Kieron's EVE Blog

Mined a little in BWF (filled a container, and my hold...worth about 3 mil ISK). Got bored with that (I have almost 40 mil ISK, so it isn't like I need cash), so I thought I'd try out zergfleet.

I hopped in my little cruicifier, and warped to the Oij gate in BWF - into a warp bubble and about 15 hostiles, camping it! Luckily - it was an insta jump, and they couldn't get me. There was one hostile sitting 250km off the other side of the gate. Really, their setup was to trap anyone coming INTO BWF, not out of. So, I was lucky, in a way. If I had been going the other direction, they would have nailed me for sure.

So, I made my way to EU HQ, and outfitted a tackler. Zergfleet only had about 6 people willing to fight, so I didn't get to do anything.

I tried to figure out how to run a mission, but gave up.

Some bad dude in a battleship (BS) was camping the space station I stay in (called "the Pill").

I saw him when I undocked with my medium strip miner, so I immediately docked again to get my bearings.

I undocked again, and set my warp point to 1000km away, straight ahead (so it wouldn't take me time to align). As soon as I undocked, he locked me and started to pummel me. He hit me about 10 times before I was able to enter warp - one more hit and I think I would have been toast.

I still have a perfect record - I've never lost a mining ship to a player.

I was still able to mine about 600K ISK, and instadock back into the Pill. This time there were about 4 hostiles camping it.

Big news - our alliance is disbanding! This makes for a bit of a shake-up in the solar system I've called home over the past couple months, since it is kinda up for grabs.

We want a corporation called "Storm Front" to have it, and there are a couple "ebil" corps who are fighting against them to keep them from having it.

The other "experiment" I wrote about awhile back had its first success last night. Well, we'll see if it is really a success or not - it could be.

Mined in BWF last night for about 45 min. All my crokite is now being purchased for about 7K/unit (which is better than the previous price of 6K/unit).

For the second time, one of my "alliance mates" convoed me out of the blue to warn me/curse me about mining under such hostile conditions. So, I decided to write a "form letter" to send back in the future (since I don't have time to write so nicely when I'm trying to ninja-mine). This form letter was written during EVE downtime. :-)

=====================

Thanks for being concerned about my welfare while mining while hostiles are in BWF.

As you know, hostiles are often in BWF, and I have chosen NOT to let that deter me. Although I am still learning to be a ninja-miner, I am quite careful: Over the past few months, I've mined over 40 mil ISK in BWF and never lost a ship or pod to another player.

This has allowed me to contribute to the "war effort" via direct gifts of ISK for alliance ship replacement and group mining (not to mention joining PvP ops when BWF is too hot even for me).

Anyway, I really do appreciate the heads-up re: the danger in BWF.

Good hunting, and let me know if I can help you with anything!

Strip mined/hauled for a couple hours this evening in my medium strip miner. I also bought about 5 haulers (Bestowers) for 550K each (don't know how good a deal that was, but since they tend to get blown up every once in awhile while I'm racing for a can...).

I made about 6Mil (I think).

Our alliance has been war-decced by a few pirate corps. Luckily? they are pretty small, and I'm looking forward to joining in some PvP ops...maybe tonight.

Got my training up for the medium-sized strip miner. It can hold TWO stip-mining modules, so it should double my mining rate.

The only problem is, that I had to buy it in Jita (about 7 jumps from my main hang-out, BWF). And the (star)gate to BWF was being camped by about 5 hostiles, so I was afraid to bring it home. It's so slow, they might be able to kill it b4 I could warp away. It goes like 100mps vs. a shuttle at 600mps or my tackler at 1200mps.

So, it's just sitting in the hanger, waiting for the bad guys to leave.

It's a little odd that with about 130 members of our alliance logged in this weekend, and with only about 10 hostiles in local (in the local system), we seemed to have our hands tied, and couldn't do anything. It's somewhat embarassing, really. I'm afraid that the sharks will smell blood if we can't show that we can defend "our" system.

Been listening to some EVE podcasts. There's a new one at www.deadspaceradio.com.

Last night I bought a strip miner, and tested it out. It really didn't seem THAT much faster than my other miner, but I wasn't mining Crokite, which is what I'm familiar with, so it was hard to tell.

I was pretty scared I was going to be killed - the barge costs about 2mil ISK, and the mining module about 2mil. I was worried that someone would kill me simply for the value of the mining module, so I hung out in secure space (where there isn't any Crokite).

Anyway, on alliance chat I saw they were forming up a mining op, so I got on TS and joined them. It was amazing to see about 10 miners and two haulers stipping a belt. We were going after every asteroid until it was gone. It was nice and secure, since some of them were mining using battleships.

It'll be interesting to see what my cut of the profits will be. 10% will go to the corp/alliance.

To be a good hauler, I'll really need to get a tractor beam. I think it would be fun next time to try hauling.

Written Friday, 6/30:

I tried mining last night, but all the belts were full of rats, and no one
was ratting, so I joined a gate camp. This was only the second time I've
been involved in a gate camp.

I was using my little frigate, fitted with a tackling setup. I was told to
orbit the gate at 15 clicks, which is odd, since the first gatecamp I did I
was told to orbit at 1 click.

No hostiles came through the gate, so it wasn't very exciting.I did get to
shoot at some rats that showed up, and get most of their loot (and I got the
bounties - which I'm not sure if it was shared with the rest of the gang at
the gate camp, or if I killed them.).

Our alliance is expecting an attack this weekend.

7/4: No attack occurred. Apparently our "show of force" scared them away!

I've decided to split the blogging of my EVE playing from my personal life (to better serve both of you). At some point, I'll move the posts from my personal blog to this one as well.

If you've been reading my personal blog, the first things you'll notice is that THIS blog is black and white. That's so that it can easily be read from within EVE.

Last night I finished the training for my strip miner...now I've got to test it out. It only goes like 40 mps (vs. my other miner, which goes like 350 mps)...in other words, it'll seem like a SLUG!

I've also setup an "ALT" (a different character - or "toon") to try out a secret experiment. I can't tell you what it is, since I want the two toons to be completely separate.