Letrange's EvE Blog

Mord's Axiom

2012-01-20T11:17:00.000-08:00

We'll see.

Send some timers my way would you?

2012-01-16T08:20:00.000-08:00

One problem with being in an alliance that seems to be predominantly euro time zone is that it seems a lot of timers happen in other time zones. Like when I'm at work. And strangely enough it often happens that RL takes over big chunks of my weekends. So Friday came around and many POSes were put in reinforced. At one point on Sunday I asked, "So, should we be doing X now?" (X had gotten delayed by all the POS work). And the HC replied "only once we deal with all these timers" and he gave me a link to the pos timer list. So I check the link and every single one of the timers comes out while I'm at work or in bed...

Ironic...

So I started working on X since it was either that or rat or log off with nothing to do...

I used to know this stuff

2012-01-13T06:11:00.000-08:00

EVE's learning cliff is alive and well. I am re-scaling parts of it I had not seen in a while. Case in point: Bombs launch in the direction you approach, not the direction the camera is facing...

Bombing run #1 over in right field, bombing run #2: on target...

I didn't kill any blues, and I managed to return the ship I borrowed, but yea, it's been a learning experience. Lucky I wasn't the only one channeling the god of dumb last night. Someone forgot to fit a cyno on their ship and that did not end well... "I'll cyno you in on them"... "oh shit"... "-.-;"... Glad that particular incident was not me. Also: "take fleet warp" when there's no one in fleet or wing position... Let's just put that fleet behind us and try not to do it like that again.

So I was dangling over the cliff by my finger tips but all ended well, for most of us anyways. The devil is in the details. Like where to set the exact keep at distance value (i.e. on the button in the selection tool, not in a right menu in the overview.... or in space... like I said, details...

Also, good thing I noticed my skills were 4 million above my medical clone BEFORE I ended up needing to re-upgrade a clone....

Those of you coming back to EVE after an extended stay away may want to brush up on those items. I know there's more than 2 or 3 of you.

Back in fleet ops.

2012-01-11T05:46:00.000-08:00

And I get back in fleet ops. Was a station op and there was an actual attempt to oppose the fleet. I was flying my Scimitar so I won't get on kill mails, but our kill to loss ratio on that op was nice and tasty and we (the logi group) kept people alive (at least those who brought the right ships and broadcasted for shields). It felt nice to get in a proper fleet again. I'd missed that.

Argh! The rust! and an uncharged headset!

2012-01-10T04:20:00.000-08:00

Note to self: Remember to plug in the headset. I end up doing this about once a week. So the headset has a short time to charge before I go online and it's inevitable that it dies right at the important part of an op. Murphy is alive and kicking. I'm probably going to have to get a spare wired headset for when that happens.

Screen #2 died as well, This weekend that will solve itself, but I'm down to 1 screen and DAMN do I miss screen #2. Makes running dual accounts MUCH simpler, not to mention having maps and such open in the 2nd screen etc etc etc...

Figures all this stuff would go wrong right after xmass when ze budget needs to be watched like a hawk. Come on 15th, move your ass.

Also: I apologize to the alliance mates for all the noob moves. Being away from the game for a few months really does rust things up. Gonna need some virtual WD-40 (and duct tape, cant forget the duct tape as I'm Minmatar). Hopefully I won't get too many ships killed while I un-rust.

Also, as a general rule in 0.0, DO NOT JUMP BETWEEN JUMP BRIDGE SYSTEMS WITHOUT CHECKING YOUR INTEL CHANNELS. Bloody lemmings (and yes I include myself in the list - not so much because I didn't figure they would be there last week as because I'd forgotten how to "bust thru" a cloaky bubble camp - all that rust I need to knock off). This has been a public service message brought to you by 90% of the alliance leaders in the game.

After an abortive attempt - back to 0.0

2012-01-09T06:53:00.000-08:00

After a first abortive attempt to get to 0.0, my carrier is finally out of low sec and in the deep end of the pool on the 2nd try. Just need to get it to the alliance staging system and I'll be able to get in fleet ops. Bout *expletive of choice* time.

Meanwhile, I keep hoping for my DUST 514 beta application to come thru... Time will tell.

Back to FAIL and thoughts on Incursions

2012-01-05T10:08:00.000-08:00

My corp is transitioning back to Cascade Imminent. So I'm in the "24h" transition phase. The good news is I'm pretty much ready to head back to 0.0. The bad news is that as a space holding alliance [FAIL] suffers from the usual constant annoyance wardecs of people looking for cheap kills in Jita. And since I don't have an incursion alt (defined as a character with enough skills to run in good incursion fleets), this will pretty much put paid to my ability to run incursions for the foreseeable future. It says something about incursions that I had very serious thoughts about dropping corp and either running solo or forming an incursion focused corp. Only the thought that my gut tells me they are due for a pretty significant nerf soon swayed the decision towards staying in a null sec corp.

The problem for all the Incursion haters is that the truth is most of the serious incursion fleets usually include a fair seasoning of 0.0 pilots. Null sec alliance leaders probably hate the damn things since they seriously reduce the attraction of null sec as a whole. Heck look at me. I KNOW I can make more isk more easily by staying in high sec and running incursions. Since I didn't have the ships the join PvP fleets after I unsubscribed my alts for the summer and returned after Crucible, I didn't have any problem justifying doing incursions. And I was right. I'm heading back to 0.0 with a carrier that can move my PvP ships from high sec to 0.0 bases and staging systems. I would not be able to afford this by now had I stayed in 0.0 or gone back to it right after becoming active again. And therein lies the quandary for null sec alliances. Null sec alliances need bodies for the fleets they run to protect their space. No bodies, and the fleets don't happen. No fleets and pretty soon you don't have any space. The alliances need this space for it's T2 moon goo and renters. The grunt pilots though are just looking for better income than in high sec and possibly some fleet action. Or vis versa, some fleet action with some better income than high sec to afford the shiny ships fleet actions call for.

The call of "Fleet up to defend your space" rings rather hollow when "your" really means "the alliances" and from the income point of view it's rather shit compared to incursions especially since the sanctum nerf. The worse thing from the point of view of the alliance leaders is that this affects the "mid level" grunts the most. The guys senior enough to fly the fleet ships but not senior enough to have a vested interest in the alliance's space.

Couple that with the 0.0 alliance influence on the CSM and CCP's stated interest in getting people to move to 0.0 (It's like herding cat's isn't it?) and you get "incoming nerf". When I don't know, but it's going to happen. Heck I suspect we'll see them move most if not all the high sec incursions to low sec. That'll make the pirates happy.

Incursions as they stand are probably a rather large failure of design. What they should have done is designed high sec incursions aimed at a fleet of 10-20-40 2-4mil sp pilots with apropriate levels of rewards for those levels. Aim the low sec ones to to need Logistics ship support and aim the 0.0 ones to need logistic support with serious dps. Then there's the problem of targeting 0.0 incursions, I would have made them smaller but more spread out and they would concentrate on "developed" constellations (i.e. make them 3 systems only (VG-AS-HQ) and spread them out more and have more of em running simultaneously (have 6-10 of em run simultaneously) so that it's not a twice a year experience for null sec pilots (which it currently is for those run in null sec). Seriously: as a null sec pilot how many times have you run a null sec incursion? I think goons and russians get like half of them - if you're a smaller entity they're a once in a blue moon thing you can mostly ignore. I'd have the 3 system null sec incursions run for half the time so that they bounce around null sec more.

That would be more balanced. Is it going to happen like that? Probably not. Sad.

Back to work.

2012-01-03T06:52:00.000-08:00

Well, I managed to survive the holidays once again. I also managed to run some good incursions over the holidays. Spent just about all of it already buying materials and fittings for the ships I'm preparing for 0.0 as well as fittings for my carrier (yikes, fitting out a carrier is not cheap). By tonight I should be able to learn the skill that will let me fit the last module in place. By no means does this imply I am ready to fly/fight with my carrier. It remains a suitcase carrier for now. I have about 6 months of skill training ahead of me on the carrier skills. And that's after I can get in the Guardian. A rarity of me, I'm actually cross training to Amarr cruiser 5 in order to get into the armor logistics ships.

On the PI front, I've slowed down since Incursions and preparations for the move to 0.0 are talking so much of my time. My research alts are banging away relentlessly on the holes in my BPO collection. All is prepared for the fuel switch over later this month. So all is well on that front.

All this progress makes me wonder what wrench is about to be thrown in my plans. There's sure to be one. Come on, this is EVE.

Fly safe all and a happy new year!

Back from the travels

2011-12-29T06:45:00.000-08:00

The Christmas travel season is now over. The week long "what was that all about?" annoyance wardec is almost over. I've got some new hulls coming out of the oven. Things are good. We'll see if this trend can continue.

Anatomy of a failed Incursion Fleet

2011-12-20T11:54:00.000-08:00

Well it was bound to happen, My first fail incursion fleet. Only one ship was lost, no sites were finished and the fleet was disbanded. So, here's an AAR so that others may recognize when this happens and react accordingly. Personally I learned a lot since it was my first attempt at an Assault.

The fleet started out well enough. Trying to get 21 random people to work together is always a bit if a crap shoot. I was the 3rd logistic ship to join so I knew I was in for a bit of a wait while the fleet firmed up. But as we approached being ready, there were signs things could potentially head south. The original FC had to change computers and then could not get on voice coms so another pilot volunteered to be FC. Then there was backseat coaching from fleet chat which the new FC ignored and/or didn't pay attention to. Not to mention certain people did not look like they were on voice comms (never a good thing).

Things started off with a we bit of a Leroy since there was cross talk on comms and we got in and the anchor was saved. That's when things went a little south. As the FC was trying to sort out targeting info and what not, one of the Basilisks made the cardinal sin of not broadcasting when he was getting yellow boxed. Which means that the rest of us were slow off the mark to getting reps on him and he went down rather quickly (this can happen when one gets alphaed). Then in the recriminating confusion that followed most of the DPS squadron warped off while one of the Logistics ships was tackled. The rest of us stayed on the field while the remaining DPS killed the tackle and then we all warped off, so the only killed ship was a Basilisk (it could have been worse).

Needless to say the fleet fail-cascaded at this point. A few observations:

1) I think I'm going to want a sebo with a scan script when I'm in Assault/HQ fleets instead of the tracking link. In Vanguards it's not a problem as I can lock everyone up while in there.

2) If you're in a cruiser, MOVE!!!. For fuck sake, I don't care if you have 31k (or what ever) buffer tank, moving with an afterburner on makes that tank MORE EFFECTIVE by REDUCING INCOMING DPS... How the hell do you think Scimitars survive? It bloody well isn't our massive tanks...

3) GET ON BLEEDING COMMS. Most FCs are too fucking busy to pay attention to fleet chat except for responses to questions they are asking. If you need the FC's attention for something important, use voice - don't expect him to even notice that you're typed something.

Incidentally if you notice an FC that lets point 3 get out of hand (i.e. letting too many people in who ware not on voice comms - both ways) it's time to plan your bail out maneuver.

That's it for now. It does not look like I'll be able to get together a fleet of 0.0 ships prior to January at this rate. My presence online is going to go down over the holidays... It being xmass and RL being RL.

Lots of things with the alts

2011-12-19T04:46:00.000-08:00

This weekend was a "too much shit going on with real life" type of weekend. So not enough time in single blocks to really get into incursions (their one problem). I did finally get things sorted out with the character transfer of the last character over to my research account. Oh that reminds me - I need to close off that petition. About the only thing left to do at the moment alt wise is setup the head researcher's PI. I've got the 3 BPOs that still need ME cooking away, and the PE stuff fully maxed out.

I probably should do a run of scimitar invention while I'm still in high sec. I think I may be going thru a lot of them in the future and "rolling my own" is probably going to save me some iskies in the long run. I'll need to do a datacore run but I do believe I haven't done one in quite a while so that should give me enough to rock on with. One thing I'm going to need to do with the PI thing is concentrating the materials needed for fuels.

Fuel

2011-12-16T07:20:00.000-08:00

Well, I managed to get the research POS fueled for the next two weeks. In about a week I'll fuel it up to last until January 24 with some switch over fuel in there.

Busy

2011-12-14T06:37:00.000-08:00

Fair warning: Between preparations for getting a new car, a concert, an office xmass party and sundry other items, this week is not looking good for my presence in EVE. This will have it's impact on blog posts of course. Ah well such is life, there's always the weekend...

In the name of science

2011-12-12T16:00:00.000-08:00

Since I over-converted my stocks of matari fuel (for my research POS), I was curious if my skills and standings were such that I could re-convert back to the raw components. Without loss. The answer is yes. If you as a refiner use a "no tax" station and your BPOs are researched to ME:40 you can do round trip for only the manufacturing costs. This should simplify the lives of those, like myself, who over-did the "prepare for the fuel block switch over".

Now all you need to do is grab however many fuel block you would have been be shoving in your towers, and simply reprocess them back into raw fuels and ship that off to your towers (with extra robotics for the smaller towers, of course). I no longer need to go crazy buying new fuels to make it to January 24th.

CCP and their communications issues

2011-12-12T13:03:00.000-08:00

Most of CCP seems to be learning. Some are not. Case in point: CCP Soundwave. Remember this is the guy who was pushing the "greed is good" position within CCP's internal "get with the program" document. We've all seen where that led (20% layoffs for the short attention span set). His most recent pronouncement of wisdom? Fuel blocks! (and CCP Soundwaves wildlife safety advice)...

CCP Grayscale redeems CCP later on with a concise post about the real reasons for the delay. But seriously man Someone needs to sit on CCP Soundwave. Or at least restrict him to flying in space things where he's marginally competent.

CCP may be trying to improve communications but yeeeeesh.

Carrier

2011-12-11T18:41:00.000-08:00

Between the Saturday incursions and the sale of the CO gantry (and attendant upgrade parts), I was able to scrape together enough isk to afford a carrier. Now I need to build up my sable of "Fleet Doctrine Approved" ships in order to finally be ready to head back to 0.0 Should only take me another 1 bil or so worth of running incursions.

At least it will give me time to fit out what I can on the carrier and skill up a few things for more mods ans what not. The idea is not necessarily to fly it in combat - but I've at least got the remote repairers and what not.

All over the place

2011-12-09T11:29:00.000-08:00

So, I actually had some time to get in game last night. Started off with the PI to get it out of the way. Then went on to Pop the gantry out of the oven. While it cools in my stockroom container, I only have to wait until tonight to get the last of the P4's to upgrade it, at which point it's time to hock it to the alliance, corp, friends or if none of the above, put it up on contract. I'll need to get a price check in Jita before I decide what to sell it for.

Then later on I went and did some incursions. Got in an average fleet. Made about 85mil or so. Poor FC had a bit of a scare on the last site as he got seriously alpha'ed. Bit of armor patching after that fight and all was well.

Then it was back to my high sec base in order to continue the preparations for eventual return to 0.0. In the event I decided to slap together some Imicus cyno boats for my alt. So a bunch of manufacturing jobs were arranged. For some reason I like to have a prototype cloak on a cyno boat, so a matching bunch of those are "in process".

Once all the hulls baked, it'll be time to start staging them. Hopefully by the end of this weekend I'll have that suitcase carrier as well. Time will tell.

Restricted game time issues

2011-12-08T06:38:00.000-08:00

I did managed to get some PI done and actually trucked over to the only high sec Incursion for a few sites. Much too much competition when there's only one high sec site but oh well. In other news things have progressed to the point where I'm cooking the first gantry and in 2 days I should have the rest of the T4's for upgrading the gantry. At that point I'll put the whole lot up for sale on contract. Goons and a few (only 2 to 3 gantry packs in high sec on contract) enterprising Jita residents seem to be doing the same, but since that's in Deklin for the most part, it doesn't really count as competition for the high sec market.

We'll see how that works out. A gantry pack seems to be running between 250 (Deklin price) and 300~ish (Jita/HS price). I'm actually surprised there's not more as there's no reason to buy a gantry alone since it can't do jack until you upgrade it... The supply of BPC's on the other hand is quite sufficient. Un-surprisingly.

Oh, and please don't ask about the 131000 chickens incident...

Prognostication

2011-12-06T12:03:00.000-08:00

I think that's a word. Not totally sure... I know, "To the internets batman!"... prognostication... what do you know, it IS a word.

Anyways, As the astute can guess I'm going to prognosticate on the impact SWTOR will have on EVE online. And I'm going to say it's limited. If anything all it should do is slow EVE's recovery from the 18months of madness. The initial indications are good, and if CCP can keep up and do a few good patches post Crucible (like oh, say get out the assault frigate's 4th bonus in Crucible 1.1 for example), then follow it up with a above par patch in the summer 2012 (like say some rather engaging interaction with the dust bunnies along with some continuation of the revamp of older EVE systems). I'll say they have gone a good long way to repairing their relationship with their customers (it's like any long term relationship - there's going to be spats along the way - sometime serious - sometimes not). Takes communications.

Why I think EVE will not be greatly impacted by SWTOR: In a word, WoW. From all reports SWTOR is an arch standard, diku mud derivative MMO very similar in overall features to World of Warcraft and it's ilk. The thing to remember about EVE is that it's a VERY different beast from a traditional themepark MMO. It's community is different. It's feel is different. It's core demographics are rather different. EVE appeals to the griefer and/or the older gamer interested in a complex social game with just about limitless possibilities where you are responsible for your destiny in game. There are a sub-set of both of those who are probably also SW fanboys who are just marking time until the next SW MMO appears, but I think they will be found to be the minority.

WoW on the other hand may see serious subscriber flow, due to the similarities in mechanism and the fact that their core demographics probably have more of an overlap. The big question I have is "How bit and bad will the rebound be? Time will tell.

Blip

2011-12-06T07:14:00.000-08:00

A rather short amount of time was available to me to go online last night. PI. That is all.

Humm, is it DUSTy in here?

2011-12-05T06:15:00.000-08:00

Oh, and by the way, I noticed this following artifact in the overview settings over the weekend:

WTF?

Is it me or are we seeing the first inklings of DUST 514. Discuss the fact that there are BOTH types of bases!?!

Fuel Block BPO

2011-12-05T05:24:00.000-08:00

The fuel block BPOs are cooking nicely. They should be ready by the end of the night Tuesday. I finally got all my researchers able to remote research properly so I can sit them on the planets where they do PI (well in the stations in said systems anyways) and simply so the research remotely x numbers of jumps away. Rather convenient the system with the tower didn't have a good mix of planets.

One of the issues I'm going to have is that to get a "right mix" of planets to do long term gantry production, I'll need 4 characters doing PI. With that I can pump out a gantry and it's upgrade parts in about 8-9 days. Another option would be to go to full on production planets and buy the P1's off the market. But that would take some serious isk investment on anything I have on the market on sale. Then I figure I could get a gantry done every 2 days on a single character. If I had a spare 500mil or so I might consider it if it was profitable (it probably is at this point).

The good thing is that I'm effectively self sufficient as far as gantry BPCs go. the cheap first day BPCs seem to have disappeared from the market and they are climbing up in price as the mineral market recovers from the tornado that was the Tier 3 BC storm (bad pun, I know, bad Let, bad!).

Meanwhile I re-stocked up my mineral bunker (depleted from the BC manufacturing runs) and still need to get 400mil to get to the 1bil price point I set myself as an objective before buying my carrier. Once I get that I'll want to stoke it up above 1bil before buying a pile of PvP ships. And then one more time before before I consider myself ready to head back to 0.0. If I'm still in corp by then. I'm not entirely sure that I will be. My CEO seems to be ok with my rebuild and prepare in empire plan. The alliance leadership may be less so. But it's the difference between being effective and not so...

Friday and Saturday

2011-12-03T21:40:00.000-08:00

Well, I get in an excellent incursion fleet on Friday. I managed to nail the not so mythical 100mil an hour. Props to the FC. Ran with that fleet for 3h before it disbanded - very nice.

That and some PI pretty much took care of my Friday night. I also re-activated my 3rd account which initiated some character shuffling. Got the cyno alt over to the 3rd account, going to get the research ceo back on the 2nd account. That'll have all 3 of my research chars on a single account which means I can un-sub them as a unit when I don't need research and can work on getting the main research character cleared for T2 invention and stuff. I also need to do some corp movements. Make sure all the 3 characters on the research account are in the same corp and all that.

The other high sec capable corp I've got I'll be selling to friends (can anchor in gal 0.7 and min 0.7). So by the end of the weekend, my fuel pellet bpos will be cooking. They should be done by mid week at which point it's going to be a matter of converting most of my existing fuel stocks into pellets (keeping just enough to fuel that research tower through the switch over. We'll see.

Didn't get a lot of incursions done until really late Saturday night.

Shuffle shuffle shuffle...

More Incursions

2011-12-02T07:00:00.000-08:00

I started the evening getting my PI plans firmed up and working on my main and my #1 alt's planets. This got them knocked into shape. My main's Barren planet got turned into a pure manufacturing planet with 21 advanced and 1 high tech factories. This allows me to manufacture eve the most complex P4s straight from P1's with only the High tech factory being used at 50% capacity. Takes a while to set up but once it's up and running I should be able to get a gantry and it's constituent parts pumped out in about 8 days. I've just got to do some massaging of some of my other PI alts to make the materials input streams more consistent (especially from the Lava planet) and we'll be good to go.

Then I managed to get some incursions done and followed by some long distance hauling in my Freighter to round off the evening. The hauling was in support of some more long term plans for the weekend. Which is mostly going to be incursions for my main.

Tidying up

2011-11-30T20:48:00.000-08:00

After logging in, I was able to get my 4 fuel cube BPOs. Researching at a tower it should only take 3 days to get those to ME:40 which is "perfect" for the cubes. Then it'll be a matter of laying in a 2 week reserve while waiting for the exact date of the change over and plan on converting all existing pos fuel stocks to the new cube format after the switch over.

I wasn't really prepared for the new tornado BPO (not to mention my work hours conspire against me being able to truly take advantage of it). But I did manage to do some flip and profit on Mexallon as well as sell 2 Tornados at a profit (one at over 200% of mineral value) so basically I was able to get my own tornado for free. I'm not worried about the investment in the BPO since it simply goes into the collection and can be pulled out for use at any future moment in time. Sometime in the next 3-5 days I should really make sure it goes into the research slots.

Otherwise it was a quiet Wednesday. I fitted out an AC Thrasher last night and an AC Tornado tonight. Should be interesting to use em one day. In the meanwhile I plan on heading back to incursions to make back the isk I just used to secure that long term investment that is the tornado. Being independent of the whims of the market is rather nice. If I've got the time I can analyze whether it's worth making my own or buying off the market.

But on to incursions for the weekend.

The PI tax whine fest

2011-11-30T11:13:00.000-08:00

The thin of skin may want to avoid the Science and Industry channel on the EVE-O forums for a bit. We need some cheese and crackers to go with that whine.

Some observations:

1) this game needed some more isk sinks and reduced faucets.

     1a) The high sec tax increases on PI are part of the more isk sinks,

     1b) The removal of insurance payout on concord ganking is part of the reduced faucet.

2) There needs to be a balance between risk and reward.

     2a) you are taking little to no risk doing PI in high sec. - you shouldn't get as much reward as 0.0 or low sec.

     2b) there are 3 choices for more risk: work with a 0.0 alliance, work with a low sec corp/alliance, work with a wormhole corp/alliance. The people putting up the gantries get to control the tax rates. Find one you can work with or create a corp that can do so and you can control that. That's the reward for the risk of putting out the gantry and getting a customs office in place.

someone's going to need to run a detailed break even analysis on the amount of time it takes for a gantry/CO to make back it's investment cost in high sec tax equivalent.

Let's do some back of the envelope calculations:

a gantry takes a bpc (25mil) 71 P4's (using the 1350000 average that works out to 95.85mil (some are used for the gantry and some are used for the upgrade) and a capital construction part (say 5 mil to be safe with current mineral volatility) that works out to a CO costing you 125.85 mil (or probably slightly higher). Say you arrange a P1 producing planet to make you on average 8-10k P1's a day. Exporting that each day will cost you 400k to 500k in taxes (More - much more for a production planet where you have to import most stuff and export the end product). based on some calcualtions I did for production planets they effectively earn twice the taxes (import materials followed by export finished goods - the volumes are such that it effectively doubles the taxes or close enough not to matter) so, let's say 800k to 1mil per day (as a conservative number).

so if you have a virgin planet in 0.0 space you're effectively "breaking even" on your investment in about 4 months for a production planet and 8 month for an extraction planet. If you need to replace the 17% interbus ones a production planet CO only has to survive 2 months and an extraction planet CO only 4 months IF only one character is using it. Remember a gantry benefits EACH character that uses it.

Say you have a planet where your corp as between 5-10 characters doing PI on it? well you "break even" on your costs about 5-10 times faster . Let's take an example of what I mean: The gantry benefits say 5 characters and you slap it on a production planet in 0.0. 3 of the dudes use the planet as a production planet, 2 use it as an extraction planet. That means that you should break even on that planet in about 7-8 days and that's low long the gantry has to survive to pay for itself.

Moral of the story: if you like to work alone you're screwed. A corp with enough characters doing PI on the planets they slap gantries on should be able to justify the purchase and installation of the gantries in about a week to two weeks depending on the use of the planet involved.

Personally, if I was a CEO in a corp that has enough characters doing PI, I'd use corp cash to slap gantries up, put an 8% tax until the initial investment is payed off then reduce it down to 2-4% to pile up cash for replacement gantries (for those lost to ganking and what not)

This is hardly the end of the world people.

The first night of Crucible

2011-11-30T05:16:00.000-08:00

So, I picked up the new Tornado BPO. Just as I expected it was around 600mil. 650mil to be exact. But that was hardly surprising based on the prices of existing BPOs Baked my first one and flew it to market. Put it up for over 200% mineral costs and it went in seconds. Those who were more prepared are making a first day killing as these things are selling like hotcakes. Holly cow. Does anyone remember the short term impact of the Noctis on mineral prices? You ain't seen nothing yet. It was almost like there was a major war or something and the fleet replacement purchase orders had come through.

Yep that new font is going to take a bit of getting used to but it'll work. Being able to tell the difference between certain letters like D and 0 is a nice feature to have (only took you like 7 years...).

They still messed up my plans to make fuel pellets but apparently this morning's patch to the patch will fix that. Yay!

The Economic side is still reeling from the changes to the taxing structure. I'm not surprised they did the change. The previous taxes were based just about strictly on the volume of the goods. Now they are based on values pinned to market prices in November 2011. Honestly they just cut into profit margins. This is definitely by design. Need for those new gantries to have value. This shocked the less observant. Big surprise there. I think this is more of a case of the grognards being grognards than anything else. It's the sort of bitching that CCP can safely ignore. And it does introduce more isk sinks into the game. Well played.

Production planets will need to plan their production out much more carefully. You'll want to minimize the amount of import and export you're doing. I suspect that P2 extraction planets will come in vogue again. Interestingly if you look at the import export rates compared to the previous level's import export rates you'll see that once you get the product you want you're stuck using it's export tax. P2's can be manufactured on single planets (there isn't one that can't be as I recall). for P3's and above SOMETHING must change planets prior to manufacturing. if you look at taxes on an item and compare those to taxes on the next lower level's item going into it, you'll notice that the lower down on the PI scale an item is the less taxes you will have payed overall if that's the item you ended up moving. EXCEPT P0's. Those are never worth getting out of the gravity well tax wise.

What this means. I suspect there will be 2 types of extraction planets. P1 types destined for the direct market of a P3/P4 manufacturing planet. P2 planets are probably more inefficient total goods wise compared to P1 extraction planets but the end product will pay less taxes than if you'd moved the P1's from another planet to a production planet. Expect end use P2's (those not destined to be made into P3's and P4's) to come from those planets. For P3's and P4's you're probably better off shipping in all P1's to take advantage of the break in taxes afforded at the P1 level and then have a mix of processing nodes such that the end product you desire is attainable on planet. I suspect this will concentrate the serious volume trade on the P1's and that PI goods that are not also end use goods will stay on planet as part of a manufacturing chain to keep import/export costs down.

You're going to say AHAH! what about Integrity Response Drones or Wetware Mainframes??? It still applies since you would have needed to move P3's and P3's can't be manufactured full chain on a single planet, so some thing (either P2 or P1) would have needed to pay taxes to make the P3. Tough luck there.

The old gun icons are back. Surprisingly it applied to all turrets including salvager and tractor beams.

One thing about the new nebula that is rather glaring. You don't see any changes until you actually jump regions. Since they are not preternaturally generated I can understand the need to do it this way. But damn the region jumps are jarring. Otherwise they are gloriously glorious.

As a mainly Minmatar pilot, I'm not getting the full effect of the V3'ing of the ships yet but I assume that will be on it's way for the next expansion (poor overworked art department - but they do excellent work).

It's too early to judge but so far this rather small expansion (they got this done in only 6-8 weeks for crying out loud, there were what? 20+ weeks between the summer and now?) seems like it will be judged as a mildly successful one. We'll need to see if they can actually deliver an expansion worthy of the name for the next summer's expansion.

edit: gah! typos... sorry about that for any early readers

pps: if it looks like I spent a lot of time with a spreadsheet while flying around - the answer is yes I did.

Ah, THERE's the CCP I remember

2011-11-29T08:17:00.000-08:00

"Fuel block blueprints will not be seeded on tranquility today"

"The new blueprints for fuel blocks, as featured in the blog Starbase happy fun time blog by CCP Greyscale, will not be seeded immediately after the release of Crucible. We are expecting that these blueprints will be seeded on the market in the next couple of days."

Thank you so kindly for messing up my travel plans. It wouldn't be a CCP expansion without delayed features any more.

A relaxing break before the shiney

2011-11-29T07:18:00.000-08:00

So, I did some PI (of course) and then navigated out to an ice belt over in matari space. My alt had already been sent on afk ahead in the Orca with the Mak in it's cargo hold. I know I know you're going to go "Let, dude, wtf are you doing mining ice? You're making gobs of iskies doing Incursions, just buy the ice". This is true but the incursions were down to 1 incursion last night and I wanted to pre-position myself for post-patch activities (BPO acquisition) and lay in a supply of matari ice for my alt corp's research tower when the time comes (I've pilled up quite a bit of BPOs that need research). So I decided a relaxing evening of filling up the Orca with ice was called for.

I figure a 2-3 month run of research should get things slapped back into shape. Need to research the bombs and a 2 BS BPOs and what not. Getting my alt corp to do that (they're all T1 researchers) should make it easy.

So by the end of the evening my Alt was back at my high sec base and the ice had been contracted back to my main. My main was in place ready to rock once the patch lands. And my other alts had done some PI work. Fun fun.

Now I just have to survive the day at work...

I just realized

2011-11-28T12:53:00.000-08:00

I'm a stealth blog again! After getting dragged kicking and screaming (well no, not really, I just never asked to be put in a blog roll or a blog pack - that was never why I blogged) into the blog pack. Twice. I have finally regained my status as a stealth EVE blog. I just noticed that EVEOGANDA doesn't have me listed in either the pack or the sites list.

Woot!

/me cloaks up and slinks away.

p.s., is Rixx the new blogfather? Did he actually kill off CK? Where are the bodies buried? Inquiring minds want to know.

Crucible Patch Notes

2011-11-28T12:14:00.001-08:00

For your TL;DR needs: The Crucible patch notes are here.

Not bad

2011-11-27T17:18:00.000-08:00

After 3 sessions of Incursion and having run 34 vanguard sites, I'm up 310mil isk over the weekend. Unless I'm totally mistaken that should make 45k ish Concord LP when those incursions finish up (if they do - no clue how that works).

This meshes very well with my 149mil isk investment in my Scimitar. So overall I'm ahead 160mil which is rather good considering am now over 1b again and on the 22nd of November I was at 209mil... Ah yes, EVE is like getting on a bicycle. Just takes a while to knock the rust off is all.

I must admit I like incursions - going in with a fleet reminds me of other MMOs where you do things as a group. People from other MMOs are going to find it rather familiar territory (with of course eve specific idiocyracies - like the danger of suicide ECM boats breaking up your rep chains). Out of all the activities in EVE Incursions are probably the activity that bears the most resemblance to other MMOs. The only problem is that with a requirement of having 3 logistics pilots for the first tier that actually pulls in isk, it's pretty much strictly for the veterans instead of something that could be used to ease other MMO players into EVE. Ah well. Another lost design opportunity in EVE. We should be used to those by now.

As I look forward to a more relaxing evening than concentrating on keeping fellow pilots alive in incursions I'm feeling pretty good about returning to EVE. At this point my plans post-patch are pretty set.

1) Get the fuel pellet BPOs
2) Get the Tornado BPO.
3) Convert existing fuel reserves into the new format
4) Get the 3rd account re-activated and that pile of un-researched BPOs researched (I need to consider some character moves so that the corp/research characters are all on the same account - gah)
5) Get a suitcase carrier
6) Get an isk reserve buffer
7) Head back to 0.0

On the skills front, I'm doing some emergency shoring up of drone skills (What? I can't fly T2 logi drones??? Damn it! - not to mention the T2 mining drones for that vanguard site -.-;). I'll get back to the carrier skills once that shoring up is done. I may slip in Command ships soon though as I killed off all the pre-requisites.

That should keep me going for a bit.

I will point out the irony of wanting to be in 0.0 but being unable to generate the income necessary to progress there in 0.0. Good design CCP.

First serious Incursion

2011-11-26T10:32:00.000-08:00

So I log on this morning and "head to the sound of the drums". I.e. get in my Scimitar and open my Journal and pick a likely incursion in high sec. So off I go to the Amarr one.

All in all a rather buys time but we hit 9 sites and got the rewards for 7 of them, so this prety much brought me about half way to pay for the Scimitar I just purchased for this endeavor. I got lucky and there was a good FC on hand. A Black Legion pilot - I remember those guys from the days I was in Rage back in Vale of the Silent. They hung in nearby Geminate at the time. At any rate, as soon as he had his 3 logi pilots, namely to other Scimitars and myself and the knowledge that we had 4 tracking links between us, he got 4 faction battleships and 2 T3 to go with his Sleipnir.

All in all it was a very good first run. I can tell that part of the job is going to be being able to know what the spawn patterns are for each site as in this case with solid logi and dps the FC was able to burn the sites as fast as possible and we were able to keep everyone alive. Less logi support and we would probably have been better clearing out the waves although that would have taken longer. So taking notes for when I get my own pilots together for this one day.

So for the afternoon: Make the rest of the isk spent on the Scimitar up and start making forward progress toward more isk for Tornado BPO and a Nidhogur. Not to mention all the skill books for capital modules I need to acquire and command ship skill as well.

Looks like I'm back.

Preparing for Incursions

2011-11-25T20:55:00.000-08:00

As I got home from work, I did the usual PI (now planning on manufacturing a medium minmatar control tower) run and then proceeded to grab an incursion fit for the Scimitar. Noticed that what looks like a canonical fit is acr based instead of ccc based like my current 0.0 fit scimi. So I decided to simply buy a new one and fit it out as indicated.

So off to jita and 150mil isk later I'm tooling back to my high sec base in my brand new scimi - 4 large repers and an ab and it's all cap stable - woot. Noticed I can't use T2 logi drones and immediately slapped some skills in to begin addressing that. Carrier 3 should finish as I sleep.

The idea is to see if I can get in on some Incursion action over the weekend. Time will tell.

Off to bed for now.

Oh right, the two alts also had PI going...

2011-11-25T07:43:00.000-08:00

PI is low-ish maintenance once it's up and running. But getting it up and running? Yeesh. Have the alts on a 4 day cycle. I'll see how that works out when I have both toons contract their PI goods to my main and simply use the main to either do the further processing or selling on market.

Also did a run to Jita to get rid of more trash.

Not much else to say, everyone seems to be in the "get ready for the patch on Tuesday" mode.

More carebearing... And some rust... Lost of rust...

2011-11-24T05:59:00.000-08:00

And I just reactivated one of my alt accounts. In celebration I went and found a grav site. Well more like I found it and then decided to celebrate my alt's re-activation with some light mining. For those who are just stumbling onto my site for the first time and might be newbies (or PvP pilots - same thing as far as mining goes). Gravimetric sites are exploration sites that contain mine-able asteroids. The particular site I found was supposed to contain Kernite as well as the Omber, but obviously someone else wiped the Kernite before I found it. Well waste not want not. I killed the Omber to de-spawn the site.

I will note that once again DA RUST is showing. Talk about embarrassing. So I get to the site. Start mining. Damn!, a Myrmidon is on grid. Ok, switch to my combat ship. Face palm. Oh right. Need to offline the lasers and empty the cargo hold before the switch will happen cleanly. so there's my hulk, sitting empty in space floating serenely when the rats come on in and wouldn't you know it target my hulk!

-.-;;;

Well THIS is most embarrassing. So I get my alt to launch drones and take care of the rats while I shove the Loki back in the Orca my alt is flying and scramble madly to get back in my Hulk. Good thing Low SP Myrm pilots are not likely to have hulk skills or someone would have been justified in sneaking off with my Hulk.

It's the little things.

The earlier part of the evening was spent finishing the setup of PI on some nearby planets and getting a T1 hauler of the appropriate cargo space/maneuverability setup so that I could finish off the work started yesterday.

Datacore run and some PI

2011-11-23T05:44:00.000-08:00

So, last night I worked on my datacore situation. It hadn't been as long as last time so the isk was less. But it did allow me to setup another level 4 R&D agent which is the max there is with core complexion in high sec. The 5th slot was occupied by a level 3 agent. This brings my total of agents up to 5. This should help out on the passive income stream, while I get to work on more active methods.

I also finished "bunkering up" for some T1 manufacturing runs. This means having a mix ratio on hand that is good for most manufacturing tasks. I like to run an inventory of 4000 Megacite at "bunker full" state with each mineral below that x4 the one above (so 16k Zydrine, 64k Nocxium, and so on down to 16mil~ish Tritanium). Although the ratios are off for any specific faction manufacturing run, in the aggregate it works out quite well as a good "bunker" ratio. What runs out first depends entirely on what I've been building and it allows me to pump out at least 2 BS without having to calculate "do I have enough materials on hand". The idea is to build what you want then put up buy orders to re-fill the bunker, taking advantage of the buy/sell difference instead of simply deciding to build something and buying the minerals at the `sell` price.

Last but not least I got 2 planets of PI going to get some PI materials going as well (might as well, I`ll be in high sec for a bit after all. I just setup a cheap high cycle (20h) one extractor setup. Going to work on some math to figure out "at what point is it worth destroying the extraction head and buying a new one else where". We'll see.

I'm also starting to organize things among some pilots I know to get a core Logistical group together to go run some incursions after the patch. The idea being that so long as 3-4 of us have Logi 5 and we have some DPS we trust, it is relatively easy to get DPS to run vanguard sites.

We'll see how those plans go.

Inter bus shuttles are going for HOW MUCH?!?

2011-11-22T10:08:00.000-08:00

As I was cleaning up my inventory of "stuffs" I decided to look at the value of some of the one off stuff I've collected over the years. Most of it are not worth moving for the moment. But then I saw the Interbus Shuttle - only difference is a 20m³ cargo bay vs a 10m³ cargo bay. It's going for over 200mil on contracts!. Load up the Prowler with a bunch of meta 4's and that shuttle and haul ass to Jita. Do the usual "cloak thru Uedama" on the way and there we go, iskies to replace the iskies spent getting the Minmatar Carrier skill.

A bit of light exploration and some Noctis work later and I hit the sack. Going to have to do a datacore run soon as well.

Nothing knocks the rust off like...

2011-11-21T07:36:00.000-08:00

Well no, I didn't get a kill mail or loose a ship. I did manage to brown streak a Pilgrim. Here's the story of how a neutral Mammoth pilot got a really good laugh:

So, I decide to do a bit of exploration in the area I'm hanging in high sec. Hummm, 2 wormholes in the same system. Must be a Saturday. So I switch to my cloaky Loki. Warp to and take a look at the first one. Nope running out of time. Probably not a good idea. So I warp to the next one. Humm, time left but the hole is abused. As I sit there cloaked about 3500m off the wormhole, a Mammoth warps up and jumps!

Decloak. Jump!

And this is where the predictible script departs into keystone cops land. I spot only one ship on the overview and I: aproach->target->point->f1. Then I notice it's targeting me back? That's when the ship type registers: Pilgrim. Then my initial volley slams into it. Bang no more shields! While my artillery are cycling, he jumps out. I do believe I managed to panic him quite effectively. Unfortunately he took the wormhole with him.

Doh!

So now I'm sitting dumb and vulnerable without a quick exit. My wormhole reactions kick in. Cloak and move off the spot in case he has friends on the way. While my brain is still in "evasive action" mode, the Mammoth uncloaks and warps to his tower. This is where my time away from EVE shows. I did not react fast enough to lock and tackle the Mammoth.

Stupid rust!

So then the conversation in local starts up. The Mammoth pilot thought I was with the Pilgrim. And I thought the Pilgrim was with the Mammoth pilot. Lord knows what the Pilgrim pilot thought. So we had a good chuckle at the keystone cops routine and I inquired whether that wormhole that just went poof was the static.

"Um... please tell me that was your high sec static..."

"yea it was"

"Oh good"

Of course now my course of action is clear: Scan my way back out to high sec. Shouldn't be too much of a challenge. While I was scanning the center of the system, my friendly Mammoth pilot mentions some combat probes and a Buzzard on scan. I comment that he probably had a good laugh at what happened, then settle in to find my way out while the Mammoth pilot logs out at his POS.

The scanning down of the exit (of course, it's the last one I check), got my scanning skills knocked back in shape rather quickly. Getting the old D-scan habits back in shape and what not.

So eventually I get myself back to k-space and start chugging back to base, with little to show except for that all important experience and no ship losses to show for my mistakes (bonus!).

Later on in the weekend I managed to get out all the way to Vale of the Silent in order to un-snafu a manufacturing slot that was stuck in F-D49D. Kind of quiet there. Only ran into 1 bubble camp with no campers and another gate that had a sling bubble that didn't interfere with my travel plans as I approached the gate from a different celestial than was intended. Manufacturing slot un-stuck.
BPC and stuff trashed (just 35 x 10mn Afterburner I's so don't freak out - just not worth the hassle of selling to the Russians or Raiden.) so it doesn't clutter up my assets.

I also had a quick convo with my CEO about future plans and the fact I would not be coming back down to 0.0 until I built up the isk and got myself a suitcase carrier. Not to mention I need to get at least one alt account re-subbed for the cyno alt.

Slowly waking up after a summer's break.

Pardon the dusting

2011-11-18T14:27:00.000-08:00

Hey all (or hey the 3 who still have links to this blog)! As those paying attention to my comings and goings know, I've been logging in quite a bit for very short stays lately. And although there's not much in the way of industrial changes in EVE, there are quite a few new fixes and what not coming in the next patch. This leaves me with an important decision coming up. Do I get active in EVE again or not?

As you all (or the 3 of you as the case may be) know I un-subbed my alts and moved all my assets back to high sec in order to skill flip wait out the fall and see what the winter brought. As my post about destroyers indicates, I am still paying attention to what goes on development wise. I still say CCP is in full blown panic, knee jerk reaction mode, but it looks like some long standing issues are getting some love. I feel sorry for the CCP employes who got the axe over the summer but "Pride goeth before the fall". And the little guys pay the price.

I will point out that the dev production since REALLY pointed out how much EVE development has suffered with CCP's concentration split between the two other games. I hope for their sakes they can get DUST out the door without an entire year's delay (Me has PS3, me want BETA). While I'm on the subject. Allow me to point out something to the absolute IDIOTS in charge of the Nex store. It is not that Incarna will eventually be useful to EVE. It can be. The way you introduced it and marketed it, however... What drugs were you on? I also fail to see why you guys were so attached to introducing a horribly flawed secondary micro transaction system when you already had possibly one of the best micro transaction systems in gaming (talking about PLEX here - would someone please explain to Hilmar that PLEX IS Micro transactions even without the NeX). Your players are far from stupid and they WILL call your bluff. 8% reduction in subscriptions (the number I've heard somewhere) since the high point should point out the true cost of these miss steps to your game and hence your company.

Meanwhile let's get back to the decision point. Here's my current situation: RHI basically imploded and left Cascade Imminent [FAIL]. Yaxi is rebuilding it and has joined Cascade Probable while he does this. I'm still in RHI, but my previous experience with 0.0 life has left me with the issues that unless a corp/alliance is prepared to support non-cap pilots properly, living in 0.0 is not only rather difficult but actually costs more than it brings in. Definitely compared to life in wormhole space. So, I'm currently rather leery of that since I still don't have even a suitcase carrier.

So the question is: has CCP done enough with it's winter patch to address things and justify coming back. And if I do, my choices are: Stay with RHI and give another crack to 0.0 where my options are severely restricted or go and do something else that will build up my isk total as opposed to drain it.

The destroyer pilot in me acquired a shark-like grin

2011-10-26T14:16:00.000-07:00

Don't know how FUD this one is but if it turns out to be true...

EVE NEWS24 had an article called "Raw Intel: Coming Soon". In it there was the following little gem:

- Destroyers (T1 and T2) lost their ROF penalty. And the horrible cruiser-sized sig radius has dropped to a frigate-sized radius. Like it should be.

Lord, the grin I got was downright terrifying... I hope this comes true.

If this comes true, expect a resurgence of Thrasher wolf packs in low sec.

If this turns out to be on the books for winter for real, color me interested for this winter's patch.

The cynical in me

2011-10-24T11:08:00.000-07:00

Well now, CCP's latest moves are filling me with concern. Rumblings from various reporting sources like Massively, fill me with trepidation for the future of EVE online. This is having all the hallmarks of a knee-jerk reaction. Which can best be described by removing the word "knee".

With the burn rate issues and what not, I can see why CCP needed to cut employees. This was one of those "Get shit under control" where their burn rate HAD to start matching their income from EVE rate. Sucky though this is it HAD to be done or CCP goes under.

As distressing as it is for the employees, I can see why WoD got put on the back burner and CCP is concentrating on pushing out DUST and re-focusing on EVE. They had lost sight of where their bread was buttered. They are paying the price. The problem is now what? If, as Brendan reports there were no changes at the executive level and the entirety of the critical decisions came directly from Hilmar, then fine, he wants to fix things, he deserves a chance. However if Hilmar was not personally 100% responsible for those decisions, then some of the executives below Hilmar should have also gotten the axe. This has not happened. I suspect that this means that the same guys who have LOST what the player base considers the vision of EVE online to be are still in control of the decision making levers.

Combine this with the squeeky wheels in 0.0 and you have a recipe for some very dangerous changes coming up. I suspect that CCP could easily break high sec to the point where there is a mass exodus of carebears from the game. The sad/amusing thing is that since these executives don't understand the thought processes of carebears they could easily do this by accident thinking they were improving things. We'll need to pay close attention to subscriber numbers. Theoretically, by addressing the FiS issues and working on some FiS content, CCP could turn things around since there is still no real competition in their Space Sandbox segment of MMOdom. If players regain confidence in CCP, it should at least stem the outflow of players. Oh! and incidentally, 8% of your subscriber base is not "just a few disgruntled players" - you idiot, it's the start of a mass exodus. You need to start treating it as such. Then there are all the carebears who weren't really affected by this summer's fun. Fuck that up and you'll see a silent bleed and welcome to the NGE incident you're currently trying to avoid.

Oh, incidentally, congratulations on finally introducing battlecruiser to the game for the first time (at best all existing "battlecruiser" class vessels are simply what most people would call "heavy cruisers"). That still feels like a panicky "fuck, what can we deliver for the winter expansion to pander to the players?", but at least we're getting real battlecruisers out of it.

CCP needs to start thinking less in 6 month cycles and more with proper long term planning with staged deliveries matching up with those 6 month cycles. I have a suspicion that all the good work CCP Greyscale did over the summer ruminating on long term changes to the FiS side of thing just got thrown out with the bath water and the rush to show something for the winter expansion. This does not augur well for thought out changes.

Still waiting for the winter patch itself before making any decisions about coming getting active or un-subbing my main.

And I pass 70mil SP

2011-10-03T08:08:00.000-07:00

Apparently (according to EVE gate) I passed the 70mil SP mark over the weekend. I'm currently skilling through Drone Interfacing 5. It's one of the pre-requisites for Carriers. Once all the pre-requisites are done, I'm probably not going to pick up Capital Ships and Minmatar Carrier right away (pricy), and once all the pre-requisites are done, I'll probably finish off Frigate Construction 5 (want to be able to build my own Wolves/Jaguars) and then work on all the Amarr tree (get Lazorz skillz and then make sure frigate/cruiser/BS are at 5) followed by the Caldari tree.

I thought about command ships, but since I already have T3 unlocked (and fairly well skilled up) the price difference between a T2 equiped T3 and a T2 equipped Command ship is not that much, I figured it can wait until I get my leadership skills in place first. As a grunt in a 0.0 alliance (well the corp isn't at this moment in time, but it will be again in the future), the flexibility to fly the "flavor of the month" fleet fits is probably a higher priority than getting in command ships. So getting Amarr/Caldari up to snuff on the sub-cap arena is called for.

Bombers seem to be cyclically popular so I'll probably max out some skills in that arena at some time.

The Mittani searches for meaning.

2011-08-31T11:13:00.000-07:00

Still on break here. But I still follow the perambulations of EVE Online. In this vein I like to read The Mittani's column in Ten Ton Hammer. Issue 65, we find Mittens waxing philosophical. When you start comparing EVE to Orwell and Huxley, it's time to step back and take a deep breath. And although EVE is certainly a lesson in the darker side of human nature, it is, in the end, entertainment. Admittedly, stronger entertainment than you will find just about anywhere else once you play it at the level alliance leaders play it. But theoretically entertainment none the less.

But like strong drugs, liquor or any other generator of strong emotions, you would be well served by the old saw: "Everything in moderation and moderation in everything". Turning to philosophy to "find the meaning of it all" is a surefire sign that the deep end is approaching.

Instead of Orwell or Huxley, Mittens may want to look up Nietzsche instead.

""He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you"

Dude, once your CSM term is up, or earlier if necessary - take a break. Preferably before we're reading about you in the newspaper.

Just in case you guys didn't clue in

2011-08-03T10:34:00.000-07:00

I've decide to take a pretty significant break from EVE. I will still skill flip my main account and work on my alt accounts until their subscriptions run out. But for all intents and purposes I'm not active.

My reasons are, naturally, complex after 4 years in game. But a good part of it is the dis-enchantment due to the supposed direction CCP has been hinting EVE will be going. The problem with EVE is that because of it's support of greifing (I'm not talking about PvP - I'm talking pure griefing here) mechanics, most players develop a love hate relationship with EVE. The problem CCP has got is that it is very easy through miss-management, to tip the balance from love to hate causing all sorts of problems. There are features of EVE that make it totally unique. These are very desirable features amongst the player base. There are aslo plenty of features that detract from the game. These we put up with in order to play a game with those desirable features. A lot of these are also the reason that as popular as EVE is it will always remain a niche game and probably never crack the 1mil subscriber mark. The desirable features are such that it could easily do so with if wasn't saddled down with the irritants.

For me personally it was the "out of touch with reality" indicators that the price of stuff on the noble exchange imply. Also the evident desire to cut out EVE's industralists from new content. As well as rublings that wormhole space is not considered 0.0 enough to allow for the ABC's to be located there (whut?). All of this combined leads me to believe there's a chance EVE will start evolving in a direction I don't want to follow. Which gets me down. Which makes me dis-inclined to play EVE for now.

Don't get me wrong - the technical side of EVE keeps getting better and better. But the game design side of things is looking more and more like it's going to be making some fundamental game breaking changes (from my point of view) down the road.

We'll see. For now I'm putting my main into a skill flipping mode and going to play some other games to clear my mind. I'll probably re-examine the issue after the winter expansion and make a decision of whether it's worth continuing to skill flip or weather it'll be simply better to unsubscribe altogether. The development timeline however indicate that it might only be worth coming back in a year or two.

In advance to any meme queries: No, you can't have my stuff or my characters (everyone I've met who sold off his main lived to regret it later).

Disengagement

2011-07-12T07:57:00.000-07:00

Yep, going thru the EVE blah's at the moment. Further discussion after I tidy some things up.

Deadline

2011-06-28T15:49:00.000-07:00

So, I've checked my accounts, they all seem to renew in the month of august at different points in time. Basically this gives me until mid August to make a decision. That's fine, I don't really want to make a snap decision. But with the way CCP is going (their wording on what they are doing is damning) it looks likely that at a mininum, my alts will be un-subbing and probably also my main. They seem intent on ridiculous prices and eventually instituting pay to win (above and beyond the current pay to win philosophy of PLEX itself).

Like I stated yesterday, the fallout from the CSM meeting will be significant. If it at all looks like they are being manipulated by CCP as a PR move it could very seriously backfire. And the minute a CSM representative un-subs after the meeting?...

Either way, just waiting to find out which way it's all going to go. But either way I'll be voting with my wallet.

Wow... Clusterfuck of epic proportions

2011-06-27T07:24:00.000-07:00

CCP has, in the past, managed to piss off the player base, fairly significantly even. But this time they may just have crossed that line in the sand. I've been holding off on posting about the shit storm because the iRabble (internet rabble - coining it if it's not been coined yet) is doing a great job of it. Pitchforks and torches are being waved about and what not. I suspect that CCP having had such a long string of success has finally lost touch with it's player base. Reports of Perpetuum receiving a major influx of players could be rather telling. Up until now you haven't seen people un-sub en-mass from EVE due to changes. EVE has not yet reached an NGE moment. But it's definitely walked up to the edge of the precipice. We'll have to see if CCP can pull back from the precipice. Or not. The upcoming (this weekend) CSM meeting will be crucial. If any of the CSM members un-subs and says they can't tell us why due to the NDA, THAT will definitely precipitate an exodus out of New Eden.

Personally I haven't been on EVE much lately. I'm still cogitating about sticking around or not. Keeping the alts subbed in or not. I've got time to make my decision before their subscriptions come up for renewal so if I quit it wont' be a rage quit - it'll be a much more calmly considered change of gaming venue.

The most amusing thing is that they could have so easily avoided touching match to powder keg. This has been a game design/marketing failure of epic proportions. Think about it. There's a price/volume curve to goods. Places like Walmart pander to the masses looking for cheap affordable goods. Gucci, to the rich and the rich-wannabes. Both have a place in the market place. I suspect that Walmart's net profits are higher than Gucci's though (quantity has a quality all it's own). Due to the number of students and other "not rich" types who play EVE you'd guess that their mentality vis-a-vis price would be closer to the Walmart end of the curve rather than the Gucci end of the curve. Then you need to realize that your average non-vet looks at the value of anything in game from the metric of their IN GAME income (which is level 3 missions or mining in a Retriever once they graduate out of newbiedom). Until you've been playing this game for over a year or two anything in the price range of 400 million to 1.5 billion is "forget about it - it's one day in the distant future, not for now".

All CCP had to do to avoid the current crisis of confidence was make sure that the NEX (Nobel Exchange) was stocked with a mix of items ranging from relatively in-expensive to very expensive. They could have kept the monacle at it's current price if they'd stocked the store with cheaper items. The impression that they were pandering to the ultra-rich veterans and/or bot/rmt users was what pissed off most of their players (the ones it didn't piss off, have a firmer rooting in reality or were themselves ultra-rich - in game). Admittedly they were impressive when they went for the jugular and broke the 25$ psychological barrier on virtual goods that seems to have been established by World of Warcraft. But the way they did it just about guaranteed a shit storm. This primed the powder keg.

Then they touched off the match. Leaks showing that the direction they wanted to take the noble exchange were explicitly in the direction that the player base clearly stated they didn't want it to go. CSM5 with Mynxee at it's helm was rather clear on this. Nevertheless here we are. Leaked documents showing senior developers arguing the position of greed vs junior statistician arguing that it would be a bad idea. CCP Zulu can argue it was a document that was used internally to incite debate. Who is saying what is damning in the extreme. This was not two senior developers debating the pros and cons. This was a senior developer (and CCP Soundwave is by now) exposing the game design point of view. And a statistician saying "this may not be a good idea". The subtext there is that "but I can't prove anything until after it hits the fan and we analyze the loss in the player base". And we know from other sources that CCP is very much a "Clique" driven shop. EVE's player base is not stupid (far from it - EVE is self selecting away from that). They can read between the lines and can by now spot a scam at 1000 yards with their Eyeball Mk I's.

Then to add icing to the cake we've got more leaked information CCP Hilmar (the president) basically saying "don't worry about it, we've seen this before, it'll all blow over". He even goes on to boast that they sold 52 monacles in the first 40h. Um... Hilmar... you realize that's a pittance compared to what you should have made sales wise during that period if you'd set up the store properly with a range of goods instead of just the "high end"? Such dismal performance should be embarrassing - not something to be proud of. The tone of the e-mail indicates that he fully expected the player reaction to happen. So the newly clarified direction EVE is taking is driven from the top. The interesting thing is that the reaction CCP foot soldiers have taken basically seem to reinforce the position that these leaks represent the true position and direction CCP wants to take the game. I have to tell you that should this turn out to be true, I won't long be in this game. Which is a shame.

There is nothing else quite like EVE out there. Should something come along that provides a modicum of similar sandbox features while pandering less to the griefers and botters, I'd be there in a minute. There still isn't, so I'm loathe to abandon EVE just yet. We'll just have to wait and see.

LOLOLOLOLOL

2011-06-21T17:08:00.001-07:00

15 bucks for a pixel skirt!?!

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

Technology Injection

2011-06-21T08:00:00.000-07:00

Today is the day Incarna 1.0 (and it's subsequent immediate client patch #1) goes live on TQ. The thing to remember amongst the disappointment of the spareness of the features being introduced is that this is mainly a technology injection into the EVE online universe. The next 2 years will show if it's a success or not. The canvas of EVE just got bigger. There, however, is still much more to do. What is good to see is that there are serious low level work going on in parallel.

Please take the time to check out CCP Curt's new dev blog: carbonio and bluenet: next level network technology. This is something no other MMO company out there does. They talk about their tech. It's one of the reasons that come hell or high water CCP will probably be there down the road. They push the tech as hard as they can. In all probability they are a generation or 3 ahead of the competition as far as their server tech goes. It will be interesting to see what happens once they have 3 games running on their server technology.

I must admit I'm amused by the bitter vet syndrome a lot of players have been voicing lately. They should know by now that the status quo is never safe in EVE. It always evolves. Heck remember when blockade runners could not warp cloaked? The speed nerf. The graphics engine upgrades. The days when a 200 man fleet was considered lag. So EVE changes. Adapt or quit, your choice.

As a side note I'm amused by the idiots in fleet who think they are experiencing "lag" in a 100-150 man fleet. Be part of a 250 man sub-cap fleet being ordered to jump into 600 in system already? Been there, done that. That was "LAG". The minor hesitation we get when jumping gates as part of a 100 man fleet just doesn't count. And for the idiots who insist they are getting DC'ed because of it, I've got news for you - I've never gotten DC'ed under the conditions you're describing so it's you, your connection or your computer that's the problem, not tranquility or the node we're running on. Heck I've never gotten DC'ed even with an 800-1200 man fight either. Lagged the fuck out, yes. DC'ed no.

More testing out of the CQ

2011-06-15T08:17:00.000-07:00

Ok, not quite as bad as I thought but note to all future users: the behavior of holding the right mouse button down is different from the behavior of holding the left mouse button down. Still say that the lack of being able to change the point of view to the the point of view OF the avatar is a serious fuck up - especially once we start getting multi-user environments. It also precludes doing things where you click on something that you are focusing on (because to focus on it you need to depress the mouse button to move the focus). I still say it feels awkward compared to 80% of the other avatar interfaces out there in PC land.

Captain's Quarters

2011-06-14T10:23:00.000-07:00

Well I finally broke down and installed the Sisi client on my home comp... And the server was down when I finished...

Later on I did manage to get on however and check out the parts of Incarna.

Looks: 9/10

Possibly the best looking avatars in MMOs going.
Stations appropriate to the setting.

Interface: 2/10

Hyper realistic avatars without a first person perspective? fail
Constant need to lift off the mouse button to change direction? fail
Context menus showing up when you can't click them? fail
Inability to choose which planet you're looking at when focusing on the PI screen? fail
I'll have to check again but I think there were some problems with looking up and down - more fail.
Head does not follow the view screen focus? fail

Ok seriously here you need your developers to go play something like FFXI for a few weeks switching between first and 3rd person perspective to see how smooth the interface should transition, and how smooth and natural the controls should be. Achieving less than that (which came out about the same time EVE did) is abject failure 7-8 years later. Seriously didn't you guys play any other of the good MMOs as far as 3d movement/interface schemes go? The interface felt like it was designed by the guy who did the original resident evil interface. Which made that game unplayable for me. Someone needs a clue by four upside the head. I mean seriously, one of the major immersion inducing aspects of playing FFXI was that when you were in first person perspective the other avatar's heads would look to what ever that person's field of view was looking at so if I was talking to someone and they turned to look at something else I could see their avatar's head move (withing it's limits of movement). It's a small thing that gives a MASSIVE feeling of immersion. Very few other games had that level of feel. Your graphics are advanced - your immersion sucks due to some bad decisions at the interface and control scheme level.

Functionality: 3/10

Not much to do in the quarters - and we can no longer spin ships to distract ourselves.
It feels like a hotel room. Appropriate, so that is the reason the functionality score is higher.

Turrets: 7/10

Nice upgrade looks wise (for the few times I'll be zoomed in enough to actually see the turrets)
Some bugs on turret and effect synchronization (Unless these are fixed internally already, they'll make it onto tranquility - look forward to a bit of bitching)
Some questionable turret placements (WTF are those turrets doing on top & bottom of the tempest!?! - expect MORE bitching)
Not enough gun flash on artillery (Please see Youtube videos of an Iowa class battleship firing it's main guns (406mm/50's) - personal complaint)

Aurum Store: 5/10

Works.
Nothing special.
Not going to have a lot of content at start, is it?

Now I realize that this update is mostly to get the technology in place so that it can be iterated upon and improved, and multi-player interaction added (getting meeting rooms in place WILL BE WORTH IT - huff - puff). But you really really need to get your heads out of your asses as far as the control scheme goes. And apparently the current control scheme is an improvement over the original one - that makes me shudder.

Looks like the verdict will be "meh expansion" with potential to be realized over the next few expansions.

Oh, lookie there, Morsus is red

2011-06-13T05:03:00.000-07:00

As you all know, I'm down with Cascade Imminent these days. I've actually been able to get in fleets now that my ship situation is firming up a bit. Got in on a carrier save, got a shinny new Saber (I don't expect it to last long - note to self - investigate making Sabers as the price seems a little high compared to other interdictors), missed some major kill fleets, but did go on ops.

One of the new surprises in the south was spotting a lot of Morsus Mihi guys floating around and finding out they hot-dropped one of our carriers and are now considered solidly red. This should make their attempt to move into the area nice and welcoming. Looks like they want back in the 0.0 club after getting their asses handed to them up north. After throwing Magesta and Rage under the bus that is PL (and my oh my does Shadoo look smug whenever the conversation turns to supercapitals), they are in the process of loosing their own space. Looks like they are putting feelers out in the south. Bumbling ones. Either they've already decided who they want as enemies down here or they've cut a deal with PL/DRF, we'll need to see.

Some reflection on 0.0 life - and kills (yay)!

2011-06-10T08:14:00.000-07:00

Been a bit of a blah week the last week has. Been mostly on my alts doing PI in high sec. Strangely enough this has been most of my char's income lately. I think I'm still suffering from the shock of my first fail cascade. I've gotten to FAIL space, did a bit of "get ships ready for operations" and then just hit a "blah" patch. I'm loathe to setup PVE ships even though I know I need to do it to get some income generating. Mainly it's the "Since I'll just need to evac them anyways" feeling left over from the R.A.G.E cascade. That cascade really brought home the "keep your footprint light" necessity of 0.0 life. Especially since I currently lack significant integral strategic mobility (read: I don't yet have a suitcase carrier or jump freighter).

This also has to do with the nature of FAIL itself. It espouses a much more nomadic lifestyle for it's combat operations that I was used to when we were with R.A.G.E. Again I'm feeling the lack of strategic mobility inherent in being a non-carrier capable pilot. I am discovering that this is more of a major barrier to entry into null sec life than I had previously supposed.

It works like this: Industrial presence in null sec consists of mainly 2 things: Extraction and supercap construction with their associated infrastructures. The only reason some of those are there is that they can't be done anywhere else. That's it. I'd estimate that 90% of null sec industrial presence consists of elements to support those two activities. Except for some minor manufacture, just about everything else comes in from Empire. The reason is simple: High sec stability. So long as it's relatively easy to ship stuff to 0.0, there's no reason to get serious about building stuff locally. This is especially relevant with the vast shakeup that most of EVE is going thru (the "dodge the PL stomp" game the rest of us are playing currently).

So operationally and strategically I have to maintain my main character and the main alt's mobility. This precludes getting into lucrative stuff like PI since starting and abandoning planets gets tiresome after a while. Not to mention the lack of personal/corporate/alliance logistics for industrial purposes. I may get my alt into PI pending the finishing off of his recon skills, but my main will be away too much to make it worth while.

My frustrations with this lack of logistics is a major part of the reason I haven't been posting much. Or logging in for long periods of time for that matter. The truth is my characters are about 2-3 months away from being logistically independent. And then there's the "skill up for the flavor of the month". Another barrier to entry in 0.0. Once I get my logistics in place there will be a month or three of skilling up other faction ships and weapon systems. In order to make things consistent for their FCs and simply the "buy kits in high sec and sell them in 0.0" style of logistics, most 0.0 alliances maintain "standard fleet fits" of a limited number of ships. Again it's frustrating when you don't have the skills to fly the main fleet ships. You marry this with the 0.0 attitude of "our way or the high way" and you have the reason 0.0 is so sparsely populated. Frankly wormhole logistics were easier that being in 0.0 without a carrier. I've now done both and I stand by that statement.

Regardless of the above, I finally got on when a decent roam was starting last night and managed to get in on the action. Yay, got in on 6 kill mails.

I'll stick it out for the nonce, but stay tuned to see if I say "fuck it" and head back to wormhole space while I wait for my skills to get to the point where they will make life workable in k-space 0.0.

Man over 4 years in game and I still don't have the skills to make life in 0.0 workable. Crazy game. (currently training Matari BS 5 - slog slog slog). Ah well, such is EVE. Although I can see why a lot of otherwise potential pilots say "fuck it" and never play or just dabble and then seeing the 4+ years it takes to become "useful" in 0.0 simply play another game where it only takes them 3-9 months to get to the end game. CCP has made some rather bad design decisions from the point of view of attracting new pilots, but especially for moving those pilots from high/low sec to 0.0. Or even retaining those that hit the 6 month slump.

Technology Update

2011-05-31T11:29:00.000-07:00

The 1.6 incursion patch is something I've been waiting for a long time. A patch where CCP vissibly removes old defunct code and assets from the client. Things have evolved since CCP first made EVE online. Various parts of the artwork have been addressed over time (the Trinity series of updates). But the framework on which it all hung together was written back in the day (I suspect certain programmers have been horrified when they refactored some of it to discover that parts were "prof of concept" code (with all the shortcuts that entails) pressed into service as production code. This update is finally replacing a lot of that older code with a much more thought out structure. We can see this by the fact that the download is about 550 megs but the client won't appreciably increase in size. Putting in the new but cleaning out the old at the same time.

There's no shiny doodad to show off the new code this time. But framework changes are rarely flashy in and of themselves, it's the future stuff that makes them good. Hopefully now the UI designers have the tools to upgrade the interface to something we can be proud of that's intuitive and powerful. This is the kind of update that can keep a game going indefinitely.

Mind you it's not always the best time to do such things just as you have MAJOR content upgrade barreling down the pipes, but it had to be done. I suspect CCP will be rather glad when both DUST 514 and INCARNA are out the door and we're back to more regular expansion territory.

Clear Skies 3

2011-05-30T07:44:00.000-07:00

Clear Skies 3 the movie is out.... What are you still doing here? Go, go.

Holding patern released

2011-05-26T11:59:00.000-07:00

Looks like we're headed for Cascade Imminent.

Also looks like we have a release date for the summer expansion - Incarna. June 21st.

Apart from that - not much happening...

Holding patern

2011-05-20T06:19:00.000-07:00

So... Back up in empire space (hopefully not for too long). I find myself in a bit of a holding pattern. Log in. There anything happening? If no log off and go do something more productive. Apparently PvP'ers find this exciting. But I digress.

I think CCP is in a bit of a holding pattern update-wise as well. On one hand we are getting a bunch of quality of life updates finally. I can only applaud. Some streamlining and balancing changes (here I think we've got some issues). I sat back and thought about the latest changes and the latest implementations of features coming out of CCP. I think the problem is that there's a lack of a long term development plan. We get a lot of "I can't go into the details because the meeting to even consider the development direction for that won't happen until 2013" sort of responses recently.

I think CCP is sloooooooowwwwwwllllllyyyyyyy realizing this since it looks like there is a fairly straightforward development plan for Incarna after Incarna drops. And we DID see a 2nd iteration on a feature (bye bye click fest - althought we didn't get the ability to nuke things from orbit yet). However with it's emphasis on supporting a ganker/griefer style of play, CCP regularly misses development opportunities. Admittedly this allows the better organized corporations/alliances to get around various problems or using self discipline to compensate for the lack of scalability of the constructs established by CCP.

Major issues still need to be resolved of course. The current "Supercap-I-Win Button" needs to be addressed. As much as the supercap pilots like CCP Abathur (sp?) I think we can all agree that the current issues are directly the result of his design. Not to mention 0.0 sov warfare. The current system SERIOUSLY advantages the supercap fleet owners. Which is fine, but not in any way helpful if you want 0.0 populated by anything other than bitter vets and their serfs. We'll see how this all works out as far as those changes go. I think CCP is going to fail on the design front there. I also think the current CSM has a very good chance of making things MUCH worse in 0.0.

cough cough - scuse me while I dust

2011-05-17T13:31:00.000-07:00

Been a while. Sorry for the lack of posting. There's a lot of ground to cover. Since I last posted there have been a lot of changes in my EVE playing. Things I need to cover:

On the personal front:
- PL being hired by the DRF to attack NC space
- Having an idiot FC "welp" a fleet
- R.A.G.E getting curb-stomped
- The view from the front lines of the NC situation
- RHI leaving R.A.G.E

On the generic EVE front:
- Various patches and communication issues and 0.0 nerfs.

So...

It's no secret that PL joined in the fight turning the Geminate war into something much more serious for the north. PL basically totally ignored the Geminate battleground and just jumped straight into Vale of the Silent and specifically concentrated on eliminating Rage from the equation first. From the point of view of the foot soldier in Rage we definitely suffered a failure in leadership. From the minute PL entered the fight, it no longer felt like a proper campaign but like a chicken with it's head cut off. Although I only have hearsay regarding what was really going on, I suspect that there was some political friction at the leadership level resulting in the rest of the NC basically throwing PL under the bus.

The issue was straight forward. Once PL started operating with their SC fleet and the NC fleets being unable to keep the PL sub-cap fleet from downing cyno-jammers, the writing was basically on the wall. If the NC super cap fleet did not show, we were going to get steamrollered. This is effectively what happened. At no time did the NC supercap fleet take to the field while vale was burning. I do not know the political reasons for this, but the effect is clearly visible to anyone who can check dotlan.

Basically while PL was curb-stomping RAGE I was doing mostly logistics moves of ships from staging are to staging area. I literally spent more time moving my ships from station to station than in fleets during this period. This has taught me some hard lessons about 0.0 life.

1) Keep the ship count small unless you're a carrier pilot.

2) Do not stock ships in a "rally/staging" system. The convenience is outweighed by the fact that they rapidly become the next target for PL's next attack.

3) Ye gods, does leadership need to pay attention to logistics for campaigns like this. If the logistics underpinning of the alliance is not in place prior to a start of a campaign (defensive or offensive) things will go pear shaped rather quickly once things start and a percentage of the fleet runs out of ships and can not quickly re-ship. The longer this drags on the harder it gets.

4) BAD FCs KILL PARTICIPATION IN FLEETS. I'm not talking about FCs who loose fights but actual BAD FCs. Military lead should kick these fuckers out fast. They are a much worse threat than FC burnout in all honesty.

I had a birds eye view for the debacle in F-D when PL started their invasion. After serving notice of their intention to attack the system. Anchoring a POS and putting the station into first reinforced, we (rage and the rest of the NC that showed up) were in a tactically strong position. We managed to get a strong fleet in system with bridges up to bring in caps/super caps to deal with the supercaps that PL had logged off in system (there were not that many initially). Everything was going well UNTIL the shield fleet FC warped his entire fleet using a fleet warp into a bomber trap at the gate. I still have my suspicions about that FC and that particular trap - we'd never flown with him before and that trap was way to precise - especially since bombers had been reported. At that point the fight as a whole was still salvageable. But psychologically shocked by the loss of a significant part of the shield fleet and some good multi-system attacks by PL that battle was lost at that point.

It was very clear to the rank and file though that there was a lack of commitment by the NC as a whole to the defense of Vale by the lack of the supercap fleet's presence since day 1 of the campaign. Using 10-30 supercaps during the entire campaign, PL managed to keep the entire north's supercap fleet at bay while they leisurely went about capturing station system after station system. In this day and age if you don't defend station systems you loose period. During this period the alliance leadership made itself scarce as far as the rank and file could see.

Subsequent events shed some light on what was happening. R.A.G.E lost its leader and from rumors he had been planing to leave the alliance and take certain corps with him as he left from day 1 of the PL spearhead. This goes a long way to explaining the lack of plan for both defending and retreating from vale in good order. Not to mention coordination with the rest of the NC.

For all intents and purposes Vale was lost from day 1 of the campaign, it just had to play itself out. In retrospect I must salute PL for demonstrating how a proper regional conquest should be handled. I pulled some good lessons from the experience. Watching the invasion of F-D and ZLZ showed much of how PL operated tactically. I can't fault their strategic decisions to hit one alliance at a time. Especially if they know the reasons why he north's supercap fleet wasn't being committed (which I suspect they do).

But I'll have to watch the rest from the sidelines. RHI has now been out of R.A.G.E since the end of last week. I've contracted off most of what remaining assets were trapped in Vale. I'll be sticking with RHI for the time being and see where we end up.

The fallout from this personally is that although I lost a bit of value in all the retreats and what not, the real opener was how dependent ship logistical moves were on carriers. This has changed my plans for personal development. I'm now going to slowly skill up for at least a suitcase carrier before going into command ships. I've now got jump freighters covered anyways. Piece of advice: if the 0.0 corp/alliance does not have a solid logistical backbone and you yourself do not have access to at least a suitcase carrier and a cyno alt, you may be better off waiting before going to 0.0. The preponderance of older characters means they don't always worry about the logistical issues of other players who do not yet have carriers. Jump bridge networks can alleviate some of the issues of not having a carrier of your own, and they're getting a nerf.

Humm

2011-04-28T14:58:00.000-07:00

Last night was just some high sec logistics while my jump clone timer was running. Nothing interesting there at all. However, the relaxing piloting in high sec allowed my mind to wander. This is probably dangerous.

Crap. Started working on an evil idea for making life hard for passive moon holders and realized that even though I don't personally own a moon-goo moon, my alliance might not like me giving CCP ideas along those lines (Honest guys, it would have ended up being worse for the Russians than for us).

/me dusts off the blog

2011-04-26T09:59:00.000-07:00

*cough* *cough*

Sorry about that, a combination of things made it so that getting into the game recently has been a bit of a chore. RL can be like that some times. Combine that with Having to move ships from station to station constantly recently (note to self: from now on in when leadership says: move to station x - move somewhere else since PL will be hitting that station next), and it all adds up to "not in game a lot recently".

Also at the rate things are going I'm probably going to be bounced up to empire soon since a good portion of my ships got trapped in one of the stations that is no longer available to us. We'll see how it all goes in the weeks and months to follow, but I definitely need to work on having a personal logistics train (read carrier and jump freighter).

Note to self for future endeavors: Should I ever become alliance leader of a null sec alliance: Making sure that the sub-cap pilots have an available logistics backbone at reasonable prices IS important to pilot participation in ops. The lack of it has resulted in my non-presence in a lot of ops recently even outside of the lack of logging in. Amateurs talk about tactics, professionals talk about logistics. I've just had a serious lesson in that truism.

Charge of the sub-caps

2011-04-15T07:02:00.000-07:00

One hundred kilometers, one hundred kilometers,
One hundred kilometers onward,
All at the grid of death
Warped the six hundred:
Forward the sub-cap fleets!
Bubbles on the titans he said!
Into the grid of death
Warped the six hundred.

Forward the NC fleets!
Was there a pilot dismay'd?
Not tho' the crewmen knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not the voice reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die,
Into the grid of death
Warped the six hundred.

Abbaddons to the right of them
Bombers to the left of them
Titans to the front of them
Primary'd and Secondary'd
Storm'd at with Tremor and Scorch
Boldly they warped and pointed,
Into the jaws of death,
Into the mouth of hell
Warped the six hundred.

Flash'd all their lazors bare
Flash'd as they cycled fair
Bubbling the capitals there
Charging the DRF while
All of EVE wonder'd:
Plunged into the drone cloud
Right thro' the support they broke
Intrepid Crossing and Raiden.
Reel'd from the saber-stroke
Shatter'd and Sunder'd
Then they warped back
But not the six hundred

Bombers to the right of them
Abbaddons to the left of them
Titans to the rear of them
Primary'd and Secondary'd
Storm'd at with Tremor and Scorch
While Maelstrom and Guardian fell
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the sub-cap fleets,
Noble six hundred!

(Paraphrased from the poem Charge of the light brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson in honor of my 600th' post)

600!

2011-04-15T05:34:00.000-07:00

Well wow, I made it to 600 posts.... go me!

In other news last night was a great break from the constant CTAs. We had a corp roam out to various DRF regions. I was a little late to the party and we kept running into small blue roams. Comment of the night: "WTF, is half of Vale in Insmother?!?". Since I was late I decided to take something a little more "evasive and survivable" and brought my cloaky Loki to the party. Even if I didn't personally get on any kill mails the rest of the roam got a couple and we almost got a Maelstrom and a Basilisk. Those survived by letting the Crow scout die and logging off. Russians, they love their logoffski tactics.

We stuck around for the Basilisk logging back in but no luck. The roam ended back in vale and there are plenty of things that need attention tomorrow night. We'll see if it's the usual: form big blog, rep things while PL avoids us then watch PL incap thing right after we leave starting the whole cycle over again. Meh.

Denied!

2011-04-13T07:42:00.000-07:00

Although PL did mess around with our reinforcement lines, they didn't really make a major push into F-D49D last night. I came, I got on a kill mail, I left disappointed. The one problem with being on the defensive is that you cede the initiative to the enemy and need to wait for them to make a move so you can follow with a counter attack (if they haven't wipe the floor with you already of course).

In a way I was glad, since we did not have what I consider to be the better FCs on hand last night. Not that I consider myself to be a great FC, but I've FC'ed enough myself when I was running AMC and I've flown under enough FCs that I will form an opinion on them. Not that he's made my list of "never fly with again" FCs. Only one made that list so far. However, we're now flying against PL in our time zone. Average may not just cut it. Of course with the NC being as big as it is, if you see an FC you really can't stomach, just switch ships and join the other fleet. There's always another fleet.

One of the big differences I'm noticing right away is that PL operates more like a mobile strike force backed up by solid supercap fleet for heavy hitting instead of the more usual alpha BS fleet of a true space holding alliance. This means that nailing them is going to be rather hard since the NC's more militia like military is not setup for raider/counter-raider operations. For those of us just arriving in Vale, we no longer have the option of building up ISK in order to have a stable of ship types in order to form more specialized fleets. So we'll see how it goes. Should be a tough war from now on in since we'll have PL roaming gangs every night.

Getting ready for the hammer blow

2011-04-12T08:32:00.000-07:00

This evening as I get back from work, things should be heating up in F-D49D as we see the DRF/PL/Raiden. make a Major push into Vale of the Silent. I can't predict what will happen but it has the potential to be a major battle. Expect 1000+ in system by the time the station comes out of reinforced. CCP better have that system and some of the surrounding ones on some servers running with steroid fed hamsters. After last night's action (I had a ring side seat to PL busting the I-Hub 4 Aeons, 13 Nyxes, an Avatar and an Erebus, with an other Erebus at the PL POS for A-HAC fleet extraction) where the I-Hub went down rather quickly.

The equation is rather clear though. Station comes out of 2nd reinforced - both sides know the timer. I-Hub is gone. So, if the reds flips the station tonight they can immediately go for the TCU and start claiming the system. The timing of this works out such that they will be able to babysit most of their TCU on-lining during the dead time followed by Russian prime time. The next 36 hours should determine how the opening stages of the war for Vale of the Silent goes. Stay tuned.

Rought weekend

2011-04-11T10:35:00.000-07:00

Between PL being hired by the DRF, a serious offensive into Vale and real life keeping me busy - it was a rough weekend. About as rough as CCP's seems to have been. We'll see if I can post something interesting tomorrow but can't think of anything today.

Shout out to brick

2011-04-07T05:07:00.000-07:00

This is just a shout out to our brosefs down in Geminate in Brick Squad. Congrats on getting sov in TDE. You deserve it (it also made more sense than R.A.G.E having that system). They've been there in every battle down in Geminate good or bad and have proven to be solid. Go guys!

One of these days I'm going to have to update the fit of that tempest I keep bringing out to these fights. It's still the original fit I designed up in high sec/wormhole space before joining R.A.G.E. One of my Maelstroms did not last very long due to some bad FC'ing not too long ago. But this one just keeps trucking along between Infrastructure Reinforcement Ops and fleet battles. And I just haven't had the time to refit a few modules that should be changed out. On the other hand I was in on 6 kills in TDE two nights ago and 7 kills in K25/O2O last night, so I really can't complain about it too much. Especially since I got another kill mail. At least this time the DRF didn't just stay away during the US timezone. Great job by the rest of the time zones making sure the DRF didn't get TDE while brick was getting the (what 3rd?) TCU up.

Of course this being Thursday I expect a big DRF offensive while I'm at work with plenty of reinforcement and repair ops for us tonight and Friday. They are rather predictable in that pattern. Incidentally, PI is proving to be a godsend with all the CTA's going on. At this point I'd say that 90% of my income is coming from there. This is probably why I'm more sanguine about the loss of the high end anomalies. When you're on constant war ops you don't have the time to run them anyways. And the DRF have been active enough that the only people who have the time to complain are those not coming on ops.

Do you want some cheese with that whine?

2011-04-06T10:51:00.000-07:00

The whine

First some background, from the patch notes to Incursion 1.4:

The type of anomalies spawned by sovereignty upgrades now will be affected by the security status of the system. See CCP Greyscale's blog (http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=883) for more information. Please note that these changes will take effect within the first week after deployment and will not all be updated immediately after the patch is deployed.

For those of you who have had your head in the sand, this is CCP's answer to the isk fire hydrant that they let loose with Dominion. The only surprise is the rapidity and steadfastness that CCP is approaching this change. I approve. I know this will be an unpopular position with the rest of my 0.0 confederates but unlike them, I have been expecting this for quite some time now. Basically since the Dominion patch came out. There was talk on CCPs part about increasing the sinks but obviously that fell thru.

Possible Cheese

The problem CCP's game designers have is that they consistently design low npc cost mechanics. Making more and more of the economy "player driven" does not necessarily imply you need to make it isolated from the NPCs. One of the things CCP (grayscale, chronotis and other indy related devs) should look at when designing new systems or re-designing old ones is to look at where the npc interaction happens in their designs and make sure that there are appropriate sinks along the way.

For example, there are two ways to make a module: You can make it in an NPC station (Installation costs and production time charged by the NPCs), or you can make it at an equipment manufacturing array. Here the isk sink is represented by the PI component of the fuel used to keep the tower online. The actual sink is the import/export taxes and the prorated planetary installation costs necessary to extract and process the materials resulting in the PI fuels. Most of the costs in manufacturing a module at a POS are neither a sink nor a faucet. Just a lateral transfer of isk from one player to another. We can marry this with the fact that the PE development of a blueprint has very little impact on the total cost of a manufactured product. So although there are sinks there they are rather small compared to the total amount of isk coming into the game through bounties.

I would seriously like to redesign the manufacturing mechanisms to be a little less abstract. Setting up a production line should cost 5-10 times as much as a single example of the final product. I'd change the way that manufacturing slots are setup and handled. I would give a "size" to manufacturing lines (probalby in m3 heck why not use the m3 of the final product) and the running costs should be proportional to the length of time of the run times the "size" of the production line. This would provide for a much more substantial "isk sink" that the current production. Also the pvpers wouldn't bitch about it since they don't see a reduction in their "income" and manufacturers would simply adjust our spreadsheets and pass the cost on to the clients.

Doing changes along these lines would also allow us to consolidate various POS maufacturing modules to fewer modules but that the total amout of m3 of "manufacturing space" be the limit and not the number of slots. Also reducing/elminating the setup costs if an previous "shop floor" for the same object was available and un-used.

Other thoughts

Another change I would like to see is the removal of "compression items" by changing the mineral mix of those items so that they can't be used for compression. But I still see the need for "compression shippable items" for efficient shipping. What I'd like to do here is have an intermediary step for hull manufacture. I.e. instead of the current: mineral->ship hull, what I'd like to see is mineral->t1 component->ship hull where the t1 component is "compressed" compared to the mineral content. I'd also like to re-ballance the current capital components and t2 components for this paradigm as well. so you'd get materials->component->hull where the components are compressed vs the minerals. This would mean it would be advantageous to ship components around vs the minerals or the final hulls. This would spur a solid and viable market for components since they would be the "compression" item for long distance shipping.

Call me crazy but putting in some sinks instead of turning off the faucets would have probably gone over better.

Kudos to someone

2011-04-04T10:13:00.000-07:00

... Rant ...

... Grumble ...

... Rant ...

To the DRF FC(s) who engineered that bomber trap Saturday morning at exactly 14:50, well played sir, well played. My poor Maelstrom only got on 2 kill mails before getting erased from existence.

... Grumble ....

/me manfully restrains himself from saying things he shouldn't.

Long op and rumours and what not

2011-03-29T07:18:00.000-07:00

Although the 2011 fanfest was not chuck full of meaty new games or mega-heavy announcements, the active player base should be impressed by the restraint shown this year. As usual people will miss-interpret EVERYTHING that was said at each and every one of the presentations. But that's business as usual in EVE. The willfully blind mixed in with the purposefully misleading (aka market manipulators). CCP however was very restrained on what they promised. The video was more of a statement of intent rather than an item for item promise. Think of it as one of those corporate "mission statements" but with more visual elements than usual. I'm waiting for the Youtube rollout of the various panel and presentation recordings to pick appart the things I missed. People keep saying things like "Eyog said mining will go away" or "Melted Nanoribbons will get nerfed some more". Which I figure are the usual miss-representation of what was actually said.

Apart from that it was a long grind of an op last night in support of dreadnaughts rendering various and assorted things incapacitated. I did however get to bring out my shiny new Maelstrom, so that was good. It even survived the evening.

A kill, ops and grid-fu

2011-03-28T07:23:00.000-07:00

Saturday was a bit of a wash, between watching the live stream and being afk on a semi regular basis I couldn't justify being in a fleet and going afk every 20 min or so. On the flip side there was a point in time where some neutrals were in system. So I get in my Cloaky Loki and start a bit of stalking (cloaked up safes are nice when I had to go afk). Eventually a nice neutral vagabond warps in to the ice belt at the warp to zero spot. And starts motoring towards the sun at 2700+ m/s. Eventually he turns around and starts re-approaching the belt. Humm not headed at me but he IS getting closer.

So I pipe up on corp chat and let them know I may have a warp-in on the neutral Vaga - the neutral Rapier is probably cloaked in the belt though. So one of the corpies gets in his carrier alt and a Rapier but unfortunately warps in from the wrong direction and a tackle is missed. The Vaga warps off. so the carrier and his Rapier head back to somewhere safe. I'm surprised when the Vaga warps in behind me, pops drones and starts trolling for me (obviously he figured out I was providing a warp in even though he probably doesn't know what I'm flying. I go "He's stupid enough that if I uncloak my Loki and tackle him, he'll go for me". So I simply wait until he passes me then his drones get withing 5k of me I de-cloak and point him. Sure enough he turns to attack. But I'm not too worried as I have a carrier and a rapier coming back in.

While we were finishing him off - and the carrier kindly repaired my rather minimal shield damage, the neutral's corp mate uncloaks his rapier but he's too far away to help and besides what is he going to do at this point? Rapier+Loki+Carrier vs Rapier+Almost dead Vaga. About the only think he could realistically do is cyno in a black ops strike force. That could have gotten messy but obviously these guys were either not willing to jump into us or didn't have the bomber forces ready to go. So I get my 2nd true kill mail with R.A.G.E. A nice sweet ambush of an ice belt raider.

The next evening was the all hands on deck in case the DRF come and mess with our station coming out of reinforced. In the end they elected not to come (probably because it was Monday morning their time). I ended up joining the bomber fleet when armor fleet turned out to want a different type of armor BS than I had in the operations area. Things got a little funky when we discovered that the grid around the station we were defending was totally FUBAR. So we spent a few minutes getting bookmarks both in the main grid and in the 2nd grid to make sure that if someone warped/jumped in to this other close pocket that we'd know where they were. Grid-fu was alive and well. People who had never experienced the phenomenon were given links to the grid-fu manual so they could understand what was going on, and for the entire operation to repair the station and kill the SBUs we kept eyes on the pocket, just in case. Very funky stuff. One tactic is to bring snipers and fight at the border of the grid and we didn't want the enemy to be able to leverage that to their advantage, since it's like fighting at the edge of a pos shield.

Then it was stand down, Rep up the station some more (switch to my scimi) and then switch to a BS and go shoot at a station the DRF captured earlier in the day in Geminate.

Repping up

2011-03-25T10:15:00.000-07:00

I finally got to use my Scimitar in an op. Of course it was multiple POS coming out of reinforced op but oh well. Those are less stressful - mostly - than battle where others are depending on you to keep them alive while you try to stay alive yourself.

The first one was a bit of a [insert favorite expletive here] as just after we started a DRF cyno appeared on top of us... while the BS fleet was reforming after an extended CTA... 3 carriers later the rest of us managed to get away. The next op (also a CTA) went a weeeee bit better. POS repped up and our repping fleet went home without incident this time. Then it was time for some PI before bed.

So, how's everyone liking the EVE TV coverage so far?

Fanfest 2011

2011-03-24T08:08:00.000-07:00

Fanfest 2011 is now underway. Not much to say until after the main presentation on Saturday. I will, however, be paying attention to the information streaming out of Iceland by various means. Blog reports, Youtube videos, live streams.

My predictions

2011-03-23T08:26:00.000-07:00

By now the voting should be over. I will admit to slight disappointment with the last CSM for their overly focused on low sec priorities but what can you do. I love how The Mittani rages about dirty politics and vote buying as I judge him to be most likely to engage in such antics. As such I predict that the odds are good that the two following people will be part of the CSM:

The Mittani (hey, it's Goonswarm - of course he'll get in)
Selene (ex Selene, ex CCP Abatur)

For the rest, I really have no clue. I must admit to being Meh on most of the candidates. I believe the CSM is focusing too closely on nuts and bolts details. There needs to be more idea discussions to try and work on some of the major problems we currently have with sov warfare, pvp, and the economy in EVE. We all know CCP has some problems with execution but there are also problems at the grand design level that should probably be addressed.

We're well along enough where some clear principals of how EVE operates should be clear. The problem comes when you have internal inconsistencies and what not. There's also the problem of lack of follow through with established subsystems.

I think this CSM is going to have many more internal dissensions than the previous one. We'll see.

VOTE!

2011-03-21T08:15:00.000-07:00

The last day of voting is today. If you haven't already voted for the CSM candidate of your choice (multiple times thanks to alts) this is to remind you to go do so. If you don't like the choices - run next time. My two active accounts have voted. Have yours?

As an aside, were there any candidates from eastern block countries? I know there's a large Russian gamer population in EVE. Lord knows we're fighting them often enough in Geminate these days. What's the problem? Don't care what happens to the game? Afraid of all the US candidates? Afraid you'll have the KGB knocking on your door for participating in a democratic process? What's the story?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the fight for the 74IL-O constellation continues unabated. We came at them the same old way and they came at us the same old way. Comparisons to Stalingrad and World War I trenches can be made.

My first Rage KM

2011-03-20T09:12:00.000-07:00

Yay, I finally get a non-meh kill mail. As part of the action around O2O I was in 6YC guarding the out-gate for an element of the NC fleet during these operations. As part of them, I finally managed to get my first "Final Blow" on something other than a POS module or pod. So although I've been on other people's kill mails before in NC fleets, this marks my first real kill for R.A.G.E.

The night before was spent in a tower kill fleet that was in stark contrast to the fleet that put said towers into reinforced. Not in a good way. This was followed by much purchasing in Jita. I was in my pod so was able to get in and out without The Orphanage messing with me.

Now just need to get all those war supplies (hulls and fits) out to 0.0.

Just a neat pic from one of the O2O operations

2011-03-18T17:53:00.000-07:00

Those dots on the planet? - Battleships

This was just a cool shot I took during a station shoot in O2O.

Just missed a titan shoot

2011-03-18T07:18:00.000-07:00

Some times the timing just doesn't work out. I logged on just as a CTA was finishing. So I check out the killboard and find that the NC just killed a bunch of Titans and Supercarriers. Grumble, grumble, grumble.

In other news I managed to claw my way back up over a billion so it will be time to acquire a few more fittings and hulls again and get them shipped down.

Not much in other news.

Something for Fuchsia 4

2011-03-17T05:07:00.000-07:00

I didn't get on much last night. RL stuff. On the flip side this morning I did discover a fuzzy fuchsia Machariel.

An evening of carebearing

2011-03-16T08:27:00.000-07:00

After the flood of action over the last few days, it was with relief that I greeted an evening of running anomalies and "doing" PI. The bankroll needs to be replenished, new hulls must be acquired and new fit sets must be assembled. Note that I'm not exactly bleeding funds, but I am in the process of building up 0.0 reserves. Expect continued posts in this vein until I feel I've reached a comfort level.

In other news I'm no longer running through Barrage M like it's a box of Rice Krispies (i.e. by the large cargo container full). Finally got around to stabilizing my ammo supply situation (i.e. melt loot -> manufacture Phased Plasma M -> kill rats for loot -> repeat). I also discovered that Hail M kills battleships faster and cheaper than Barrage M (average of 30 volleys instead of 40 volleys) but that due to resist patterns, plain Jane Phased Plasma M is probably still the best bet. So my efficiency both in isk and time is going up when running anomalies.

On the PI front my Robotics production is stabilizing nicely. My alt is currently doing construction parts and coolant. The construction parts are to pile up a reserve for future projects. After that I'll probably convert that part of the chain to a different production chain like Enriched Uranium or Mechanical Parts. We'll see. I'm basically running 4 resource extraction and one production planet per character and that seems to be working out well.

My high sec alts are on 4 day extraction routines simply doing 5 extraction->P1 planets each. Just to keep my life simple (go to planets - pick up P1's and reset extractors - head to market - sell - go back to extraction system - repeat every 4 days)

No progress on my stable of ships last night as it was dedicated to making iskies as opposed to the logistics of getting new ships to my home in 0.0.

Woah! That was impressively fast.

2011-03-15T07:34:00.000-07:00

Whole lot going on last night. I had a family dinner last night so I didn't get on until much later than usual. I only had a 3h window for EVE last night, so I figured "should be a relatively calm, I can get some PI done and then run an anom or two before bed"... Just goes to show you how wrong you can be. Instead I get on and there's a CTA starting 2 min after I log in. So I grab a Hurricane (I really am going to have to get that Maelstrom hull down to 0.0 - getting tired of showing up to shield fleets in hurricanes all the time - course it would be nice if the CTAs abate a bit to allow me to do so...) and burn for the formup area.

Once there it was a matter of waiting a bit as there seemed to be quite a bit going on at the command level while the fleet (cap and supercap heavy!) was forming. I appreciated the chance to "look at" some ships I rarely get to see (having lived in high sec and wormhole space for most of my EVE career). The delay was explained when one took a look at EVE maps and noticed a constellation in our space that was suddenly without sov. In the end we were told that although the supercaps would eventually be dealing with some "issues" related to that situation, the fleet I was part of was going ahead with it's original plan.

And then things started to move. It was to be "Incap everything we can find in the two DRF systems in Geminate".

So we are bridged down right on top of one of the iHubs we need to hit. And the sub-cap fleet starts chewing away. We're not doing toooo badly, when our cap/supercap fleet arrive. As they finish deploying drones we are told to align to the outgate and start burning for the next iHub. Holy hell! Visible movement to the damage bar on the iHub. By the time we warp then land at the gate (about 2min total from the time the supercaps landed on grid) the iHub was incapacitated. The evening went like that for the next few minutes with us starting in on things and the supercaps arriving and "showing us the firepower".

We were undisturbed by the DRF for the duration of this op, this being deep in the US timezone. And we bridged back to our staging system. Cadillac all the way. 2.5h after start of op that op was finished. At that point although there would be further ops I just had enough time to head back to home base, do 15min of PI and log for the night.

In the morning I check evemaps and sure enough all vulnerable systems were in NC hands after downtime. Obviously the collective FCs had made the right call since we were able to achieve our original objectives and deal with the distraction of the sovereignty issue in our own back yard. Not a great night for forwarding my personal objectives of getting more appropriate hulls and fits established but a good night for the NC as a whole it looks like.

Note: I won't report what hearsay there was about the sov situation, except to say that there was a sov situation since that much can be observed through evemaps. Mainly because it was hearsay and since I'm not involved in the higher level stuff (thank god!) there's no way to confirm the truth about what we heard. Ah, politics, such murky waters.

Edit: Another point of view of these events can be seen at Kirith Kodachi's site

Ok, that was a lot of ops on saturday and sunday

2011-03-14T08:07:00.000-07:00

Busy weekend in the NC. Started off just missing a CTA to rescue a tower. Having missed that, I hooked up with a home defense fleet that was organizing to go after some reds in our space.

Engagement the first.

I ended up choosing a cov-ops for this mission. We ended up almost mousetrapping a Raiden roam that had gone up a one way street. I was scouting as the fleet was plugging up the only exit. At one point I did try to probe the Raiden roam that was probably at a safe spot while I kept eyes on a specific gate, but no luck on that. The Raiden guys bolted for home at that point and we did manage to get a kill or two as they tried to burn towards home. So we chased them back to Geminate. At this point things got a little messy. At a fork in the road we have the Raiden guys that went one way and at the other we're suddenly confronted with Blackline. The FC in his infinite wisdom decides to find out if Blackline. are as good as he's heard.

Engagement the second.

Short story: they are. I got a ring side seat to Blackline doing what it does best and our FC getting a little impatient and jumping into them. Sure enough although we managed to dis-engage with most of our fleet intact we did take a few losses, mainly to our logistics.

Engagement the second bis.

This is when things got fun. That Raiden roam we were talking about? Managed to slip between us and Blackline and then jump right into Blackline just like we did. So our FC decides to muddy the water and after a quick u-turn comes back and jumps into the ongoing fight making it a 3 way for a very short while. Raiden melted at this point and the engagement between Blackline and ourselves continued. But we managed to get out and dis-engage at that point.

Engagement the third.

At this point we get to a rally point for a slight break and for some of our pilots to get some replacement ships. While there we get wind of a roam that had some potential and was in need of some reinforcement. So off we go to the Kavala Expanse. On the way we manage to get lucky and two red ships going from point a to point b manage to run smack into our fleet. Since I was pushing ahead they managed to be ready and go the two. We then caught up with the other fleet and after some neutral results (no actual engagement was had once we caught up to them) we headed back to NC space in order to take a break before a scheduled CTA.

I make the CTA this time.

This one ended up being a simple shield repair fleet. We flew to the POS and the POS was patched up and we flew back. We did loose an interceptor to some shenanigans next door but otherwise it was un-eventful. Not exciting but necessary. After we went back to our rally point I decided to bail from the fleet as I'd now been on ops for about 7h total.

Flying with and against the Russians.

The next day was once again CTA time. This time a combined NC fleet was taking to that hotspot in Geminate that is the O2O system. My first thought on entering the fleet was: did I get in the wrong fleet? Lots of Russian. Turned out we had a Russian FC for this op. My big problem is that I was in a close range battleship with no way of switching fits right before the OP. Note to self: Re-fit some of the armor BS to long range fits. At one point I did manage to get high damage against a Jaguar that had wander a little too close to our fleet, but for the most part the reds were outside my engagement range. It was very frustrating. The initial part of the battle went well but eventually it went south and I lost my Tempest just prior to the fleet getting hot dropped by enemy super caps. Ah well, Geminate will remain hot for a while longer.

Towards the end of Sunday I did manage to solve my issues of getting an Orca into our operations area for my alt. And I also got my alt started on PI in 0.0. I'll be concentrating on tower fuels for the most part. My robotics production is hitting high gear on my main.

I did manage to get a Scimitar fit out and brought down. So the establishment of my "stable of remounts" is ongoing. Mind you all this logistics work does interfere with making isk. But such is life.

PI in 0.0

2011-03-10T08:19:00.000-08:00

About the most annoying part of doing PI in 0.0 is that you need to keep on top of the resources piling up. Apart from that it works out fine. Don't need an expensive hauler to handle the goods, and if you are moving stuff around on a daily basis if you should get ganked at some point in time it won't be the end of the world.

Something some players loose track of sometimes is that it's not always necessary to build up "the best" ship for a specific job. Sometimes a "sufficient" ship will do fine. In this case I'm using a mammoth with 4 T1 extenders, 2 Medium shield expanders, 2 em hardeners and 1 thermal hardener. That's it. Total replacement value around 1mil isk. One day, I'm sure I'll get ganked in it. But at least it will have made it's replacement value in profits in the meantime and it will be cheap to replace (heck this one was built from melted rat loot - including all the modules in it). It's cargo space is plenty for moving around all the materials from my extraction planets to my production planet and the final items to the station. That being the case, why should I invest in a more expensive ship that would just be more losses when it gets blown up? It's not like a more expensive hauler will save me from getting ganked. Smart flying and attention to intel channels do that.

Well I'm glad nothing happened

2011-03-09T09:40:00.000-08:00

New definition for mixed emotions. Flying with an FC that does not inspire confidence to support a POS repping op and nothing happens. Yep it was one of those nights. Starts off with a standard announced CTA. The time rolls around and immediately things start to go sideways - the FC calls for a change in loadout. Not having either an appropriate ship nor reserve modules to refit a hull, I decide to grab my interceptor.

Equipped with my trusty steed, I head towards the rally point. We start moving out soon. Sure enough thanks to the vague orders the FC managed to split the fleet while traveling to the destination. This is not normally something that gives your pilots confidence in your leadership skills. Miraculously we arrived at our destination without incident with the repair work underway. A short amount of time and we were able to return home without incident.

The good thing about this CTA was that it was a short one. This allowed me to get back to running anomalies. I'm still running anomalies a bit hap hazard instead of concentrating on the best isk per hour ones since they are new and I'm trying to get a feel for them. So far I like the Forsaken ones best as they are short and sweet and the Hub and the Rally Point have BS on every spawn.

Meanwhile like most 0.0 residence I'm getting into PI down here and getting my main alt into the corp to help out with that. Lord knows with all the large towers sprouting all over the place there's a need for POS fuel.

CTAs and the buildup continues

2011-03-07T10:19:00.000-08:00

This weekend was a mix of CTAs and the continuing buildup of my nullsec reserves. My latest shipment arrived and I was able to fit (and loose a battle cruiser). I'm also starting to figure out which FCs are good and which, I'd rather not bring an expensive ship to their shindig. Clue: broadcasting primaries and secondaries is good, saying "just shoot the thing nearest you" is bad.

The one problem I have with the build up of my 0.0 presence of course is the time it takes. Basically I need to build up a stable of re-mounts from scratch. This is an expensive proposition. Replacing combat losses at least has insurance to defray part of the cost. An outright build up means you're paying full price for everything. And in 0.0 even with a well stocked market, this is extra expensive. Or time consuming as you purchase/build in high sec and ship it down. The other thing is that even though you make isk much faster than you do in high sec (oh yea momma, come to papa you sweet iskies you). Essentially re-shipping from scratch is a time intensive effort. One more trip up to high sec and that should allow me to get the base of my "stable" established. Once I do that it'll be "build back up to over 1 bil isk" and go shopping for the "cool" ships - like the Rapier, the Scimitar or the Munin.

In an effort to make a bit more iskies, I've started doing PI mainly to sell pos fuel to the corp. Not sure how this is going to balance out in the long run, but being able to make some more iskies than just running anomalies and exploration sites is a good idea. I've also decided to bring my alt Zindal down with me so some shuffling of corporations up in high sec is in order. I'll also have a corporation for sale in high sec that can anchor towers in 0.7 Minmatar and 0.7 Gallente space for sale once I bring back my 3rd account (contact me via in game eve-mail if interested).

Building up.

2011-03-03T09:53:00.000-08:00

Now that I've finally settled into 0.0, it's time to get serious about the buildup of my fleet. Any pilot in EVE needs to maintain a stable of re-mounts. Different ships have different uses and specializations. On top of that you need to plan for the replacement of combat losses. For my initial fleet I plan on having a back bone of six battle cruisers and six battleships. Battlecruisers are for roams, fast response fleets and when I run out of battleships. Battleships are for main fleets (going for strategic objectives as part of a CTA or Home defense fleet when called for by the FC). Only once this backbone is in place will I work on building/re-building a stable of T2 ships for use on ops.

We'll see how it all goes but so far looks like within a few days I'll only be one BS hull short of my initial objective. At that point it will be "build back up the funds" time.

Stoping by the old haunts

2011-03-01T07:25:00.000-08:00

Since it was quite a trip back to the area of 0.0 that I now live in from the op Sunday night, I decided to stop off at my high sec base and pop some stuff out of the oven and get some hulls built for later transshipment to 0.0. I'll also need to get the alt to Jita and purchase some module kits in order to fit out said hulls.

Mmmmmm Barrage M mmmmm....

Lacks Vision #2

2011-02-28T07:44:00.000-08:00

Gah, I'm tired. Just helped deal with an Agony Empire dick-star last night... By jove! I think I've figured out the current situation with sov warfare. The current sov system is basically recreating trench warfare. At it's finest...

Like others I'm not sure how to fix the issue to make it a more engaging endeavor. But some look at the current situation would probably not be remiss.

1) Trench warfare may be clinically interest but it definitely lacks a certain "fun factor". There are plenty of WWII games out there. How many ground WWI games do you know?... That's a lot isn't it? (your sarcasm meter should need a new fuse now).

2) Fleet engagements are fun, Blockades are not. Plus we've got the issue that we're a game. We can't force people to play 24/7 like the poor saps manning the ships on blockade duty in the real world.

3) Raiding is fun, interesting and useful. But the way things are currently setup the only thing to "raid" are unlucky saps who aren't paying attention to what's going on. The only damage raiding does is minor and indirect.

There are other issues (it's complex) but those are some statements about the current state of the game that I think hold more than just vapor. The problem is sov warfare has degenerated into trench warfare. Now the problem is that the solution to trench warfare (at least on more than the tactical level) turned out to be technological. CCP controls our technology. So until we have something that re-introduces maneuver warfare at the sov level back into the game, we'll be stuck with this simulation of world war I that is the current sovereignty system.

Brain still fuzzy, will work on objectives to get out of this situation later.

The Sixty Million SP Man

2011-02-27T12:28:00.000-08:00

I hit both Logistics V and 60m SP over the weekend. And much rejoicing was had. So, my skill breakdown looks like the following:

Skill Breakdown

As you can see Science and Spaceship Command take up the brunt of my skill points. With gunnery and missile operations a close 3rd and 4th. I'm still in what I consider to be the "flesh out before getting into capital ships" part of any character development plan. Being a jack of all trades I figure it'll be about a year before I get into capital ships in any big way. I still need to get the Shield transfer and energy transfer skills to 5 before I fly a scimitar in anger. I also need to get up to high sec and get that scimitar hull I've got laying around fit out and ready to rock and roll.

I've also heard rumors that my first post about lack of vision is causing controversy and apparently bitter vet tears over at scrapheap challenge (nope, haven't read it yet). I am amused. That would also explain antithaca's answer to the post. Especially since I had not proposed any specific solutions, just generic objectives to fix up an observed imbalance in the risk reward ratio of certain aspects of industrial operations.

(side note to antithaca: please sink some SP into your blog reading skill to get it beyond level 1)

Slowly getting my PvP on

2011-02-25T07:21:00.000-08:00

I'm still having to spend an inordinate amount of time concentrating on ratting and such. And loosing 2 T2 cruisers is not something that you recover from quickly. But on the other hand the isk per night is definitely there and I'm getting there. At this point my objective is to have and maintain a stable of at least 6 PvP BS and various other ships. Once that stable is established we'll see about branching out and doing other things. So for the near future future it looks like running anomalies and what not are going to be the order of the day.

On the other hand, just as I log in last night, we get notification in alliance chat that 3 carriers have just been tackled. So I burn to the staging system, join fleet and comms and then burn 14 jumps to get to the system where the carriers are. While I'm in transit, a Titan and 2 supercarriers jump in to try to save the carriers. Then jump out again as our tackle fails to catch them. Then I finally get in system and help kill the two carriers. Very nice to be part of a successful scramble response. I am pleased my stats are starting to look less carebear like (although being part of the NC obviously that will never go away entirely - but that's fine by me).

Then it was back to he corp home system and make some more isk to be able to afford more battleships and cruisers.

Lacks Vision #1

2011-02-23T08:24:00.000-08:00

Call it coming off a break. Call it looking at things from a distance. Call it madness. I am finding that EVE is still like no other game out there. But it's got it's flaws. And warts. And maddening idiosyncrasies. And like most games it ignores some realities of human ingenuity when at war. It also ignores a whole bunch of possibilities and gradations.

This post is part of a series that going to be a look into some of what I see as issues and some possible ideas of ways to implement changes to the game to resolve said issues. Vague semblances of possible plans.

Risk vs Reward.

That right there is one of the major problems with EVE online and the cause of it's population distribution. Specifically it's industrial base in this case. Let me ask you a few questions:

Is manufacturing something in a station safer than at a POS? Then why does it cost less than manufacturing at a POS? When one puts up a POS for any industrial purpose (as opposed to for a tactical or strategic PvP purpose) it represents taking a risk. You need to invest in the infrastructure and you need to invest in defending said infrastructure and there are ongoing fuel costs or it's just an item sink. All of this costs. There are some time savings with POS but in reality that is much less of a consideration than you would think since the time scales are so short and the differences are less than an order of magnitude. Besides for most things the rate of resource extraction is more of a restriction on rate of manufacture than the strict manufacturing time itself. As far as I can tell only super capital construction and T2 ammo are scaled at what feels right-ish time scales.

The point here is that CCP seems to want to have a risk vs reward scale on things. But they fail in a lot of cases to set things up so that riskier stuff has more rewards than safer stuff. And I'm not talking about mission levels either. A Level 4 mission is actually LESS risky to a skilled battleship pilot than a level 1 mission is to a newbie in his first Rifter.

My point here is that a) manufacturing (and researching) in stations is WAY to cheap for the level of safety delivered. The time scales of manufacturing for the most part are too short relative to the materials investment so allow for any change in manufacturing time at the scales that CCP allows to have a significant or even relevant effect.

So, what would I do? Ideally you want some incentive for those carebears to set manufacturing facilities in places that can be attacked. Although I would SERIOUSLY like to totally revise POS ... fuck it while we're on a lets revise things kick let's go all the way.

So lets look at this:

Desired outcome:

1) Industrial work in attackable facilities must either be NECESSARY or CHEAPER than industrial work in stations. This is to provide incentive to industrialist wanting a competitive edge to move out of stations. Stations should primarily be market locations rather than service locations.

2) Attack-able facilities should have as little impact on the physics engine as possible. Look, the current situation where a POS is made up of a whole bunch of separate pieces that are individually anchored in space is bad design. Looks cool, but has a cost since the physics engine must keep track of them all. This can't but help add to lag. This is bad

3) The cost of manufacture needs to go higher. MUCH higher in empire stations. Heck Dr. E was complaining that the new anomalies in 0.0 have caused the balance to tilt too far in the direction of faucets than sinks. Increasing the direct isk sink in empire accomplishes 2 things simultaneously. 1st it provides an isk sink in the one spot where it'll not impact the people directly involved (from the spreadsheet point of view it's simply an increase in cost passed on to the customer). Two it provides incentive for people to get into player corps and put things that PvPers can attack in space.

4) Two the basic station hanger that each pilot gets at each station is currently effectively unlimited in storage space. Provide a minimum. Add extra storage for pilots an ongoing fee. Ditto for docking space. Make it cheaper for corporations to expand storage in stations but charge them as well. Make it cost competitive with exposed storage in space.

The whole idea is to make safe spots more restrictive and more expensive than less safe spots. NOT THE OTHER WAY ARROUND!!! friggen idiots.

So... Let's think about this. How would I change current station/pos/something else design to accomplish this. Hehe, I'm going to save my ideas that for the next post but I'm going to let people think about what we're trying to accomplish here as a thought exercise.

Manasi's trees

2011-02-22T12:24:00.000-08:00

In Manasi's post recently he goes into explaining why he's being bitten by the bitter vet flu that seems to be going around. You know what? I'm going to agree with him about his point of view while still not being disappointed that Incarna is finally coming out.

I will argue that the specific analysis of only 4 new pvp ships introduced since 2007 is a little flawed. There are easily 6-7 functional ship configurations per hull for the 4 strategic cruisers. Minimum. I currently have 3 configured (1 PvE, 1 Recon, 1 PvP) and the utility vs cost is astounding. They are not substantially more expensive than T2 HACs (if you're not faction/officer fitting them they are what? only around twice as expensive). And you can truly fine tune their functionality to what you envision. Manasi mentions that he does not yet have SC unlocked and usable and this may be why he only considers them to be 1 hull, those of us who use them consider them to be an entire ship class like say "T2 Cruisers" in and of themselves.

But on the whole he's correct that the release of new ship types is slow. On the other hand, what functionality ship wise that are not in the current ships would he like to see? I can think of some functionality that is not currently in the mix but what does he want?

Will the T3 frigates introduce new functionality or will it simply new flavors of existing functionality? The current T3 ships only introduced a single new functionality to the eve mix that wasn't there before. The ability to warp out of bubbles. Any other functionality you'd be able to accomplish using other ships in EVE. Prober? cheetah or Recon. Ewar? Specific ships already. Combat? duh, command? got command cruisers for that. So as you can see the only new thing was the ability to warp out of bubbles. Oh and weird combination of other functionality (scout ship with the DPS of a HAC? T3 can deliver, Firepower of a Hurricane with the long range webs of a Huggin? love that ship).

At the end of the day we need some new functionality to hang a new design on otherwise we end up with new ships that are simply different variations on existing ships. So Manasi, what functionality would you like to see that we could hang a new ship design on?

But otherwise yea, I would like to see more ship classes in game if only to give even more things for the indy side to make.

TeaDaze's trees

2011-02-22T11:38:00.000-08:00

I want to talk some more about the various responses I'm reading on various blogs to the Captain's Quarters, Incarna and the direction CCP is taking EVE. I've decided to write a series of posts regarding these issues.

After reading a bunch of FUD and what not, I'm slowly coming to the feeling that the CSM lacks vision. You're going to ask "WTF are you talking about Let?". This is actually something that CCP itself was complaining about when the CSM started. CCP has adapted to this reality and is using the CSM interaction to guide it's proofing of certain things. But the reality is that MOST EVE players tend to concentrate on issues from a very limited point of view. How can anyone who boasts that they've never put a mining laser in a ship ever have any valid input on various aspects of mining? The truth is they can't because they are only looking at it from a very limited point of view. A lot of the CSM feedback is highly valuable on the nuts and bolts mechanics side of things. Sort of like some strange extension of the QA/Balancing side of things. However I am becoming convinced it is actually less valuable from the point of view of the expansion of the game into new territory or serious re-balancing of existing mechanics.

Let's take TeaDaze's post explaining his reasoning for quitting EVE online. Let's take a good look at what he's saying "ccp promised that we would not be forced to interact with avatars". Umm, unless they promised you something under NDA, I never saw any promise like that I ever read in any publicly available material. I did see a promise about how the new system would not take any more time to accomplish certain things than the current system takes. What does this mean to me? This means the following: Can I dock up, change ships, refit the new ship and undock in the same amount of time under the new system? How to test this out?

First we look at the purpose of the maneuver: To change ships and refit the new ship in anticipation of combat conditions that will be prevalant between the moment one undocks until the next moment one finds oneself docked back up.

Example that covers the current situation:

Dock up
Switch ships
Strip all modules and cargo from new ship
Open up fitting tool
Refit all modules and fill cargo (including fixing up groupings)
Undock

I would suggest someone sets up a specific ship and fit and time themselves a few times on Sisi in an unoccupied system to see what their average time to accomplish the above task is.

Now this operation should be functionally identical once Incarna (more specifically the captains quarters part of it) is in place. According to CCP there will be a new mirror made next week so I expect to see the new CQ up on Sisi within a week or two of that (to make it up before Fanfest). Once the CQ is on Sisi we can test this out and see if we get the same results time wise. If not THEN we can say that CCP is not delivering. If the time is close to the same, then we can say that the interface is irrelevant to the functional objective of the procedure. The truth is that the current station environment imposes a certain cpu and interface constraint already. There's a session timer when you get into a station and when you undock. Cosmetically changing the interior from the ship spin to an avatar with a view up to the ship may not change the functionality or time sink at all.

This is why I say "wait for Sisi". Now I can respect TeaDaze's decision to stop playing EVE. I don't have a problem with that. From his point of view EVE was drifting too far from what his vision of what EVE's mechanics should be. But that's a personal analysis and decision. Personally I'm not married to particular mechanics so long as the functionality is there. For that I'm willing to wait. My decision to cut short my break was based on a failure to deliver functionality in another game. Not a failure in mechanics.

You can criticize CPP for breaking the established lore of EVE. Course you have to ask yourself if that lore is there because of the way the game was designed to get around limitations of not having ambulant avatars from day 1. But unless they break the functionality I'm willing to wait and see.

I really get the impression though that Mynxee and TeaDaze specifically are disappointed from the lack of progress in improving low-sec traffic for pirates to go after. I can't say I'm surprised because the current situation (lack of use of lowsec) is a direct result of the ratio between the inexpensiveness of PvP ships vs the lack of defensibility and relative high cost of industrial ships in low sec. Unless CCP is willing to address that issue (and so far none of the proposals address it) low sec piracy will allways be the victim of it's own successes.

Tempest in a teacup - the CQ

2011-02-21T10:06:00.000-08:00

Ah, EVE, you are such a controversial game. There are a metric tonne of people weighing in (we're in space so microgravity conditions apply - parse my meaning now you semantic dominatrices) on the issues of the Captains Quarters. From the ecstatic to the horribly, horribly disappointed. Mostly the later. From all the breast beating and corset tearing going on you'd think the death of EVE was coming. Can I have your stuff?

Reality check time people. A few observations:

1) WAIT FOR IT TO HIT SISI YOU IDIOTS. At this point in time there is so much F.U.D. floating around there's no way anyone can get a clear picture of how this will turn out.

2) The EVE mob's passions have been inflamed. This alone tells me things will turn out better than the doomsayers have predicted. The previous times we've had these levels of reaction have been: The "need for speed" adjustment (a.k.a. the nano nerf), The supercarrier nerf (that ended up being a boost). The ECM changes. The "go vote for us" incident (CCP refocuses on lag).

3) The truth of the matter is that for the true attack on lag CCP needs to work on distributing the physics engine of a solar system between multiple nodes. Until that technical hurdle is overcome, we won't see a true attack on lag past incremental improvements here and there. Incidentally the problems they need to resolve to accomplish this is NOT FRIGGEN TRIVIAL! The type of programmers that need to be thrown at this problem however are not the run of the mill programmer. They need to throw some eggheads of the programming world at this problem. Just throwing more bodies won't do it.

4) Growth pains. CCP is well on he way to becoming a larger developer. But they are no where near there yet. They also need to overcome their rapid growth pains. It looks like they are getting there but there is still a ways to go.

5) Think long term people. we will be at the 2003 level in terms of content once the next 2 releases of Incarna happen. Not in terms of quality, but in terms of scope. It took years of development for the space ship side of things to get where it is. Also CCP is THE ONLY major developer that does not charge extra for expansions. Sure you can bitch that they don't put out as much content as WoW does on each expansion but I'd like to point out: a) they don't charge you for the expansion and b) they are 1/10th the size of blizzard.

The above are the major reasons why I think the current hubaloo about a single feature of Incarna is much ado about nothing. Seriously, we're going to get a balcony view instead of an overhead view. We currently have a session change when we dock up, we'll have a session change after incarna comes out when we dock up. So long as you can do all your interaction from the balcony, not much except the decor will have changed as far as functionality goes. We'll see once it hits Sisi. Until then, everyone needs to take a chill pill.

Kept busy

2011-02-20T15:40:00.000-08:00

Well with things running "warmish" in Geminate, I've been kept busy answering the CTAs (Call to Arms). On one side was the lost of my Rapier in O2O-2X which was kinda of sad but predictable (must rat to replace it). This was my first personal experience with fighting under serious lag conditions. On the other hand there was the excellent fight in VSJ-PP.

From what I could tell it looked like we managed to frustrate the DRF (Drone Russian Forces) or trick them into jumping in to us. At which point lag conditions took over. From what I remember the local count, once again, peaked over 1k ships in local (and mostly on the same grid). Lag is survivable at 600-800 in system. But it really sets in once the local count hits upwards of 1k. Also observable was the recovery from lag (once it sets in) can take quite a while and the ship count needs to drop below 300 before things feel "workable" again. I'm not sure this node was reinforced. This particular fight was a movement until engagement style of fight. We were headed in one direction then reversed course and the DRF jumped in on us as if they were chasing us. Planned or spur of the moment call by the FC? No way to tell. Either way it worked. Also I don't think this was a reinforced node.

On the other side of things (my high sec alts) well it's Hulkageddon. I've basically put all extractors on long ass cycles and will be resuming things once it's over. No reason to loose ships stupidly. Alt # 2-3 is currently training PI and will be training some low level hauling skills once that's hit 4/4/4/4/4. We'll see how it goes. I will note that in high sec there is very little difference between a 5 and a 4, you get a teeny bit more resource but not as much as you think. And you still need to make sure you have enough basic processors to cover your extraction. Long term (once Hulkageddon is finished), I think I will switch to pure extraction on most planets and one or two industrial planets (between the 3 alts) to make P2 and P3s.

A foot soldiers view

2011-02-17T10:20:00.000-08:00

I finally got my PvE ship down to the 0.0 base. So things look set to actually get some isk to make some pew pew ships for use on CTAs. And it looks like there will be a lot of CTAs in the near future. Solar wing looks serious in their attempt to move into Geminate. All of last night was spent on ops. Course in the NA time zone this means a lot of "putting stuff into reinforced". We'll see how this plays out.

On the PI side, my 2 alts finally broke the 100mil barrier (made after recouping initial investment). This is what's known as "good". My other alt has started on the road to getting his PI skills. I will need to follow those by some hauling skills (sufficient to fit a specific type and fit of hauler). I will also need to invest in getting him outfit with said hauler loadout.

This weekend also marks the start of hulkageddon. With it's concentration on all industrials this time, I think it's time to simply batten down the hatches and wait out the storm. This might impact my bottom line but prices should shoot up on a lot of goods that depend on stuff being moved around.

Lots of scouting

2011-02-15T09:47:00.000-08:00

Null sec

I'm still in the process of settling in. My PvE stable is currently sadly lacking and I'm waiting for some ships to make it down to the operating area in order to increase my income to afford the ships I'll be blowing up as I get my PvP rust knocked off. In the meanwhile I scout. Some times as part of a fleet, sometimes solo to get to know the area.

And it looks like there will be some fights. It looks like various drone russian forces have decided they wanted to move into Geminate. This has actually been a boon for me since I know the layout of Geminate quite well from my days in UFA (as much as that fail cascaded).

As can now be surmised, there seems to have been a coordinated metagaming/ingame offensive to occupy parts of Geminate by the Drone Russian Forces (apparently that's what they are called). The move to disband/occupy the Rebellion Alliance space seems to have been well organized by Solar Fleet. I had also observed some Intrepid Crossing ships operating in the area as part of the Rage operation to counter the DRF incursion. So I find with no surprise that they've occupied my old home in K25-XD this morning. So it looks like there will be plenty of fighting in Geminate for the next little while. I can't really comment on the fight in Uemon but ouch.

So it looks like I picked an "interesting" time to settle into null sec. Looks like it won't be boring at least.

High sec

Meanwhile my alts continue to supply PI goods to the high sec market, which is trending down a bit so I'm going to say that supply is up, we'll see how long that lasts. On the other side of things, it only takes 15 min on the non-selling alt to harvest the PI goods every 2nd night. and 30min for the one who ships everything to market. I should be able to upgrade Zindal's PI installations tonight and start on alt 2-3's PI training plan. I also need to run some numbers on P1 vs P2 vs P3 profitability and decide whether to make some changes in what I'm extracting. We'll see.

Settling in

2011-02-11T07:59:00.000-08:00

I'm settling in slowly. Managed to get in a home defense fleet. Managed to get my ship blown up doing something stupid. Ah well, such is life. It's been a while since I've been in big fleets. I really need to get myself some Hurricanes. Note to self: build hulls and guns in HQ base and ship em down. In bulk. This will actually take a bit of planning since most of the movements of stuff will need to be done by the hauling alt. And I will want to be able to plan a build sequence that will get stuff manufactured within 24h with the idea of popping some long term jobs in the oven just before I jump back to 0.0 when the 24h is up. Going to need to plan some. Since I'm now living in 0.0 jumping up to take car of stuff in high sec (jump clone wise) means I need to plan stuff in 24h chunks of manufacturing.

We'll see how things progress.

Strategic Mobility in EVE

2011-02-08T08:32:00.000-08:00

Having recently made use of Jump Bridges to move some combat assets to my new home in R.H.I, I've been given a nice lesson in how they work. What follows are my thoughts to their impact on null sec politics and the discussions that are happening withing CCP and with the CSM.

What are jump bridges? Basically they are like player owned and operated stargates. The thing is that they have a rather significant range compared to the normal stargate network (what you see when you peruse Dotlan). This allows an alliance to setup "shortcuts" around their controlled systems. Which is useful but not in and of itself game breaking.

Now as has been noted by CCP they consider the current strategic mobility of forces around null sec to be an issue since it lends itself to "supper blobs". It allows the sky marshals of EVE to concentrate forces in a rather easy and convenient fashion. The main reason for this is that allied forces can use each others networks if they set up their standings correctly. This means that a sub-capital force can zip from one end of EVE to another so long as they have allies along the way. Something that would normally take 50 to 70 jumps can take less than 10.

I suspect that jump bridges were originally designed to facilitate internal defenses of a territory. The use that we the players have been putting them to seem to be having the usual law of unintended consequences. Now I note that CCP is considering design changes to limit strategic mobility. They've even requested that the removal of jump bridges entire remain on the table and the CSM agreed.

Now the individual pilot will be horrified by the removal of what they, rightfully, see as a major convenience. Strategically however it would make things tougher to coordinate long distance operations. Which is what CCP wants. One way they could do this without destroying the existing infrastructure outright would be to simply not allow jump bridge usage outside an alliance. This would allow for rapid deployment of forces withing ones own territory to respond to a threat without leading to the strategic mobility for entire power-blocks that we now see in null sec warfare.

Now admittedly, this is crystal ball gazing. CCP will do what CCP will do, and the CSM will provide feed back on their plans. I suspect that the long term effect of this would not be the balkanization of null sec CCP seems to want. For that you would really need to kill the jump bridges entirely.

That takes care of the strategic mobility of regular forces, what about the capitals? Well they depend on cyno beacons and cyno ships. I don't know if the beacons have the same issues as jump bridges or not (usable by allies) but if they do, the same thing would probably need to be done to them. Either way, logged out and then cloaked cyno ships represent the pre-planned emplacement of future mobility. The day when we can hunt down cloaked ships is the day when we can realistically limit strategic mobility of capitals. Until then, not really. We need some form of not necessarily accurate detection - i.e. long range detection only accurate enough to land you within 150-250km followed by some form range pinging and of depth charging (hey look ma, something a destroyer or destroyer derived T2 hull could be tasked to do as a specialist ship). Some mechanism like this would remove the strategic effect of cloaked cyno ships without necessarily removing their tactical usefulness.

That's my 2isk on the issue.

And I move to Vale of the Silent

2011-02-07T20:36:00.000-08:00

Since I'm now in, it should be obvious (to anyone able to use the people and places window) I have joined Red Horizon Inc [R.H.I]. And the first evening was spent... Moving stuff... It's just like being in my 20's again... Scuse me while I go get the pizza and the beer.