Greetings my fellow corp men and women (& blog readers)!!!

Agatir here again… As one corpmate stated, “It was bound to happen.”

Most of you know that SI Radio has found a new “home” in a small pocket of 0.0 in Providence under the sovereignty control of Noir. Mercenary Group. (NMG.) As such we rent the ability to live and use the areas under their control for a “small” fee. Along with SI Radio there are a few other renters who inhabit the same systems. The majority of folks here have been enjoying the pocket’s military upgrades to farm anomalies and signatures. As you can expect, it is not uncommon to warp into a site only to find that it is already being pillaged. So you pick another site and warp off. Some of these sites are 6/10 and 10/10 complexes. Such sites have the ability to produce some really nice loot items, of the True Sansha variety. So there is some competition to race to the more lucrative sites. It is to be expected.

Since our arrival, SI Radio has lived in relative peace with its new found neighbors, but as my corpmate quote hinted to… it was only a matter of time before some feathers got ruffled.

***Warning: the following is all based upon Agatir Solenth’s in game perspective, and does not pretend to be the whole truth, and not thing but the truth***

As I log into game, yesterday evening, and make my customary salutations, I am greeted with folks telling me NOT to undock! This puzzled me, as there were only blues in system. Suspecting there may be a 20 man roaming gang running through the pocket, I inquired to what was going on? I was informed that we just had a friendly fire incident with our neighbors, in an adjacent system, in a 10/10 complex, and fingers were being pointed back and forth on who shot who first! To further complicate things both sides were claiming that THEY had got to complex first.

WOOT!!! Our first diplomatic crisis! I wasn’t sure if SI Radio even had diplomats other than Luminous or Quivering Palm (QP) and they are just talk show hosts! Luckily QP had just got online, so things were being discussed in some chat channel.

As this is a blog, and not a novel… I’ll just give the quick recap of what was passed in corp chat.

***Warning: the names and places have been changed to protect the fact I didn’t much care to pay that much attention***

Our Guy > We didn’t shoot first.

QP> He says that you did.

Our Guy> I got the logs to prove it.

QP> He says that he has a screen shot & logs to prove it.

QP> http: ENTER SCREEN SHOT HERE

QP>Wow he is really mad.

Our Guy> Yeah I trying to stay diplomatic but how can you when they talk like that?

Our Guy> Yep. He is just mad that we were here first.

QP> Were you?

Our Guy> Yes, we had to warp out and when we warped back in they were there, but we had wrecks all over.

Our Guy> He is claiming that it was his escalation.

Agatir Solenth> Um… guys is it me or is the first thing listed in that screen shot a combat message showing him shooting our drones? Then our drones shoot him?

Our Guy> Yep Agatir. He attacked our drones. They must have been set to aggressive and they attacked him.

QP> He must have been mad because you guys got there first? Did you guys blow his ship up?

Our Guy> No

QP> Then what is he bitching about?

Agatir Solenth>*SHRUG*

So… no blood no foul? I think everyone agreed to go their separate ways, and it was reinforced by our landlords (NMG.) that it is first come first serve on all sites in the pocket. I thought it a fair solution all around.

And in the end I got to test my Abby’s tank against the final room of a 10/10 complex and help my corp score a Nightmare Blueprint! ;p

Fly Safe… Stay profitable…

Next Report: Why do pod pilots hate to walk in stations?

Greetings my fellow corp men and women (& blog readers)!!!

I am Agatir Solenth (or Ag if you prefer). It has come to my attention that the Planet Risk Show is on the verge of being removed from the Blog Pack for lack of posting activity! As Quivering Palm & Luminus Aardokay have been overwhelmed by real life events (like answering fan mail, drinking beer, or chasing half naked girls on the beaches of Greece) I felt it my duty to step up and blog about the recent events surrounding SI Radio’s move to Providence.

It has been almost two months since I joined the ranks of SI Radio, and I can tell you that flying with these guys has been as much fun as listening to the Planet Risk Show Podcast. It isn’t that we have been super successful. We have had some “epic fail” attempts at PvP. We have gotten suckered into a RP event that turned out to be PvP trap (POP went my Geddon). Our wormhole operations have had limited success due to poor spawn rates in our 0.0 pocket.

What has been really successful is the chemistry of the guys who I fly with. As Quivering Palm and Luminus Aardokay have said again and again on their Podcasts, we are bunch of Carebears that have graduated to Noobs! We have as much fun losing ships as we do shooting them. This has made it a lot of fun to go out and try to learn this thing called PvP, and I for one, have become very good at losing ships! It would appear that we are a collection of beer drinking guys that like to fly internet spaceships. Most of us began our careers in EVE mission running and/or doing the industrial trade thing, and got our first taste of PvP in wormhole space.

That being said… what you can expect from my future reports will be snippets of our exploits and failures, lessons I have learned along the way, and my thoughts about EVE in general.

Until then… Fly Safe… Stay profitable…

Next Report: Drama in the Pocket – A Friendly Fire Incident

SI Radio officially supports (in alphabetical order):

Mike Azariah

Mynxee

Song Li

TeaDaze

PLEX Giveaway – 8 days left – turn-in your submission!

PS: don’t try to be too professional about it and miss-out on the opportunity to win free PLEXes

Recruitment is officially closed – Thanks to all who applied!

We will re-open recruitment again probably end of May for any specific needs.

As promised during the last show (if you haven’t yet listened to it) we are opening up recruitment.

You may skip to the 2h 35min index of Episode 16 to hear the relative talk – this post aims to cover what we are looking for in potential recruits and what we are offering.

Who are we looking for

- Mature, self-sufficient players with a good grasp of the game. We are based out of 0.0 so if you just joined the game, this is not for you.

- Having said that, we are not following a “10M SP minimum” policy or anything, rather than that you have already discovered what you want to do in the game and you feel you are ready to go to 0.0

- That implies that you like to live in an environment that is high risk / high reward. We are explorers, amongst the first to enter wspace and went all the way from C1 sites to farming Class 6 sites with just a handful of people. We expect that any new recruit has a strong sense of exploration and doesn’t expect to be handed a plate of food, but rather that you will “get what you put in”.

- If you (like us) used to live out in wspace, you will feel at home. We are still focusing on doing high-end PVE in Class 5/6 wormholes, but based out of a base in 0.0 rather than a POS inside wspace. This allows us to form raiding parties in wspace, while when there is no scheduled PVE op we can go for a small-gang PVP roam or you can stay in 0.0 and do some ratting / plexing on your own in fully upgraded systems.

- PVP skills are more than welcome, but given that we don’t consider ourselves relatively good at PVP (some could say we really suck at it) we don’t expect to get any seasoned PVP focused players. We aim to train ourselves and get good at PVP sooner rather than later, so you may want to join us and hone your PVP skills together with the rest of us.

- Some of us might like doing PVP more than anything else, but we also have folks that rather shoot at rocks all day long. If you like Mining and are not afraid to take the risk to move into 0.0, then you will find lots of opportunities to mine ABC ores and help in gathering resources to build everything from T1 all the way up to T3 ships and items (including capitals).

What we can offer you

- A friendly, “casual” gameplay style. Not too many rules and regulations, but not without structure either. We don’t tolerate griefing, scamming and smacktalking. We are not pirates either. We operate under strict NBSI (not blue shoot it) rules of engagement.

- We have a strong logistics backend to support our operations and you can get advantage of that to focus on what you want to do.

- Organized PVE ops in high-end Class 5/6 Wormholes with experienced FCs and also the opportunity to learn how to PVP with the rest of us.

- We offer corp-insured PVE, Mining and PVP ships. Based on how much we trust you and the way you handle yourself in fights, you can get access from T1 frigates all the way to T3 ships (provided you can fly them efficiently) when we go out in a corp operation. You are expected to have your own PVE & PVP ships ofc. Same applies for mining ships, with Orca / Rorqual support for large operations.

- A strong base of operations located in Providence, able to roam freely in the constellation, with 4 stations with corp hangars, under the Sov of NOIR. Mercenary Group. The new Providence as it shapes up, looks like it’s going to become a small-gang PVP haven.

- Strong EU time zone players (who usually stay up late so you can also find us online in some of the US time zones as well :-p) US players welcome.

What we want from you

- If you are interested, send an eve-mail to Quivering Palm, with a brief description of your profile and what you’ve been doing so far in-game, as well as what you aim to achieve while part of SI Radio.

- Limited API Key is also required.

- Be available for an interview with one of our recruiting officers (you will be notified by eve-mail) using EVE Voice.

Recruitment will officially open May 1st

Please feel free to send in your application beforehand if interested, but we won’t be able to accept anyone’s app before May 1st.

EDIT:

Almost forgot – if you are Greek you get bonus beer points

qp

[...]
We can learn
From the past
But those days
Are gone
We can hope
For the future
But there might not be one
[...]
So far or so it seems
All is lost
With nothing fulfilled
Off the pages and the
T.V. screen
Another world
Where nothing’s true
Tripping through
The life fantastic
Lose a step
And never get up
Left alone
With a cold blank stare
I feel like giving up
I was blinded by a paradise
Utopia high in the sky
A dream that only drowned me
Deep in sorrow, wondering why
[...]
Seasons change and so can I
Hold on Boy
No time to cry
Untie these strings
I’m climbing down
I won’t let them push me away

Dream Theater – A Change of Seasons

It’s been a really tough couple of months for the corp, being kicked out of our system, losing roughly 25bil ISK in assets and having half our folks logoffskied for weeks in a hostile territory that used to be our home, until we could find them an exit…

It’s true what they say… What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!

We are back baby!!

Tune in this Wednesday, 20:00 EVE time on the Planet Risk show (or get the recorded podcast if you can’t make it into the live) and listen to what happened in the final part of Planet Risk’s evacuation, what we did while we shamelessly didn’t do any shows or blogged about anything and also to learn what our next big bold move is.

Who knows? It might hold something interesting for you too!

qp

The third Blog Banter of 2010 comes to us from ChainTrap of the Into the unknown with gun and camera EVE Blog. He asks us: "Eve University turns six years old on March 15th; six years spent helping the new pilots of New Eden gain experience and understanding in a supportive environment. Eve is clearly a complicated game, with a ton to learn, so much that you never stop learning. So, the question is; What do you wish that someone had taken the time to tell you when you were first starting out? Or what have you learned in the interim that you’d like to share with the wider Eve community?"

298 days ago, we set foot inside wormhole space for the first time. Back then it was a group of 8 friends, most of us with less than 10M SPs at that time, that had absolutely no idea about wormholes, no idea about PVP (some say we still don’t have a clue), and had turned all the ISK in our wallets into a Medium POS, some supplies and fuel to last about two weeks.

We dared to venture into the unknown, dared to be bold and embraced the sandbox of the EVE Universe. In EVE – YOU – control your own destiny.

During that time, we managed:

…to make and burn more than 50 billion ISK
…to act as a fleet supporting each other instead of being a band of solo players
…to build capital ships
…to ride capital ships
…to self-destruct capital ships (damn you R&K!)
…to master the art of t3 production and make a fortune out of it
…to easily farm C6 plexes
…to have a show, podcast and blog related to w-space that acts as one of the definitive sources of information for EVE players
…to have played a major role into the CSM elections by hosting a series of interviews with Candidates
…to relay Alliance Tournament 7 for two weekends and commentate on the fights afterwards
…to fight alongside seasoned pilots
…to be considered celebrities and widely identified & to fight against (and win) against famous celebrities in planned deathmatches
…to organize our very own PVP tournament
…to lose ships due to friendly fire
…to strip belts out for vast amounts of minerals
…to mine mercoxit
…to keep losing ships and still have the "oh well.. no real harm done" mindset
…to manipulating wormholes and w-space as if we were the ones who designed it
…to see ships in directional and instead of cowering, head over to take them down
…to have a single monthly corporate meeting
…to kill a Rorqual 5 days into the w-space colonization effort
…to successfully ransom a ship for 1 billion ISK
…to take down and destroy a defenseless POS
…to take down and destroy a defended POS that someone else erected into our own back yard
…to participate into large capital fleet warfare
…to help destroy the ego of a large alliance such as the R&K
…to spend Valentine’s day fighting our most epic fight defending our home
…to spend Steak & BJ day self-destructing our assets and evacuating our Class 6 wormhole
…to grow our corp with valuable and trustworthy members
…to have the creator of EVE-HQ in our corp fighting and having fun alongside us
…to get QP’s brother to join EVE
…to make so many friends in the game
…to exploit what w-space has to offer us to the point that we’d grow tired of it
…to lose multiple billions in assets, ships, pride and not /emoragequit
…to make a lengthy post on how much we have achieved during the previous year

None of this would have happened if we haven’t dared to be bold!

This is our message to all new capsuleers:

Dare to be bold pilot!

Luminus Aardokay & Quivering Palm

List of Participants:

1. CrazyKinux: The Three Pillars of Wisdom
2. The Elitist: Helping the new guy/gal
3. Hands Off, My Loots: Nothing Needed
4. Rantuket: Blog Banter 16
5. EVE Opportunist: Nooby Cluey
6. Into the Unknown With Gun and Camera: EVE University
7. Zero Kelvin: We’re the young ones!
8. I am Keith Neilson: Set Your Destination
9. Prano’s Journey: Just Like the Very First Time
10. A Merry Life and a Short One: No Seriously
11. Yarrbear Tales: Nublet 101
12. A Mule In EVE: If I only knew
13. Diary of a Space Jockey: WTH did I get myself into?!
14. EVOGANDA: Why?
15. A Memoir From Space: 16th Blog Banter
16. Death’s Sweetest Kiss: Who What When Where Why How??
17. Freebooted: Beyond the Shortcuts
18. Learning to Fly: Noobing
19. Caldari Outcast: My First Blog Banter Post!
20. Roc’s Ramblings: Financial Survival
21. Diary of a Pod Pilot: Free Knowledge Inside
22. Nullsec Carebear: I could’ve been less of an idiot
23. Facepalm’s Ramblings: Something Smells Fishy
24. Kirith Darkblade: Do you wish to know more?
25. Autopilot Disabled: I’m still starting…
26. Finders & Keepers: Relax
27. Confounded Capsuleer: What have you got to loose?
28. Clan Oriana: Sixteen
29. Flashfresh: EVE Blog Banter #16
30. Rettic’s The Chronofile: You Make EVE
31. Diary of a Bored Spaceman: Past Imperfect
32. Chocolate Heaven: Known Unknowns
33. Zen and the Art of Internet Spaceship Maintenance Trust No One!
34. More to come soon…

Well here it is:

3x LG Flatron W2486L – 1080p LED screens driven by 3x8800GTX (triple-SLI able motherboard from ASUS but without enabling SLI is the trick to run this) gives an awesome desktop for EVE. I opted to go for nVidia although it doesn’t support running 1 client on all 3 screens at the same time (as ATi does) but I can run my 3 toons at the same time, each on it’s own 1080p screen which is pure awesomesauce!

Playing eve along me are various gadgets and geeky stuff as you can see below – and yes I am loaded with Microsoft hardware as well – the wrist pad is the latest addition – and boy it’s comfortable Oh and yeah.. I haven’t quitted smoking just yet either

QP

Last night I got myself into some non-consensual PVP… and almost lost my brand new Tengu… and by the looks of it… I might have lost it and never realized that the ship I was flying had a weird bug…

I need to point out, that usually I would take my Cov Ops fitted Tengu when moving in hostile space. However I decided to spend some ISK and build me a nice gank and tank Tengu setup, so I was giving it a try.

So I board my new Tengu from the Ship Maintenance Array, get the bookmarks for the high sec exit from the can (always remember to leave a copy back), and head to the Class 1 static. Stability looks good here, jump inside, check directional.. check directional again.. all good, decloak, warp to the C1 (while spamming directional), activate hardeners before I land on the high sec exit… all good so far…

I activate my weapons, overheat the scrambler, fire up the AB and start orbiting the hole – waiting for the target to decloak… a few seconds pass… nothing… hmm that’s probably someone who is waiting for the session timer to end before jumping ba…

The wormhole at that point is looking really small and by showing info I see that’s on the verge of collapse.

Meanwhile another habringer joins the fight and I am not sure what was that 3rd ship.

At that time, my shield has a hard time keeping up and I realize that I might lose that ship because I have not even taken down that Harbirnger’s shield! WTF?! I am supposed to be doing 545 DPS while overloading with my current skills… anyway.. that’s not the time to think about those things…

Overheat my AB, burn the distance (good job on the Harbringers trying to bump me away), and manage to reach it and jump through to the safety of highsec…

I need to give a shout out to Tal Brasi (the first Harbringer pilot) who after chatting with me in wspace colonists channel, offered me the new static signature and the new highsec system so I was back inside Planet Risk not more than an hour later. I was expecting some kind of “welcoming party” there but oh well… we’ll meet again someplace, someday GF!

Now after I am back safely into PR, I start digging to find out how my new Tengu that was supposed to be dishing out pain and suffering couldn’t even bend the shields from that Harbringer, even with overloaded launchers…

Fire up EVEHQ and head to the fitting tool and the Audit tab. Then back to the in-game screen.. Then back again.. then.. aha!

Here are the relevant skills I have:

OK then, petition time. I have to give a thumbs up to CCP GMs here who replied really fast saying:

“Did you try logging off and on again?”

Seriously tho, to cut a long story short, the issue is a confirmed bug and I have submitted a detailed bug report and reproduction steps.

The problem lies with the Ship Assembly Array at the POS. Apparently more T3 ships have reported such issues, so if you are flying a T3 ship, boarded from a Ship Assembly Array in a POS – make sure to check that your bonuses are applied properly!

So these where my thoughts after the dust settled…

Wspace colonists really can’t catch a break with T3 ships inside wspace.

Besides the fact that I cannot change T3 subsystems unless I am in a station, I have discovered that every time I board my ship from the Ship Maintenance Array of my POS, the bonuses I should be getting from the Caldari Offensive Subsystem Skill at level V (that I have trained) are not applied.

If I logoff and then quickly log back on again, before my ship engages the emergency warp drive, the bonuses applied are still the wrong ones.

If I logoff, wait a couple of minutes and then relog, always while flying my Tengu, the correct bonuses are applied.

If I store my ship in the SMA, the next time I’ll pick it up I’ll have the same problem again.

Since I can’t change my subsystem while at my POS (still no news from CCP about this) I can’t confirm for any different subsystems and/or other T3 ships.

Oh the joys of living in wspace!!!

Any of you guys can confirm similar strange behavior?

QP

CrazyKinux’s EvE Online Guides Collection

Now also sporting a link to our guides as well

Thanks CK for organizing and updating this awesome list!

We seem to have solved the server issues we had over the past few days… and just in the nick of time as it seems. CrazyKinux is revisiting the EVE Online Blog Pack (if you are reading this blog in your Capsuleer app on your iPhone then you probably are already aware of it) and we’d like you to go over there and show your support.

Regardless of whether we make it to the next version of the Blog Pack, we’ll continue to blog and write guides and all, so no worries there – we do this because we love doing it

I know we haven’t been blogging extensively over the past couple of weeks, but we had quite a few things to deal with. Fortunately, there will be a new corp-member who will start blogging here soon enough, so you’ll be hearing more from the industrialist’s life in wspace.

You will hear all about the Valentine’s Day Massacre – some of you already heard about from various rumors circulating in wspace colonists channel.

Yep, we’ve had a full-blown siege and capital fight in Planet Risk – and we’ll be talking all about it in the upcoming show – this Wednesday 24th of Feb – 21:00 eve time on siradio.fm

stay tuned!