With Christmas around the corner and my own vacation starting in less then two weeks, it's been a fun last week or two, starting with the crucible patch. As my Pandora Radio cranks out tune after tune to add to my christmas spirit, and as my workplace begins to add christmas decorations to our front lobby and lounge, I am once again reminded: It is winter. Yes. It has snowed, EvE has released a new patch, and heralding in this season was the first super capital kill the other day in HED-GP, an old stomping ground of mine that is constantly camped, due to it being a pipe to highsec.
It is rather unfortunate though that he was a scrooge and self-destructed versus fighting the good fight because even with the new changes, he could have taken a few battleships out before being toasted himself. So, it is sad to see this Nyx go to the graveyard without generating a killmail, but i'll still call that a kill. Tis' the season to be killing capitals. And of course, who else would perpetuate such a kill? Why, Pandemic Legion of course! They fought the NC. supercap and killed the pod when it was liberated from within the mass.
Link Here if you want to see PL <-10.0> Kill an NC. Nyx.
On a side note, we had a supercarrier hunt in our alliance the other day as a pilot that was flying a thanatos was attacked and killed by an ev0ke supercarrier. The pilot managed to get his Nyx out before we could get in and capture it with a bubble, and while it was sad, it wasn't exactly a prevented kill. The carrier taken down had no fighters and seemed to be relying only on sentry drones and heavy drones.... so their fault. However, we gave good chase and came up empty. Thanks again to the people who formed up the fleet extremely quickly while my corp and I rallied everyone to the system to try and get the guy. Mad props to your speed.
So speaking of the holiday season and cold, oxygen isotopes are through the roof, almost 1400isk/unit. Goonswarm's "Operation: Interdiction" has thus far been the driving reason behind the price inflation, with the only current places able to get ice and ice products is in nullsec and lowsec, where goons won't venture to place fleets. Besides, on sites such as evenews24.com and from screens I have seen on the web from Kugu forums, it seems that the goons might be in league with the DRF, as a paraphrased quote from The Mittani was stated as "We realize we are handing the Russians a lot of isk. We're ok with that." So any speculation on the fact that it might be the goons trying to inflate ice prices to the point where they would make as much isk as possible selling off stockpiles is clearly wrong. As prices have slumped temporarily I think (winter is coming afterall; even supercaps hibernate too) despite the fact that new fuel blocks will require the oxygen isotopes, it appears that this is being done in an effort to make moving capitals against enemies of Goons or Goons themselves (Gallente capitals only) extremely expensive, and therefore make combat scenarios involving capitals less likely. Well, it might be working. I've heard the gripes and complaints of corps and capital pilots that use their Thanatos for peaceful industrial moving purposes complain of the increasing costs to move stuff around lowsec and nullsec.
And all these leads me to my point: Thank Goons. Despite the fact that they have increased fuel prices, 0.0 ice miners will certainly find their wallets full for all those presents of joy this christmas season. And, despite the fact that there are less capitals fighting and less fighting occuring, I expect that the spring and summer months will will bring about a renewed need for new capitals and industrial handiwork- namely in the measure of dreadnaughts, which right now have seen prices go up 10-25% just for the hulls alone due to the buffs they recieved in Crucible.
As i found out exactly expensive it is to move ships around and goods from high to nullsec via step-off/jump-off systems, I myself plan to get in the market out here and mine ice to sell to my corpies. I've already been offered a massive ice contract which I plan to fill. Myself, I plan to go beyond that and start a stockpile of ice products too- I forsee an increase in fuel prices beyond what they currently are.
So for now, i'm heading out to the ice belt. It's time to quit denying the fact that Winter might not be coming, but that it is actually here, hiding under our frost-bitten noses and that we are keeping it at bay with good cheer, christmas songs, shopping (ingame and out), yule-log fires, PvP and industry.
Fly safe, and Happy Holidays from Tassemet and Elizabeth!
