[VIDEO] Black Ops Providence

And here we are. Like I said earlier, Blops don't make very exciting material to watch, it are just ganking with hardly any movement, but here we go:

Black Ops Part 5 (THE DOWNFALL)

This weekend had its ups and its down. Its laugh and its cry. Thankfully, mostly laughs.

When we started Blopsing in Providence last November, kills were up for grasps, we were roaming the systems and pockets uncontrolled, no intervening, no counter-gangs or counter-drops. I think this was due the Halloween-war in that time, that the CVA and its allies simply couldn’t be bothered forming fleets. I may be wrong here, I don’t know.

Either way, things have changed since November. Most constellation entries and exits are being watched by gatecamps, mostly Interceptors - a god damn load of Interceptors.

Friday didn’t go so well. We killed an Abaddon-battleship but after that we lost two Cyno Tech-3’s under 30 minutes to gatecamps... So we kinda gave up on Blops for that evening. We decided to grab some Tech-1 Frigates and roam Minmatar FW lowsec for the next hour. We lost some Frigs, and we killed some Frigs and Dessies. Fun was had.

RAINBOW KESTREL FTW

Saturday was better. We got our Loki’s back set sail for Providence again. But this time we took a slightly different approach. From our normal Lowsec base we can only cover the north half of Providence, so we decided to go deep and set up a midcyno point in Catch, an adjunct Region that would cover the entire Providence. And with great success. The southeren pockets are much lesser watched by defense fleets and alike, and we didn’t run in any trouble. Our Blops sank six Battleships, a Battlecruiser and an Exhumer, and to top it off a Tengu and a Golem. Not a bad catch for the evening at all.

We decided to keep our alts in Providence and return tomorrow.

Sunday was rather interesting.

About an hour after downtime we returned to our Midpoint and continued hunting. The first system I got into we got a Rattlesnake and a Dominix sitting together in an Anom. There was an amusing detail here because when I jumped into system they were reporting me in local.

Brikulis > ze Underking ship type??

Halcona Motsu > nv

oskars > meh just kill him if he is causing any problem

A minute later he lost his Dominix and his Rattlesnake.

They spend a couple of minutes spamming Defense Fleets in local and getting Interceptors together and what not, but with no avail, except for the common local bragging and flaming.

Later on we got another Battleship kill, but after this one our little adventure took a turn for the worse.

Karashur had found yet another Dominix sitting in an Anom, like any other Dominix we would hotdrop. Except this one had a Cyno fitted. Not much to comment here; Cyno went up, local spiked, Panthers got bubbled. I had about 3 seconds left on my Micro Jump Drive cycle to finish and I would have gotten out, but just then I got shortpointed and got stuck. Two Panthers and two Pods down.

Nevertheless, we had a great weekend and we will surely return again. I’m not really bothered about the Panther loss, the 1.5B ISK loss is rather slim compared to the damage it has caused over the months and years.

Onwards to the next Executive Outcome campaign!

PS, I got most kills (and loss) Frapsed this time and I’ll try to get a new video together. Unfortunately, Blops don’t make very exciting video material, but we shall see.  

Black Ops Part 4

We’ve been deployed in Fountain for a few weeks now, so I haven’t done any Black Ops pew pew since then. I only do Blops in between campaign ‘downtimes’ as we call them. I still operate in Providence, which is a fair distance from our home in Cloud Ring, so we use jumpclones to get around.

The last Blops post was about the risks and chances of Blopsing, both in groups and solo. Interesting enough, a few days after that post we got some interesting encounters. I’m not going to summarise every kill, but there are 3 engagements I’d like to highlight.

I had Vargur and Dominix on scan in the same anomaly. Local was considerable high with 20 guys. I report them on TS and my mind starts spinning making all sorts of calculations and mostly assumptions. To warp to the anomaly anyway to at least have a looksie at them: Dominix and Vargur (in Bastion mode!) are 10km from me, not moving. The call is made and Cyno goes up. Dominix primaried and dies quick enough. I decided to shoot the Dominix first because I hoped the Vargur would disable his Bastion mode meanwhile (in order to run!), and having Bastion disabled would cripple his tank enormous. And this is exactly what happens, they both died: http://judasii.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=22172148

Now if you look at the killreport very closely, you see that my Loki died five minutes after the Vargur’s pod! That was due a terrible mistake on my own side. When the Battleships died, local already went up and Interceptors appeared on D-scan. We were too far from the wrecks to burn around and grab it, so we just warped off with all haste. I kept the anomaly on D-scan to see what would happen to it because I really wanted the loot after checking the killmails.

All was clear for a few minutes so I decided to be bold and warp the Loki back and grab it. Just that very moment an Inty warped in and got me… Rotten bit of luck. Funny enough, the Blops also got on the Loki lossmail due our Smartbombs getting the Battleship pods. I’m not sure whether that’s a good or bad thing.

Two days later we get a second chance: Bastion Golem running an anomaly. This guy was TOUGH. With two Panthers we were punching 2k DPS in his face and he didn’t flint. He was clever enough to keep his Bastion up and I reckon he was overheating everything he had because he was tanking like a mother! We kept hammering for a few minutes (which is waaay too long for a Blops drop) and eventually he turned off his Bastion. His tank then finally collapsed and went down: http://judasii.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=22219985

By then local spiked, Interceptors and Cruisers were on short scan and again we had to run and leave the loot. This time I didn’t go back. Lesson learned, but missing Marauder loot two times in a row kinda sucks.

My wingmen had already jumpcloned back home to Cloud Ring because we were going on the new campaign the next day, but I decided to stay in Providence that last evening. And I’m glad I did because I managed to solo a Megathron.

He was fitted to boot spending 6 lowslots on his armor tank! Unfortunately for him, he didn’t plug his Explosives hole, nor extra buffer. So my Fusion charges ripped through that rather quickly... http://judasii.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=22232879

Later I checked the recorded combatlog. The time spend from uncloaking the Loki for tackle, until warping the Panther and Loki out and cloaking up again took less than 60 seconds. If you want hit-and-run skirmishes, I don’t think it gets much better than this. The wreck was looted and I was gone again by the time people had time to read their intel! I kept the Loki cloaked in local for my own amusement as I saw swarms of Interceptors jumping in and out of local and warping around anomalies.

OBVIOUSLY I didn’t Frapsed any of this, not even a single screenshot. :-(

Video: Let's not Play: EVE Online

Oh yeah, made this the other day. Figured I'd throw it in here. Have fun. o7

Pics or it didn't happen!

And now for something completely different. This post is going to be rather non-EVE related. As a matter of fact, it won’t be EVE related at all.

Last two week I’ve been very excited about my (still nameless…) new fan fiction. (See previous blog post!)

One of the first comments on my previous story was that it would be great to see this visualised. People were throwing in ideas about making videos, and illustrations and what not. Great!

But, well, videos is a tough one. I make EVE videos, but they’re PvP recordings. The fan fic story mostly involves characters, and not so much EVE ships. I can make a video of a dude walking up and down the balcony in the Captain’s Quarters, but that, needless to say, won’t do.

Now illustrations is a different thing. People may not know but I’ve got some experience with graphical designing like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, but another thing (even less people know this!) is that I also do oil painting. So to cut things short; I’m going to paint illustrations for my next fan fic.

Here is one example. Without too much spoilery; here’s a scene with 2 characters sitting at a booth table of a smoky lounge bar making all sorts of dubious deals, as one of them hands of a Neopad to the other. What I tried to achieve here is the light of the Neopad shining in their faces in the middle of a dark room.

I started with this little sketch I made while at work, literally a 30 seconds thing. All it does is make a concept of the visualisation of my imagination. It gives it a basic object layout of the canvas.

Secondly, put those shapes on the canvas, still very basic, throw some colours in there that I want to use and set the mood.

Add some stuff.

And some more. And result.

Hope you like it!

Fan Fiction

To whom it may concern: fan fiction.

A relative short update, but I felt I wanted to share something with you readers. (Do I have readers?) Today I am going to write to you, for you to read, about things that I've written and am writing to you that you can read. (!)

As you've figured, I like to write about stuff, all sorts of stuff. Especially EVE-related. I've got this blog, I write After Action Reports for PvP fleets, I did short bits on my Corp forums, etc. Among all that I have written a bit of EVE-related fan fiction last year. I never actually done a fan fiction before that but I just wanted to try it out, and so I did.

My first attempt at fan fiction, which I called, "Fan Fiction: A First Attempt", didn't took a lot of readers. This was because I only posted it on our own internal Corp forums with a handful of viewers. I published it in a series of eight parts, in total a mere 5.300 words, spread over a duration of five months. But when I wrote the first part I didn't think I would develop that particular bit into a longer ongoing story. In fact, it doesn't really fit the rest of it, as it has a complete different style.
The fan fic starts out as a short story about a Black Ops pilot that Smartbombs a Frigate, and is written in an almost comical, maybe childish way. Then I decided to keep the character and write a longer story after it, but in a complete different fashion. The story develops into a more sinister and philosophical thing. The character gets involved with other mysterious personas and ends up in exciting fleet fights. So, I'm not very happy with the first part at all, but it does give a quick introduction to the rest of it. (And I do quite like the rest of it if I may be so bold.)

If you're interested in reading it, I finally published it on my Google Drive, which you can view right here. Please bear with me; it is my first story ever, and that aside English isn't my native language!

Onward!!
As of last week I started writing a new fan fiction, nearly three months after my last bit. And this thing is going to be huge compared to my first attempt. I've just started writing the yet nameless story; finished the introduction and the first 'scene' and I'm already passed 2.400 words. I'm not going to reveal a whole lot about it yet but it has something to do with this dear fellow:

The story won't be exactly game-style related, though. It merely uses the EVE universe as a decor or scenery. My first fan fiction had a few combat scenarios in it that could be imaged as the in-game combat, but my new story will be more about situational details, while being rather abstract about combat. I think ... as I said, I just starting writing that one.

I've not decided yet how exactly I will publish it. Maybe spread in different parts like the first one, or just write the entire thing and then bomb it in one go. We'll see. I hope you're interested in all this, and if you are, try Fan Fiction: A First Attempt and let me know what you think of it. :-)