Faux.Pas Joins an Alliance!

Some very exciting news! A few days ago our young corp was approached by a fairly small but expanding industrial corporation. They were looking for some new pvp corps to join their ranks and help them during war decs and with some of their lo-sec mining operations. It sounds like an ideal setup, they offer us some free ships as compensation for security services and they help us get to some targets! It sounds like the perfect setup and I for one am super excited to see how it goes!

Battlecruisers of Doom!

Last weekend Azx had an idea. Azx had a wonderful…awful, idea.

I have it on good authority that this is exactly what Azx looks like

“Let’s do a battlecruiser roam, I’ve had this Ferox around for way too long.” I foolhardily agreed. Actually I was pretty psyched about the idea. I hadn’t flown a Prophecy since the changes to the ship’s bonuses. It had gone from a primarily laser boat to a drone boat and I was interested to see what kind of fit I could get on it with all my new maxed drone skills. I was pretty pleased with the fit. It wasn’t ground breaking but had about 700 dps and an effective tank of something like 80,000 hit points. Not great, but not easily ignored either. And I was planning on losing the ship so what the fuck do I care?

We fit out and headed to lo-sec. Our first encounter was…odd.

Basically Azx got caught on a gate. But, the Vexors we were fighting started killing an Omen that we thought was with them. Then, basically, they all left. We had no idea what was happening. We were just trying to get dps on the closest ships before Azx died. And boy was he going to die if they had just kept at it. We were confused but it seemed like the tank on his fit was legit. Vexors can spit out some serious dps and seemed to handle quite a bit of it. And we managed to get on the Omen killmail so yay!

Our next fight went a little better. We caught a few guys, we think from the previous group, on another gate. We primary a Cerberus and manage to break through his tank and take him down. The fight went really well, right until Azx parked his Ferox in a stargate and got stuck! Getting stuck on an inanimate object is always embarrassing, but can be downright lethal when you have enemy ships landing on you. For some reason though they didn’t engage us and we headed to a station to lick our wounds.

The final battle went about how I expected the night to go. We warped into a hornet’s nest and were obliterated. I’ll say I thought we put up a pretty good fight all things considered. We made a few mistakes, but that’s what pvp is all about. A lost ship is only painful if you don’t learn something from it. Every fight you’re in is a lesson, and the more you analyze you’re performance afterwards the better you get.

I for one need to learn to OVERHEAT MY DAMN MODULES. I don’t know what it is, I just can’t seem to remember that it’s available to me. I even have thermodynamics trained to V! Anyway we had a blast and I managed to get some decent videos of the fights. All in all a great way to spend some time on a rainy weekend!

DxTory and AVImux Fix (For Me)

I just wanted to put a quick post up on how I FINALLY got my audio setting to work the way I want them to. I started capturing in-game footage of my Eve-Online gameplay a few months ago, but have had a terrible time getting the videos to upload to YouTube with both the in-game audio and my mic’s audio. I’ve recently changed a few things around and it seems to have fixed all of my previous problems. If you’re interested in recording your gameplay feel free to try these settings out and see if they work for you too.

In DxTory I set my capture to the Raw format. There are lots and lots of videos on YouTube oh which codecs to use and all the other settings you can use in the program. Go check them out, because I don’t have the time to go through them all here. Now once you get the file recorded in the raw format, you need to convert it to something that your video software can use. I just use the RawCapConv utility that comes with DxTory. Once you output that AVI, or whatever file, you need to fix the audio. Again a utility that comes with DxTory does the trick. Use the AVIMux utility and select your newly exported video file. The trick is to make sure NO VIDEO CODEC is selected. I had set this to the same codec I used when capturing my video and the program would hang and often not work at all. If you turn the video codec off, the program works great, and instead of extracting the audio in tens of hours, you get it in a matter of minutes!

All that’s left to do is use a program like Windows MovieMaker to compile everything. Bring in the AVI video file and add the audio file you just created. Mix the audio so just the audio file you added plays and you’re good to go! Hope this ends up helping someone, because I searched Google for a long time and couldn’t come up with any answers so I’m very excited that I finally got everything working the way it’s supposed to.

Enjoy!

Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks

The other day I was reviewing my killboard. A killboard that is currently bursting with the smoldering wrecks of miner hulls. Anyone who knows me, or has read a few of my blogs, will know that I’m not one to turn down even the easiest of kills. I get just as big a rush out of stalking and killing a miner as any other ship. The catch is, miners don’t really make me any money. They’re full of ore that I can’t fit in my cargo hold. They don’t use any modules that I would find particularly useful. And they don’t kill anything that would have given them loot that is worth a damn!

So the other day I decided to try something different. I found a Mackinaw in lo-sec mining and not watching his local. I stalked right up on top of him and engaged. But after I had blasted through his shields I called my drones off, and offered him a deal.

“50 mill and I’ll let you go.”

It makes sense for both of us really. I don’t want to waste my time killing him and not getting any money for it. He doesn’t want to lose his ship, and I make a little cash. It’s win, win! Sorta. Either way he paid up and I let him go. A success! I guess this means I’m officially a pirate now…

A little later on in the evening I came across two Ventures. I’m telling you if you want to kill miners give me a call. I can’t seem to go on a roam without finding them these days. Anyway I know the Ventures have +2 to their warp strength, making it impossible to scramble them with a single module. But I figured these two were being dual boxed by someone so I decided to give it a go, hoping I could bump one of them out of their align and getting a Venture kill. It seems like the kind of trophy I should have on my wall right? I crept up on them and only decloaked when I was about 5,000 meters away. I just missed my bump and the first Venture warped off, so I immediately locked the second one. This one ended up being afk. My drones only took two shots at him before he exploded. I stole his loot just for good measure.

Ah another fine day of killing defenseless miners. Maybe someday I’ll find another foe worthy of fighting me!

 

Sneaky Roam

Last week Azx, Jakob, and myself set out to lo-sec in a fairly odd fleet. We were looking for something a little more interesting than our standard Tech 1 cruisers and frigates, so we decided to roll out some heavy hitters. Jakob and I both piloted Pilgrims, and Azx brought out his uber-cloak Proteus. It was a sneaky fleet and it caught a poor Omen and Coercer unaware. Well the Coercer was actually just afk on a gate, so I guess anyone could have snuck up on him! o\

The Omen we found ratting in our lo-sec area. He never had a chance. In fact we didn’t even manage to get all our ships there before Azx exploded his ship.

The fleet did seem to work pretty well though. We were able to move from system to system without spooking too many people and we could pick our targets at will. I think we’ll definitely see this fleet roll out again sometime soon. Although I have to be honest, it was terrifying flying an expensive ship like that into combat again! I’ve gotten so used to losing a few million at a time!

A few days after that encounter I caught a thrasher ratting in lo-sec with the Pilgrim. It was a really clever catch and I wish the video had worked. I’m still having trouble getting the mic and game audio to work right with YouTube. I use the AVImux part of Dxtory, but the program doesn’t have a load bar, it just hangs when I run it. If I let it run for like a whole day, then force close it, the file usually works. But it’s super annoying that it doesn’t have a progress bar that works and I have to guess how long to let it run before knowing if it’s going to work. Does anyone know of a program that does what the AVImux program does as a standalone software?!

Double Kill

I don’t even really have words for it. Literally the post after I call out how many miners are in my area not knowing what they’re doing…

 

[EDIT: re-uploaded the video with my mic audio included]

Faux.Pas Tutorials?

Dear readers,

I wanted to put something to a vote. I think I’ve finally gotten my video capture technology sorted out. Apparently I can fly spaceships but can’t operate video software. After to talking to a few players in-game recently I was wondering if there was any kind of interest in me making short tutorial videos. My thinking is these would all be in relation/preparation for lo-sec pvp combat. I think all the videos would be on topics asked for by people reading the blog. It would basically be another category of blog posting, similar to the fitting theory posts I’ve done in the past. Let me know if there is any interest!

The Teacher Is In

So I’ve noticed an odd trend in my local lo-sec area.

The weirdest part is they aren’t always in the systems right next to hi-sec. Sometimes they’re way in there mining for god knows what. But none of them seem to know what they’re doing. They don’t align. They don’t seem to know what the directional scanner is for. They are the perfect targets, I just wish they dropped something more valuable. I might have to start ransoming them.

Ramming Speed!

A few days ago I found a Procurer on his own in a belt. Oddly enough he was bragging in local about how he hasn’t been caught mining in lo-sec in years…just as my Arbitrator landed in the belt with him. Now sadly I had swapped out my warp disruptor thinking I would use the Arby just for ratting and really run from most pvp. Which I will never do again. So I had to use the “bump” warp disruptor. It was effective for the first couple passes but he eventually was spared my onslaught by a catastrophic misclick on my part that closed part of my HUD and let him get away. I certainly learned from my mistake though and have since refitted the Arbitrator with the proper miner killing equipment.

Then just today, Poor Mujachip Muja got caught in a belt, unaligned, and with his d-scanner apparently switched off. Not that it would have helped him. My Pilgrim inched closer to him cloaked and eventually I got my fangs into a miner for keeps. I also managed a video (smiley emoticon). Ignore the part where I forget where the tactical overlay is. I spent a little time in local chat explaining how I had found him and how to avoid getting killed, or at least how to make it harder for me to kill him. A lesson I hope I can pass on to all the newbie miners in lo-sec!

DON’T SIT IN A BELT UNALIGNED. I don’t care how safe you think you are. Pick a station, a gate, something! ANYTHING! Stay aligned at all times. And if you see someone enter your system and not immediately warp out, guess what. They are probably going to try to kill you. Just saying. I do it a lot, I would know. Learn from Mujachip. Don’t end up on Vult’s board of Violence.