Nate Guralman, Minmatar Militia Recruit

I've read a few times that a good way to start learning PVP is through Faction Warfare, so I signed up. I'm now a member of the Tribal Liberation Force, the NPC Minmatar FW corporation. No clue how this works, I'll learn as I go along (although I suspect this will be expensive, and that the correct way to do this is to join a player FW corp).

Since my Rifter got blown up earlier today, I decided to switch ships. I'm now flying my Thrasher. Still mostly T1 fitted, so I'll be fairly weak.

Flight Log - 2011.10.30

After I'd finished moving everything to Nakugard, I decided to take a quick flight into Otou. It's a low sec system with a bit of activity, only two jumps away. It was pretty empty when I got there, but I figured I'd see if I could take on any of the locals. I flew from asteroid belt to belt, taking out NPCs and scanning as I'm flying. A Bestower eventually shows up on scan. My scanning skills are getting pretty better, so I managed to get him on grid in 90 seconds or so. Of course, he was behind a POS shield. I decided to move closer.

Experienced pilots can start shaking their head now.

The POS defense systems opened up on me. I tried to warp away, but I lost my Rifter before I'd even completed my turn. Fortunately, I wasn't podded, and I was close to home, so that's where I went. I'm not registered with a killboard yet, so here it is for posterity.

2011.10.30 14:50:00

Victim: Nate Guralman
Corp: Sebiestor Tribe
Alliance: Unknown
Faction: Unknown
Destroyed: Rifter
System: Otou
Security: 0.3
Damage Taken: 2021

Involved parties:

Name: Caldari Control Tower / Knights of the Minmatar Republic (laid the final blow)
Damage Done: 1598

Name: Serpentis Trooper / Serpentis Corporation
Damage Done: 423

Destroyed items:

Small Nosferatu I
EMP S, Qty: 120
X5 Prototype I Engine Enervator
50mm Reinforced Steel Plates I (Cargo)
200mm Light Carbine Repeating Cannon I
Small Shield Booster I, Qty: 2 (Cargo)
Warp Scrambler I
ECM - Multispectral Jammer I (Cargo)

Dropped items:

Damage Control I
200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Small Proton Smartbomb I (Cargo)
EMP S, Qty: 504 (Cargo)
Rudimentary Ship Scanner I (Cargo)
EMP S, Qty: 240
Reactive Plating I
1MN Afterburner I
200mm Light Carbine Repeating Cannon I, Qty: 2

Not much in terms of loss, but given the rookie mistake, it's still relatively expensive.

Location, solo flying, hauling with an Orca

I spend part of the evening moving one of my alts, Toritetsu "Tori" Morimoto from Aldrat to Nakugard, where Fugawa Heavy Industries is located. Since Tori is no longer part of E-Uni, I though it would be best if he were located in the same station as the rest of my alts. He has quite a few ships, so I used the company's Orca to haul stuff around.

But that got me to thinking if Nakugard was the correct location for FHI. It does have a few advantages:

• It's in high sec
• It has lots of asteroid fields and an ice field
  
• It's 1 jump from Hek
• It's a few jumps from low-sec

This was a great location for FHI when they were mining, but since FHI is now out of that business, I'm not so sure.

Another thing I was thinking about is flying solo. One of the most common bits of advice for EVE players is to join a corp. Solo flying is difficult, especially in 0.0 and low sec. Since that's where I want to be, this solo idea may not fly (no pun intended). That means if I do join a corp, there's no point in me scouting out a new location for FHI.

I think I'll finish hauling everything to Nakugard (it's not much work), then decide if I'll join a corp before I move again.

Reorganization Continues

I reactivated my alt accounts this morning. These accounts had quite a few valuable assets that I figure I can sell, then transfer the proceeds to Nate. Among some of the items in inventory are:

• Hulk
• Orca
• T2 fitted Drake
• A few T2 frigates (Hawk, Buzzard, Crow)
• A handful of T1 frigates and cruisers
• Tons and tons and tons of gear

The Hulk and the Orca alone are worth north of 600,000,000 ISK. With all of the gear, ships and credits I have between my alts, I'm probably close to the 1 Billion ISK mark. That should keep me going for a little while, even after I've paid the stupid tax in the form of replacement ships and gear.

That said though, now that I have these accounts running for a few months, is there anyway I could leverage them? I don't want to be spending too much time on these accounts, so things like missioning and mining are out of the question. But what could I do with them? Train one for salvaging? Hauling? Park one in Jita for trading?

I'll have to research this further. For now, I'll be spending a bit of time hauling gear around, selling useless stuff and funneling that ISK to Nate.

Flight Log - 2011.10.29

After reading First Time Ganker on EVEOGANDA's excellent blog, I was inspired to do the same. I knew my odds of taking anything out would be next to nothing, and I would lose my ship in the process. But I wasn't looking for a kill, I was looking for experience. At the very least, I'd be able to see how fast Concord showed up, what my UI looked like in GCC, etc.

I started out my flight by bouncing around asteroid belts, to see if there were any smallish mining ops going on. Barges would be out of the question, but though I might get lucky and snag a Bantam or something. No dice. After a while, it dawned on my that it wasn't too efficient, so I decided to switch to my scanners to find me a target. At the very least, I could practice directional scanning.

That was a good move, for the experience of scanning alone. While scanning, I found an Amarr Shuttle on D-Scan. A shuttle! Surely, I'd be able to pop that if I could get close. I bounced around a few systems for a while, not being able to pin-point it exactly, but I knew I was getting closer. But I'd been at it for 5 mins or, so and I started thinking why would a shuttle be stationary for so long? I was hoping it was just someone chit-chatting while in transit, not paying attention to someone stalking them.

I eventually tracked them to a moon, nowhere near anything else. That's when I figured out what was the deal with the shuttle: it was parked at a POS, inside the shields. No shuttle kill for me.

I continued scanning and I found an Ibis. This one was just sitting, alone in space, besides a container. Nobody was inside. I locked it up, and destroyed it. Not very satisfying kill, but at least I got lots of practice with the D-Scan. I've learned how to quickly narrow down the location of a ship, but pin-pointing the exact spot to get them on grid still eludes me. I'll definitely need more practice. One more thing I learned, I do NOT have the firepower to suicide gank. I took me two rounds to drop the Ibis. That's pretty sad.

I scanned the system for another little while, and I found a few more POSes with empty ships around them, but no targets that I'd ever have a chance of ganking. At this point, I figure losing my ship for the sake of losing my ship would be a bad idea, since I was still in my alt corp, so I packed it in.

No kills, but lots of D-Scanning experience. Not exciting, but still a pretty successful outing.

Corp Theft!

Since I'm considering keeping an alt with good security status around in case I need something in Empire space, I decided I need to keep my alt corporation round as well. That means that Nate needs to drop corp, which he did. But before he left, he figured he'd help himself to some ISK. The Corporation's balance sheet now shows 28,000 ISK. I'm not totally heartless.

Nate will be eligible to quit corp in 23 hours. He'll be waking up in the clone vats in 23 hours, 10 minutes.

BTW, here's a screenshot of my Rifter. I know they're a dime a dozen, but they're still cool.

Plan Your Work

Like I mentioned in my first post, I want to focus on PVP this time around in EVE. I'm not exactly sure where to start, so I'm going to start by choosing my ship and fitting it.

Fortunately for me, ship selection is easy. I'll fly the Rifter. This ship is probably one of the best known ships in the game, and for good reason. It's cheap, agile, flexible and works in many roles. And properly fitted, it can take a beating while administering devastating damage. It's no wonder that many in the EVE community recommend it for pirate training.

Fitting the Rifter is a bit more complicated. Even though it's a good ship, it's not dominating. To fly is successfully, you still need the SPs and the experience. I have neither, so even the best fit isn't going to save me from myself. But, a good fit will improve my chances of success, even if only slightly.

I figure there are a few ways to fit the ship. I could go for a heavy tank: damage control, armor plating, armor repairer. It won't prevent an alpha strike, and I won't even be able to take damage for long periods of time, but the extra armor could keep me alive long enough to warp out if I get in over my head (which I'm sure will happen soon). Another option would be to go for agility; microwarp drive, nanofiber, warp stabilizer. This would help me get out of dodge quickly. Sure, it looks like the coward's way out, but the way I figure it, it will help me keep my costs down at first. Given that I probably won't be bringing in the big ISK right off the bat, this may not be a bad strategy (assuming it works). A third alternative would be to go for big damage. I'll pour all my money into weapons, gyros, a missile launcher in the fourth high slot, etc. The goal here is to pick targets that I think I can destroy before they can destroy me.

So, which do I choose? I think that depends on what I want to do. And that's blow stuff up. So that means I should go with DPS, right?

Unfortunately, like everything else in EVE, it's not that easy. I fired up EFT, and after adding autocannons, a gyro and a standard missile launcher, I had 67 dps, 192 alpha, and very little CPU left. After adding a scram and a web, I had almost nothing left. I think survivability is a bit more important that DPS in my early career, so let's try an armor fit.

I dropped the missile launcher and the gyro. I replaced them with armor plating, damage control unit and an armor repairer, and a small nos in the last high slot. My damage has dropped to 52 DPS and 179 alpha, but my HP has jumped from 1500 EHP to 2500 EHP. Not bad. The problem with this setup though, is that armor repairer will suck my cap pretty quickly, even with the nos running. So let's try replacing that with passive hardener. I drop the small armor repairer and replaced it with reactive plating. Lo and behold, my EHP goes up by 100 points to 2600, and I'm now cap stable at 97%. Can I do better?

Yes. I replaced the 100mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates with the 200mm version. My EHP goes up 500 points, to 3133, and I've sacrificed only a bit of speed. I think I've found my fit:

[Rifter]
Reactive Plating I
200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Damage Control I

Warp Scrambler I
Stasis Webifier I
1MN Analog Booster Rockets

Small Nosferatu I
200mm Light Carbine Repeating Cannon 1, EMP S
200mm Light Carbine Repeating Cannon 1, EMP S
200mm Light Carbine Repeating Cannon 1, EMP S

[empty rig slot]
[empty rig slot]
[empty rig slot]

I realize I've got noob-level components, but given my skills, that's about all I can fit (and afford to lose). So while I train up for T2 components and gain experience, this will have to do.

I'm off to Hek for a bit of shopping.

Meet Nate Guralman

Nate Guralman is my alter-ego in New Eden. He's a Minmatar from the Sebeistor tribe. He's the last character I've created, and so he's got the least SPs. So why use him instead of one of my more skilled characters? Because he's got a pronounceable name. I'd given my other alts Japanese names (I was planning a trip to Japan at the time), and I quickly realized complicated names are a problem when flying with people you've just met. I suppose I could have petitioned for a name change, but this was easier. And it's not like my other characters had that much more SPs.

I'm not much of an RPer, so my character won't have much in terms of a background. I'm presenting him here just so I can set a baseline of where Nate was when he started his piloting career.

So where is he starting from exactly? Pretty close to the beginning. As I'm writing this, he's got 4,433,471 SPs, and about 18,000,000 ISK. The corporation he's in has a few dozen million ISK tied up in assets, but I'm not sure what to do there. I'm considering dropping Nate from the corporation, and keeping that corporation as a high-sec trading/hauling company, so that I can haul loot back and forth from low to high sec. But I'm likely to sell some of the mining assets. I just can't see myself doing a lot of mining anymore. The corp has a well fitted Retriever that I should get 8,000,000 ISK for, as well as hulk that would sell for much, much more. And I have an Orca as well. The Orca, I'll keep.

In terms of short term plans, Nate will be training the basics to level 5: engineering, electronics, spaceship command, gunnery, mechanic, etc. It's not the most exciting training you can do, but I'm a firm believer that if you have the fundamentals right, it's much easier to deal with the specializations. Once that's done, I'll start training the skills I need to fit a Rifter with T2 gear, and fly it properly. I'll post my fit and EVEMon plan here once it's put together. For now, I have to run.

Fly dangerously

A New Beginning

I've decided to return to EVE, after a few months' hiatus. I quit sometime during the summer (I don't remember when, and it's not important) because I had overbooked myself with too many things, including work, social and leisure time. I was also a bit burned out on EVE. EVE has a ton to offer, and I was trying to accomplish them all. At the time, I was running four accounts, trying to split my time between industrial work (mining, manufacturing, PI, etc), missioning, and large fleet PVP. On top of that I was an EVE University personnel officer, and I was taking every PVP course I could to certify myself for any and every fleet role. It was just too much, so I stepped back from the game.

Just for the record, my departure and return have nothing do with the CCP PR mess and subsequent Mea Culpa from the company. The timing was pure coincidence. That said, I have read up on it, and I'm cautiously optimistic about how CCP are addressing the problems. I hate to see any company laying off people, but I'd rather see a company do that to thrive long-term, so they can hopefully re-hire some of those people.

Back to the topic at hand. I've decided to return to EVE for a few reasons. One, EVE really appeals to my personality. I'm an analytical numbers guy by trade and at heart, and EVE is really just one massive deep space simulator. I could spend hours building my own spreadsheets and financial models, as well as spending hours fitting ships and planning skills (and I have). Two, I'm in awe of the community. The level of organization I've seen in some of the corporations is absolutely astonishing. Some of these virtual gaming communities put "real-life" communities I've been part of to shame. And third, it's one of the few good Sci-Fi games out there (I'm a sci-fi geek too).

The reason I took a break from EVE is an unfortunately familiar refrain in my life. Whenever I find something interesting, I jump in with both feet, but without a plan. This leads me in many different paths at once, and I get simultaneously overwhelmed and discouraged by lack of deep progress, and eventually I quit. It's not something I want to repeat, and in fact, it's a habit I want to try and break once and for all.

So my plan this time around is to choose a few activities, set a few goals for myself, create a plan and work it. This blog will be my journal. I'm hoping that by writing my journey down, I'll be able to learn by tracking successes and failures, analyzing that information, and coming up with plans for improvement. But more importantly, I'm hoping this blog will help me engage the community, so that I can learn from other capsuleers.

I'm going to close off this post with my initial EVE objectives. I have three in mind:

1. I would like to significantly improve my PVP skills. PVP combat has always been what I've found most exciting about the game, and so it makes sense that I should focus on that
2. I would like to join a low sec pirate corp. I've always played on the "good" side of any game I've tried, but I've always wondered what the dark side would be like. EVE seems like the perfect place to try that out.
   
3. I would like to experience null sec warfare. I've tried a lot of things in EVE (albeit some too superficially to say I've really tried it), but I've never set foot in null sec. I'd like to eventually join a null sec corp to try that out.

I'll need to refine those goals going forward, but at a high-level, that's what I want to do. I may find out I don't enjoy any of these at all, and that's ok: I can always change my mind later. After all, that's the beauty of playing in a sandbox.