Changes

With the CSM9 term now all but over (we're just waiting for CSM10 to finish getting NDA's sorted until we're officially released) it's just about time to drop politics and get back to the Eve.

Over the next few postings I've got some great topics to cover, including some lowsec survival tips, some fresh ship fits, and something to go over lowsec mining (my posting last year about why no one mines in lowsec is a fairly constant traffic generator, so it seems fair to cobble something up about mining and local production for lowsec markets).

The perspective of things is changing around here as well. For the last 3 years myself and the guys have been flying for Gallente Factional Warfare. As of last weekend, that era is over. We gutted what was left of the alliance, trimmed everything down to 4 pilots, made a couple new friends, and left FW.

While we still live in the same place in lowsec, this change has cancelled an enforced blue status with a couple thousand active pilots in our area providing us with a far more target rich environment, more fights, and new challenges. Our former friends in Gal Mil (aside from a few confusing moments when standings weren't properly reset) seem just as happy as us to have more potential targets, and there haven't been any hard feelings. The change has had an immediate positive effect on our Eve outlook, and has caused some changes in how we do things.

Primarily while in FW, income was gained through LP. We now face the challenge of having to earn an honest living. Charlie is hell bent on funding himself solely through piracy. So far, he's doing quite well. As the managing director of Noob Mercs last year, Charlie made a name for himself flying cheaply fit, low SP compatible ships, and actually winning fights with them. There are a lot of people flying around lowsec that make bad fitting decisions, but Tech II and faction mods dropped off poorly fit ships still sell well, and Charlie has racked up 63 kills this week totaling over 6 Billion ISK.

Well known for it's role in Nullsec, the Heretic has
impressed me as an extremely capable Lowsec fighter.

For myself, I enjoy flying slightly prettier ships than t1 fit destroyers. This week has seen me try both the Sentinel and Heretic for the first time in my Eve career, and I've had buckets of fun with them (I'll talk about each one specifically in future posts this month).

With a 10 year old character, I've got some skills stashed away in invention and T2 production that I've started to leverage for income purposes. I'm not a hardcore producer by any means, but our home system has a decent market that seems some traffic, and I'm able to sell things for higher profits than I'd be making in saturated highsec markets, even if things take a little longer to sell. With FW system upgrades, goods are also considerably cheaper to build. Once I find a reliable JF service that doesn't try to get me to sign over my first born for a round trip jump costing around 15m ISK in fuel, I'll be golden!