State of the Signal #14

Thrice Hapus, CEO

Believe it or not, it has been nearly a year since our last State of the Signal. While we are a little smaller than we were this time a year ago, we are busier than ever and our pilots today are more universally active within the corp. In fact, I have worked consistently over the past several months to ensure that our membership roster reflects active and engaged pilots. I want for every capsuleer who joins our ranks to get a true sense right away of just how active we are as a group — and lately, that has been quite a lot! 😀

You’ll notice a few new names in the divisional reports that follow, and even a new or renamed division or two. While many details have changed over the course of Signal Cartel’s existence, the core of who we are has not. We remain one of EVE Online’s preeminent service corporations and a true counter-culture to the “gung ho” PVP traditions that are so commonplace. While we respect and applaud these valid playstyles, I am happy that New Eden is big enough and the sandbox deep enough to accommodate our unique approach to life amongst the stars, as well.

I celebrated my fourth year in Signal Cartel this past May. I can still say confidently and without hesitation that there is no other group in New Eden I would rather belong to. Signaleers are a rare breed: dedicated, consistent, passionate about their areas of expertise, always willing to share info and help our newer members — and they do it all with kindness, friendliness, and little expectation of acclaim. Our division managers are excellent examples of this ethos, and it is my hope that their reports which follow will encourage each of our members to step out boldly and, in the time-honored phrase of Mynxee, one of our founders, to “be the content they wish to see in New Eden and in Signal Cartel!”

Thanks to each of you for being part of the fun. Fly sharp!


Tamayo

THE ANOIKIS DIVISION
Manager: Tamayo
Assistant Manager: Maxwell Kurvora

As the manager of the Anoikis Division since the Spring of 2019, I, Tamayo, am pleased to report that the division is very active and in great shape. Currently, the division has 37 members. Our two structures in the C3 have been improved and now are fully rigged and module equipped.

Due to the implementation of the new shared bookmark mechanics, we now have a shared AD bookmarks folder for our wormhole connections and other signatures.

A new medal was created for division members, the “Anoikis Advocate.” It is awarded to those who embody the frontier spirit by actively living and working out of our wormhole. The medal has been awarded, so far, to:

  • Mia Rosseb
  • Sir Fiddle Sticks
  • Sanja Burus
  • Palis Airuta
  • Ano Nimus
  • Maxwell Kurvora
Maxwell Kurvora

Maxwell Kurvora has been promoted to Assistant Manager of the division. I was the only person who had the roles to change modules and a few other of the day-to-day operations. Maxwell was an excellent choice to promote to address these issues and represent the division.

The division is financially sound. Between our wormhole Planetary Production (PI) and Null-Sec Ice mining, we are supplying our own fuel for the stations. We have back-up structures available in case we are ever evicted.

Members are active in PI, PVE mining, manufacturing/research/invention, reactions, and ESRC/SAR. We’ve had our first official mining fleet operation and have now started official AD PVE combat fleets. Our AARs will be posted in the forums for the corp to view.

The Anoikis Division has a great core group of excellent and enthusiastic pilots who contribute to the success of the division, whether it be through donations, organizing events and activities, advice, intel, Tripwire mapping, just chatting in our channel, or the Fedos.

Come and join the fun!


ENGINEERING
Managers: A Dead Parrot & Sky Diamond

A Dead Parrot

The Engineering Division has been very busy pushing many buttons this past year. In case you were wondering, the Engineering Division (never to be referred to by our acronym, E.D.) supports all of our in-house programming projects such as Corporate Buyback, our Member Management Application, the 911 service, the Eve Scout Rescue division, Fleet Ops Division, Thera Scanning, the in-character OPSEC story lines, and Allison in all of her forms (note the Oxford comma).

The division is run by the “Odd Couple” of myself, A Dead Parrot, and Sky Diamond. Sometimes we let Thrice code a little bit, but only on small projects that aren’t flammable.

We are currently working on a new application aimed at helping inexperienced 911 operators as they learn the ropes. The application was the brainchild of Jehan Dante and we should have a beta version to show to the Rescue Division shortly.

A fairly medium project we are looking to complete this year is an application for supporting the Signal Cartel Academy’s (SCA) class offer and acceptance program, a single location where members can advertise a class they are willing to teach and other members can sign up. The program would automate and organize the current system taking place manually in the forums now. The back-end REST API for this is already written and we would welcome any volunteers who feel they might have the time to help produce the front-end for the ever-helpful SCA.

I would also like to mention the Thera Scan application , a project written in 2019 by Mzsbi Haev, which is a brilliant tool to manage the bookmarks and signatures for our Thera scanning volunteers. Though the application was not originally developed under the Engineering Division, we are now getting in position to support it in the future, should Mzsbi decide to win Eve or something dreadful like that.

And one last special mention to Arturon Megumi, who has been contributing to the Allison Discord bot as well as keeping Sky on the JavaScript straight and narrow. Arturon also recently brought us the automated #ccp-news channel on our Discord server. Thank you, Arturon, for “being the content you want to see.” Incidentally, Arturon is the same Signaleer that brought us this amazing animated visualization early this year which shows every one of the 46,672 sows and tends done by the Rescue Division in 2019… in just over 2 minutes!

So if you ever have questions or suggestions about our projects, or you just find yourself in need of advice on asynchronous recursive functions (or cats), look us up in the #developers channel on Discord.

Sky Diamond

Buyback
Buyback Business Report for 2020-07
The buyback program, currently run by Captain Crinkle, Katia Sae, and Sky Diamond, is now in business for more than 18 months and during that time:

  • 4,071 appraisals were created
  • 2,365 of these appraisals got approved by our customers
  • 1,847 contracts got delivered to our offices
  • We bought goods worth more than 250b ISK
  • 300 courier contracts to Jita were created
  • 6b ISK got payed on courier contract rewards
  • 290b ISK collateral were on the courier contracts we created
  • The profits of up to 20b ISK are reinvested within the corporation as working capital
  • When profits exceed 20b ISK, the surplus will be donated to Signal Cartel

Igaze

EVE-SCOUT RESCUE
Manager: Igaze
Asst. Managers: Captain Crinkle, Xalyar

Since last time EvE-Scout Rescue has continued to grow thanks to the contributions of many, many, many enthusiastic rescue pilots!

Our coordinator team has grown a little more and now is comprised of Xalyar, Sydney Selket, Dagmar Maulerant, Miruxa, Catbriar Chelien, Angel Lafisques, Captain Crinkle, Triffton Ambraelle, and our newest coordinator, Ace Rimmer Midumulf! We now have pretty solid coverage around the world’s time zones. Their skill and dedication are crucial to ESR, so much so that Xalyar and Captain Crinkle are now Assistant ESR Managers and will be helping me with various tasks that have grown with the program.

Our 911 Operator program has also continued to grow. So much so, in fact, that our developers had to come up with a way to deal with too many operators responding to single calls. Allison now has a 45-second lottery program that randomly selects from requesting operators who gets to respond. Thanks to Arturon Megumi and Sky Diamond for this addition to Allison. We also introduced dispatcher medals for this team: 36 pilots now have over 5 dispatches, 18 over 50 dispatches, and five master dispatchers have over 100: pris Naari, Triffton Ambraelle, Xalyar, Catbriar Chelien, and Ace Rimmer Midumulf.

An amazing thing has happened with our rescue caches! Over the last three months our cache numbers have stabilized at over 2500 caches, around 97% of Anoikis. There are a couple of factors at play here, one being the changes to bookmarks that allows us to share bookmarks to cache locations. While long discussed, it took a CCP revamp to the bookmark system to make it possible. We then had some long discussions about how to implement this and the formal system went into place on December 10th, 2019. Cache numbers started rising immediately and eventually climbed to a record high of 2554 or 98.1% of Anoikis. This was helped along in no small part thanks to Jehan Dante’s Tender Games which created a huge spike in activity.

This increase has also led to an increase in our medals, with 12 Signaleers reaching UltraCacher status (over 1000 caches) in the last year. Aldar Roanaok and Troubled Watters both exceeded 3000 caches, while Tamayo, Mako Koskanaiken, and Renek Dallocort broke through the 5000-cache mark. They were all left in the dust by Captain Crinkle, who earned The Crinkle Crown with over 10,000 caches.

The increase in the number of our operators and the increase in the number of our caches has led to a massive increase in the number of rescues we are able to accomplish. Kudos to our team of 911 Operators!

April 1, 2019 – July 1, 2019
ESRC: 44
SAR: 44

April 1, 2020 – July, 2020
ESRC: 202
SAR: 103

Since formal tracking began, we have completed 1421 rescues (ESRC: 825, SAR: 596). Our total a year ago was 733.

Igaze, Xalyar, and Sydney Selket all earned SAR Golds for over 50 rescues, while Chaim Achasse became the first to earn the Beacon of Anoikis medal for over 100 rescues. There are a couple of other pilots very close to earning that medal now, too.

And a huge thanks to A Dead Parrot and Allison. They are the linchpin to this division. Allison’s continued growth is incredibly important to the success of ESR!

The last year has been a great one for ESR, and I am constantly amazed at the quality of our pilots and all the work they put into the program!


FLEET OPS DIVISION
Manager: Reynauld Lachapelle

Reynauld Lachapelle

Hello everyone! A lot has happened since the last State of the Signal! I will try to keep down to a few key elements, don’t worry.

Back in November last year, a new team comprised of Null Flare, Xalyar, Katherine Skysong, Aldar Roanaok, and myself, Reynauld Lachapelle, took over the management of what was then the Signal Cartel Fleet School (SCFS). We very recently rebranded the division as the Fleet Ops Division (FOD), which more accurately represents what it is that we have been up to since then: running and supporting fleets of all kinds. Jehan Dante and Vanessa Pacht Feng also joined the team on the occasion of our rebranding.

As far as content goes, here is a breakdown of our most popular activities:

  • We have continued expanding on the staple wormhole fleets you have come to know and love. We are now firmly with one foot in C5+ territory, which brings a whole new host of danger, frights, and excitement. These fleets are for the most part spearheaded by Null Flare and Katherine Skysong.
  • We have introduced new Abyssal Deadspace fleets to our roster of group content. These have been a lot of fun, and we are slowly but surely climbing up the difficulty ladder as we collectively get better at it! Vanessa Pacht Feng and myself are working hard on making these happen!
  • We have brought the Hugs fleet back to life with incredible vigor thanks to Jehan Dante‘s tireless drive to end all wars and spread the love!
  • We also have the pleasure of flying with our friends over at ARC or Vulfpeck (VP) every now and then and maintain great diplomatic relationship with them. If you ever want to get in touch with either of these entities but don’t know how, come have a chat with me, and I’ll introduce you. All the content they have provided so far has been Credo-compliant, and they make it a point that it remain so.

And now for some stats because you nerds love numbers:

  • Since November 23rd 2019 we have ran 18 fleets, with a total of 219 pilots.
  • Our most popular fleets are our wormhole fleets with an average of 20 pilots in each of them.
  • We have lost a total of 14 ships in the course of our regular PvE activities and 66 ships during Hugs operations.
  • Our total ISK earned is ~7 billion and the average payout is ~63 million.
  • Our current loaner fleet contains 149 ships, excluding Hug ships, for an estimated value of ~6.5 billion, without fittings.
  • We also have ~650 Hug ships spread around our various headquarters, as well as ~2,000,000 m^3 of fireworks ready to be fired.

SIGNAL CARTEL ACADEMY
Division Manager: Xalyar
Admin Team: Maxwell Kurvora, Dagmar Maulerant, Sloopy Noopers

This is the first State of the Signal contribution I am privileged enough to have to write, and the first one for the Signal Cartel Academy (SCA) altogether.

Since its inception and announcement on the 23rd of November, Y121 (2019), the Academy has started its wild run across the lands of the Corporation, spanning far and wide in topics and offerings.

It did not take long for the first class to be requested: just 4 days, with the first [NEED] request being posted on the 27th of November, by Emy Noxx.
Since then, in the two hundred and twenty-plus days that have passed from the creation of the Division, we have offered more than 52 total classes, spanning many topics and addressing many needs.

The SCA is just 32 weeks old, and some simple maths mean we have offered to the Corporation an average of 1.625 classes per week so far. That, quite frankly, blows my mind.

We have, with the passing of time, found ourselves with a consistent set of topics requested with regularity, but also with the flexibility to be able to respond to specific requests and to address specific topics on a per-need basis.

Many of you have taken advantage of the SCA offerings, and many have volunteered their time and energy to respond to a request and set up a class. I express my gratitude to both sides of this equation equally. Hopefully myself, and the rest of the SCA Admin Team, will be able to continue to provide the Corporation with an easy way to help each other and to share the vast amount of knowledge we like to call EVE Online.

The Discord Direct Messages inbox of myself and all the team are always there for you all.

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” – Albert Einstein

Keep being willing to learn: I can promise you the SCA will be willing to teach you.


SPLUNKWORKS:
Manager: Null Flare

Null Flare

Splunkworks handles day-to-day running of ship fits and related questions in the Signal Cartel Corp. I’d like to say “we,” but as of this moment in time, there is only one member: Null Flare. That was the biggest change the Division saw, with the departure of the old admin crew: I got promoted and left to my own devices…

I’d be interested in accepting some new candidates if interested, but that’s for a later time! We, Splunkworks, and myself personally get a lot of day-to-day questions about fits and mechanics, and I love helping you all out! But rather than just fit a ship and leave it, I’d like to help YOU understand the fitting! So in my work with the SCA, I have run a few Fitting 101 Classes, to help both newbro and veteran alike be able to fit some basics and stop bombarding me with…

Um, I mean stop the need for asking me. I also monitor the forums for any fitting related questions but these don’t come in as often as they used to. There usually isn’t a lot of work involved, unless some big patches hit (Surgical Strike was fun!), but I’m always around if you need something helped with, be it fitting or just general ship advice. It’s a hobby! Pyfa as well is an important part, but I just scratch the surface where all these graphs and maths are concerned. As you all know, any questions regarding ships/fits/hulls/ammo/drones/prop mods, etc., I’m here if you need me! And if I’m not around, there’s usually someone to help on Discord or in Alliance chat.


RECRUITERS
Manager: Quinn Valerii

Quinn Valerii

A lot has happened since the last State of the Signal: Mynxee stepped down as head of recruitment and has won Eve, I stepped up to try to fill the role she managed so effortlessly, and there have been other changes within our recruitment team.

I am happy to say that, supported by Tamayo and Sky Diamond and with the recent great addition of Aldar Roanaok to the team, recruitment continues to run well. Continuous improvement and development work by Sky Diamond and others has helped improve our day to day work and, thanks to Aldar Roanaok, who has become an invaluable addition to our team, our timezone coverage is now in a very good place.

My thanks go out to our entire recruitment team who work tirelessly behind the scenes and to those Signaleers who regularly step up in the absence of a recruiter in our public chat to signpost prospective recruits to our Joining FAQ and online application system and who answer basic questions.


CENTRAL SERVICES
Manager: Katia Sae

Station Quartermasters

  • Gelhan V – Moon 10 – DED Logistic Support – Vanessa Pacht Feng
  • Saisio VIII – Moon 4 – Perkone Factory – Asa Kansene
  • Zoohen III – Theology Council Tribunal – Void Raven
  • Thera XII – The Sanctuary Institute of Paleocybernetics – miruxa
  • QMs Helper – Billie Idol
Katia Sae

Since we are The Exploration Corp, we try to keep in stock those ships and items that support that endeavor, such as free T1 starter exploration frigates, ESRC supplies, fireworks, and more. We do our best to keep the stocks up, but if you see something that’s not on-hand, please let your local QM know. And thanks to Jehan Dante being the content you wish to see, you should start seeing Hug Destroyers and Hugs Fleet packs.

Huge shoutout to Asa Kansene, for serving over a year now as our Saisio Quartermaster. Thanks so much for your efforts!

Also, special thanks to Void Raven, miruxa, and Vanessa Pacht Feng for stepping up and filling our QM vacancies when the call went out during our time of need. Can’t forget our very own Billie Idol either, rock on! We can’t provide these services without you!

Signal Cartel Group Blog
Since our last State of the Signal, our SC Group blog has been doing very well. We’ve had 33 blog posts, broken out as follows: 2 1420. Life, 2 Announcements, 4 Art, 5 EvE-Scout Rescue (ESR), 6 In Character – Roleplay, 1 Poem, 5 SC Fiction Competition, 7 Signaleers,
1 State of the Signal (not this one 😉 ),

The posts for 2019 have been indexed and you can check them out here.

Also, if you’ve ever thought you’d like to try blogging or enjoy writing and wanted to post your work publicly, then be sure to check out this post on how to get started and submit your work. If you’d like to participate in our Signaleers series then check out this post.

TripTiks 2.0
We’ve had a great response to our rebooted Expedition TripTiks. With the reboot we’ve already added 10 new TripTiks, which has doubled our content! We have another 6 in the works. To see all our current TripTiks you can check them out here.

New Services!
Here’s just one of the many things I love about Signal Cartel and that is our motto of “Be the content you wish to see.” Most, if not all other corps, have the mentality that leadership is responsible and must provide the content for its members. Not so here. We are not only a service corp to all of New Eden, we are also a service corp to each other. If you see a need or content you’d like, then step up. It can be a rewarding experience for you, and I’ve no doubt others will appreciate it.

With that in mind, along with Jehan Dante mentioned above for the hugs ships, we had Xavec step up and offer the following two new services. Great stuff and thanks to you both!

Xavec

SCRAMS
New member and want to relocate to one of our corp stations? Then be sure to check out our Signal Cartel Relocation and Moving Service – For New Signaleer Recruits!

Since the program launched, Xavec has averaged 1 contract per week. Seeing how many new members we get, that seems low, so if you’re new and have stuff you’d liked moved, reach out to Xavec !

  • Period 1: 6 contracts for 305,000m3 and 40 jumps
  • Period 2: 2 contracts for 120,812m3 and 32 jumps
  • Period 3: 3 contracts for 964,621m3 and 53 jumps
  • Period 4: 2 contracts for 119,590m3 and 43 jumps
  • Period 5: 2 contracts for 134,894m3 and 28 jumps
  • Period: 6 2 contracts for 520,729m3 and 39 jumps
  • Totals: 17 contracts for 2,165,646m3 and 235 jumps

SCRUBS
BPC buyback Service for Signal Cartel
To date, the program has paid out 2.5+ billion to 25 contracts plus 125+ million in donations to Signal Cartel.

There have been 7 Punisher and 5 heron hulls donated to Signal Cartel as well, with another 33 more Punishers on the way. Currently the service has broken even, with the possibility of a small profit which will be used to cover time and expenses associated with running the program.

Observatory
The EvE Scout Observatory has for the most part found a permanent home on our Discord server’s #eve-observatory channel, after having moved away from Flickr and the limitations imposed there for free photo storage. Please visit, share, and like your favorites!


Johnny Splunk

THERA SCANNING
Manager: Johnny Splunk
Asst. Manager: Captain Crinkle

Eve-Scout’s Thera Scan service was formed before Signal Cartel itself, and this year we have set about increasing the profile of this service across the corporation, and the number of our members who take part, for the aid of all pilots across Eve.

Beginning in March this year, we began to send out weekly summaries of Thera activity in the recent week, including relevant links to forum topics, and latest developments. Additionally, some basic information on Thera activity was added to the corporate Co-Pilot tool. Our latest development has been the announcement of new corporate medals for contributions to Eve-Scout Thera Scan. These medals are designed to recognise consistent contributions over an extended period of time, and we look forward to awarding the first.

Captain Crinkle

To aid with promotion of the service amongst our newer members, Tekufah has made a giveaway offer for a free Covert Ops frigate to qualifying pilots. This has proved popular, with twenty-eight new pilots already claiming their prize.

To aid with the process of scanning Thera, Mzsbi Haev has created a webtool , including full instructions and integration with Tripwire through bookmarklet integration. To help our pilots learn how to use this tool, Maxwell Kurvova has held training classes as part of work at Signal Cartel Academy.

To conclude, we would like to thank all who have contributed to the service in the past, and encourage the curious to try it out. Our work to improve the profile continues, but significant progress has already been made in a short period of time. In May of this year, we had 42 different pilots contribute to Thera scanning, the most we have had in a single month for over four years.

Promotion

Editor’s Note: Signal Cartel (SC) is an EvE Online counter-culture in more ways than one. One of our motto’s is “be the content you wish to see”. In other words, leadership is not expected to provide content for its members, but rather members are expected to step up if there’s something they’d like to see. Likewise, members are expected to request promotions, training, and other needs as they qualify or want. I should also mention that Signal Cartel takes advantage of the in game medals nominated by members for members as well as awarded by leadership to members for their efforts and hard work.

In this particular request for promotion, a new member of Signal Cartel – Geek Explo, who’s an executive of a large healthcare company in the US in real life, shared how SC has impacted him since joining. Talking with him in Alliance chat, he mentioned he’s used SC as an example in a doctorate paper about organizational leadership. Basically saying, and I’m paraphrasing here, having a strong culture around behavioral expectations drives success. In the case of Signal Cartel, the Credo really helps to drive the mission. So, from an organizational leadership perspective, holding people accountable to behavior, giving them the tools, and mentorship to be successful will lead to better outcomes toward the mission.

Also, what’s not to like in his bio! 😉 “Space travel is life-enhancing, and anything that’s life-enhancing is worth doing. It makes you want to live forever.” – Ray Bradbury

Note: Some wording edited for clarity of terms and what not’s. 😉


Promotion
From: Geek Explo
Sent: 2020.07.04 13:07
To: Thrice Hapus,

Thrice o7,

Geek Explo

I’ve been with Signal Cartel now for over a month. I have to say that I am thoroughly impressed with the culture of the entire SC community. I’ve played Eve for several years, and in a past life have been in Null Sec, Wormhole, and High Sec corps. None of them felt the way that SC does. It might just be because I’m partial to the exploration life and that was never a focus in those corps, but I think part of it is also that SC really tries to make a difference for good in Eve.

I mentioned in Discord last week that I have played MMO games for over 20 years. Not once have I ever been publicly awarded for the time and effort I have put into the game. Something as simple as a medal for sowing is an incredibly powerful recognition for effort and dedication (and more satisfying than ISK). I really appreciate you having that be a part of what SC is about. One last thing on that: I run a large healthcare company in the US, and while I understand the value of culture and recognition, I often times lose focus on this. Because of my experience this month with SC, I have put a renewed focus with my team on employee engagement and recognition.

Last thing: I have sown 7 rescue caches and tended 263 others since joining. I love this activity and want to be a part of its growth and leadership moving forward. I am available for whatever Igaze needs with this division of SC.

I’m asking for a promotion not because I need access to hangars and free ships, but I want to get my hauler alt into the alt corp to start helping with running things. I’ve been very fortunate to not have to worry about ISK, I just like to do activities that help others.

Thanks again for leading a great online community, I know how hard that is and the time it takes to manage all this stuff (and you aren’t getting paid to do it). Thanks for being awesome and making a difference.

Geek


From: Thrice Hapus
Sent: Jul 5, 2020, 10:27:00 AM
To: Geek Explo
Subject: Re: Promotion

Thrice Hapus

Your application for C1 is technically a day early, but I think we can let that slide. 🙂

This is a terrific email and I am very moved to learn that your time in SC is having some real-world impact. It has been the same for me in so many ways. I am by far a better human being today than I was 4-5 years ago, and my time in SC has played a role in that development.

Would you mind if I shared your email to me on our blog and/or the EVE forums? This is the sort of thing that I love to share with the world and our wider EVE community: This game makes a difference IRL, all the time. It is far more than a mere escape from reality for a few hours each week. it is more of a hobby, at least, and an actual life-changing experience, at best!

Thanks again for being part of Signal Cartel. And welcome to C1!

Thrice


Of course permission was given and here we are! Thanks Geek Explo for sharing your story, it’s great to see how EvE is Real. <3

Zoohen Fireworks

Editor’s Note: This is an after action report (AAR) by Signaleer Sloopy Noopers for an in corp Fireworks event held on March 28th, 2020.

Sloopy Noopers

When times are dark the best defense we have is each other, and what better way to celebrate this than to get together and make a proper racket! This was the idea at the core of the fireworks in Zoohen on the 28th of March. No one was getting a send off, there was no national holiday or historical event to mark, it was simply a celebration of the companionship we can offer through this unique community.

I started my day by stocking up on supplies and purchasing a ship for the finale of the event. Using a number of alts to haul these through High Security space, a chore which took considerably longer than expected (more on that later), I deposited the required goods at our offices in Zoohen.

The plan was to make a ship go boom towards the end of the event. With this in mind the ship in question had to be of appropriate size and pretty enough to mark this particular celebration. I’d decided that this should be a battleship, what with these being the biggest ships available in High Sec, so I opted for an Armageddon. These are, in my opinion, a very attractive looking ship and I had a couple of swanky skins knocking about in my hanger.

What this button? Sporting the Lava Core skin!
Katherine Skysong

Having not flown anything larger than a cruiser since my mission running days, long before I joined Signal Cartel, I’d forgotten how slow and cumbersome these ships were, a situation made worse by my decision to haul this through over twenty systems using a very, very low skilled alpha alt. The journey was painful!

Having extracted myself from J-Space for the first time in eight weeks, I clone jumped to Zoohen, and prepared for the festivities. I always enjoy the build up to an event, watching corp members slowly filling up local and the last minute planning is strangely exciting. Katherine Skysong was good enough to set up a fleet for the event. After begging up some extra supplies from some lovely Signaleers, it was time to go!

As I undocked I saw my overview was already populated with a number of eager Signaleers who were getting the show started. Eager to get into the thick of it myself, I set a course to orbit my corp mates. However, having completely forgotten how slow an unfitted battleship actual was, I started my crawl towards the party at a speed comparable to an asthmatic slug and promptly got caught in the station structure. After some off-comms, family unfriendly language, I managed to cajole my lead footed ride free of the station and headed out with all launchers blazing!

It wasn’t long before my overview was a sea of purple fleet-mates and the fireworks were coming thick and fast. As I crawled my way further out into space more and more Signaleers appeared and I quickly found myself targeted multiple times. Someone decided to web my ship, as if I needed slowing down any further! Effectively immobile I took the opportunity to take my time getting images.

After around an hour of bangs, whizzes, and chatting in comms, it seemed time to blow my Armageddon and free myself into a more agile ship. I jettisoned what was left of my fireworks, set the two minute timer, and readied myself to pop out in the Navitas I’d stowed in my frigate escape bay. Sadly I didn’t catch the exact moment my ship blew, but below is the last photo as the explosions started.

Finally as the celebrations came to a conclusion and people started signing off from comms, I headed for home and fired off a few final pretties.

This gathering was a massive amount of fun and a very welcome distraction from the events currently consuming everyday life. It was a pleasure to see so many fellow Signaleers together, a rare event due to the nature of exploration. Hopefully more events will come in the near future to bring us all together again!