Well that was.... Interesting...

Note: DO NOT jump into a ship that's in an Orca IF that Orca was just pulled out of a Ship Maintenance Array. I had managed to store the Orca in the SMA even though it had ships in it and that had not pinged. The story of what happened subsequently is a mess of confused strange events that could only happen in EVE.

Side note: GM's don't get enough recognition for their work. And I'll appologize for one comment last night to GM Homonia. Sorry but part of a stuck character petition is indicating which character has a problem so if I say I can't interact with my main inside EVE it kind of indicates that the character indicated in the petition IS my main. Petitions CAN be sent via the web when in-EVE interface is un-available. So if I was a little short at that point blame it on the 1.5h without a response after the initial GM indicated the situation was being "investigated".

Are you ready for a confused muddle of a story? The facts may or may not be what I'm about to recount, but well that's what happens when things are confused. Not to mention there are probably 5 separate groups involved in this story.

Dramatis Personnae:

The DAFT boys: Dev and Dem and Zam. Much scouting was provided by these guys. Thanks. Our combined scouting kept this muddled situation from resulting in any losses.

Random Russian scout: Magnate with Russian probes. Name unknown. Probably still in system. Or not. Good scouts are like that. Could also belong to the that gank dude a while ago.

The German stealth bomber dude: Noob or not?

The Cheetah and his budies: Cheetah/Hound pilot with probably a Hurricane alt (going by name), a Tempest, a Megathron and a Huginn. (and possibly one other ship but he didn't stick around).

The GM team: GM Syndemic, GM Momonia and GM Zerat

My alt and I: Your narrator.

So I start the evening off with the usual "scan everything down" and get a bookmark on the high sec wormhole. I neglect to actually check out the wormhole's other end in high sec but I did bookmark it. I then decide I've had enough of PI and I'll want to ship the product to high sec and close down the operations on the planets in order not to have to worry about things when I do close things down.

So the first thing I do is decide to switch to my PI hauling ship. I preference a low "to warp" time ship for this. But I had put this Wreathe in my the ship maintenance bay of my Orca. So I jump in the Orca Empty out the Corporate hangar at my POS and start un-anchoring it since we'll no longer need it. Then I jump in the Wreathe that's in the SMB. Things go wrong.

When you get a "Fatal" error message and shutting down the client and re-logging in does not resolve the issue, things are wrong. With an empty Orca floating around my POS the situation is also "sub-optimal".

At this point I start the petition and log my alt in. I get the Orca situation under control, i.e. get a pilot in it to guarantee that it's under control. Eventually I get a reply from GM Syndemic that the situation is being investigated and he can't help me. The wording of the comment seems to indicate that it's a more general situation. A bit of forum querying however seems to indicate no one else is having the same problem I am. Ah good.

And 1.5h without a response or the ability to log in ensues.

At that point my patience wears thin and I send a query on the same petition to see if they are having problems. At this point a new GM (GM Homonia) comes on and managed to get my character in game by moving me and the wreathe I'm in to a station in High sec. Some repackaging and new rigs ensues (thank you for that) and the Wreathe is now usable and she moves me to the high sec system I was in 2-3 days ago... Oh great. And the pilot with the bookmark to high sec that I had not had time to check out? Oh right - that's me.

About this time the DAFT boys start reporting Russian probes in the wormhole system. Interesting. But I get my alt scanning that high sec wormhole so I know how far I have to travel. Lucky I remember what it's xxx-999 code is, so nailing it is fairly fast and easy. Note my alt is in an Iteron V fit for a volume/speed compromise (i.e. it gets to warp MUCH faster than a normal extended Iteron V). I send the Iteron to the HS wormhole and just as I land a neutral stealth bomber jumps in. Coincidence? Initially we assume that he's related to the the Magnate we caught a glimpse of but by the end of the evening, we'll not be so sure. So my alt jumps to high sec and starts to orbit the wormhole at 5km under cloak.

30 Jumps! ouch. At this point I indicate to GM Homonia that I am beginning to suspect that it was the Orca/SMB/SMA interaction and that there are 2 more ships that may be affected. I ask if I should repackage those as well. I indicate that reducing the chance of a repeat incident would be worth losing the rigs. I start motoring towards the wormhole.

During this time we get MORE activity at the wormhole. A cheetah also comes in and out. Oh and the SB seems to want to play with the DAFT boys. He indicates that he's a noob and forgot to bookmark the exit. You can believe as much of that as you want but either way one of the DAFT boys provides a bookmark at a random planet for the idiot. He picks up the BM and eventually makes his way back to the wormhole. At one point he launches some bombs around the wormhole (one of the daft boys is cloaked up with eyes on the wormhole from the inside at this point). We play with his mind a bit by making him think his bomb may have damaged one of the cloaked ships (Side note I really need to test this one day to see the exact effects of a bomb on a cloaked ship - up to and including log reports so that if I want to mess with someone's mind I know what's truly possible or not).

Then there was the Cheetah scouting in and out. This one we can say probably had nothing to do with the stealth bomber, and since it was the scout, nothing to do with the Magnate (who was probably going "WTF?!?" if he had stuck around by the end of the evening.

It's about this point in time that I get a convo with the 3rd GM and with 15 jumps to go get Letrange and his Wreathe moved back into the wormhole system. Some random spot in space but at least I don't land on the stealth bomber who had just jumped out. Its eventually established that I should probably log out with the ships that may have a problem in he Orca and that downtime should fix them if there's anything wrong with them. Should something still be wrong with them after downtime, I'm re-open the Petition.

At this point I switch up to my cloaky Loki and try and bait the SB back into the hole using my alt's Iteron. No luck. Humm this Nemesis sure looks like it's AFK. So I amuse myself for a bit getting him moved 20km off the wormhole. There with the cloaked hauler/scout I should have plenty of warning if he tries to jump back into action. Eventually I head back and get the PI materials pickup done and then use the Orca to move it and extra stuff back to high sec (again no reaction to either the Wreathe zipping around, nor the Orca going in and out. The Cheetah is observed again though.

As one last part of the operation I move the Covetor up to high sec and park it in a station. Oh that's interesting a yellow Megathron and Tempest wandering around outside the station. Oh and what's this? that scouting character has changed up to a Hound. Interesting. You don't think? Na, couldn't happen right?

Sure enough the hound ends up at the wormhole (remember I've still got my alt in his iteron cloaked up orbiting the wormhole in HS). So I haul ass with the pod and jump it into w-space and off to my POS as my alt keeps an eye on things. Back in the Loki, it's time to keep an eye on things.

So sure enough between my alt, my main on both sides of the WH and the DAFT boys keeping an eye on things, Guess what shows up? Yep that's right, the Megathron, the Tempest and one other BS/BC which I forget. Then after some hole jumping the third BS/BC and the tempest are replace by a Hurricane and eventually a Huginn. After some wormhole baiting by this little squadron, during which I indicate that indeed we are aware of them so it's not like they'll surprise us, we get them to waste quite a bit of time for absolutely no results. At one point they uncloaked my hauling alt (man that took a while) and they finally figured out that we weren't going to be panicked into stupid moves, since we had full situational awareness, they moved off.

Rule of thumb: Unless you're sure of a one shot kill, fights within jumping distance of a WH are for suckers and gankers. Eventually I logged my alt in the Orca and my main in the Loki.

Crazy night. Things were "busy".

Not much to report

Busy weekend IRL. Good though. EVE meet as usual. Barely had time to log on and skillflip/PI. Man will I be glad when CCP overhauls the PI stuff. Things are on schedule, although I'm not looking forward to the ship movement I need to do to centralize things once I get out of wormhole space.

Plink

Once again I log on relatively late in the evening. Quickly do the rounds of the extractors then cloak up in my Loki to sit outside the HS wormhole which is due to pop any moment. This is a technique used by pro wormhole residents to establish an exact time of spawn for a wormhole. This enables us to estimate with great accuracy when a wormhole will de-spawn. Useful information if you want to know if you have enough time to haul that stuff to point X and get back in time.

As I'm chilling with some soup, chatting with Cozmik who has moved all his ships out of the wormhole, in pops a neutral Probe. Blink Blink. And he sits there. Oh lookie sisters scan probes on d-scan... Right! upcoming lesson. I warp off to a safe spot and warp back to 20 on the wormhole, uncloaking in warp. Start targeting as I land and activate point and artillery.

Insta-wreck. Start targeting pod and re-activate artillery. Insta-corpse. I'm really rocking this projectile alpha. So I look at the fitting in the kill mail... An armor repairer. Salvager in the 2nd high slot. Ok lesson time.

Let's look at what happened and try to analyze where the pilot made his mistake, shall we. What to look at first? The fit or the tactics? Well since I'm a fairly strong proponent of fitting for the tactics let's look at that first.

His tactics: Jump thru a wormhole, launch probes, start probing for astrometric anomalies and signatures.

...

There are just a few problems with these tactics.

1) Your survival depends entirely on your ability to jump back to high sec to get out of trouble.
2) If you're moving scan probes around you're not paying attention to either the d-scan (it's on another tab) nor is your attention necessarily going to notice a ship appearing on grid in the overview.
3) There are ships out there that can one shot a Probe (oh, like, say, my Loki...)

Now don't get me wrong I'm a big proponent of using the Probe as a cheap exploration vessel. But let's take a look at how I usually do it with my alts (my main uses a Cheetah or my cloaky Loki - which is expanded probe launcher fit)

1) Jump into system and hold cloak while hitting the d-scan and checking out the near 14 au for signs of activity.
1a) if there's something on grid - wait 30 seconds and jump out.
2) Bookmark the wormhole
3) Warp to a random planet at a random distance.
3a) At this point I either cloak up and see if things stay calm or
3b) head off in a random direction at max AB popping 4 probes out then cloaking up after a bit of separation from the probes.
4) Once safely cloaked up move the probes off to some random deep space point without fiddling with them. Once they are no longer a sign post pointing to the general location of my cloaked Probe I can fiddle with them
5) Keep moving under cloak away from the warp in spot (preferably in some off-plane direction)
6) Calmly probe out the signatures I'm interested in.

There's also some general tactical information about small ship maneuvering it helps to keep in mind when designing a fit for a frigate:

1) Your tank on a frigate is laughable. Your survival depends on not getting hit and/or reducing the effectiveness of things trying to hit you.
2) My tour in Faction Warfare taught me that properly fit, most frigates can warp off before opposing larger ships can lock them up.
3) By proper fit we mean Inertia Stabilizers (preferred in this case) or Nanofiber Structures and nothing that isn't absolutely necessary making the signature bigger.

So with this in mind, here are the parameters for a Probe fit that matches the tactics I want to employ:

Primary function:
1) Expanded probe launcher - well this is the reason for the fit so we need this
2) Two gravity rigs (again this is for the primary purpose of the ship)

Now we address survivability:
3) Cloak - a simple prototype cloak is all that's necessary
4) An afterburner in one of the mids. A mwd would be better but I know from experience that I'd be sacrificing a low slot or a rig spot to enable it to fit. This is sub-optimal. As an added bonus the AB does not cause sig bloom (which allows other ships to lock you faster as a side note).
5) Two inertia stabs in the lows. (some people prefer nanos - I prefer getting to warp faster)

Optional elements:
6) Something in that 2nd mid (I usually go for a rock scanner)
7) A pair of Warrior I drones. (or nothing - they will probably never get used)

The ammo load-out usually consists of 8 core probes and 8 combat probes.

Used intelligently this should be the last ship you ever buy a scanning alt. And even if you screw up by the numbers and get it popped it's not like it's horribly horribly expensive.

Remember this is EVE. In wormhole space, they ARE out to get you. It's nothing personal (although flying stupidly DOES offend us). The question is not are you paranoid, it's are you paranoid enough?

Keeping wormhole space clean

I logged on quickly last night early in the evening and I managed to totally redo my Barren planet's PI layout. It only has to last until we pull out but I wanted a higher production of Oxygen and Bacteria. That done and all the extractors re-started, I went on to to do some other things.

Later on I logged back in and went to check the class 1 next door. Uninhabited but there were two cans cluttering up d-scan... Damn litter bugs. So I decide to see if I can find the darn things. Sure enough some intelligent use of the d-scan allowed me to localize the GSCs at a moon. Since there were no towers this made it relatively safe to warp to. Unlike yesterday's Brutix.

Sure enough, Two cans. Sitting in space. Clogging up the system and creating lag. Can't have that now can we. So, keeping an eye on things I un-cloak and begin laying in with the artillery. Damn do GSCs have a lot of structure. About 2 h and 2000-ish rounds of EMP M later I had the entire system scanned and there was no more space trash laying around.

What have you done lately to keep you system clean and reduce lag?

That was prety much it for the rest of the evening so I logged off. Some times it's not about making isk, just about shooting stuff. It helps that the only stuff I had around that could conceivably be hauled was the salvage and loot from yesterday's Brutix.

Lemmings I tell you

Did another logistics run. Get back to the POS. Wrecked Brutix found at POS. "Yea I was warping away from some sleepers"... Right into a defended POS...

/me double facepalms

Gets out the salver and cleans up the space near the POS...

...

...

...

Ideas

Gah! steam of consciousness stuff coming (PvP players may want to skip this one).

A post on Kirith's blog got me thinking about the missing parts of EVE. For PvP players we have killmails as "achievement" objectives. Admittedly these are chuck full of intel for those who know how to look, but the point is that they are used as a metric of success or participation. The thing is implementing something like this could easily be done in EVE. Especially associated with with something like the contract system. The problem is that the contract system is not flexible nor powerful enough to do what is needed.

With that here are some random ideas to improve the situation:

1) Corporate contracts. This needs to be leveraged and used much more. The reality is that this feature is horribly underused. having a list of corporate contracts available and completed on the corporate interface would help a lot. Having a copy paste feature like a kill mail and an API to this information would also do wonders. (restrict access to corporation members or individuals when exporting would be kind of intelligent).

2) Get this information into a tab on he character sheet like the kills and losses.

3) Allow courrier contracts to have a POS tower/module as a destination and as a source.

4) Allow assembled ships to be in courier contracts and so long as the assembled ship meets insertion into ship maintenance bays allow them to be placed in the Ship Maintenance bays of Orcas. This way we can have contracts for hauling assembled rigged ships around, that don't need freighters.

5) Allow either corporate internal buy/sell orders or contracts with partial completion.

end of stream of consciousness.

WTF is with newbies these days?!?

Ok, you're a newbie, you've joined a "decent" corp in high sec. Do you not listen to the veteran pilot explain about how w-space works. It's 0.0. People shoot first and ask questions later. Which has occasionally lead to some amusing blue on blue incidents that did not result in dead ships - "Why were you shooting at blues" - "Because you were"...). The d-scan is your friend. How to tell the difference between a Russian tower and a North American tower... All things that lead to good situational awareness. I can distinctly remember receiving lectures on the above back when I was a newbie.

So. I log on last night. Note that there's a bit of time left before the 40 P4's I'm currently cooking are ready. So I remember that Dark Ochre rock I had not finished off the previous evening. Quick scout of the system. Looks empty. So switch to my Covetor and head out to the rock. Note that in wormhole space we tend to bookmark individual rocks, not belts.... There's a reason for that.

Slap the two warp core stabilizers in my alt's hauler, now that he has the skill. Half a jet can, tanky and 2 warp core stabs - no guarantee but has a chance to get away if there's no bubble.

So I start mining away. Get a few hauler runs in when I spot a core probe on scan. Quickly start the Covetor warping towards the POS, then while the run up starts, I check the rest of the d-scan (you will note - react first - then ask questions). Vexor.... Vexor on scan...

Ooooookaaaaaay. So my alt makes a last pickup and warp while I'm traveling to the POS. I did mention that my alt's fit has 2 Inertia Stabilizers right? Once I'm at the POS I get in my cloaky Loki and take a wild guess and warp to the HS wormhole at 100.

Yep dead on the isk. One neutral Vexor on the wormhole... scanning away in one of our settled systems... I watch him for a sec and he does not seem to be with anyone. I then warp to a safespot and back to 20 on the hole. I uncloak in transit so as not to have the un-cloaking delay - trusting on his not noticing me on d-scan since he's probing. Start locking - then establish a nice stable orbit at 18 (comfortably inside optimal of my 5 x 720mm's and inside the warp disruptor range) and when lock arrives - point and let loose. 1st volley - shields gone and armor at 95%. 2nd volley (10 seconds later) armor at 10%. And he jumps out.

So I cloak back up and start orbiting the wormhole at 18. And in a few minutes he pops back in... And he pops drones... You're kidding me right? So I wait a bit then uncloak, target, and point and open fire. Sure enough I have the same effect on him... He sticks around a little longer and I find out he was smart enough to put in a DC at least since his structure seems more resistant than his armor was. His 5 Warrior 1's are tickling my shields (oooo the danger). Admittedly I was paying more attention to any wormhole wobble than the rest of the fight. And he jumps out again.

So I pick up his drones, cloak up. So I figure melting him twice in a row should have taught him a lesson (mind you as newbies go, at least he was smart enough to jump out. Not all would have been). So I jump out and sure enough not in local. A quick convo later and he explains that he tought I was an NPC...

/me facepalms

So I explain the facts of wormhole life to the newbie and drop off his drones at the high sec side of the wormhole (what can I say, It was feeling like stealing candy from a baby) and set the can to blue.

Then figure it's time to do a high sec run to the main base to drop of another ship (less to deal with come shutdown day). You will note I've decided to let the system cool down before getting back to mining. I'm crazy not stupid. So I fill my DST with some ore and various goodies that I need to move to high sec anyways (Dread Guristas ammo - I forgot to mention that I also ran two high sec combat sites yesterday as well). Autopilot. An hour later I melt the ore, shove the rest of the stuff into appropriate bins in the hangar and pop out in my pod. Autopilot back to the wormhole.

An other hour later I'm back in the WH. Get into my cloaky Loki and decide to sit on the high sec wormhole (cloaked at a classified distance away from it) while I chow down on some soup. I'm just finishing up when...

WTF is a neutral Covetor doing inside my wormhole???. Has someone removed all the inteligent pod pilots and replaced them with lemmings? You're kidding right?

Nope warps off in the direction of empty space. But since I have eyeball mk 1 on him I note the direction. Warp to the older grav sig. Nope, wrong direction. Check warp and warp to the newer one. Yep. Land 5km from the Covetor. Who is obvioulsy going to try and Ninja my soon to be Ore. Can't have this now can we?

Uncloak, start orbit (which boosts me away from him). Target. Lock. Say hello to mr. Alpha strike. One wreck later, and the pod escapes to the wormhole. So I head to the POS, grab a salver and clean up my grav site. Then after posting the kill mail, I note that the guy was from the same corporation as the previous guy from 2h ago... A conversation ensues where the first words out of my mouth are "Don't you guys talk to each other???".

Apparently not. Oh and a cargo expanded Covetor?... Brain hurt.

The rest of the evening is much calmer - unfortunately for Cozmik who missed all the fun. I did finally manage to nail that Dark Ochre rock (and a Veldspar rock next to it). And did some PI and went to bed. This morning saw the completion of he last of the P4 I was building.

Ah well at least this means my cloaky Loki is formally blooded.

Stuff

Been busy since last post. Humm let's see. In no particular order:

As you know I'll be taking a break from EVE come September. That being the case there are a bunch of administrative and not so administrative things to do. Administrative: Open up the books and see where each corporation in the alliance stands dues wise and pass information on to next alliance leader. (not done yet).

Not so administrative: Meeting with corp to discuss corp future with me no longer in the picture. End result of the meeting: Active pilots going to an active corp while I put the corp to sleep. W-space tower going to have to come down. Date for all this established.

Which leads to administrative: Kicking out all the members I haven't seen in a few weeks because they haven't logged in (not done yet but soon). This will probably happen the same day I tear down the tower (got to do something during those long un-anchoring parts).

Which leads to more logistics: Do a preliminary teardown of all industrial facilities and backup defenses. Get all of same shoved up in high sec. Two full Orca loads later THAT got done.

More logistics: Put in the last fuel the tower will need. Enough to last past the planned tear-down date. Gather rest of fuel and some PI materials and ship it all to high sec. Dump PI stuff on Jita, fly fuel to main high sec base.

Again Logistics: Fly around gathering stuff at disparate bases (including the tower modules and left over fuel from the high sec research facility. Centralize to main high sec base (again).

Then there is administrative logistics: Start emptying out corporate hangars in preparation for un-renting corporate offices. Acompanied by corporation wide eve mail: "Please empty out anything you want from the communal part of the hangars so I don't have to deal with it".

Moving ships around (shipping the small stuff in the Orca, flying the battleships). This is mostly done at the same time as the above mentioned logistical moves. Back to the wormhole each time a part of the operation was finished.

Can you tell most of the last week was spent AFK hauling various distances in high sec? (getting pro at the low slot switch out with my Orca).

So now that things have been pared down to their minimum, the plan is to make use of the remaining time in w-space to make as much isk as possible out of the various sites and connected system. In light of this, on Sunday I got my mining on. 15k of Arkonor and 17k of Dark Ochre (alliance member request for serious quantities of Nocxium) got mined when....

One of the alliance carriers was getting into trouble. And since it's in a wormhole an unknown (at the time) distance from my current wormhole, there wasn't much I could do except shut down the mining Op, scan for the exit (got it on the first scan down) and see how far the trip was to get to it. Unfortunately it was too far (I just hit high sec when the pilot said "carrier down").

Side comment: Yes I know it's a horrible fit. No I'm not responsible. Yes he should never have engaged without more backup than he had. I know.

The thing about dispersed wormhole life: In order for wormholes to be profitable and livable for even a small alliance you need multiple wormholes which means your forces are dispersed as far as rapid reaction goes. So standing rules are each wormhole is responsible for it's own local defense. Only when a POS is in danger are alliance forces called upon to concentrate. This is not a great big secret. Most alliance in wormhole space operate along the same principals. The dictates of the logistics involved necessitate it. The problem is of course that against serious raids (as opposed to assaults) you're outnumbered and end up loosing ships. Actual assaults are fairly rare mind you.

Throughout all this of course I need to keep my PI plans rolling along. This involves making one last set of P4's (10 of each item) and then going to P1 production only for dumping in Jita. I should be finished the last of the P4's withing 24h so from that point until tear-down it's Extractor work only.

Oh forgot to add: Bought my first Makinaw only to find out I need to slip in some Ice mining V to fit the T2 ice harvesters. Oh well.

So all in all a rather busy period for me.

New Loki (again)

So... I've discovered I'm definitely different from most EVE players. My PVE Loki? Tech 2 only. My Scout Loki? Tech 2 only. My PvP Loki? NOW I faction fit it....

Just dumped about 330mil on modules for my latest Loki. It is an armor tanked mix between a Hugin and a Hurricane. I could sink about another 270mil into it and get a full rack of T2 Trimarks to replace the T1 Trimarks I currently have. That, however, will have to wait. 30km Disruptor, 35km dual webs, 6x425mm AC (load out includes Barrage M and Republic Fleet Phased Plasma M) 50m³ of Drones (5 x Warrior II and 5 x Hornet EC-300 with 5 x Warrior TP-300 in cargo in case I'm operating with missile chuckers).

Should be fairly nasty until I loose it.

This makes the 5th Loki I've owned and my 3rd current Loki. I like Lokies.

Wormhole space is good for T3 stuff (making and flying).

Who Nuked the bubble gum factory?

Because, Mynxee, she is all out of bubble gum...

Mynxee: And the Beat Goes On
Mynxee: CCP Deliverables Status Report
CCP Warlock: The Long Lag
CCP Tanis: Fixing Lag: fostering meaningful human interaction, through testing and communication
CCP Zulu: Need for Moar Speed

Would that our non-CSM politicians were as hard working.

Changes

Well, the people who needed to know, now know. Time to come public about some changes. I need a break from EVE. Nothing to do with lag (I'm in wormhole space - we're not affected by that by and large). This being the case I'm winding down my operations and transferring leadership of the alliance to one of the other corporations. In about 2-3 weeks or so.

All the plans are in place for the transfer. It should go smoothly. Cathrianne will be the new leader of the AMC alliance.

The plan is to liquidate much inventory of materials so that when I get back I'll be in position to explore any options I want with a clear conscience and a pile of isk that will keep my options open. My plan is to let the two alt accounts run down (skilling up while they are still active) and then just go on skill flip life support on my main with a centralized asset depot in one system.

So over the next 3 weeks I'll be consolidating and liquidating stuff I don't want to keep for when I decide to come back active. The plan is to go explore other MMOs (FFXIV in particular) for at least the next year (letting my EVE batteries recharge). Unlike other inconsiderate idiots I will not simply stop logging on without anyone knowing that I'm going inactive. I will not also clutter up any corporation or alliance rolls with my inactive body.

The good thing about all of this is that it should allow me to complete some insanely long skills while I'm inactive (Finish the Large T2 weaponry plan, Minmatar BS V, Leadership skills for Loki and Claymore, AWU 5 etc etc etc)... so that I'll be nice and prepared for when I come back. We'll see how it all goes from there.

I will mention that this has slowly been in the works for the last two months. This is not a sudden change or anything like a reaction to various and other FUD stuff flying around about EVE's development state. Nor is it a spur of the moment thing. I'm taking a break. I need it. EVE can be intense (adrenaline shakes anyone?) but it does wear you out after a while. There's only so long you can operate at full alertness before you need to take a break. I've reached that point.

So in about 2-3 weeks my posting will slow down to a skill up trickle (and ze blogfather will need to remove me from the list - again - hehe)

Slooooooow week

Yep, it's a slow news week. CCP is getting back from vacation so hasn't yet gotten traction in dealing with the issues it might want to address soon-ish (like before pitchfork wielding FC's descend en mass on corporate HQ). Chribba grabs sov in 0.0 (check out N3-JBX in Scalding Pass). I need to grab 2 more melted nano-ribbons. QEN Q2 2010 is out.

0.0 looks like it is slowly devolving into roaming gang warfare where people simply give up on the military conquest as being too hard and attritional and go to a raiding mentality where you simply roam and interfere with your opponents life in hopes the other side will break and move out. So no great big campaigns at the moment (at least none that are grabbing the headlines). Looks like the carebears are winning EVE. I blame the Pax Aestas Desidiosus we are currently going through (it's latin, look it up).

Oooo and there's a new CCP Zulu devblog with CCP Oveur in the comments... Those are always fun.

50 Million

SP that is. Guess I'm officially a "veteran" pilot now. And tomorrow I get Large Autocannon Specialization IV. Nice.

Not much realy

For all the people outraging at the "74 Plex" goes poof thing. I'd like to point out a few things.

1) Compared to a Titan - it's not much. People cheer when those go poof.

2) It's about what a Mothership runs as I recall.

3) If someone had used the plexes to buy one of the above two ships, no one would be making a comment on the internet.

4) There is no reason to move Plex around except for arbitrage - which is an in game gamble with in game items. There are more expensive things to arbitrage with. Buying Battleship BPOs, researching them then dragging them to 0.0 to put up on sale comes to mind.

5) There are more intelligent ships to use to move stuff around and avoid suicide gankers. Plex are rather small items. Using something a little more resilient than a T1 frigate to move around would only be sensible.

6) In the famous words of Oveur: "It was never meant to be cost effective - it's just a giant dick". CCP has time and again designed things in this game which are the equivalent of giving you enough rope to hang yourself. This guy sounds like the type of guy who if I said "go jump off a bridge" would.

7) There is no reason to move Plex around. They can be used remotely from any station in the universe. These guys were gambling on an arbitrage move. buying cheap plex somewhere other than Jita and moving them to Jita to dump on buy orders.

If this was an alliance OP, they trusted the wrong pilot to do the moving. Simple as that. Also - if they were personally redeeming the plex - there's no reason to have them spawn on the main who's in say 0.0 and then move it to Jita. Just make sure one of your alts is in Jita and have that alt redeem the plex. Safer - easier - and suicide gank proof.

Once an item is in game - and it leaves a station it's destructible. Heck Titans and Motherships are always vulnerable - they can never dock in a station. EVE does not have wear and tear. It's the destruction that keeps the economy humming. How you husband your resources is your responsibility. The problem with our society is that people do not take responsibility for their actions. In EVE suicide ganking is considered part of the game play (however much people revile it - it is). The deal is YOU are responsible for taking a plex out of a station if you put it in your cargo hold and hit the un-dock button. Also once you give something to someone else it's gone from your control. End of story. You may get something back or you may get an equivalent remuneration back but there are no guarantees and EVE is setup that way.

The only thing that is special about PLEX is that they can be redeemed for game time, an the only way to create them is to use real world cash. There are ways of using them that do not involve moving them, so anyone moving them is taking a totally unnecessary risk. Why they would choose to do that is their problem.

Still happening

Well, I checked this morning. The instant completion bug is still going on.

Bleh

That is all.