Maxi Foyle, Space Relapser

Something was missing.

It was almost a year ago to the day that Maxi Foyle, Space Pioneer of Aerodynamics, quit EVE Online.  Maxi entered EVE Online’s sandbox universe at the beginning of last year with a mission, a dream of galactic conquest, adventure and money making.  In the space of 2 short months he found his feet, found a Corporation, mined and hauled his way into money, bagged his first kill, lost his Corporation only to witness the birth of a new, tighter, friendlier one, grew a small following of EVE veterans on this very blog and then…. and then…. he bottled it.  For every goal achieved 3 more sprung up in its place.  With each discovery came the glimpse of yet another, ever further out of reach.  Maxi Foyle looked into the infinite abyss of EVE Online and was terrified by what he saw.  The time it would require to do everything he wanted to do, the emotional toil of working with and against other human players, the cost and the regular periods of bum-numbing boredom were too much.  I couldn’t afford the time or the money to get any more embroiled in my undeniable love of EVE Online.  Maxi quit.  I quit.

I went on to pastures new.  Played lots of the other unique and wonderful PC games that came out in 2011 and before.  I got lost in Skyrim‘s mountains, caught up in Human Revolution‘s conspiracies, rebuilt Bastion‘s bastion and rekindled a love for point and click adventures with Gemini Rue and the Blackwell games.  I wrote about them too.  I wrote so much on my blog that some of my writing spilt over onto popular gaming website Beefjack.com.  My gaming life was good.

But something was missing.

At first I thought I just missed MMOs.  The human interaction, the character building and the complex systems to wrap your head around make them so much deeper than your average singleplayer game.  I tried Lord of the Rings Online, but it was too twee, grinding and old fashioned.  I tried Star Wars: The Old Republic, the new MMO in town.  It was a pleasant, enjoyable RPG to play through but the human side was lacking.  Groups and guilds were hard to come by.  Beyond the well written storylines there was no exploring to be done, no accidental discoveries or true adventure to be had.

I thought it may be a good dose of Sci-Fi that I was missing so delved into Alistair Reynold’s excellent novels but their talk of starships, technology and galactic politics only made things worse.

Something was definitely missing.

News stories popped up from time to time of goings on in EVE Online.  I read with curiosity about game updates (both popular and unpopular), player riots, an exodus of subscribers and the foolish words and subsequent banning of an influential Corporation leader.  They felt like news stories from a country I used to live in, gossip from a job I used to do, not a game I used to play.  I found myself  looking up fellow EVE bloggers at quiet times to catch up with their ongoing travails in EVE.  E-mails would notify me someone had commented on this very blog from time to time, dragging me back to approve the comment and have a little reread of my time.  ”Sad that you quit”, one said “But I understand it oh so well, I quit too.”.  Yeah, it was the right thing to do, I’d think, the game was a bit boring, I’m happier playing Battlefield 3 I’m sure.  

But something was still missing.

Then 3 things happened:

One quiet day, without knowing how I got there, I found myself checking the subscription price for EVE Online and read with intrigue that the price for UK residents like myself was coming down.  I chose not to subscribe….yet, but downloaded the game client anyway!  Some part of my brain just took over.  What’s the harm, it said, just download it you don’t have to play it.  And so EVE Online was once again on my hard drive, hidden in the start menu folder marked ‘Games’.  Watching and waiting.

Then a good friend asked me what the best game ever was.  A ridiculous question but one I couldn’t help trying to answer.  ”Deus Ex because of the freedom to complete each task and the way it reacts to your actions, no wait, Skyrim because it’s such a well made open-world, oh but Grim Fandango made me cry and….”.  I reeled off a list of 5 or 10 games I couldn’t choose between but to my surprise in amongst this rambling list was EVE Online.  ”No other game mimics real life so well.  The player led economy, the politics of working for and dealing with real people.  The cunning, treachery and nastiness that AI just can’t recreate.  This is a game where a real person, with huge influence within the game, can be voted into a position of  power in the design of the actual game in real life through votes made by in game characters played by real life forumites.  He can then lose that real life power by hounding a suicidal player in a real life meeting of game players that has impacted on his in game persona being banned from the game with fallout across the game and the real world through this and his reaction.”  I think my friend’s reaction was “Huh!?”, but the point remained.  EVE had found quite a profound place in my gaming life.  I held it on a pedestal even though I kept telling myself I didn’t want to play it.

Then the third and final thing happened: Another comment on this blog.  I couldn’t believe people were still reading it and rushed to see what vile criticism/pleasant feedback they’d left.

It was neither.

It was the same mysterious reader who’d previously commented to say they had quit EVE too.  Only this time they had a different message:  ”BTW, I have resubbed to EVE again and have joined RPS Holdings.  Join us if you ever get interested again.”

This was too much.  I knew what had been missing, but had been afraid to admit it.  I had to go back.  I had to return to EVE Online.

So, here I am.  Standing before the vast cryostasis tank that holds Maxi Foyle, SpaceCapsuleer, drone expert, bumbling PvPer, nervous hauler, violent thug with a science degree and genetic roots in a ginger minority, in a deep cryogenic sleep.  It’s been a year of earth time since I stepped foot in EVE Online.  Veritable millennia for Maxi in game time.  Rise and shine, Mr. Foyle.  Rise and Shine.  Time to wake up and smell the space coffee.

Computer!  Defrost Maxi Foyle.

BEEP!  Error!  Out of credits!  Please purchase PLEX time to reanimate your corpse.

Oh bollocks, forgot about that!  Ok, ok, I’ll be right back… see you next post

Space Jaunting: Part 2 – Last Day – Resigned to failure

Hello, you join us today on a sad day in Maxi Foyle’s EVE life.  It’s a sad day because it is his last day with his current corporation and perhaps his last day in EVE.  You see, Maxi Foyle, Space Resigner, feels he’s reached the Event Horizon of EVE Online.  The new gameplay mechanics, the exploration and adventure, the excitement of working with (and against) other humans all had Maxi tumbling into the EVE online lifestyle in a big way, but recently things have become a bit stale.  The time required to learn each new skill, to get each new ship, to do each new money making industrial enterprise gets longer and longer, and more and more expensive.  Over the last week or so Maxi’s started feeling he has seen all he’s likely to see from EVE for the near future, and with each goal he acheives each new goal seems further and further to grind before reaching it.

What does this all mean?  I’m afraid it means, for the time being, there will be no more Space Jaunting blog.  The time and effort required to play this amazing, deep, all encompassing game is more than I can afford at the moment.  So rather than force my way through and write less and less exciting posts I’m going to draw a line under it here and keep this blog as it was intended: as a slightly silly journey of a total beginner in the world of EVE online.

It’s been incredibly fun, certainly some of my all-time favourite gaming moments have occured in this game.  The stupid thing about me saying it’s getting less fun is that I’m forgetting some of the greatest escapades have happened when I least expected them to.  So often I’ve signed on just for 10 minutes to say hello to the corp and update my skill queue, and then 3 hours and a PvP skirmish, or a stupidly difficult mission later I’m only just logging off.  If I get the time back I will continue with EVE and I will make sure you all hear about Maxi Foyle’s new adventures, but for now this is goodbye.

o7 fly safe

P.S. I’ve enjoyed writing about EVE so much I’m going to keep posting about other games in the form of reviews and articles over on http://asreviewedelsewhereontheinternet.wordpress.com/, including a proper review of EVE Online very soon, so please check it out if you enjoyed this.

Space Jaunting: Part 2 – Day 1 – A Private Individual

Hello.  As I mentioned Maxi was invited to test his mettle at PvP last week as the final part of his Basic Training for his (now previous) Corp.  Maxi was told to fit out a Tristan with a particular fitting set-up and warp out to a deserted asteroid field in the Mehatoor system for some Karate Kid style training and sparring.

The trick, it seems, to 1 on 1, or ‘solo’, PvP is all about keeping your enemy where you want them, and making sure you’re not where they want you.  This is achieved through the use of Warp Disruptors and Stasis Webifiers which, once you’re in range to use them, lock down the target’s warp drive so they can’t warp away, and then slows their speed making it a lot easier to hit them and keep them within the range of your warp disruptor.

So the first part of Maxi’s training was to practice warping in to the asteroid belt, locking his trainer and getting the warp disruptor and stasis webifier on and keeping them on him whilst he wriggled and squirmed and tried every way he could to escape the range of the warp disruptor and warp out.  The lesson Maxi learnt?  That his trainer can indeed escape his warp disruptor and get out, but this was only achievable because his trainer was using a Micro-Warp drive to speed away from Maxi.  Now a Micro-Warp drive uses up a ship’s capacitor incredibly quickly so the good news is an enemy target using one to get away isn’t going to be able to waste capacitor energy on firing weapons, plus if they don’t get away quickly enough they may empty their capacitor altogether before they’re out of range and be stranded powerless to resist your attack.  And of course not everybody has a micro warp drive fitted.  Lesson 1 complete!

Lesson 2 was the tables reversed: Maxi’s trainer would warp in from elsewhere in the system and lock down Maxi’s systems, Maxi then had to try to escape the disruptor’s range and warp out.  This was great fun, and it took a few goes before Maxi worked out how to do it.  Again Maxi’s trainer had a faster ship thanks to the Micro-Warp drive so Maxi just couldn’t get far enough away from him to lose the warp disruption, but as mentioned the Micro-Warp drive ate up his trainer’s capacitor which when empty could no longer sustain the Warp Disruptor.  The trick, Maxi learned, was to keep an eye on the overview which marks little symbols for any effects players are having on you, i.e. Warp Disrupting.  As soon as the disruption symbol disappeared from the overview Maxi slammed warp and shot out before his trainer’s capacitor was back.  It was thrilling and he wasn’t even shooting at me.  Lesson 2 complete!

Lesson 3: As his trainer explained ”I’m going to warp in and start shooting, I’ll try to stop when I reach your hull but apologies if I blow you up!  Now try to pop me before I do.”  And with that Maxi was expected to take part in his first PvP.  His trainer warped in in an Atron, an amazingly crap frigate, but he was far more skilled in PvP skills, it was going to be a close match.  It’s fair to say I can now see the appeal of PvP combat.  As with much of the game you’re not really involved in the action, in fact your overview will be set up to look something like this:

That shot’s from a mission not actually of the PvP battle, I was too involved to take photos, but that is the vantage point you watch it from, with an eye on the distance circles to make sure your target’s in the right range for your weapons.  After locking and webbing his target there was little Maxi could do beyond hitting ‘orbit at 630m’ and ‘fire missiles’ and ‘fire guns’ and watch with biting nails as the two sets of shields, armours and hulls slowly lit red as we blasted chunks out of each other.  It’s brilliant, exciting and nerve-racking, the only thing I can compare it to is watching a penalty shoot out involving a much loved football team.  It’s unlike combat in other games because it’s taken so long to get to this point: Weeks of skill training, millions of ISK invested in the ship and loadout, all boiling down to 30 seconds of tension, fear and then…

Elation as the trainer’s ship exploded!  It happened just as Maxi’s hull had been breached, it was that close.  What a rush!  I can see why people spend their whole EVE lives skulking around looking for fights now.  After gathering up his trainer’s lost loot and handing it back at the nearest station, training was complete.  Maxi was rewarded the rank of Private in the corporation, little knowing that days later the corporation would be no more.

So Maxi now has one kill on his killsheet, but it would be unfair to claim that when his opponent would have easily bested him if he hadn’t chosen such a useless frigate.  I think we might have to add another goal to Maxi’s list:

7. Get some proper PvP kills on his killsheet

In fact these goals are getting all over the place, I feel it might be time to review them and see where we are and where we want to be by the end of Part 2.

Until next time, fly safe o7

Space Jaunting: Part 1 – Final Day – Political Incorrectness

Hi.  Welcome back to the ‘new look’ Space Jaunting blog.  I finally clicked on the ‘appearance’ button and took the chance to spacify everything a bit.  Hope you like it?  We’ve been gone for a while, apologies about that, but Maxi Foyle has been gagged by a Super-Space-Injunction from revealing any of the following information until this point.  (That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it!)

Basically there’s been a bit of corporation politics going on over the last week or so, and it would have been very foolish of Maxi to divulge his thoughts and actions during that period on a blog that all his corpmates could easily view.  The long, short and round of it is that Maxi Foyle is no longer a member of the LPT corporation who took him in in his first week of EVE playing.  Sad as that sounds he has instead jumped ship to a new corp that contains the majority of his best mates from the previous corp, and it seems a generally much better corp to be a part of.  How?  Why?  What?  Let me explain.

I’m going to tell a story now, and whilst it is Maxi’s understanding of events surrounding his corp’s recent collapse it is very much a story told with the story in mind, so it’s true to the best of his knowledge but it involves some assumptions about people’s motives which may be more evil and malicious than they really were, but they make for a better story so that’s what we’re going with.

We’re going to tell the story of a player, we’ll call him Dil, who was CEO of the LPT corporation that had been running for quite a long time, it had a tight group of lieutenants adept at mining, PvPing and missioning.  It had recently recovered from an alliance war which had left it battered and bruised and it was looking to consolidate and rebuild by getting new players in to build its numbers and use them to build a POS from which to launch its future operations.  And so Dil’s lieutenants were sent out into the galaxy to gather as many new corp members as possible, no requirements were stipulated, new players, experienced players, everyone was welcome in.  Dil had a plan to exploit these new recruits, and the trick was to keep even his closest lieutenants out of the loop, so they were all off praising the worth of the corp to anyone who would listen, genuinely believing their own words, and recruiting tens of people over the course of a few weeks.  It was during that time that the titular Maxi Foyle, Space Crumpet, was recruited to their militaristic cause and was quickly involved in the training schedule and mining operations, as we’ve discussed at length in previous posts.

Something I didn’t really mention in previous posts was the payment structure for the mining operations.  It was fairly, err, random.  After Maxi’s first op he was offered payment in the form of a Retriever, however having already got one himself he asked for cash instead and sure enough 5 million ISK was deposited there and then by the corp’s mining officer.  Future payments were promised in a similar way and Maxi merrily continued going to mining ops and not really thinking about it when a couple of ops came and went without payment, and didn’t pay much more attention when some of his fellow miners started questioning how it was worked out who got paid what and when we were going to get paid.  He just carried on oblivious to the vague and changing answers and it was only after a couple of private conversations a week ago that he started to smell a rat.  The word from the top was we had an order to fill, and until we got all the ore needed to fill the order the corp wasn’t going to get paid, and so the miners weren’t going to get paid until then either.  About a week ago it became apparent that wasn’t strictly true, and a few days later the corp was all but disbanded.

Of course, what had happened was Maxi had fallen for the oldest EVE trick in the book:  Working for free under the lie that “we could pay you a bit now, but if we crack on we could all get paid a lot more money in the future” when in fact, the CEO had no intention of paying anyone at all.  Even the mining officer, a long term lieutenant in the corp who had known the CEO for months, believed the lie and had made the few payments we had seen out of his own pocket, awaiting the big pay cheque from the CEO at a later date.

Last weekend, whilst Maxi was offline, a couple of his fellow corp members twigged what was going on and Renge, Maxi’s recruiter, trainer, and all time EVE role-model used his powers as a corp lieutenant to access and empty the corp’s (limited) bank accounts to spread the ISK out amongst the unpaid miners (it didn’t nearly cover the amount of ore we had mined but it was better than nothing) and then promptly resigned.  As soon as Maxi logged on the following day and found out what happened he resigned too but was immediately able to join a new corp a defecting LPT member had created and that was quickly swelling in rank due to the number of old corp mates jumping ship from LPT.

And so Maxi Foyle, Space Scam Victim, is no longer a member of LPT corporation, but instead is now part of LP Manufacturing ltd.  A new, tight-knit, slightly industry focused corporation who are trying their very best to prove they’re not trying to scam everyone like the last corp!  We have voice chats and everything!  It’s quite exciting.

What has Maxi been up to for his new corp then?  So far mostly moving house to the new headquarters, doing a bit of mining (no operations yet to speak of, but the corp conveniently buys ore from you directly if you have mined some, which benefits everyone), finally setting up a PI planet, with another coming this afternoon, and joining in some more level 4 missions, this time in Crimples which is still massively underpowered to take on level 4 missions, but with some help from his fleetmates he’s not had too many scrapes and been able to earn loads more ISK from the mission rewards and dropped loot than his standard level 1 missions provide.

That’s it for this post, otherwise it’s going to go on forever, but there are a couple of things I want to tell you about from the last week so expect more posts very soon.  First up will be how Maxi got in that PvP he mentioned at the end of the last post.

One final note is regarding the totally non-sensical titles I’ve been using for the blog.  I’m sure many (myself included) have wondered what ‘Part 1′ is meant to entail, and why I keep calling the posts ‘day something’ when in fact whole weeks may have passed between ‘day 9′ and ‘day 10′, for instance.  I don’t know either!  But it’s the system I’ve accidently set up now, so I’m going to stick with it.  With that in mind I think the moving to Maxi’s second corporation in his EVE life is a big enough event to warrant bringing an end to this opening ‘Part 1′ segment, and start the next post as Part 2, in which Maxi is no longer such a newcomer to these parts, has a steady flow of ISK coming in well in advance of his initial aim, and maybe even makes his way into null-sec space.

It’s good to be back.  Fly safe o7

Space Jaunting: Part 1 – Day 10 – Dagan Come and Me Wanna go Home

Welcome to another installment of Maxi Foyle’s adventures in space.  Today I’m going to tell you about a meeting.  A great meeting.  A meeting of 2 minds, 2 towering characters, 2 sentinals of human spirit.  One is a genius, one an expensively educated idiot.  One is a twisted, bitter, evil old man bent on galactic domination, one a naive young idiot also bent on galactic domination.  One is broken and corrupted by the loss of family and friends, one hell bent on revenge for his 2 lost, stupidly named, frigates.  The 2 men in question?  Dagan (no surname), Epic Arc Mission Boss, and Maxi Foyle, Space Deodorant Dodger.

In case you don’t know who Dagan is (how can you not know who Dagan is!) he’s the final mission target in the epic arc, the collection of story based combat missions Maxi has been dipping in and out of over the few weeks.  It’s designed to ease newer players into the world of EVE PvE (Player vs Environment) combat but the easing wasn’t really working for Maxi, as he lost not only the Inquisitive Badger during his forays for the Sisters of EVE (the group giving out the missions) he also lost the Inquisitive Badger II!

Having gained a cruiser in the shape of Crimples, though, Maxi felt ready to head back to Arnon and pick up the trail where he’d left it.  And let me tell you it is a hell of a lot easier in a cruiser.  In fact in the last 2 evenings Maxi completed the second half of the 50 missions without so much as a damaged hull, or a sweating brow.

Anyway, back to this meeting.  The missions famously culminate with the capture of Dagan.  Once you’ve blown up his ship and scooped him into your cargo bay you can see the following message when you view his details:

Dagan lies imprisoned within his pod. Distorted through the glass, you can see impressive, chiseled features contorted in impotent rage. He knows he is at your mercy, and has every reason to fear the “mercy” of a capsule pilot.

Ha!  They obviously didn’t bank on Maxi Foyle, Space Human Rights Campaigner, to be that capsule pilot.  The actual meeting between Maxi and Dagan went something like this:

Dagan had been taken from his capsule and placed in laser restraints on a chair in the middle of the Vexor’s enormous cargo hold.  A small metal table stood in front of him, and across from him a metal door opened with a woosh.  A skinny, ginger Mohicaned man, (or was it a boy?), entered carrying 2 small cylindrical containers, one in each hand.  Both containers had some sort of vapour rising and swirling from them, and one had some sort of slender, twisting probe poking out the top.  What is this devilry he brings?  Acid?  Poison?  Poisonous acid?

Maxi made his way across the cargo hold floor and plonked both cups of tea on the metal table and slid the one with a straw in it over to Dagan.

“Hi”

“What is that, acid?” Dagan spat as he leaned forward, as far as the restraints would let him, to peer at the container’s steaming contents.

“Err, no, it’s a cup of tea.  Space tea.  Don’t you like tea?”

“Pah!  A likely story!  You think you can poison me, Dagan, with some false words and a cup full of acid?  What’s that twirly probe thing for?  To inject it to my heart!?”

“No!  That’s a straw.  So you can drink it with your hands tied.  Look if you don’t want it just leave it there!  I’m not going to force it on you”

“Oh, I get it, you want to give me gifts and be all friendly-like so that I let my guard down before you…have your wicked way with me?” Dagan said the last part with what almost seemed like a grin.

Maxi shuddered, “Nope, I just thought you’d be bored down here on your own so I came to have a chat before I hand you over.”

“Hand me over?  You mean you aren’t going to murder me in the most gruesome fashion and eject my sodomised carcass into deep space?” Dagan sounded almost horrified.

“God no!  I’m not into all….that!  I’m not even going to kill you!  I’m just going to hand you to the authorities and collect my million ISK reward.”

“The authorities?” Dagan hissed “What do they want me for this time?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I tuned out after about the 10th mission.  It all got a bit samey, go here, meet this person, shoot that, now go here….  I think it was something to do with drones?”

“Oh!  The drones thing…yes.  I reconfigured an ancient army of dormant defence drones to wreak havoc across the …”

Maxi interrupted, “Yeah, alright, I don’t want your life story.  I like drones too, you know?  I’ve nearly trained enough drones skill to pilot 5 at a time!  And I’ve got this amazing new drone boat, Crimples, it’s this beautiful Vexor I’ve kitted out with…”

“Yes, yes, I saw it.” Dagan sighed, “You used it to blow me up remember?”

“Oh yeah.  Huh.” There was an awkward silence for a moment.

“So why do the authorities want me alive?  Wouldn’t they rather you tortured me to death and threw me to the space hounds?” the pleasure in Dagan’s voice when describing this scenario was really starting to creep Maxi out.

“I don’t know!  They probably need you alive so they can put you back in your ship for the next player to complete the epic arc.  Anyway, you’re starting to creep me out.  You drinking that tea or not?”

“Um”

“Too late, I’m thirsty” Maxi took the drink and got up to leave.  He paused and a huge grin started spreading across his face.  He looked down at Dagan, bursting with excitement “Do you know what this means?  I’ve completed the epic arc!”

Dagan glared.  “Not if I can kill myself first!” and with that Dagan started shifting and squirming and trying to get an arm free from his restraints so he could strangle himself to death.

“Haha.  Good luck with that!  See you later, Gadam.”

“It’s DAGAN!!!!!!!!”

And with that Maxi shrugged, turned and left.

Next time: My corp have invited me to try some PvP!  I am incredibly excited about this.

o7 fly safe

Space Jaunting: Part 1 – Day 9 – It’s Basic Training, Basically

Here she is!  Look at her!  Take in all her wonderful, shiny, green curves.  Marvel at her easy grace as she carves her way through warp-space.  You whisper her name as you embrace her image: “Crimples“, you whisper “Crimples, you are the most beautiful drone ship that looks like an upside-down ski boot I’ve ever seen.”  She replies with a face-full of deadly scout drones.

That’s right, Maxi has finally piloted his new Vexor, and it’s fair to say they’ve fallen completely in love with one another.  It’s very early stages in their relationship of course, in fact they haven’t even seen any ….you know…. ‘action’ together (because they’re 27 jumps from the epic arc mission hub) but even so Maxi Foyle, Space Mechanophiliac, can’t help giggling with glee every time he sees her.

Anyway, Crimples unveiling aside, there’s only been a couple of things to tell you about since the last post so I will keep it short and sweet:

First up: I forgot to mention Maxi Foyle had reported to corporation HQ to start his Basic Training.  One of the totally brilliant aspects of his corporation is that there is a whole military-style setup with members earning military ranks as they progress through the corporation from Private up through lieutenants and captains to commanders and eventually, err, C.E.O!  Well, it is a corporation, after all.

But to attain the rank of Private, and to prove he can be of some combat use to the corp, Maxi must complete Basic Training which, this being EVE, does not involve spending 3 months in boot camp crawling through space mud, but instead involves purchasing and learning a set of basic skills centered around ship management, rigging and weaponry.  Having been playing for a few weeks Maxi was fairly confident he’d probably have most of them already, but it turns out he was lacking about 30 of them!  So once again his training queue has been reprioritised, with the drone skills needed to launch medium attack drones from his Vexor being bumped down the list again.

Interestingly the one skill that stands out from the basic training as not being very basic is the need to get level 4 Graviton Physics which is primarily required to use cloaking devices.  Not quite sure what the corp has got in mind here, but that could come in very useful for Maxi if he wants to survive in null-sec.  The worrying/exciting thing is that’s probably what the corp have got in mind for us too.

So what else as been happening?  Well, a lot of mining and…even more mining.  At the moment, now he’s got a Retriever, the mining is the easiest, quickest and safest way Maxi has of earning some ISK, so we’ve been doing it every time we log on recently.

Maxi also tried a few local level 1 missions, but they’re so poorly paid it’s hardly worth the effort.  Unfortunately, it seems grinding through level 1 missions for a particular corporation  or faction is the only way to unlock more profitable, higher level missions from them.

For now though Maxi needs all the ISK he can get to buy level 3 implants, which improve a characters stats, which most importantly helps you learn skills much more quickly.  At about 10 million ISK an implant though it’s taking a while to get a full set (of 5).

That’s about it for now.  I told you it would be a short one!  I’ll see if Maxi can do something other than more bloody mining before next time.

Fly safe o7

Space Jaunting: Part 1 – Day 8 – Can Flip, Will Flip

If there’s one thing that I’ve learnt this week it’s to not log into Eve Online before writing this blog, because then this blog does not get written, I just play Eve Online instead.  That’s been the case the last 2 nights so tonight I’ve forced myself to ignore it and get straight on here to update you all on Maxi Foyle’s week so far.

It’s been a week of distractions for Maxi too.  You’ll remember he was getting all excited about his new Vexor he’d been given and couldn’t wait for the skills necessary to fly it to complete.  Well they completed last night but he still hasn’t flown the thing because of all the lovely distractions his corporation keep throwing at him:

Distraction number 1 – Mining Ops – Maxi went on another mining operation on Tuesday, it was even busier this time, and Maxi was able to use his new Retriever, the Feisty Pigeon, to mine loads more ore than last time, and get a long way to filling a can of scordite before he and his can got can flipped.

Now, for those of you unfamiliar with the game and the term, ‘can flipping’ is the colloquial, deep space term for having your stuff stolen.  Specifically stuff you have put in a can whilst mining.  How could Maxi Foyle, Space Industrialist, be so lax as to let someone pickpocket 3 million ISK worth of ore from right under his nose without him noticing?  Well, he wouldn’t, he just let them pickpocket him even though he did notice them coming.

The issue is a very big bad pirate stole Maxi’s stuff and, after much convincing by his more experienced mining fleet members, he refused to retaliate because apparently the pirate would have then blown Maxi, and all his fleet friends, into little bits (because if Maxi attacked first, the pirate is free retaliate and the authorities would not intervene).  And then when Maxi’s clone stepped out of storage and undocked in a new ship the pirate would have blown him up too.  And the next clone.  And the next clone.  Etc.  That pirates name?  I’m not so childish as to give it out in public, but to give you a clue it begins with G.

And ends in: enghisKhan.

Just putting that out there in case any more experienced players reading this want to earn the 400 million ISK bounty I noticed was on his head…

Anyway, Maxi trudged on regardless and managed to produce about half a can of ore for the corporation’s cause.  Considering the previous op had earned him 5 million ISK for one can, it’s not a completely wasted night.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but over the few weeks Maxi has been trying to make some ISK and a name for himself in deep space, he’s been getting more cautious, less ambitious, and generally softer as the weeks have gone on.  Don’t worry, I’d noticed this too.  Despite Maxi’s grand plans to make a life in null-sec space, he’s never visited once.  Nor has he done any Player vs Player combat, or challenged any combat missions above level 1.  This was playing on my mind this week and I’ve been contemplating forcing him to go to null-sec just to say we’d been when the perfect opportunity to prove he’s still got some space balls appeared:

Distraction number 2 - Daredevilry – Last night Maxi went on a Level 4 mission and blew up 2 Cruisers in his little frigate the Jousting Mongoose.  And it was so easy he even had time to lean out the window and take this photo whilst doing it (the cruiser’s that explodey thing in the top right hand corner):

And I could leave it at that and sound very brave indeed, but I think I ought to explain how this came about before you start accusing me of making it up:

Last night Maxi signed on just to sort out his training queue and out of curiosity asked a fellow corp member if there were any local level 1 mission agents Maxi could go on, just for something to do instead of bloody mining.  The corp member explained how to view local agents and their mission level ratings, but then came back with a slightly better offer.  The conversation, with a player I’m going to call JL for anonymity’s sake, went pretty much like this:

JL: “Are you near Ohide?”

MF: “Yep”

JL: “Have you got high dps on your ship?”

MF: “Um, what’s dps?”

JL: “Damage per Second!”

MF: “Err…not sure, I have 3x 125mm railguns”

JL: “Can you link me your fit?”

MF: “Umm, how do I do that?”

JL: Sigh <inaudible, obviously, but I know he was sighing by this point> “You drag your ship from the fitting window to the chat window”

MF: “Oh!  Here you go.”

JL: “Looks good enough to me.  Wanna help me with these bs’s?”

MF: “What are bs’s?  Bullshitters?”

JL: “Battleships”

MF: “Battleships!” <at this point Maxi was thinking up a polite way of declining when I reached over and typed> “No problem.  Invite me to a fleet.”

And so Maxi’s daring foray into a level 4 mission began.  Just to put ‘level 4′ into context for the uninitiated, missions (as with much in the game) are categorised from levels 1 -5, 1 being easiest, 5 being hardest.  Maxi has so far only ever done level 1 missions and has lost a few frigates doing them too.  Level 2 and 3 missions are advisedly tackled in cruisers and battlecruisers (which is why Maxi was so keen to get his Vexor).  And Level 4 and 5 in the largest ships in the game, the battleships and giant capital ships.

This should also give you an idea of the ridiculous odds Maxi was therefore going to have to face warping in to a fight with Battleships, in a level 4 mission, to join a fleet of 1 other pilot.

The fight itself went a little something like this:

Maxi warped in to see a vast radar array bristling with missile sentries, orbited by Cruisers and Battleships.  Initially no one seemed to notice he was there, so Maxi took a moment to get his bearings.  The array and enemies were 30km ahead, whilst 200km away to his left his fleetmate’s Battlecruiser was very slowly making its way towards the hive of buzzing red hostiles.  A wing of JL’s drones had been deployed and were zipping around making a nuisance of themselves around the Battleships whilst they were trying to blast holes in JL’s Battlecruiser shield.

JL acknowledged Maxi on the fleet chat window and confirmed he was well tanked, and was fine soaking up all the enemy’s firepower, it was just taking a long time to get within a range at which he could use his railguns, could Maxi help out by dealing out some damage to them?

“Not a problem”, Maxi replied, still a bit baffled by the 30 or so hostile targets littering his overview.  He wasn’t quite sure what the plan of action was.  Best start on the small targets Maxi thought, and so targeted one of the missile batteries standing guard at the radar array.

(A small note on targeting enemies: If, say, an enemy targets you your ship’s computer identifies this threat and automatically targets them back, making you aware of the threat and giving you the opportunity to counter-attack.)  Now Maxi had seen this in action before and made a curious mental note about the phenomenon, but in the excitement and commotion of the scene that greeted him he forgot all about it.

Needless to say, by the time Maxi had locked the target and fired one useless volley of railgun fire, that missed due to firing from such a long-range, the missile battery in question had targeted him back and launched a missile.  Not only this but it appeared to have notified its missile battery friends of Maxi’s presence in the fight and they too locked and launched a volley, no, torrent of missiles straight for him.  And missiles do work at long-range, in fact it is their most famously useful feature that they work very well at long-range.  After the first wave of missiles reduced Maxi’s shield to nothing and armour to half he luckily realised there was only one course of action, and before his fleetmate could type “WARP OUT!” Maxi had hit warp and made a second perfect escape, getting out of there with only a quarter of his hull left.

Not a lot of use, you’ll agree, but Maxi’s amazingly patient corp-mate JL told Maxi to repair and get ready to warp back once he’d taken out the missile batteries.  And sure enough when Maxi warped back in 10 minutes later to join the fight with the missile batteries gone and the Cruisers and Battleships focusing all their fire on JL, Maxi was able to get to work dealing some damage to the large ships.  Soon enough the enemy was crushed and we moved in on the mission’s target, a space chapel, that exploded a little bit like this:

Despite the relative lack of help Maxi actually provided JL was happy to share the mission reward with him, making the whole experience very worthwhile for our plucky, heroic space mission helper.  Not that Maxi stuck around to join the next mission.  “Err, I think my tea’s ready, sorry.  Thanks, though.  Bye!”

So ends another galactic adventure for Maxi Foyle, Space Missile Attractor.  Perhaps I can hold off the null-sec visit for a bit longer if Maxi keeps up these dare-devil ways.

Thanks for reading.  Until next time, fly safe. o7

Space Jaunting: Part 1 – Day 7 – Operation Mined Control

One day I will run out of terrible mining puns, but until that day you’ll have to put up with titles like that.  I hope you don’t mined?

Quite a lot has happened in the last couple of days so I think an update is in order:

The first point is a little update on Maxi’s Charity Fund Raiser day.  The day was of course just a silly name for a day of hard, ISK making graft on Maxi’s part, and very successful it was too, but one very generous reader decided to interpret it literally and gifted a fitted and kitted Vexor to our very own Maxi Foyle, Space Charity Case.  This is the very cruiser Maxi was dreaming of owning a couple of posts ago, so many thanks to Serpentine Logic for this generous act, and although I know he didn’t do it to get anything in return the very least I can do is plug his very informative blog which you should read here.  Maxi can’t even fly the thing yet due to a lack of skills, but we’ll rectify that this week and let you know how she flys!

The second piece of news is Maxi did his first shift in his new Mining job last night, going on a mining op with about 10 other Corp members.  It was a lot of fun!  The operation works with the majority of us mining the asteroids for whatever ore we’re being asked for, putting the ore in ‘cans’ which are floating cargo containers in space that are then scooped up periodically by another member in a massive hauler and shipped to base.  It was slow work on my part as I was in the Snooty Nave a tiny mining frigate I was given in the tutorial missions, filling about 1 can in the 3 hours I was out there.  Not sure how much that’s going to earn me but as of this afternoon I will be the proud owner of a Retriever which will speed up future mining no end.  It was a long shift, and not terribly exciting, but it was a good chance to have some long chats with my fellow corpies.  The corp are planning a few ops a week and are asking us to get involved as often as we can, so hopefully this’ll start building up some serious income for Maxi.  I’ll let you know when I get paid!

And finally the only other piece of news was Maxi has bought himself a new frigate.  After the loss of the Inquisitive Badger II Maxi thought maybe it was time to try ‘normal’ combat again, rather than rely on drones, and so bought and kitted out one of these awesome looking things:

It’s an Incursus named the Jousting Mongoose and it looks amazing in my opinion, and that’s the main reason I bought it!  It’s a more traditional frigate in that it relies on 3 guns to deal damage, rather than drones or missiles.  With a bit of online research I think I’ve finally fitted a ship well too, playing to the ships strengths with 3x 125mm railguns to deliver damage, an afterburner to zoom in close enough to enemies to deal that damage, and armour buffs to tank the ships armour.  It took a while for me to get over a fear of having no shield boost, but after taking her out for a bit of ratting I can see the improvement you get from putting all of a ship’s resource slots into one thing, like armour boosting, rather than spreading it across shields and armour.

That’s about it for now.  This afternoon I will be watching the timer tick down on my final Mining Barge skill level needed to pilot a Retriever (4 hours to go!), and then heading to the Mining Barge dealership to pick up the keys to my new Retriever, the Feisty Pigeon.  In fact that reminds me, I need to go get some strip mining lasers and cargohold expanders.

See you next time.

o7 fly safe

Space Jaunting: Part 1 – Day 6 – The Maxi Foyle Charity Fund Raiser

Hello and welcome to a slightly unusual blog post today:  Today, because in the real world someone who will one day be important is getting married, I have a day off work.  This got me thinking about a couple of things:

1. What to do with a day off?
2. Why is Maxi Foyle not getting married?

The answer to question 2, I realised, must be the enormous wealth needed to host a grand wedding and therefore the answer to question 1 would surely be to spend the day accruing enormous wealth in any way possible, in the name of love or, failing that, galactic domination (or, more realistically, to buy a mining barge).

So I cordially invite you to the first Maxi Foyle Charity Fund Raiser day! 

The goal?  To double Maxi’s ISK savings before the end of the day.  Maxi currently has 7,313,036.42 ISK, so the aim is to hit:

15,000,000 ISK before the end of the day

I’ll be updating the blog throughout the day to let you how we are getting on.  It might sound small change to the more experienced EVE players reading this but Maxi has hardly seen over 5 mill since he started as every bit of money earnt, at about 100,000 ISK a mission, was going on ships, skills and equipment.

The plan of action is to grind through as many epic ark missions as possible, whilst keeping an eye on the markets for any money making opportunities hauling goods between stations.  Hopefully, if I don’t lose a hold full of goods or too many ships on missions, we might actually hit our target!  So, not wanting to delay any further, we currently have:

08:18 EVE time – 7,313,036.42 ISK

Let’s get to work

Update: 10:51 EVE time – 9,094,472.73 ISK

The last couple of hours have been pretty productive so far, we’re certainly on target having accrued about a million ISK an hour.  Maxi’s been non-stop hauling as a few excellent opportunities have popped up, at one point earning 800,000 ISK in one shipment of Spirits into low-sec space.  Dangerous, I know, but the opportunity to double our profit was too much to pass up.  So far, luckily, there’s been no incidents to speak of.  Logging off now for the ‘scheduled downtime’.  After the break Maxi’s going to head to the Epic Arc mission hub and take the Inquisitive Badger II out for some missioning, and see if he can earn ISK any quicker doing missions.  07 fly safe

Update: 14:52 EVE time – 11,922,921.71 ISK

A few more hours, a few more million ISK!  This is going surprisingly well.  I’ve only been logged on about an hour so far this afternoon, but after catching up with some house hold chores I sat down for a proper EVE session and started making the journey to Arnon IX where I was certain I’d left the Inquisitive Badger II ready for missioning, only to arrive and find I’d taken her to pick up the Iteron in Clellinon and left her there, 11 jumps away!

Rather than make another long journey straight away I had another look for any local hauling opportunities and found a station selling antibiotics at 300 ISK in the same system another station was looking for antibiotics and willing to pay 350 ISK for them.  Easy ISK!  So the extra 3 million ISK Maxi’s earnt was actually earned in the space of 10 minutes ferrying antibiotics between the 2 stations.  Sadly the supplier has now run out, so no more easy ISK.  Time to pick up the Inquisitive Badger II and do some missioning, really this time.

07 fly safe

Update: 17:18 EVE time – 15,161,315.72 ISK

Made it!  A good days work, and a pretty accurate goal to set in the end!  Might do some more EVEing later and bump that up even more, but for now I’ve been ordered to corporation headquarters (27 jumps away!) to get some basic training with a few other newbies.

The rest of this afternoon’s ISK collecting started with a few missions on the epic arc until I lost another ship, the Inquisitive Badger II :(

Having only earned about 500,000 ISK from the missions anyway I went back to hauling and found a few really good routes, mostly between low and high-sec systems.  It’s strange to say it but I’m really enjoying the hauling!  Especially the high risk low-sec hauls.  The fear and anticipation you get when you jump into a low-sec system with a cargohold filled with 10 million ISK worth of Spirits is thrilling, and the relief when you make it to your destination unharmed and sell the lot for 12 million ISK is brilliant.

That’s the end of Maxi’s fund-raising event though.  Thanks to all who took part!  As I said we’re now going to make the 27 jumps to Corporation headquarters and join in some real training with real people, and hopefully some mining operations before the end of the weekend.

See you soon.  o7 fly safe

Space Jaunting: Part 1 – Day 5 – This Corporate Life

Hello!  Welcome back.  Sorry we’ve been gone so long, I’ve been seeing family over Easter and Maxi Foyle, Corporate Space Lacky, has been busy being corporate.  Last time out, you’ll remember, Maxi was setting off for Arnon IX.  The reason?  To start the ‘Epic Arc’, a series of story-based missions designed to test your new-found combat skills and earn you some ISK.  And unbelievably both are going well for once!

Having extensively trained in drone use Maxi can now utilise the Inquisitive Badger’s large (for a frigate) drone bay to deploy 3 attack drones at once, then sit back and snipe enemies’ from afar whilst the drones buzz around dealing damage to anyone sorry enough to stand in the way.  With this tactic, and the confidence boost of the last post’s successful combat, Maxi has been eating up loads of these missions, earning a good chunk of ISK in the process.  Not that he’s got anything to show for it because all that ISK is going back on skill books to help train a few new things:

Firstly, Planetary Interaction - This allows you to build resource bases on planets which gather up resources for you to collect and sell for profit.  Simple. And the best thing about it is this resource gathering happens whether you’re logged on or not, essentially making you ISK whilst you sleep, work and (god forbid!) play other games.  I haven’t set up a base yet as the necessary skill training has been put on hold again whilst Maxi really gets to work training those Mining Barge skills he was thinking of taking up a few posts ago.  Why the sudden need to learn how to mine properly?  Because Maxi Foyle, long time Space Hobo, has finally got himself a job!

Now the last time out Maxi had some concerns about his new Corporation, nothing to do with the welcoming and helpful members he’d met, just that he’d only met a few and noone seemed to be online when he was.  Well luckily that’s all changed.  The last week Maxi has seen lots more members logging on in the evening and he’s really been seeing the benefits of being part of a corporation.  The best aspect of corporate life, aside from all the helpful words and advice from more experienced players, is the jobs on offer:  Maxi’s been invited to join Wormhole hunters (I felt it best to avoid any more wormholes for time being after Maxi’s previous form with them), mission fleets, and, most appealingly, mining operations.

So with the promise of a regular wage and escapades with friends enticing him Maxi is ploughing all his training into the necessary skills to pilot a Retriever.  It’s a mid level mining barge, not quite as fancy as the one Maxi saw in his earlier blog-post, but a much more attainable one.  In fact, after a weeks training, he’s now only 3 days away from having all the necessary skills to get on board and get involved in the mining ops.

After spending my first 2 weeks training bits and bobs as they’ve taken my fancy or been gifted to me by generous mission agents, it’s nice to finally have some focus to his training now.  I’ve also started using the excellent EveMon to help plan Maxi’s training schedules as well, it brilliantly lets you click on a ship and it pops up with all the skills you need to train and the best order to train them in.  With this new focused approach to training Maxi’s formed a bit of a training schedule:  Once the Retriever skills are learnt he’ll finish enough Planetary Interaction skills to earn some ISK from it, but then he’s learning how to pilot one of these beauties:

The Vexor.  It’s a cruiser class drone ship, ideal for Maxi’s existing drone skills, and will give him enough firepower to take on more difficult missions later in the Epic Arc.

Obviously, this being Maxi Foyle’s blog, the last week hasn’t all been plain sailing.  Maxi never goes blunder free for long and the saddest event was definately the loss of the faithful Inquisitive Badger in a slightly too difficult mission.  Never fear though, Maxi is now riding around in the Inquisitive Badger II:

Almost identical, no?

I’ll finish with an anecdote of a typically Maxi Foyle-esque piece of bad luck (i.e. entirely of his own making) he had last night:  Having finally upgraded my trial account at the end of the 2 weeks Maxi was able to train the Industrial Ship skill needed to fly the Iteron he had been gifted at the end of his Industrial tutorial missions.  The Iteron is a basic ship with barely any points to fit weapons or upgrades, but it does have a HUGE cargobay.  Now he could use it Maxi thought he’d take it out for a test drive and what better way to test a large hauler than to do some hauling?

With that in mind Maxi looked through the buy and sell prices of goods around the region on the market and found a good opportunity hauling electronic parts 5 jumps between two systems for a tidy profit of 400,000 ISK for a full cargohold.  Not bad for a first attempt he thought so Maxi set off, bought the goods for nearly 4,000,000 ISK (when he only had just over 5 million in the bank) and set off with a full hold for his intended drop-off.

Maxi’s destination was in 0.4 security space, which alarmed Maxi somewhat, but it was the only part of the journey in low-sec space, and all he was going to have to do was jump in, warp to the station, and dock.  When he reached the final jumpgte a warning popped up highlighting the dangers of low-sec space, but Maxi once again closed the warning (this is becoming a theme, methinks) and with held breath Maxi clicked jump…

Upon arriving in low-sec space Maxi immediately leapt out of his skin as a bright red name appeared in his overview, indicating a hostile player, likely a pirate, was within close range.  Oh crap oh crap oh crap oh crap!  4,000,000 ISK.  At this stage it would take as long to jump back as it would to warp to his destination, so Maxi hit warp and prayed the massive, lumbering ship would act before the pirate noticed him and his valuable cargo.

After a few incredibly long seconds the warp drive kicked in and Maxi zoomed to his target station.  No shots were fired, no target locks were identified.  The pirate had let Maxi pass!  So, with sweat wiped from his brow, Maxi docked, sold the goods and pocketed his evenings profit without incident.

Another success for the irrepressible Maxi Foyle, Space Profiteer!  Or at least it was until he undocked into space and immediately had is empty hull blown to smithereens by the same pirate he passed on the way in!  It would have been worth hanging around just to see the look on the pirates face when the huge hauler popped to reveal nothing but more space, but Maxi didn’t feel like hanging around long enough to lose his escape capsule too.

It taught Maxi a good lesson though.  Whilst the ship was more than covered by the profit of the mission, if he’d lost it when it was full of 4 million ISK worth of electronic parts….it doesn’t bear thinking about.  Might leave the hauling in low-sec alone until I’ve learnt how to cloak!

That’s all for now.  Next time: An ISK race.

Fly Safe 07