At the start of this week I realised something. It was three years ago to the day when I stepped off the plane thinking "What the **** have I done?". I was no longer a British resident. I had become an expatriate. I had taken a massive leap from working in the green and pleasant southwest of England to the orange desert of the Middle East. I was an alien, a legal alien, an Englishman in the heat!
More importantly I had changed Eve Online TZ's! I thought it might be interesting to look at my killboard just before I left, immediately after arriving and then now.
In June 2010 when I left the UK I was with the EU dominated Shadows of the Federation. With BST (British Summer Time) daylight savings in effect I was suddenly catapulted three hours in front of my corp mates. In the winter that grew to four hours. So how did Eve change for me?
May 2010
250 kills, 25.70 billion ISK destroyed, 15 losses, 660m ISK lost, 97.51%
My last full month in England. Wow, I had a lot of fun in May 2010! I do recall I was spending too much time on Eve given I had no idea how Eve would run in the desert or if I could even connect. It was possibly my last month of Eve so I went at it hard!
Looking through my kills I see I was even popping some squids in hi-sec. Wow! That must have been before I went -10!
The killboard is scattered with battlecruiser kills, which were the fleet ship of choice back then. Plenty of BS brawls too. I'm seeing big engagements with 150 a side clashing in Black Rise. Ah! This was the month with the four Chimera kills.
That was a good month of killin'
July 2010
74 kills, 3.44 billion ISK destroyed, 12 losses, 480m ISK lost, 87.79%
My first full month in the desert. Eve connected fine and I was still doing OK in terms of kills. The later nights due to later working hours meant I still was catching some of the earlier fleets. However, I was missing a lot of fleets due to the time difference. In my first month I didn't know anyone really and the girlfriend was 3500 miles away. One interesting thing to note, there were only two solo kills from that total of 74.
December 2010
24 kills, 900m ISK destroyed, 11 losses, 240m ISK lost. 79.02%
Oh dear. Things were very different now. Upon finding out the portrayal of the Middle East region by the western media is full of shit, and that it is a good place to live, my life had changed a lot during the previous five months. I had flown back to England in October, married the gf and brought her out (unmarried cohabiting is illegal). I now had a large circle of friends (aka drinking buddies) who selfishly impacted on my Eve time by asking me to go down to the pub for a beer. Bastards! My Eve time was getting ganked hard. We were also still living in a shared apartment so late night Eve was not really an option when wifey went to sleep.
I did get six solo kills that month, but my kills were well down.
May 2013
115 kills, 2.26bn ISK destroyed, 21 losses, 280m ISK lost, 88.99%
Fast-forward to the present and things have changed. I don't think I have that much more Eve time than back in December 2010. Wifey is still here, so is the pub and the gang. In fact Thirsty Thursday's are better than ever. Admittedly we now have our own villa now so I get some extra late night Eve time compared to December 2010 when we had one room. So what else has changed to make such a difference? Simply, my playstyle.
Back in SoTF the action was in the fleets. We'd be docked up awaiting the fleet to form and have one big roam. Now I am in the US dominated Quantum Cats Syndicate the action is mainly solo and small gang which is much more accessible than the larger fleets that ran once or twice a day.
52 of my 115 kills in May were solo. Other than one kill that had 11 on it, the rest are two to five pilots generally.
This change of play-style has been really obvious in my BattleClinic ranking. I was a 5000'r for a long time. BattleClinic awards points for a kill based on a number of factors. Ship types, numbers on the killmail etc.
If you solo a faction frigate with a T1 frigate you'll get 50 points. You solo that same faction frigate with a cruiser, you'll only get 12.5 points. Solo a faction frigate with another faction frigate, you'll get 20 points. Kill the same ship with five of you, you'll each get 5.1 points each. Kill a Titan with dreadnoughts? You'll only get 4 points each when there are 67 of you on the kill. So if I use a Tristan to kill a Imperial Navy Slicer I'll get the more points than if I was in 12 titan killing hotdrop fleets!
At the end of December I made a New Years resolution. I would break into the top 5000. I'd been hanging 5000-5500 for far too long simply because so many of my kills were fleet kills hence minimal BC points. I would get into that top 5k.
So nearly seven months into 2013 how'd that New Years resolution work out?
Oh yeah!
So in three years my life has changed radically both in game and out of game. And I think in both cases, it is for the better.
P.S. Mondays post was about tears in Eve. Last night I'm sure this squid hadn't read the post. He was flying an assault frigate and attacked a corpie who was flying a T1 frigate. Obviously the corpie asked if anyone was near. I was in the next system in an assault frigate so rushed over to help. The squid died and apparently it was really unfair for me to come. Yeah, because AF verses T1 frigate is so fair! Seriously dude!
In June 2010 when I left the UK I was with the EU dominated Shadows of the Federation. With BST (British Summer Time) daylight savings in effect I was suddenly catapulted three hours in front of my corp mates. In the winter that grew to four hours. So how did Eve change for me?
May 2010
250 kills, 25.70 billion ISK destroyed, 15 losses, 660m ISK lost, 97.51%
My last full month in England. Wow, I had a lot of fun in May 2010! I do recall I was spending too much time on Eve given I had no idea how Eve would run in the desert or if I could even connect. It was possibly my last month of Eve so I went at it hard!
Looking through my kills I see I was even popping some squids in hi-sec. Wow! That must have been before I went -10!
The killboard is scattered with battlecruiser kills, which were the fleet ship of choice back then. Plenty of BS brawls too. I'm seeing big engagements with 150 a side clashing in Black Rise. Ah! This was the month with the four Chimera kills.
That was a good month of killin'
July 2010
74 kills, 3.44 billion ISK destroyed, 12 losses, 480m ISK lost, 87.79%
My first full month in the desert. Eve connected fine and I was still doing OK in terms of kills. The later nights due to later working hours meant I still was catching some of the earlier fleets. However, I was missing a lot of fleets due to the time difference. In my first month I didn't know anyone really and the girlfriend was 3500 miles away. One interesting thing to note, there were only two solo kills from that total of 74.
December 2010
24 kills, 900m ISK destroyed, 11 losses, 240m ISK lost. 79.02%
Oh dear. Things were very different now. Upon finding out the portrayal of the Middle East region by the western media is full of shit, and that it is a good place to live, my life had changed a lot during the previous five months. I had flown back to England in October, married the gf and brought her out (unmarried cohabiting is illegal). I now had a large circle of friends (aka drinking buddies) who selfishly impacted on my Eve time by asking me to go down to the pub for a beer. Bastards! My Eve time was getting ganked hard. We were also still living in a shared apartment so late night Eve was not really an option when wifey went to sleep.
I did get six solo kills that month, but my kills were well down.
May 2013
115 kills, 2.26bn ISK destroyed, 21 losses, 280m ISK lost, 88.99%
Fast-forward to the present and things have changed. I don't think I have that much more Eve time than back in December 2010. Wifey is still here, so is the pub and the gang. In fact Thirsty Thursday's are better than ever. Admittedly we now have our own villa now so I get some extra late night Eve time compared to December 2010 when we had one room. So what else has changed to make such a difference? Simply, my playstyle.
Back in SoTF the action was in the fleets. We'd be docked up awaiting the fleet to form and have one big roam. Now I am in the US dominated Quantum Cats Syndicate the action is mainly solo and small gang which is much more accessible than the larger fleets that ran once or twice a day.
52 of my 115 kills in May were solo. Other than one kill that had 11 on it, the rest are two to five pilots generally.
If you solo a faction frigate with a T1 frigate you'll get 50 points. You solo that same faction frigate with a cruiser, you'll only get 12.5 points. Solo a faction frigate with another faction frigate, you'll get 20 points. Kill the same ship with five of you, you'll each get 5.1 points each. Kill a Titan with dreadnoughts? You'll only get 4 points each when there are 67 of you on the kill. So if I use a Tristan to kill a Imperial Navy Slicer I'll get the more points than if I was in 12 titan killing hotdrop fleets!
At the end of December I made a New Years resolution. I would break into the top 5000. I'd been hanging 5000-5500 for far too long simply because so many of my kills were fleet kills hence minimal BC points. I would get into that top 5k.
So nearly seven months into 2013 how'd that New Years resolution work out?
So in three years my life has changed radically both in game and out of game. And I think in both cases, it is for the better.
Congratulations on breaking into the 5k! Well done. My new goal now is breaking the 1k, I'm right around 1,700 ish at the moment. Lots of explosions ahead for both of us.
ReplyDeleteOnly a couple of hundred places behind you then! Moar assplosions!
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