No New Year’s party for you guys…

After a lot of heated discussions the Polish EvE Online community have decided that we should all together help our Russian brothers by sending them some very much needed and critically important supplies. After all, they’ve just finished fighting off Northern Coalition’s forces and were starting to make the push into Geminate. So we scrapped together some funds, bought a Charon freighter and filled it with life-saving medical supplies and some extremely qualified medical staff. We would be their much needed Santa Claus, even if a bit late!

Unfortunately, our freighter pilot must’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere and for some reason unknown to us, he ended in the Vuorrassi solar system. Without enough time to change plans and relocate all the supplies and staff elsewhere, we decided to gather a support fleet of mostly battleships and battlecruisers, and make the push with our precious cargo through Northern Coalition’s territory. Our goal was to deliver our package to where it was needed the most – straight to the brave Russian soldiers on the front.

Our fleet was however intercepted by Northern Coalition forces about halfway through – there were a few small skirmishes on the way, but as we were moving through the NCGR-Q system to U54-1L, we were assaulted by a large battleship fleet supported by two Titan class ships. Unfortunately they appeared in the best moment for them – our fleet was split up into two groups. We managed to kill NC’s interdictors though, initiate the warp with our freighter and escape to U54-1L. However it was a costly escape, as most of our fleet didn’t make it out in time. My own Tempest battleship was lost shortly after helping to dispose of a heavy interdictor – the Northern fleet landed practically on me, and I just couldn’t burn out of range quick enough.

In U54-1L we decided to make one last stand with our precious cargo and the remains of our fleet. Alas, the forces of the North were too numerous, and our freighter exploded in a ball of flame after it’s pilot tried to ram down some of the enemy battleships.

Being in high spirits, we had hoped that our sacrifice was not in vain and the medical staff and supplies wouldn’t go to waste – or maybe the Northern Coalition would find them useful – but it was not in the cards tonight. One of their bloodthirsty pilots shot the wreck and destroyed it all, showing no respect for either the life-saving medical supplies or the extremely qualified medical personel, even though most of the latter died anyway in the freighter’s explosion. Barbarians, all of them.

And so, we all learned a very important lesson tonight – being a Santa Claus is not easy at all.

OOC afterwords

This was the Polish community’s 8th Gank Night – usually the event being your typical gank fest, a fleet of pilots flying in whatever they can find and killing whatever they can find and engage. This time, we’ve decided to do something really crazy – and escorting a freighter full of booze and ladies through hostile space is definitely a good way to show that indeed we’re not exactly sane. The freighter’s lossmail is a testament to this craziness.

NC’s attack came at a good moment for them – about 2/3rd of our fleet was already in warp to the destination gate, and initially there were only some battleships and a bit of logistics staying with the freighter. Without a full fleet we couldn’t do much against the about 200 of NC pilots. We managed to keep warp disruption bubbles out of the freighter and it warped out – at the cost of our battleships and logistics. When the rest of the fleet came back to help us, they’ve been lagging out quite badly and couldn’t do much – and all that with only about 250-300 people in the system. It doesn’t help when all your FC can see is a 1 frame per minute slideshow.

But of course we all knew that we were going to die anyway somewhere, so it’s all good. I’m just disappointed with all that wasted booze that got destroyed with the freighter’s wreckage, but overall it was definitely fun.

Flying around

After about a month of playing Eve Online, here’s where I am – in a tiny shuttle, orbiting a gigantic titan class vessel – the Caldari Navy Leviathan, sitting in an orbit above the planet of Luminaire VII, or what my character would rather call it – Caldari Prime.

It’s one of the things that make the Eve universe have a nice story that the players take part in. While some of the players might simply ignore the rpg setting, I kind of like it, especially if it lets me take a very close look on something that is currently one of the largest and most deadly spaceship a player can fly in the game – and in a way that doesn’t involve me being blown up rather quickly by an angry mob of other players. The second picture shows the scale better – you can see my 40m long shuttle in the middle of the screen, flying across the top of the Leviathan.

So far I’m in a newbie friendly training corporation called the Unseen Academy – I mostly spend the time here flying around on my own, doing missions and other stuff, and once in a while attending various trainings of all kinds. So far we’ve done group mission running, some pvp, some mining operations, and a frigate tournament of sorts. If you happen to be a Polish player as well, I’d really recommend them (just like they were recommended to me) – if not, there’s also a few others, Eve University being probably the most known of them. It’s a nice way to get to know the game better, see what you can do in here and find what will be fun for you.

Still, I haven’t totally decided on what I will be doing after the Academy. Missions are okay, but they’re getting quickly repetitive and boring. Exploration (especially in high security systems) is nice, but very, very random – one day you can get loot worth from 5 to 30 million ISK each, other times you fly around scanning system after system, and get either wormholes or hidden asteroid belts. Mining, trading, production and research… I can’t go there, too static for me. This would leave pvp (probably in null sec), which I’m still a bit scared of… ;)

Dwarfs in space

For the last few days, I’ve been playing Eve Online. I received a trial invitation from one of my friends (with one extra week of playtime), and started flying around big empty areas with planets, asteroids and other stuff in it.

In short – it’s much more fun when you play it by yourself, compared to looking at pretty videos, screenshots and observing someone else doing the flying. If I had to sum it up in a few words – it’s basically the good old Frontier, only played in an online environment. And yeah, I know that by saying this I’m basically reducing this incredibly complex game to something that could be fitted on a single floppy disk (only with better graphics), but I have only good memories of both Frontier and First Encounters, so it’s absolutely not negative.

So far I’ve been mostly running tutorial missions and finishing the first epic arc. The tutorials are lengthy, but they explain the basic game mechanics quite well – and award ships and skill books. The epic missions on the other hand were a bit disappointing – they provide a nice storyline to drag you around the Empire (and grant a new player something from 10 to 15 million ISK while doing so), but it looks extremely unfinished and ends without any sort of a real ending. I’ve expected maybe a bit more of action, especially for something that long. Still, the cash and experience was nice to get.

Right now I’m mostly playing around, doing random odd jobs to find something interesting. On the weekend I was mostly doing missions versus NPC pirates and then salvaging their wrecks – while not very hard at the starting level, it’s a bit boring when the pirates die in a few missile salvos and don’t have the chance to fight back. Not that I really want them to fight back though, as I’ve already lost a good few frigates by jumping into something that I couldn’t handle. Missions themselves aren’t very profitable (at least the Level 1 ones I’m able to do), but switching ships after the mission and reducing 20 enemy wrecks to sellable parts or raw materials can usually double the income. I’ve already made back more than I’ve spent on a destroyer fitted to salvage things, but most of the time the rewards aren’t that great.

This week will be exploration week – running around systems and scanning for minerals, pirate bases and other stuff that can be found in space. Lets hope that I can find anything at all. ;)