WH vs PL, Batphones & Neuting

This was a busy weekend for EVE with me with different fleets and ops to go out on.

First off, we had an operation planned by ex-CSM member Chitsa (SSC pilot) that would lead us gloriously into null-sec with progodlegend as our FC. Our fleet consisting of over 150 wormholers undocked from Amarr and headed down towards Brave Newbies' space. Eventually we ended up fighting Pandemic Legion and Nulli Secunda in a large fight that was a first for many of us wormholers who generally do small gang fights.

For me, the experience of fighting in a large fight was thrilling and new. As logi, it was incredibly difficult to keep up with the broadcasts as I was repping people and unlocking them to move onto new targets that I was locking (and subsequently sometimes watching die before reps could land - sorry those in Harbinger Navy Issues). It was all fun and games until I captured the attention of their FC and was subsequently blapped. I did manage to get out with my pod and make it all the way back to our wormhole, avoiding many camps along the pipe on the way home with some creative safe-making. The final battle report has the wormholers coming out on top in the ISK war, but both sides won when it comes to content generation.

The next day, Hard Knocks tackled a bunch of carriers in null and batphoned us for help. Our closest connection was 18 jumps away, so I jumped in a Crusader and ran out there. The targets ended up losing 8 carriers and assorted support ships. It was a great catch by HK and we were happy to lend a hand.

On our way home, one of the wormhole groups (The Enigma Project) that was also helping HK (and also were in our chain) decided to camp the return hole and kill some of our returning pilots. One of our pilots took a battle Exequror to kill one of their pilots before dying in glory. Then we decided to form up a fleet and jump into their home to look for a fight. They did not disappoint us and landed on the hole with a larger group ready to take us on. Unfortunately they had heavy neuting and jamming capability and our logistics (myself included) were quickly neuted dry and jammed out. We ended up losing one Guardian before calling the fight and heading home.

All in all, it was a good weekend for wormhole activities. Except, that is, for my reaction POS. I lost an industrial due to me being lazy and not properly scouting the hole before jumping in. This disrupted my supply run, so I'll have to find time to get the rest of the gas into the hole.

CSMX Results & Blog Focus

Your CSMX Winners

This is a bit late but nonetheless, the tenth Council of Stellar Management has been elected with Sugar Kyle and Manfred Sideous winning permanent seats this year. I'm happy to see Sugar win a permanent seat after all of the work that she put into CSM9, so I'm very confident in her abilities moving into an important year for CCP.

As expected, there are a lot of null-sec winners. I count 8 (9 if Corbexx moving to the GSF counts) null-sec candidates, leaving 5-6 non null-sec people on the board. Wormhole space only has one real CSM member (Corbexx). I don't particularly consider Chance Ravine to be a wormhole candidate. He's more of a marketing/ YouTube/ exploration guy. If wormholers are lucky, Chance will represent lower-class wormholes. If not, we only get one this year. That's unfortunate, considering that Ariete (from SSC) was also a contender. Some people think that standing next to Corbexx left Ariete in the shadows. I think that Ariete was a name that I did not really associate with wormholes prior to the CSMX election campaign. If he wants to be successful next year, he will need to really get his face out there more often.

Corbexx deciding to join the GSF in the wake of news about NOHO disbanding left many wormholers feeling that they had been betrayed. It seems to me that many people refuse to vote for someone representing the Goons, regardless of their area of expertise. This is particularly interesting as prior to joining the GSF, Corbexx was touted as a workhorse wormhole candidate who performed well on CSM9. Corbexx joining the GSF does come as a surprise to me, but I'm not immediately writing him off. I endorsed him as my number one pick for CSMX and that was based on hard data and his past performance. I won't change my mind simply because his corporation ticker is switching, but I'll be expecting him to perform as well as he did on CSM9 for the wormhole community.

In other news, posts to my blog have been few and far between. Part of this has been to reduced game time, meaning I just don't have any stories to tell. But I've been thinking of focusing on posting more market analysis posts. I received a lot of attention on my PLEX Prices post after being linked on EVE News 24. As a professional economist with a specialty in trade, I'm incredibly capable of studying markets to analyze trends and forecast the future direction that the market might take. This is an area of interest to me, obviously, but it also might be interesting to others who are industrialists or traders. So, as of now, I will take requests for analysis for any good that you would like more information on. I'll find time to do the analysis and post the results on my blog. You can leave a comment here, email me or catch me on Twitter at @JeffKione.