Insert humorous and enticing post title here

I hope you are enjoying the festive period, I certainly am. But I needed a break from eating my body weight in roast potatoes, playing Fallout New Vegas (thank you Santa!!) and trying to explain to my toddler what "lie-in" means, so thought I would stop by and make one last post before the end of the year.


J!nx T-Shirt Competition
I’m a little bit loath to promote this as out of the 7 or so designs I submitted they only allowed one to go through and it was probably the worst one of the lot! But, there are some fantastic designs up by other people so I’ll HTFU and get on with it. Click here to see the entries. You need to register to vote.


Another milestone for SOTF
Warning. I am going to indulge in a little corp chest beating...

It’s been quite a year for SOTF. We have grown considerably in numbers and dabbled with our first base in 0.0 during the past year. We have also killed just over 11000 ships and, in addition to our usual targets, pewpewd our way through 20 war decs. Earlier this month we also passed the 20k kill mark. Cool beans!

We have upped our game considerably during 2010 and our ability to do this comes down purely to the efforts that the individual corp members make to SOTF, both in and out of the game. I was thinking about all the individuals who do jobs of one sort or another or who contribute to the corp in some vital way and quite frankly there are an awful lot. Whether it's Gallactica's mind boggling powers of diplomacy, the FC's who lead us to our doom/victories, the people who step up to train and fly logistics, the individuals always willing to scout you up a pipe or help you fit a ship or the superb corp shopping service run by one of our members - everyone brings something that has helped the corp become what it is and will hopefully ensure that we continue to do well in the future.

As ships get shinier and more new members join the family then problems inevitably arise. But the essence of the corp remains. It’s still an excellent, laid back and fun place to hang out, filled with interesting people and pilots of all skill levels. And if you see us out in space, we are probably all still drunk too.

So here's a salute to my corp-mates, and to another 12 months of SoTF o7


I r scammer cat
I’ve not yet sat down and sorted the in-game contracts for the lotto prizes but, as I have now heard back from all the winners, I will make a point of sorting this out within the next few days. Sorry for the delay!

Raffle Winners!

Raffle has been drawn this evening! Winners as follows:

First Prize - 310/Jared Reidel

Second Prize - 182/The Methatron

Third Prize - 218/Einon Draconus

Fourth Prize - 62/Loren Gallen

Fifth Prize - 238/Laedy

Sixth Prize - 10/NL Jarin

Congrats and thanks to everyone who took part. Winners, I will eve-mail you this week about prize deliveries.



Due to a very busy real life schedule this might be my last post till after the holidays. So a very merry Christmas to everyone, hope that you have a good one.



o/

Happy 1st Birthday...

...to Eve Travel, one of my favourite Eve Blogs, which also currently features snowfall!

And thanks to all the raffle entrants. I have a couple of ticket number emails still to send which will be finished this evening. Unless my house collapses under a snowdrift the draw will take place tomorrow at about 8pm.


o/

Mini update

Lottery update
I have extended the date for buying tickets till Friday 17th, partially because of the downtime move and partially because I don't know how much online time I will have before the weekend. Lottery will still be drawn on the 19th as per original post.

And, a bit later than planned, here are some pics:





Don't do it kids
It seems some friends of mine have recently been given suspensions/bans for breaking the EULA. I don't know exactly what happened but it is horridly sad news in so many ways and I was pretty gutted to hear about it. End of the day what people do with their own accounts is none of my beeswax and everyone knows knows the risks involved. But the "loss" of these pilots will have an impact on a lot of people, not just because they were awesome pvp'ers but also because they were darn good company. It's a sad, sad day :(


That pewpew thing
Soo, I have a hanger full of shiney new Minmatar ships and no time to actually undock any of them. Christmas is a busy time in our house! We recently had some ex Bi-Po/Wolfy pilots joins us and I'd very much been looking forward to flying with them. I also need just 1 more kill to pass 1000 mails whored onto, but it just isn't happening at the moment.

So I've asked Santa for a baby sitter, a clone to send to work, a cleaner and a quiet room with a lock on it. Fingers crossed eh.

How "War" works in Eve Online.

It's totally not meant to be like this, OK?
























Sometimes people do make me wonder...

Faction War Interview: Lacco

Love them or hate them Draketrain is certainly one of the most well known corporations in the Gallente/Caldari war. I am very happy that Lacco agreed to take part in an interview. Enjoy!

Read more >>

Presenting the WTFIMS Christmas Raffle

I am super chuffed to finally announce the WTFIMS Christmas Raffle!






Now don’t be fooled by the title, there is no Victoria sponge or cheap booze on offer here but instead some Faction War themed prizes that I hope will have wide appeal. So without further ado, here are the prizes!

FIRST PRIZE
FW Store Faction Battleship of your choice*
Hardback copy of the Emperyean Age Signed by Tony Gonzalas
Gallente Themed Eve Thermal Mug
50million isk


SECOND PRIZE
Caldari Navy Cruise Missile Launchers x4
“Can I Have Your Stuff?” XXL T-shirt


THIRD PRIZE
Republic Fleet Warp Disruptor x1
Red Guristas XL T-Shirt


FOURTH PRIZE
Imperial Navy Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane x1
Orange on Black Guristas XL T-shirt


FIFTH PRIZE
Republic Fleet Gyrostabilizer x1


SIXTH PRIZE
10k Caldari Navy or Federation Navy Ammo Of your choice
OR
10k Caldari Navy Missiles of your Choice
OR
15million isk alternative

How it works

- Tickets cost 2mil each.

- Max amount of tickets is per 50 character (100mil).

- Each ticket purchased will be assigned a number. You will be eve-mailed your number/s. These are your raffle tickets! You cannot choose your numbers; they will be auto-assigned in the order they are purchased.

- Tickets must be purchased before 11pm (eve time) on 17th December 2010 (see update below). Any isk received after this time will be returned, as will any odd amounts of isk that do not meet the minimum ticket price.

- Lottery will be drawn on SUNDAY 19th DECEMBER 2010 at around 8pm Eve time.

- Send your isk in-game to CUCUMBER SAMMICHES with "lotto" in the reason field.


Some Technical stuffs

* The Faction Battleships to choose from are, Navy Issue Dominix, Navy Issue Scorpion, Navy Issue Armageddon and Navy Issue Typhoon.

All prizes will be contracted out of either Jita or Dodixie.

T-Shirt sizes are not changeable as they were donated to the lottery.

I have not arranged a "guarantor" for this event, it is basically a corporation Christmas lotto that I decided to expand on. It is completely self-funded and not being done to make profit. I’m sure there are plenty folks who can vouch for my honesty but if you are unhappy with that, well you don’t have to enter :-P

Tickets will be drawn using www.random.org and overseen by my sort of independent adjudicator Rashmika (and if he offers to film me doing the numbers on his new iPhone one more time I am going to shove it up his arse...)

Winners will be announced straight away in Gallente militia chat, The raffletastic public channel (which anyone can join) and then later posted on this blog. Winners will also be contacted individually by eve-mail to arrange delivery of in game items. Delivery of OOG items will take place in January 2010 (don't want things getting caught up with the Christmas post).

I think that’s all the important stuff, so to stop the wall of text if you have any other questions just give me, Eelis Kiy, a shout ingame.




Huuuge thank you to Tony Gonzales for his help with the out of game prizes.

Tickets can be purchased… NOW! :-)



***UPDATE 15/12/10***
Ticket purchasing now closing on Friday 17th instead of the 16th. Some prize photos can be seen here: http://wtfims.blogspot.com/2010/12/mini-update.html

wutwut

Have been rather waylaid in real-life doing various work related tasks though I did have the pleasure of being part of this spiffy engagement:

http://sotf.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=8095296


OUCH!


Major props to the SoT remote reppers; it was a pretty insane engagement. You will of course be pleased to know that we did get revenge with an even bigger lolblob a few nights later (and I was bloody afk but watching my other half on his PC, having all the fun without me):

http://sotf.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=8115630

Slightly screwy report but you get the idea. It’s not the first time we’ve teamed up with the squids during the last month and have to say it is refreshing to spend time fleeted with some of the more amiable folks over there. In amongst the RP, forum trolling and smack I think it’s always nice to be reminded that, just like us, there are folks on the other side who just want a good bit of pewpew and don’t have time for drama bombs.

The Saturday fight came after quite a long period of roaming in a bad case of all dressed up with nowhere to go until we found the SoT fleet. I hope this is not a sign that things are going to die down again now that many of our war-decs have ended.

The 8th have moved on to new ventures and MC dropped their dec against us a few days ago. In addition Ta8ula Rasa appear to be disbanding, so whilst we shed a tear for the loss of targets we’re also having quite a childish giggle at being partially responsible for causing the end of an 0.0 Alliance... FW noobs 1, null-sec noobs 0 :-P

Here’s a fun RP thread on the subject if you are so inclined: http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1419335

I hope to be back in the thick of it soon. Some fab new pilots have joined us recently and the corp is buzzing. I am also 10 kills off 1000 player mails whored onto. Woot!




One last thing. I am trying in vain to publish an Eve video that I’ve made but Windows Movie Maker keeps having a mental breakdown and messing it all up. If anyone has any tips on Movie Maker please drop me a message! Alternatively, if Santa happens to be reading this please can I have Adobe Premiere Pro. Go on, I’ve been a good girl this year. Well mostly.

Fly safe, and Happy Thanks Giving to all the American types out there o/

Friday funny

Have a good weekend! o7

Remember remember

Well in between these...



a lot of this...


and a few nights of this...


...there hasn't been much time for me to indulge in internet explosions. However, last night I enjoyed a traditional, hectic and action packed evening with my corpies which more than made up for the all the fun I've been missing out on.

Read more >>

First impressions and a big milestone

so we've been out in 0.0 for a week or so now and I've finally had the pleasure of a few fleets in my limited online time. It's been fun learning about bubbles and bombs as well as playing with giant rats though the system names are an utter PITA. Never again will I bemoan someone’s mispronunciation of Vlillirier.

We've also had time to get to know our new associates which has been both interesting and frustrating. I-RED have a completely different mind-set and playstyle to ourselves and I am not sure how our "gung-ho-kill-everything-or-die-trying" attitude is going down. I have heard that we are having a positive effect but I cannot help but feel like the crazy drunk relative who has reluctantly been invited to stay.

Our priority as a corp has always been 100% pvp focussed and our entire corp structure has grown up around this priority. We log on, we kill stuff, we go to bed. Any isk making or logistical efforts are simply thrown in to help us achieve our desire for internet explosions. We also live surrounded by corporations with exactly the same attitude and if the call goes up in a shared intel channel, the x's quickly flow in from all our trusted Gallente Militia allies.

But I-RED is an Alliance with complex goals and strong focus on roleplay and storyline expansion. To put the two together and see our corp against a different background has been interesting. The differences in priorities and pilot attitudes are quickly apparent. They call for patience whilst we scream for more fleet members so that we can get out and get on with it.




One thing I have accidently learned all about from our time with I-RED is the RP history behind their alliance and it's relationship with the Gallente militia. Even though we had a previous war with them relating to the same issues I had not previously paid much attention to the story that was going on. This week I found myself having a history lesson whilst in conversation with wivers from I-RED on the subject of an RP post for the eve-O forums. Can't say this crazy drunken pilot is going to become an intense RP player any time soon but it has been quite a learning experience and I was a little embarrased at my ignorance on the whole affair! Perhaps both sides have something to teach the other in this somewhat unlikely pact.

Overall the experience seems to be going down well for us. There is a new lease of life in the corp and a lot more people to shoot at. It was certainly the right decision to bite the bullet and give it a go.


Cane-tastic

I've used the change of scene as a chance to get out of my Ares and into my first Hurricane. All I can really say is OH MY GOD ITS SO AWESOME WHY DIDN'T I TRAIN THIS SIX MONTHS AGO. It's quite a new experience to be doing actual real dps and not sitting on the bottom of all the kill mails with my warp disruptor...

http://sotf.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=7949745

http://sotf.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=7949900

http://sotf.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=7949703


Those kills were from quite a messy fight. Out gunned at the time, as we lacked the battleship numbers to meet them head on, we ended up hopping to difference distances off the gates in the hope of popping a few ships before they got a warp-in on us. Perfect chance to test my arti-cane out, it was a lot of fun though pretty intense.

SOTF Milestone
This week we passed 1 trillion damage done. Not too shabby for a bunch of FW nublets! :)

Faction War Interview: BacardiDesire

I actually arranged this one with my crazy Dutch friend sometime ago but due to real-life had been unable to follow it up. So tyvm BacardiDesire for still agreeing to take part, even though we are now at war!

Read more >>

Blog Banter 22: Home is where the heart is

Welcome to the twenty-second instalment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux.

This months topic is brought to us by L'Dene Bean of Nitpickin's who asks: Why and how did you pick your corporation? Is your loyalty solid or just until a better placed organization "recruits" you. The shorter version: Who holds your Unshakable Fealty and why?

I first discovered MMO's back in 2004 with Star Wars Galaxies and a few weeks into the game I was invited to join my first ever player guild; STORM.

STORM truly gave me a baptism of fire into the social delights that are possible with online gaming. At its height the guild numbered around 200 members, its underlying ethos was to have fun and be helpful (and arguably to be drunk and filthy at all times). I was absolutely hooked.

Read more >>

Fun stuff I totally missed out on...

NibbleTek have ended their campaign in the Caldari militia and moved out of Nisuwa. The final stats do not look too shabby for us at all, being down on kills but up on isk destroyed. This was no doubt assisted by the carrier kill, apparently Nibbles first ever Carrier loss. Kudos to the QCats and go us! Well I say us, but that doesn't actually include myself, having been tucked up in bed with a hot water bottle and lots of aspirin for much of the past fortnight.

Read more >>

In which I try to be all artyfarty

From the distinctive designs of Rixx Javix to the comical delights of Sassy B there are some truly amazing Eve Online artists out there. Just taking a look through the entries for the Eve Online: Create a Starship Contest it is pretty hard not to feel completely in awe of the talents of those blessed with creatively awakened brains.

Then there are people like me; People who have Photoshop and too much time on our hands but not much in the way of talent. Usually the result of such a combination is "art" like this or this or hmm yes this.

Read more >>

New targets!

Last week a rather formidable pvp corp, NibbleTek, joined the Caldari militia and moved into our home station in Nisuwa. On the back of this many other Caldari corporations are now growing a few balls and the result has been more entertainment than we've had in a loooonnng time (and ship losses lol). Nibble presents quite a challenge for us and one we are going to have to work hard to face up to, but my gawd it makes a nice change from chasing cloaky Hurricanes and camping dead gates in oversized fleets.

In addition, war appears to be kicking off with The 8th Order (who re-formed recently). I swear it's like waiting for a bus round here, you wait for 1 and then 10 come along at once.

However, even with this new upsurge in mutual explosions, as a corp. we've had to face up to the fact that Faction War has largely been dead for us for far too long. Our member activity picked up as expected in September but our Caldari foe appear to have largely lost their momentum of earlier in the year. It's all been quite disappointing.

After the loss of one prominent member (who no longer considered us enough of a pvp corp, it was a fair point) we opened the discussion on other directions we could take together. Should we go pirate? Move away? Change our tactics?

Change can be good of course, but it can also be a corporation’s death knell. All of our members are united in their addiction to Faction War and there will always be some people who don't ever want to do anything else. But the facts are plain and simple; there is not enough pvp round here to sustain our interest. We either shed more members or we start putting eggs in new baskets. So even with the recent developments in Nisuwa I expect to see the corp taking tentative steps into new directions.



In other news that has no particular title:

- SOTF pilot Lunara Yoshi has a very detailed drone guide featured in this months EON Magazine. I can’t buy the bloody thing but I hear it’s a very good guide! Part 2 of the guide will be in next months issue.

- I will be running a Christmas lottery during December. Prizes will have a Faction War theme and hopefully there will be a few little surprises in the prize pot also… cryptic I know!

- 11 days and I’m in a Hurricane, woowoo!


o/

SISI: Character Creation

After reading a few posts from fellow bloggers on the Character Creation testing, currently available on SISI, I decided to give it a go. Certainly been a nice distraction from the lack of pvp going on in Black Rise lately.

Read more >>

Blog Banter 21: What's good for the goose...

Welcome to the twenty-first instalment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check for other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month topic comes to us from @ZoneGhost who a few month ago asked "Is Low Sec the forgotten part of EVE Online?" Is it? I'd like us to explore this even further. Is Low Sec being treated differently by CCP Games than Null Sec (Zero-Zero) or Empire space is? Can one successfully make a living in these unsecured systems where neither Alliance nor Concord roam to enforce their laws? What's needed? Or is everything fine as it is?

Read more >>

Li'l update...

Work-family-work-family-work-family GAAAH... don't these people know I have internet spaceships to blow up? Yes real life is kah-pwning my Eve time of late, which in turn prevents any interesting blog writing! However I would like to do a mini update on a few things.

The quest for pvp
Faction War is quiet again, bleh. In my limited online times I have seen two pretty nice Caldari fleets out, being countered by big shiny fleets including Carrier support. But overall there isn't enough going on to keep the corp.’s lust for explosions sated.

There are various discussions on our forums about different tactics or areas of game play we could explore to get our pvp kicks, personally I am hoping for some 0.0 roaming.

I understand that fellow Gallente militia corp., QCats, have decided (or are in the process of deciding, not sure which) on going down the piracy route. Can't say that I blame them, they will certainly have a lot more targets to choose from if they do. It's probably never going to be an option for SOTF though. I have nothing against piracy myself (I love reading pirate blogs!) and nor do most of our corp., many being ex-pirates themselves, but it simply doesn't suit the play-style or ethos of the corp. as a whole. I think a big deciding factor behind it has always been that our CEO wants everyone to know what to expect from SOTF members when they see us out and about and as such it is not often we fire on neutrals in low-sec, unless we know they are hostile in some way.

On a personal note, I have 2 Brutix (Brutixes? Bruti?) a couple of Vexors plus a whole bunch of Rifters just waiting to die in a big ball of solo-fail-explosion. In addition I am just a few days away from Minmatar Cruisers 5, opening the door to lots of new ships to play with... all I need now is to a) not be completely knackered b) time to sit down at my computer and c) join a fleet that doesn’t nag me to fly as tackle!

In other coming soon (tm) news I am still poking about with a big Faction War guide and also working on a few new Faction War interviews.


If we do it in a bubble will she still get a surprise in her drone bay?
You might have seen the Eve-O story on skilltrainingcomplete.com - a rather fun way to procrastinate away your lunch hour and help other Eve-players at the same time. It's a little bit like "Yahoo answers" but specifically for Eve questions. I've been mucking about with it for a few days and have to say I hope it keeps going. It seems to be sensibly managed, well thought out and so far a much less flame-ridden place to ask questions than the Eve forums can be. >>Take a look<<


21st Blog Banter is announced
I mentioned a few weeks ago how you can involved in the Blog Banters run by Crazy Kinux. Well we've just had a heads up on the topic for the 21st Banter. If you want to find out how you can get an early start then click here.


o/

Random Reports

It's been a frustrating month or so. Real life has turned rather hectic and the result is me having to be more efficient with my Eve time in order to get the most out of the game.

I thought this would result in my missing out on a lot of fleet activity but in fact quite the opposite has happened and I've found myself constantly joining rather fab fleets. Competent FC's, great company and good ol’ light hearted, banter filled evenings. Fantastic!

Read more >>

First Blood

I'm close to reaching 1000 kills on the boards and was having a little reminisce over my mails on Battleclinic and Eve Kill this evening when I found this beauty, one of my first ever losses in Eve and my first ever pvp loss in Faction War:

http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=2037933

A *cough* fine pvp fit *cough* there I am sure you will agree, and what cool folks to hand me my first buttraping… today I spent most of my evening in a MENTL run fleet lol.

In addition, my first ever pvp kill, which was also in Faction War:

http://www.gallente.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=7603503

Whenever I recall this kill it makes me chuckle. Having no particular idea of what we were doing when we first signed up to the militia my corp-mates and I made ourselves a fleet, hopped into Old Man Star and went off to save The Federation.

The first ship we came across was a neutral Dominix ratting in one of the belts, so like all good carebears we closed our eyes and opened fire, yaaarr!

Not only was he ratting for real and NOT baiting for a trap (like every other battleship ratting in OMS I have ever seen since that day) but we actually managed to kill him. It took us sooo long to take him down that passers by were warping in at range to watch and then laughing at us in local.

We didn't mind, we had fun, and it felt good to be the (slightly fail) bad guys for a change :-)

So um, what was your first time like?

Saving pods and session timer tips

After yesterday’s angry-face post I thought I would counter with a few titbits on saving your pod in low-sec.

Generally, in low-sec, unless you suffer a lag monster incident or are within range of a smart-bombing ship, you should be able to save your pod after your ship explodes.

As soon as your ship starts exploding begin spamming the "Warp to 0" icon on your overview.




Having a handy "escape" style overview tab set up, showing all stations/gates etc. will help you to quickly select something to warp to. Select your object and click the hell out of that warp button, 9 times out of 10 you will be out long before your attacker can lock up your pod.

One very important thing to bea