The Incursion train cometh!

I’m back on the incursion runs… infact I’ve lost a nightmare since I last posted…

My hard drive gave up the ghost and refused to reboot, and I had a choice to make… weither lose everything or just some of it. I of course chose the first and swapped my drives over so the auxillary drive became primary and I upgraded my pc to Vista 64bit and gaining access to the full potential of my hard drives and memory.

While I was installing Vista I used my laptop to run some incursions but during a site my lappy lagged a little and when it caught up I was redboxed and already taking shield damage. I posted and the logi’s dived on me but alas my nightmare went down faster than a hooker holding a £50 note lol. Some of the fleet donated towards my loss but I wasn’t perticularly bothered. I went off home and bought the bpc to build another one! Rigs were manufatured and modules were bought ready for recreation (insert evil laugh). I was advised to petition the loss, since the laptop used to run 3 accounts, but since crucible I can only run 1. Worth a try but I’m not holding my breath!

Whilst that went on I looked at getting a new research agent going, since I currently cover Amarrian ships, but I want to diversify onto the other races, even if its just unlocking the agents (level 3 is preferable). I found Creodron were a good Gallente research agent with mining missions available. So I grabbed a spare hulk and flew to do some work… the thought “it should only take 2 or 3 missions to unlock level 2″ in my mind. 15 missions later and I still hadn’t got my standings up high enough to get onto level 2… gonna have to rethink this plan lol I dont really like doing distribution missions either… since you seem to get further and further from where you started! Last night I did a transport mission, and when I handed it in I got offered another and another… all the while getting further from my starting agent. I wonder how far it could take you if you just kept accepting missions… surely eventually you should start coming back… shouldn’t you??

Anyway… I got fed up with the pitifull level 1 mining missions (in a hulk you don’t even need to complete a full cycle) so I left the hulk in station and went off back to base to fit my nightmare. All rigs were either on stock or had finished production, so I fitted and flew off… back to the incursion area. I left my Alt and the borrowed account mining while I made the journey, and I must say… well done CCP for the new travel assistance. When you set your ship to warp to a gate you can tell your ship to jump mid warp, so as soon as it lands it jumps to the next sector. Its sort of a semi auto pilot that can make traveling a little easier and faster, especially if you are also running a mining fleet at the same time!

Typical of ccp… I have 2 days booked off from work and the drop an update on for the first day (Tuesday) and then announce it (but I didnt find out until afterwards (has been moved to Wednesday.. so I stayed away the first day for nothing… ggggrrrrrr. So now I am eagerly awaiting the system to come back online, whilst the contractors fit double glazing (you didn’t think I booked time off just to play eve did you?   )

 

Don’t fly straight!

A new direction

Well my training has taken a slight diversion for 30 days… (30 days left of a 35 day skill )
I’ve decided to learn jump drive calibration V so I can get the most out of my capitol ships.
I’ve currently got 2 Thanatos, but the first (and only fitted than) is many jumps from where I need it. So I have a choice.. jump it the 4 or 5 jumps to get it to my exit sector or strip it, move the parts and sell the ship. So I am learning the skill to maximize my jump capability. I believe the jump freighters skill also help (someone explain that please) according to some of the jump planner sites I’ve used. I still have to look at moving some of my crap to reduce the amount of stations its in….once day I’ll get it down to single figures!!!

Crucible has arrived…

Thoughts? To me its just another tarted up version of Eve. Some of the new ships look nice, I even bought a BPO for the Caldari BC and put 2 into production last night

I also started my Rorqual build, although thats going to take a while even with 2 chars producing the modules. I ran out of Zydrine somehow last night so I must have under estimated the requirements! I know I’m going to have to do some mining at some point as I am over producing the modules. Basically for capital ships I tend to buy bpc “packs”, which contain bpc’s for more modules than we need (being as close to perfect build skills as possible) and I tend to just complete the bpc; hence we have parts left over after every ship build. The hope is we will eventually have enough for a cap ship without building many components! We will have paid for it theoretically, but it will still feel like a free ship!

The one ship I still want to get (and I’m about 7 days away from) is a jump freighter so I may see if any of our parts could help to one of those. An excorp mate was really helpfull with his JF when we had to escape Vale and now I’m looking at going back into null it would be helpfull to have one of these as well as the 2 carriers I have on hand (plus a rorquel by then). I just hope the nullsec region isn’t too far from my favourite lowsec sector!

I’m avoiding doing incursions as I feel rough as hell. I’d rather get some mining done where I can dock up, or it wont hurt if I fall asleep!!

Don’t fly straight!!

Once more into the breach dear friends

Away from Eve..

Well, it looks like I’ve fixed my rebooting problem. No, not a problem getting my pc to reboot… more the opposite… STOPPING it from rebooting. There was no fixed pattern.. 30 seconds, 5 minutes or 2 hours *self reboot*. Relog back into eve to sort the mining fleet out… BSOD *reboot* start mining again *reboot*. But after doing some research on the error code that keeps coming out on the blue screen (yeah I actually caught it one day) I was directed towards a possible memory conflict. About 2 months ago I bought a second memory chip, and it would appear my pc didn’t like it in *that* slot… next one along… fine. *face palm* They were supposed to be paired so it should have gone in the slot I put it in… oh well… at least it works

I’m looking at changing job again in the very near future… hopefully more money for less hours so I may have the time and energy for Eve but I feel that may happon after xmas.

In Eve…
So I’m going to dive back into incursions since I only have my internet connection to worry about now, and that is usally fine if I reboot my hub before I start. I’ve been offered a better service which with any luck will be more stable (when I get my ass in gear and order it), it just means I need to take time off work for the connection to be completed.

So I bought 3 nightmare bpc’s last week, and put them into production… why 3? well I bought 1 with the intention of setting it up as an incursion ship and then looked at the costs. I worked out if I built 3 and sold 2 it would offset my out lay on my ship by around 300 mill. It was a lot to shell out, but if it recoups some isk then it will be worth it. Hence the reason I’ve been working on my gunnery skills (T2 pulse lasers FTW). I’ve also been chipping away at the other suplimental gunnery skills that boost damage, reducing cap usage and firing time e.t.c. so when I get T2 projectiles working I’ll be good to go!

I’ve been selling more minerals to some friends (100k nocxium last night) so I’ve been busy mining to replace what I’ve sold. Its not as good isk as doing inc’s but it all helps.

Training…
My main is still working on gunnery skills as I said above..
My alt is taking a break from leadership skills, and I’m working on getting her ready for a carrier. I figure its better to do the skills that unlock cap ships so that is all I have to learn should the need arises. Amarr carrier anyone? Yeah, I may look at building 1 for her soon…
I’m still running my wifes char atm so I have taken her back to covering the core certificates… getting them up to expert will help if *she* ever returns. After that job I’ll look at tanking skills since her gunnery skills were higher than mine… -WERE- lol

Don’t fly straight!

A matter of isk

Well, I’ve temporerily diversifyed into a new task. A couple of my ex-corpies have set up thier own industrial corp and are trying to recruit miners. Now, I know from experiance getting commited players is like finding rocking horse excriment. You’ll get loads that will join, take what they can and leave… some will play occasionally but not really commit to the corp properly and occasionally you will find someone who will want to put the effort in.

My corp currently has 1 commited member that will not mine… at all. But he runs incursions a lot which makes the corp isk… and I’m happy with the trade off. It means the corp is self sufficient even before we sell any ships… or anything else.

As I was saying, my friends new corp needs minerals to build ships to sell… so I’ve offered them a deal. If they don’t like the idea thats fine, but the other person I’ve offered the deal to has jumped at it. I’m basically selling them minerals below the market price. Its a special deal for some old friends and it will make us some isk whilst we help someone else get started.

I could make a mint selling on the market, but I’d rather it helped someone else, as I’m not going to go short E.g I’m selling trite to someone about 1isk below market price… 20 mill trite will set you back 50 million isk.
As I put in one of my corp mails… you only get out of Eve what you put in.

I figure this project will tide me over until I can afford my new cpu which looks like it will be after xmas now. Especially as I have a possible job change coming up. One way or another!!! The killer is… I’m currently paid weekly (weakly really lol) but 1 of the companies I’ve been talking to is monthly… so I’d effectively have to work 7 weeks without any cashflow. Always a painfull start, as I’d have to make sure I could cover my gametime with plexes.

Training wise..
I’m still working on the gunnery skills… I figure even though I daren’t risk going into a fight I may as well max out my gun skills for when I can… so I’m doing all the extra gunnery skills for extra damage, less cap etc.
My Alt is still covering the leadership skills, although I’m seriously thinking about getting her up to mom level. Since she is my second account, I think I could bear her being stuck in a coffin more than my main. She shouldn’t be that far from learning Amarr carriers realistically since she already has marauders trained.
I am also currently using my wifes char whilst she is on a time out… so I’ve got her working on the core certificates. Once she hits expert on the core skills I may drop her onto tanking as I’ve noticed she’s seriously lacking in that department.

Don’t fly straight!

poorly poorly, sick sick

O/
Well my pc is still acting up… crashing when it wants and at the most unopertune moment. I’ve not taken part in an incursion for a while as my last attempt got on my nerves a little. I’ve swapped to sniper incase of dc/reboot since a logi without a stable connection is dangerous for the fleet. I took part in a HQ fleet and lost connection twice.. the second time right at the end of the room. I didnt bother logging back in. Finances seem to always be too tight for me to complete my build with birthdays and suck… especially christmas just on the doorstep. I’ve bought motherboard, memory (2x 4GB DDR3), a copy of vista ultimate 64bit (I’m currently running XP 32bit) and a 1Gb g-card which I am currently using as it seems to have made my pc a little more (moar?) stable. I just need the CPU and maybe a new hard drive (I’m wondering if the hd could be causing the crashes).
The other thing that is keeping me out of eve is all the extra hours I’m working atm.

Anyway… in Eve… I’ve reverted to mining, as its a way I can play without having to worry over the crashing too much. I’ve just put an orca onto build since I sold my spare… I was discusing the costs involved with building one and realized with a bit of mining I could build one for a lot less than the market. The person I was talking to couldn’t get the figures to add up, and according to my sources I can understand why. The cost of the minerals is actually more than the value of the ship (flooded market) but when you add on the cost of production, rares and the cost of buying bpc’s they really aren’t feasable. Unless you discount the minable minerals… which is where I come in. When we formed this corp we decided not to mine to sell minerals… we were doing it to build something. We wanted to put something on the market and ships was the direction we went in as that is the simplest route. When we had a ship price list up we always had a rake of orders… I think we were supplying some of the CVA guys and then NC with thier pvp ships. I know we were undercutting the market quite significantly which always kept our order book full. For example… At the time a tier 3 bs would cost over 100 mill but we were selling them for around 80 mill. We could have done them lower but we were making quite a tidy sum and people were happy. We were even getting the isk togeather and buying BPO’s for some nice ships.

But the building became too much. We were having to mine every moment we had. And we were becoming burned out. There was only 2 of us in the operation running 3 accounts. So when we went to a 0.0 corp we closed the build books. We still get requests which I occasionally fulfill, but not as often as people would like!!! Now my wife has left Eve I am down a  miner so ore collection has slowed right down.  I’m considering taking her char on as well, since she has good mining skills; actually thats unfair… she has good all round skills, but since I dont pve multibox (YET) I would only use the mining skills anyway.

Training..

I’ve finally reached large pulse laser specialization IV (in training, but not sure what to hit next… Maybe getting projectile skills up so its not a long run to get T2 proj…

My alt is learning leadership skills so she will have all the leadership skills at 5… although I am leaving fleet command 5 till last since its around 39 days.

Have you seen the announcement about the December patch… Hybrid guns getting some lovin! Being Gallente that is right up my street!!

 

Don’t fly straight!!

TLC required

Well, my pc is still a little buggy, but if I’m carefull with it I can at least risk playing!
I should be able to start purchasing my rebuild this week, I’m going with a new mobo and chip that are a little better than my current setup, but will afford me the option to go to the latest cpu next year.

I’ve been running more incursions recently, although I’ve ventured away from logistics. I’m flying my new navy scorpion setup. the idea with swapping to DPS means if my pc decides to reboot mid site (it does from time to time) I won’t be leaving the logi wing short handed. The sudden dc of a shiney dps ship is annoying, but not likely to cause any major problems.

I attempted to buy a graphics card from e-bay, but despite getting 2 cards from the vender – neither of them work!
I’m wondering if dropping to a single screen setup might help? I don’t really know what is causing my computers instability as I’ve even tried reseating the cpu fan. I’ve also added another 2gb of memory, but because I currently run 32bit windows I can only access 3GB of the available memory :s

I did wonder if having too many fans inside (1 on cpu, 1 extracter unit on the back, 1 side window fan and 2 fans in the front bringing air in) might cause PSU problems. This build cost keeps going up!

Back to Eve…
Training wise I’m working on getting my caldari bs skill up to level 5 so I can fly a Golem, but also trying to slot in missile skills for extra damage!
My alt has hit Fleet command 2 and is working on getting the advanced leadership skills to 5.
I managed to convince the wife to take part in an incursion in a basilisk, although she is trying to get logi 5 ticked off. She did 1 night of incursions last week, but then the weekend landed and they are always bad for getting into fleet.

Hopefully my next post won’t be too long!!

Don’t fly straight

open heart surgery

ok, thats the end of the world for me. My poor PC has finally given up the ghost. It had been giving me notice – rebooting itself at the most inconvienient moment. Its one of the reason I resist doing incursions a lot of times. Last night was the final straw… I got invited to fleet and *Reboot*… Aaaaaaargh!!!!

So when I came back on I downloaded Sisoft’s Sandra software with the idea of seeing if I could find out what the problem was. I attempted to run it once it was installed, and, *reboot*. Every time I tried to run it or Eve – same result.
I formatted my HD and did a fresh install, but alas Eve wouldnt even install!

So I’m looking at a new mobo, chip and everything else needed (looks like I will need DDR3 memory as well as mine is DDR2).
I’m also thinking about a new PSU as well, as I am intending to eventually go to a Sli setup and my current psu doesnt support pci-e power.
I think its one of my AMD cpu’s over heating, but they are only hitting 63 degs so I’m not sure.
If anyone has any ideas what the issue could be I would like to hear, as I dont want to have to build a “stop-gap” (cheapest I can afford until I can get the one I want). There is a difference of about £150 between what I’d like and the one I’ll end up with…

UPDATE

Well, I bought some Silver Thermal Compound (a little more expensive that the other stuff but I figured somethings aren’t worth skimping on)

I got home, did some more installing (yay got Eve to finally install) whilst I ate my dinner and by the time I had finished 4 hours had passed and NO unrequested reboots… *facepalm*. So I haven’t messed with the CPU as it appears to work ok (for now). I’m running a long stress test on the cpu so if that comes back ok I’ll leave it be. I’m wondering if the reboots could have been hard-drive related as it appears to have calmed down since I reformatted the drive.

The rebuild is still planned, I just have more time to buy from other shops and not HAVE to buy locally. The other thing that is going through my mind is to build a completely seperate pc.. new case… new everything rather than a rebuild. It may work out more expensive, but the one I am on ATM was a “make do” pc… cheap case, AMD mobo and chip, given g-card, recycled HD and 1x 2gig memory DDR2 chip. At least if I do a second pc I’ll have this one to play on while I get the new one working right!