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Thursday, December 29, 2011
Back from the travels
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.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Anatomy of a failed Incursion Fleet
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.
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.
Monday, December 19, 2011
Lots of things with the alts
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.
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.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Fuel
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.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Busy
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...
Monday, December 12, 2011
In the name of science
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.
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
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.
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.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Carrier
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.
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.
Friday, December 9, 2011
All over the place
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.
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.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Restricted game time issues
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...
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...
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Prognostication
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.
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.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Humm, is it DUSTy in here?
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
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...
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...
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Friday and Saturday
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...
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...
Friday, December 2, 2011
More Incursions
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.
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.
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