I need to get better at this..

However, I forget to post. Thus an update on my EVE Life.
I've joined a new corporation -SAW-. They seem like a decent bunch, everyone around my age so real life issues are expected and thus not a problem.

It has a very high amount of new players so vent is filled with questions, which is pretty cool since it makes me feel like I know what I'm doing.

We're lining up for Caldari in factional warfare... which is not so cool. I'll be honest, factional warfare looks absolutely amazing. I'm totally stoked for it, and it's been a loooong time since that's happened for a game. This however looks wild, and CCP is doing a fantastic job with their news posts to build it all up. The painful part is that I am for the first time ever in game thinking of Quincy as a down to earth Minmatar citizen and it feels kind of wrong to be planning to fight for the scummy Caldari. Busted station or no....
This of course means that the mighty Jaybird I is flying for the Ishukone watch. Although it's also moonlighting with the RSS... sssshhhhhh don't tell anyone.

Oh, and congratulations to the CSM members who earned spots on the council. Now go out there and prove the concept will add value to our game.
To be honest I feel that the biggest issue facing the CSM is the lack of community support. I feel that the first thing that needs to be tabled, before any other issue is how to get as many players invested in the process as possible. For the next round of elections I would view any number less than 30,000 votes as a disaster. People are passionate about this game, there's no reason that we cannot attain 50% participation. I should post this on the forums, but hey I like rattling on here.

Fly Smart,
Quincy

There goes another one...

EXTRA EXTRA

So it seems that MC is gone due to picking a fight with BOB and the usual internal struggles. Assuming of course this isn't a forum Maskirova, I hope this is actually. Well you know what they say about poking a tiger with a stick. Or poking a crocodile in the eye, or hopping into a circle of wolves after rolling around in hamburger.
Actually I thought that the alliance of MC, KIA and the other guys would've been able to carry the whole Tortugan thing off.

Chalk me up as someone else who underestimated the combination of talent, planning, perseverance and execution that BOB is capable of.

KiaEdz has a nice writeup of the whole thing here. Speaking of KIA, I would say the smart money is on them to have the ability to start filling the massive whole that will be left in the mercenary field. Although, I expect that the remanents of MC will form something. However, as BOB proved here the critical elements of an alliance that lasts are planning, dedication and execution. At the end of the day you need leadership, and a lot of it to make this work. MC was a force as long as the Captain was able to steer the ship.

However, whatever happens MC was the alliance that I always thought about going for, but like so many things in this game, I never gained the conviction to do it. Sadly, I won't get the chance now. Never know, maybe this will make me chase the next EVE opportunity that comes along.

Goodbye MC, EVE-Online will be different without you.

Fly Smart,
Quincy Tawharr

Back at it...

So I finally took the 82 jump haul out to 0.0 to start my change of pace. I settled on Sansha space, for no particular reason other than it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Not a lot in the way of a market out there which is a surprise... I expected there to be no market at all. Granted the market is a bout 30 jumps from where I am, but it's there. It often surprises me how little danger you're while traveling in this game. Since I was hauling BP's for my stay in nullsec (154 no less). I was rolling in my trusty SexyBack, a Matari Covops.
Even jumping into a bubbled gate didn't phase me in the slightest. Pick a direction, recloak, change directions when cloaked... laugh as the Vaga zooms by trying to decloack you. Then maneuver around the bubble and you're home free.

Good Times really, on the down side I forgot to set a med clone on the way and now I'll have to go 20 jumps back from where I set up. A lab is 12 or so jumps away, but the factories are within a jump of where I am.

Props to whomever can nail down which system I'm in with a single guess.

Fly Smart people,
Quincy

I've got a bad feeling about this...

In my past I've been quite the DnD player.... I'm a huge dork what can I say.

With 4e coming I keep getting a bad feeling about where the game is heading.

It's little things, like how Elves have suddenly grown an average of 6 inches.
Or how rogues can now sneak attack Golems.
Fighter's can keep an enemy "focused" on them.
Maybe I haven't done the work to read into it, but I just get the feeling that the people at Wizards sat down and tried to convert WOW to paper... I'll start to really look through this soon, since I'm interested in picking these up. I was interested in using the only component to hook up with a few people online until I found out that it was fifteen dollars a month. Which is insane, as much as I would love to get the old group together. For $15 a month we could all play WOW and I wouldn't have to design the adventures, or put up with people whining about failed saves.

Fly Smart everyone,

Here's hoping I'm horribly mistaken.

So sue me....

Ok, over the next few WEEKS.... I will be moving to 0.0..

On a side note it occurs to me that I have no idea where I'm going or what I'm doing.

The big move...

Over the next few days I am going to prep for my big move out to 0.0; where I intend to live in one of the npc regions. It's time for a change really, and taking the plunge into the frontiers of EVE should be an interesting change of pace.
To prepare I've started buying ship blueprint copies and vanilla T1 blueprints like mad. Fortunately the cruiser and frigate size module prints are fairly reasonably priced. The battleship ones however are not so nicely priced. I figure it'll cost me approximately 50% of my wealth to "set up shop" as it were. That should land me a few Battle cruisers, the fittings I need to run them and a mining ship for giggles.
I'll probably mission for one of the pirate factions, and if I like it I'll work my way through all of them. I'd like to get a stable of shiny faction birds to fly.
For now however, I need to find medium artillery blueprints... which in Essence may take some doing.

Fly Smart,
Quincy Tawharr

The Joys of Q1...

Real Life is a drag at times. However, real life also just landed me a new set of wheels. Which means that real life is a little more serious business than Internet spaceships.
On a related note, the search for a new corp begins. RvB is cool, and I'll stick around but I want something with a little more spice to it. Maybe I'll try out an RP bunch, I'm hoping for a slightly more focused group really. One that will allow me to PvP and mission to support it.

Presenting Lewis Hamilton...

Which is the name of my Purty Malediction.
She's quick, fire's missiles, and has a boost to Warp scrambler/disruptor range. Which I didn't realize until I had been flying it for a week. Noob moment really.
I have no fancy speed implants, and given my corp rigs aren't really an option so I don't think I'm doing too badly with my fitting.
In the Mids: MWD II , Warp Disruptor II, Stasis Webifier II
In the Lows: 2x Overdrive II's, and a Nanofiber II
In the Highs: 3x 'Malkuth' Standard Launchers...
Generally I try to stay out of web range unless I'm letting the cavalry close. The second reason to not use rockets is ; I'm not out to kill stuff with this. The Cavalry kills stuff, not the scout.
She'll pull about 6.5km/s, and get this her targeting range is actually shorter than her disrupting range. 28km targeting with a disruption range of 28.8, how cool is that?
Talk about a fun ship to fly, except when I chase a stabber 4 systems, scram it and then promptly fly out of targeting range.

Fly Safe everyone,

Quincy

A first time for everything....

A little background, currently my corporation is Blue of RedversusBlue. As the name implies we are locked in an eternal struggle of warfare. Kind of like Super Mario Brothers one if you will.
Since we're a little short of Fleet Commanders I volunteered to lead a group of intrepid fighters out to combat the Red menace. To understate, fleet commanding is a challenge. Even when you have better people around you offering suggestions (which I asked for). We took the trip from our home system in Bei to the Red's home in Hatakani with our light force. The destination gate in Hatakani ended up being camped on the Hata side. Which was fine except we ended up getting chased a few systems with me picking gates pretty much at random until we pulled a couple jumps ahead.
Then our intrepid warriors and I elected to head home (read run away) to combat a station camp back home. We promptly ran headlong into a moving camp in Balle, I assume they were trying to figure out where we were. Amazingly only my beloved Rupture died. Which I lost driving a Stiletto away from a Battleship so it could run away. Why the Interceptor didn't just stay on the battleship I'll never know. I generally don't look gift horses in the mouth though. A learning experience to be sure, good times all around. Well, for Red anyways.

In the night I hopped into a Malediction... which I REALLY liked. The ship just felt right, better in fact than the Minmatar interceptors have. A little silly maybe, but it's a solid little ship.
I'll tinker with the fitting and then post it for your lulz.

Fly Smart (meaning don't let me lead your gangs),

Quincy

Downtime continues...

NNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!


:D

I guess we're not flying at all, pass the time with the quality EVE Podcasts to your right.

Quincy

Downtime has me thinking...

Another patch downtime is upon us, if we're lucky the server will be back up tomorrow night. CCP's been pretty good with patches of late (touch wood) in my experience. Obviously I wasn't part of the boot.ini crisis. Like any smart EVE player I've picked a nice long skill to train , Energy Management 5, just in case. Which being 2 years old I really should have by now, but it's a boring skill so I didn't bother.

What I was really thinking about is something Verone said during the elimination rounds of the Alliance Tournament. That there should be an EVE tournament that's not just for the alliances. So I thought about it a bit... and I came up with something that someone must have thought of a thousand times before. If it's your idea I apologize.

Remember the SAK Tournament a few months back? It was accessible because of the ship type used. An EVE for Everyone tournament should be a similar idea. So using that as a base, I suggest the...

The EVE-Open Tournament

Find a witty RP name and you're ready to go. Now notice it's the Open? That means open to everyone who wants to compete, so no requirements on Corporation. Now I think 2v2 is a little low in numbers so let's raise the maximum team size to 10 (minimum 8), with 5 pilots max per match. The 5 man team allows for FC's to do their thing while keeping it on a smaller scale.

While this does eliminate people it also forces people to have spares and the number requirement forces people to at least think about having enough people to progress. The points from the alliance tournament are great, maybe the values should stay the same so people feel "at home". But the point pool is reduced to say 20, allowing for a team of 5 frigates, 2 Cruisers, 2 Destroyers and a frigate, actually looking at that the point values need to change. I'll throw that up tomorrow.

I would say that the cruiser should be the largest ship one could field, this event is for everyone after all. Second, let's eliminate T2 ships for the same reason. Still with me? Great, now all the faction implants have to go as well, while we're at it let's toss rigs, skill hardwirings and boosters out the window as well. The playing field is getting nice and level now except to make this a real sporting event that pits a players ability to fly, fit a ship and manage a simulated engagement against another opponent on a level playing field we need one more thing to change. All ship modules must be base T1 (non-named).

If you (somehow) pull this off you've created a playing field that virtually eliminates any ISK or Ratting site advantages. You've made a tourney for everyone, an event that can truly crown a champion because quite frankly you can't use your resources to overpower anyone. A level playing field means your game time decisions are the over-riding factor deciding whether you win or lose.

How do we run this monster? To be honest it'd be tough. I'd guess that's an understatement but here it goes. Let's assume 64 teams enter, I would suggest that this type of number be used (16,32,64,128...) to make scheduling "easier". From here we take another page from SAK. The first few rounds are given a time frame to complete all matches within, and observers are used to "officiate" matches. Observers scan ships, and say go. Both sides would have to submit killmails and perhaps a FRAPS for match confirmation.

Off trackage, as I was saying 64 ships. So for the first round we break it into 4 team brackets. A round robin ensues with the top two teams from each bracket advancing, perhaps make each team play each other twice. I would suggest the same in round 2, until you get to 16. At this point the tournament flips to Single Elimination. Perhaps the cameras start rolling in the round of 32?

Long post, and probably totally unworkable but I'm very vulnerable to this sort of thing. I won't bore you any longer, but I do need to learn that less is more.

Fly Smart,
Quincy

What am I?

Warning: Pretentious First Post
I promise I won't do it again. :D

I am Quincy Tawharr, the name deserves a little explanation. Well maybe not but you're getting it. Tawharr is simply the surname I use in every RPG that allows a surname. Guild Wars, DDO, Tabula Rasa (beta), and EVE-Online. It's a pretty easy way to find me actually, plus I like it.
Oh and the guys on EVE-Radio butcher it the 'W' is not silent, it's TAW-harr not TA-harr. You can emphasize the last syllable if you like so long as you pronounce the w.
Quincy... I wish I had something good to say about this, but the truth is that I'm a huge fan of Galaxy Quest so I aped the commander's middle name and took it as my first.
The name's out of the way so what am I exactly?

I am a member of Blue, so I fight Red.
I am Stone Cold Sexy, I mean look at that face.
I am Sebiestor, of the Minmatar race.
I am a daring frigate pilot.
I am an imposing Cruiser pilot.
I have a goal of flying every cruiser and smaller ship in EVE, at a high level.
I do not agree that versatility is a weakness.
I believe my versatility is my greatest strength.
I believe that specialization is boring.
I believe in my corpmates, no matter how hard we get pounded by Red.
I believe in joining any fight that I have a reasonable chance to win.
I believe that ISK and Skill points create the illusion of real skill.
and the most important points for last...

I believe in flying smart, not safe.
I also believe that failing to prepare, is preparing to fail.
I believe that if what you're doing isn't making you happy you should change, I don't care who wants you to fly a basilisk.

I am Quincy Tawharr, and I am a New Eden Swiss Army Knife. Nothing else in this game makes me happy, so that's what I do.

Fly Smart everyone,
Quincy