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

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…

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

A sort non-fictional story by Merinid Dormer

February 14th, Sunday. 19:00 New Eden Time.

Vessper was sitting in his Thanatos. “I am aligning and waiting for instructions” he said.

“10 more minutes to go” said Nictutu.

Quivering Palm with a steady voice continued, “ Guys, this is it. It’s now or never”.

“Let’s secure that tower and the stuff we have in it”, I added with a bit of a doubt in my voice. Hopefully no-one had noticed. Morale was not on the highest levels. Some minor fleet changes of the last minute, nothing i could notice while i was shacking. My fleet fight experience wasn’t helping either. All I could think were the Blueprints, Components and Minerals behind the damaged force field of our Production Tower, sitting just 0.54 AU away. Those were what I’ve been working on for the past few months. All the research and effort Eowarian and I have put on these…

“Everyone who has a cloak jump in, the rest stay in place”. He sounded confident. He was Alekseyev Karrde. The CEO of  one of the most notorious and experienced mercenary corporations in New Eden. NOIR. When a mercenary, like his kind, is in your side your only fear is that he might get more money than you gave him from the “enemy”. Alekseyev and NOIR weren’t  like this though, they had the reputation of honoring their contracts, regardless of money. “ Members of SI Radio Corp. you don’t have to worry about anything. We are here and we know how to do this. Follow our lead and we will secure your system again.

TechPalatinus was patient. He and his 30 pilots were ready. All of them, well trained and experienced pilots. “We are in place and waiting for orders as well”. Wormhole Space colonist feared his corporation. Capital Construction Research members were ruthless. They were known for destroying Towers and stealing whatever valuables they could find. They were on our side. They have been friends for quite some time now.

“1 minute 30 seconds” said Nictutu.

“TeaDaze jump in” Quivering ordered. Orders is not something that TeaDaze is supposed to take I thought. The guy is a legend. He was always in our side. What a pilot. He was a daredevil.

“There is a command ship that we can provide for you to fly TeaDaze” said Luminus Aardokay. “Well thanks a lot man” answered TeaDaze.

“SI Radio Corp. members, are you ready?” asked Quivering.

One by one, Luminus Aardokay, Nictutu, Vessper, Estar Tarns, Sengiria, Verona Black, Eowarian D, Viscious Hunter, Sir Keldron, Drapetis and myself replied “Here”. 20 seconds of silence followed, or was it like an hour? At that point I couldn’t make the difference.

“Mr Deaker reporting movement in the enemy tower”

“Reinforced is down in our tower” said Nictutu.

“Vessper you are clear to warp” went on Quivering.

“I see an Armageddon Navy Issue, 3 Proteus, 3 Legions, 2 Bhaalgorn, 2 Thanatos and one Megathron moving & aligning towards planet VIII” continued Mr Deaker.

“Let us know when they are on grid Vessper” said Alekseyev

10 seconds afterwards Vessper was already repairing the Shields of our Control Tower. “They are on grid. I got hostiles all over me.”

“Everyone jump in. Quivering move your fleet in.”

TechPalatinus followed. 20 of his best pilots inside Strategic Cruisers.

Rooks & Kings have failed to spot the trap. And they paid the price. The day was to be remembered as Valentine’s Day Massacre.

The fight over our system was over. We were once again the ones to control it. The Siege was over. Things were getting back on track. But I was left wondering. What was to come next?

It was clear to me that Wormhole Space systems are special. Not just another part of space just recently discovered, but the foundation on which the world we live in is going to grow into something greater. The 3rd generation of Cruiser Construction is the present. But scientist are working on different aspects of any technology discovered in wormhole space. Rumors are traveling about 3rd generation Frigates and Battleships. If those rumors are close to being truth one thing is for sure. Wormhole space is the future. This is where new challenges arise. Where money is made. And day by day more capsuleers dare to be bold. More people pack up their stuff and search for glory,  money inside wormhole space, setting up colonies. 3rd generation production is profitable. Scientist of all major factions are paying good money to get their hands on items saved from Sleeper wrecks. They call them “Blue Tags”. A single Anomaly once gave our corp “Tags” that worth more than 700 million ISK, the salvaged wrecked provided us with enough materials to build 2 3rd Generation Cruisers.

Pirates, Mercs, Spies, Industrialist, Mission Runners, Miners, Traders. They all want their cut. They will come to take it. And to do that they will need to take control of wormhole systems.

The Era Of Capital Fleet Fights Over Control Of Wormhole Systems Is Upon Us

Are The Colonies Prepared To Defend?

After the long hiatus, we are back and eager to clear some sites and make some extra ISK

So after the holidays when everyone was away and not clearing sites we had quite a few spawned inside our new home. In total we had 6 PVE Sites (2 Citadels, 2 Bastions, 1 Strange Energy Readings and 1 Mirror), 9 LADAR sites (Yes 9!!) and 8 Grav Sites (Yes 8!!!) and also a RADAR Site.

So far we’ve cleared most of the PVE and LADARs – but damn! scanning all those signatures every day after server restart just to refresh their sigs so you can scan for any new wormholes is a royal pain! The mining crew has almost cleared a Rarified Core Deposit and we are planning to have a massive mining op soon to clear all the smaller sites in one go.

On the PVE front, we are now using carriers to augment our sleeper encounters and net extra ISK from each site. The first carrier you bring into the mix spawns an additional 6 Sleepless Guardians (the best Sleeper BS kind) while the second carrier you bring spawns an additional 8! Nothing to worry about though… the encounters are easy enough when you have 2x Carriers on grid and the DPS is quite good to clear the sites fast enough. The extra ISK from the Guardians is also most welcome!

Here are some nice looking pics from our recent encounters. Look ma! Lights!

PVP action has been quite low these days – following last month’s massacre where I got podded – I’d say this is not bad. A few days ago we had some folks hauling stuff through our wormhole but we lacked the manpower to setup an effective camp using bubbles etc so we didn’t net any kills. Too bad

On another note, we are still debating whether to build a Rorqual right away or build some Dreadnoughts first. We will talk about that on our next show, as well as give you detailed info on how to use carriers in wspace encounters from our experiences these days.

Last, but not least, on a personal note, my main (Quivering Palm) just got over 20M SPs (huzzah!) roughly about the same time as I celebrated my first year in the game. One year ago I was looking to find level 1 agents with Quality 15+ and now I am debating whether to build a Moros or a Rorqual.. I’d say it has been a good first year and hope much more to come!

See you out there!

You might recall the Siege on Planet Risk * we had back in the Class 2 beginning of September, where we managed to protect our POS against a Russian corp from the xX Shadow of Death Xx alliance.

* hence the grin… :-p

We also had quite a few dealings with Russian PVPers last week, where we simply got pwnd… Some lessons learned there (wait for the next PR show for details).

So I began to think how come and so many Russian folks wander in wormholes…

Perhaps the image discovered by Therem Harth gives a clue to why wormholes are so popular to Russian players…

In any case, I just want to point out that I have no prejudice nor hard feelings for any Russians playing the game. In real life I work daily with a team of Russian folks and I am proud to call some of them my friends… Hmm.. maybe I should show them that Dominion trailer and hook them up with EvE! :-p

Мне бы хотелось побывать в вашей стране!

На здоровье!

1. We are in fact selling our home system in w-space which we affectionately call Planet Risk.

2. We are also selling our Planet Risk related wormhole-fu and settling services. i.e. we will provide all the information we have gathered the hard way regarding all relevant aspects we have encountered, plus we will help the newcomers to settle down, setup their POSes etc and after they are comfortable with the arrangement we shall be gone from the system with no claims to come back to.

3. We used to be carebears, doing missions and mining in empire space before we got here. We like to think we evolved into newbs and had a great time and fun while doing so! We are now extending this opportunity to come and establish your own base in our very own system, with all the good stuff and our lessons learned, to the highest bidder!

OK… so who is this sale for?

1. Small to medium sized corps. Planet Risk’s optimal usage will come from corporations with no less than 5 and no more than 15 active players. On a theoretical level Planet Risk can be inhabited and operated by less than 5 people but farming the neighboring C5 plexes with less than 5 pilots is a death wish. More than 15 pilots will need to go on farming sprees more often to ensure a big paycheck at the end of the month.

2. Carebears who have always been dreaming of exploring the fun side of EVE but who do not have the experience to venture into null sec and who do not wish to band under the protective wings of an Alliance. If you’re bored silly of grinding missions in empire and you feel like you’d go all Stockholm Syndrome if you crunch another Veldspar rock, then Planet Risk is for you. Keep in mind that Planet Risk, though a much safer place to be than your cookie cutter null sec, is still 0.0 space and PVP encounters will happen relatively frequently.

3. People willing to invest ISK into a w-space colonization operation in terms of equipment, know-how, real estate and colonization services. A couple of billion ISK in your corp.’s wallet should be your starting point. You’ll make those back in the first month in Planet Risk with quite a profit margin. By the second month you’ll be able to make your corp 15bil/month.

4. Any other type of player who wishes to colonize w-space for specific types of operations. We suggest that you go over our podcasts and blog posts as we have extensively covered life on the wormhole and looked at it from various profession perspectives, such as those of Pirates, Resource Harvesters, Industrialists, Carebears, PVPers, Researchers, Mercenaries etc…

Hmm… so if we have a small (5-15 man) corp… Why don’t we wait for Dominion and try to claim our own 0.0 system?

1. Wormhole life is in many ways different than null sec. If you know the ropes you can make boatloads of ISK in relative safety at the same time. In fact you can up to a point control the level of exposure to danger. All of our corpmates have their +4/+5 implants on them. How many 0.0 citizens can tell you that?

2. You won’t find yourself against big blobs. Planet Risk is a Class 2 system, and all wormholes that spawn from and to it will not allow anything bigger than a Battleship to go through. You can rest assured that unless another corp is VERY determined to rip you out of Planet Risk and settle there your POS is going to be perfectly safe.

3. Wormhole life is suited for both Teamwork and Solo activities. You can have fun (and ISK) alone or with your corpmates doing Plexes and sites or ambushing other pilots in neighboring systems, or organizing mining expeditions. Planet Risk plexes are soloable, albeit time consuming.

4. You can start your own T3 production. We started a couple of months ago and now we can build practically every T3 ship and subsystem. The cost of building T3 ships for our own use is only a fraction of the retail market price, so you can either equip your own team or sell them for profit.

5. You can run your own T1 production inside Planet risk, research your BPOs and construct everything less than a super capital ship with no war-declarations to scare you or threaten your POS. In fact if a corp declares war against your corp, it gives you the added bonus of a good laugh.

6. After Dominion you will most probably have to fight to claim your space rather than just come here and start farming Class 5’s the next day.

Plus, you won’t be missing the ratting aspect of 0.0 since you get your daily wormhole linking to it

Sounds great! Can you tell me more about Planet Risk?

Planet Risk is the name we gave to our Class 2 wormhole system. It’s official designation is J163923. It has no native wormhole anomalies that affect your ships. It has two static connections that daily connect to a different Class 5 system (N062 wormholes) and 0.0 (E545). It also sports infrequent access to/from HighSec (about once every 2 weeks) and other Class systems, as well as Low sec.

We have established our presence here since 20th of May 2009, and you can read about the first 10 weeks on the Captain’s log section of our website.

You cannot bring in capital ships in Planet Risk. The ships that fit through any wormhole connection to it are all combat ships up to Battleships, all industrial ships except freighters and the Orca. You can build capitals inside Planet Risk to facilitate your life, BUT you will not be able to take them out of Planet Risk.

You can check out some of the screenshots section to take a look of our system. FYI, it has the same colors as the Apocrypha login screen of your EvE client

Won’t I make more ISK per day if I stay in Empire Space and run missions/mine and follow the life of a carebear?

Until you get a solid operation up and running you’ll probably make less ISK than you would if you spent your days grinding L4 missions. Once you get the hang of it though you’ll be able to make the same money in 1/10th of the time and by investing 1/10th of the effort while at the same time having 10 times more fun.

For mining w-space is hands down a lot more profitable. Arkonor, Bistot and Crokite are going to be your daily asteroids.

Now if you are scared shitless of PVP and the very notion of shooting and being shot at by other players makes you sick then Wormhole Space is not for you. If however you dare to be bold,  our “casual” player can expect a monthly paycheck ranging from 500M to a Billion ISK to hit his wallet. A week  month of dedicated farming can net your corp 15 or even 20 billions. Not bad eh? EDIT: corrected: it’s month not week tnx Disndale!

Not to mention the fun you will have and the sense of exploration!

So why the hell are you selling it if it is such a money maker?

While Planet Risk, being a C2 system, is an excellent place to start your career as a wormhole colonist up, it can accommodate you up to a certain degree. Once you grow in numbers you will eventually seek out more resources to satisfy your ever increasing demands, as well as new challenges. For quite a few months Planet Risk will be able to give you a new thrill every day, but as you grow accustomed to the wormhole way of life, these thrills and challenges become more and more trivial.

We have reached the point where we want to expand and invest in bigger premises and greener pastures. Larger and tougher battles, capital ships, more ISK, new experiences. We won’t be leaving w-space. Just relocating into a higher class system. But even with those demands in place, we calculate that Planet Risk could accommodate us for at least another 6 months. We do however get antsy =P

OK sounds interesting… So what do you offer?

Here is our offer:

1. The way we have our daily operations running in every aspect of living within wormhole space. In particular:

a. POS Setups & Fittings & Defensive tips & tricks as well as assorted Bookmarks to help you defend your base(s).

b. POS Refueling operations & best practices

c. Hybrid Polymer Reaction operations and method of optimizing your production for maximum profits and/or T3 production

d. Tech 3 production operations and profit optimization

e. How to work with Planet Risk native wormholes (daily openings to Null sec and Class 5 systems) including scanning tips and defending against heavily populated systems.

f. Class 5 encounters. Including PVE anomalies and Magnetometric and Radar sites that require fleet operations. Detailed wave-after-wave explanation of triggers, Sleeper rats, expected profit per site, and more…

g. PVP guide for wormholeers – what you need to know to be safe in the lawless 0.0 wormhole space, how to defend yourself and how to fight back

h. Mining operations & best practices, including detailed analysis of all the Gravimetric and Ladar sites found in Planet Risk, as well as mining tips & tricks for wormhole space.

2. In addition to the above list, we can provide the following tools:

a. A detailed spreadsheet that anyone can use (comes with a how-to-use-guide) that will be able to help you plan what to bring inside wormhole space, how to haul it using industrial ships, how to optimize your cargohold to minimize jumps through wormholes and how to fit your POS properly.

b. A detailed spreadsheet that will be uber-helpful to POS refueling operations.

c. A detailed spreadsheet for T3 production needs and Hybrid Polymer reactions

d. The method we use for giving away paychecks to our corpmates every 15 days, including (you guessed it) the detailed spreadsheet to help out with the calculations.

3. Finally we shall be providing any support needed for the buyer to move their possessions from K-space into Planet Risk, including (but not limited) to:

a. Scanning of appropriate K-Space systems to be used as entry points

b. Hauling support by our industrial fleet, including (if needed) Freighter(s) and/or Orca(s)

c. Combat Fleet to protect the Hauling operation(s).

d. Safespot under our POS Shields during the setup of your new base.

Hmm so besides the money you ask, I need to acquire lots of stuff as well! Any idea how much the whole thing is going to cost me?

Well.. Good News!

We will be more than happy to sell you any/all of our belongings at face value (zero profit) to go along with the sale. This way we won’t have to carry lots of stuff outside and into our Class-6 and you will have all the stuff you need inside Planet Risk waiting for you to use.

The list of available assets will be made available upon request, but just to give you an idea we are talking about 2 Large POSes, shitloads of structures for all T1 ships/modules/rigs production, T3 production end-to-end and lots of ships that we’d rather sell than have to carry around with us.

Wow!… So anything else I need to know?

1. We keep the rights to the name Planet Risk. Period. Other than that you can name your system whatever you like. At most we might accept a name in the lines of “The system formerly known as Planet Risk”. =)

2. You must be speaking on behalf of your corp, so need to be either a CEO or Director to vouch for your genuine interest.

3. This is not an open bid, and it will run for as long as it takes till we have a satisfying offer. I’d say that we definitely won’t bother for less than 2 Billion ISK for the real estate, so your offer needs to be considered as a long-term investment from your end.

4. We shall keep all bids/discussions confidential and the buyer will decide if they want their name to be public after the transaction is complete and the system is under their control.

5. We shall provide all the needed support before-during-and-after the transaction to the buying corp to make sure they enjoy wormhole space as much as we did!

So what are you going to do with the money you make out of this sale?

We are going to invest it in our Class-6 project more on that soon ™!

For any questions/comments/bids or offers please contact Quivering Palm or Luminus Aardokay in-game.

But, when we started this blog and the show we have decided we will go with complete disclosure of both the good and the bad…

We lost our first T3 ship last night.

…It was the Proteus Utility Ship.

…and 2 Battleships (Raven, Dominix).

…and an Interceptor (Ares).

To Sleepers.

Why did we lose it?

Well I’d say that our major mistake was the lack of Intel on a given Magnetometric Site. We have only tried this particular site once, sometime back in July. We ended up loosing 2 BSs (Megathron and Raven) and a Catalyst back then. In this particular site, there are two waves of Sleepers and then there is a weird trigger for the remaining waves. First of all, we thought it was only one additional wave. heh..

But first things first. The site has 15 Ancient Artifacts for analyzing that hold Relics that we can Reverse Engineer for T3 Subsystems. That particular site also had an Abandoned Talocan Battleship that gives Hull pieces.

Other Magnetometric sites only spawn 10 of those Artifacts, so it’s rather lucrative on it’s own and explains the difficulty – by far the toughest Class 5 encounter we have seen.

On the other hand, we thought the 3rd wave is triggered after you open a few of the cans. That’s what we thought from our past encounter. Turns out that’s not the trigger.

The Raven gets D/C a few secs before we dispatch the remaining of the second wave, so we decide to stop the BSs to wait for him to relog, while the Proteus is till heading towards the cans. We plan to move everyone by the cans and start opening them up one by one. But as I mentioned above, turns out the spawn trigger is not the opening of the cans…

So there we are, a fleet of 5 BSs moving slowly towards the cans after we dispatched the 2 initial waves and the Raven pilot reconnected, and the Utility Proteus, 20KM away from us. I need to point out that the Anomaly of that particular Class 5 was the Wolf Rayet, that decreases the Signature of ships – perhaps the most annoying / difficult anomaly to work with if you get a lot of small frigates buzzing you.

Then the spawn came.

6 Frigates, 6 Cruisers, 3 Battleships at about 100KM from us. Everything targeted the Proteus. With 6 of the frigates MWDing towards the Proteus they got it webbed and scrammed and he was too far from us to be able to do anything. It popped in a few seconds.

Then as we where speechless, they moved on to target a Raven from the main fleet. My scorpion tried to lock all the frigs to jam them so that the Proteus could escape. By the time the Proteus popped, I still had 5 more secs till I could finalize my lock on the frigs (damned Wolf Rayet!!) Once they have switched to the Raven, I had to unlock the frigs and target the BSs (still sitting at 100KM+) to jam them to reduce the damage output.

In the meantime, on my effort to compensate of the loss of the extra reppers from the Proteus and Raven, I start overloading my ECMs only to miss a circle and end up with 80% of my ECM modules burned out. aha..

The Alpha strike was massive and the Raven popped next, after a few seconds, and as it turned out, Luminus’ had disconnected at the most bad time he could ever DC, leaving us with no EWAR from the scorpion and only 2 RR on the Raven. Faster than you could say “Murphy” and while we did a good job killing some sleepers, turns out there was another wave inbound.

I check my overview… some frigs, about 10 Cruisers and 7 Advanced Sleeper BSs (ZOMG). The rest of our fleet has 2 Megathrons, an Abaddon, a Dominix, a Scorpion (with only 2 ECM left) and the Eos. The command is given to warp out – cut our losses, as my Scorpion gets called primary from the Sleepers. Seeing damage bleed into structure, I jettison my cargo (holding 3 Intact, 5 Malfunctioning and lots of other stuff from our previous Mag site) so that when the Scorpion blows up, at least the loot will be intact in case we can pick it up later. Turns out I am being fired upon only from BSs and Cruisers, while the Frigates tackle the Dominix, so I warp out with some hull left, while the Dominix is scrammed and goes down next.

We regroup, and Luminus takes in an Ares to try and grab the dropped loot (some Billions in RE pieces and tags) and manages to return safely 2 times. The third time he goes in, the Sleeper frigs are already on to him and the Ares pops.

We decide to cut our losses and call it a night…

Lessons Learned:

If something could go wrong, it will go wrong at the worst time possible.

Don’t leave anyone far away from the pack.

Disconnects happen at the worst time possible.

Cut your losses sooner rather than later.

When fighting in Wolf Rayet, ECM boats should be equipped with Sensor Boosters.

We haven’t lost any ships to sleepers since the last time we visited this particular site. I guess it shall be our goal to farm it before we leave Planet Risk and go to Class 6 sites.

Turns out from the Relics we managed to save, we where able to make 20 Run BPCs of the Utility Proteus Subsystems, so we are going to replace it in the next couple of days, while we can build the BSs from the minerals we have. So all-in-all not a huge loss in ISK (it could be far worse) but a huge slap in our ego.

One thing is certain. This particular site still remains the only site we haven’t been able to complete. I believe that I speak from all the corp members here when I say “It’s personal”.

For bonus points: Who can name the site I am talking about?

It kind of feels like needing to take a leak for so long, and keeping your legs crossed because you just can’t.. not just yet at least, and then that moment comes where you finally make it to the loo and the release is just orgasmic. And this is pretty much how it felt during the Hellcats Party on Saturday the 24th… Orgasmic.

The preparation for all the little bits took almost 2 months. Setting up the details of the Celebrity Deathmatch with Nashh, arranging with Mynxee to tag along with Nashh, getting TeaDaze to film it and commentate, organizing the Hellcats party radio and blog side, performing the CDM, recording and editing the after-match interview,  promoting the Party, working on the video editing and effects with TeaDaze, bastardizing Lonely Island’s Jizz in my Pants, into Jizz in my Pod, Having the Party, releasing everything.. Damn.. Climax!

But let’s pick up things from where we left them… CDM #16 – Part 2

Quivering and I are on the verge of a breakdown. Excitement has taken a liquid form and it’s been leaking out of our ears into the pod’s goo with all other disgusting fluids (hey.. I had to include this somewhere). We’re sitting at 100 km from planet VIII, and we’re talking tactics, a few seconds before we have to actually warp in to the arena. Quiv and I have been playing together online since 1998, and even though we do have distinctive, totally different and in most cases incompatible play styles, this time the strategy came out naturally and in accord…

Who poses the biggest threat? Both actually. On the one hand, Mynxee is a seasoned pvp pilot who is specializing in small fleet warfare and sits inside a very tough pirate faction ship. On the other hand, Nashh is in a tough drone boat that can tank like a mean motherhacker, pack quite some blaster damage when in-range and our “meta-gaming” intel from reading Nashh’s blog had us convinced that he would be sporting some ECM. Both could pack some serious damage on us so we had to try and counter both’s damage output.

We decided to point both of our weapon disruptors on Mynxee and try to keep her optimal range short, while throwing our ECM drones over on Nashh. Being relatively safe from big damage outputs, Nashh’s ecm modules and possible ecm drones were the next thing that could destroy our game. It was clear that Nashh had to go down first.

I went FC as my old passion for an EOS had me train all of my leadership skills up to 5, and we both warped to 0. To our surprise, Mynxee was the one that chose to warp at point blank and Nashh in the distance. Apparently Mynxee decided against fitting artilleries. I almost shouted to Quiv to swap scripts for tracking disruption, just in time before TeaDaze gave the go signal.

We immediately put our planned strategy into motion. Both of our disruptors fell on Mynxee, and all of our drones on Nashh.  I fired up my MWD and in no time I fell upon Nashh’s Vexor like flies on steaming manure. Quiv opened the hatches of his missile bays, and his Caracal started spitting fire and brimstone totally devastating Nashh’s shields in a matter of seconds. At that point I was surprised to find out that there were no ECM drones out on my tail… to be precise, I had no drones at all on my tail! Nashh decided to sport sentry drones, and quite the expensive kind a fact that put a huge smile on my face. Having spent the last year using only drones as my offensive weapons I knew very well that sentry drones at such a close distance were destined to fail hitting anything for any decent amount of damage, not to mention of course that they had taken up all of Nashh’s drone bay.

I kept Nashh at point with the ECM drones and the webber and doing some light damage on him with my  small blasters and drones, while Quivering’s missiles were mercilessly punching holes into the Vexor’s plating. At that point Nashh went all out on my Vexor, getting it into armor, and at some point even managing to mute me using his ECM module, but it was already too late. It took only 90 seconds from the moment TeaDaze gave the go signal until a metallic clang was heard, followed by a hydraulic hiss when Nashh’s capsule got ejected to safety while his Vexor’s hull cracked and exploded into a fiery mass. I said to Quiv “Whoaa.. we might have a chance after all”.

In the meantime Quivering’s Caracal’s only stress signs were the ones in his missile bays from their use, otherwise it looked as shiny as it was when taken out of its box. Not a single shot had been fired upon it. With Nashh out of the way, it was high time to turn our weapons upon Mynxee. And at that point it’s where the excitement for the spectators suffered a horrible death.

Mynxee’s tank was just massive. We got her light ECM drones out of the way, and we threw everything we got upon her. Blasters, missiles, drones.. the damage output was massive, but so was her tank.  It took about 5 minutes of constant pounding to bring her tank down. At the same time Mynxee was throwing everything she had on me, but my armor resistances coupled with the medium repairer as well as the immense tracking disruption on her guns made it impossible for her to bring me down, up to the point where the continuous overloading burnt her guns down and she just waited for the inevitable.

I suggested a ransom in local just for shits and giggles, but even though I couldn’t see Quiv, I sensed the veins in his eyes almost popping due to the bloodlust =P  Shortly after, Mynxee’s Cynabal became part of the collective cosmic dust and the match was over. There was a moment of silence and then both Quiv and I burst into cheers. The adrenaline was still flowing, our hearts were still pumping.. we couldn’t believe we won the match.

I quickly flew and scooped the faction sentries into my cargo hold. “Mine” I yelled, and smiled, as Nashh exclaimed “To the victors go the spoils” in local. Corp chat spiked, as the spectators rejoiced. We were “playing home” after all. The fight seemed like it was action packed, full of thrills and awe inspiring dogfights, or at least that was the perception we had while fighting it. Alas, two weeks later after seeing the video TeaDaze took, it looked absolutely dull. I can’t even begin to fathom how TeaDaze found things to say while commentating those endless 5 minutes of armor chewing.

After the match, all five of us jumped into vent for an interview where we exchanged thoughts and gave each other (and now you as well) some behind the scenes info.

The  days before the party

The match was over, and we had two weeks time before the Hellcats Party to arrange everything. We so wanted to go out and let everyone know how the CDM came to pass, but we held back on those urges (crossing the legs thing remember?), and started working on the delivery. Soon after the match the first recounts of the story emerged. Nashh’s trip to Planet Risk proved to be far more exciting than the match itself, while Mynxee’s trip was relatively safe and uneventful. At the same time, Quivering had to leave for Dubai due to work and tried to stay in touch from afar.

I worked with TeaDaze to produce the video documentary of the fight. TeaDaze did all the editing on video and audio (on AlienHand’s excellent eve inspired pieces) and I worked on overlay visual effects and typography, resulting into a Teaser Trailer. The hype was growing, as more hints started to emerge about the things that would be released on the 24th.

During these two weeks we had set up a poll to gauge people’s thoughts on the outcome of the match.  Needless to say, less than 15% believed in us, and there were more people voting for the “went for beers instead of fighting” option rather than us getting it with a flawless victory. I find your lack of faith disturbing =P

The Party

And the day came, and the excitement kept growing. Mynxee sent me limericks that fans sent her to read out which along with 4 hours worth of music entered my playlist for the party. I logged in the game an hour before the party, and there were already over 150 people in the Hellcats Pub channel making the chat busier than Jita prostitutes. A while ago I received a call by Quivering who had just returned home from his two week trip abroad, tired beyond any recognition and sleepless for almost 48 hours straight. It was more than apparent that I’d have to tackle the party DJing alone.

I fired up a private convo with Mynxee and Quiv in game to exchange organizational information and went for a quick shower to cool down a bit. The clock ticked 20:00 and the party started. The next four hours were frantic. Intense music, limericks, tons of Rifter PVP in Evati, the Hellcats Pub channel spiked at a bit over 300 people, and billions of prizes were being given out every 10 minutes to lucky winners. We announced the outcome of the celebrity deathmatch, aired the interview, posted the link to the full video on YouTube, Nashh posted the second part of his recount on the CDM (and mind you it’s a very entertaining writeup) and released the brand new parody song by yours trully, Jizz in my pod. Everyone was ecstatic as the party proved to be the most fun someone could have without leaving home, while the turbo-mode chat proved once again why EVE is a thinking man’s (or woman’s) mmo. The amount and quality of humorous quotes was just amazing. Quivering Palm heroically stayed up for 2/5ths of the party before collapsing semi-dead on his keyboard.

The party was about to end but I still had plenty of music queued. And as at 4am Greece entered DST back into 3am, we extended the party for one more hour. (Actually DST kicked in an hour after the party, but shhh don’t tell anyone). At the end of the party, so much had happened that trying to recount it seemed like an impossible feat, however Mynxee gave it a shot… and you should probably read her recount to catch all the little details.

The aftermath…

Everyone fills full, tired and damn proud for this joint venture between Hellcats, CDM, Planet Risk, TeaDaze and Split Infinity Radio . Please do send us your feedback as we are really looking forward to doing this again, better, louder, larger!

Rest assure this wasn’t a one hit wonder.

PS: The Vexor Navy Issue that won the Celebrity Deathmatch was given out as a prize during the party to the first person who found his way to Planet Risk and yelled in Local. The Caracal Navy issue that Quivering flew is slated to be given to Nashh as a token of our appreciation.