Editor’s Note: We got another another entry added in our Signaleer Series! It’s been a while since our last one, so I hope you enjoy. Xavec truly embraces our motto of “Be the content you wish to see”. In that spirit he has started and continues to operator two great in corp services. SCRAMS, Signal Cartel Relocation and Moving Service, is offered to new Signal Cartel members to help with relocation of their assets to one of our corp offices and SCRUBS is a BPC buyback Service for members. Huge shoutout to Xavec for stepping up! – Katia Sae
What attracted you to EVE Online and how long have you played?
The short answer to this is that my housemate, while I was studying at university, told me about this amazing game with a 2 week free trial. That was all the way back in 2009 before alpha was a thing! I remember being blown away by the concept and execution of the game, including the absolute total vastness of New Eden.
I remember doing some easy missions and a bit of High-Sec mining and being shockingly disappointed at how little isk I was making. I didn’t understand the game at all and didn’t understand skills properly. As an impoverished student I didn’t feel ready to commit to paying for the game. I trained some random mining skills and when my free trial was almost up I started to train leadership to V – I thought that the mining benefits would help me make more isk. Like I said, I didn’t understand skill. In those days all accounts could only have skills in the skill queue that started training in the next 24 hours.
Then one day 9 years later a colleague made a passing comment about Eve Online. I had completely forgotten about the game. He told me about Alpha accounts being free to play. Soon after that on a day off I downloaded the game again. I still had the same email address and managed to recover my account and found the same character sitting there with a number of skills trained. I’ve had one break since then of around a year when I got Zelda The Breath of the Wild on the Nintendo Switch – this was the first time since then that I had the same mind-blowing experience. I soon came back to Eve though!
What is your background as a pilot? Did you jump right into exploration, start in the military, hired by a corporation, or something else? How would you describe your characters career path?
Quite simple, really. I started out a bit lost and without purpose. I did a bit of mining and a few missions but found that the returns were pitiful and I really wasn’t enjoying it. I remember Googling income streams and reading that exploration was the easiest way to earn isk for a new player. I did a whole bunch of reading about wormholes and fitted up an Imicus. I scanned down a wormhole in my high-sec home and warped to it.
I remember feeling my heart rate go up as I splashed into a wormhole for the first time. I’d read that wormhole space was dangerous and was sure that I’d basically get shot within seconds. I didn’t; but neither did I find any faction relic or data sites on that first occasion. I loved exploration and this new potential for earning enough isk to fly cool ships as well as the adrenaline of entering lawless space from my safe High-Sec home meant that I’ve been an explorer ever since.
What attracted you to explore New Eden? What is your goal and have you achieved it?
I’m more driven to explore Anoikis than New Eden! But I also like to explore New Eden too. There are so many unique things to see! The planet Eyjafjallajökull in wormhole space, Choonka’s Shipwash, EVE gate, the statue of Katia Sae. The new Jita trade hub station is quite a sight too!
I can make isk as I go. My goal is simply to have fun and I’ve met this goal frequently! My time at the moment is divided between exploring wormhole space as a wormhole dweller and fleet flying with Signal Cartel and other PVE fleet groups.
What attracted you to Signal Cartel? Any corp related experiences you’d like to share and/or any Credo related stories that would be of interest?
My first contact with Signal Cartel was seeing the Eve-Scout Rescue Caches in wormholes that I was exploring. I thought it was neat but hoped I’d never need it. Then one day I forgot to bookmark my exit and lost my probes. The pilot who helped me spent time explaining that you don’t lose all your skills if you die and that self-destructing was a much quicker option! I learnt from this mistake but also ended up in the Eve-Scout Public channel where there was information on joining the corp. I read up about the Eve-Scout Credo and then read the very thorough directory of important information that is sent to all new members. It’s a goldmine of useful information. I learnt very quickly about all the rookie mistakes I had been making. Plus everyone was so friendly! I have been a member ever since. If I hadn’t joined Signal cartel I probably would have left the game long ago. For me the Credo embodies my real-life values of helping others and not harming others. In real life I am a healthcare worker so this resonates with me.
I have so many Credo related stories! Hugs fleets are one of my favourite corp activities. We fit up frigates and destroyers with festival launchers, reps and tank, and go seeking out people to “Hug” with snowballs or fireworks. It makes pretty lights in space and often people don’t know what the heck is happening to them until they kill us and read the Killmail and see how we were fitted. Sometimes we paste some relevant memes into local chat for the fun of it.
On another occasion we invaded Brave space with a competition to see which squadron could make it there the quickest. The squadron I was leading won, getting from our home in Zoohen to the Brave home system in Nullsec in under 3 minutes. The second place made it in around half an hour. We then charged their Keepstar and hugged them. At one point I was receiving remote reps from one of them and missiles from another. I felt like they were toying with me before they eventually destroyed me, but at least I got all of my fireworks away!
I have recently taken on joint leadership of our Fleet-Operations Division so this is something I am definitely going to try to promote.
Some of you may have heard of Chappy’s Birthday Bash. A terminally ill capsuleer brought his dreadnought into a Lowsec system and thousands of others came to have a massive friendly brawl. I was in the Signal Cartel fleet and we were very happy just lobbing hugs at people like the weird kid at a birthday party throws Maltesers.
I have been allowed through gate-camps and wormholes, sent isk and o7, in chat on many occasions, purely for being in Signal Cartel. Through my work as a 911 operator, I have seen that so many people are so generous with their time and their isk! Far more people than I thought have been assisted out of wormholes by people who you would otherwise assume hostile. (Helped Out by Locals)
In Signal Cartel we often say that reputation tank is the best tank.
What is the name of your favorite ship that you enjoy flying the most while exploring? Why is it your favorite?
My stand-out favourite ship is the Astero. Someone recently joked that Signal Cartel that we probably keep the Astero market afloat. It’s such a versatile ship and it’s great for exploring. It can cloak, it has bonuses for hacking data and relic sites as well as scanning signatures. All bread and butter for an explorer. It’s also super agile and doesn’t require mad skills to fly and it’s easy to fit to align in under 2 seconds. Oh and it can use drones. The other thing is that nobody ever really knows what sort of heat an Astero is packing so they think twice before engaging it. Mine has got me out of many tight spots!
My fit is geared towards stealth and evasion. I work on the assumption that if I get target locked, I am dead. So my fit is all about quick align time, cloaking, and low signature radius. Anything that gives me that extra server tick to warp away to a safe.
In my high slots I fit a Sisters Core Probe Launcher loaded with at least 16 but preferably 24 Sisters Core Scanner Probes and also a Covert Ops Cloaking Device. In the mids I put a Zeugma Integrated Analyzer which is great when paired with a Blackglass Implant. I often fit a Microwarp Drive and also an Afterburner so I can get out of bubbles quickly. My last slot usually has a Scan Rangefinding Array in it. I often swap out one of the prop mods for a Burst Jammer II to use as a last ditch attempt to warp off if I get scrammed. In the lows I fit a Damage Control II, enough Nanofibre Internal Structure modules to make my align time under 2 seconds and if I have anything left over something to augment my drones. The rigs are again usually dedicated to agility. In the drone bay I usually have a flight of T2 Light Drones and a flight of ECM Drones. In the cargo hold I keep a Mobile Depot (seriously, being a 911 operator has taught me NEVER to go into wormhole space without one) and supplies to create and replenish our wormhole rescue caches. In my implants I usually have a set of High-grade Halo implants to get my signature radius nice and low, plus the Blackglass.
All neutral ships are set to a nice bright colour on my overview. If a ship is warping in I usually have a good few seconds notice before they are able to fire on or scram me. I can usually cloak and warp away to a safe before they’ve even been able to start locking me. I need to make sure I’m always more than 2000m from objects so I can insta-cloak.
During your travels, what has been the most interesting fact, amazing sight, or other aspect of New Eden that has surprised you?
It’s vastness! There is a reason so few people have explored every solar system in New Eden and even fewer to explore every one in the game – as far as I know our own Katia Sae is the only one to have done so. It is just mindboggling how many light years across the place is and even travelling at multiple AU per second it takes hours and hours to get across it. I’m sure that there have been things in the game for ages that nobody has yet discovered. And this is all before you even consider player-generated content. I think you could play Eve for a lifetime and still find new things to do.
What advice would you give to someone interested in exploring New Eden?
Always know where your towel is.
But seriously, always think of what your worst case scenario is and what you would do in that scenario. Run mini drills with yourself so you don’t get paralyzed by fear when you are engaged. Join a corp, fly in fleets and have fun! If you just sit in an NPC corp forever not doing anything social then you are missing out on a huge part of the value of Eve.