raul Itinen > our c5, black + red
                Raul Itinen > srsly try it

Trying the Nereus

My colleague Brother Chaplin a few days ago showed me a great YouTube video from Marlona Sky doing PvP with an industrial ship, a Nereus. Since I saw that I wanted to try that hilarious experience and for that reason I had acquired a Nereus and fitted it.

Today we had in our chain a low-sec entry and it was a good opportunity to put in practice the Nereus. I did ask Brother to join and he gladly did it.

The lowsec system was Shalne, and there was nobody in the system so we decided to jump to Gonditsa.

At Gonditsa, we warped to the gate that leads to Bherdasopt - a high sec system - trying to find criminals or suspects to shot. And we did, because as soon as we arrived, we found a suspect Drake Navy Issue owned by K'Dra, that started to shoot us with Heavy Assault Missile.

Mister Commander and his Arazu

After a few buys days only updating PI and skills, I find some time to be more active. Mick and Bolinar were rolling our static C4 and I join them with my rolling-100MN-rupture, and we do the usual stuff, jump with the afterburner on to increase the total mass and jump back with the afterburner on. The wormhole goes puff as it should be.

We only have one relic signature at home, so the new one it has to be our static C4. I recently have trained my alt Kippel to Astrometrics 5, so it becomes more easy to scan, good thing, because the older, the lazier. Kippel gets into his cheetah and starts to scan. With some small RL interruptions to provide "IT support" to my wife, I finally find the wormhole.

C4a has been active recently, Commander Predator has lost an Astarte and his pod, so I try to be more careful, just in case the system is still active. There's a tower in dscan and I start to search for it. Two manned ships in the POS, Prophecy and Arazu, being in the Arazu Commander Predator. Then, he was podded and came back. They seem to be afking.

Meanwhile Raul has been scanning and got the static C3, nothing else in the system besides a gas site and our own wormhole connection to home. We jump to C3. I see in dscan an online small tower. Using dscan I find it and warp to it. It has some ships, but only one of them manned, just a Cheetah.

To my surprise, all the defense mods are offline, and two of them are incapacitated, so perhaps the tower has been in siege recently? Or the owners are not very skilled in POS defence techniques?

No active defenses?

CSM 9

I never cared too much about CSM elections, neither who is applying or anything. Indeed for CSM 8 I didn't vote anybody, probably because I was still "too young" in the game.


This time,  I am going to make an exception, because even if I barely know a few of the candidates, I think I should vote those that match my game preferences.


So having said this, I plan to vote with both of my accounts:

• Steve Ronuken. He is pushing for more support of third party tools, and I often use this site.
• James Arget. Wormhole guy.
• Proclus Diadochu. Another pro wormhole.
• corbexx. Yet another wormhole candidate.

I bet my preferences are pretty clear, apps & IT + wormhole stuff.


If you have not yet voted, you still can do it here.

Nothing like a good motd

I log in back from dinner, just expecting to do some boring stuff, like updating PI, when I am quickly greeted by Mick asking for interdictor support.

Chuck Turing > hi again
Mick Straih > hi
Mick Straih > get a dictor, get it to 3a asap
Mick Straih > can you?
Chuck Turing > yes
Chuck Turing > sabre
Mick Straih > go go go

I swap ships and get into my Sabre. The target is in C3a and has been already killed twice by Mick, first in a retriever and second in a vexor. According to Mick he thought he was baiting before, so we were wondering what was he doing now.



Following Mick's instructions I warp fast to the Low Sec wormhole and cloak, waiting there in case he gets aware of our presence and tries to flee through this connection. D-scan shows he's back with a Venture, but this time he's not in the Ore site, but probably harvesting some gas.

Mick decide to throw Combat probes to locate the venture, meanwhile I wait for any signal to bubble up. Mick warps to the Venture and finish it. Then Mick tells me he is warping back to Low Sec with his pod, I bubble up with the Sabre. Wolfram Ulv arrives and is slowed by the bubble giving us enough time to catch him.

Perhaps we should not have killed the pod, and he would have brought another ship? Who knows, in any case, Mick updated channel MOTD with the following funny text that gave the name for this post.

Not a great day again

Nothing in the C4a, it has a C3 static, but I am not in a mood to start scanning, so I go back and jump to the inbound null connection. It's in EOL (End Of Life), but as in siggy it's not marked as EOL I think it already has enough time to go to look and come back. I update siggy.

Just after I jump to null 020-2X and I see some Mobile Tractor Units. I always feel tempted to shoot some of those and grab some "free stuff", they are like a lottery. The locals are also aware of my presence and greet me in the channel. Good thing I am in a cloaky hound.



"I don't speak Russian" in Russian :)

I locate one of the MTUs in an anomaly and I start to shoot it meanwhile I watch dscan. Thanks to the afterburner I am able to speed tank two of the sleepers until I end the MTU. A waste of time. Nothing worthy inside.

Kronos in C4a

After two days waiting in Hisec due a forced trip, I was able to return to my home system. The highsec system that was connecting the chain was not far, neither the chain was looking dangerous.

I had bought a new venture and fitted it again with the gas modules and some agility rigs, so perhaps next time I am more bright and I warp away.

At home there was not much to do, just a few people online, and probably half of them AFKing. I did check my PI, updating the extractors timers and moving products to the POCOs. Nothing really exciting, and neither I was in a mood to explore the chain.

I was about to join the AFKers team when suddenly tgl3 said in the channel: "Kronos in C4a running sites". PVP mode quickly triggered, fleet advertising, pings through Jabber announcing a possible target, comms, Guardian pilots requested... and update status in the channel:

Jabber ping did work, Mick and later Omaristos logged in and joined the fleet. We got a good set of ships, logis and DPS. I was sitting in my Hurricane and my alt Kippel was flying the second Guardian, being Mick in the other Guardian. A must to be able to cap transfer and hold the possible damage from the sleepers and Kronos.

Ticket express to highsec

I was kinda bored, not many people online and I decided to do some exploration in the chain. We had a C6 inbound at home, so it seemed to me like a good opportunity to see if there were some Vital or Instrumental  gas sites.

C6a was looking good, no active towers in the system and only one connection to another C5 wormhole, that was also inactive.



 

I scanned all the signatures in the C6 with my alt Kippel and I found two Vital Core Reservoirs. Those have some nice C320 and C540 gases, the most expensive. I know I couldn't harvest the complete sites, because I am not still able to deal with the sleepers, but at least some quick "ninja-harvesting" would be feasible.

I came back to the tower and I offered in the corp channel the chance to join my fleet to harvest some. Only Avam TheRock joined, and we jumped into the C6.

We started with the C320, and meanwhile Avam was showing me how faster his Venture was compared with mine. The reason behind was the rigs he was using. I told him I'd have to plug some of those on mine also to gain that improvement. I found later, they proved useful.

Who's Chuck Turing: his history up to day.

This is a long story, you  are advised! Some of the facts told here, happened long time ago, so I probably have missed some details and others are a bit blurry.

Chuck was born in Sept 2012. It was perhaps the third or forth time I tried to challenge myself playing EVE Online. Basically, trying to find out if there was anything besides mining and warping to asteroids. Every time I had tried the game, usually around summer, I had not succeed to go beyond a week before surrendering and deleting the whole stuff. The tutorials were a good start, but they didn't help to really get into the game. I still don't think they show what EVE really is.

After playing for like 5 days, something happened and made the difference, I was recruited by Woolly into Border Enterprises. Border was small corp with helpful people, always patient listening and answering to all my questions. They helped to earn my first "huge amount of isk" by running a mining op where at the end of it, they donated all the ore to me. I was mining in a scythe (no longer has mining bonuses) and they were using retrievers and orca support plus links. It was an amazing team experience for a noob.

Mining Scythe