39 Month Review

Starwalker had been in the space lanes of New Eden for more than 3 years, he still predominately flew frigates and was still in R1FTA. The only real difference was that whilst he did much the same thing R1FTA had changed around him. That change had started with two main catalysts:

1. Miura Bull left R1FTA and then later started Screaming Hayabusa [SKRMR]. Many of the original pilots left R1FTA to join SKRMR
2. R1FTA formed the R1DER alliance with Black Dragon Fighting Society [BDFS] being a feeder corporation and most recently formed a wormhole corporation - Operation Devil's Tattoo [THNGY]

Whilst change was inevitable it seemed that R1FTA was in decline and whether this was terminal or temporary remained to be seen. Starwalker was hopeful of a renaissance. On a more personal level he was pleased with progress - obtaining 1000 kills and getting into the top 5,000 pilots in Battleclinic:

However, whilst Starwalker had become obsessed with checking Battleclinic ranking that scrutiny had also highlighted that it was only a pale imitation of pilot skill. Starwalker had resolved to wean himself away from following his killboard ranking almost daily but he suspected it might be a difficult addiction to remove completely.

Now that training was more optional rather than essential Starwalker considered whether to move away from his +3 learning implants. The pair of genolutions in particular had reached around 40m each and as always it was an opportunity cost. The extra fitting was useful but not essential and in reality the min-maxing with +3 learning and skill implants only counted on very rare occasions. He might have felt differently with Snakes or Crystals but Starwalker did not fly with really expensive implants, links or boosters.

Starwalker still used Covryn as a main base with a large selection of ships, modules and ammunition but had only kept fitted ships at Gultratren and Adirain. Even then, he was considering stopping that because he regularly changed the ship that he flew and its fit. That change often resulted in ships at stations that were either the wrong ship or the wrong fit, at least based on what he preferred to fly at that time. The obvious downside was that any roam would have a long pod trip back to Covryn.

Despite being in New Eden for over three years Starwalker still did not have an ISK income source and relied totally on PLEX converted to ISK to buy ships, modules and ammunition. Equally, he had no inclination to go missioning or do production and simply wanted to go out and destroy other ships.

Starwalker still had no plan for the future and would simply just take each day as it came. The beauty of New Eden was that he could do that or choose to do something else, the choice was his and he liked that. Currently he enjoyed frigate combat in low-sec and occasionally null-sec and for now he would continue to do that.

36 Month Review

Today was the three year anniversary. Three years roaming around New Eden with the primary purpose of killing more times than being killed. It was working, Starwalker had killed over a thousand ships with more than six hundred solo. He was very proud of his "Lone Wolf" medal for five hundred solo kills.

What was even better than the Lone Wolf medal was the Torpedo medal for soloing a battleship in a T1 frigate. The reason it was special was because that type of kill was so rare. Starwalker enjoyed the kill and especially the above class kills and those opportunities did come as Starwalker predominately flew frigates.

He also liked the fact that he was a top ranked pilot.

Although Starwalker was a little more wily and made fewer mistakes they still happened frequently such as:

• This Breacher was destroyed by a Thrasher at the station undock. The mistake was that Starwalker decided to redock and since he was only in low shield he did not repair that damage as he heard "docking request accepted". The next shot smashed through the remaining shield, armour and structure. Starwalker wondered whether the pod would dock automatically - it didn't
• This Breacher was lost to an Incursus that applied no scramble but did apply a web, probably a double web given that the Breacher could not pull range from point blank. Starwalker had noticed immediately that no scramble was applied but left it loo long to try and warp out. By the time the command was given it was too late given align and warp time delay

Starwalker had over 60 million skill points and he had all of his core skills and was simply filling out gaps, primarily in drones and ship classes such as Interdictors and Heavy Assault Cruisers. He was not training for any particular ship and still had lots of gaps in specialist T2 ships, although he rarely flew anything like that. Training was consequently very relaxed and not especially focused on anything.

Starwalker still had three jump clones and had spread them to stations in Gultratren, Adirain and Ishomilken. Each station had roughly five fitted ships, four Breachers and one Hawk, along with assorted ammunition and consumables (capacitor booster charges and nanite paste). The main base was still in Covryn and that had the main stock of ships, equipment and ammunition. 

Overall Starwalker was enjoying his time in New Eden and he had been with R1FTA for most of that time, which was part of R1DER. He liked the regular small gang roams, although he rarely roamed in a gang outside of those regular roams. Even though he spent most of his time roaming solo he still liked being part of the corporation.

33 Month Review

Over the course of the last 3 months Starwalker had much less time in space as he had predicted and this was reflected in fewer kills. However, his enjoyment was still the same - he flew predominately frigates with the occasional foray into larger ships.

What had changed was that he was flying scram kiters more, in particular the Breacher and Kestrel instead of the Merlin. What he liked about the Kestrel in particular was its ability to fight in scram range and to drive away kiters within point range by use of Javelin missiles. Selecting damage type was also an added bonus and was the main reason that he favoured the Kestrel over the Condor despite being much slower. 

Although Starwalker was a little more wily and made fewer mistakes they still happened and sometimes he was the victim of bad luck. This Moa was destroyed by getting trapped on the station and not being able to simply warp away. This Kestrel was destroyed by dithering about whether to try and get closer or simply redock. The fast lock and first volley took the Kestrel to within 3% of zero structure, the next volley finished the job - before the redock command kicked in.

Now that Starwalker had 56 million skill points he had all of his core skills and was simply filling out gaps, primarily in cruiser weapon systems. He was not training for any particular ship and still had lots of gaps in specialist cruiser T2 ships, although he rarely flew anything like that. Training was consequently very relaxed and not especially focused on anything.

Despite nearly three years in New Eden Starwalker still had no passive form of income and did not do anything to make ISK like station trading, missions or faction warfare. It was too much hassle and he wanted to spend his time finding fights and killing things. Loss was an occupational hazard and his attitude to loss was more or less the same, every ship undocked was going to be lost. The only question was how and when.

30 Month Review

The last few months had seen Starwalker able to spend more time in space and that had been reflected in his ascent to a top ranked pilot on Battleclinic. July had also seen a new achievement, the greatest number of kills in one month - 152 and losses - 35. Whilst ultimately his goal was to kill more than be killed he (not so) secretly enjoyed the fact that he had reached Top Ranked status.

He had also started to like the idea that his success ratio was greater than just over one kill for one loss. Battleclinic was reporting two kills for one loss and he wanted to see that trend continue. Whilst he knew that he had improved he also knew that he had lots of room for further improvement and still made plenty of mistakes.

That improvement was visible in a number of ways:

• Better use of heat management with overheated modules, including module fitting placement to minimise heat damage from adjacent modules
• More awareness and use of range during the course of a fight, especially when range control was established
• Better selection of ammunition based on damage type (when selectable) such as rockets in a Kestrel
• Better selection of ammunition based on likely range of fight such as starting a fight with Null ammunition in a Merlin against a Breacher or Caldari Navy Antimatter against an Incursus
• Leaving quickly (when possible) when the odds were heavily stacked against a kill and in favour of a loss such as starting with an apparently solo fight and a gang arriving
• Not engaging target where a kill was highly unlikely such as avoiding an Imperial Navy Slicer or light missile Condor in an afterburner Merlin
• Looking for opportunities to have an advantage in a fight such as engaging kiters at the warp-in point to a complex
• Surviving gate camps more frequently than dying to them

Whilst Starwalker was not a theory crafter he felt that his fitting skills were better than before because he considered how to take advantage of ship characteristics (fitting, bonuses, speed...). Similarly, he looked at Top Ranked pilots and how they had fitted ships such as Miura Bull and Patrick Kasper. Finally, he checked the ship fitting section on Failheap Challenge for ships of interest.

Over the course of the last 30 months Starwalker had summarised his key areas of focus for improvement as ships, combat, skills and base. Today:

1. Ships flown were still predominantly focused on frigate brawlers like the Merlin. However, he did occasionally dabble with larger hulls and had only just lost his first battleship. One way or another he had flown a number of different ships but he still enjoyed the frigate the most. However, he was considering spending more time flying cruisers, although he had not yet decided on which ones
2. Combat - he maintained better situational awareness but still did virtually no manual flying. Whilst he had wanted to improve this area for some time, he still suspected that he would be saying the same thing next year
3. All his core skills were trained to a reasonable level and with over 50 million skill points that was a lot of skills. Starwalker had no particular new ship to train for but was considering focusing on one or two cruisers and one or two frigates to fly almost exclusively over the coming months
4. Covryn had become his main base with virtually all of his equipment and a large number of ships. Adirain and Gultraten were operational bases with a few fitted ships and a jump clone. He had moved Starstepper to Stacmon with the remainder of his ships for easy transport to Covryn

It was strange to think that he had been in New Eden for two and a half years as it didn't seem that long but it was true. He had enjoyed the increased flight time in the last few months but with a recent in change commitments he would not have as much time going forward. Time would tell what that meant in practice.

24 Month Review

Starwalker had spent two years in New Eden and since June 2011 he had been a member of R1FTA. This was only his third corporation, his first was the State Academy and then he had joined Ambivalence whilst he was working out what he wanted to do. It was reading Miura Bull's blog that had sent him in the direction of the Black Rebel Rifter Club.

Many of those original R1FTA members had now moved on including Miura Bull himself but Starwalker was still there and he had no intention of leaving any time soon. He still enjoyed the frigate combat and whilst he would occasionally fly bigger ships he was happy to fly around in frigates most of the time.

Over the course of those two years Starwalker had summarised his key areas of focus for improvement as ships, combat, skills and base. Today:

1. Ships flown were predominantly focused on frigate brawlers like the Merlin. He had occasionally dabbled with kiters like the Kestrel and recently he had branched out into using drones with the Tristan. He had little interest in exploration, electronic attack ships, mining or logistic frigates. He had flown larger ships like the Caracal, Moa and Drake but that was only really occasional rather than regularly. In general he liked frigates
2. Combat - Starwalker maintained better control of range, the situation, his modules and overheating but still wanted to focus more on situational awareness and manual flying. He suspected that he would be saying the same thing next year
3. All his core skills were trained to a reasonable level and with 36 million skill points that was a lot of skills. Starwalker had no particular new ship to train for and instead was focusing on completing a small selection of level V skills and rounding out his skill set by raising those skills that were between level I and III to IV 
4. Two bases currently had ships, equipment and a clone: Covryn and Gultraten with Covryn being the more important and having more ships and equipment. Both locations were chosen because they were comparatively easy to resupply from Hek and bordered hisec

Starwalker had very few goals in New Eden but one of them was to kill more times than being killed. That had started well when he was in hisec but moving to lowsec was a difficult period as he was being killed more than killing. However, he slowly learned and improved and by the Summer of 2012 he saw that trend turn positive.

Month	Kills	ISK (B)	Losses	ISK (B)	Efficiency
February, 2013	13	0.11	4	0.10	52.26%
January, 2013	13	0.29	3	0.04	88.01%
December, 2012	27	0.63	15	0.4	61.51%
November, 2012	14	0.94	7	0.18	83.65%
October, 2012	8	0.1	2	0.03	76.69%
September, 2012	11	0.17	12	0.6	21.73%
August, 2012	2	0.12	2	0.13	47.77%
July, 2012	36	1.26	17	0.38	76.96%
June, 2012	6	0.1	3	0.03	77.16%
May, 2012	12	2.22	9	0.13	94.41%
April, 2012	4	0.04	1	0.02	67.56%
March, 2012	2	0.85	3	0.03	96.94%
February, 2012	3	0.07	9	0.32	18.02%
January, 2012	1	0.12	5	0.19	38.52%
December, 2011	1	0	3	0.11	0.00%
November, 2011	0	0	1	0.02	0.00%
October, 2011	1	0	8	0.15	1.90%
September, 2011	7	0.14	4	0.03	80.70%
August, 2011	5	0.03	13	0.08	28.50%
July, 2011	12	0.13	6	0.08	62.79%
June, 2011	11	0.53	7	0.04	93.23%
May, 2011	3	0.25	1	0	99.60%

Starwalker had recently achieved his 200th kill as recorded by Battleclinic and he was ranked around 29,500. He knew that some pilots had 200 kills in a month but Starwalker was pleased anyway, especially with his limited flight time. He also noted that the two months with the highest number of kills (July and December 2012) had been when he had more flight time. Starwalker did not know what the next year would bring but he was happy to keep doing what he was doing.

21 Month Review

Starwalker had now been in New Eden for nearly 21 months, it was time to review progress and see what had been happening over the last 3 months. In many respects it had been business as usual except that Starwalker had spent less time in space than he had wanted.

Most notably, Starwalker had finished his miscellaneous training so he could now fly battleships, command and recon ships, in fact, that training also included Amarr Frigate V. He had Assault Ships V but had previously overlooked the Amarr as he had focused on shield tanks and missiles, however, he wanted to try out the Vengeance as an armour tanked rocket ship.

The strange thing about completing that training was that Starwalker had no intention of flying those ships yet but had still felt compelled to use his skill books rather than have them sitting in his hangar. Now that it was done he could get back to the main task of filling out his training gaps and bringing some skills to V, for example, he was currently training Fuel Conservation to V. There was no specific plan related to the next ship to fly, as Starwalker was happy with the core skill set and was still flying ships using that skill set.

Starwalker had flown the Drake as per the plan but it had not been wildly successful as shown here. He had also been flying around in the Merlin a lot and had enjoyed it but was starting to think about flying other ships. He still had a general preference for blasters and rocket or missile ships and had enjoyed the ancillary shield booster for active tanking but he was also looking to fly some other ships too.

A new generation of ships was coming and Starwalker considered that there might be some good ships to fly, such as the Caracal and Rupture. He had flown a Caracal recently but that had simply been ganked, hardly a good test of what it could do. Starwalker had also decided that whilst he liked T1 frigates he would fly other larger ships too, and although the Drake experience had not been great the new T1 cruisers could be a lot of fun.

Starwalker had a base temporarily in Fensi but had now settled on a strategic base in Hek with operational bases in Covryn, Gultratren and Egbinger. The last base was R1FTA HQ and from his perspective it was not well positioned to be resupplied and typically he was resupplying it from Gultratren. Each station only held a very small number of fitted ships (1 to 3) along with ammunition and that seemed to work well. In the event he was podded there was also the basic set of learning implants at each station too.

Unfortunately, Starwalker had been experimenting a little too freely with ship fits and that had resulted in some abominations. Miura Bull had recently expressed surprise at a fit that Starwalker had died in and that comment had added weight to his growing realisation that fits needed to be really thought through and to exploit the ship's strengths. He had already known that but had been a little too carried away with experimentation and actually flying in some of those experiments.  

The lack of flight time in any ships had forcibly curtailed his desire to improve his manual flight skills. He could approach manually but he still found it extremely hard to control frigates manually once the fight was underway. Perhaps by now he was handicapped by bad habits and laziness, time would tell.

Looking forward and as before, he had no strong goals to achieve and was simply still enjoying flying around in small ships trying to kill things. He was only just successful in that, with success being measured as killing more times than being killed but the killboard showed it was a close run thing.

18 Month Review

Starwalker had now been in New Eden for a little over 18 months. He was a reasonably experienced pilot now with just over 27 million skill points. 3 months ago, he had had good intentions of flying more interceptors and covert ops frigates and even to do some exploration. He had done virtually none of that.

Instead, he had spent time still flying T1 frigates in a new part of New Eden - Eugales, especially the Merlin, which was now a fearsome blaster boat with a cool ancillary shield booster. Starwalker was running into more faction warfare pilots, who often ran away and he had also started to fly the HAM (Heavy Assault Missile) Drake, along with a complement of drones. More than that, he had achieved his first solo battlecruiser kill and he even had two new jump clones. It had been an interesting time.

Starwalker was slowly improving, clearly experience counted. He felt that he made fewer pilot error style mistakes, although he still did make mistakes. He had trained for ships in every race and most weapon systems but he was starting to favour Caldari ships, for shield tanking and missiles. He liked the new ancillary shield booster for active tanking and coupled that with the simplicity and damage projection of missiles.

He had been flying around in the Incursus recently, the active armour tanked variety and appreciated some of their benefits, especially armour repair in null-sec. However, Starwalker was also inclined towards favouring gank over tank, despite on occasion losing to ships with really good tanks but lower gank such as the dual repair Incursus. This naturally led back to shield tankers that could use the low slots for damage modules rather than armour tanking.

Whilst Starwalker was still training drones and similar for battlecruisers he had been easily distracted by other shiny toys. Consequently, he had completed level one training for things like the Minmatar battleship and medium autocannon specialisation. There were still some distractions available such as Command Ships and other battleships and Starwalker considered just doing them first so he could then concentrate on the real combat skills needed like heavy missile specialisation and getting more drones skills to a higher level. Perhaps the real problem was lack of discipline and flitting between too many things.

Previously Starwalker had summarised his key areas of focus as ships, combat, skills and base. Perhaps now was the time to really focus:

1. Ships - focus on Caldari ships: Merlin and Drake. The Caracal might be useful as a little fun frigate killer or perhaps the Hawk. Whilst the Merlin was now a blaster boat Starwalker already had small blaster specialisation to level 3
2. Combat - Starwalker maintained better control of his modules and overheating but wanted to focus more on situational awareness and manual flying
3. Skills - focus training plan on Caldari ships, missiles, drones, navigation and fitting skills, after finishing off training for miscellaneous items (battleships, command ships and recon ships)
4. Base - two bases currently had ships, equipment and a clone: Heild and Eugales. Another clone in its ship was located at Fensi

Starwalker was satisfied with the way things were going in New Eden with only one complaint - he still had not sorted out some ISK income to fund his ship losses.

15 Month Review

Fifteen months on and Starwalker was still very much engaged with New Eden. His skill points now exceeded twenty-one million but he was still doing things for the first time such as flying an interceptor. Similarly, he would soon have trained Cloaking IV to fly a covert operations frigate.

Starwalker knew that he was not spending as much time in New Eden as he wanted but equally he was enjoying that flying time. Whilst he was not a good pilot he also felt that his pilot skills had improved a little from last year. He was now making fewer mistakes and taking notice of elements like manual piloting and transversal, whereas last year they were not even a factor really being considered.

That did not mean mistakes were not being made such as:

• Crow was lost and rocket modules burnt out
• Merlin lost when unable to spiral in on a Talos
• Cormorant lost by not paying attention

Starwalker considered that his training plan was working well as he was typically focused on his next ship and training for it. He still had lots of gaps in his training but he also had a wide range of skills and many things that were at least partially trained. Beyond getting into some new ships like battlecruisers Starwalker was also planning to improve his navigation and capacitor focused skills.

Going forward, Starwalker still had no significant goals and was happy to go with the flow. The only thing that might be considered even close to being a goal was to fly in other parts of New Eden but there was no rush.