Ecliptic Rift

I haven’t done one of these in quite some time.

Science skills continue to comprise a huge chunk of my abilities, as they have in the past. Industry and Mechanics look fairly solid. That last will continue to increase, in part due to working on skills for armor tanking (Hull Upgrades V should finish this weekend).

In 2010, part of my goals involve continuing to turn up the combat abilities, so Gunnery, Missiles, and Drones will expand somewhat, and I will keep refocusing on Minmatar ships. In particular, I want to fly a Claw soon, and maybe a bit of ratting in a Jaguar or Wolf (more research required on this). T3 strategic cruisers will hopefully also come into the mix sometime this calendar year. And of course, I want to finish out the Core Elite certificate (52 days left with my current attributes, including a full set of +5 implants).

Yes, we fly ships.

Yesterday, I asked on Twitter, “Question for the day: what ship class do you currently not have trained but REALLY want to fly?” I got some interesting responses:

• CyberInEve: “Heavy Interdictors”
• diaryofaraider: “Time to sound like a total noob. Battleship. I’ve been way too obsessed with T2 frigates to train beyond them.”
• tehmetalleer: “covert ops!”
• ericscho: “Still badly need to do stealth bomber and interceptors on FW pvp alt !”
• Novon: “I’m finishing my SB skills then going intercept. After that going to look a going lvl 5 in cruisers.”
• Rettic: “Right now I really want to fly a Battleship since i can’t seem to do any successful solo ratting in 0.0 atm… but really I want interceptors. Shouldn’t be too long.” This led to an interesting discussion on 0.0 ratting ships as we educated him a little.
• SHM5: “I have just trained carrier and supporting skills bit can’t afford one. I’d love to fly a Titan & blow up 400 ships in one go” Not for long!
• hi7ch: “Macherial (spelling) Have Gal BS 5 do not have Min BS5.. or even BS 1. then again that isnt a class.. sorry”
• autumnn_aether: “strategic cruiser. 22 or so days away. (and a couple hundred million ISK…)”
• MissionsCollide: “blackops. Mmmm. Blackops.”
• ChainerCygnus: “T2 ships Destroyer and above, Strategic Cruisers, and all Capitals.” Way to focus, bro..
• chocolips: “For me, marauder. I do a lot of missions in my mach. But the vargur is more efficient. Just fugly “
• 00sage00: “HICs (Broadsword), HAC (Ishtar), Recon (Curse), Command ship (Nighthawk). A lot of ships. And all different races. ”
• Ionst0rm: “easy – Wolf and Jaguar ”
• automaticjim: “I’d like to be able to fly a black ops battleship. I Know people don’t like them but the seem cool to me. ”

What about you?

Image credit unincorporated via Flickr

How fast does your Jaguar fly? How does a 75% speed boost with afterburners sound? CCP has proposed just that for all assault frigates in Dominion. This should have interesting results in factional warfare and lowsec piracy, if in fact it makes it all the way to Tranquility. I suspect we’ll see some tweaks on this, though.

As part of the efforts to support Stillwater, I’ve begun production of Thukker ship designs. Currently, I can provide the Cheetah, Jaguar, and Vagabond, though later I’ll begin Panther production as well. Interestingly, the Thukker designs lend themselves to covert and espionage work (e.g. the Cheetah and Panther), so I think I should produce recon cruisers like the Huginn and Rapier as well.

I now have research teams working around the clock in Thukker-provided facilities. Also, my own recent skill training revolves around various aspects of research management and laboratory operation plus the skills required to build these high-tech ships.

My working capital has mostly come from profits in cybernetic implant trading. These tech 2-level components really fetch a high price on the market; building a Vagabond takes around 105m ISK in components, not to mention the datacores required for the invention attempts (something like 4m per attempt), the usage of research and manufacturing facilities, etc.

Still, I like having a home and a “tribe”, in the most general sense of that word. I belong with these pilots.