Altaholics Anonymous: August 2011

Welcome to the first installment of my blog. I decided to write this blog for a few reasons, I got into the whole "blogosphere" of EVE online from reading my buddy's blog and liking it so much I started reading others' blogs as well. I also started listening to podcasts. As I read these blogs I realized my take on EVE and the way I play EVE seems to be unique and may be interesting to other people as their stories were interesting to me.

So let me introduce myself, I am Cloora in game. I am also Milonia, Karok Vilneram, Aranolt Sagura, and "Mystery Man". That takes me to the title of my blog. You see, I am addicted to alts. I am at the point now where I cannot afford to run anymore. In the past, I have played MMORPGs that allowed many, many alts and I did not have to pay any additional money to have them. I had to simply spend the time leveling that character. In Dungeons and Dragons Online, (DDO) I had the versatility of bringing whatever character the group needed to run the dungeon. Need a Cleric? No problem. Lacking on a tank or some melee DPS? Let me introduce you to my Paladin. We need a buffer wizzy! I got that too. Not only was I more desirable to have in a guild because of my versatility, I also got to experience more of the game and all it had to offer. I had no need to run these characters at the same time. I simply brought what was needed or what I wanted if nothing specific was needed.

In EVE, the way characters advance prevent me from doing this. Plus there are massive benefits in EVE to have more then one character. I didn't know this at first, and I was also under the impression when I first started that alts were frowned upon (they are by some people) When I first started I somehow thought that mining was going to be a good way to make ISK. In my Bantam it was pretty good ISK compared to the missions I was able to run at the time. My income went up significantly when I shown the trick of "jetcan mining" by a corp mate. So my 300 cubic meters of cargo space were DWARFED by the 23,000 cubic meters of this jetcan. My only problem was hauling it back to station. Going back to the station and swapping ships takes time and I leave my jetcan unattended with hours of hard work in it that anyone can come steal. This is where my first alt came. Cloora was my miner and then Milonia was started to be my hauler. I enlisted in my wife to make her and name her. My wife causually played some of the MMO's I played and she decided she would try this one too. In her trusty Badger I no longer had to swap ships, I could just sit there and mine while using the Badger to haul the ore when the jetcan got full enough to the Badgers maximum cargo capacity. BRILLIANT!

Now any EVE vet reading this blog will be thinking, "I wonder what he did when his jetcan was first stolen?" Well, it never was in the Gallente space I was in. I don't remember what backwater system it was but no one came in to steal my ore. That didn't happen until later.

I was in my first player run corp because my friend from the Matrix Online (MxO) was in it. The CEO was inactive and everyone else pretty much never talked. I was lonely and longed for more interaction. My friend also didn't play much. I browsed the forums and found a list of roleplaying (RP) corporations. I RPed in every MMO I have played before. I had great fun getting into the story and RPing in MxO as a Zionist. I started an RP guild on the Sarlona server in DDO and it grew to the largest RP guild in the game before it's decline. It always added an extra element of fun to developing characters and getting into the game's fiction. So I decided I would join an RP corp in EVE. This required me to read and get familiar with EVE's back story more and the fiction. Wow, I found out that EVE had the richest and most complicated fiction out there. Much of it was also not filled in by CCP and players were filling it in. Part of the whole Sandbox theme I suppose. I decided that joining a Caldari RP corp was what I wanted. APEX Unlimited sounded cool so I dropped them an application. I hung out in their public chat with my wife and we got to know some of the current members. After some time my application was accepted and I was in my first REAL corporation! The CEO was active and so were the other members. We had mining ops and ran missions together. They also PvPed in gangs out in low sec against pirates! Wow exciting stuff!.

Being that Cloora was a miner, I wanted to be the best miner I could be. I trained lots of mining skills. I got into a Retriever which was a mid grade Tech 1 Mining Barge and the ISK was rolling in. I did some missions but I could only fly a Cruiser called the Caracal kinda poorly with subpar missile skills. My wife's character though, was already in a Battlecruiser called the Ferox and had good hybrid turret skills. Once she could fly a Badger Mk II for my hauling she was free to do whatever else while Cloora trained industry and mining skills. She was doing level 3 missions in the Ferox and making good ISK too. But not quite as much as me in my mining Barge with her hauling.

At this time in Caldari space, I finally got my taste of can flipping. I never lost a ship to can flipping. I was savvy enough to have read the forums as I do in any MMO and have an understanding of why not to take my loot back or shoot the aggressor. I did lose some ore sometimes but other then that I was pretty good with understanding the aggro mechanics of EVE through the can flipping. In fact my corp would try and ambush the can flippers and succeed at times. I would not get in on those kills I was merely the bait. My wife was the first one to suffer a loss in PvP.

She was hauling minerals that were cheap in low sec. We learned quick about warp core stabilizers but it didn't always help.

I was having great fun with APEX and making good ISK (at least good for me) Milonia was now missioning in a Rokh and utilizing her great hybrid skills. I finally got Cloora into a Drake and found out the easy mode of the passive tank. Running level 4 missions was there the ISK was REALLY at. I still mined so I could read and do other things while making money. Missions required more concentration and Milonia was losing Rokhs every so often since she didn't know that the Rokh's passive tank was not as great as the Drake's and an active tanked Raven was more optimal for tanking missions.

Our first PvP kill was my wife Milonia's to be had. She was running with some of the gang out in low sec and they happened across a Vulture at a belt. Recusor, who was in her gang, tackled it after the Vulture pilot announced in local how he had 90% resists on his shields. They moved in to test his tank. 90% is still too little against a couple Battleships and Battlecruisers with no chance of escape. After he popped his buddy showed up too late for a rescue but instead showed up for his own demise. He did extract some measure of vengeance as he was able to finish off Recusor's Drake before we could kill the Raven.

Milonia was quickly becoming more popular then me and also having more fun with PvP. I too wanted to PvP but wasn't sure Cloora was skilled for the task. Enter Karok Vilneram my full combat alt. I started with a Khanid character because of the RP and how they are close with the Caldari government. He was going to be a Khanid diplomat working with Caldari capsuleer corps. This character, even though he was newer then both Milonia and Cloora, would be a useful addition. It was also around this time I had my first child in real life, so my wife wanted to concentrate on motherhood more and left Milonia in my capable hands and she became my full time alt.

Karok's full time goal was to get into an Absolution. I saw a YouTube video of one pwning everything in sight in nullsec and thought I had to have one. Plus Amarr ships were undiscovered territory for me. Being that he was going to be getting into a Command Ship I thought I might as well get him into a fleet boosting role as well and trained skills up for that. I would mine with him in a Battlecruiser and then a Command ship giving bonuses. At this point though he was in a Prophecy doing missions and training for PvP. He had interceptor skills which I figure I would get good at PvP with that ship.

The opportunity arose when we were war decced by a much larger alliance of Gallente RPers. I was nervous and excited all at once. The first battle was going to be when the war declaration went live and we would stand our ground in Nonni where most of us were near. I remember our scouts watching their fleet move in from two directions to our location. One was coming the back way through low sec and was going to jump in from Aunenen. That was the gate we were parked at. The other half was coming down the high sec route and was going to come in from Litiura. We were all hands on deck and as ready as we were going to be. I had Milonia in a Ferox and Cloora in a Drake. In order to effectively dual box in missions and PvP I did a few things I learned through trial and error. I had two separate computers and I had the mice and keyboards right in front of one another so I could swap back and forth. I made a few mistakes where I was trying to do things on the controls of one computer while looking at the wrong monitor but it generally worked ok. I could control two larger slower ships just lobbing damage at our targets. I was trying to make up for my lack of skills with more ships.

When their fleet arrives all hell broke loose. We started to tackle a few of them but the Fleet Commander (FC) quickly knew it was going to be a slaughter and ordered everyone to warp out. I did and got Milonia's Ferox out but Cloora's Drake was tackled and quickly overwhelmed even with a PvE passive tank. I felt ok about the loss against the large fleet but could tell this war was going to be tough for APEX. We were outnumbered 2 to 1 on active fighting pilots and probably 2 to 1 on average combat skill points per pilot as well. We were getting slaughtered and I was only mildly holding my ground playing station games and losing a few ships in the process. We had a few wins when they came into our neighborhood with less then us. I had Karok do some interceptor work that was quite fun and netting me a few kills. A Malediction was his ship of choice in that role.

The big turning point came when a PvP centered corp whose RP was one of revolution and anarchism announced they would war dec both sides. They were called Stimulus and we were REALLY screwed now. However, in a move that both saved APEX and destroyed it all in one move was performed by our CEO Vendrin. He renounced the Caldari State and worked out assistance from pirates that were normally our enemies. The reason was that none of the other Caldari loyalist corporations came to help us in our war and left us high and dry. Because of this, Stimulus was now going to work WITH us instead of against us. So now we were all against The Cyrene Initiative. Flying with Stimulus pilots and FCs showed me a skill level in PvP I was not even aware of. They were pros and I was the amateur trying to do what they did. With them, we would annihilate them even with worse odds. Even when STIM was not around they were scared to engage APEX because they were nervous about Stimulus coming in and mopping up.

The war finally ended after they had nothing but frigates and cruisers to engage us. Also near the end of the war we decided to hit a few of their low sec Player Owned Starbases or POSes. VETO helped us by brining out some Dreadnaughts for POS bashing and this was the first time I saw Dreads in action. I bring up this point because a player in our alliance named Dangermouse DM, and a guy who I was getting to be good friends with, Fang Khan would later take those moons and set up their own POS network. This network will be important later.

After the war CYI was devastated, but so was APEX. Many players not craving constant combat left during the war. Others left after because they wanted to work with a Caldari loyalist alliance. We were no longer that. We had no direction. Vendrin tried to give us a new direction. We were going to go out to null sec space and fight there. APEX aquired a few combat corps with players that were kinda PvP snobs to us lower experianced players. But they could help us in our goals so we stuck it out. We were going to get to be buddies with some large alliance and get some space to rat in and have lots of fun combat and be rich. I only went out a little bit with Milonia but we got our butt's kicked. We went to a place called FDZ4-A since there was an NPC station there we could base out of. We would get in fights with some locals called "The Axe Gang" and we did pretty good against them. The problem was they were friends with some bigger alliances that came in and steamrolled us.

After that debacle we lost direction again. The combat corps left feeling like it was our fault for our failure in nullsec space. I tried to stay and help and at this time Cloora was a Director in APEX. I was Production Director and I was doing a pretty good job at making stuff and mining still. At this time I thought I could use another miner. Enter Aranolt Sagura. He trained straight to a Hulk so I could mine with two Hulks and haul with Milonia. Karok would be giving bonuses.

Remember Dangermouse DM and Fang Khan? Remember the POSes we took down? Well, they decided that they were going to run a 12 POS chain with 8 in Placid and 4 in Tamo. These POSes would be moon mining and reacting to make T2 goods. The chain of reactions did not need much outside supplies besides the POS fuel. DM and Fang had the timing of the reactions and fueling down, but they did not have the time to log in to do any of it. They needed someone with the capability and trust to handle this. I was this person. I left APEX Unlimited and moved to Black River. I moved ships and jump clones (JC) out to Aulbres to handle this task. Fang and DM agree to pay me 400M ISK a month to handle this. They buy the fuels and put them in Stacmon and I have to run them out. This was a pretty crappy job. It is not only time consuming, but this is where I learned that when you HAVE to log into a game and play it. It is no longer a game but a job. If I didn't fuel the POSes and move the reactions around when I was supposed to, the whole thing would stall and the POSes would offline and were then vulnerable to be destroyed by any random pirate. Fang, who also helped me from time to time, also realized this. Fang purchased a Jump Freighter (or built it actually) to help in this endeavor and it made the logistics tons simpler, but we still HAD to log in at certain times every two weeks and spend a few hours doing this. It wasn't for us.

Also during this time, Vendrin, who tried various other things with APEX, booted Black River out of the alliance for whatever reason. We had our feelings hurt a little bit as he didn't even discuss it with us, but we moved on. After some time apart I learned from Vendrin he was going to close up APEX and move on to something else. APEX was my home for so long and I had such fond memories I couldn’t let that happen, so I offered to purchase the alliance from Vendrin. I bought all the stuff (blueprints and any other property) of APEX for 400 million ISK. I then paid Vendrin 500 million ISK for controlling shares and CEO position of the Executor alliance of the APEX Conglomerate. A decision I am glad I have made every day since then.

What I bought was a shell of an alliance. APEX had a few corps in it at the time that were largely abandoned and APEX itself only had inactives left in it. It was perfect. I was now allowed to do what I wanted how I wanted. I decided to first let everyone know of the new direction and goals of APEX here.

At first I didn't do much. A few guys came back and then left because they wanted to try something different. I recruited a few people and a few stuck around but most of them left because we didn't do much. At this point in my real life (IRL) I had 2 young kids and my wife so I wanted as casual a play style as I could. I wasn't ever going to make EVE a job again. It almost made me quit last time. That meant no null sec space holding. I wasn't going to be logged in 5 days a week. Constant domestic aggro insured that 2, maybe 3, nights a week was all I was going to play. That should be plenty anyway, this was a game not my job.

I brought back Black River so I could be with my buddies Dangermouse DM and Fang Khan. They were off and on with activity but I was happy to keep them around anyway. I now lived in my old stomping grounds in Lonetrek mining and running missions again. I was making plenty of money but lonely and I longed for PvP.

I put Karok into the new Faction warfare and fought with the Caldari State. At this time in the game the great Nano-HAC gang ruled supreme. When I first started the game you used to be able to fit lots of nanofiber internal structure modules on a ship and they had no stacking penalties. You could get battleships to go rediculous speeds and most people agreed it was overpowered. Being killed by a nano Macharial way back then I agreed. This was where the term nano(insert ship here) started. CCP finally decided that these were not good for the game and they nerfed these types of ships.

After rigs were born from salvaging in the game, a new type of nano emerged. It was born from the polycarbon engine housing rig. They had similer effects to nanofibers and so people called any fast ship a nano-(insert ship name here). Heavy Assault Cruisers (HACs) were the most popular ship that was used for this. You could get near interceptor speeds with awesome range and firepower. I flew a Nano-Zealot with Scorch ammo on Heavy Pulse lasers and I was almost untouchable. Anything that I couldn't outgun I could outrun and anything I couldn’t outrun I could outgun. It was awesome! Then came Quantum Rise (I think that was the patch) where they nerfed speed through various methods and also nerfed webbers. They made Warp Scramblers turn off Micro Warp Drives as well (MWD). Even though this nerfed my style of game play I thought it was a good idea. It made combat more tactical and more ships and modules were used and more choice and variation is a good thing. I brought Karok back into APEX with my other characters.

I wanted to get some of my other characters into PvP and wondered how I could do this without losing lots of ships like I have in the past trying to PvP with just myself. I started to venture out into low sec by myself with my newly trained Falcon and Pilgrim. At this time the Falcon was a very powerful ship in its Electronic Counter Measures (ECM) and its extreme range. I would warp around and try to catch pirates in the act of ganking people and warp in at 200+km and just jam them safely. This would allow the people they were ganking to leave or win if they were fighting back. It was some act of revenge for the pirates I spent so much time evading from my earlier times in the game. Unfortunately, right after I trained the Falcon CCP nerfed its range. Most people abandoned it but I kept with it since its jamming strength was buffed to counter the nerf.

I had good probing skills and I had trained the Falcon from when it was very overpowered (OP) and the pilgrim just seemed like a good idea as well. They changed the probing mechanics and since I was well versed in scanning and probing from the old system I decided to learn the revamped system just as well. CCP did an excellent job making the new system use more player skill and be more fun overall. I also got very good at it. This is where my next stage of EVE online came from. I was always an anti-pirate, but now I had weapons and tools and a strategy to defeat them. For example, these pirates named the "High and Mighty" would always camp the low security system of Aunenen and blow up anything that came in with their sniper Eagles and other sniper ships. I would wait on grid with 4 probes out and ready to scan at max strength and shortest range right on grid. Once a sniper ship came in and aggressed someone, I would scan them and warp my Pilgrim to them with Karok and use my webber, scram, nuets and tracking disruptor while my drones tore them up (slowly). My Falcon would warp in and jam the person, and then Milonia would warp in with a heavy damage ship (DPS = damage per second) and help to finish them off. I was actually becoming successful! Not only that I was altering the pirates behavior. They stopped using lone sniper ships. They started to gang up with more people. This made it harder for me. Good thing I had another tool on my side: Synergy.

Synergy is a free program that let you use the mouse and keyboard from one computer and link it to other computers. Once it is set up and running all I do it move my mouse off the side of one screen and it shows up on the nearest side of the other screen. It seems like I am using two monitors on one computer, that is how seamless it is. This enabled me to also use my newly purchased Dell XPS gaming laptop and I now had three computers and I was getting good at using all three at once. I wasn't nearly as good as 3 separate players but I was defiantly better then one. This was my advantage and I was paying to win with my multiple accounts and my multiple computers. Believe me though, there is a lot of skill and practice involved with multi-boxing in PvP and I don't recommend it for everyone.

I started to lay my probe traps everywhere in the system I was watching. I became like CONCORD. I had two ships with 8 probes in the system. I would split up the probes into 4 groups of 4 and cover all the celestial groups. Since the probes didn't appear on the overview it was hard to see them on the directional scanner. Most people would never see them. Also, I would leave them there at max scan strength at their locations. This would allow me to scan anyone in 6 seconds flat. I would simply watch directional scanner and also local for indications that piracy was afoot. A little skull on someone's portrait in local would be all I need to know to hit scan and warp everyone on the offender. If it was too much for me to take on my Falcon jammed everything and I got the heck out. It was wildly successful. Fang started to be more active in EVE and I shared with him my technique. We helped me by bringing in more DPS and we were doing great things in Aunenen. Pirates started to know who we are and altered their behavior around us. Some large alliances moved in and gave us a few black eyes but our hit and run tactics with superior scanning ability gave us the ability to curb stomp them with regularity.

When we kicked the hornets nest hard enough though, we would have to leave until it settled down. There was just now way we were going to take on cap ships. I risked my Moros I owned a few times but if they fielded more then one cap with proper support we were out. We would find a new place to hunt, Mara.

In Mara, there are no stations to dock at. The system is less then 25 AU across and you can hit everything in the celestial sphere of the system on your directional scanner from the top asteroid belt. It was a great system for hunting pirates and there was plenty of bad behavior around to give us opportunities to shoot. With no stations to dock at unless a person had a cloaking device, they could run but not hide. Hundreds of kills rolled in at Mara, it is still to this date our hottest combat system. We would just watch in the system and look for anyone going GCC. In Mara though the gates weren't camped often and we weren't getting the carebear traffic for us to react to when they got ganked. Enter Mystery Character. I did not create a separate account for this character, I was pretty much done with Aranolt with what I needed to use him for so I decided to make a new character that would be combat focused and I would put in different corps. I made him my bait alt. So when APEX and my bait was in a system together not everyone would assume we were working together. It worked great. I got Bait man into a Caracal and a Drake as quickly as I could so he could be proper bait and survive the initial gank. I also got him into a Blarpy (blaster Harpy) and tried him in Factional Warfare (FW) but I got booted when I shot at other FW members because they were also outlaws.

We started to become well known among the local pirates. There was a pirate corporation we did battle with constantly called Monsters who based one system away from Mara. We fought a few times and generally did well at least when Fang or I was in gang. The big challenge was when we would recruit new people. Fang, DM and I knew what we were doing in PvP now. We could sniff out most traps and had a good sense of when to get the hell out. New players however, did not know this stuff. When we recruited new corps of new players or just new players into our corp, we had an issue of them getting killed a lot. So yes our killboard isn't stellar, but we like to have new people and teach them the ropes. BULK incorporated was one corp full of newish players to PvP. They had a few vets that (kinda) knew what to do. Also a corp that was buddies with them joined up, The Omega Federation. The leadership of BULK was in flux and so I dealt mostly with a pilot named Inevitability. He was cocky but I suppose you need to be to be a leader.

They both left APEX over our Rules of Engagement. (RoE) which basically says when we can shoot other people. Since we are anti pirates we have certain rules that clearly define when and where we can engage. One of the things we DON'T do is can flipping to bait miners or ninja looting to bait mission runners in high sec. This is a douchebag move that people that can't get normal kills do. We had this fellow named Keshix who was ninja looting (I imagine) to bait mission runners into shooting him. He then would come back in a big bad PvP fit ship and gank them. I demanded an explanation and for it to stop. It kept happening so I told the leadership of Omega to boot him. I guess they didn't like me telling them what to do so they left the alliance.

At this point I lost a bit of motivation from EVE. We were doing very well and our numbers were increasing but after losing 2/3 of our population I didn't feel like logging in much. I started to play Starcraft II and did that for about 6 months. When I came back only a few core players were left again and I had to rebuild from scratch, again.

My playstyle has been nerfed a bit since CCP did a few things to the game, most notably adding probes to overview which made it harder for me to probe pirates down while they waited off their Global Criminal Countdown (GCC) at safespots. Now they can see the probes on directional scanner (d-scan) and just move to a new spot. Then they changed the probing overall so that "unprobable" T3's could be probed down. What really hurt my probing style was the halving of the probes strength and increasing how many can contribute to a hit. Now my 16 sisters probes laying in wait has gone the way of the dodo. "16 Sister probes? Really?" Yes Stuart Price, really. I was an epic prober with my strategy and style of probing. Now, I rarely probe. I had to change the way I do it and I have to hide the probes way off directional now and recall them faster. So I adapted, but it still isn't the same.

Mara has been nearly fished out as far as pirates. When they come in they know who we are and what we do. We still get the new ones who quickly learn not to attack the Drake sitting in the top belt, but overall traffic has decreased a lot. Our rivals, the Black Rabbits, and Monsters have either died or moved. And then we lost one of our own to Monsters anyway. Tek Avellos who is Fang's real life buddy left for Monsters, "because they were close to all my stuff" when he decided to go pirate. He has been an APEX staple for years so we were sad to see him go. I fear he will never come back to the light. It made for uncomfortable times when our buddy was now in the corp that we shot on sight. We would not shoot him but shoot the others and then it turned into we started working WITH them. Monsters changed to Sinners and we now work with them and chat with them in their Mumble server quite often. Funny how you can make new friends. We fly with bumnz and his corp Manpower quite often which doesn’t help a whole lot since he is known in Mara probably better then APEX is.

So that brings us to modern times. I live in Passari and don't carebear much anymore. Now I live for PvP. I love it. Unfortunately I have long ago learned that there are upsides to being a pirate. Your target selection is pretty much everyone who isn't your friend. You are Not Blue Shoot it (NBSI) and you can rack up 1000+ kills in a year or two. I have been PvPing regularly now for 2 years and have gotten probably about half that. They are also spread across all my accounts and there is a lot of overlap since I use multiple accounts to kill most of the time. My PvP play style requires a ton of patience. There has been nights where we spend 4 hours and we don't get a kill. The conditions aren't right and I can't find any outlaws or no one will go GCC. Other times they are there but they are in small speedy ships and they get away, or the smell our trap and avoid it altogether.

Because of this fact of our combat style. I have had many people leave after joining because it isn't fast enough pace for them. I understand that, but my goal is to win, be efficient and fly with fun people. I don't WANT to be the bad guy. There are so many pirates out there I want to be different. There aren't many good anti-pirate corps out there. People on the forums can name many good pirate corps, but who can name a good anti-pie? I want to be that person/organization that is well known for something that is normally known for the opposite. I like being the outlier. This blog will be my exploits of trying to do that, and I am happy that you are reading about it.

Altaholics Anonymous

Monday, August 15, 2011

I have been interviewed...

Monday, August 1, 2011

Being Lazy creates mistakes.

Laying the groundwork