Brawl or kite: how a veteran pirate rebuilt my Hookbill for Faction Warfare

 

It's late. I've been dabbling with my Caldari Navy Hookbill fitting for the past hour. Trying to figure out what's the best setup for my first foray into Faction Warfare (or Factional Warfare?). I think I've got a good fit, but I'm not convinced.

Then comes the next question: what next?

I've joined the Caldari faction, read through all the WARNINGS, but I have not a clue where to go next. The Militia tab popped up, but the conversation doesn't seem too friendly (aren't we supposed to be in the same camp?), and I resist the urge to ask. I'd rather test the waters by myself first, though that might be a bad idea, since I'm now a flashing little blip on someone's overview.

Then I remember Rixx telling me about using Plexes to get into PvP.

So I message him. "I'm in a Hookbill, looking to find Plexes. How does one do that? Please don't laugh..."

The Ten Commandments of the returning EVE capsuleer (now that the kids have grown up)

Back in 2010, I wrote a post called The Top Ten Commandments of the Capsuleer Parent. It was about survival — squeezing EVE Online into the margins of parenthood. Nighttime ops after bedtime. Changing diapers between gate jumps. Negotiating screen time with your spouse like it was a sov treaty.

That post came from the trenches. I was tired all the time, I was stubborn with my gameplay and blogging, and I was absolutely not giving up my game time.

Fast forward to 2026. The kids are grown. The house is quieter. The evenings are mine again. I should be living the dream, right?

Well. Sort of...

Here's what nobody tells you about coming back to EVE after a long absence: the game kept going without you (of course it did!). And so did you. You're no longer the same player. The game's not the same game — it is in a way, but it's also so different. And that freedom you spent fifteen+ years fantasizing about? It feels different than you thought it would.

So in the spirit of the original, here are the updated Commandments. 

Not for the parent surviving the chaos — but for the returning capsuleer looking at his docked ship and wondering where the hell everything went.

Detour into the unknown: My first steps into Exploration flying a Heron

I'm hitting pause on my Enforcer grind—and my eventual dive into PvP—to try something completely different: Exploration.

After months of security missions and getting my Merlin into proper fighting shape, I figured it was time to learn scanning, cloaking, and the art of sneaking around New Eden. You know, useful skills for not getting podded too quickly when I finally do jump into PvP.

Right now I'm sitting at 665 out of 750 Enforcer points (still not entirely sure what that means, but it sounds impressive). I could push through those last 85 points running the same missions over and over, but that familiar itch kicked in—the one that whispers, what if you did something else?

So I took the detour.