Thanny Taunting

A few of the guys my Corp (Sp4rtans) decided to taunt a Thanny.  The Thanny pilot managed to get himself a GCC timer and so opened himself up for a little fun.

Boosters

I got an alliance email over the weekend with a brief summary of booster benefits which I have never looked at before.  So being the inquisitive type, I decided it was time to educate myself a little more on what they do and how to make them.

In summary boosters are an easy way of boosting a number of your combat related skills without the need for an implant.  Be warned though they do have drawbacks that might leave you in a worse position.  In order for you to use boosters there are a number of skills that are either essential or beneficial for you to train up.

• Biology; allows you to use boosters, the higher the skill the higher the grade of booster you can use.  In addition to this, for each level you will increase the duration of the booster for 20%.
• Nanite Control; reduces the effect of side effects by 5% per level.
• Neurotoxin Recovery; reduces the chance of a side effect by 5%
• Drug Manufacture; required to manufacture drugs, the higher the level the higher grade drug that can be manufactured.

A good forum guide for boosters can be found here.

The spreadsheet below provides you with the base data for boosters along with a sheet where you can enter your relevant skills and it will show you what the duration and side effects are for your pilot.

Booster Spreadsheet

As a final entry here I have added a small flow chart that shows you the overall outline for manufacturing your drugs (can also be found in this Dev Blog).

War is over ...

I would love to report that the whole war ended with a huge fight and my ship collection in a matchbox but actually it ended up with them ending the war and the last evening was us camping them at a station and them sending out so much smack talk in local that another PvP corp asked them to try dec'ing them.  Overall probably the worst war we ever had. Oh well, see what happens next, the next war is never to far away.

Reflections on an Agony Course

With a few rifters and vigils packed and shipped to Stacmon I turned up for a bit of fun and to learn a little more about PVP and FCing.  I have been out on the occasional roam but usually with our fleet being handed various parts of their anatomy back on a plate.  SO this was a chance to go along and enjoy a roam without the risk of losing much.

So who are Agony Unleashed?  Well, they are a corp who is doing something a little different than everyone by offering a range of courses that teach other player some basic game mechanics.  You can check them out at http://www.agony-unleashed.com.

So, I had coughed up my isk for the course (12 mil for individuals or 10 mil if you set up a corp account) and turn up in Stacmon ready for the course.  There is a lot of reading that you need to do before and which though they say they are not going to cover in the course a lot of this is really covered on the first evening.  The main things you definitely have to set up are your frigs, your general game settings to help reduce lag and the overviews.  You don't have to follow their settings but they are a good starter for ten, especially if you have not done it yet.

The first class night saw about 60-70 if us going through the basics of EWAR, fleeting comms, etc.  With a little flying practice.  I would of preferred a little more practice seeing effects of the various modules and such like but would be difficult to do this with so many people in fleet and you do get that experience on the second day.  There was a little directional scanner test which was very useful (even if you have used and done this before .. it is easy to get lazy and rusty on this).

Anyway the real thing that everyone looks forward to is the roam and we had 103 at one point; it might of been higher.  It is fun to see such a large blob of ships flying around together; will get some pictures next time I am flying on one as I will be a little more relaxed.  Well we all joined up in Stacmon ready to go and warped off towards low / null sec.  I cannot tell the route we took in the end because we jumped around a fair bit based on what intel came in.  I will tell you know that this is not the sort of fleet that avoids anything that looks too dangerous, if the scouts find a good size fleet you are likely to try it.  I know we did straight off, within about two jumps we engaged a sizeable fleet that paired us down quite quickly; we did get some good kills but meant that we returned to Stacmon for new ships etc as a good portion of the fleet was gone.  Once we had done this we headed back out again and this time faired a lot better.

I got my first killmail (Onyx) whilst out on this roam (though it was others that did the lions share of the damage) and was party to a lot of others.  There are some things that you have to get used to, which includes; not always clear commands, lots of chatter with intel, lag, etc.  On the whole though I cannot see how this would be different from any other fleet up and is good experience in the long run.  One other thing did become clear as the evening progressed was that our opponents primary the Agony pilots who run the fleet and this is disruptive at times, especially as the evening progresses and people slowly drop out.

Despite the things that might annoy the average carebear with OCD it is a great course to do and certainly makes things fun.  You are likely to be tense for the first couple of hours, so try to relax and enjoy it.  Also try and kill something as soon as you get on grid cos if you pause you will miss out.  I know I did near the beginning and was soon charging all over the place trying to get my fair share of kills.

I am looking forward to the odd alumni run (once you have done the course, you can come back as an alumni for free and join in both the theory and the roam for free), and would like to get on the other courses too.

Thanks Agony for a great weekend out.