Signal Cartel has a pretty outgoing core set of members, who are brilliant at organizing all kinds of fun fleets and activities. I’m going to talk about two of these which I had chance to attend (in some form or another).
The call had gone out with my Corp for explorers to help raid the Devil’s Dig Site, a fixed multi stage combat site with some weird artifacts and a lot of cans to hack. Oh, and a load of sophisticated rogue drones guarding them! I didn’t realise places like this existed within New Eden, I’m nearly two years old and still learning new things! So when the call went out for dps, hackers and some form of logi I thought it would be fun to try and do something new as something new.
I signed up for logi, went and read about shield logi, started training up a few skills ahead of the op and went to sleep. What I didn’t do was check in on the op details regularly, so I didn’t spot a doctrine fit being posted that was not what my skills were aiming for. The time for the op came around, I had just bought myself a very nice Bantam, with lots of nice fittings that I thought I could fly quite well. And then I read the updated op details and my heart sank, 9 days of training would be needed before I could join the fleet. And in that time, the mission op would definitely be over!
Now there are ops where being in doctrine is essential, and turning up in the wrong fit is genuinely a liability. However I got the feeling this was more of a fun fleet than an ultra-serious one, so I decided to at least turn up an see. I half expected to be told I’d be a liability / risk, but at worst I figured I’d get to see a fleet leaving! As it turns out, the corp/fcs were really friendly and let me tag along. Ok, I probably wasn’t all that useful - I think I spent most of my time shield repairing a very tanky drake and flying towards ships since my remote-repair range wasn’t far enough. But it was an amazing amount of fun, and I can say that I was there.
In a similar way, a few weeks later a tourist fleet to B-R5RB, a monument to titan wrecks from one of the largest battles in the game, was organised. The form-up and leave time were slightly ahead of when I’d be available, so I had resigned myself to another great event that I’d just have to miss.
(I am fully aware that I should step up and organise some events of my own, but with a serious lack of being able to commit to times when available, forward planning is tricky. However I do hereby promise that next time I log in for an hour + session to form a fleet).
In my play session before, I had bought and equipped an exploration interceptor, after spotting the fitting in Corp Fittings and being intrigued. With bubble immunity and a fast align time, it’s designed to explore null-sec, in theory able to slide past most gate camps and not get caught. Since I was too late for the fleet, I decided to take a jaunt out to B-R5 myself. The interceptor made fast work of the 20-or so jumps from Thera to the monument. When I arrived the site was amazing, not just the titan wrecks - but the tourist fleet was still there! Which meant I was immediately hit by a flurry of fireworks from my loving corpies. I managed to get an invite into the fleet & jump on comms just as the group was disbanding, but a couple of us hung around for an extra 30 minutes or so to run data and relic sites. Bonus!
On an unpredictable and often limited play schedule it can be really hard to get involved with corp events. However it really is worth it to try (if it’s appropriate - e.g. probably best not to pitch up to a srs businez C5 Wormhole Sleeper event in a Kitsune). The amount of fun and camaraderie you get, even from a few occasional interactions, is where the joy of this game comes from for me.
Now to find an hour’s play time and set up a home-base welcoming fleet…
The call had gone out with my Corp for explorers to help raid the Devil’s Dig Site, a fixed multi stage combat site with some weird artifacts and a lot of cans to hack. Oh, and a load of sophisticated rogue drones guarding them! I didn’t realise places like this existed within New Eden, I’m nearly two years old and still learning new things! So when the call went out for dps, hackers and some form of logi I thought it would be fun to try and do something new as something new.
I signed up for logi, went and read about shield logi, started training up a few skills ahead of the op and went to sleep. What I didn’t do was check in on the op details regularly, so I didn’t spot a doctrine fit being posted that was not what my skills were aiming for. The time for the op came around, I had just bought myself a very nice Bantam, with lots of nice fittings that I thought I could fly quite well. And then I read the updated op details and my heart sank, 9 days of training would be needed before I could join the fleet. And in that time, the mission op would definitely be over!
Now there are ops where being in doctrine is essential, and turning up in the wrong fit is genuinely a liability. However I got the feeling this was more of a fun fleet than an ultra-serious one, so I decided to at least turn up an see. I half expected to be told I’d be a liability / risk, but at worst I figured I’d get to see a fleet leaving! As it turns out, the corp/fcs were really friendly and let me tag along. Ok, I probably wasn’t all that useful - I think I spent most of my time shield repairing a very tanky drake and flying towards ships since my remote-repair range wasn’t far enough. But it was an amazing amount of fun, and I can say that I was there.
In a similar way, a few weeks later a tourist fleet to B-R5RB, a monument to titan wrecks from one of the largest battles in the game, was organised. The form-up and leave time were slightly ahead of when I’d be available, so I had resigned myself to another great event that I’d just have to miss.
(I am fully aware that I should step up and organise some events of my own, but with a serious lack of being able to commit to times when available, forward planning is tricky. However I do hereby promise that next time I log in for an hour + session to form a fleet).
In my play session before, I had bought and equipped an exploration interceptor, after spotting the fitting in Corp Fittings and being intrigued. With bubble immunity and a fast align time, it’s designed to explore null-sec, in theory able to slide past most gate camps and not get caught. Since I was too late for the fleet, I decided to take a jaunt out to B-R5 myself. The interceptor made fast work of the 20-or so jumps from Thera to the monument. When I arrived the site was amazing, not just the titan wrecks - but the tourist fleet was still there! Which meant I was immediately hit by a flurry of fireworks from my loving corpies. I managed to get an invite into the fleet & jump on comms just as the group was disbanding, but a couple of us hung around for an extra 30 minutes or so to run data and relic sites. Bonus!
On an unpredictable and often limited play schedule it can be really hard to get involved with corp events. However it really is worth it to try (if it’s appropriate - e.g. probably best not to pitch up to a srs businez C5 Wormhole Sleeper event in a Kitsune). The amount of fun and camaraderie you get, even from a few occasional interactions, is where the joy of this game comes from for me.
Now to find an hour’s play time and set up a home-base welcoming fleet…
