Blog Banter 39 - Home is Where You Stage

I don't answer all of these blog banters. I tend to go for the easy ones, the ones where I have an immediate answer the moment I finish reading Seismic's question to the community.

This month's banter is about home.

"Some say a man's home is his castle. For others it is wherever they lay their hat. The concept is just as nebulous in the New Eden sandbox. In EVE Online, what does the concept of "home" mean to you?"

I've moved around quite a bit. So I've had a number of homes. I just recently moved into a new one.

My first real home was with EVE University. I chose not to stage out of Aldrat, simply because I preferred being at a trade hub. So I chose Hek. Not an uncommon decision, among some of the membership, but it was not a recommended decision by the staff. The University war rules used to state that you could not be at a trade hub during war. By the time I joined, it was just a strong suggestion. It didn't hamper any of my participation. Fleets during wartime staged out of Aldrat, but I simply met them enroute, flying solo (against their silly rules) to join them.

After departing the University, I mostly drifted about, doing this and that. Engaging in planetary interaction in Molden Heath. Trying some PvP up near Old Man Star. Doing the hauling contract thing, flying hither and yon across empire space. Never really had any specific base of operations, and bought the ships I needed as I needed them. I made sure not to get too dependent on any one location, made sure I could pick up and move on easily.

Eventually I did move on. Stain. NPC nullsec. First staged out of a quiet corner of Stain, J-AYLV. But it proved to be a bit of a pain the butt. It's not as though Stain has an actual trade hub, but the closest it gets to one is LGK-VP, a good 28 jumps from the system I was calling home. I tend to like to be within 10 jumps of any system where I can buy and sell goods. So after about six weeks, I packed it up and moved to TG-Z23, just four jumps from LGK. Shortly thereafter I joined The Littlest Hobos. I moved fully to LGK at that time, but never made the move to their main staging system in Catch.

Being in a nullsec alliance, that didn't end up working for me. Mostly I didn't feel like I had the time to commit to nullsec, and really time is something they tend to require of members. En Garde wasn't demanding anything of me, don't get me wrong, but I knew if war ever came to Catch, I probably wasn't going to have the time to devote to a defense, and that was going to cause me some level of guilt.

Hulkageddon V was approaching, so I decided to depart Stain sooner rather than later. My eventual plan was to join faction warfare, but in the meanwhile, getting my gank on seemed like a fun thing to do. This is EVE, after all. I joined Corelin and his Fancy Hats Corporation. They were basing out of Amarr space, and I sent twenty Catalysts down to the staging system, but it never really felt like home. Mostly because I knew I'd be moving on in a month. The majority of the stuff I brought out of Stain, I'd left it up in Hek.

Hek is sort of my home away from home. Whenever I'm between corporations, I tend to function mostly out of Hek. It's not the cheapest trade hub, nor is it the most well-stocked, but it is reasonably central to everything in New Eden. It's within 10 jumps of every other major trade hub, except Amarr (if you're willing to travel lowsec, which I am quite comfortable doing at all times, as long as I'm not in a standard freighter.)

At the finish of Hulkageddon I set-up shop in Huola, after joining Autocannons Anonymous. I moved tonnes of ships down there, making use of both Black Frog Freight and Push Industries. I still have over 2B ISK in frigates, destroyers and cruisers docked up in station. I may return to Huola and the Minmatar some day.

Which brings me to my current home. The Minmatar/Amarr warzone was growing a bit stale, not too mention that only 1/10th of the entire warzone is actually used by both sides for PvP. So I jumped over to the Caldari side. I am currently staging out of Ishomilken with Fweddit. Rather than moving all my stuff from Huola, I simply repurchased another 2.5B ISK in ships and modules and freighted them to my new home myself.

Nothing grand. Nothing particularly heady or introspective. Home for me is simply where I'm staging all my activities from. And that location can change as the situation fits.