Yes I know that it has been QUITE some time since my last blog but the holidays have been busy. It hasn't been me not logging into EVE because I have been doing plenty of that. I was on the test server quite a bit getting familiar with all the new stuff before the bulk of the rest of the community. One thing out of all the awesomeness that was the Crucible expansion that really got me excited was the POCOs or Player Owned Customs Offices. Being that APEX spends plenty of time in low sec and I do lots of Planetary Interaction I found this to be a key component to the expansion that really spoke to me and my gaming style. Now I could put up something in low sec besides a POS that will actually MAKE me ISK instead of cost me something and it will open the way to some PvP hopefully as well! So once the patch hit I organized our glorious alliance to help me out with my one Dreadnaught (a Moros) and take out an Interbus CO and put up our first one at a good planet. It was fairly uneventful but was nice to work together on something. After putting it up I did have my qualms about the local pirates taking it out. However, because of the game mechanics involved with a POCO, I knew that we would have a good chance to save it. Unlike POSes which you have to keep filled with Strontium so they can go into a reinforced mode, POCOs will do it automatically with no Stront. Also, depending on the time a POS starts it's RF timer and with the amount of Stront in its Stront cargo bay will determine what time it comes out of RF mode and when you have to be ready to defend it. A POCO has a configure menu that will let you pick a 2 hour range of when it will come out of RF and it will add 24 hours to that so you have time to coordinate a defense. What this means for APEX and our American time zone players, is that when the European pirates shoot our POCOs, it will be 4AM in the morning when they have to come finish it off and it will be 7 o'clock PM for us Americans. It gives us a significant advantage. So the Carebear Stare either unaware of this or not caring about this, decides to RF our first POCO. We ready a defense fleet and get shield reppers ready as well. Once a POCO comes out of RF it has 1% shields. It will have to be reinforced again if we can get it's shields above 25% and repping it any higher will just be icing on the cake. With 3 Basilisks and a Chimera it took about 25 minutes to get it to 50% shields and we called it good.
A few days later, CareBear Stare decided to do it again. By this time I had two more POCOs put up. They only RFed one of them. This time I was going to be on vacation away from home and not able to be there when it came out of RF. Luckily my alliance stepped up and defended it for me. We also discovered another thing, as long as we guard it and no one else shoots it, the passive recharge of the shields will get it to 95% by downtime. We don't even need to rep it! It will get to 25% and be safe after only 3 hours or so. With this new knowledge we put up 4 more POCOs. After that it was quiet for about a week. Then I logged on and saw a bunch of eve mails that all 6 of our POCOs in one system had been RFed. Really? Wow these guys are wasting so much of their own time. Again we just made sure no one shot at them when they came out of RF as we waited for targets to take our bait in Mara. So the lesson is, shooting a POCO to annoy the owner isn't really annoying. It isn't like a POS where it is annoying as hell when someone incapacitates your guns and reinforces your tower.
The POCOs are making us ISK and saving me ISK at the same time. It isn't a lot and it will take some time to make up the cost of putting them up. I like the sense of ownership though and will continue to put more up.
With the rest of the Crucible expansion I feel CCP really did a great job. The amazing thing is, it seems like it was faster and less work for them to put out an expansion most of the player base loved. Fixing stuff is easier then adding new stuff. I really think blasters are going to be used much more often then before. I used them before anyway because our style of PvP was land on grid and melt faces but most of the rest of the PvP community had eschewed the use of Blasters and rails (which was never used in PvP as long as I can remember). With the new lesser fitting requirements and the speed and agility buffs many Gallente ships are being used again. The Triple rep Hyperions are more popular because you can fit bigger guns now with your monster tank. Brutixs are about the same but at least they are faster and more agile and can also fit a full rack of Neutron Blaster Cannons much easier then before if you want to fit max gank. The rail platforms are a little better but I think rails just need a different approach overall. I feel like they should be the highest DPS long range guns in the game with a high ROF and very low alpha, just the opposite end of the spectrum then the other long range guns. This would add some flavor to the game and encourage their use.
The new Tier 3 Battlecruisers are pretty cool, and they do what they are meant to do. They are glass cannons and are very fast. I have seen some really fail fits so far but also some really good ones as pilots learn how to use them. There has been a few Nagas, Oracles, Tornadoes and Talos that have killed us or at least given us trouble. Some people just don't learn though that you can't track stuff very well.
http://apexunlimited.griefwatch.net/?p=details&kill=2586The new graphics are amazing. It feels like I am playing EVE 2 and not even the same game with the new nebula and new font and new warp effects. Warping through a planet for the first time was a nice surprise too. I am also very happy they nerfed supercaps, I no longer see supercarriers being thrown around and hot dropped on single cruisers for the lulz.
On another topic:
The amount of hypocrisy of some pirates is absolutely mindboggling. So we as APEX are playing the role of anti-pirates, trying to keep a semblance of order within low sec and not let pirates run rampant. We are space cops in a sense, and when a criminal or group of criminals in real life commit a crime, do the real life cops only bring an amount of cops to have "good fights" or "honorable fights?" No, they bring so many cops that they minimize any losses to as close to zero as possible. They strive for having none of their own getting hurt. They do the real life version of "ganking" and "blobbing." That is the role that APEX plays.
Some pirates are looking for easy ganks, some are looking for good fights, some are looking for both. Whatever the situation, when they take the bait of a defenseless or lone ship, they are showing us they have no problem in overwhelming odds in their favor. We too, are like them in we like overwhelming odds in our favor as well. So when we "gank" or "blob" a pirate (as they claim in local) and they complain, the irony is both enjoyable and hilarious. Our policy is always to throw a "gf" in local first no matter if we won or lost, but when our opponent starts smacking, we will tend to reply (even though silence REALLY gets them MAD BRO). Our favorite is when we kill them and they talk about how horrible we are because we "blobbed." Ha ha! Sorry man but your ship got blown up not ours!
We have had a guy recently who is in a e-peen null sec alliance that proceeds to smack whenever we engage him. It is really childish really. The only time I smack is trying to entice a fight. After the fight it serves no purpose. It just makes you look like a tool.
