FREEDOM!

Yup, we are out of the alliance, and I am damn glad of it! We are now free to target and harass targets of our choice. Ya, I am looking at you, PoS in HS with no FF! Goodies and drops await our eager blasters.

No activity in the hole last night, all of us are recovering from the weekend. The War in Fountain is over(ish). Alliance Tourney is fun to watch, and a learning experience.

GK announced another payout, and depressing news about the nano-ribbon market. The market is sucking right now. Ge is moving his skills towards T3 Subsystem production, and yet still has time to replace his lost Drake. Ze is headed home, and should be back late this week... guess I should have used his toon more agressively. Sa is talking about moving scouts around, and releasing our old C2 from the watch list.

The AWOX alt is now in a PvE Corp, and looking for a decent target.

Being baited, again, and again, and again...

Ge lost a Drake this weekend, our buddies from Failed Diplomacy baited with a Loki. I managed to jump out to HS, unfortunately Ge was polorized and warped his pod out. With this being said, they had a hictor with them and didn't use it. So we all went our seperate ways and I put a scout on either hole to watch their antics.

The hictor had a cloak, and a single bubble generator. Which the gang used repeatedly to try and snare people jumping into our home hole. Yup, actions of someone multi-boxing.

Followed by; this morning antics, new 'bait' same tricks. Two attempts at a probe, then a loki and hictor pop into the home hole... new shields on the ship's name didn't fool me. I had all the people from the previous attempt red-listed and 'friend'ed. Combat probes kept appearing in the hole while I waited my timers out, silly griefer-bears from highsec. The same corp that war-decced us a couple of weeks ago, now in an alliance. Go figure.

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This weekend was rather fruitful, we managed to farm out the hole and start the reaction arrays (again). A double k162 from NS ended up appearing, we collapsed one hole with me and Ze ( in a hictor ) 23 jumps out from lowsec on the wrong side!

The null-bears kept bringing people in, bubbling gates and being obnoxious. I went out and made Sa's favourite breakfast, BACON! After having a leisurely breakfast, we came back and started scouting our way out of BoT's ( Brothers if Tangra ) systems.

Probing down each system as we went, I manged to find a NS-to-NS hole. This dropped us 3 jumps from lowsec, and a mere 12 jumps to the home hole. During our slow progress to safety I found PoS minus a forcefield, ten minutes later with loot in hand we exited null and went on our merry way.

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The Alliance is failscading fast, what a way to wake up on Sunday. The alliance is down to 43 people, with our group being the largest corporation left. People got butt-hurt and removed themselves from the allaince... all of the big players left, and left us with 10ish 1-3man corps. Personally, this is great news. I am pestering Ge to get us out, while the getting is good.

What is that?!?!

Our morning was interrupted by a blip on dscan. Unfortunately only SS got on the kill, while the rest of the crew were closing holes. A second blip was missed and jumped back into highsec, silly people.

So the story as I heard it. SS was holding station over the K162, while the rest of us were in warp to the HS. The blip was a retriever, which was using our home as a transit station. SS decloaked and burned to the offending retriever, only to have it jump through the K162. She then jumped and tackled, which the retriever then jumped back to our home hole.

SS then jumped back, both of them polarized and went for the tackle again. The rest of us were in warp back to the K162 when SS killed the retriever, the pod warped off. Loot-n-shoot, followed by another round of closing with a hictor.

While we were headed back to the K162 to highsec, SS stayed on the now despawned hole. Lucky she did, she almost got a Talos kill, and instead he rushed back to the HS and jumped back out. We closed the K162 to HS and headed back to the static.

With only one kill for the morning, and the hole semi-secure we all headed to work. With dreams of explosions in our eyes!

Internet up, and sleepers burn.

Sa got the internet cable hooked up last night, and ran system tests all night while we slept. This morning, Sleepers dies by the droves. Everyone is happy again!

During our morning roll, we were interupted by a cloaky Loki, which immediately burned back to his hole jumped back in and we followed. SS was left watching the hole, while we dropped drones and tried to tackle the Loki.

So, tackling using Scorpions was fun... and fruitless. Loki ran away, we came back and closed the hole. No one else interrupted our morning prayers to Bob.

Internet still spotty

Internet is still going down, the tech installed a new filter and told Sa it was the phone line to the modem. The tech was kind enough to give Sa 50ft of line to install. He WILL be doing that tonight!

In other news, we have partially farmed the hole and started production lines back up. Ge was nearly giddy with his new assembly array, until he tried to run a print. He still has a month to go, to start making full sub-systems. The guy almost cried.

The inflitration alt is slowly moving gear to his next target. Internet keeps resetting, what a drag. The new targets were so kind in showing an Orca fit for PvP. They have been targetted by a group of bumper and 'miner liscenses'. So, I am going to provide some overwatch... with my AWOX machine. Got to love it when people line up in front of the gun.

Stupid Internet

Our shared connection was glitching all weekend. Every 5 to 30 minutes we would lose our connection... Sa ripped all the phones and filters out of the house to isolate the problem. The problem is not in the house, it is out in the street. So, Tuesday we might see a fix.

The weather is good, we BBQed and rode bikes instead.

Infiltration alt is on his next target, it is looking like an AWOX is coming around. An Orca and a small fleet of mining barges is available three times a week, talk about timing your ops. Now I just need a stable internet.

HAC vs Drake

I am deeply saddened by the thought that my beloved Drake-isk-making-machine is becoming obsolete. The new HAC changes look great, add in the hybrid/ac changes and things start looking so much better for HACs and Hybrid Cruisers. Missile nerfs and the Drake nerf have left me with little choice but to shop for a more efficient and cheap replacement for my Drake-isk-making-machine.

HAC changes look great, I mean it, those buffs look good... insurance, and effectiveness look inversely proportional. With a nasty curve. I don’t get double my fun for double the price, and if I lose a Betty-Crocker I only get a cheesy wrapper.

Pushing the corp to change over to Rail Battle Cruisers seems correct. I would rather fly something I can afford to replace… which in wormhole-space always happens.

100

This is my 100th post!

Since I have begun blogging, I have yet to receive any comments. This has not stopped me. Blogging is likened to a diary, a very visable diary. And so, I blog to remember what has happened.

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In Wormhole news, we were chased out of the home hole last night by a group of dedicated killers. They tried multipul times to kill Ge, who casually slipped away. What the gang didn't realize, we had scouts out and watching their antics.

Wardec continues with more people wanting to ally with us for isk... One man corporations wanting to be paid big money for zero effort. New scam, same verse. Lucky for us, I suppose, our friends in TAXU joined the fight and have been actively looking for targets.

Production has been slow, sales have been low, Fountain still rages.

Breaking the rules.

Our normal set of rules have not been published on the net, only shared between members... who all know each other in real life. Or as Sa calls it, Face-punching-range. After much discussion, I am posting our rules for wormhole operations on my blog.

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Worm Hole Rules
By: The Cats
1) You do not discuss operations, rules or policies with outside entities (Corps, Alliances, and “Friends”).
 a) No smack-talk, no talking in Local in any wormhole. Do not give away free intel, by announcing yourself and the corporation
 b) No announcing or leading anyone into the Wormhole, without director permission.
 c) Ships, fits and who flies them is not open knowledge. Do not share your personal fits with non-corp members (discussion is fine, posting is not).

2) Scouting and scanning skills are required.
 a) You will have an alt-scout logged out in the home hole at all times.
 b) Book marks will be standardized; statics, exits and anoms in the home hole will be updated daily, and kept fresh in the Corporation Book mark folder.
 c) Safes will not be shared. If a safe is burned due to probing or accidents, an AAR will be filed.
 d) All players will have a warp-while-cloaked ship, for their primary character for scouting. Alts may use expendable cloak-while-stationary ships.

3) Operations in the hole.
 a) No operation will occur until all holes are rolled shut and the home hole is secured. Rolling shut a k162 into a known occupied system will not be accomplished without a dedicated scout watching (and cloaked).
 b) If any signature appears during an operation, or any unannounced probes, ships or wrecks are seen, all operators are suspended until the hole is secured.
 c) Mining and gassing will not occur until sleepers from the site are cleared. Warp bubbles are suggested at the signature of the site being processed.
 d) PvP is hazardous; attacking another player is a private call. If you do not successfully eliminate a
player in the home hole, an Eve-mail will be sent corp wide announcing the situation. Successful elimination of a player in the home hole will require re-securing the home hole before any other operations may continue. AAR will be filed if any PvP occurs. “GFs” in wormhole local is not allowed.
 e) PvE ships are up to the individual, suggested fits can be found online or discussed with corp-mates.
 f) Exiting the wormhole. Warping directly to a ‘d-scannable’  bookmarked wormhole is acceptable, otherwise warp to a safe to see if the hole is clear prior to warping directly to it. This includes picking up PI materials.
 g) Planetary Interaction material pick-up will only occur after the home hole is secured. If you get nailed while on a POCO, it is your fault.

4) Naming conventions.
 a) Shields before your ship name are copy-able from the d-scan window. Do not trust them.
 b) Each person will have a designator after their ship name, to identify who it belongs to.
 c) Signatures will be named; Type – Three letter designator – actual name.
 d) Wormholes will be named; Type (K162, etc) Series (a, b, c, etc…) – Time or stability (EOL, Crit).
 e) Inflammatory naming is not acceptable. Racial slurs, sexism, agism, personal threats are against the EULA.

5) System defense and general notes.
 a) PvP is personal, engaging a larger fleet is not advised. Call for back-up, bring friends.
 b) Be very wary if the player, or players are orange to our corporation. Do not engage alone if the players are marked red to our corporation, past encounters and advanced knowledge may be in play. Engaging neutrals is acceptable. Blues and light blues may travel across the home hole. Anyone harvesting, shooting sleepers or loitering in the home hole is fair game, this includes blues.
 c) We do NOT harvest or shoot sleepers in 'Blue' holes.
 d) It is advisable to train starbase defense to four, and anchoring to three.
 e) Asset denial is acceptable play, eliminating wrecks with loot ( including sleeper wrecks ) to remove potential earnings is acceptable.

Resources
http://talocanunited.com/wordpress/operational-security/
http://evemaps.dotlan.net/
http://invadingyourhole.blogspot.com/
http://www.tigerears.org

Mid week lows

Nothing going on, no kills, no mining, no decent exits. The alliance is quieter than a bathroom at church, I don't think they are logging in at all. On an up-note, GK posted our earnings fo the last two weeks and it was pretty good.

Ge has been more active than the rest of us, and has continued his effort to convert our existing stocks of gasses to something more profitable. He is also chomping at the bit to refine our current stock of ores, not likely to happen until we get a decent exit.

Nothing to see here

We have been wardec'ed! Huzzah!!!

No really, some asshat thought it would be full of lolz to dec us. Funny thing is, they only live in Rens. We don't live in Rens... we don't live in k-space. So, "Nothing to see here" move along.

On the Anoikis side of town, we had a quiet Friday and Saturday to clear and clean up the hole. Rolling rolling rolling, keeps those K162s rolling. Sunday was totally different, with an odd pair (Gnosis and Navy Vexor) in the hole and scanning from our static.

Our static was closed and unopenned when we went to sleep Saturday, guess we had visitors. No K162s were present after our fun, so they must not have liked our home and rolled it shut. Trying not to get ahead of myself.

So, I ran the people downstairs and fired up Sa's computer... and logged Ze in by accident. He didn't mind and kept things moving. We formed up and got ready for a quick tackle of the Gnosis with a Hawk. Pod warped off and the Vexor dropped in at 100km.

Sa/Ze warped back to the PoS and grabbed a Hictor and set up an ambush on the static. The Vexor was smart enough not to try and jump directly to the static and had a tactical at 100km set up. Personally, I would have set up a 150+km tactical in case I needed to escape quickly. Ge and SS were in scouty Tengus and kept cloaked.

I dropped combat probes and started a 45 minute chase across the home system, while the Tengus prowled around the static, waiting to pounce. The Pod and Vexor racing around, and I kept missing by mere kilometers. Finally, he made a mistake and dropped a can. I book marked it and followed him into warp, then hit scan one more time.

He had used the pod to create a safe 200km from the can, I landed on him and tackled. Calling in the reinforcements, Sa/Ze brought the hictor in to get the Pod of the Vexor. While we were finishing off that Pod, SS warped back to the Can and nabbed the Pod from the Gnosis.

I am fairly certain it was a dual boxer, the Gnosis was discovery/probe fit with four fitting mods in the lows. The Navy Vexor was drone fit, also fairly poorly. The PODS!!! ZOMG!?!?! One was a learning Pod worth 750mil, the second was 1.75Bil with a Mining Foreman link.

We also nabbed a T1 scout and Pod later in the day, it wasn't as intense as the earlier battle...

Pondering the news on fits

The Allaince think-tank, more of a puddle really, has designed some new fits. They look like EFT-warrior crap, and these are supposed to be for newer members. Cap-stable garbage with no points... it hurts, it really does.

Our builds are based on personal skills, practice and of course feedback from each other. I dont expect everyone to have identical fits, just smart fits that fuction as intended. Points are always liked, and cap stable is not even on the list. One minute with a prop-mod on, three minutes free firing, self-rep acceptable, so are passive recharge shields. Being able to handle 400dps incoming and 300dps outgoing, omni-tanked is required. Either 60km range, or prop-mod with 20km range.

That should cover it....

Gud fites

We have been discussing our dalliance with the alliance. They keep derping, we keep laughing. Until now.

A conversation was posted by our diplomat, about a recent encounter with another wormhole alliance. They wanted a 'Gud Fite' and even offered a 3vs3, 2vs2, 1vs1, and a 1vs2. The diplo passed... this is a dangerous thing to do.

If you live in Anoikis you know these guys, http://mabricksmumblings.blogspot.com/2013/05/surely-youre-joking.html. Yes, Surely You're Joking, isn't a joke. They are looking for good fights, not Gud Fites. If you blue-ball them enough, they will evict you.

Constantly denying fights in wormhole space is not uncommon, it is however fraught with danger. People will start camping you, I have. Spending weeks in a hole to keep killing the same people over and over, I haven't evicted people on my own. I have had people pack it all in and leave wormhole space... or at least the hole I am camping. Surely You're Joking will evict you, so will other 'hard-core' PvP alliances/corporations.

Being associated with people who will blue-ball, when they have enough people online to fullfil those 3vs3 and not coming out to play. Well, it may be enough to move us out of that alliance. Even if those same people are not living in the same hole as us.

Getting the clock cleaned

Our esteemed alliance mates once again show us how to lose a blinged out cruiser, to invaders. Details are still sketchy, pretty sure they were not using d-scan and the updated discovery scanner correctly. The losses were 900mil and 350mil, a Tengu and a Command Potatoe.

We cleaned out our home hole, and dashed back to k-space for refining. Our liquid cash has taken a dumpster dive recently, our buyer of exotic parts has completely shut down his production in NS due to the Fountain conflict. It looks like all those sleeper guts will be headed to market in the coming days, luckily we moved them out to k-space prior to our vaccation.

Ge has kick-started his labs again, and it looks like he will be moving them to Minmatar space next week. Security in Anoikis is not good enough for the isk he has been laying out, so back to K-space.

Ze is still out of country, so I am not expecting him to log in anytime soon. He is already loosing sec!

4th of July

We spent the 4th in sunny Tahoe, watched the fireworks over the lake and enjoyed the weather. Not one of us logged in all weekend, no one was home. There were deaths in the home hole, people killing sleepers and we wern't there.
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Returning to the home system was fun, it was great to talk to the people down-stairs and fire up the isk making machine once again. Clearing the gas sites left behind by our unknown friends and finding a sweet couple of kills by the PoS.
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Ge has fired up the production facilities and we are back. PvP will come later, right now we are enjoying the sun and road of western Washington. Don't bother shooting us, we don't care.

Where is my ITTY?

I am utterly disgusted on the new itteration of Industrials... they are awesome! Unfortunately we have been using Hoarders for PI for years, and we need replacements A.S.A.P. Jita is sold out or hugely overpriced, GK missed out on that.

We had a few singletons spread out in k-space, so we have been bringing a few back into the hole. Not nearly enough for everyone, so back to sharing. The Hoarders will be sent back to Jita or scrapped for minerals.

Due to the loss of our hoarders, Ge broke out his slide-rule and brought in BPOs for the Ittys we will need. He had forseen this event two years ago, and had in his BPO collection Itty I, II, III and V. So the corp spotted him for a IV. Production will be for our needs and then the BPOs will go back into what ever station Ge keeps his stash.

For such a dedicated industrialist, Ge has started to gain some good scouting and kills under his belt. Maybe he can make me an Azaru?

Little out, little in

Our fun filled group tackled and killed a few ships this weekend, and were promtly shut down when a new k162 showed up. The group that boiled out of wormhole space were faster, larger and more overpowering than we can muster. So, we made our kills and went on a motorcycle ride. Ate lunch at a seedy bikerbar, and were oogled by old men in leather.

We got back, all the holes were rolled and all the anoms were cleared or stripped. It was a bummer, but hey, it is summer. We expect to get invaded on a regular basis. Check out Talocan's old allaince site, it is still smart on being invaded.

The recent posting of SYJ's major kill of over 500Bil is amazing, sad that most of the material didn't drop. Makes assaulting a system, not so worth while. This makes assaulting a system either revenge, or defense against interlopers. Sad state of affairs.

In other news, the western USA is still in a heat-wave. Multiple brown outs due to over use of electricity are being reported. That just might keep the kiddies in line... maybe.