Well, I have to admit, EVE ain't the fastest thing out there.
Me and Danali finally nailed down what we want the corp to do as our 'trade'... namely high-stakes courier service. Someone way deep in the ass-end of unsecure space wants a few very hard to find modules, but can't be arsed to go get them himself? Our job will be to deliver them to him, even if there's an entire battlefleet in the way.
And there probably
will be battlefleets in the way. During our discussions, Danali figured that if we were in the least successful in our first few deliveries, we would soon become a very large target.
Mind you, this is quite some time away. We've gotten the basics out of the way (people have settled on races, we've got target ships in mind, we've securied blueprints for our 'corp-issued war frigates), now it's mainly getting the name out, building trust, and most importantly, aquiring the ships and skills needed to get this off the ground.
That's the long-term stuff.
Short term, we will soon have another battleship pilot in our ranks (Danali's getting an Apocalypse), and with two of them handy, we should be able to start busting down L4 combat missions and tackling 5/10 complexes. Those should be very interesting, and possibly suicidal.
As for staying awake while in Empire space (trust me, being in 0.0 keeps one
wiiiide awake!), I find it best to play in windowed mode. Then I keep something going in the background (browser, book, music, etc) that I can flip to while I travel or whatnot.
----Short Term Update----
Danali and I tested out one half of our L4 mission loadouts, namely taking the Aquitaine and stuffing it to the gills with large rails, damage modules, tracking computers, target painters, sensor boosters, and lots of heavy drones.
It was quite successful. Blew apart mercenary/Mordus cruisers in about 4 volleys apiece, and the drones handled everything else.
All we gotta do now is test out D's Apoc (one it's bought and fitted), and we might stand a good chance of being able to do L4 combat missions on a regular basis.
If that's the case, you can expect to come along for the action.
Unsure if this gets you revved up, but thought you'd like to know.