Vadimus Quarrier Works

It seems so long ago, my ragtag group of CAS’ers mining in Gisleres. We had just started moving up from our Retrievers into Hulks, but Gis being a big system full of belts and way too close to Cistuvaert, we began seeing the plague of can flipping and griefing in general increasing to a point where it just wasn’t desirable to stick around, we were outgrowing the area, but most importantly, we wanted to mine in peace and quiet.

That fateful Memorial Day Weekend, I will never forget. Friday Night I downloaded the Ombey EVE 2D map latest update and began looking for something. A system so far away from home. Back when 25 jumps seemed interminable, even mindboggling. Sunday morning I found it. A place in Kador, so far away, but a brief trek through Uedama and Niarja (scary back then and full of Concord and gankers) I made my way to this quiet system named Ithar. We hadn’t even been really mission running at this point, but there were agents everywhere. And it was dead as a doornail. 19 massive asteroid belts. I made Bookmarks, and told my friends and fellow miners I had found the promised land. Supa, Jas, Jegen, and Stuart came with me. All told of the 20+ miners in our crew in Gisleres, I took 4 with me. I had a vision, and some came out and looked at the place and jaws dropped.

A small group of Iteron 5′s loaded with all of our EVE worldly belongings caravaned to the edge of Amarr space to finally be left alone to do what we wanted to do. Mine stuff. Shoot rocks and BS all day long with little fear of anyone ever finding us. More and more joined as we moved from Center for Advanced Studies noob corp to our first Player Created Corp, the CAS Mining Conglomerate. We ran missions to reduce tax rates and refine perfectly. We mined in Hulks with Itty 5 haulers without a single can flip for almost a year. But something happened in there. We went from miners, to mission runners, to industrialists, to freighter pilots, to battleship L4 mission runners. And we grew, and we prospered.  9 Months later we changed our name, our look, but not our core. We became Vadimus Quarrier Works to kick off a new year, with my freshly updated standings to deploy a POS. And RKSTR was born.

Time has passed, now we have L4 mission runners soloing missions all day or L5′s in my case. We have dedicated Explorers, WH operations, have been through 4 Alliances and still have a group of dedicated Miners. We have forayed into lowsec and nullsec and Wormhole Space. Mostly members had become friends too. We stayed relatively small, but our core members stuck around and we continued to grow, to hone our skills, and learn and to work as a team, but in a free form method due to my weird way of doing things as CEO. We rarely have ‘corp ops’ for the good of the corp. Because my vision was to let people do what THEY want to do, this is a game after all, and it is hard work. It’s 2.5 years of my blood, sweat, tears, trials and tribulations. I’ve learned much, as have we all. Not just in skills, but in people management, setting an example to a small to mid-sized corp of people who can do anything we work towards, even individually towards the goal. What is that goal? Having fun. Learning new things, meeting new friends and harassing old ones.

We have lost a few along the way, but that is bound to happen. People get bored of the game, or real life events and what not get in the way. Some come back and some don’t. Some of use have been around for quite the long haul. And as we grow in skills, and as a corp, we continue to learn and become what our corp ticker means.

It was originally picked because we were a group of hardcore miners, and that part is at the core of how we got started and will never be forgotten or enjoyed when time permits.

However it means a lot more now as we pick up new professions and excel at them in ways we never dreamed of mining in our little Retrievers so long ago.

We got good at lots of things, and we became more than just miners. We became Rock Stars at most of the paths EVE has to offer in Empire.

2 Years in Kador. We are still here.

And we are RKSTR.

RKSTR and myself recently began binging on Level 5 missions. After a 3 day L4 grind with a corp to get the proper standings, we embarked on our first set of Level 5 missions. The first day was relatively easy, but just before DT of the first day, I was handed a mission by my agent, one that I would save for the following afternoon. After getting home from work, I gathered my mission running team together and told them to get to my system ASAP. I had accepted the mission and warped into the mission point to be greeted by a single Carrier. A Thanatos, 5 fighter drones, 8 frigates and 8 battleships.

This is in highsec mind you.

I promptly took down the drones, the frigates and the battleships waiting for my backup crew.

Now, you may ask, WTF are you flying to be tanking all of this? About 2 weeks ago I finished up all the primary skills for a Tengu, purchased one to passive fit and T2 rig for just the purpose of rolling over Level 5′s. One of the missions we ran, I warped into and sat around popping battleships while the Tengu tanked 35+ battleships. And then started taking down the carrier, help arrived, as yes, I had enough DPS, but we really wanted to roll over a bunch of missions.

I have included a picture of the RKSTR Ugly Stick being neuted by the Gallente Carrier for your viewing pleasure.

Later that afternoon, we received a similar mission vs. Minmatar this time. A big fancy Nidhoggur awaited my team to arrive and blew that one sky high as well.

I’ve only had to warp out of one of my Level 5 missions in the Ugly Stick, and that was due to using the wrong hardeners. I had to pop 4 or 5 drones scrambling my ship, before warping out safely with 20% shields.

And later yet again that evening, I solo’d a pair of L5′s versus Gallente with pretty much no challenge to my ship or skills at all, and at 67k LP per mission, I could not rightly complain. I can recommend it, but you really need some intense skills to be able to solo one, or be the primary tank. And being able to keep your cool under fire never hurts.

~CQ

I have a Gallente character with only 1 million SP in drones. I am so ashamed. It is like a Caldari with no missile skills, or an Amarr with no lasers, or a Minmatar character without his duct tape. Pathetic really.

So I am on a crusade to make my shiny new Ishtar tear through some missions. My tank so far has been ridiculiously solid and I feel I need more damage to be able to control (destroy) the rats better. Caldari COSMOS has been much like the Amarr COSMOS. There have been quick, easy courior missions, quick easy kill missions, and for the longer, harder kill missions, you can just buy the mission items off of contacts. It is easy enough to farm some of the items from NPCs and sell those to make up the ISK difference. I have really only had enough time to run a mission or two a day though, and with talk of moving in RL that may be even less.

Apparently Sanshas attacked in Penirgman. It looks like Concord was there helping too. Someone fell for that one =/

I’m going to take a brief Eve vacation as I catch up on sleep and Fable 2. (I’ve owned it for a year and haven’t played it yet)

If anybody wants to have something posted here, let me know out of game elnarkhad@rkstr.net.

Never having really used the ECM modules, I found this pretty useful.  Head on over to RifterDrifter and check it out.

http://www.rifterdrifter.com/2010/04/ecm-for-dummies/