Zen and the Art of Internet Spaceship Maintenance

It has been a while since I have posted anything and  this has been so mostly for good reasons. Chiefly that I have been having a lot of fun in EvE. I’d like to get back into the swing of posting somewhat regularly but I’d like to give some background on what I have been doing so those posts will actually make some kind of sense. Wall of text incoming. BRACE FOR IMPACT!!!

My last posts were around the time I left BOZO. Not long after this the leaders of BOZO decided to throw in the towel and take their special brand of foul mouthed ass kicking out of EvE and into the real world. I decided to go back to empire for a bit and I ran some level 4 missions and even bought myself a Kronos marauder to run them with. That kept me interested for a good week or so. I did a bit of faction warfare as well but was looking for something different.

Right around this time I was perusing the forums a bit and I came All  this threadnought. The thread starts out innocently enough. A rather seasoned player who has made a home for himself in somewhat deep NPC 0.0. Over the course of a few years he has been stocking up the market in his system and is inviting highsec residents to come get a taste of 0.0. He dubs this experiment and the community surrounding it Hub Zero. It all seemed promising enough and over the next couple weeks some people take him up on it and post some of their experiences which are mostly positive.  Here’s where it goes down hill. After this begins a series of drama bombs which kept me on the edge of my seat (Ok, maybe not but I kept reading).  It seems that the player who originally posted the thread is at times not the easiest to get along with and can be fairly easy to troll and get riled up. There was intrigue, threats, insults, comments on RL girlfriends, allegations of racism and of course WAR! All the makings of a great thread. I decided the idea sounded interesting enough to check out for a bit. I had about 60mil in my wallet and a clone in a nearby 0.0 region so I jumped, grabbed a t1 frig, MWD and a couple warp stabs and made my way to UF-KKH in Stain region.  I made the trip late at night and as a result it was largely uneventful. When I arrived the locals were fairly friendly after I announced my intentions not to be a dick and I proceeded to buy and fit out a ratting drake.

I got to know Aaron the leader of this rag tag bunch among others and made a pretty decent amount of money in fairly short order more than making up for my initial investment in the drake and mods. I even invited one of my RL buddies to come out which he did. It was good fun for a week or so, then things started to go sour. This was right about the time of the last few pages of the thread I linked above. About this time relations between the Hub Zero denizens and a local alliance Apotheosis of Virtue fell apart arguably due to actions of both sides. I managed to get myself set set temporarily blue to AoV and before I got around to making any more long term plans for living in the system I discovered that several former BOZOs were now hanging out in a nearby constellation as members of Hydro Chronic corporation which was part of the Brick Squad alliance. Hydro had been somewhat friendly with BOZO back when we lived in Syndicate and I was invited to join. I packed up my drake, sold off some of the junk I had accumulated and headed over. I stayed in touch with the Hub Zero guys thinking I might return one day.

Hydro had a very laid back atmosphere. I continued to rat and make cash and I occasionally participated in Brick Squad’s camping ops in HED. I didn’t really enjoy it though as I was used to a much more structured fleet and FC style. The Brick HED camps seemed to me to be more of a group of really good solo pilots rather than a real fleet. There’s nothing wrong with that I’m just not that good of a solo pilot so I need a bit more direction. On one op I drunkenly protested about this and was sharply cut down and so ended my participation in these ops. I was more interested in small gang stuff roaming around Stain. Fortunately this was just what the rest of Hydro was looking for. It was decided that Hydro would move to another less crowded constellation in Stain to help with making some Isk and provide more roaming targets. This whole time I had begun to really enjoy the Stain region and decided that no matter what I would be staying here for a long time so I had taken the step of liquidating a lot of assets and moving my JF and carrier into the region. The assets I brought to Stain included pretty much all my remaining assets including the BPO collection from my former corp Initrode which had been largely hibernating at the time. Since I had the JF out there I helped out with moving peoples’ assets to our new home. When we arrived it became apparent that another Brick corporation had the same idea so the next day we had to pull stakes again and move to yet another location within Stain.We got settled over the next couple days and I proceeded to make a decent amount of money mostly from running some exploration sites, while still having some fun in occasional corp roams.

This whole time I had been mulling over the concept of Hub Zero. The idea really appealed to me and from my time spent in the area and in chats with the members it became apparent to me that the primary reason for the issues with it had been due to the leader rather than a basic flaw in the premise. In my down time I began looking around Stain for a quiet corner to start building something like it.

Right about this time an old Initrode member returned to the game after being absent for well over half a year. I invited him to come join me in Stain which he did but after only a day and a half he decided it wasn’t for him. To be honest I don’t really know why. Sure there were some neuts around but I was making good money so I saw no reason why he couldn’t. In any case Lor decided he wanted to go back to empire and get back to doing some T2 invention and production, etc. We still had a tower anchored in Gallente high sec which needed only to be re-fueled, onlined and fitted to be put to work. The sticking point was that Lor wanted the BPOS back in empire for his uses and I wanted them out in 0.0 to be used for production as part of my mini Hub Zero concept. Having been nearly the sole active member in Initrode for quite a long time (and of course the CEO) I felt that I had both the right and the greater need. I decided that the fairest option would be to take what I needed and entrust everything else to Lor. This meant that he would get all the assets of the corp save for the most of the BPOs. A couple were specifically his so I returned them of course including his Drake BPO. I also passed over the CEO position as well as control of the public channel etc. In total I believe that Lor actually got the lion’s share of assets Isk-wise considering all the POS equipment T2 MFG goods etc, but it didn’t go over well at least at first. I understood Lor’s perspective but I simply wasn’t willing to give up on the 0.0 haven I had constructed in my mind. After a day or two we patched things up but I don’t think he has been online more than a few times since then. If you are reading this Lor, come out to Stain and give it another shot. You may like what you see. Read on for more on that.