Holy Cow, it was the Jove all along!

Scylla has been deployed.  The plot from Caroline's Star appears to be moving again.  The exploded star's graphics are a bit different after being "stuck" for the past few weeks.  And now the mysterious cloaky structures are now uncloaked and described as being a "Jove Observatory" - at least the one I found this evening was.

I spent some time orbiting the structure to see if any visitors would show up (none did).

It also looks like it's crumbling or a little broken, or as I described it in chat:  A little bit like Sigourney Weaver's Alien jumped out of its chest.

Here's a shot of the show info window:

This youtube vid from the test server (not posted by me) shows the tower in all its glory:

Zealot II

After some good feedback on my Seeking Anom Fits post, I've been playing with the Zealot.  I promised to post back, so here's what I'm currently flying as of this morning.

Previous edition of this fit had a named web in mid and a dmg control in low instead of the tracking mods.  It worked fine, and using the web is fun, but I like this version better.  The web was only useful under 10km while the tracking mods are useful throughout the entire range.  I haven't settled on ammo yet; I default to Multifreq but have tinkered with Conflag.  Multifreq seems to work well enough.

With this fit and my skills, I'm blapping most frigates in 1 (maybe 2) salvos from 10km to 20km and can hit frigates well enough out to about 25km.  I've had a couple of frigates get up close and orbit that caused me to maneuver, but mostly I sit at 0m/s and pop things as fast as I can lock them.

[Zealot, Face Melter II]
Medium Armor Repairer II
Fourier Transform Tracking Program
Heat Sink II
Heat Sink II
Heat Sink II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II 

Experimental 10MN Microwarpdrive I
Optical Tracking Computer I
Cap Recharger II 

Heavy Pulse Laser II
Heavy Pulse Laser II
Heavy Pulse Laser II
Heavy Pulse Laser II
Heavy Pulse Laser II 

Medium Energy Collision Accelerator I
Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I

May try the Gila soon.

What's Playing:  Interstellar Motion Picture Soundtrack

Medicine Haze

I was scheduled to work today, but thanks to a nasty head cold that ambushed me last night, I am sitting at my PC at home in my PJ's.  I'm nursing some coffee and then will decide if I have the will to eat.

I had just started typing something semi-incoherent about Standings and the PVE Soundingboard that the CSM hosted earlier this month.  I got three paragraphs in and wasn't sure where I was going.

Thank you, cold medicine.

Let's to this instead.

Here's a preview of 3 things I'm working on around here:

1. I still need to wrap up the Resolutions series.  Unless I get greatly inspired, the next post will hit on/around 1 Jan and will probably be the last for awhile.
2. I'm working on Cruiser skills and poking through some of the hulls I've forgotten about.  Exploration/Anoms are a good way to do this.  Other than some sporadic Logi duty, most of my time in a cruiser for the past decade has been in the Sacrilege.  For many years I didn't fly anything smaller than a BC, and of course lately I've been mostly in the Golem or killing burners in frigs.  Now, I love the Sacri, but if Cruiser-sized burners ever become reality, I need to be a little better rehearsed.  This has already fed one post on the blog and will likely spawn a few more.  The help and comments you guys have provided are already helping, so thank you.
3. Burners.  I'll owe my monthly stats update in a few days.  My fits and strategies have generally stabilized, although I'm still missing the Team Enyo.  I may need to change regions and see if I can get him to spawn.

There are a few other drafts knocking around in the bin that I need to dust off and see if I'll ever post.  Half finished thoughts, and a rant or two.

What's Playing:  The Black Keys, Live at KCRW, Next Girl

Seeking Anom Fits

I've been doing some combat anomalys lately, all highsec stuff.  I've see other folks flying a little bit of everything.

With the idea of trying to kill as many anoms as possible and force some escalations, I'm trying to clear them as fast as possible.

So, on a whim I put a Zealot together today.  It's been years since I've flown a Zealot and I wanted to melt some faces with a good pulse fit.  On my very first run I got lucky with a Shadow Serp boss that dropped a Snake implant worth ~200M that more than paid for my new kit.  Yay.

I don't claim to be an expert, but here's what I did.  I'll drop the 2nd armor rep if I feel tanky enough with one.

[Zealot, It's All Fun And Games Until Your Face Melts]
Medium Armor Repairer II
Medium Armor Repairer II
Heat Sink II
Heat Sink II
Heat Sink II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II 

Experimental 10MN Afterburner I
Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II 

Heavy Pulse Laser II
Heavy Pulse Laser II
Heavy Pulse Laser II
Heavy Pulse Laser II
Heavy Pulse Laser II 

Medium Energy Collision Accelerator I
Medium Energy Locus Coordinator I

Tech 1 rigs because I lack the skills for tech2 at the moment.

I'm also in the mood for some antimatter-fueled blaster action.  I was thinking maybe a Blaster-Eagle (I haven't flown a Moa-model in years either....).  Open to ideas, What do you guys use?

A Moment of Silence

Happy Rhea day!

My client is updating as I type, which at my connection speeds means I may be able to play again sometime in 2017.  Or maybe after dinner.

In the mean time I wanted to announce some sad news:  I lost Xevozz, the Heretic last night.  This ship was previously featured as a crazy fit experiment back in June.  I was doing some Cosmic Anomaly sites trying to get an escalation to pop.

Yes, a little bit of exploration for the lvl4 grinder; figured I'd try some out.  The Heretic seemed like a fun way to do them - nimble, decent dps, and a ship that I don't fly as often as I'd like.  I upgraded the rigs and ammo to tech2 but otherwise left the fit from June intact.

And yes, kind of a dumb fit; using a hull intended for something else entirely in a mildly inappropriate way.  That was kind of the point.  The loss itself wasn't really anything to be proud about.  I looked away at the wrong moment and pow, the Angels had their way with them.  I grabbed the Sacrilege, murdered the pocket and looted my wreck at least.

So, a moment of silence, please.  This was a good ship that died doing what it loved best.

The death isn't the fault of the ship.   He deserved a better pilot.


(Mental note: do a blog post about naming conventions for ships).