Ecliptic Rift

The Bei tower has come down. Not due to hostile activity, nor (in a nod to some surreal rumors started by the NER executor) due to escaped velociraptors. Unfortunately, the return on investment just hadn’t appeared. I’d burned enough ISK via fuel and figured I’d had enough. Ecliptic Rift remains in NER for now, however, mostly because I have no compelling reason to leave at the moment.

So last night, I’d just docked my Cheetah in Hek when the SYNEPUBLIC channel lit up with reports of a Sansha raid in Vylade. Out of curiosity, I checked the navicomputer. Only eight jumps, high-sec all the way. I had a Sleeper-fit Drake in my hangar, too. I had my pod moved over, checked to make sure I had enough heavy missiles in the hold, and undocked.

As I made my way out there, I joined the fleet structure. An ad hoc coalition of pilots had assembled quickly; we had a hair under 50 pilots in our fleet, and I know of at least two others present. When I arrived at planet II, the warp-in point positively swarmed with Nightmares and support craft, not to mention lots of independent capsuleers to oppose (and support) them. After identifying the nearest cruiser-sized vessels, I set to work. We eventually destroyed all the Sansha craft, including the additional Nightmare squadrons they continued to send through their wormhole. I didn’t see any capitals present this time, although some capsuleer sympathizers destroyed a CONCORD command vessel on the field.

I don’t really know why I went out there. Nation managed to “harvest” 65 thousand people from the planet, which might seem like a lot but could have been worse after the million lost yesterday. It just seems like we shouldn’t tolerate turning regular, normal people into True Slaves (or whatever Kuvakei does with them).

Still, I need to get out of here. I’ve liquidated quite a few of my assets and almost reached the point where I can get out of Republic space for a while. Soon…

Since re-re-joining New Eden Research, I haven’t seen much research business. Not any, actually. I have plenty of labs available, and I’m burning something on the order of 50m ISK/week in fuel costs for my large tower. Before the disasters that befell NER, alliance chat stayed very active, with quite a few regular folks talking about trade, science, industry, and the news of the cluster. Now, my greetings rarely get any response, and when they do, I think only other lab operators respond. For various personal reasons, then, I hope things pick up. As much as I love life in a solo corp, I also like having occasional backup and such as needed, plus conversation with other pilots who have similar interests and expertise. No doubt, the lack of the reporting infrastructure and whatnot has had an effect, and I understand the executor has plans in that regard. I hope we see those things soon.

So, in the meantime, I think I may shake things up a little. Instead of continuing to operate a large research base in high-sec, I think I’ll put up a small tower with a few labs as (hopefully) alliance business ramps up. I can use the invention and copy slots myself, at any rate. CONCORD and local regulations don’t allow most industrial operations in high-sec, or at least not the ones for which I have equipment, so I expect to redeploy the current large tower to low-sec and engage in some reactions and such to explore some new market segments.

What about you? Any plans you’ve had to alter lately when things didn’t work out as intended?

I’ve rejoined New Eden Research after building up Mundilfari Station in Vorsk, so if anyone needs highly-available research facilities of any sort, we can help. Corporations can join NER (including subsidiary corporations) and use the material research labs for 15k ISK/hour, or production efficiency labs for free. Copying and invention will require other arrangements. Send me a message and we can work them out.

Putting up a large tower, lots of labs, and requisite defense in case of war took a good bit of time and ISK. Fortunately, my trading efforts keep paying off well, and I have a good system in Heimatar so that I don’t have to spend too much time on it. Once NER gets going, I expect that the tower will at least pay for its own fuel costs. As an added benefit, I have copy slots available for my own use at all times, and all the research (including invention) goes a lot faster. Dedicated facilities really make a difference.

I also did a bit more exploration, primarily clearing out a few facilities hidden in cosmic anomalies near Vorsk as well as poking at some Angel Cartel datacenters and such. That actually reminds me, I need to jump back down to Curse so that I can visit with my research staff in the Cartel labs and keep our arrangements down there going. I know I have something of an inconsistent arrangement, so I’ll need to address that soon. Maybe.

I got confirmation of great news this weekend: New Eden Research has returned. Essentially, corporations can join the alliance to use research labs with much better availability. However, due to CONCORD regulations, alliance members can only use material and productivity research labs (not copying or invention).

I do like to think that this new, resurgent NER will fare better than the previous incarnation. We’ll see.

The “Minmitar Republic” (sic) started hostilities with the New Eden Research Alliance, effective 110.08.23. As we’d not had any prior communication from them, we don’t know their specific objectives, though we suspect them of belonging to that psychotic class of pod pilots just looking for fights.

Just before the fight started, one of our experienced combat pilots played a few can games with them and shot down a MINMI ship (a Cormorant, if I recall correctly). After the war actually started, they wanted to play docking games at Rens 6-8 BTT. The same pilot from earlier turned that around on them, taking out a Vexor, Rifter, and a pod. Apparently, they had not expected the “carebear stare”.

Our jubilation turned to frustration, as some inexperienced pilots made costly mistakes. Mission-fit battlecruisers do poorly in PvP, particularly when pilots use them for scouting, and so we lost a Ferox and then a Drake in the Jita area.

I’d like to say that everybody learned their lessons, but I doubt it. As I went stationside tonight, some of the more hardened pilots had begun to put together a fleet to go after MINMI. I hope to hear a positive report tomorrow on that op.

Photo credit Hen3k Hen3k via Flickr

I haven’t done one of these in some time but activity has picked up. After rejoining New Eden Research this week, we found that NER had a wardec ending. Evidently nobody had seen the war targets at all, so maybe next time. Chainer Cygnus and the security staff seem anxious to let fly at somebody.

I got a couple of rig research jobs going now that a number of the megacorps have shared the results of their research into more efficient ship modifications. Early results seem promising, some more than others, as the market demand for certain rigs well exceeds supply. As one of the Eifyr agents told me today, “it’s not war profiteering, it’s providing the financial stability for the Republic.” I took a shipment of contracted ore our miners had brought into Yrmori, then refined and sold it out of Eram.

Speaking of agent work, he sent me out on a mining run. I picked up a Retriever and a couple of strip miner modules, but I’ll never do that again if I can possibly avoid it. I took an hour or so to pick up something like 45k m³ of whatever odd ore they wanted. They did pay well, though, and I noticed more than a few of them looking at me with a little more respect afterward. Perhaps that ore had more importance than I realized.

Now they have me chasing down some Amarrian battlecruiser in Leurtmar. I fit a Dominix for the occasion, but the Imperials had more firepower on their side than I’d realized. I got the crew back to the local Thukker Mix station with the hull and crew intact, though I lost a Hammerhead drone in the fight. I may need to get some help before heading in there again.

Next, I need to make sure I have all the corporate roles set up properly so Arloeswr and Chainer can do their jobs properly. Arloeswr runs our Mining division, but I really must get him to focus. And I still haven’t gotten a good handle on how to give credit to pilots for taking care of assignments, research, and production for the corp.

The work of a CEO doesn’t really end, does it?

Photo credits Adulau and joegle via Flickr

New Eden Research has another war dec, this time from FUMA. They have a high efficiency rating and seem to be fairly active, so unlike our previous enemies who never bothered to show themselves, I might have to keep an eye our for them and their friends from Lotto Syndicate. Actually, not necessarily the latter, as the corp seems to have departed the alliance recently. I don’t know the story there.

Of course, anybody who wants in on some action could certainly contact me about openings in our security department. I don’t want permanent employees, you understand, but project work could prove lucrative. Feel free to send me an EVEmail (Casiella Truza, the fluid router network will find me) if the possibilities intrigue you.

After the recent blog banter on alts, I wonder what people think about solo corps versus joining another corp. A lot of people have solo corps so they can set up their own POS or for other, similar goals. In my case, Ecliptic Rift basically exists so I can use the alliance labs from New Eden Research. I had a POS, Ansgar Station, for a while, but took it down due to low ROI (and it made a fun story too).

But EVE really doesn’t work best when played more or less solo. Not that that’s binary — even solo players can have friends and shared chat channels and cooperate on various sorts of projects — but sometimes you want wing mates and camaraderie.

So how do you usually handle things when someone in a solo corp wants to put another character in yours? This presupposes no concerns about metagaming from an enemy organization (c.f. Goons vs. BoB), of course.

Things have gotten really tough. Ansgar Station is gone. I recovered what hardware I could to sell off on the market, but we’ve had to halt the Sidereal Fusion project for now. I’ve temporarily moved my research operations to Gulfonodi, but they mostly consist of ship and drone research in NER facilities.

Joron took his failure personally and resigned from the corporation. I think he prefers staying on the run, to be honest. Maybe he’ll end up back with those Guristas or something.

Raimo didn’t die, oddly, despite the EM blast that burned out most of the hardware we’d custom-built into him. But he doesn’t seem like himself, either. Before, he always had lots of ideas and an insatiable curiosity, but now he just processes the projects I assign him. No performance complaints or anything, but he’s lost his spark. If he leaves, too, it won’t really surprise me.

I did hire on one more research assistant today, but she doesn’t have anything like Raimo’s skill. She’ll probably just end up doing some project management and maybe some BPC processing. As far as I can tell, though, she lacks any ambition whatsoever. No real piloting abilities beyond basic shuttle flight and enough astrogation to get around, but she does know her way around the labs.

Maybe Ecliptic Rift works best as a small organization to support my own research. Maybe I need to stop relying so much on other pod pilots to help out and just establish relationships for specific projects or operations.

I should send Vikarion a note; maybe I can work out some sort of research deal with the White Rose Society.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have received our first war dec. Rutilus Incendia decided to register hostilities with CONCORD against NER, though I’m told that the alliance hasn’t seen any trouble from them and generally does not actually see any action in these sorts of situations.

That almost disappoints me. I had hopes of teaching these thugs a lesson or two about what we can really do. Ecliptic Rift doesn’t want fights, but if we get them, we intend to win them.

As things stand right now, however, Joron Darkdust, my chief of security ((alt)) stepped down due to his desire to pursue alternate interests. He didn’t give a lot of detail about what those interests might include, but (knowing him) I suspect that they involve exploding ships.

UPDATE: They let it drop after a week. Nobody ever saw them, to my knowledge. What a shame!