My first op: Lonely Roids

See all those huge roids tumbling in space, always alone and without company? I am sure I would feel lonely if left alone for so long with no one to talk to 0:-)
What about visiting them for a nice chat?


Those were the words with which I advertised my first corp mining event (together with the banner I made for it). I have to admit that my try to get the roids in our home a bit more company was a bit spontaneous, so I was doubly surprised when actually a few corp mates did participate. The op actually lasted a lot longer than planned as well. We normally do quite a few corp mining ops for fun (and profit) but my op fell into a time where no new mining-op was announced when at the same time quite a few new people joining the corp. And as a mining op (with a lot of relaxed chatting) is the best way to get to know each other, I tried to improvise one. And it worked! :-)
Lots of new people made for a more varied "mining"-ship approach, which I liked as well. Below a new member in his miner/hauler Wreath

and here we could even witness the maiden voyage of a Rokh

All in all a quite nice op (if I might say so) 0:-) Though I have to admit the official one we had the week after was much better (e.g. with more Hulks and Orca support).

EVE Blog Banter #8: Signature Characters

OOC:
Welcome to the eighth installment of the EVE Blog Banter , the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here . Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month's topic comes to us from me, Ga'len at The Wandering Druid of Tranquility. He asks: "What new game mechanic or mechanics would you like to see created and brought into the EVE Online universe and how would this be incorporated into the current game universe? Be specific and give details, this is not meant to be a 'nerf this, boost my game play' post like we see on the EVE forums."

Well I guess there exists a universe of ideas already that all do have their positive and negative sides. Among others it would be really nice to see more of planets, to perhaps see more about our crews (who they are, if they are happy or if they are slaves, if they could be freed – if slaves – or cared for better I am sure the performance of the ship would increase as well). There are ideas about planetary rings, and comets as well ideas about fleet maneuvers. All of those look very promising and sound quite nice! My addition to these cool thoughts would be a better integration of the rich background story into the game itself. One way to do that would perhaps be to create missions where it might be possible to meet EVE's signature characters.

I spelled out the idea already on the EVE-O forums in this thread:

First of all I was quite happy to read the new rediscovered scrolls dev blog and am really looking forward to see more epic mission arcs. In regard to players interacting stronger with the core storyline elements of the EVE universe I guess a highlight of some such arc might surely be the meeting of an EVE signature character (like as a mission "agent"). Examples might be:

For an Amarr character e.g. it surely would be epic to be able bring a report on sleeper activity to Jamyl Sarum herself.

For a Minmatar it might be as epic to step onto an Eldar Titan and get a nod from one of the legendary elders e.g. for helping in the survival of a forgotten Minmatar tribe.

A Caldari might be honored to get an interview with a megacorp CEO upon getting a report from Heth to deliver (with the choice of either helping the CEO or Heth).

A Gallente would surely be honored to get a letter from his President for a secretive meeting with and advisor who might propose a secretive mission.

And so on and so forth. Even if this interaction is more like PC-agent interaction (well cut-scence would also be HUGE but probably much more time-intensive to implement) I guess such an interaction with the EVE signature characters would help a lot immersing players in the interesting backstory of the universe they are playing in.

A scholar goes exploring

Things are progressing quite well! Not only corp-wise but also personally. I still have to find a hacking site yet, but my first expeditions in my rusty but trusty Probe frigate went quite well. Actually I could pilot a Cheetah as well, but I guess I first will practice with that ship.

Above my trusty rusty Probe: Z Ranger 1 above an interesting planet that does look quite habitable.

I already found a small site with a few Omber asteroids that went on to help me get the Isogen needed for a building project (made me a Vexor that I sadly can’t yet fly). There you also see my new pride: the Covetor. Said ship is atm in the process of being redesigned into a Hulk. For this I’d like to thank Zino (quite some corpmate)!

Z Curufinwe in action before she went into Zino’s factory.

Probes launched from Ranger 1 also managed to find me my first salvaging site which can be seen below:

But this was not everything. I got lucky as well and found a Serpentis Hideout and a Serpentis Lookout and – just yesterday – I got lucky to find a Serpentis-Phi Outpost! The latter I was too cautious to try alone. But a nice and helpful corpmate (Swisstuck) helped me. Together with him it was quite a breeze.

Above shot of both Swisstuck’s vessel as well as my Cane at the Serpentis Outpost and below the spectacular fight against my first Serpentis Faction Battelship (the explosions wrought by Swiss’ ship were quite spectacular).