21 September 2008

20080921 : The Black Hole That Is Jita on a Sunday

Why? Why do I even bother?

To tell the truth a bit of desperation has brought me to Jita on a Sunday. I'm in need of copies of my Shield Power Relay print, but with every station within four regions of me running wait times of over a week I resorted to the contracts.

A nice guy in Jita is selling five BPCs of the SPR, along with about a dozen other BPCs for a nice reasonable price so I thought, why not? It's just a short jaunt to Jita, after all?

On a Sunday.

The ticker on the log-in page says there's 32K+ people on right now. Minus the 258 in the system I just jumped out of, that should make somewhere in the neighborhood of 31,742 people in Jita.

Sounds about right.

[UPDATE] A friendly GM moved me back to Perimeter and added, " I suggest you stay away from Jita for the time being." The up-side is I'm not stuck. I'm also not able to get at the stuff I bought.

I guess I'll just go to the mall here in Perimeter.

07 September 2008

20080917 : Skills Update

Just finished Caldari Battleship V, though I'm a bit uncertain what to do with it at the moment. I embarked on it with the idea of piloting a Golem, but after reading of some of the disadvantages I'm entirely unwilling (not to mention unable) to pay the price for the ship.

Now it's on to Shield Upgrades V in 11D 7H 37M.

The next thing to train? Perhaps Heavy Interdictors which is just Propulsion Jamming V and the base ship skill (~26D 21M) to effectively pilot the ship and the Warp Disruption Field Generator. To fully jam out this plan from BattleClinic will take 28D 8H 42M or so.

Opinions?

I'm hovering around 25.53M skill points and looking for somewhere to go.

Fly safe.

05 August 2008

20080805 : Update

What have I been up to? Not much, frankly.

I'm getting around to consolidating assets at the moment. I've been bad of late in allowing things to get scattered around a small-ish group of relatively close stations. Currently I'm shuttling off only about seven jumps to grab Halve Maen 3A, my Amarran Cov-Op class Anathema. I want her a bit closer to home. I've still got Halve Maen IIG out in Stac (a Helios), but at 17 jumps through not-so-nice locales that one will stay put for a bit.

I'm tossing around the idea of joining up with the local militia (Minmatar) to give my best to the Factional War. I'm also tempted to spend some ISK and buy a battleship to give the L4s a try in my neighborhood.

Just last night I realized that I had a bit of cash piled up and far too many points with the local corporations so I invested in Political and Military connections. The skills are handy to have when negotiating rates on missions. Hence the interest in the well-fitted Battleship. Probably a Typhoon.

That's the toss-up, really. Abandon the money from missions (and the BS) and join the Militia, or turn my back on the war and concentrate on more money via the connections, the BS, and the L4 agents's offerings.

Decisions, decisions.

On the training front I'm a scant 31.8 days from Minmatar Battleship V, which is a gateway drug to Marauders. I've got to admit, though, I'm almost fonder for the Caldari version of the ship. Oh, well. I'm only about 35 days off Caldari BS V, so if I get that far it's not that much more of a journey (relatively).

I've also got to get around to Metallurgy V at some point. I think there's 18 days left on it as I bagged it partially trained. The only thing that makes me think of it was that I found the Scrapmetal Processing book in a dusty corner of a hanger out in Lustrevik.

One of these days. Maybe.

That's all for now. Nothing exciting I'm afraid.

12 July 2008

20080712.01 :: Supplemental

Today marks (I guess) the first time I mention my actual in-game persona.

Yeah. I'm Wygg.

I'm also Badlanders. And Tinkur.

Don't hate me because I'm beautiful.

20080712 :: Four Months On

I'll take a bit to scribble on this piece of paper, only to throw it into the endless ocean. I'll expect no response. No readers. I'm at peace.

Current status report:

I left MIRE in Tinkur's capable hands for a bit. After a lot of internal deliberations I was thinking of joining a corp again. I corp of substance. I decided to link up with STRIFE Mercenaries. At the time STRIFE seemed pretty stable, but due to a number of issues (seasonal timing not discounted) the corp was short-lived.

Currently I'm tripping about the 'verse in a number of ships (Drake being the top one) trying to up my standings.

To any who haven't bothered, the COSMOS agents are well worth the visit.

I was admittedly tempted to try Factional Warfare, but with my main being so short on cash it didn't make sense.

What with the exploration skills trained up I'm almost tempted to go back on the road and do a pictorial collection of what I see. Sure it's been done, but there's a lot of sites to be seen out there in the verse. If I can avoid those who would do me harm it might be worth the trip.

Opinions?

25 March 2008

20070325 :: Accounting

It's astounding what a fella can do when he puts his mind to it. I knew I had over-extended myself a while back and it took the lost of the Cheetah to put things right.

First a touch of background:

The Cheetah, named the Halve Maen* ate it as you may recall from a previous post. I had a bit of an "awwww" moment with this one as was not only my first Cov-Ops frigate, but also the first-ever rigged ship I had flown. And, to top it all off, I had built the rigs myself. She was the ship I purchased after deciding to go into Exploration. At least she went out doing what she did best.

Note: there's still no sign of the five crewmen nor the janitor who were in the hold. Anyone finding them, please feed them and drop me a line.

Anyways, I found myself in dire straits after realizing I'd let her insurance lapse. CCP really ought to come up with a better system for that. I understand the hassles of sending out emails to every client with lapsing insurance, but currently the only way you find out is if you happen to open the insurance window to insure a new ship. While it does place the bulk of the responsibility on the pilot's shoulders to keep their insurance up to date, I'm sure a system could be crafted that pops something in the neocom client-side to take a load off the server. Needless to say, all that aside, I couldn't scrape up the 12 mil for a comparable replacement.

The first thing I did was to go and fetch my Drake, Sir Walter and set about cleaning up the den of Angels I stumbled upon that cost me the Cov-Ops frigate. And then for good measure I wiped up the two other locations in-system she'd uncovered. I never could figure out what the two Asteroid Stations were about, but there were two of them, too.

All told it was three hideouts, each running about 1.3 mil a pop in bounties alone, not including the loot and salvage. Among the salvage were a few choice items that run in the 4-8 mil range. Figure with the loss of the ship (~12 mil) and three hideouts, plus just the two heavy ticket items I'm getting about what I lost in the ship. Fittings were another matter though I had been able to salvage the Cov-Ops cloak and about 45 quest probes.

After triumphantly returning to station and looking at my new-found loot a bit of buyer's remorse set in. I had been on a bit of a buying spree lately, picking up items that were nice to have, but wholly unnecessary. I sold off the Rifter, Rupture, two Mammoths, and the Tyhoon. Some items are still stuck in market limbo, but already I've raised the bank account to over 96 mil.

And that's after taking into account the purchase of a new Cov-Ops ship: the Helios. And she can lob probes with the best of them. She's not been rigged out yet, so her time's a bit off with analyzing probe data, but already she's found a few places in the neighborhood.

If anyone reads this and has any comment on the Cheetah/Buzzard/Helios/whatever the Hell the Amar fly, then please let me know!

* The Halve Maen (English: Half Moon) was the name of a Dutch East India Company yacht which sailed in what is now New York harbor in September, 1609. [Wikipedia]

24 March 2008

20080324 :: Successful Experiment #4

I got yet another round of good news today:
Great news! You were successful in producing a new Tech II blueprint!
You have a good feeling this job is perfectly suited to someone of your talents.

Blueprint details:
Blueprint Type: Tremor S Blueprint
Number of Runs: 10
Material Level: -4
Productivity Level: -4
My third success in four attempts at Invention.

Now if I can just get a handle on selling the BPCs for the correct amount of money I might just have a cottage industry to call my own.

Hurting for cash ATM. Lost the Cheetah exploring a system in Empire. I warped on top of an Angel party and they were none too pleased. Silly me had let the insurance lapse and as much as I'm embarassed to say I haven't the 12 mil to replace her right now. I've got to liquidate some assets and then re-assess. I did manage to salvage the Cov-Ops Cloak, though, which will save some ISK.