Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Tripwire

Last night we had our first venture as a corporation into wormhole space.  It certainly helped to get teamspeak up and running, as there is only so much information you can convey and you can only type so fast in chat channels.

Initially, this started as a single corporation member derping around and probing.  He mentioned that he had jumped into a wormhole, but he did not understand that it was EOL (end of life).  The whole literally closed right behind him.  Derp.

With TS up and running, I asked him to link his system in chat.  He started to type the name of the system so that he could highlight and right-click to choose system name.  I told him to stop.  Go to the upper left corner of your monitor with mouse, click and drag the system name to the chat channel.  OMG!!!  He felt a little foolish.  I then told him that it took me nearly 3 years to learn that nifty trick.

I finished jumping into the low sec system he was in, and we warped to the hole he had probed down.  Prior to jumping in, I opened up tripwire on my in-game browser.  I then asked him to create an account there as well.  I briefly explained what the system was, and how we would use it.

Tripwire is a mapping program which is used primarily for wormholes, chains and sites.  There are other programs out there, but I have found that this program works best for me.  There are features in the program to follow me and automatically update the current system with the application.  It also will setup the opposite side of holes when you jump through.  Finally, for corporations, it automatically shares data as long as you have setup an admin account with a CEO or Director API.  The corporation member thought that this was a very helpful tool.  I agreed.  Tripwire can be located here.

While I probed the remaining 4 sites (all wormholes) in the first hole, he proceeded to jump into the first hole and continue probing.  After I finished probing, there was an exit to low sec, so I took that.  Found 1 relic and 1 high sec exit.  In the high sec system there was 1 relic which took me longer than usual to probe down.

We had a 3rd corp member join us, so I asked him to burn down to us and we would run the relic sites.  Both sites blew and had maybe 3-4 million worth of loot.

I called it a night, and the others continued exploring.

All-in-all a very positive night, teaching tricks in the game and learning to use new tools which will make an explorers life easier and more efficient.

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

New Jovian Exploration Department

Recently I came back to the game on my main character after a sabbatical of almost one year.  This is the third time in the game where I have taken a pause like this, but it was the longest by far.  Back in October 2013 I was burned out, tired of the game in general and mostly was not sure what I wanted to do.

When I came back to the game in October of 2014 I immediately started to chat with some of my friends who were still in the game and joined their corporation/alliance/coalition with nearly all of my characters, including the space coffin.

This has worked well so far, as I have joined fleets when the opportunity presents itself, but I have not lived or died based on a timer or a fleet notice.  I have let the game opportunities come to me when I was ready.

In addition, I have an alt corporation in empire space that is reaction farming in low sec and also now is handling the Tech II production of frigates, interdictors and recons.

As my null sec and low sec security pilots have sort of been on autopilot for a good 3-4 weeks, I recently was looking for something fun to do which would not necessarily involve them.  This lead to exploration.  So, I grabbed one of my alt characters who had Covert Ops trained and who could use a Covert Ops cloak and had her start to explore.  This truly became a very fun endeavor and something that I wanted to grow upon.

I decided in the past 2 weeks to open a new alt corp for the purposes of exploration.  However, I also wanted to give assistance and advice to new pilots in New Eden as I know how challenging it can be trying to start this game that I have grown to love.

So, on Sunday, December 28, 2014 New Jovian Exploration Department was born.  We have grown to 6 members as of last night and look to add more new members who are excited to learn the Exploration side of the game.

Information on the corporation can be found here.