Capsuleer: The datapad app for pilots

I do use my portable datapad for easy reference and lookup about the status of the cybernetically injected skillbook dataware from which I try to learn in my spare time. The code I used for that was actually once the one called "EVE Tracker", but I did start using Capsuleer as well. At first the plus side of Capsuleer was the nice graphics as well as the date and time information when a certain skill would be finished and fully absorbed into my brain. Especially the information when that was scheduled to be by date and time (as compared to just giving an ETA in days/hours) was nice. The plus side of the EVE Tracker was still that I also got more information about all the skills.

But since the Capsuleer code got updated to revision 2.0 it really shines and is quite some nifty peace of software! Especially as it now also has integrated a lot of skill information. It even allows me to get connected to over pilot's public logbooks - a feature that I use quite a lot now.

As I am quite a happy user of this code I was quite happy as well to see that a lot of other people are using it as well (which is kind of a thank-you for the huge work the authors Pyjamasam and Roc Wielder put into it). But instead of us happy users thanking them - as should be the time honoured fashion to do things - they did thank us for using it (some strange world we are living in ;-) ). The thank you involved quite a nice collage with the capsuleer logo made up of pictures of pilots who make use of the programm. And look what I found:



A picture of myself made it into that collage as well! 0:-)

EVE Blog Banter #7

OOC:
Here we go: my first try at participating in Crazykinux's blog banter. His question to us players was:
"What 3 things haven't you done in EVE and why? Would you be willing to try one day? Why so? Why not?"

As I am quite new to the game, there are a lot of things I haven't done. A few of those are things I will never consider doing and other things I am looking forward to do someday. I'd like to begin with one from the first category:

Griefing/can-flipping/pirating
This I will never do. I do play this kind of online game to be able to interact with other players and to do things together with them, to help them to have a fun time with them and to find friends among them. I am quite sure others are also playing this game to have a fun time, to relax and have a nice time. So I do find it quite wrong that some players seem to find it fun to ruin the fun for others. Sorry but ruining other ppl's time is not among my definition of having a nice time. Just the same as hurting others is not my definition of having a nice time either. I do guess it is too easy to say that destroying other ppls ships/play-goods is nothing personal if you don’t see/know the person on the other side, but one shouldn’t forget that there are other persons on the receiving end of this kind of "fun".
e.g. take can-flipping (which did happen to me already): Imagine the time it takes for a poor frigate to get a can full of ore. Even in my Retriever it takes about 1 hour for me to fill a can solo. Now along comes someone who just "flips" the can so that I am no longer safe to get the goods I mined back. I just have to cut my losses and warp away. I do hope that was fun for those ppl to ruin my (about 1 hour) game time in the evening where I was hoping to relax a bit from work. It sure wasn't fun for me. Sure I got over it, but sure as well I don't have any love left for any type of greifer. May that greifing come from can-flipping or pirating or ganking transports or what have you.

I am sure most in-game griefers who like to ruin other ppls spare time are much nicer in real life, but I am sure as well that being a greifer in a game shows also a bit where your real attitudes lie. Either that or they are are too dumb to know that the ppl whose time he ruins are real people as well.

After this rant off to 2 things I would like to do sometime in the future:

I would like to explore a wormhole together with others (e.g. my nice corp mates) and secondly I would like to be more of a help to them when doing missions. Well actually both of this goes in the same direction so I do hope it might count as only one of my 3 available points 0:-) because as a third thing I would like to do is be more the scholar that I am and exploring the universe.
One project in that regard is surely going to be a visit to the EVE gate in a Covert-ops ship :-)

Corp mission night: One report of many

I am still training up and preparing myself to help my corporation with clearing criminal influences near our offices. But even though I am yet not much help I was still invited to join and could watch with awe what my corp-mates were doing. Here is a report of one of these endeavours that my sensors picked up while I watched the battle:

>>> Data connection opening
>>> Subject: Battleship fleet sighted in Sol
>>> Sender: Serpine Sol Inquestor 389
>>> To: Serpentis 3 HQ
>>> Transmitting data

Around 2000 hours a battleship fleet has been sighted prowling the nebulae of the Sol region. It was quite an ominous sight.



Due to electrostatic interferences of these particle clouds my team had trouble localizing them. Our cov-ops sensors were to weak to penetrate too far into the clouds. When we finally found out were they were haeding, we immediately alerted the local station to scramble their fighters and followed the fleet invading our territory.
Finally free of those clouds we could make out their signatures: The fleet arrayed against us was made up exclusively of ships of the Black Thorne Corporation. Intel suggest they are mostly miners, so we didn't investigate them. That was quite a mistake of intel as it turns out!

Following is an inquestor probe feed of the invading BTC fleet facing our ships.


Sadly the fight didn't fare too well. Here you can see one of your battelships being hammered quite heavily by incoming fire.


They didn't suffer any losses and our ships were smashed. It was terrible to behold! And they didn't stop there but did advance on our Station in system as well, smashing the stations defences with ease.


Our station sits undefended! I am awaiting your instructions how to proceed! What? Looks like I was discovered! There was a rupture hiding between those battleships. It is targeting me ...

>>> Transmission closed

Ruin

I just read through the new chronicle called "All These Lives are Fit to Ruin". I have to admit it was quite a read and one that made me thoughtful as well. Are we Capsuleers really that unthinking of other lives? I do fear so. But I guess it's always better to look first before your own door (or however that saying goes): I do think that I so far only shot at those things that really matter to the outcome of a mission. But I fear that there might have still been a bit collateral damage that could have been avoided. That story at least opened my eyes to these matters. I hope now to be much more sensitive to such issues (concerning not-military structures). And regarding my crew ... well I guess most of us don't think about their crew too much. I guess I will try to get to know them better. Capsuleers don't have to be monsters, they are human still. I am human still. Or better: I want to be human.
What do you thin about that esteemed reader?

Tepet's Pride my first T2 ship whose crew sadly died when I was doing a mission versues Mercs that warp scrambled me.

All these Habitation Models survived my visit btw 0:-) And here is also the first picture of my new pride (my first BC which is self-made as well) :o)

Mining ops Part II: A Miner's Life

A Miner's life is not bleak but can be quite fun when in the right group. I guess that is why I am such a fan of corp mining operations.
Here a few excerpts from things happening:

Hulk of Fire!

In the peaceful reclusion tht is Solitude the roid belts don’t have to fear loneliness. To the contrary! They had to fear for their life! For the BTC mining fleet does descend upon them. Even though mining is quite peaceful it can bet stressy as well. Especially for the haulers who have to hurry to keep up with the output of the many Hulks in attendance.

Those same Hulks must have put their processing facilities in overdrive to eat away at those roids as fast as they were. One of them was actually too enthusiastic and one could see fire shooting out of his Hulk.

Mal valiantly tried to put out those flames with a blanket, but just before he would have had to evacuate the ship reprogrammed drones were able to put out the flames.
Aside from that incident the operation went quite well and the miners even found the time to reprogram a few drones to serve tea. 0:-)

Newbie Hauler

On one of those mining operations I was honored to try to be the one to haule all the ore off to the safety of the nearest station. That was quite a night! It began when our master-miner Greg called all of us (those that were willing at least) to attack the roids of Solitude. And attacked they were with a lot of ferocity so much that your humble reporter who for the first time tried to haul was hard pressed to keep up but was never able to.
Here you can see the beginning of the end of said asteroid field with the miners sitting like a dark spider in the middle building their net of destructive mining laser energies.

It was quite difficult to manoeuvre through that net safely (and that was before certain Warrior drones were ordered to attack said poor hauler to entice him to haul faster ;-) ).

Here you can see the hauler trying to exit the mining HQ as fast as possible.

It was nice that Mrex brought his Orca as well one to clear away the most hauling-heat btw.
And here you see 3 Hulks huddling conspicuously close together.. what plans might they have hatched? Perhaps we will see during the next mining mission .. ;-)



Apocrypha – Life goes on

Even though the beginnings of Apocrypha were quite disastrous – not only for the poor people of Seylinn – even with the emergence of the anomalies called wormholes life has to go on. And life did go on! One way to show that was by doing something relaxing – like mining.
Below you can see the BTC miners diligently destroying roids and looking at their new awesomeness as well as the nice new technical effects. 0:-)

Here the most valiant miners of that night. Even as they came under attack by Serpentis Frigates they did just continued their mining exercise undisturbed.

The Serpentis spying upon the miners before it got surrounded by drones.

Mining ops Part I

One of the first things I could participate in the Black Thorne Corporation were the nice mining ops. Below is the report of the first one were I could participate. It was held in early February:

The dark of space, glittering stars, softly glowing nebulae and peacefully flying roids huddling together in a belt. I do guess being in Solitude they hope they might survive the aeons. But the solitude is scattered by the arrival of the master miner of the Black Thorne: Greg.
Unafraid of those huge roids he flies really close and starts his job.

I am really happy he didn’t get crushed between those huge roids!
He isn’t left alone though for long. Others do come: One of these is a huge lumbering demon-whale of a ship to collect the remains of the first roids to fall. The mining force grows more and more and majestic ships, like the one below, unleash their barrage of destruction against the roids - all for the glory of the Black Thorne.

The fleet is steadily increasing on and on. Here you see a powerful Gallentean workforce arriving as well.

To judge the size of that ship, just take a look of the tiny can trying to eke out an existence near the huge ship.

But the true deathbringers to roids are the immense hulks the epitome of nightmares for them. Here you see two of them flying back to back defending the can resting between them.

From the bridge of this huge orca the whole op is being coordinated.


The formerly huge belt is diminishing fast - as can be seen in the background. But as the stalwart miners are not black-hearted, they do decide to leave a tiny rest of small roids alive and head for another site where they might bring destruction for roids.

It is a hidden place which was found only due to Swiss’ diligence. Some might wonder why the operation was shifted to this site. One might think it could have been to stay on the move to better hide the operation from environmentalists who might protest against this crass destruction of natural resources.

The setting sun in the background of this drone-cam picture completes this news-feed.

BTC - My new corp

After that fiasco in Caldari territory I was quite downtrodden. But luck was with me, as I found quite a nice corporation (The Black Thorne Corporation) that would have me! And I am quite happy to be there as well! It is like an industrialist corp should be!
Below my application:

>>> Burst data connection opening …
>>> Sender: Zargyl of the Sebiestor
>>> To: Black Thorne Recruitment Office
>>> Sender Code: z7786893r
>>> Transmitting data
>>> Data transmitted message opening

Dear honoured Sirs,

after reviewing datafiles from library databanks I found quite interesting hints about a corporation called Black Thorne. Further research into the matter revealed more interesting details that made me small time research student and pilot write this application to you.
Due to the fact that I am a pilot - though not yet a good one I have to admit - I was honoured to be able to study at the Republic University where engineering, industry and science were my top fields of study.
After my time with the University was up, I wanted to see more of the world outside, explore, help others and do a bit mining to help me grow. I don’t want to do this alone and found a nice corp called C.O.R.E Research Expedition with headquarters in The Forge. That was quite a small but active, and friendly corp of social and mature people. I liked it there. But then came the time of the war and they were quite aggressively trying to help the Caldari State. Anyone who could not achieve a high standing with that state had not many chances to rise there (as well as the fear of being expelled). And as I am of the Minmatar and not yet a combat pilot able to take on the higher priority targets to rise in esteem high enough and fast enough. I am now searching for a new corp who would have me.
Therefore I can emphasize with your corporation’s founding. Furthermore as a Minmatar I also do emphasize with the problems of the Gallente Federation against the likes of a certain Mr. Heth, as the Gallente Federation was the only one actively helping my beloved Minmatar Republic.
I am no combat pilot and more of an inexperienced but enthusiastic and friendly industrialist who would like to grow together with others in a friendly environment. Therefore would like to apply for membership in your corporation in the hope that soon I might be able to do my part as well in the larger picture of the universe (as well as corporate life).

Best Regards,
Zargyl of the Sebiestor

>>> Transmission closed.

Thankfully I got accepted! *jumps happily around* This now is Mallinthas my new boss:



If all Amarrians were that open-minded I am sure there would be no cause for war between the Matari and the Amarrian people. He is also a great diplomat and I would nominate (if I had that kind of influence – which I don’t have) him as an advisor to Empress Jamyl Sarum.