A year with DGSE

Time flies when you're being shot at. It was a year ago that I joined Dark Star Galactic Engineers after Kename Fin recruited me from reading my journal. I could review my posts from a year ago, but it seems like more fun to rely on my memory instead. If I get any details right, I'll add links.

In an attempt to explore more of what New Eden has to offer I join a small PvP corporation and briefly roam around Molden Heath. I get no kills, or even any shots in, turning up late to the only roam that sees combat, and before I know it the corporation is accepted in to a null-sec Alliance. I don't think I am ready for that jump, still mightily inexperienced at any activity beyond mission running, and graciously leave the corporation. Rather than return to straight mission running and risking growing bored, I turn my attention to manufacturing and invention. I get some good advice on how to get started and Kirith Kodachi is generous enough to send a researched BPO my way, which allows me to start manufacturing whilst I wait for the month before my own research can even start in a public laboratory. Details on how to invent are kindly offered by the knowledgeable Karox Lominax, and I steer my skill training in the right direction. I still don't start mining seriously. It is about this time that Fin takes note of my industrious behaviour and offers a home in DGSE.

A player-run corporation must be better than any NPC corporation, I tell myself. I had started my own, one-capsuleer corporation before just to get out of the default corporation. NPC corporations are full of capsuleers who have no more in common than not being in a different corporation, and the spread of opinions, systems, and ideologies is little better than local chat in Jita. I am happy to join a new corporation, one that can guide me along my new path of manufacturing and invention. I find the small corporation is friendly and welcoming, and I am even given the opportunity to use but not abuse the corporation's private tower for any research I would like to carry out. The tower may be thirteen jumps away from the base I establish prior to joining the corporation, which at the time is a huge distance to cover relative to my New Eden travelling experience, but being able to queue research jobs with no month-long wait is joyous, even with the caveat of installing only short jobs to ensure equal availability of research slots for all corporation members. I am quickly able to get more BPOs researched and explore the market for standard modules.

Then Apocrypha arrives. There is a lot of excitement about wormholes and w-space, but like previous additions I assume that these are changes for other capsuleers, those who are organised, daring, or simply social enough. I happily plod on with my manufacturing and working with Core Complexion, Inc. agents, gaining standings to get datacores needed for invention. My own goals still seem quite exciting. Some members of DGSE have other plans, and within a couple of months are looking to push in to w-space to investigate the possibilities available. Their intentions are made known to the corporation as a whole, and I find myself with a difficult choice. I certainly would like to explore w-space, if only to go somewhere I never thought would be accessible to me, but the unknown time commitment and skills required makes me nervous, as does my often crippling shyness that needs to be overcome to believe that I would be accepted on the expedition. In a rare display, I refuse to conjure up excuses why I shouldn't participate and manage to offer my services, only worrying about my decision afterwards.

It turns out that some of my uncertainty is shared amongst all of the wormhole engineers, a name adopted by the division of DGSE heading to w-space. None of us know what we are to encounter, whether it is the logistic issues of setting up and maintaining a presence in w-space, the increased challenge of Sleeper ships, or the incredible danger hostile capsuleers can pose in frontier space. But we head out to w-space and begin our grand adventure. We experience all of the harshness of space in time, some more than others. Setting up a tower and keeping it running is not straightforward, needing occasional trips back to New Eden for fuel. But we grow accustomed to this with time, to the point where we tear down the tower to install it deeper in w-space, further removed from known space. Sleeper ships certainly cause more troubles than silly mission rats, but we only lose the odd ship here and there. Hostile capsuleers cause the real problems.

A trap is laid whilst we are running a Sleeper site in an adjacent system, one I escape only thanks to some luck. Another capsuleer has the bizarre urge to infiltrate our small operation, hijacking ships from our shared hangar in w-space back to New Eden as his own, costing us hundreds of million in ISK and a great more in confidence and trust. And there are plenty of other times when pirates ambush us, where we mostly end up in the red where ISK is concerned. But our spirit prevails, every time. We plan for counter-attacks with cheap Tech I cruisers, and mostly dust ourselves off and get back to our adventures. Our recoveries are not all quick, and sometimes we retreat to New Eden for a short stay, but the outlaw allure of w-space always brings us back.

Over the nine months or so of moving in to w-space I spend more and more of my time away from civilisation. In the early months, I probably divide my time in favour of being in New Eden, concerned about being stuck out in w-space and keen to get some Tech II invention running. As time moves on, my returns to New Eden become increasinly perfunctory, ignoring mission agents and, eventually, serious industrial and marketing efforts. Now my visits to New Eden are to buy shiny new starships and to keep a skeleton manufacturing process running for comfort. My skill training reflects the change of where I call home. Initially concentrating on invention and manufacturing skills, I am encouraged to hunker down to train for the Damnation command ship for Sleeper operations, after which it is interesting to note that my focus flits between core skills and PvP skills. The shiny ships I bring back to the w-space tower are either for the good of the fleet, or overtly hostile. I have yet to use my PvP ships in anger much, although I have fired a few shots from my stealth bomber, and it will probably do me good to lose something expensive in a fight, from the point-of-view of personal growth.

Now w-space is as much my home as DGSE is. I don't think I can go back to my old life in New Eden, not now that I have experienced the more dynamic and threateningly interesting life through a wormhole. And I doubt I could find a more amusing and friendly group of people than I have come to know in the corporation. It's been a hell of a year, I can't wait to see where I am taken next.

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Tags: eve online, mmorpg, penny ibramovic