Power loss, and mission hub movement

I finally managed to login to EVE on Monday for 3 and a half hours, after only 10 mins logged in on Sunday. Why? Well, my house had no Power on Sunday 9am-8:30pm, with 30 mins of power 2-2:30. I did manage in that 30 mins to get my skill queue altered - but my hopes (with a day off) of a full EVE day were just that - cruelly dashed by the local utility company. This is the 3rd power cut recorded by my UPS since November of significance, and admittedly does follow a period of stability from March. It was however the longest power cut of recent times.. The good news though was the fact that during the period of power I managed to copy a load of movies to the laptop and PSP, enough to keep me going during Sunday afternoon. I also surprisingly got out on the mountain bike for a 5 mile blast (mostly uphill).

Yesterday therefore was the first proper EVEning in a while...

As promised, I moved from a Fed Navy Level 3 mission hub to a Creodron level 2 agent. I flew over all my important ships and equipment and setup for an evening missioning, when I completed around 10 missions. Standings gains were okay, but I've still not opened any level 3's up yet unfortunately - this current home IS only temporary until level 3 missions of any quality are available to me.

Once level 4 R&D missioning is done, I will be moving back to my low-sec neighborhood... and starting the invention process with a (high-sec) POS providing the BPC's for use... I've decided to setup a POS in high-sec purely as I haven't found any moons with value enough to offset the risk of moon mining in low-sec.

Sometimes grinding for standing is boring, but personally as I haven't missioned in ages, coming across "Damsels in Distress" and that permanent pest Krull is a nice change from watching my back in low-sec from gangs of real pirates. Downside is it is considerably less lucrative than low-sec exploration....

Missioning

I'm finding missioning a bit boring recently - as although when I rejoined the game a while back CCP had added a lot of missions I'd not seen before - now I have seen them all.... Good news is according to the recent press release is that from March there will be all-new missioning opportunities. So I'm going to take this as a chance to have a short break from "normal" missioning. I'll still fly back up for corporation missions (as this takes 10 mins only), just will base myself in Ours bit more for production/manufacturing, rather than usually being in mission hub, flying back for manufacturing.

Tonight, the plan is to
1/ Finish 2 outstanding missions in Sinq Liason (one that is a faction gain).
2/ Fly back to home base (Ours) to take the combat fleet back (all frigates + destroyers + battlecruisers)... One cruiser will be left, but can be picked up in due course by a final run with 2 industrials. Its amazing how much stuff you accumulate over time. Can still fly back as needed for future combat missions, but this is all aimed so my personal kit/equipment stockpile is reduced to a single station in central-ish space. Ideally want to find some scan sites in Essence, but really anywhere in Sinq Liason or Genesis is really an option also. We already scouted a potential loc down in low-sec that was very "quiet" during UK evenings
3/ Break out a scanning/salvaging/hacking/archaeolgy frigate to go search for cosmic anomolys and radar sites for the 1st time - this may involve jumping to a jump clone and roaming low-sec for a bit in a cruiser/frigate combo (with a go & get a BC if needed mentality). As my characters can both cloak, a cloak will be fitted to both ships for "scan wait" periods. Good practise for low-sec roams.

Downsides are I have a lot of personal items to do tonight in addition to above so who knows when I'll get online - Doh!

Level 2 missions

Faction grinding has got me to the point where I can run L2 +18 missions finally for the agent in the station where the coporation hanger is. This makes life easier, as can base out of the corp hanger... which is handy when you need to refit for a particular type of enemy.

Ran around 10 missions last night, grinding them for isk. I need a Battlecruiser now, so am fundraising for the cash for one - but as all loot goes to corp for the industry growth - this does take a while - especially as I'm still stockpiling salvage for rig manufacture :) Deafturrets combat skills are growing daily, and he's able to use a MWD now. Ludicrous speed is now a setting accomplished by hitting MWD button.

This weekend in Industry have managed to get Deafplasma up to point where he's now 75% ready for invention. Still got some electronics & hacking skills to go... However need to work on social/connections skills... plan is to go to the Gallente Datacentre with a stack of tags so we can instantly get some very good Gallente standing. Base refinining efficiency currently at 92.5% - should be at 100% or close by end of week.

As ever with EVE, everything takes time, so you can't rush things...

One piece of good news is the Incursus BPO is now able to come out of research tonight - that will immediately go into production (although not in Ours as the build-costs will eat into profits there). Also moving frigates = a problem until we get the 30km3 industrial..

The corp will start recruitment properly in about 2 months I expect, as then we'll need some combat pilots... Looking at my eve-maps book, I've designated 4 areas to check-out, for POS placement potential - and another few areas for mining possibilities for those in the corp who may be interested in that. Far enough away to hopefully be quiet and relatively speaking pirate free - have stations's present ideally (not essential)... and low-ish sec - but not so far from high-sec that we can't get stuff back to ours for manufacure, then out to sales hubs.

Prior to going out there, it'll require some map work to check on system activity (ie pod-kills etc), plus a cloaked scout to meet the residents. Everywhere has existing residents, so finding if they are Pie/not-pie will take some time.

I also need to check research agent locations - as we don't want to spread our wings too far. Well until we have jump-clones anyhow :)

Lesson learnt: Don't fly tired.

Last night, myself and Senx Trelligan were on a mission VERY late.

It was a multi-part storyline mission and unfrotunatly it sent him into low-sec for a combat leg - so he messaged for assistance. I had ran missions in low-sec before, but in relatively safe space. This was far from that, and well past my bedtime already at 0:30am. 14 guys in local but no gatecamp and seemingly not in space (or in scan range). Senx warped us in and we started the mission knowing we were in full danger of being scanned out. L1 and L2 of the mission were fine, we were watching our backs. We then got sloppy and stopped paying attention to our on-board scanner. Too late....
Doom Armada alliance warped in with 3 guys, and ended up podding Senx, and killing me (but my pod did make it out alive). Was impressed with 2 things... - one being their warp scram range at 27km (from what I can remember). Second was just how efficently they went about killing us. The use of Navy ammo must help them a lot with dps also...

I personally should have done a lot of things better than I did - one being using AB to fly away from the scrambler (being deadspace this may have got me out of his range)... But as this was my first PvP encounter in EVE for 9 months... I'm rusty - and being 0:45-46 at the time was very very tired too. I'm also not skilled for T2 anything, and have pathetic support skills. So basically NOT a good place to be.

Lesson learnt:

1. If missioning in low-sec pay attention to scanner... it will alert you to guys coming towards you.
2. Don't fly tired - it leads to 1/
3. Stay aligned at all times.
4. If you see bad guy on overview hit warp. Don't collect drones, don't pass go, don't get your ass handed to you on a plate. Warp.
   
5. If you are getting targetted and are scrammed and knowing you can't survive make some attempt to get out of range of the scrammer. Don't just sit there. Really. Don't.

PvP is an aim for the combat char, but it's 9-12 months off - I'm resigned to doing missions till them. But I'll definitely pay more attention in low-sec next time. So thanks for the combat lesson Doom. One day I hope to be able to be as efficient at PvP as you guys were.