Meanwhile, in EVE Online…

Kill Ten Rats: No Longer Blue

You can’t help but admire an attitude like that; ‘We have decided the game is boring…we are going to make it more interesting by declaring war on everyone!’ Player content, I guess. Certainly big news if you live next door to the bit of space Band of Brothers have carved out for themselves, but for most it’s just another interesting news item that is unlikely to matter to them personally – like some overseas war.

My rather loose touch on EVE politics suggests that BoB do actually have the numbers and skills to if not conquer the universe, then almost certainly make a massive dent in their neighbours territories, but nothing lasts forever, and sooner or later they’ll implode – bickering, fatigue, politics, drama. It may be sooner rather than later if this new offensive overstretches too badly. In my day, this kind of galaxy-wide scourge was called ‘M0o’. Things change, and people with them. Still, the announcement seems to have been met with a large number of ‘Good Luck! Just what the game needs!’ posts, most likely from people hoping to ingratiate themselves further down BoB’s now exhaustive target list.

Despite having hung the game up some months ago, I still find myself fascinated with this elusive ‘other EVE’ I never quite managed to find – a place of sweeping politics, vast empires at war, huge fleet battles, space stations and Titans. It sounds quite fun, but my own experiences were somewhat less impressive and involving, consisting mostly of solitary deep space haulage and an unending succession of NPC mission bug-hunts, with the occasional botched gank attempt stoking the embers of my paranoia just enough to keep me fearful and alone. Not a good game for pick-up grouping, I’d say.

It’s all my own fault, of course, as EVE is a game best played as part of a large player corp (guild), or not at all, and being somewhat more paranoid and unsociable than most, I never really embraced this side of the game, which when all is said and done, is the way the thing is supposed to be played. It is a shame though, as I do want to like it. For space-based sci-fi it really is the only game in town, and has a clean elegant look and feel that I’ve yet to see beaten.

The PvP in particular is something I’ve never gotten into, largely because of the costs involved. Last time I was playing, I was chugging about in around 120 million ISK of ship and gear. ‘Don’t fly what you can’t afford’, is the golden rule, and while I could afford it, it’d take about a week to replace the loss of a 45 second skirmish. Possibly I exaggerate, but you get the idea. So I should fly something smaller, and cheaper, and expect to die. This works financially, but only provides results in large numbers of ships, i.e. more than one.

So the upshot of it all is that if I’m ever to play EVE again, I need to swallow some pride, and do it properly – I need to join a corp. So before I throw my self to the mercy of the in-game ‘Recruitment’ spam channel, I thought I’d give any regular readers first dibs.

Here’s the CV:

  • Race: Caldari Detis
  • Skill Points: 7,561,298 – mostly in a wide spread of low-end IVs and Vs, rather than focused in any one specialisation. Includes: Drone Interfacing V, Refinery Efficiency III and Production Efficiency IV
  • Ships I Can Fly: All Frigates and Destroyers, All Cruisers, Badger MkII, Typhoon & Tempest, Assault Ships. Can train more specifics as required.
  • Play Hours: 1900 to 0200 UK Time (BST: GMT+1), most nights. A Euro corp would be best, or at least one with a lot of European members. I only speak English...sorry.

Ideally I’m looking for a decent medium or larger sized corp (20+ members) with plans. I don’t mind picking up a shovel if needed, but prefer NPC trading to mining as a means of providing income. I am an absolute PvP n00b, so will almost certainly need some kind of training if I’m to be useful on that front. Having said that, I would like to learn and try it, as it seems I’m missing out on a lot. The market and logistic sides of the game interest me also, although I can appreciate the trust needed to do that sort of thing will have to be earned. I’m pretty much a blank slate as far as bigger game ambitions are concerned, but it would be nice to have something to get behind, and I’d be happy to devote my skill training to the larger needs of a corp, having already got most of the more general ‘must-have’ Tech 1 skills up to a reasonable level.

I’m happy to listen on teamspeak, but currently live in a shared house and play late, so can’t be shouting at the PC all hours of the night. I’d consider a 0.0 corp, but will need some time to get up to speed on surviving out there, so any 0.0 corp would have to have a reasonable infrastructure, rather than being a roaming guerrilla outfit. Empire corps are fine too. I don’t mind wading into a war-dec situation, as long as I’m brought up to speed on PvP quite quickly! I probably wouldn’t last five minutes in any overtly pirate corp. I haven’t really been a team player in EVE so far, but I’d like that to change. Titans and Outposts not necessary…I’d go all slack-jawed at seeing a POS close up, frankly.

Oh, and it goes without saying, I’ll be writing about the grand corporate adventure here, but promise to use a made-up corp name!

Any interested parties should use the Contact link on the sidebar, for more details.