Poetic Discourse

Inferno: The War Starts At Midnight

2012-02-23T02:42:00.001Z

I'll get the ball rolling with a quote from one of my all-time favourite films: "The war starts at midnight." You can interpret that how you wish, with regards to wars and CCP's long-awaited announcement that they're finally fixing empire warfare.

So. Yeah. It's fucking official. CCP is going to be iterating on Empire. War, war and more war. The war declaration mechanics. Faction warfare. Perhaps bounties too.

The war declaration mechanics are what I'm most interested in. Even if I am in null at the moment and will probably be here for quite awhile longer. It's important to me that conflict does not escape highsec. Bellwether mechanic, and all.

Keeping the signal-to-noise ratio high these last six months was probably what convinced CCP to tackle this sooner rather than later (they could have still iterated on null and little things, if they'd wanted.)

There was the one big threadnaught that we all kept going and going. There were endless wardec proposals on the Features forum. The backlash against EVE University. Blogs posts. Tweets. The conversation was frequent and aggressive. Folks didn't want to see carebears playing EVE yet not playing EVE. Bring back the conflict.

Now, there's no guarantee that we're going to like this new war declaration system. There are some things to be worried about. The latest devblog makes a short statement about CONCORD sanctioned warfare:

The next few months will be spent reinvigorating Concord-sanctioned warfare, giving tools and a framework to groups who wish to take advantage of these conflicts both directly and indirectly.

There's a consensual warfare ring to that statement, isn't there? A new framework for those that wish to engage in conflict. (Another way of potentially saying what I think that devblog comment might be saying.) The positive we can take from this development? That the CSM left Iceland, in December, reasonably happy with where CCP was going with the new war declaration system (although they weren't at all happy with the initial presentation, some conversations moved it in a direction the CSM was happier with.)

After back and forth discussion the CSM ended up being positive about this change although some concerns of the finer details that have to be hammered out. This is definitely something that requires community input and a devblog will be released detailing the changes once they have become clear.

We'll have to wait to see what CCP is up to. Exciting times are upon us. Crucible. Inferno. All this development is really a good thing. I can't see CCP fucking up wardecs. I still have too many good feelings about Crucible. Nothing bad is going to happen? Right?

What happens to highsec? Does CCP give it back to the EVE player, or let it sit comfortably with the carebear?

What Would Real Space Combat Look Like?

2012-02-20T21:58:00.000Z

Slashdot has asked its readers "What would real space combat look like?"

Two friends and I were up until the wee hours of the morning over the weekend debating what real space combat would look like. I've spent some time looking it up online, and there doesn't seem to be any general consensus. So, I thought I'd ask a community of peers what they think. Given our current technology and potential near-future technology, what would a future space battlefield look like? Would capital ships rule the day? Would there be equivalents of cruisers, fighters and bombers, or would it be a mix of them all?

Some of the more interesting comments:

My prediction: slow and boring.

"I always thought the idea of having humans on board a "space battle cruiser" were really weak on imagination. It's very likely space battles would take place with autonomous robots, controlled from a distance, so as not to sacrifice human lives. This, in general, is probably the future of military combat. A million little nano bots would also be much more effective in waging a battle than 1 or 2 giant ships with laser beams (also weak on imagination)."

"When talking space distances controlling them remotely quickly becomes impractical due to the time it takes for commands to be sent."

"I imagine AI will continue to advance quickly."

"Continue to advance quickly? When did AI start to advance quickly?"

"There are two great perils to ship-based weapons that I could foresee, regardless of ship size: heat dissipation and conservation of momentum. Any energy-based weapons would need to dump a tremendous amount of thermal energy off rather short-order, so your ships might have to drag some sort of radiator array behind them, leaving a sweet juicy target. If you committed to projectile weapons, you would need to have some sort of recoil dampening mechanism/thrust compensator every time you fired the weapon."

"Well you could have fairly negligable recoil if said missiles are launched at extremely low velocity, launching their burners after being released from the ship."

"Combat ships, if they exist, would probably be spherical. If there is anything resembling a cannon, there will probably be a single one and aiming will involve rotating the craft (or some sort of gimbal) around the center of the craft, for faster positioning."

"First, actions would take place over distances of 1000's of kilometres. Maneuvering would be slow and expensive in fuel use - as would any change in course or speed. In that respect it would be like a naval action from the days of sail. However the weapons would be directed energy, rather than projectile and the vessels themselves would be almost impossible to detect - partly because of the distances and partly because of the stealthy designs they would employ. Visual detection methods would be almost obsolete, the only exception being to look out for occultations."

"So all the ships would operate at a temperature of 3 Kelvin?"

"So long as they radiate their IR away from the area of operations they could not be detected. There's no Tyndall effect in space."

With current level of technologies; "launch contents of bilge at high velocity" becomes a pretty whiz bang weapon. Death by shit pellets. 'elluva way to go.

If I've learned anything from anime, it's that space battles will consist of giant armadas of robots piloted by people who all get slaughtered until a random girl in a giant robot suit with infinite capabilities eventually achieves the self esteem she needs to take the fight straight to the bad guys and wipe them out, escaping at the last possible second.

I'm going to start from a few first principles here. First - and I don't think this one is seriously open to dispute - (A) space is an exceptionally harsh, unforgiving environment. Failure in any one of these systems: the hull, the carbon dioxide collectors, the heating unit - will render a space vehicle uninhabitable. A failure in either the engines or navigation system will likely lead to a ballistic course to nowhere.

Now, (B) if the history of human space exploration is any indicator, we really don't know how to build fault-tolerant space systems at all. Almost any malfunction tends to produce a catastrophic outcome. Putting principles A and B together, any battle damage of any sort is likely to render the vehicle unsurvivable and kill all the crew.

Now, consider the expense of launching anything of size. Remember, the ISS is the most expensive structure ever built by man. So the idea of putting large, fragile, massively expensive craft (where they can be shot down by space-capable ballistic or nuclear missiles, or damaged with a ground-based lasers) is a total non-starter.

If you want to know what a real war in space looks like with our current level of technology, it's going to involve small, expendable space-based satellites hiding from ground-based things radar and weapons.

And lastly, *any* space combat is going to dramatically increase the amount of space debris in orbit of earth (as China's test a couple years ago did, or the accidental irridium satellite collission did). Just a few incidents could turn dramatically render Earth's near space too dangerous for manned craft for a long time to come.

I think they have it right in Mass Effect. It's going to be really really awful and boring. Gunners are going to be mathematicians, and you can turn into some sort of butcher simply by missing.

Gunnery Chief: [as the character enters the Citadel] This, recruits, is a 20-kilo ferris slug, feel the weight. Every five seconds, the main gun of an everest class dreadnought accelerates one to 1.3% of light-speed. It impacts with the force of a 38-kiloton bomb. That is three times the yield of the city-buster dropped on Hiroshima back on Earth. That means- Sir Issac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space. Now! Serviceman Burnside! What is Newton's first law?

Serviceman Burnside: Sir! An object in motion stays in motion, sir!

Gunnery Chief: No credit for partial answers, maggot!

Serviceman Burnside: Sir! Unless acted on by an outside force, sir!

Gunnery Chief: Damn straight! I dare to assume you ignorant jackasses know that space is empty. Once you fire this hunk of metal, it keeps going til it hits something. That can be a ship. Or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in ten thousand years. If you pull the trigger on this, you are ruining someones day, somewhere and sometime. That is why you check your targets. That is why you wait for the computer to give you a damn firing solution. That is why, Serviceman Chung, we do not "eyeball it". This is a weapon of mass destruction. You are not a cowboy shooting from the hip!

Serviceman Chung: Sir, yes sir!

Remove ships out of the equation entirely. I don't quite see what they could contribute. They're slow and inefficient, and impossible to give orders in time over large distances.

Relativistic kill vehicles are far more menacing weapons than any ship. It's a reinvention of one of mankind's earliest weapons: The humble rock, thrown at the enemy. But this rock is accelerated very near the speed of light, making it nearly impossible to detect, and completely impossible to stop (if you blow one up, it just increases the destruction). Even a fairly modest RKV can carry the destructive force of a hundreds of atomic bombs and absolutely obliterate it's target.

CSM7 - Revaan versus Jagerblitzen

2012-02-20T10:11:00.001Z

Episode 36 from Voices in the Void features their first CSM7 interview and debate. They call it a 1v1.

I'd like to think I got the ball rolling there. Making the suggestion to Arydanika to have Marc Scaurus interview Kelduum Revaan. I then mentioned to Bel Amar that a Hans vs. Kelduum debate would be fun (while being dead wrong on the issue of Kelduum participating.) Whether Marc saw that tweet or not I don't know. So he gets the credit for coming up with the 1v1 format and pitting two popular empire candidates against each other.

So, the format was set. The date set. The participants ready to go. I was excited for it all to happen.

I've yet to listen to the interview. I've decided to write up this preamble first, set the stage, and offer some disclosure for those not familiar with my New Eden political leanings. I'm no fan of Kelduum Revaan. I'm no fan of EVE University. I'm a fan of the EVE University concept, no fan of what it has become. I won't get into what I think it's become. There are many posts on this blog dealing with that topic if you care to find them.

Time to start listening to the interview. I'll be doing this in a play-by-play format, and using timestamps as headings.

1:06:30
The opening introduction. Marc can't pronounce Revaan, but he can pronounce Jagerblitzen. Kelduum is introduced, more or less, as the PvE candidate (I'd expect Kelduum to correct that in the next couple minutes, since he wants to be the everyone candidate.) Hans is introduced as the faction warfare/lowsec candidate, though wanting to be the empire candidate.

1:08:00
Both candidates are asked how the risk/reward balance can work in lowsec, given that it's almost as dangerous as nullsec.

Kelduum responds that he'd like to see lowsec rewards on par with nullsec rewards. He states that lowsec is not as dangerous as many people let on [true!]. He also would like to see mechanics that encourage people to work together in groups. No examples of what that might entail.

Hans is far more concrete in his answer. Agreeing with Kelduum that lowsec is not dangerous if pilots take certain basic precautions. He doesn't agree that increasing ISK reward will entice people into lowsec, although it would be a small factor. He sees rewards as going beyond just ISK. Good fights, for example, are an excellent reward. Since lowsec is seen as an area of New Eden where much conflict occurs, Hans sees PvP as one of the most rewarding aspects of lowsec. Small gang warfare, for instance, is already popular in lowsec, but he feels that it can thrive even further. CCP's iterations on lowsec should focus on how to make PvP and small gang warfare even more vibrant and active and interesting for players. That, he feels, will encourage more people to try lowsec. The risk of losing ships is outweighed by losing them, if the fights are fun as hell and easy to find.

1:12:24
Arydanika asks about decreasing highsec rewards. Such as nerfing incursions in highsec to make lowsec incursions more valuable and enticing, placing items in lowsec that cannot be acquired in highsec (such as certain ores), or decreasing the value of level four missions in highsec and while increasing their value in lowsec. The two candidates were asked how they feel about these types of proposals.

Kelduum feels that because lowsec has the reputation of being so damned dangerous, moving level four missions to lowsec would have no impact on people moving to lowsec. Highsec players would simply do level three missions. The issue is educating people on how to operate in lowsec safely, that it isn't a big scary place.

By the time Hans got to answer, the discussion had already morphed into one dealing with mission AI, and that the original intent of level four missions was that they were to be done in groups. Hans carries on with the point that if that was CCP's original plan, they failed hard. The fact is that the traditional mission AI doesn't do anyone any favours. It teaches nothing practical to the player, because the AI is so predictable. CCP needs to give the traditional mission AI a serious boost in intellect so that players doing those missions are given some practical skills and encouraging group beahviour.

Kelduum finishes by making an interesting comment about player generated missions. No details, though, which is a shame. It sounded like a potentially interesting idea. I guess we'll never know.

1:18:45
Arydanika asks the candidates feelings on incursion payouts in highsec. She feels the payouts are crazy ridiculously high.

Hans says he's not an economist, so he's not comfortable making an claims about the inflationary (or not) aspects of the highsec payouts. He'll defer to the experts in that area. What he does feel is that there's no reason for anybody to do incursions outside of highsec. The payouts might be a little lower in highsec, but the risk of losing expensive ships is close to zero. Lack of risk in highsec outweighs the reward of increased incursion payouts in low and nullsec. He feels work must be done to encourage people to run incursions outside of highsec. He makes an interesting point that the safety that highsec engenders actually encourages classist attitudes (carebears vs. gankers vs. pirates, etc.), and how that's an undesirable attribute to have in EVE Online, and it actually encourages players that should be back in low and nullsec to pick on highsec players simply because they are bored and restless.

Kelduum believes there's a lot of myth surrounding the ISK per hour returns in highsec incursions. The myth of 120M ISK per hour is not reality. Most of the people he talks with make closer to 60M ISK per hour. The simple solution is to leave highsec incursion income as it is, and to buff the incomes from lowsec and nullsec.

1:22:50
Bowdy asks what makes each candidate passionate about EVE.

Hans loves EVE because the game itself doesn't set the goals for the player (unlike other MMOs which just plop down the next sequence of rinse-repeat raiding content with every major patch or expansion.) It is the player that sets their own goals. That's what sets EVE apart in the MMO genre. EVE is truly open-ended. The reasons why we all play are all vastly different, and he loves that fact. The players create the content, unlike other MMOs where you're simply on a treadmill of new content that isn't all that much different than the content that came before. Being able to do whatever you want in EVE, being able to play your own way, those are principles that we have to protect.

Bowdy then catches Hans, quite smartly, in a quote he made last week, about the sort of PvP he doesn't respect, larger corps picking on smaller defenseless corporations. Hans ably defends himself and adds further context to that viewpoint: he points to the deep politics and the deep mechanics in EVE Online as being great features of the game. That an experienced player can kick sand in the eyes of newb, he doesn't see as the great selling point of the game. He'll defend the ability of people to be able to kick sand in newb eyes if that's what they enjoy in EVE, he just doesn't respect it. CCP should make more of an effort to create really fun game play out in low and nullsec. If they do that, the "griefing" everyone complains about will be less of an issue, because the folks seen to be causing the "problems" in highsec will be back in low and nullsec, doing the fun stuff, rather than trying to amuse themselves in highsec -- because they're bored, because there's no enjoyment in the low and nullsec gameplay -- by kicking sand in the eyes of newbs.

Hans also promises not to commit suicide during his term in the CSM.

For Kelduum, what fires his passion for the game is the community. Not just the community in the University, but the entire EVE community [not including me, probably]. He also likes that anything at anytime can happen in EVE. That anything that does happen effects everyone on different levels, because the game is a single server. EVE is special because it is ridiculously harsh and he wants EVE to continue being ridiculously harsh.

1:34:30
Marc then asks Kelduum about war declarations and Kelduum's wish to eliminate griefing wardecs.

Kelduum starts by explaining some EVE University history with respect to war declarations, how he created the decshield back when The Privateers were stating they were going to keep the University at war forever. How, as the University grew, that they were faced with an increasing number of wardecs, culminating in 30 or so per year from 2010 onwards. He explains that one of the biggest problems for the University is when corps declare war on the University, come out to fight for a couple days, then disappear, not to relog for the rest of the week. Bowdy asks how that's a problem? Kelduum doesn't really explain. Later Marc asks much the same thing, if someone isn't logging on, how is that affecting University functions? Kelduum again avoids answering directly.

Kelduum is then grilled specifically on his war declaration proposal. Basically, his wish is that if someone doesn't want to show up to fight, then there is a method for the defender to end a war quickly. He also wants to see mercenaries get involved in wars. There is skepticism among the hosts and from Hans whether his complex proposal involving structures and bubbles of nullsec is the path to take.

Hans, on wars. He wants to see more cooperation among corporations. Private defense treaties available, so that if one corp is wardecced, then everyone that signed the treaty comes along as a defender as well. He wants to see more relationship building among the players. He would like to see more involvement with mercenary corps. He feels the fixes aren't complex, and that players themselves can solve most of the issues if they are given the tools to do so. His major issue with wars in highsec is that it creates an environment for conflict that is completely at odds with the rest of EVE, that you can cherry-pick who you want to fight with no repercussions. Treaties and mercenary contracts would go a long way to solving the cherry-picking problem, since you'll never quite know who you're picking a fight with.

1:52:42
Marc then asks each candidate why players should vote for them rather than other candidates who may share similar values and constituents.

Hans feels that most other candidates are running on platforms based what they want to see happen with the game. Hans feels that he's connected with the community and that his platform is more about what the community wants to see happen. And he'll continue to remain very connected to the empire community through his CSM term. He'll listen and bring what he hears to CCP.

Kelduum stated that he doesn't really care what anybody has to say. He has his seat all locked up, 1500 University members strong (plus their alts.) He's not at all worried about competition or what his so-called competition is saying or doing.

Oops. Dreaming again.

What Kelduum actually said is that he feels he's pretty grounded in the community, since there is a large network of ex-Unistas (20000, apparently) out in every corner of New Eden. He's not running on any particular set of issues. There are lots of things that need to be fixed in EVE, and that he'll listen to what CCP proposes as they propose it and give them his honest feedback. His role as a director and CEO of EVE University for the last five years should serve him well, it shows he has the experience in a leadership role to serve on the CSM.

One disturbing comment that Kelduum makes. After being CEO of EVE University for a couple years, it seemed to him the next logical step was the CSM. Is that his only reason for running? That the next logical step of progression for his New Eden resume was to see CSM following on from CEO?

1:58:52
And that wraps it all up. Lots of hugs to go around.

***

So who won? I think they both held up well to the questioning. I think Hans fared better overall and proved himself the better orator and had better detail to every question asked of him. Kelduum often spent time just framing the question in his head (lots of umming and awing) before getting to an answer, and those tended to lack detail or forethought.

Whereas I think Hans definitely came out ahead in this 1v1, Kelduum didn't stink up the joint by any means. He didn't do or say anything that would turn off any of his current supporters, though I doubt the interview won him many (if any) new supporters outside of University circles. Kelduum is highly likely to get himself a seat on the CSM (bottom seven) through the University vote alone.

Hans' showing was very impressive. He shows a great deal of knowledge about empire space and the issues that affect empire. He's certainly very deserving of a CSM seat, and he's getting his name and message out there. I think he's close to a CSM seat, not quite sure he's over that hedgerow just yet. His upcoming EN24 interview should push him over the top (it will give him an even larger audience), if he has as strong a showing in that upcoming interview as he did in this interview.

Kelduum should be thankful that he has the EVE University juggernaut firmly behind him. Without it, he would stand absolutely no chance of winning a CSM7 seat. His ideas are not strong, he often doesn't have a clear direction on some of the issues, and his ability to express what concrete ideas he does have is weak, at best.

Anyhow, good work Arydanika, Marc Scaurus and Bowdy. I look forward to next week's 1v1, even if I won't be play-by-playing it. You folks are doing a stellar job with the podcast (though Bowdy needs a new mic, it sounds like he's talking from deep inside a cement pipe.)

The (Maybe) Last Wardec Proposal

2012-02-19T03:06:00.002Z

The aim of this proposal is the create a simple wardec system that makes moot all of the previous exploits. It further puts some power into the hands of the defender.

Simple systems are far easier to create and manage than complex systems. They are far less vulnerable to bugs and exploits. Complex systems are less malleable, more resistant to future change. Simple systems are easier to adjust and change, iterate upon, if necessary.

This simple proposal is a response to the following complex proposal, which involves such things as nullsec bubbles and structure bashing. Such a proposal would take CCP a year to implement, and a further year to work out the inevitable bugs and exploits.

I've made other war declaration suggestions, each less complex than the previous suggestion. I believe this to be my final iteration on the subject. (But who knows? Maybe it can get simpler.)

Declaring
Corporations in an alliance, declare war as an alliance (the executor corporation has to declare in this situation.) Corporations in an alliance have war declared upon their alliance.

Any number of wars can be declared upon a single corporation/alliance by different corporations/alliances.

Costs
I think most people agree that the current costs to initiate a war are far too inexpensive. There is some middle ground where a group will have to weigh cost versus reward before declaring war on another group of players. My suggestion would be that the cost to declare on a corporation be in the 100M to 250M ISK range. That the cost to declare on an alliance be in the 250M to 500M ISK range. This cost would be the base cost.

~~Costs are fixed. They would not escalate based on any factor (e.g., number of wardecs already declared on the defender, the number of times the war has been extended.)~~ Costs escalate based on the number of wars the attacker has created. This is the escalation cost. Since the escalation cost is based upon the attackers wars in progress, decshields become moot. I suggest an escalation cost of around 50M ISK. This is then multiplied by the number of wars where the corporation/alliance is currently flagged as an attacker. So, for example, if the attacker has five wars that they have created and wants to start a sixth war, the cost for the sixth war declaration would be base cost + (escalation cost x 5).

The 24 Hour Warm-Up
During the 24 hour run-up to the start of conflict, both the attacker and the defender may perform normal membership activities. Players may join the corporation(s) of the attacker and defender. Players may leave the corporation(s) of the attacker and defender.

Friends and Mercenaries
Additionally, during the 24 hour warm-up, the defender may invite other corporations and alliances to join the war on the defending side of the equation. The attacker does not have this option.

The cost to invite a corporation to a war will be in the 50M to 100M ISK range. The cost to invite an alliance to a war is in the 100M to 200M ISK range. I suggest these costs be half of the base cost to initiate a war with a corporation or alliance.

Friends and mercenaries must be invited to each war declaration separately. The cost is per corporation/alliance per war declaration.

The cost is non-refundable. The cost only sends a corporation or alliance an invitation to join the war. That corporation/alliance can choose to accept the invitation or decline the invitation. Accepting adds the corporation/alliance to the war declaration as a defender.

Any number of other corporations/alliances may be invited by the defender, but each invite is a separate non-refundable cost. The non-refundable aspect ensures that scamming/lying/subterfuge/trust remain an integral part of the game.

The invited parties have until the end of the 24 hour warm-up period to accept the invitation. If they do not respond before hostilities begin, the invitation will be automatically declined.

This system puts some power and control into the hands of the defending corporation/alliance.

For industrial corporations, it is now in their best interests to develop symbiotic relationships with more combat-oriented corporations. This mechanic gives the industrial corporation/alliance some method of adequate defense.

This system encourages increased interaction between players, especially with regard to diplomacy and relationship building.

War Begins
As per usual war mechanics, the attacker and defenders may attack each other at will within empire space without repercussions from CONCORD. This is known as the hostile phase of war.

Membership
Once hostilities have begun, members of the the attacking and defending (see comments below for rationale/discussion on this edit) corporation(s) may leave those corporation(s) if they wish (normal rules concerning dropping roles still apply.)

Members of the defending corporation(s) may only leave their corporation(s) if they are currently in a 24 hour warm-up period (even if other war hostilities are currently active.) (See comments below for rationale/discussion on this edit.)

~~The defending corporation(s) may still accept new members.~~

~~The attacking corporation(s) may not accept new members during the course of the war declaration.~~

Attacking and defending corporations may continue to recruit members during hostilities. There will be a delay (suggestion: two hours) in joining a corporation that is at war, once this delay has been completed the membership is activated. This eliminates recruitment gaming (e.g. one person points an adversary, while in station ten people suddenly join the corporation, undock, and become part of the fight.) This delay only takes effect if the corporation is currently in the hostile phase of any war.

Corporations may not join an alliance if that alliance is flagged as the attacker in any war. Corporations may join alliances that are only flagged as the defender in any war.

Members of the attacking and defending corporations may still leave their corporations, though they continue to remain war flagged to all wars currently in their hostile phase.

Corporations may leave alliances during war, though the corporation will continue to remain flagged to all wars currently in their hostile phase.

Surrender
Only the attacking corporation/alliance may sue for peace. If the defender accepts the proposed surrender, the war ends immediately. If the defender wishes to sue for peace, they simply contact the attacker, if the attacker agrees, then the attacker will initiate the suing for peace mechanic.

Extending the War
A war lasts seven full days (eight if you include the initial 24 hour warm-up period.) There is no mechanic to extend the war from within the war itself.

If an attacker wants to continue a war, then, once the current war ends, the attacker simply redeclares on the defending corporation/alliance. When redeclaring, another 24 hour warm-up period will take effect.

Conclusion
I am curious to hear possible exploits and problems with this proposal. Obviously there are certain restrictions imposed upon the attacker that are not imposed upon the defender. The attacker commits themselves to the war, the defender has some power to shape the war to their advantage.

Truisms of the War Declaration

2012-02-18T07:28:00.000Z

If a 2-man corporation brings your 1500-man alliance to its knees, the failing is not with the game, it is with your alliance. The 2-man corporation has not griefed you. You've griefed yourself.

***

If your alliance loses 500 members due to the war declaration actions of a small corporation, with a significant number of those outright quitting the game, it's not because the game failed them, it's because your alliance failed them. Give your members a reason to play, not a reason to dock up. Don't bore your members, engage your members.

***

If your wartime rules do not account for an enemy that refuses to show, then your rules have become the enemy. Wars need not be fought on a battlefield. If your weakness is in your own policies, expect your enemies to exploit them.

***

If you're not a fighter, you'd best be finding friends who are. Natural selection will always first remove the easy prey. Seeking out easy prey is not a sign of weakness, it is a survival given.

In Memoriam

2012-02-15T05:27:00.002Z

My alt is Scottish Play. He lives in Stain. One of those two things, most of you already know. A few of you may have figured out both.

My dog of 15 years 4 months passed away July 2011. I named my alt in memoriam of my furry pal. Macbeth. My alt is not a huge secret. Poetic's API key would quickly give it away. Or search for Viator losses in Stain near the dates of my Viator loss blog entries.

Anyhow, the alt, Scottish Play, will be PvPing soon enough, and I'd have to come clean eventually if I want to brag on my few kills. And my many deaths.

I've just been thinking about him a lot lately. I was there when he was put to sleep. That whole process still affects me. In two weeks he would have been sixteen. For a German Shepard, he lived an exceptionally long life. He lived a pretty good life, actually.

There are more Macbeth photos behind the jump.

Everything I Know About Jump Freighters I Learned From a 6 Year Old Girl

2012-02-13T00:47:00.001Z

The alt is now training jump freighters. I like to be self-sufficient. Expensive self-sufficiency, though. These things cost around 6B ISK. Unless I can make a couple billion ISK in the next two months, I'll have to resort to buying some GTCs.

I'm excited about the prospect of flying one of these. Six billion ISK. Just the thought of having that much ISK at risk (more really, because it will have cargo) sends shivers up my spine. Good shivers. The kind of shivers you should get in EVE. Risk versus reward and all that.

So everything I've learned about jump freighters so far, I've learned watching the following video:

What did I learn? Well, you need an alt at the destination, or some character who can light a cynosural field thing. When it's lit, the jump freighter pilot can jump to the lit cyno. Both characters need to be fleeted together (obviously.)

It is best to jump your freighter from the undock of a station. The destination should be as close to a station as possible. For quick docking in the event of trouble.

Other things I know. Jump freighters have a maximum range of five light years. I still have no idea how to measure distance between star systems though. I wonder if there is some site that will take two systems as input parameters and spit out the distance?

Obviously, when jumping this thing into Stain, it would be beneficial to find a highsec system (with a station) within range of whatever system in Stain I'd like to jump it too. I'm guessing that's going to be impossible. Stain is quite a distance from empire space. My guess is that I should be able to find a lowsec system that is five light years from the Stain station I wish to jump to. At the moment, I'm assuming two jumps to get into Stain (though I would not be surprised if it ended up being three), highsec to lowsec, lowsec to nullsec.

I'm going to have to spend a few jumps practising all this in highsec. My first trip in a cargo-ladened 6B ISK freighter is not going to be into Stain. In two or three months, you can expect a post about either my first successful jump into Stain, or the destruction of my brand-new 6B ISK jump freighter. The latter would make for better reading, but has the nasty side-effect of making me sad.

I intend for Poetic to be the cyno lighter. So I have to figure out what skills she needs to pick up. From what I've gathered loosely over the months, the skill set for a cyno lighter is not high, so shouldn't be much of a problem. Just keep a Poetic clone down in Stain with some cyno lighting ships (I've heard this can be done in cheap frigates.) I don't know how accurate all this water-cooler information is. But I'll get around to checking out EVElopedia soon.

Heck, once I get the hang of it, maybe I'll see about joining Black Frog.

EVE Blog-a-Day #020 - What's Your EVE Persona?

2012-02-11T04:33:00.002Z

What is EVE Blog-a-Day?

Similar to the EVE Blog Banter, which occurs once per month, EVE Blog-a-Day will pose a short simple question for EVE's bloggers. It's meant to give bloggers a jump start into posting. You want to post something, but you're stuck for a subject? EVE Blog-a-Day can help. Feel free to use it every time a new question is posed, or only when a new question piques your interest.

Even though it is called EVE Blog-a-Day, questions won't come daily. Probably in daily spurts here and there. It might disappear for awhile, but it will return when inspiration strikes.

Question #020

The new EVE Online website has a personality analyzer. Take a few moments to answer the few questions. Tell us, what is your persona?

My Response

I'm the Explorer. With potential interests in the Trader and the Salvager. The Explorer is a solo occupation, with economic and scientific goals. I cannot argue with this. I really get a kick out of travelling the dangerous areas of New Eden, checking out the territory, evading hostiles as best I can. It's why I circumnavigated New Eden through all the outer nullsec regions. It's why my alt character is in Stain, doing what he could just as easily do in empire lowsec.

Participants

I also call on folks to send me their questions to ask the community. I'll post them, crediting you for the question, as well as a link back to your blog (give me your blog address too.)

When posting a link to your blog entry on Twitter, use the #eveblogaday hash tag, as well as the usual #tweetfleet hash tag.

If you partake in a particular question, please post a link to your blog entry in the comments. I'll compile them all, and every 25 questions, I'll post a big recap.

EVE Blog-a-Day #019 - Who You Voting For?

2012-02-09T03:42:00.002Z

Do you know who you will be voting for in the upcoming CSM7 elections? If not, who are you following closely?

My Response

I've not yet made up my mind. If Darius III runs, I'm going to throw my two votes towards him. I would like him on the council to keep The Mittani honest. Plus, I see him as a Mittani-like character, but without all the peacock feathers and strutting about. If Darius III does not run (and it's looking like he may not), then I'm considering Riverini (looks like he'll announce this weekend) or Hans Jagerblitzen. Hans, because high-sec needs a representative, and you-know-who-from-a-certain-large-highsec-corporation is definitely not that guy.

Participants

I also call on folks to send me their questions to ask the community. I'll post them, crediting you for the question, as well as a link back to your blog (give me your blog address too.)

When posting a link to your blog entry on Twitter, use the #eveblogaday hash tag, as well as the usual #tweetfleet hash tag.

If you partake in a particular question, please post a link to your blog entry in the comments. I'll compile them all, and every 25 questions, I'll post a big recap.

Life in Stain - Moving Day

2012-02-09T03:26:00.002Z

The moving will happen this weekend.

The reason is that I want the alt to remain in Stain, and become more self-sufficient, if not completely self-sufficient. For now, that means missions.

I also want to be closer to the Stain trade hub. But not too close. Currently I'm about 25 jumps away, and that makes it inconvenient for both selling and buying, especially since I have to pass through 37S-KO to get there, and that system has proven to be a bit of a pain in the ass. It's the only system, along the Period Basis - Catch pipe, that is nearly always gate/bubble camped. I've been a victim there twice.

What I want is access to missions, level ones through threes, as well as access to courier missions, to mix it up while I'm working my way towards the level three missions. I have a good location for it, near the travel pipe, as well as having a number of systems just off the trade route. And it's a quick trip to LGK- for marketeering. And the selection of PI planets is just as good. Yep, gonna continue with the PI for sure.

I'll also be getting Black Frog to transport some more Viators, Dramiels and Catalysts down to the new location. The Dramiels should be perfect for blitzing level ones and twos. I'm thinking about using the Catalysts to kill station bubbling Sabres. They annoy the hell out of me and deserve to die (I'll of course post the results, good and bad, likely mostly bad to begin with, on that endeavour.)

Gonna be a busy weekend. Lots of stuff to haul in the Viator. Probably six trips worth of stuff. Not gonna be fun, but it has to be done.

CSM7 - I Represent EVE University

2012-02-08T02:52:00.001Z

I don't represent EVE University. Obviously. Kelduum, as part of his CSM7 platform, has stated he represents everybody. I called bullshit on that earlier.

I'd like to point out a few of his public comments concerning his platform which give way to the lie that he represents anybody other than EVE University. He wants to see changes implemented that benefit his organization (hard to fault him for that, I'm sure The Mittani wants to benefit Goonswarm).

We'll start off with some of his comments made on the EVE Online forums, specifically where I ask him a few questions.

Q: Would you push for a special designation (e.g. training corporation) for EVE University, to exempt them from a war declaration system?

A: Believe it or not, if CCP offered me some kind of 'special designation' tomorrow, I would very likely say no.

The answer seems fine on the surface. It is curious he didn't outright say "No," but qualified his answer with a "very likely". I wonder what offer might be made that would change a "very likely no" into a "yes."

Specifically on war declaration mechanics:

Q: What methods would you suggest to CCP for defenders to end wardecs?

A: A moderately expensive structure, which projects a 'bubble of nullsec' around it (and can't be anchored too near anything like gates/belts etc), can optionally be fuelled to increase its EHP, and must be online to keep the war running, but at less cost.

However being in nullsec anyone (for example, mercenaries or even someone who doesn't like the aggressors) could get involved and help kill/repair/defend it, increasing options for interaction between players.

Here's where we start getting into the suggestions that benefit nobody in highsec except for EVE University. He suggests a structure that can be destroyed. Destroy the structure, before the normal week-long ending to a war, the war ends early. Exactly who does this benefit except a corporation that can quickly field a fleet of 50-200 ships to smash the structure in record time? It certainly wouldn't benefit small corporations and alliances. But a corporation well-known for its blob warfare, they could end wars within hours of them beginning. This is a suggestion meant to benefit any corporation or alliance that can bring massive numbers to bear quickly (and there is only one such corporation in highsec.) No thought is given at all to small and medium alliances. Certainly not a component of a platform for someone claiming to represent everyone.

Now let's grab something he wrote over on the EVE University forums, a head-ups on his CSM agenda to his prime constituency.

The wardec systems clearly need a rewrite, both eliminate the existing loopholes in them as well as encourage PvP against groups who can/will fight.

The important aspect of this comment is the part where he wants to "encourage PvP against groups who can/will fight." Basically, he wants to encourage a war declaration system that will not include corporations and alliances not interested in non-consensual PvP. In other words, he's looking for a war declaration system that encourages consensual PvP. EVE University is the biggest detractor of the current war declaration system (before CCP started allowing exploits to be used), and has never enjoyed going to war unless it was a) mutual, and b) arranged. It should be little surprise that Kelduum aims to champion a system that will keep EVE University free of conflict that is not of its choosing.

This final bit, from his official announcement for candidacy is a lol.

I believe the CSM needs an experienced yet neutral voice to help ensure balance and prevent control of the council from moving to push the agendas of any one player group to the detriment of the rest of the player base.

CSM7 - Herding Cats: The Empire Vote

2012-02-05T23:49:00.001Z

For those candidates not in large voting blocs (read: nullsec alliances), they're going to have to spend a lot of time getting their face out in the public; stumping speeches on the more popular discussion forums (the EVE Online forums mainly.) You certainly can't rely on any voting bloc that has less than 2500 members to get you in the CSM7 door. Not every member of your bloc is going to vote for you, especially in highsec where interests (and future interests) are so diverse.

CSM6 is an important point of reference when trying to determine how many votes you're going to need to get onto CSM7. There were nearly 50000 votes cast for the CSM6 elections. To get onto CSM6 as an alternate required 920 votes. The bottom of CSM6's top seven had 2200 votes.

(CSM7 is a tad different than CSM6. Still fourteen members, but the alternate designation is now gone. As well, only the top seven candidates get invited to Iceland for the summits.)

There's far more interest in the CSM than at anytime in EVE's history. To get (what was once called) an alternate's seat on CSM7 is going to require well more than 920 votes. To get into the Circle of Seven will require more than 2200 votes. How many more votes though? That's an unknown, but some conservative guesses can be made.

I feel a 25% increase in election interest is conservative. That means ~62500 votes will be cast for CSM7. There will likely be a 25% increase in candidates, mostly from empire space (all of whom will be on the ballot, because Goons and Test will give them all their 100 likes, simply because it will flood the field with candidates and split like hell empire space voting.) To get into the Circle of Seven likely won't require more votes than last year, perhaps 10% more (so ~2500 votes to get into the CSM's top seven), whereas to get into the final alternate seat will require that extra 25% (due to the sheer number of candidates, and having to compete with already well-known incumbents with a base already backing them); so, ~1250 votes to get in the CSM door at all.

What does Kelduum have for numbers? We can look back to the CSM Crowdsourcing vote, where Kelduum rallied his Unistas to vote in a particular way. He made that process as simple as it could get for the University members, and of 2000 members at the time 590 participated in the crowdsourcing. Apathy won't be as high for this vote as it was for the last, plus Kelduum is certainly going to impress upon unistas, ex- and not ex-, to get out the vote as often as he can. The University currently has 1500 members. I believe he has 900-1200 votes in the bag (unistas, ex-unistas, plus available alt accounts thereof.)

That still leaves him 250-400 votes short of a CSM seat. These are votes he'll have to compete for out in the wild. His chances of getting into the Circle of Seven are slim at best, but getting in the door itself is a definite possibility. (If he does get in the door, the outlook for CSM8 and Circle of Seven are much rosier.) With Ripard Teg finally declaring that he will not run, Kelduum should have breathed a sigh of relief. Kelduum's chances of capturing any votes outside of his University base would have been next to nil with Ripard in the race.

Kelduum's main problem at the moment is exposure. Outside of University circles he keeps a very low profile. Not many outside of the Uni-machine have any idea who he is. Nearly everyone playing EVE Online knows about EVE University, far far fewer of those players have any idea who its CEO is. He does at least have the advantage of using the University brand to his advantage in this regard, in getting empire folks to listen to what it is he has to say.

Unfortunately, even within the University, Kelduum is not the great communicator. When he does muster up the effort to do so, he does reasonably well at conveying a message. It's just that he doesn't do it all that often. He's a better manager than politician. It might even be fair to say that he feels uncomfortable in the communication role; he generally leaves that to his directors. Again, he's a good manager.

He knows he has to make the effort. He realizes that his Uni-base alone will most likely be unable to carry him into a CSM seat; he will need the vote from folks unaffiliated with the University. He's already begun the process of getting his message out.

It will continue to interest me as his campaign progresses. I'm certainly less bearish, more bullish on his prospects as a good CSM representative (of which I will get to in a post in a few days.)

CSM7 - THINK OF TEH RAISINS!!1! AND 0.0 SECKS!

2012-02-05T20:19:00.002Z

Mintrolio, of the excellent posting, has officially thrown his hat into the CSM7 ring.

We were all hoping it would happen. And it has.

I am particularly glad that he is taking an interest in war declaration mechanics. He draws a particularly interesting analogy to his real life, that of raising goats, and to some trouble he got into with a neighbour and a local magistrate. Basically, far too many rules hindered his ability to come to a fair and equitable outcome to his squabble. He'd like to see fewer rules in EVE Online so that players can work out their differences free of the heavy hand of magistrates and the like.

Even though Mintrolio is from 0.0 space, believing it is the best secs of all, he does understand that not everyone shares his views on secs. He understands there are many different types of secs in EVE Online. There are many issues that are very important, but secs is most important to Mintrolio.

Unlike most of the 0.0 candidates, Mintrolio has a broader outlook on the game as a whole. He looks to represent all secs, even the secs he's not familiar with. Even low secs. He'll bend over to help out with low secs. If that is what it will take. He'll take it.

If Darius III does not run, I'm throwing my two votes Mintrolio's way. If he can improve secs in EVE, who are we not to vote for him?

The Bellwether Mechanic - Predicting CCP's Future Direction

2012-02-04T19:19:00.000Z

CCP has made a number of changes to the conflict mechanics in highsec during the last six months. The removal of insurance payouts on ships destroyed by CONCORD. The illegal, now legal when it comes to avoiding war declarations. New aggression notifications to protect the unwary. Even CCP's CEO, Hilmar Veigar, suggesting that CONCORD might need to be buffed.

This has lead some to wonder what direction CCP is now heading. Are they trying to soften the game to attract players who would otherwise shy away from a PvP game? Are they trying to soften EVE Online's harsh and hard reputation?

The jury is still deliberating.

I have written quite a bit about EVE Online's war declaration mechanics, especially since they rescinded any oversight they once did on exploits. There are no more war declaration exploits. If you're committed to avoiding PvP in highsec, your job is now a lot easier. War declarations are easily avoidable. The only thing you still have to watch out for are suicide attacks.

Why am I so invested in what CCP does with the war declaration system? I see it as the bellwether of CCP's future direction. EVE Online is the mine; the war declaration system is the canary. What CCP does with the war declaration system is an excellent indicator of the road CCP wishes to take with EVE Online in future development. Do they wish to shed their old HTFU image, attract a broader base of players, or do they wish to remain a niche, but highly unique game.

In my opinion, what CCP does with the war declaration system will effect the entire game going forward, if not directly in a particular area, then certainly obliquely. What CCP does with the war declaration system could signal a change in design and development philosophy. Every player should care about the war declaration system. What CCP does with it will have a ripple effect that will sweep across the game.

I can certainly hear the usual rants from nullsec players. "I live in nullsec. I could give a fuck about the war declaration system. That shit is for highsec. It won't effect us out here."

My answer is similar to what it was several months ago. The safer, easier, less stress-free that highsec becomes, the harder it is going to be to keep people in nullsec for extended lengths of time. These people will always return to nullsec at some point, to get their game on, but the ratio of time spent in nullsec versus highsec will start to slant heavily in the highsec direction. People will naturally gravitate to ISK earning acitivities that are low-maintenance and stress-free. As long as the rewards are within 10-15% of the higher risk areas, the lower risk areas will be more attractive. Even the most hardened PvP veterans are going to prop up their PvP activities in the safer areas.

It's human nature. ISK earning is work. We don't naturally challenge ourselves in work. PvP is a hobby, that's where people generally challenge themselves, in their pasttimes.

Make highsec safer, it will have an effect on every region of the game. This has an eventual snowball effect. The more people living and earning in highsec, the more voices to complain, of which CCP will take notice. More changes to make things safer may come down the pipe. In the end, what you have are PvP regions and non-PvP regions. At that point (well before that point actually), EVE is dead, it no longer resembles what it once was.

I'm not suggesting that EVE is heading down that path. Not quite yet. There are hints they want to make highsec a safer area to be. I feel that's a dangerous precedent to set. So it will be important to watch the bellwether mechanic, watch exactly what CCP does with it. It will determine what their design and development philosophy going forward will be.

So, what do we have to look forward too?

Three bits of information from CCP/CSM regarding the war declaration system have surfaced since January. The first from the CSM minutes (pg. 22):

It must also be stated for the record that the CSM voiced concerns that CCP would be fiddling with one of the fundamental things of EVE, i.e. sometimes shit happens to you (like war is declared on you) and you just have to deal with it and any changes to the current system could potentially have negative effect over all.

The second by CCP Soundwave from the Beers with Bolton vlog (paraphrased):

Soundwave states that they wish to rewrite some of the underlying conflict systems, because they are old and are not accomplishing what they want them too. Starting with the empire wardec system.

CSM Trebor eventually expanded a bit upon all this, based upon his December trip to Ísland, adding:

[There'll be] a significant redesign and rewrite of Crimewatch, the code that handles all the agression timers, Concord and Police response, and so on.

One thing I do hope that comes out of this rewrite is more emphasis on making it easier for people who want to fight to find fights, while at the same time making it harder for people to abuse war-decs to grief players who simply have no interest in PvP. I made this point at the summit, and quite frankly, I thought that some of the mechanics suggested at the summit would be invitations to organized extortion.

The CSM based comments (first and third) have me the most worried. It seems like CCP was going to implement a system that the CSM considered very bad for the game. Some back and forth between the two curtailed that somewhat. Trebor's comment is somewhat worrisome: for people that have no interest in PvP, he believes it should be harder to engage them in conflict. What this means is that anyone who doesn't want to be bothered while earning their ISK (nullsec, carebear, whoever) will be able to take advantage of this system to create a safer environment for themselves. This is certainly not positive news, and simply sets the snowball rolling slowly down the hill.

When CCP gets around to publishing their devblog on Crimewatch and the changes they wish to make to the war declaration system, we'll all have a better idea of the direction CCP wants to head. So, until that time, I'm not going to be entirely gloom and doom about the prospects. Certainly they are a tad worrisome, but until some more concrete info comes down the trough, no sense guessing what's going to happen.

CSM7 - Participaction

2012-02-03T04:04:00.001Z

To be a man of the people, you have to hang with the people from time to time. Demonstrate you're a regular guy, that you aren't above the plebs you hope will vote for you. Lead, don't rule.

Let's take the recent three-day "war" EVE University had with Red vs. Blue. The event ran from Thursday January 26 until Sunday January 29 2012.

Now let's look at Kelduum Revaan's killboard statistics.

The last time he participated in PvP with his students was back in November 2011 (apparently killing and podding them, but there was probably a good reason for that.)

So the second RvB "war" event rolls around, and Kelduum doesn't participate at all, even though he's online as frequently as any other weekend. In the runup to the "war", he made a big deal of advertising the event, yet when it finally happens, he can't be bothered to set a good example for his students. Why would his students bother with PvP, or even care about PvP, when their CEO can't be bothered with it either? If you're gonna talk a big game about how the University loves PvP, that you the CEO love PvP, then walk the damned walk.

Yet, you do not call out Kelduum on PvP issues. His standard response is to tell you that he has a PvP alt in one of the major alliances (he always throws out Pandemic Legion as one of the possibilities.) Is it crazy to assume that if someone is bothered enough to have a PvP alt, that they likely enjoy PvP? Strange, that when he arranges an event with one of the most active PvP groups in the game, that he wouldn't make some fleet appearances to show his mettle. Impress the plebs. You'd think if you liked PvP (enough the have an alt), that you'd be itching to kick some ass at an event where you're guaranteed to find a bunch of willing targets.

(Hell, even The Mittani ganked a few Mackinaws to get his Ice Interdiction up and running. Even Darius III engaged motherships during Incursion Interdiction.)

After the whole "war" was over, Kelduum got on the pulpit to exclaim how much fun the event was. That he hopes they do it again in another few months. One wonders, "How the hell would he know if it was fun or not?"

The answer is that he doesn't have a PvP alt. It's an easy enough thing to claim, of course. It's unverifiable (not without API keys.)

Which brings us to the CSM. Lead by example. If you want to represent a certain aspect of the game, you better bloody-well be active in that area of the game. You want people to fall behind your platform, then live that platform to some degree, demonstrate it to your constituents. Know what the hell you're talking about, based on some level of personal experience. You should, at least, be able to spin a few tales of your undertakings in that area of the game.

[My next CSM7 article will be more positive strangely enough, as I cover some responses Kelduum gave to some questions. The answers weren't terrible, certainly not alarming. More details still need to be sought, but it's promising at the moment. Maybe he will make a good CSM member. He supports high-sec ganking. He can't be all bad. *grin*]

CSM7 - We Gots to Iterate/Replace Stuff

2012-02-01T03:12:00.000Z

So, after nearly 48 hours of his "Who's gonna vote for me" poll being live, Kelduum finally answered questions concerning his platform.

So far one person, obviously someone with poor reading comprehension, is satisfied with the two paragraph answer.

Kelduum fancies himself a top-rate politician. Perhaps he is, within the insular little world of EVE University. He's not much of one when it comes to anything outside that sphere of influence.

So it wasn't terribly surprising that his answer was just a bunch of politico-speak -- having the appearance of saying something, but really saying nothing at all.

If elected to the CSM, I will represent every player of EVE, from industrialists and mission runners all the way to nullsec and wormhole players and everything in between, not a single special interest group.

CCP have made a good start with Crucible and are moving in the right direction. There is much that can still be improved - from balancing and iterating recently introduced features to replacing long-stagnant mechanics which have been broken for years. I pledge to focus my efforts on ensuring CCP continue down this path, and grow EVE to new levels without sacrificing current players.

First of all, he attempts to cover the broadest base possible. He's going to represent everyone. Which is clap-trap. He's going to represent both the super-carebear and the hardened PvP pirate? Pardon my scepticism if I don't buy that brand of rose-flavoured water. Exactly how is he going to represent anyone when ninety-percent of his experience in this game is sitting in station, chatting with unistas on Mumble, and managing the University? What insight does that give him into wormholes, pirating, hell, pretty much anything outside of market warfare and the corporate UI interface.

The only interest Kelduum is going to represent is EVE University. His goal will be to decrease conflict for his organization, and increase the ability for him to recruit. If you're in favour of the dumbing-down of highsec, as it will suit E-Uni, then throw Kelduum a vote. (It is telling that the first two groups that came to mind, that he then typed, were industrialists and mission runners.)

The second paragraph is much the same. No specifics, because anything mentioned concretely could actually alienate voters. So keep it as broad and expansive as possible. He wants CCP to continue iterating on stuff. He wants CCP to fix broken stuff. Kelduum supports more stuff in the game. He's the Stuff Candidate.

Wow.

What mechanics does he want "fixed"? And what does "fixed" mean to him? Exactly what features does he want iterated? All of them? Or just some of them? Which ones?

Come on. Kelduum. Man, up. Stop creasing your ass on the fence. Choose a side. Decide on some specific issues that you want to bring forward to CCP, and the suggestions that will inevitably accompany them.

CSM7 - Counting Sheep

2012-01-31T03:19:00.004Z

Vote gathering, if you're a nullsec candidate, is different than vote gathering if you're a highsec candidate.

The issues for the nullsec candidate are pretty cut-and-dried. Basically they boil down to supercapital balancing, sovereignty issues, and ISK flow. From what I've seen, every nullsec candidate is on the same page with every other nullsec candidate. So blindly voting for the nullsec candidate you're directed to vote for, there's little in the way of needing to know what that particular nullsec candidate represents. You don't need to see a complete rundown of the issues they're campaigning on. It is reasonably self-evident what they'll be representing, what changes they'll be pushing for, etcetera.

Things are not quite so determined with the highsec candidates. There are so many flavours of highsec representation. Is the candidate a super-carebear? Do they desire conflict? Do they wish to see less conflict? Are they proponents of risk vs. reward? Do they desire more theme park MMO attributes in EVE Online? Their relationship to lowsec? Nullsec?

Which is why Kelduum Revaan's exploration into vote gathering must have taken him a bit by surprise. Rather than page upon page of the student body proclaiming that "Yes, you have my vote, Kelduum", there were mostly questions. What issues are you campaigning on? What is your manifesto? Sorry, can't give you my vote until I know what it is you want to accomplish on the CSM.

What happened? Kelduum tosses up a poll asking his students and alumni if they'll vote for him. And that's it. No indication at all concerning why he wants to run, what he brings to the table.

The poll went up over 36 hours ago. At least twenty people ask him what is his agenda. Not a peep from Kelduum. Which is why I figure he must have been taken a bit unawares at the responses. Perhaps he doesn't even really know what issues he wants to campaign on yet? That would strike me as odd. He stated his intent to run three weeks ago. He must have drafted something? He must have an idea what he wants to push forward with CCP.

When Trebor did his CSM crowdsourcing vote, the unistas came out 550 strong to vote along the Kelduum line (back when membership was 2000 strong.) Based on that alone, and since Crucible saw none of those top crowdsourced vote-getters with any attention, we can maybe assume that things like the corporate UI interface are still high on his agenda, as well as the medal interface. But it would be suicide to run on UI issues alone (especially corporate UI interface issues, which impact an exceptionally small minority of players.)

Hopefully he'll put something together soon. Where does he stand on wardecs? (Is he going to push for his capture the flag idea as a replacement for the currently broken wardec system?) High-sec incursions? (Too much of an ISK faucet? Not enough?) CONCORD? Less PvP in highsec? Does he favour PvP flagging for corporations in highsec? What about EVE University? Is he going to push for the University to become a training corporation, with special rules for all corporations that get to wear that designation?

Nullsec, there's basically just one side to the coin. Highsec a polyhedron. So many sides a candidate can come out on.

If his plan was to just coast into a CSM seat based on his 1500 EVE University members, then he's going to be a tad embarrassed come the end of April.

So, if you're a highsec candidate, don't start rallying the votes until you've put together your platform.

CSM Voting Mechanics

2012-01-29T22:00:00.002Z

It's probably too late to suggest changes to the CSM voting system, but I'm gonna throw out a suggestion nonetheless. I'm interested in the feedback. What people see as the upside and the downside.

Currently the system is one account one vote. You simply vote for the candidate you are most interested in. This puts a great deal of control into the hands of large voting blocs.

The upside to the current voting system is that it, more or less, mirrors real-life political voting. In essence, people are voting for political parties. CSM6 was made up mostly of folks from the Nullsec Party, even if the Nullsec Party doesn't actually exist or has no formal structure.

The downside is that it also promotes sheep voting. A popular candidate in a large bloc doesn't have to do much of anything, other than direct his underlings to vote a certain way. If you have a large enough bloc, the candidate is almost guaranteed a seat based on voting numbers alone. The candidate doesn't have to represent anything in particular if they are popular enough with their constituents.

An alternative is you allow every account a VOTE FOR a single candidate, and a VOTE AGAINST a single candidate. Every candidate then has two votes associated with their election run, votes for and votes against. Votes against are subtracted from votes for, and the folks with the highest values get seats on the CSM.

The upside is that candidates have to appeal to the greater community, not simply their voting bloc. It would make it more difficult for candidates with singular agendas to get seats on the CSM. Candidates would have to appeal to a broader base, they'd need platforms that encompassed the game as a whole, rather than niche policies. For example, Ripard Teg, who has a very broad base of appeal would find himself a shoe-in for a seat, rather than looking at a potential second loss in a row (which is the main reason he hasn't declared candidacy yet for CSM7, the current voting system doesn't favour those sitting outside voting blocs.)

Another upside, increased complexity means increased difficulty gaming the system.

The downside is that it would lead candidates, who lead large blocs, to play against their nature, simply to appeal to that broader base. For example, The Mittani, would he have embarked on ice interdiction, upsetting a broad base of highsec players, increasing his chances for far more votes against?

Life in Stain - Burned Burning

2012-01-29T08:21:00.003Z

Today I finally did the smart thing and I have a non-blowed up Viator to show for it.

So many times, when jumping semi-blind into a system, and then encountering a bubble camp, I do the exact wrong thing and get blowed up.

The wrong thing is to try to burn out of the bubble, cloaked with a single pulse of MWD, and then warp away to safety. Fine idea, in theory. What usually happens is that the single MWD pulse doesn't get me out of the bubble, and the ships camping the gate catch up to me, decloak me, kill me. I'm burned burning away from the gate.

And whenever I written about that exact scenario happening, I've always added, "I should have just headed back to the gate and jumped from whence I came. That would have been the smart thing." But I rarely do the smart thing in that instance, usually because I'm anxious to get where I'm going and usually because the gate camped system is one that is necessary to get through if I want to get to where I'm want to go.

Curiosity kills a lot of cats. Impatience kills this cat.

Except tonight. A couple Sabres and friends camping the entrance into 37S-KO. My first instinct was to start analyzing my position within the bubbles, start plotting out a quickest route while still having a celestial I could align too. I spent about thirty seconds deciding what direction to start burning, when I finally paid attention to that little voice urging me to do the smart thing. "Save the Viator! Save the world!"

So I did.

Align to gate. Activate cloak. Activate microwarpdrive. Twelve kilometres. None of the ships even headed towards the gate after me. Only seeing a partial align, they were convinced I was heading spaceward, not gateward.

So I jumped back through, and immediately warped and cloaked to my observational point. Twenty seconds later the two Sabres followed me in. They hung around for a couple minutes before jumping back to 37S-KO. Me? I logged. I'll try the system later.

(And yeah, before any one writes, a scout would have been useful. But I'm not going to be using a scout, because a) I don't want a third account right now, and b) I'm not bringing Poetic back to Stain just to scout for the alt. I do fine solo, when impatience doesn't win over instinct.)

Life in Stain - Planetary Interaction - Black Frog

2012-01-26T06:18:00.001Z

I'm finally in the black with the planetary interaction.

I've yet to sell a single High-Tech Transmitter, but I'm calculating what I'm stockpiling at 87.5% of the current Jita market value. Until it's actually sold, I think that's a fair assessment of the worth of my commodity.

I won't be selling any High-Tech Transmitters (HTT) for another 170 days, though. I am currently processing 288 HTTs every 24 hours. I plan to bring my HTTs to market when I stockpile 50000 units of them. That is approximately 4.1B ISK worth of HTTs.

The problem, being way out in Stain, is transport to market.

I'm already thinking about it. Risk versus reward. That's what EVE is all about.

My current Viator configuration can hold 8052 m³ of cargo. HTTs require 6m³ each. Thus my Viator can transport 1342 units of HTTs per run. If I want to transport 50000 HTTs, that's 38 cargo runs. That's a lot of round trips between Stain and Empire space. That's a lot of danger.

If I want to make the Viator safer, faster, then the cargo capacity drops further. Which means even more cargo runs.

How many Viators might I potentially lose, making that many trips through nullsec (and some lowsec)? A fit Viator is worth a tad over 100M ISK, and the cargo another 100M ISK. And that's the ISK part of the equation. How much of my time is that going to occupy? A fuck tonne, that's for sure.

Enter Black Frog. The nullsec hauling arm of Red Frog. I've used them once before, to transport a bunch of Viators and Dramiels down to Stain. Cost from Jita to Stain? 95M ISK. Pretty damned reasonable, if you ask me.

How much, though, to transport 4B ISK in cargo from Stain to Jita? 125M ISK. Considering the worth of the cargo, again, pretty damned reasonable. Considering that my last use of Black Frog, I had my stuff in Stain four hours after I created the contract, pretty damned reasonable. So, a fuck tonne of my time, or create a contract, go to sleep, wake up and likely have my cargo in Jita waiting for me. Hmm.

This decision is pretty simple. I doubt I could make 35-40 jumps through Stain, Period Basis, and Delve without losing at least one Viator (if not more.) I don't relish the thought of making an 80 jump trip (there and back) 35-40 times.

In 170 days, I'll be calling on you Black Frog. Be ready. (Hell, I'll be calling on you again soon, because I want more ships and mods down in Stain.)

EVE University and RvB - Fun Times Always

2012-01-25T13:21:00.001Z

It's been awhile. Since I've posted anything about EVE University. Since there's been some juicy EVE Uni-RvB drama.

This is what happens when you try to get two incompatible alliances together. One is all for freeform PvP with a very limited set of rules (which are often breached nonetheless.) The other prefers safe gameplay with a heavy overlay of rules and procedures that dictate their play.

The last time we met our heroes, the Uni was up-in-arms when PvP happened. Namely that RvB, in all their PvP enthusiasm, attacked the University POS. No one told RvB that the POS was off-limits. RvB assumed it was just another target of opportunity. The Uni screamed, hollered, stamped its feet and called off the "war."

Many months later, the University has forgiven RvB its transgressions, and they will be going to "war" again, this weekend. This time there will be a list of rules that each corporation has to follow. What not to do. Where not to go.

Before "war" happens, though, hilarity must ensue. Namely the University, once again, getting its panties in a knot when PvP happens.

The University has a large presence in the Hagilur lowsec pocket, out near Hek. Obstensibly for PvP learning purposes. They've been stationed there for a couple months now, so likely a lot of the University's carebear industrialists have moved in also, to reap the extra rewards that they can't quite get from highsec. So, it might explain the hollering that occurred when the following happened.

In a nutshell, a couple of RvB members wandered into the Hagilur pocket and killed a few Unistas. PvP in lowsec. The problem for the University, is that they mind-bogglingly set RvB to +5 status. What that meant is that the folks blowing up the Unistas didn't even appear on the Unista overviews. So, until they examined killmails, they didn't really have a clue who had killed them. The RvBers doing the blowing up had no idea that the Uni had them set to blue.

Why one sets a PvP corporation to blue status is a question for the scholars, especially a PvP corporation that doesn't set any outside corp to +5/+10. Perhaps the University diplomatic corp had some lower-rung RvB diplo agree in principle to mutual blue status. The University went ahead and did it, RvB never did. Mistakes were made, likely not on RvB's part, since they've never had a policy of setting outsiders blue.

Back to the fun. Once what was happening was made clear, hollering started on the Uni chat channel (the one for members and alumni, not the horrible public channel). Here are some of the better comments (names redacted for their own protection):

Unista 01 > why are we giving rvb the privalege of fighting us when they can't follow rules?

Unista 02 > Did we agree to an armistice with them before our war next weekend? Can a diplo confirm?

Unista 03 > Who wants to bet some ISKies taht they'll attack our pos again?
Unista 01 > i'll take that bet & raise you that they'll podkill during our war.
Unista 03 > ROFL!! No doubt!

Unista 04 > We should cancel the big war and teach them a lesson. If they can't obey there standings how are they going to obey any of the rules for the war next week?

Unista 05 > RvB has no honor. We learned that during the last war. Why are we all surprised?

It goes on and on. Apparently the overriding sentiment is that fighting the University is a privilege and that RvB should consider itself lucky.

Then some of the complaining eventually reaches their forums.

It takes an ex-Uni to finally speak some sense to the mounting anger: "To the best of my knowledge, RvB doesn't have any blues, since that would kind of defeat the point. They have like, extra-red, but that's about it. Now come on ... this idiocy is just embarassing the Uni. You're on a public forum section, ffs."

Other than the hilarity of what happened -- that RvB is always getting itself in hot-water with the University when they actually do PvP -- I found some of the director comments eye-opening. This one in particular: "... there are elements of every corporation that have their own methods and agendas. While it reflects poorly on the organization, it is (hopefully) an isloated few who are not adhering to the rules."

That there is the crux of the issue. When you're raised in an environment that is chock full of rules, you come to expect that the outside world should be rules-based as well. When the University says they love PvP, they love PvP within a well-defined framework, one in which the aggressing parties cannot stray. Even Kelduum Revaan has suggested a capture-the-flag system as a replacement to the war declaration system.

When Kelduum is running for CSM7, bear that in mind. When he says he loves PvP, remember two things: a) he doesn't actually participate in PvP, and b) he wants to bring World of Warcraft-style battlegrounds to EVE Online, as a replacement for the war system.

Planetary Interaction - The Skill Sweet Spot

2012-01-22T08:27:00.001Z

So you want to do planetary interaction. Do you really need elite certifications for Colony Management and Planetology?

The answer to that would be a resounding "No!" Not for any level of efficient planetary interaction, at any rate.

If all you're doing is playing the market, buying your commodities and running a single manufacturing planet, then this little tutorial is not for you.

If you have any designs on actually running several planets, setting down extractors, hauling from customs offices, doing actual management of your planetary output, then read on.

If you're too busy to read on, then here's the "too long; didn't read" bit. You should achieve the improved Colony Management certificate, and achieve the improved Planetology certificate. The elite certificates are not necessary, though getting Planetology V and Advanced Planetology III (both components of the elite Planetology certificate) is important.

I run a five planet set-up for P3 production. Four planets to extract P0 resources and convert them into P1 commodities. I then transport the P1 items off planet, which are then shipped to a manufacturing planet, which converts the P1 commodities into P2 and then the final P3 commodity. In my estimation, this is as far as you want to go when you're extracting and building up the chain, from P0 resources up to P3 commodities.

If your plan is to build P4 commodities, I'd suggest running only a single manufacturing planet, and buying all your P3 commodities from the market. Due to the limitations of the Interplanetary Consolidation skill, you simply cannot run enough planets on a single character to make P4 production, from raw to final, at all efficient.

Planetology V
Advanced Planetology III
Where the planet mode heat map (scan) says the raw resources are hidden, is not necessarily where they are actually located -- especially if your planetology skills are low. Acquiring Advanced Planetology III ensures your heat map is quite accurate, only minor adjustments of your extractor heads will locate the actual sweet spots. As a rank five skill, spending the (approximately) twenty-five days skilling Advanced Planetology from III to V is not worth the effort. Apply that time elsewhere.

Command Center Upgrades IV
This skill is most important when it comes to your manufacturing planet. Manufacturing planets demand a lot of powergrid (for all the processors.) Upgrading command centers gives you more powergrid, which means more processors planetside. The number of processors you have will determine your ISK output per day. It's easy enough for your P1 planets to keep up with the needs of the manufacturing planet. The powergrid needs of P1 planets are low, even when running at a high rate of output.

The following image represents my P1 -> P4 manufacturing planet. P1 items are shipped to the launchpad. Those P1 items are then funneled to the advanced industry processors. The resulting P2 items are funneled back to the launchpad, and they are then moved onto the remaining advanced industry processors to create the final P3 product. The configuration below uses up 97% of my command center's powergrid. This configuration will create earnings of 23M ISK per day (using a value for the high-tech transmitters that is 10% below current Jita value.)

Training Command Center Upgrades V would allow you to increase your P3 production from four to five facilities. In my case this would increase my daily ISK intake to 28M ISK per day. I've decided those sixteen days spent training are better spent elsewhere.

Interplanetary Consolidation IV
Since five planets are required for (most) P3 production, there is little point training Interplanetary Consolidation V, which will allow you to produce on a sixth planet. The sixth planet offers no efficiency benefit to P3 production. Five planets are all you need.

(For those P3 items that require three P2 commodities -- Supercomputers come to mind -- similar to P4 item production, these particular P3 items are most efficiently created via market trading for the P2 components.)

Remote Sensing III/IV
This skill simply allows you to scan planets from a distance. Since you'll likely be managing your planets within a three to four jump radius of your base station (where you'll be parking the ship and storing the commodities once you've picked them up from the customs offices), there's little requirement for long range scanning. Five to seven light years is more than enough.

Life in Stain - Ramping Up Production

2012-01-21T07:40:00.001Z

Second Viator lost in Stain, along with an entire day's worth of planetary production. Commodity level one, Chiral Structures, Industrial Fibers, that sort of thing. So not a big loss, monetarily. I brought down extra replacement Viators (thanks Black Frog!), so I could replace losses at Jita costs and not Stain costs.

Dude was clever though. He followed me around my usual route, but I kept beating him to the correct gate (it was his first time following me.) Lost him for a bit at one intersection system (I went to pick up planet goods, he went to a station system, since that was the logical choice.) He picked me up again, five minutes later at the station system. I loitered around a bit, and decided to take route B (rather than my usual route A) back to my home system. The dude must have been waiting for me at a gate along route A, and when he saw me leave system, yet not pass by him, he must have quickly figured out that I was taking an alternative route back to home. Viator travels at 3AU/sec. His Sabre at 9AU/sec. He caught me at my home system as I jumped in at the route B gate.

I had a feeling he might be there. But I also figured he wasn't going to clue in to the direction I took fast enough, nor get their quick enough to catch me.

It's been a few days since that's happened. Every time I log in now (we seem to share a similar timezone), within a few minutes of logging in, he shows up in system. I must have made his watchlist. Woot! I can't blame him. You get an easy kill, you're going to want to check up on the idiot again, see if he's learned his lesson or not.

I still go about my business, of picking up my planetary commodities, but I then log off in space with full cargo, and deposit it in station the next morning, when he isn't online. Undock, log off in space again. I learned my lesson, so eventually he'll get bored and search out someone dumber than me.

We dumb people abound in New Eden, though most of my kind never leave highsec. I'm the anomaly. I prefer the risk, even if it costs me ISK. Lots of it.

I just started up the production planet. Spitting out High-Tech Transmitters now. At my current rate of production, earning about 15M ISK per day profit. It's the first time I've gone beyond P2 production. Back with my lowsec PI, I made a little over 2M ISK per day. P3 is proving to be much more worthwhile.

(I'll never go with P4, too much of a pain in the ass and requires juggling too many planets; I can run five of them now. You couldn't run proper P4 production on six planets, if the goal was to never buy from the market. The only viable way to do P4 production is to feed a production planet from the market. A lot of hauling in that method, because you'd need low region-wide buy orders.)

Anyhow, once I see how things fare, I can ramp up production to 27.5M ISK per day.

And yeah, I could make more money doing other things. Incursions. Market trading. But I hate Incursions. Mind numbingly repetitive. Reminds me of theme park MMO raiding (I quite WoW because I could no longer stand raiding, and raiding is pretty much all there is to do in WoW.) And market trading, I do not have the patience or the time for 0.01 ISK wars.

AFK

2012-01-18T03:07:00.002Z

Not going to be around much for the next week or so. So there'll be little in the way of posting, and the only playing I'll be doing is updating skill queues and managing the planetary interactions.

Not that I've had much to write about recently. Hauling planetary interaction commodities off planet isn't terribly exciting. Nor is bookmarking. There's only so many adjectives and adverbs one can use to make them seem even moderately rah-rah-siss-boom-bah. And then the audience figures out what's happening.

100 Tristans - Giving Up The Ghost

2012-01-14T07:46:00.000Z

So, I'm giving up on the 100 Tristans experiment. Twelve Tristans into it.

Why?

It wasn't much fun. It wasn't really that the Tristan is a sucky ship (if it can't be competitive with a Rifter, what the hell use is it?) It's more that solo PvP isn't my thing.

I don't really enjoy going out and looking for PvP. It's sort of boring. Flying around the same five systems over and over, hoping to waylay someone, or find someone who wants to do some 1v1. Some nights you find a couple or three fights in an hour, other nights you can fly around for three hours and find nothing at all. That's not the sort of thing I look forward to when logging on.

I love the idea of PvP. I would never play a game if it didn't have some sort of PvP. I like open-ended, world PvP. I like knowing that as I'm going about doing my thing, that I could be someone's target of opportunity. I like knowing that if I run across someone, all happenstance-like, that I can attempt to take them out (even if, usually, I wouldn't bother.)

I'd quit this game in a second, though, if CCP added consensual-PvP (and they're coming close, what with their silence on fixing the broken wardec system.) Sandbox PvP. That's the essence of a great MMOG, in my opinion. My playstyle and my engagement in PvP, it probably sounds contradictory. I don't really go out looking for PvP; most times PvP doesn't interest me at all; but I would never play a game that didn't have PvP as an integral part of gameplay.

Time for an anecdote. Today, I was just out minding my own business in Syndicate (as well as you can do that in NPC nullsec.) Bookmarking systems. I land on a gate, and low-and-behold, a Taranis. Brother to the Ares. I could have jumped through the gate easily enough, avoided the conflict. Most times I would have; got on with the business of bookmarking. For whatever reason though, I felt in the mood to engage. I got my ass kicked. But I had fun. I podded off afterwards four jumps, went and built me a new ship; continued bookmarking.

PvP will always find me. But every so often, on the blue moons, I'll come looking for it.

When it comes to PvP in EVE, what I find I enjoy the most are fleets, small- to mid-size gangs. I like the social aspect. The comms. I like having a defined role and job. I don't want the stress and bother of leading fleets, organizing them, but I do like being part of a team.

So, after I finish bookmarking Syndicate, I think I'm going to get serious about finding a good nullsec alliance. I would really like to join Important Internet Spaceship League, specifically the Association of Commonwealth Enterprises. I'll have to find out if they'd want a dude like me. They might not.

I'll write about PvP in the future. Just not the solo kind.

Life in Stain - Chit-Chat and Offers

2012-01-13T02:57:00.001Z

I'll mention by foray into Syndicate before getting into Stain. Already lost my first Ares. Two jumps in. FD-MLJ. I know of the danger of this system. I was killed there twice before. Once with 1.2B ISK in Outer Rings cargo. So I recognize the danger in the system, especially when entering Syndicate from Orvolle. I was hoping the camping would be light at this time of day, that I'd be able to scoot on past the danger.

I'll just have to enter Syndicate from another system in Empire. Lots of them to choose from. Once I get into Syndicate, I'm pretty sure I'll be able to get a lot of bookmarking done before getting the next Ares blown up. I just need to get in and past the initial ha-ha-empire-people gate camps.

I Have An Offer For You
I was contacted the other day about an offer someone wanted to make concerning my collection of Stain bookmarks. Basically their offer revolved around the notion that they can make a complete copy of my 451 bookmarks in eight minutes. Thus, they'd offer to a) copy my bookmarks for me, b) be my salesperson and sell the collection for a reduced price of 150M ISK (which they felt was more reasonable.) In return, for every sale they would keep 100M ISK and I'd get 50M ISK.

I politely turned them down.

I can copy my 451 bookmarks in about twenty minutes. Twelve minutes of savings is not worth 200M ISK in lost revenue to me. Not too mention the other red flags. Someone I don't know. Giving up the collection to someone else to manage. Trusting that their sales would be accurately reported to me.

451 bookmarks seems more than worth 250M ISK. If someone feels it isn't, then spend the 15-20 hours creating a similar collection. Afterwards tell me you wouldn't have rather ran seventeen hours of incursions.

Advice: Scout
About a week ago, a fellow from Babylon 5 contacts me. He wants to give me travel advice on getting through Stain. I won't call it guilt, that would be wrong, but I get the feeling this has something to do with my two losses at the hands of his alliance. Perhaps he feels I am depressed or despondent over the losses. Maybe he thinks I may pack it up and return to Empire space. Perhaps it's as simple as him thinking me a complete newb. I'm a bit of a nullsec newb, but not so much so that I don't know up from down and left from right.

It was a good thirty minute chat which boiled down to scouting. To move around safely in Stain, I needed a scout alt to roam ahead of my Stain alt. That you move around solo, jumping blindly into systems was complete suicide. I'm not going to call it bad advice. It isn't. If I had lots of ISK earning potential, maybe I might set up a scouting alt. On the other hand, does one really need a scouting alt in Stain? The region is really not that busy.

The following screenshots are the hourly activity filters for Stain and Syndicate -- ships lost in the last hour. From this you can get a good idea of where danger lies, without a scout. You won't know the complete picture, but you can certainly make some informed decisions, travel plan altering decisions based on the information obtained from this particular filter.

There's likely a single gate camp happening in Stain, just north of the major east-west pipe. A not unusual location, but out of the way for anyone travelling through Stain, from Period Basis to Catch. The entire pipe between those two regions is devoid of any serious activity over the last hour. Stain is not a particularly dangerous place.

Sure, there are activity flare ups from time to time, but you don't need to get over-paranoid with the scouting, just to move around. It's active, but not so active that you need to be in PvP-mode 100% of the time. There's no need to be running a scout alt just to get another character safely about. I can tell via the starmap's last-hour activity filter what systems to be concerned about, possibly avoid.

Syndicate, on the other hand . . . .

Guess where the gate camps are in Syndicate? I would hazard that there are five strung along in the north, all along a major thoroughfare. And then a couple of odd ones down in individual pockets owned by various alliances, no doubt defending their digs or capturing strays.

I appreciated the conversation and the concern, from the Babylon 5 gentleman, but I understand what it means to move about solo in nullsec. I understand that it will mean ship losses from time to time. The starmap doesn't double for the pure data that an alt scout would bring. But I understand and accept those future ship losses. And that's okay.

Life in Stain - Lick the Frog

2012-01-12T05:08:00.000Z

I was tired of being broke. I bought some GTCs. Now I'm hiring Black Frog to get me a bunch of stuff down to Stain for the alt. Three spare Viators. Five Dramiels. All the modules to go along with them (plus some, for possible sales and profits). And skill books.

The Dramiels will be for missioning. The alt might as well work for a living while down there, rather than sponge off the main. He should start pulling his weight. Plus, building up Sansha rep can't be half bad.

The Black Frog rate was cheap. A contract worth 1.3B ISK in collateral, moving down nearly 77K m³, and it will only cost 95M ISK. I may have to wait 14 days for it to arrive, but hopefully not that long. That would be the maximum. Seven expiration, seven day completion. I was under the impression they were going to cost a couple or a few hundred million ISK. So to have their calculator spit out 95M ISK, well, that seemed a pleasant surprise.

(Edit: the Black Frog contract was fulfilled in slightly under four hours.)

I've scaled back the planetary interaction somewhat. Dropped the idea of doing Supercomputers. Will stick with High-Tech Transmitters. Can more easily do that on four planets. It's a little less hectic, production-wise. When I tally up about 250K units of the P1 commodities (Industrial Fibers, Oxidizing Compounds, Chiral Structures, and Plasmoids), I'll convert the temperate planet into advanced production, have it build out the Polyamarids and Transmitters, and then those into High-Tech Transmitters. With the bloody import/export tax rates so high, we'll see what sort of profit can be wrought. I'm currently spending about 1.3M ISK per day running the planets, mostly the taxes.

Poetic just contracted four Ares and fittings out to a station on the edge of Syndicate (15M ISK reward for 11K m³ cargo, because I respect haulers.) My plan is to bookmark this NPC nullsec region. Not quite as completely as Stain, though. There'll still be observational bookmarks on every gate. There are just too many damned stations in Syndicate, that I won't be bookmarking every one of them. If there are multiple stations in a system, I'll choose one station to bookmark. I'll also bookmark every station that has a repair and/or a cloning service. Thus, for a travel purposes, all the bases will be covered.

As a travel exercise, this should be a lot more interesting endeavour, what with a lot more dangerous and active alliances being in the region -- Rooks & Kings, Agony Unleashed, Rote Kapelle. I expect to lose more Ares than I did in Stain (two), though I will try my damnedest not too.

Gambling Degenerates

2012-01-10T22:24:00.001Z

Gambling is one of the meta-games available to capsuleers. There are tonnes of options out there. From the basic lottery systems. Raffles. Full-on Texas Hold'Em poker. There are the imitators. There's even the obvious long-con scams.

I take part in some of the gambling. I'm not very good. But I enjoy the thrill of it all. Just in game, mind you.

My gambling is finally in the black, so time to discuss it, with some detail of my own degenerate history. It's less embarrassing now that I'm out of the red (at one point I was down nearly half a billion ISK.)

I'll only cover the games of chance that I'm most familiar with.

Somer Blink
Somer Blink is a raffle. There's the regular blinks with consist of eight ticket raffles, and the mega blinks which are sixteen ticket raffles. They also give away lots of free shit in promo blinks. Every time they reach a multiple of 10T ISK, they have a bunch more giveaways, plus some special raffles. They also have achievements. They also have an occasional trivia contest called Pres Butan (which I can no longer play, because I was caught selling answers; I made 50M ISK doing that, but I am a sad bear that I can no longer test my EVE trivia knowledge.)

Mr. Somer has really studied the psychology of the gambler, because this game ropes you in and keeps you roped in. It's also a very pretty and well-designed website.

During my time in the University, this was most certainly the most popular gambling among the student body. It was hard to pass on the game, because people were always calling out the promos (as a courtesy) over Mumble. People were explaining Somer Blink a few times a day to the inevitable "What's a promo?" questions.

Every blink is for some in-game item. Usually a ship, but not uncommonly PLEX and implant sets. If you win, you have three options for payout. You can turn your winnings back into blink credit (never do this), you can accept the item as a contract (out of any major trade hub), or you can accept an ISK payout. Only the last two options are worthwhile (if you want to actually have winnings). Which is more worthwhile is a matter of checking the market. You'll know the ISK payout (it's right there listed with each blink as the buyout value.) But the value of the actual item fluctuates with the market.

For instance, PLEX. Somer will pay out in ISK, 445M ISK. Yet a PLEX is worth, on the market today, 477M ISK. Far better to take the PLEX and sell it yourself, than take the ISK payout. Again, you'll have to check the market with every winning to see what is the better return. Sometimes the ISK payout works out to your advantage, sometimes receiving the actual item and selling it yourself means more ISK in your pocket.

Important tip. If you buy GTCs (Game Time Code), consider buying them via the link on the Somer Blink website. It's an almost definite way to earn extra ISK. Buy one GTC, get 100M blink credit. Buy four GTCs, get 500M blink credit. I've bought eight GTCs through Somer Blink, and earned an extra 730M ISK that I would not have earned otherwise.

EOH Poker
EVE Online Hold'Em. This rivals Somer Blink in popularity. If you're any good at poker, you can earn vast amounts of money. A dude in the University, Ninevite, funded all his accounts playing poker, plus contests and PvP incentives for the students during times of war (old days, obviously.) I enjoy poker, but mostly suck at it. I don't have the patience for it. I tilt a lot.

This is the one game you cannot play with the in-game browser, due to a Flash interface.

There are, basically, two ways to play EOH poker.

The first, deposit money into your EOH account and join games currently in progress. Sit at a table and win or lose. These are known as ring games.

The second option is to join two separate in-game EOH channels, sign up for tournament games run by the EOH bankers. There's no need to deposit money into your EOH account. You pay the banker the sit-down fee, wait for the tournament to start. If you win, the banker pays you your winnings (minus their fee.) There are a lot of different tournament games to choose from, though the most popular are the double- and triple-throughs (the top three players on six and nine person tables win ISK.) There are also headhunter games, heads up play, and all-in first hand games (sort of dumb, since it's pure chance; when poker is a mix of skill and luck, why play something that is entirely luck?)

I've lost a fair bit of money at poker. But it's still a fun way to pass some time.

Phaser Inc.
There is something to be said about the long cons. These obvious scams going for the big score. It takes a lot of patience and fortitude on the part of the grifter, not to lose sight of the big picture, not to get greedy before the ultimate goal. If one can get in on the ground floor of such a scam, your likelihood of making a profit is reasonably good. Long cons like this work because they have to be legitimate for some period of time. You're not going to pull in the reticent folks until you prove good faith over a period of months. Once you've got that good faith appeal, folks will start pouring money into you. There seems to be this overwhelming wish that this could be that one honest to goodness EVE player who is willing to turn player eggs into golden omelettes.

I sent Phaser Inc. 10M ISK. It's not much money. Was worth the risk. I thought I was getting in near the start of their venture. I should have done better research. I actually got in near the tail-end. Received a few returns. Lost 8.4M ISK total.

The Big Lottery
The Big Lottery is just a straight up lottery. I played it once, back when I was a three week old newb. Never played it again. I'm not much of a fan of the games with the long odds. It is popular and has a following though. It may be operated by the EOH Poker folks, since most of the prize money seems to be donated via EVE Online Hold'Em.

My Gambling History

EVE Blog-a-Day #018 - Do you gamble?

2012-01-10T21:27:00.001Z

Do you use any of the EVE Online meta-gaming/gambling sites? If so, which ones?

My Response

I've made frequent use of both Somer Blink and EOH Poker. (More on all this in a post that is currently being written.)

Participants

I also call on folks to send me their questions to ask the community. I'll post them, crediting you for the question, as well as a link back to your blog (give me your blog address too.)

When posting a link to your blog entry on Twitter, use the #eveblogaday hash tag, as well as the usual #tweetfleet hash tag.

If you partake in a particular question, please post a link to your blog entry in the comments. I'll compile them all, and every 25 questions, I'll post a big recap.

Life in Stain - Earnings and Taxes

2012-01-10T08:46:00.000Z

The sale of the Stain bookmarks hasn't been the flood of orders I'd hoped. But neither has it been a complete bust. In twenty-four hours, I've sold two sets of the 451 bookmarks. That's 500M ISK that I wouldn't have had otherwise. Though, I certainly could have made 500M ISK much faster in other ways, considering the amount of time it took to create that many bookmarks across 132 systems.

I didn't make an exact counting of the time spent, but I'd gather it was on the order of 15-20 hours of work. I figure my break-even point on the project is about 2B ISK.

I've decided that if I can make 3B ISK selling the Stain bookmarks, then I'll look towards creating bookmark collections for other regions. I'd likely start with Catch and Curse. Two busy areas. Plus, the three regions together should sell as a nice package unto themselves.

About the only pain in the ass associated with selling so many bookmarks is the copying process. Five at a time from People & Places into station cargo. I've got a little system going, and it takes about 20 minutes to make a copy of all 451 bookmarks. (That system: sort each list by name -- makes it easier to keep track of where you are in the process; also, resizing the People & Places window so that it shows 20 bookmarks at a time -- knowing that one full window is 20 bookmarks helps to keep mistake free in the copying process.) Not so much a pain in the ass as a tad annoying, is having to break up each sale into three contracts, since contracts have a 200 item limit. Due to this, I've trained Contracting III, so that I have enough contract slots in the event of a mini-rush on the collection.

Anyhow, I'll keep up the advertising. Poetic is back in Jita now, ready to copy and contract bookmarks to whoever needs them. She's also building out a Proteus, which I'll probably bring back down to Stain; probably use it for security status ratting.

The alt is still in Stain, of course. He's ramped up his planetary interaction. He has four planets going full on production at the moment. Stockpiling tonnes of P1 commodities, on the way to eventually building P3 commodities, having decided upon Supercomputers and High-Tech Transmitters.

What the fuck are with these new export tax rates? Looking over my spreadsheets, pre-Crucible, over a 64 day set of commodity building, I spent 2M ISK on export taxes. Post-Crucible, 10 days in, I've spent close to 10M on export taxes. That is quite the goddamned jump in tax rates in a single update. That kinda makes me angry, and I wonder how CCP rationalizes that level of price hike. Really cuts into the profit margins, especially considering that there's a substantial amount of export and import taxation to build P3 commodities.

Taxes, aside, I am learning to break out of old habits. Especially docking at station habits. Considering the amount of bubbling that occurs at the undock of NPC stations, I've learned to dock only when absolutely necessary, and only when the undock area is clear of hostiles. The habit I'm working myself into is to always log off in space, never in station. In Empire space, logging off in station is the norm. It's almost the preferable practice. So that habit will have to die hard, if I want to get anything done out here in nullsec. This is probably the most important lesson I've learned recently.

Life in Stain - Stain for Sale

2012-01-09T01:06:00.000Z

I finally bookmarked all of Stain. Long and painful process. Only lost two Ares in the process, both in the Babylon 5 area of space. Those guys do not like people roaming their pocket of Stain. No hard feelings about it though. All's good. Chatted with one of them last night actually. I'll talk about that in a later post, but he was good people.

So, what did all that work get me? So far, 451 bookmarks. Lots of fun copying them to cargo too. Five at a time. Woot! Now to see if this will sell. I need the money. I keep envisioning my bank account overflowing with billions of ISK from bookmark sales. I'm likely kidding myself.

I just posted my ad on the EVE-O forums:

Travel Stain quickly and easily with the STAIN TRAVEL BOOKMARK COLLECTION.

Includes bookmarks for every system in the region of STAIN.

Each system includes an observational bookmark (180-225km) on every gate. An instant dock bookmark (at 0km) on every station. An undock bookmark (650-1250km) for near-instant warping from a station undock.

This collection contains 451 bookmarks.

COST: 250,000,000 (250 million) ISK

EveMail POETIC STANZIEL with the character you wish to receive the contract. I will then send you three contracts (contracts are limited to 200 items each). Two contracts for 100M ISK, and the third contract for 50M ISK. (250M ISK total.)

The contract will be based out of Jita.

(If you wish me to place the contract in any other location, that can be arranged for an added fee. An extra 25M to 50M ISK depending on the location.)

Life in Stain - Who's Who

2012-01-08T04:29:00.001Z

I apologize for the last post (which I've deleted.) I hadn't posted anything in about five days; was feeling anxious to post something. Excited at seeing all the changes occurring in the northern half of the influence map, I figured I'd yammer about that. Other than the bare basics, that of Goonswarm wanting Branch and their intel telling them White Noise would put up little fight, and of Solar Fleet and Shadow of xXDeathXx going to war, I know nothing else. Raiden is poking into Branch too, so what happens when Goons and Raiden meet? Are they loose allies? Enemies? Did they agree to split up Branch? Are the sovereignty changes in Branch pretty much complete? Someone at EVE New 24 should do a primer on the alliances between the influence map alliances, loose and tight.

Back to Stain. Only seven more systems to bookmark. Babylon 5 territory remaining. These are the guys who popped my Ares a few days ago. They blew up another tonight. They're mountain lions in their territory. They will stalk and shadow the hell out of you until they find the opportunity to pounce. It's annoying to have to fly around Stain all over again, trying to equip another Ares, but no hard feelings towards them. It's the territory they marked out for themselves (the largest bit of territory in Stain that I've seen any alliance carve out for themselves.) More power to them, trying to stop interlopers, even if that happens to be a lonely Ares just trying to bookmark seven more systems.

So, the Dotlan map below. I've demarcated where I've encountered the major Stain alliances, where they seem to be setting up shop, the systems (as far as I can tell, having just passed through bookmarking) they're claiming as their own. The Babylon 5 and Against All Authorities pockets are the most active and the most dangerous to travel in. The others, less so. The Happy Endings area is pretty dead, no matter the time zone. Three of the other larger alliances, Stainwagon, Stainless and C0ven, they seem to roam all over and I haven't seen one system where they seem to congregate en masse.

I've been told there's a good Stain political threadnaught on the Failheap Challenge forums, but I've not yet found it. I might be too lazy to wade through Kugu to try to figure out the politics of Branch (in the west) and Oasa (in the east), but I'd like to at least try to figure out the politics of Stain, since I'm spending a great deal of time down here.

(click image for full size)

Life in Stain - Ruthless Russians

2012-01-02T22:13:00.001Z

The main problem being in Stain is replacing ship losses, especially if you're poor. I'm down to under 500M ISK now. My alt recently lost a Viator, and a few minutes ago the main just lost an Ares.

I have to say, I'm really not enjoying folks who warp bubble the exit points of stations. I don't want to be a whiner or complainer. I'm not saying it should be banned, but NPC station guns should shoot the hell out of bubbles which cross into the docking ring (the <500m zone.) As it stands now, bubbling up an exit gives certain ship types zero chance of leaving a station, especially if there's more than just an interdictor parked outside. I'm not suggesting station guns instantly blow away warp bubble generators. Three or four shots perhaps. Force there to be some sort of strategy to laying them down at stations -- timing issues, multiple interdictors, etcetera.

My Viator did successfully leave a station with a single Sabre was bubbling out front. The Sabre was a pea-shooter and MWDing through its bubble was no problem at all; it was sort of shocking how little damage it was doing. On the other hand, I didn't attempt to MWD out of the station bubble when I was faced with a Sabre, a Muninn and a Machariel. That would have been death. Actually, it was, though I was attempting to warp to my undock before they could throw up their bubble. It seemed I was able too, but apparently it's a game of who has the best latency with the servers. So, whereas it looked like I got off the command to warp before the bubble went off, the server did not agree (plus instant undocks are not instant.) Sitting at 0km outside a station, unable to dock, I was a sitting duck for their weapons.

Repurchasing a Viator in Stain is silly expensive. But my alt has no other ships down there. So, it's either fly back to Empire space in a Velator (which isn't an attractive option) or fly 10 jumps and buy a new Viator for 120M ISK.

My new Viator has been trapped in station for over 24 hours. Every time I log on, there is a group of people camping the undock of the station. There's really no way for me to leave. Which is why I'm somewhat annoyed with bubbles on station undocks.

(I think if someone does want to base in Stain, it would be wise to buy a bunch of ships and modules, and hire Black Frog to get them down to Stain for you. It'll cost an arm and a leg, likely, but cheaper than repurchasing ships one a time down here. Black Frog isn't an option for me. Not currently. At one time it was, but now I'm poor; when I was rich, I was just happy doing hauling, so Stain wasn't on my radar. I'm still having a lot of fun, even if I am going about this Stain relocation all wrong.)

My Ares loss was to a bunch of Russians. Ruthless lot, they are. It was in the Babylon 5 pocket of Stain. They'd been shadowing me for about 10 systems, trying occasionally to get me on gates. Every two or three systems another would join their hunting party, until finally they overwhelmed me. At first it was just a Hurricane I had to worry about. Easy enough to outrun. By the time he was red-boxing me, he'd lose target almost immediately as I was out of targeting range. Then a Tengu showed up to help the Hurricane. Again, not much of a problem outrunning them at a gate camp. The number of them increased slowly until they finally overwhelmed me with two Lokis, a Proteus, a Tengu and a Dominix Navy Issue. In hindsight, I should have burned back to the gate and jumped through; that would have likely pulled a couple through the gate with me, thus splitting their forces. Jumping back through again, I likely could have used my speed to evade half the group. My speed was not much use against the entire group of them.

(And yeah, that Ares in the killmail is the original fit. I'll try to build the improved fit with the next one. Though module sales are scattered across the entire region.)

Predictions for 2012

2012-01-02T06:47:00.001Z

Now that 2012 has begun, maybe I'll throw out a few predictions for the next twelve months. Some will be broad. Some specific. Some conservative. Others way the hell out there.

I'll revisit these predictions in December 2012, of course. We'll see if I got all of them wrong.

Nullsec

White Noise and Raiden will be nullsec non-entities by year end.
Shadow of xXDeathXx space in the east will have been swallowed and divvied up between Solar Fleet and Intrepid Crossing. The east will be a tripartite block of Solar Fleet, Red Alliance and Intrepid Crossing.
Intrepid Crossing will actually shrug off an attack by Goonswarm later in the year.
Test Alliance will fail-cascade later in the year, when Fountain begins to be whittled away by Cascade Imminent. Goonswarm will not assist, their larger sovereignty holdings (Branch and Tenal) claiming their attention.

CSM

The Mittani will run for CSM7 and continue on as chairman.
Kelduum Revaan will make it onto CSM7. He will pretty much parrot whatever The Mittani wants where non-highsec issues are concerned. They'll let him lobby CCP for corporate interface changes. He'll be known as The Spreadsheet Candidate.
The Mittani will drop from CSM7 before his term is up. Burn out will be the reason.

CCP

DUST 514 will be a moderate success on release. The major complaint of DUST will be that it feels like an incomplete release. Much like Incarna was a quarter of what it should have been, same with DUST 514. Far too few environments to do battle in, far too few vehicles and weapons to choose from. By the time the game is complete it will have drifted into niche territory, with currently subscribed EVE Online players the majority of the paying DUST 514 players.
The Summer Expansion will be hailed an even greater success than Crucible.
Pandemic Legion will win Alliance Tournament X.

Mechanics

War declaration mechanics will remain as is throughout 2012. Fear that unhappy carebears will unsubscribe will be the unspoken reason (even though this has never been a problem in the last seven years.)
CCP will introduce more mechanics to increase safety in high security space. Ganking will become more difficult. Hulkageddon V will be the last successful, impactful Hulkageddon.
PLEX prices will hit 325M ISK before year end.

Favourite Posts (by others) for 2011

2011-12-31T23:17:00.002Z

These are posts that I've favourited by other bloggers during 2011 for a variety of reasons. Mostly I just want to come back to them easily for reference purposes. The listed posts are in no particular order.

PVP: Do you have the skills?
by Durzo Smith
This is a good skill queue reference post for PvPing. I want to refer to it over the next year or so, so it was added to my favourites.

A Noobs Guide to Lowsec Ninja Salvaging
by Galdornae (via Susan Black)
I like tutorial posts, especially in game areas I'd like to try, but have yet to try. This is a good tutorial on an area of the game that interests me. I suspect I'll come back to it sometime and 2012 and give it all a go.

How To Kill Mission Runners
by Aiden Mourn
Another of those tutorial posts that I hope to try out sometime in 2012. Preferably against some EVE University mission runners. Grins.\

Guide: Overheating
by Ripard Teg
This was just a good guide. I likely won't have to refer to it again, because I took it all in on the first reading. It was a well-written guide on a topic I did not know much about.

CynoAlts and You
by S.W.
Back when I my alt was a freighter pilot, I was toying with the idea of getting him into jump freighters, and building an alt (or using my main) as the cyno lighter. I know nothing about jumping and cynos. Granted this article doesn't shed much light on those specifics, but it does give a roadmap to skilling. Alas, jump freightering is now way on the back burner.

Winter Expansion Crucible feature list
by tgl3
A great update that was posted just before Crucible released. Since I wasn't playing on SiSi, I found this to be a great post about what to expect. Plus, it had lots of pictures to go along with all the words.

It’s my killboard and I will cry if I want to.
by Anonymous
I wasn't the only one bitching about E-Uni. I made me smile. The word was getting out there.

Fixing High-Security Wars
by Khalia Nestune
More people thinking about CCP's broken war declaration system.

More tears formula
Tears in the big picture
by Ripard Teg
More musings on EVE Online's broken war declaration system.

An All-In-One Guide to Ninja Salvaging
by Captain Charismatic
Another excellent guide on ninja salvaging. EVE is about tears, after all.

Zen and the art of utility highs
by Ripard Teg
A nice article on utility highs. I sometimes wonder what to place in that one empty high slot.

Most Popular Posts of 2011

2011-12-31T17:54:00.003Z

My most popular posts of 2011 were my rants. 2012 will be different, since I'm off ranting about EVE University. The word is already out there, so no need to continue repeating myself.

There might still be some hope for future rants, if Kelduum Revaan, as a CSM7 candidate (he's already said he will run for a position), proclaims that he wants a consensual PvP system for highsec space. That would get back me on the rant wagon. (So, far he hasn't specified a platform. He may not lay one down, hoping that his 1500 member voting bloc will simply roll him into a CSM slot without ever having to voice a, potentially, unpopular opinion.)

<sarcasm>Spies in the Uni</sarcasm>
Some weird EVE News 24 drama that occurred while I was still a brainwashed Unista. Brainwashed or not, the literate-challenged post on EN24 was way out there with respect to tinfoil-hattery.
The War-Free University
Basically a rant on CCP's recent changes to the war declaration system. But one can't rant about wardecs without involving the University.
The Goonswarm Guide to Highsec Ganking
A guide written by The Mittani and friends, but it was buried on Kugutsumen. I felt it should have better distribution. It is an excellent guide. So I edited it a bit, to pretty it up and to remove specific references to the Goon ice interdiction. Even if no one read it, I wanted it for myself in a nice easy to manage location.
Why EVE University Is A Pox Upon This Game
A rant about the attitude that a lot of students take with them when leaving the University, if they leave the University. Many don't.
Interactive Mining
A silly idea, after all was said and done, but the post does have an animated GIF.
NDAs, Minutes, Other Stupid Bullshit
The CSM Emergency Summit debacle over editing the minutes, silliness with NDAs, and a rant about The Mittani whenever he mentions anything about wormhole space.
CCP's Ben Bohn of Half-Life 2
Some humours.
Russian Roulette - CCP vs. Goonswarm
With CCP's recent moves to safen-up highsec, a bit of my own tinfoil-hattery on how Goonswarm's actions (as well as The Mittani's role as CSM chariman) might be pushing CCP further in the direction of consensualizing conflict in highsec space.
EVE University's No SOP Month - RvB Tears Open The Curtain
A rant about the University encouraging everyone to wardec them, to show how open they are to PvP ... that is, until someone attacks their POS, then the tears start flowing and the wars end.
EVE University as an NPC Corporation
Some words on CCP/Kelduum discussions on how EVE University could better serve EVE Online -- as an NPC corporation.

I don't make any claims to the quality or specialness of any of the posts above. Just that they were the most viewed posts on this blog. For whatever reason. (I think, mostly, that people just like drama and rants.)

Life in Stain - The Bookmarking Interceptor

2011-12-29T03:01:00.003Z

After learning a little bit more about stacking (based on the modified attribute, not module type), I felt that perhaps my current bookmarking interceptor was wasting slots, using modules only getting the fourth, fifth and sixth stacking bonuses. Not good. I noticed this might be the case when applying a rig that I felt should give me an extra 500m/s, but only ended up giving me an extra 100m/s. I thought to myself, this can't be right. So read the stacking blurb again. And then came to Twitter to confirm. (Thanks to the folks that helped out at the bottom of the post.)

[Ares, Bookmarker]
Overdrive Injector System II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

1MN MicroWarpdrive II
Small Shield Extender II
Small Shield Extender II

125mm Railgun II, Antimatter Charge S
[empty high slot]
Improved Cloaking Device II

Small Polycarbon Engine Housing I
Small Polycarbon Engine Housing I

This fit gave me the following stats: 1192m/s, 3.0s align, 146m signature, and 2425 EHP.

(For those wondering why I need the cloak. It is there only so that I can sit in space and not worry about probes while I muck around with routes, bookmark naming, mapping, etc. Bookmarking isn't terribly exciting, and I like to tab out to the browser or my other character occasionally -- break the monotony. The cloak allows me to do this without worry. It is not effective in escaping bubble camps. It's a convenience fitting, only.)

After conferring with the knowledgeable #tweefleet, I altered the fit to the following:

[Ares, Bookmarker Redux]
Overdrive Injector System II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Damage Control II

1MN MicroWarpdrive II
X5 Prototype I Engine Enervator
Warp Scrambler II

125mm Railgun II, Antimatter Charge S
[empty high slot]
Improved Cloaking Device II

Small Low Friction Nozzle Joints I
Small Polycarbon Engine Housing I

This fit gives me the following stats: 1170m/s, 3.1s align, 131m signature, and 2654 EHP.

I'm happier with the fit. A little more survivability for a slight reduction in speed and align time, and a moderate decrease in my signature radius. A few propulsion mods as well, for slowing down any adversary that thinks to chase me. This new fit still has some attributes heading into the fourth stacking bonus, but I didn't want to reduce speed and align further. Every little bit, in this instance, counts. This ship is built for speed. For bookmarking quickly, and escaping predators. The previous fit had already proven itself in escaping bubble camps in the three to five ship range, taking little to no damage in the process. With a few extra piloting tips, this new fit should do a tad better.

(Special Thanks: Bagehi, Swearte, Flies Incandenza, Anonymous, and Sindel Pellion's legs. These folks should not be blamed for the final fit, in the event someone wants to bitch about it. Sindel's legs can be blamed for their distraction.)

Life in Stain - Setting Up

2011-12-28T20:56:00.003Z

My alt moved to Stain, obstensibly to just do some planetary interaction. After being down here for a little over a week, I've decided that the alt will base itself down in Stain for a long while. The alt will now be doing much more than a little planetary interaction. The alt will run the gamut of developing himself down in Stain.

So rather than name this series of posts Planetary Interaction, as was the original intention, I'll name them Life in Stain, instead, and detail his adventures in NPC nullsec. I wanted to give this series a more pithy title, something along the lines of Stain Resistant and Stain Removal, but nothing really made that much sense in the context of the series, nor were they that funny. (If any of you are better with puns and wordplay, I'll be happy to listen, possibly change the series title if I like the suggestion.)

The only skills the alt currently has are hauling and trade skills, as well as planetary management. Four million skill points worth. The alt is, effectively, a newbie. He'll be starting with level one missions and building from there.

Already being able to fly blockade runners will be a big help. To earn money, I'll still need to ship most of my stuff out of nullsec for sale. Training wise, I don't have to worry about hauling.

I've already set up some planetary interaction on a couple planets. Just rush jobs. Get some commodities rolling into the cargo bay. I'll determine what to do with them shortly. Just stockpiling some tier one level commodities at the moment, chiral structures, oxygen and oxidizing compounds. I set up week long programs, so I'll figure out what to do with them shortly, see what else I need to progress to tier two or tier three commodities. I haven't put a lot of thought into the production just yet, did some really basic research. I'm leaning towards Data Chips and High-Tech Transmitters, at the moment. But that may change. I just wanted to get some production going while I busy myself with other activities in Stain.

Training-wise, I'm finishing off Planetology V. After that will concentrate on getting into assault frigates as soon as possible. For missioning.

The alt can't fly frigates well, yet, not well enough to eat through level one missions, so have been doing level one distribution missions in the Viator. Money and standings are crap, but as soon as I step into an Ishkur and I can start doing security missions and stuff should move a lot more quickly on this front. I'll soon learn what it means to gain Sansha rep.

(Which leads to some questions. If I gain a bunch of Sansha rep in Stain, do I lose Sansha rep by doing incursions later on? Can Sansha incursions happen in Stain? Are the incursion Sansha a different faction than the Stain Sansha? I could see CCP doing making Stain Sansha and incursion Sansha distinct, for simplicity's sake, even though it strikes me as stupid, immersion-wise.)

I'm also looking into earning some ISK through non-traditional methods. Selling region-wide bookmark sets. I was doing all the bookmarking on the alt in a Viator, but that was damned slow. So, brought down the main in an Ares to speed up the process. Interceptor makes the process go much faster.

[Ares, Bookmarker]
Overdrive Injector System II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

1MN MicroWarpdrive II
Small Shield Extender II
Small Shield Extender II

125mm Railgun II, Antimatter Charge S
[empty high slot]
Improved Cloaking Device II

Small Polycarbon Engine Housing I
Small Polycarbon Engine Housing I

It's probably a ridiculous looking fit, but I'm using it solely for fast, quick bookmarking. It's actually proved half decent, got out of three bubble camps so far, avoiding all but a sliver of shield damage. Learning how to use the Ares' speed effectively to avoid damage from much larger, more dangerous ships. After having an Ares and Dramiel blown up getting to Stain, now that I'm in Stain, those losses have proved useful to the learning experience. Figure out why I got blown up, then try something different. The something different is working out. The different has been taking a deep breath when jumping into a gate camp. Calmly determine the direction that will get me out of the bubbles the quickest. Align in that direction and fire the MWD. (This usually means I am flying directly away from them, which is bad, but only for a single cycle.) The enemies will start yellow-boxing me. I should be out of the bubble by the time they start red-boxng me. At this point, I have to stop flying directly away from them, increase my tranversal relative to them. So I change direction by 90 degrees. So, far doing this, I've either taken zero damage, or a sliver of shield damage, and this has been from cruisers on up. I was surprised when I took no damage at all from a Tornado.

(Aside: I find it annoying that I can fit out a Dramiel to be faster than my Ares. I know the Dramiel is a faction ship, but it takes less skillpoints to get into a Dramiel than an Ares. Plus, an Ares is an interceptor. Call me crazy, but Interceptors should be the fastest ships in the game. It's their ship class.)

(Another aside: module stacking penalties. I know the nanofibers have stacking penalties. Does the overdrive injector and the polycarbon engine housings also get further stacking penalties, because they have similar bonuses to the nanofiber structures? Are stacking penalties based on module type only, or bonus type? The description would suggest the bonus type, which means that I may be wasting my time on the fit above, slotting in overdrives and engine housings. Suggestions to make the Ares faster -- currently at 4750m/s?)

So, for the main, the 100 Tristans project is on a short hiatus while I bookmark Stain. 240 bookmarks and half completed the region. Only 65 systems left. (Although the area I'm in now might take awhile. Turns out the pocket nearest the entrance to Catch is littered with Against ALL Authorities folks. And they have a habit of bubble camping every gate deep in the pocket, rather than the systems leading into the pocket (which strikes me as odd, since there's no one that deep into the pocket but -AAA-. The system map never shows any recent ship kills. Maybe sitting on bubble gates is how Russians relax while chatting amongst themselves.) So far have avoided them blowing me the hell up. Not sure if I've just been lucky getting away from their bubble camps, or if they are just terribly bad. Maybe a mix of both.

EVE Blog-a-Day #017 - What is Your Biggest Single Loss?

2011-12-26T01:15:00.002Z

What is your biggest single loss in EVE Online?

My Response

Anyone who reads this blog knows it is a 2.7B ISK loss. My previous record was 1.2B ISK. Nowhere near the 30B ISK that a poor Rhea pilot lost on Christmas Day.

Participants

I also call on folks to send me their questions to ask the community. I'll post them, crediting you for the question, as well as a link back to your blog (give me your blog address too.)

When posting a link to your blog entry on Twitter, use the #eveblogaday hash tag, as well as the usual #tweetfleet hash tag.

If you partake in a particular question, please post a link to your blog entry in the comments. I'll compile them all, and every 25 questions, I'll post a big recap.

Thirty Billion ISK May Be Nothing to White Noise

2011-12-26T01:09:00.001Z

This puts everything in perspective. My tiny little 2.7B ISK loss. Nothing compared to losing 30B ISK in cargo. (I am curious why the Rhea didn't show as a loss on the killmail, even though it is API verified.)

30B ISK. That's equivalent to ~$1100 in PLEX.

I wonder what is the largest single loss of ship and cargo ever recorded in EVE Online? My guess will be in the 50B ISK range. I can't imagine a single ship could carry that much more in cargo.

Even though Goonswarm didn't take this Rhea down, they must be celebrating. White Noise's desperation to get stuff out of Branch is forcing them to do dumb things. Even more curious, why the desperation? Are they that convinced they can't hold off Goons swarming their territory?

Hmm. This is leading into a Blog-a-Day question.

My Comments on the Future - Before it Happens

2011-12-24T18:30:00.001Z

Some day in the future, CCP, you will complete Incarna. There will be establishments. Avatars will gather. Please do not turn your game into this ridiculous shit. For the love of Allah, Flying Spaghetti Monsters,
God, the Void, six-armed Hindu shivas, whatever ... please keep EVE Online hard.

Oh, and please don't let anyone dressed as a Rifter or a Brutix into Harpa during Fanfest.

Life in Stain - Scouting Stain

2011-12-20T00:07:00.001Z

So, what with my alt's career as a hauler being crushed in one foul blow, I've decided to return to planetary interaction. The alt has much better skills in this area than the main, so earnings should be better. Couple that with trying it out in nullsec, versus lowsec, hopefully that will add to the earning potential. I also intend to train the alt in some other areas, and will check out missioning in nullsec. I will also see about bookmarking as a viable form of earning ISK.

So, Stain.

I decided on Stain for three reasons. The abundance of systems. The abundance of NPC stations. The lack of overall activity in the region. As long as I don't get impatient, it should be easy to remain safe and free from exploding, down here. It doesn't have Syndicate or Curse levels of activity. It isn't quite as dead as Great Wildlands. I guess the only downside is that it takes fuck-hell of a trip to get into (or out of) Stain.

Stain is a big bloody region. It will be easy to find a little out of the way corner and mostly go unnoticed.

In travelling here I had two options. Pass through Curse and Catch. Or via Aridia, take Delve to Period Basis. After a quick look at the system map, filtered by hourly kill activity, it was an easy choice. It was an extra thirteen jumps travelling through Delve and Period Basis, but the activity was next to nil. There would be hardly any likelihood of bubble camps and the like. Plus, I had some bookmarks to draw upon already from my circumnavigation tour of nullsec. Not a lot of bookmarks mind you. It was an exploration endeavour, so I was only creating gate observation points in the direction of travel. During stretches of systems with little activity, I didn't bother bookmarking at all. But having some is better than having none.

So, as soon as I left Aridia into Delve, I started bookmarking in earnest. This foray into nullsec is for a different purpose. I have to make some ISK. I have to limit losses. Every gate along the route to Stain is bookmarked. Any NPC station I passed by now has instant undocks. Thirty jumps of nullsec completely bookmarked. Four hours. I can get into and out of Stain, back to Empire space quickly, and likely painlessly. Which could be important for getting the goods to market. (Bookmarking in a Viator (even with an MWD) is painful. Wishing my alt could fly a Helios.)

About the goods. Stain has few PI items up on market. The volumes aren't terrible for what is on market. The alt will have to return to Jita soon, so on that trip back I'll check the markets in Period Basis and Delve. I'm going to guess that the PI market will be more active in Delve. At least that is my hope. Not having to return to Jita once a week to sell PI commodities would be a bonus.

I'm also thinking of bookmarking the entire region and selling the collection -- an observational on every gate, an instant undock at every station -- to interested parties. I've done some research and have seen bookmarked systems sell for 20M ISK (back in 2008). If that's the going rate, then that idea is off the table. Completely. Selling a bookmarked Stain for 20M would be like working for New Eden minimum wage (worse than that actually, a living in Thailand making shoes for Nike wage.) I think that with the time and number of bookmarks involved, that sort of effort is worth between 250M to 500M ISK a pop. I'd like to eventually net 5B ISK on the endeavour. (Here's a question for you all, how much is a bookmarked nullsec region, the size of Stain, worth to you?) Anyhow, if that proves to be popular and profitable, I'd probably do the same with Catch, Curse, Delve, and Period Basis.

Now that I'm here, I need to bookmark a few more systems before beginning planet research in earnest. I have one area picked out. Perfect. It is a twelve system pocket, no more than four jumps between any system. Lots of options for system to system travel. I'm avoiding anything that has a pipe longer than two systems. I want options avoiding people wanting to violence me, if need be.

How Does One Get Into the Brokering Business?

2011-12-18T08:35:00.002Z

How does one get into the brokering business? I think I'd be successful at it. Chribba successful. Take a 5% cut (is that too high?) on successful transactions, and a 1% cut on unsuccessful transactions (the dude that didn't get whatever it is he wanted, gets 99% of his money back.)

I've never done anything underhanded in New Eden. A five-percent cut of a 50B ISK transaction is a pretty good income. Hell, I wouldn't even know what to do with 50,000,000,000 ISK. But 2.5B ISK. Sure. That would come in handy. Build me a nice strategic cruiser. Maybe a few more ships. Head into null, start living.

Besides, I don't need to build up rep as a mega-ISK scamming dickhead. I'm already a dickhead to a lot of people, just for banging on about highsec conflict and a certain large highsec corporation. The "goal" of becoming a dickhead is already fulfilled. And I didn't have to steal anyone's hard earned ISK to do it.

I guess the first step is to start off small, build up some reputation in the business. Anyone out there need something smallish brokered? In the 5B - 10B ISK range? A 250M - 500M ISK fee would come in handy.

Anyone have any advice for advertising my services?

(I'm prompted by all the recent news of brokers gone bad. Just seems like a bad idea to begin with to choose brokers who are heavily involved in capital-fleet flying alliances, they can make use of the large sums they are stealing. Me? Again, what would I do with 80B ISK. But 20,000 Tristans? Far better to build a steady income being honest, than screw someone over once.)

100 Tristans - Lord of the Flies

2011-12-17T10:41:00.000Z

If you can't beat a Rifter, you join with a Rifter. I've come to learn that there's really no way to beat a standard fit Rifter. Not in a Tristan. Probably not in any T1 Gallente frigate.

Given pilots of equal ability, the Tristan is going to lose to a Rifter every time (couple that with me being of lower ability than most Rifter pilots; I stand no chance at all.) Sort of annoying, actually. But realistic in a manner, too. It's ridiculous to think that every ship of a particular class should be balanced against every other ship of a particular class. As nice as it would be to have a Tristan fit that was a Rifter killer, it's not a necessary design imperative. The Gallente might be weak against the Minmatar in T1 frigates, but they kick ass against them, assault ship to assault ship. A weakness here, a strength there. Balance that makes EVE real.

I see the Rifter as sort of the baseline for T1 frigate combat. If a T1 frigate cannot build a fit that can take down a standard Rifter fit, flying that frigate is a waste of time. Move on, or start flying a Rifter yourself. (Which I may end up doing. I already have Minmatar Frigate III, and Small Projectile Turret V [which I trained up a few months back so that I could fit T2 projectile weapons on to a Myrmidon incursion boat.] After Christmas I'll train Minmatar Frigate IV and V. I still keep plugging along with 100 Tristans, though, and hope to meet more Punishers than Rifters.)

There is one other option. Forgo 1v1 combat, find a friend who flies a Rifter and go hunting with them. Which is what I am doing at the moment. I'm flying with corpmate Flies Incandenza. Hopefully I'll continue to fly with him when he leaves corp to join The Tuskers (which should be soon, in the next week or so.)

Tristan 011
Yesterday, decided to fly with Flies for a short while. In Ouelletta we began by hunting down an Incursus. Flies found him first and popped him just as I landed on grid. Damn. I suppose Kn1v3s didn't much like that so he came back with an Enyo. Flies and I were actually hoping to find him first, attack him together. But we were not flying together in the search. The Enyo landed on grid with me first. I tried to maintain as long as possible, so Flies could get on grid, but was popped (see heading link) as he arrived. Flies was popped soon after.

Kiting Tristan
Today, I decided I'd practice some manual flying with that kite fit I posted a couple days ago. As a couple people surmised, it is a piece of shit. As long as I was able to keep range, I took zero damage from his Rifter. Keeping range was the problem, though. He was always able to slingshot into me at some point. Since we weren't violencing each other to the death, I had the opportunity to try a few variations of manual piloting. I did learn that it's really tough to maintain distance where the margin for error is 14km. Inside of 10km I'm a dead man, my optimal is 16km, whereas outside of 24km he's free to warp off. Since I cannot run the MWD all the time (only 40sec of capacitor with the MWD running, 4min30sec without), every time he'd get within 16km of me, I'd try to 180 out and MWD away, but the align was too slow, and he would get within his magical distance of 10km to web me.

Since I wasn't having any success with the manual piloting, I at least wanted to see if the weaponry was effective. So we orbited each other at 17km, and opened fire. Nada. Pulsing his armor rep, he stated that he could tank my damage all week long.

So, a useless fit. Effective at not taking any damage (if one can keep range), ineffective at dealing any damage.

Tristan 012
So, a blaster fit now.

[Tristan, Solo (Blaster)]
Small Armor Repairer II
Damage Control II
200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I

Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters
Faint Warp Disruptor I
'Langour' Drive Disruptor I

Light Ion Blaster II, Null S
Light Ion Blaster II, Null S
OE-5200 Rocket Launcher, Caldari Navy Foxfire Rocket
OE-5200 Rocket Launcher, Caldari Navy Foxfire Rocket

Small Ancillary Current Router I
Small Hybrid Ambit Extension I
Small Hybrid Burst Aerator I

Warrior II x1

After the kiting experiment, we joined forces with Remus Starwinder (who Flies had killed a couple times earlier in the night) to hunt down a Rupture.

We d-scan him down to a particular planetary region, then split up looking for him. So, me at the customs office IV, Flies at planet IV, and Remus at one of the moons. The Rupture finds me.

He lands 40km away, and I immediately turn and burn away, calling in for support. The Rupture starts burning after me, closing the distance, and yellow boxing. Within 15 seconds I see Flies arrive on grid, but he lands 60km off the Rupture. I turn to burn back, hopefully to hold him long enough for Flies to get into range, and for the Bellicose to arrive. I get within range quickly enough, get the propulsion jamming going. I last about 10 seconds. I zip off in the pod. Flies engages, and is able to hold onto the Rupture long enough for the Bellicose to arrive. Flies is exploded. The Bellicose and the Rupture engage long enough for Flies to get back to station to reship.

I am already out of system by this point, heading back to Villore to pick up a new Tristan. Flies gets back to the fight and helps finish the Rupture off. I get on the killmail, but I don't feel right about it.

CCP Employee of the Year

2011-12-17T04:58:00.002Z

CCP Guard
The face of Crucible was most certainly CCP Guard. It was he who walked us through all the upcoming changes with his series of video devblogs. His cool, charming, often humourous disposition was instrumental in taking what could have been a boring series of tech and art vignettes, and giving them character and verve. I'm not sure exactly how much involvement he had in the writing and production of those videos, but I'd gather it was not insubstantial.

He also demonstrated a deft, kind and skillful hand in communicating with an often hostile customer base. This recent devblog is a good example of how he effectively communicates mistakes and errors to the EVE Online player. Not only does he effectively apologize for a development oversight (not predicting player expectations), but he is able to turn what could have been a threadnaught of anger into a thread where people are thanking CCP Guard for the excellent communication. People are now willing to wait for a development decision, rather than rage about lack thereof. A couple days later, this devblog was the result. It takes patience and skill to navigate the EVE Online player community, which is more often than not a frothing mass of internet bravado. That CCP Guard can swim those infested waters unscathed, speaks well of his communication acumen.

CCP Guard is not just the man who's called in to smooth things over, he has become a frequent face on the EVE Online forums. He's not simply the man introducing (and linking) all of the recent devblogs, but as a dude who is just having fun communicating with the playerbase.

CCP's approval ratings were in the tank just six months ago. I believe that a good deal of the elevated approval that CCP is now basking under is due to CCP Guard's personality, on the forums, the devblogs, as well as on video.

When CCP laid off a good proportion of their customer relations team, they did themselves a great service in keeping CCP Guard on board.

Honourable Mentions:

CCP Soundwave
Soundwave is a close runner-up. As head of Team BFF (the team which handles Little Things), he likely had a large degree of input in the re-organization that had to occur to refocus the goals of the Winter Expansion in such a short period of time. He was likely a supporter (if not an instigator) in the return of development to Flying in Space. Even though he had a lot of anger thrown his way during the summer months, I like to think that Soundwave is the one department head that understands the needs of the players most acutely, himself once being a member of Goonswarm.

Soundwave will be continuing Little Things into 2012, as he asks the community what they would like to see fixed, added and solved.

He also does a fantastic job with the yearly Alliance Tournament. The guy is hilarious.

The only reason I did not place him ahead of CCP Guard is due to his role in CCP's infamous Fearless internal newsletter. Leaked back in May 2011, Soundwave's support for microtransactions in the newsletter stirred up a shitstorm of anger. I still do not believe that he was writing the supportive viewpoint simply for the sake of writing it, but that he still sees merit in a microtransaction system that has some minor degree of play-to-win involved. That haunts him still. Though, as more new features are introduced in 2012, the Fearless article will become less and less of an issue for him. There's no denying Soundwave's design mechanics acumen, it'll just be important to keep him busy enough that he won't have to brush up against the spectre of microtransactions ever again.

CCP Hilmar
CCP Hilmar gets mention for his hubris alone. If not for his over reliance on and expectations of the golden goose, we might, right now, be walking around Incarna establishments at seven frames per second, our GPU fans screaming, wondering what value this adds to blowing shit up in space.

Hilmar's desire to turn EVE into something his customers did not want, proved a tipping point this year. If Hilmar had not gone as far as he did to ignore and abuse his customer base, we might not be where we are today with new Flying in Space features and looking at such a rosy future for EVE Online. That Hilmar felt he could use his paying customer base as guinea pigs, as a technological testbed for another CCP game in development (World of Darkness), we might be grumbling over new CQs and staring at compatriots in functionless Establishments, even as CCP set down plans for more Incarna. If it wasn't for Hilmar thinking that $70 monocles would be an industry defining (and lauded) decision, our Winter Expansion might have been called Fashionista, and we'd be watching a parade of new trends and styles march into the NEX Store, stuff most of us would continue not to purchase.

If it wasn't for all of that, the anger this summer would have simply simmered. Instead, it turned to a rage that had people doing not just saying. That finally got CCP's attention at the bottom line. Hilmar finally had to listen to what his customers wanted, and put aside what he wanted. For all that hubris, he gets an honourable mention.

EVE Blog-a-Day #016 - Who is Your Favourite CCP Employee?

2011-12-17T04:04:00.001Z

Who is your favourite CCP employee? Why?

My Response

I'll defer for the time being. I am in the final editing process of a post on this very subject. Which is why the Blog-a-Day question.

Participants

I also call on folks to send me their questions to ask the community. I'll post them, crediting you for the question, as well as a link back to your blog (give me your blog address too.)

When posting a link to your blog entry on Twitter, use the #eveblogaday hash tag, as well as the usual #tweetfleet hash tag.

If you partake in a particular question, please post a link to your blog entry in the comments. I'll compile them all, and every 25 questions, I'll post a big recap.

EVE Blog-a-Day #015 - Resetting your UI

2011-12-15T07:24:00.004Z

How often do you reset your EVE Online user interface? Or are you just too damned lazy and wait for patches to do it for you?
-- question by @ChribbaVeldspar

My Response

I know I should be resetting my UI biweekly, simply to stay-on-top of every single user interface feature, trick and tweak, but I must admit that I usually wait for CCP to do it for me.

When CCP releases the summer expansion, with the long-awaited Jesus Feature, UI PvP, I'm going to be well-behind the curve. I know lots of people, especially those in the large nullsec alliances, are resetting every couple of days, just to make sure they are ready to defend their UI from coups d'etats.

Participants

I also call on folks to send me their questions to ask the community. I'll post them, crediting you for the question, as well as a link back to your blog (give me your blog address too.)

When posting a link to your blog entry on Twitter, use the #eveblogaday hash tag, as well as the usual #tweetfleet hash tag.

If you partake in a particular question, please post a link to your blog entry in the comments. I'll compile them all, and every 25 questions, I'll post a big recap.

100 Tristans - Kiting Tristan?

2011-12-15T00:01:00.002Z

I need some help with this fit. I've been having trouble with Rifters, using a normal blaster/afterburner fit. They can dictate range too easily, which means I can never get in range to do much damage.

With some advice from a previous 100 Tristans post, I've come up with the following speed tanked/kiting fit. It's not going to do tremendous damage, but with the tungsten ammo, its optimal is 18km. The warp disruptor has a range of 24km. I figure keeping an orbit of about 18km should keep me out of range of most Rifter fits, and, maybe, give me the speed advantage to dictate range. As long as I keep within 24km, I can hopefully plink them to death. This fit is also going to be great experience in auto-piloting and recognizing slingshot attempts as my opponents attempt them.

[Tristan, Solo PvP (Kite)]
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Overdrive Injector System II

Catalyzed Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters
Warp Disruptor II
DDO Photometry Tracking Disruptor I, Tracking Speed Disruption

125mm Railgun II, Spike S
125mm Railgun II, Spike S
'Arbalest' Standard Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Piranha Light Missile
'Arbalest' Standard Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Sabretooth Light Missile

[empty rig slot]
[empty rig slot]
[empty rig slot]

Warrior II x1

I'd like some assistance with the fit (before I fit out 10 Tristans with this stuff.) Specifically would like some suggestions on the rigs I should use. (If you feel my module use is bad, please comment there too.) I'm exceptionally tight on power grid, so any weapon rigs are going to put me too far over the power grid requirements. Choice of missiles would be helpful as well. I've chosen two varieties already that I think are standard (one is explosive, I believe, while the other is EM.) Capacitor use on this fit is 4min 30sec, without using the MWD. I figure I'll only have to use the MWD occasionally, to ensure that I keep range (with the MWD on constantly, I only have 50s of cap.) Maybe an afterburner would be better here (it gives an extra 10 powergrid)?

And a question about the drone. Warriors are best for Rifters (and other armour tanked ships), correct? And Hobgoblins would be best for shield tanked frigates?

In lieu of the tracking disruptor, and suggestions on a low powergrid mid-slot module? That would give me some room to play with weapon rigs.

Thanks (though I'll also thank you in comments.)

Alt Track

2011-12-14T07:45:00.002Z

Well, with the hauling career on indefinite hiatus, it is time to move the alt onto some other activity. I liquidated all of the alt's assets, to gain back some much needed ISK. Sold the Iteron Mark V and the Obelisk (which turned a 75M ISK profit, the prices have recently spiked), purchased another Viator.

I was already training a mix of trade and planetary management skills. I think I'll go with the planetary management. I already know I can find good planets and can place extractors in good locations (Planetology IV and Advanced Planetology III). I've always done my PI in lowsec, but will go one better this time around. Nullsec planetary interaction. That will at least make for some excitement beyond just managing planets and picking up commodities.

There are more than enough PI tutorials out there, so I won't be repeating any of that. (I'll try to find a couple of good ones though, and link to them.) I will go through my efforts as nullsec PI. First steps, to find a viable location. It will, of course, have to be NPC nullsec. Great Wildlands are out, since there's only three systems in the entire region with stations. I think I'm leaning towards Curse, but will have to do some research. Stain is a possibility. Syndicate and Outer Ring, I'm thinking, are far too active (but I'll still research them.)

So that's where the alt currently stands. The hauling write-ups are gone to be replaced with planetary interaction posts.

As a final farewell, here are the complete travels of the hauling alt. He did nothing but haul. Damn, I think I'm gonna miss hauling.

Hauling travels

Jesus Features - Another Interpretation

2011-12-13T03:29:00.000Z

At the CSM6's last summit of their incumbency, Hilmar (CCP's CEO) stated "The era of the Jesus feature is over."

I'm no religious person. Atheist, actually. But I do know a thing or two about the various religions. I like to know what it is I do not believe in. They all have some pretty good stories, though. The Jesus story being one of them. Jesus being the broad story it is, there are different ways one could interpret Hilmar's Jesus statement.

I would guess when Hilmar made his Jesus statement, he was greeted with mostly blank stares. Thus he had to explain. For Hilmar, a Jesus Feature is akin to turning water into wine, or parting large bodies of water. Impressive features that pull in a lot of non-believers and skeptics to the cause. Certainly a valid interpretation. In CCP's case, Jesus features would be features like walking in stations, faction warfare, planetary interaction, and wormholes. Whether those features pulled in lots of new subscribers isn't the point, the features were built with that in mind and as a goal.

I have a different interpretation.

A Jesus Feature is any feature that has died, then been resurrected, given new life. Given that definition, EVE Online has no Jesus Features.

Yet.

Faction warfare. A long dead and broken feature.

Walking in stations. Dead on arrival. (I'm not suggesting walking in stations be resurrected until after Dust 514 proves itself a success; at that point CCP can revisit the project with an eye to integration.)

Highsec PvP. Dead. With CCP throwing up its hands, allowing all the old exploits to avoid war declarations, the only PvP that exists in highsec are ganks and consensual PvP. Ganks are fine, but should not be the only form of non-consensual Empire PvP.

Bounty system. Dead.

There's some indication that the Summer Expansion will be masses of little things -- a larger version of Crucible, more fixes and upgrades. I think CCP has to give us more than just a mass of little things. Given my definition of a Jesus Feature, they have to give new life to some big mechanic. Fix a big feature that had a lot of promise, but just isn't working. Resurrect that feature into something new and exciting.

I think that Jesus Feature should be Empire PvP. Rework the entire system. Faction warfare. War declarations. The bounty system. Bring new life to empire conflict.

EVE Blog-a-Day #014 - CCP Holiday Gifts

2011-12-12T21:34:00.003Z

Which holiday gift are you choosing for your character(s)? If you've not heard of the holiday gifts, then visit your account management page, the gifts page is under the Services menu. You can also visit Ripard Teg's blog, where he breaks down each gift by value.

My Response

On the main, I chose the attribute remap. And on the alt, I chose a complete set of basic attribute implants (which I'll transfer to the main, since she has two empty clones; I've been podded a lot recently.)

Participants

I also call on folks to send me their questions to ask the community. I'll post them, crediting you for the question, as well as a link back to your blog (give me your blog address too.)

When posting a link to your blog entry on Twitter, use the #eveblogaday hash tag, as well as the usual #tweetfleet hash tag.

If you partake in a particular question, please post a link to your blog entry in the comments. I'll compile them all, and every 25 questions, I'll post a big recap.

Hauling - Using a Nullsec Scout

2011-12-12T02:32:00.000Z

So, this short tutorial will require reading the Travelling Nullsec - The Newbie Guide blog post, specifically the Travelling System to System section. Reading that will give you tips on travelling gate to gate in new systems, giving you the best advantage of avoiding sling bubbles.

I believe every hauler wants to eventually complete a nullsec hauling run. It's the toughest, most dangerous area of space, most rife with obstacles. It is an achievement.

This short guide will cover blockade running and requires the use of two accounts. The hauling account, you'll use whatever blockade runner you can fly (for me, that's the Viator). The second account, you'll be scouting for the blockade runner, acting as a +1, making sure the next system ahead is safe and clear. I suggest that your scout be able to fly a covert operations ship (in my case, a Helios.)

Before accepting your first nullsec courier contract, make sure that the destination is an NPC station. There's little chance you'll have access to a player-owned station, thus will be unable to fulfil the contract.

Prior to entering nullsec, empty the cargohold of your hauler. If you have any contracts, either complete them first, or if you plan to exit nullsec the same way you enter, drop them off at a nearby station (you can pick them up when you return.) You want to go into nullsec as cheaply as possible.

Fleet the scout and the hauler together. This will make it convenient to warp the hauler to the scout.

The following list of steps is your recipe for safe travel, system by system, until you reach your destination. It's slow and painstaking, but necessary if you wish the best chance of survival.

Scout and hauler sit at an observational at the gate the hauler needs to pass through. Both are cloaked.
Scout jumps into the next system along the route. The scout is currently at the entrance gate.
Scout makes a gate observational, at least 200km from the entrance gate.
Scout, using technique described in post linked above, will make an observational at the exit gate, at least 200km distant. (While making your first warp to an off-aligned celestial, you might want to drop a mid-warp bookmark at some random point -- this will make for a good temporary safe spot.)
Scout returns to the observational bookmark at the entrance gate. If there are no apparent enemies, the hauler jumps into the system, and warps to the scout (the scout can be warping to the mid-warp bookmark at this time.)
The scout warps to the exit gate observational. Hauler warps to the scout.
If the coast is clear, the scout warps into the next system, while the hauler remains where it is, cloaked.
Repeat steps 1 through 7 until you reach your destination system.

Upon reaching the destination system, the hauler sits at the gate observational (or mid-warp bookmark), while the scout creates an instant undock bookmark at the destination station. Once this is done, the hauler can warp to and dock at the station. The scout remains at an observational distance and, when the coast is clear, the hauler can undock.

If you are returning from whence you came, you can use already bookmarked observationals for the return trip. The return trip should be much quicker to complete. If you are leaving along a different path, repeat the steps above.

If a system ever gets too busy, or there are too many people hunting you, feel free to logout the scout and hauler for twenty to thirty minutes. When you log back on, chances are the people that were hungry for your blood will have moved on elsewhere.

I've so far made three successful nullsec hauling runs. The first into Curse via Catch, the next two into Great Wildlands. All were successful, such that the cargo was delivered (or picked up) without the loss of the hauler. I did lose the scout in the Catch-Curse contract, but that was due to not following my own guidelines. Three jumps into Catch I got impatient, jumped 100km to the exit gate, got caught in a bubble, next to a can. Decloaked, was prompty destroyed. Ship and implants. A 100M ISK mistake.

Ninety percent of my deaths in this game can be chalked up to me being a lazy mofo. Not so much an issue of me not knowing how to be safe, just me taking some shortcuts, because being safe is more time consuming.

[Note: I had this post partially written before my hauling career came to an abrupt end. I believe it to still be a worthwhile tutorial. My huge loss had nothing at all to do with nullsec hauling. This will likely be the last hauling post from me in a long while. Onto planetary interaction.]

La Bête Humaine

2011-12-11T21:59:00.001Z

I enjoy reading My Loot, Your Tears, especially the rage conversations they receive from their victims. These guys ply their trade, and sometimes they get raged upon. Funny stuff. What they don't do, is go poking and prodding for tears. If the tears come to them, then fantastic, if not, keep looking for more prey.

I know it's a cliché to comment on someone's out-of-game psyche in relation to what they do in-game. But seriously, if you kill people and then convo them, trying to entice rage and tears, there is something wrong in your life. Cool to feed off tears if you're given them freely, but to go poking and prodding for them, because you need them that desperately? That strikes me as somewhat fucked up.

Anyhow, I'm not a rager. Big losses are annoying and disappointing, but I see no reason to get more animated than a sad face. What is raging, name calling and threatening going to get anyone? There's no satisfaction to be derived from it, other than higher blood pressure and an elevated heart rate (if heart disease is your goal.) Besides, I don't see my losses as the fault of anyone but mine. The only person I'm even a little pissed off towards is myself. Every loss in this game can be avoided. Some more easily than others, but if one wants to play it super safe, one can get through this game with little to no losses at all. I don't play it super-safe, though. My losses are usually a function of my laziness and/or impatience.

With that said, shortly after I lost my Viator and 2.7B ISK in courier contract collateral, I received a conversation request from my perpetrator, who I'll refer to as Asshat (only because he came looking for tears.)


Asshat > u mad?
Poetic's Alt > Nope. The way it goes.
Poetic's Alt > I am disappointed.
Asshat > u need a tissue?
Poetic's Alt > Nope.
Poetic's Alt > EVE is a harsh game.
Asshat > u made my bio
Poetic's Alt > Cool.
Asshat > all that faction stuff was in the same container i take it?
Asshat > cuz all the faction stuff was destroyed...
Asshat > bummer for me
Poetic's Alt > Dunno. It was courier contracts.
Asshat > oh wow
Asshat > do u even know what u were hauling?
Asshat > i need to ask
Asshat > what was the collateral
Asshat > and what was the reward
Poetic's Alt > I don't usually check. I more or less know based on the collateral.
Asshat > if u dont mind telling me what was collateral and what was the reward
Poetic's Alt > You alpha'd me in one shot.
Asshat > yes
Asshat > can u link me hte contract
Asshat > how much money did u lose?
Asshat > cuz man you had roughly 2 bil worth of faction loot in ur carog
Poetic's Alt > Maybe. The collateral was higher.
Asshat > yes
Asshat > it was
Asshat > and i made roughly 50 mil
Asshat > be happy tho i didnt get any of the faction loot
Asshat > it all got destroyed
Poetic's Alt > So? Better if someone got it.
Asshat > if i did yes
Asshat > you realize.. i killed you right?
Poetic's Alt > Of course. I checked the logs once I appeared in my pod. Didn't even know what was going on. One minute undocking, then bright light and I'm floating in my pod. A bit of a shock to say the least.
Asshat > check my bio
Poetic's Alt > Anyhow ... I've been financially ruined. :) So, you have that going for you. Heh.
Asshat > thank you
Poetic's Alt > From 2.8B ISK to 151M ISK.
Asshat > i'm quite good at that
Asshat > if you haul any phat loot in the future. let me know and ill take it from you
Poetic's Alt > You got lucky. I doubt you had time to scan me.
Asshat > i scanned you
Asshat > locked
Asshat > scanned
Asshat > shot
Asshat > im fast
Poetic's Alt > All that while I was aligning after the undock? The Viator isn't a slow ship.
Asshat > yes
Asshat > right when u undocked
Asshat > saw the row of republic fleet gyrostabs
Asshat > and the pith x-type large SB
Asshat > and other stuff
Asshat > and insta-popped u
Asshat > what was collateral and what was the reward
Poetic's Alt > I'll probably make the biggest kills of the week somewhere. Fuck! :)
Asshat > i dont post KMs dont worry
Asshat > that way people dont know wat i do
Poetic's Alt > It'll show up somewhere via the API.
Asshat > check my bio
Poetic's Alt > Cheers. Fucking T3 battlecruisers. :)
Asshat > bye

EVE Blog-a-Day #013 - Losing Your Shit

2011-12-11T18:56:00.001Z

Would you be playing EVE Online if there weren't the possibility of losing your stuff? (Whether to scams, PvP, ganks, bad decisions, or any other method.)

My Response

I was pretty bummed out last night (or earlier this morning, UTC.) In one alpha from a Tornado, while undocking from Dodixie, I lost 2.7B ISK in hauling collateral. Between my two characters I had 2.9B ISK (an equivalent loss of 9 PLEX or $157.00.) Today I have 225M ISK. Flat broke, more or less. The shittiness of losing that much aside, I wouldn't be playing EVE Online if not for the possibility of losses -- small, big and gargantuan. Sucks being on the receiving end of such a large loss, but in the end, I'm accountable for it. I took the large contracts, I was flying those large collateral contracts in a ship that could be alpha'd (Viator.) I take the responsibility.

I'll earn it all back again. It'll take a fuckwhile to do it, but I'll do it. And I might very well lose it all again. But that's EVE Online. And I still love the game.

Participants

I also call on folks to send me their questions to ask the community. I'll post them, crediting you for the question, as well as a link back to your blog (give me your blog address too.)

When posting a link to your blog entry on Twitter, use the #eveblogaday hash tag, as well as the usual #tweetfleet hash tag.

If you partake in a particular question, please post a link to your blog entry in the comments. I'll compile them all, and every 25 questions, I'll post a big recap.

The CCP Loot Fleets - Naïve?

2011-12-10T06:14:00.001Z

I'm not sure why CCP seems surprised over the outrage and whining that has resulted from their loot fleets. Seems the inevitable outcome to me. Any person that doesn't feel they have the skillpoints, the PvP skills, the luck of the draw (on looting ships fast enough) or the social network to form an effective enough fleet is going to scream bloody murder. They're going to feel screwed out of the prizes.

I'm not participating at all in the loot fleet battles. But I'm not crying about them either. To the people that participate go the spoils. I'm not participating because I figure I'll end up losing far more than gaining. Plus, if I did participate and didn't get any loot, I'd feel peeved about the events (just like the people who are peeved but not participating.) So, I'm not participating, I'm not feeling annoyed. It's as easy as that.

Watching from the sidelines, reading all the rage and tears on the forums, it seems to me that CCP is a tad surprised at the vehemence of the responses, as if they didn't quite anticipate the outrage. That's really quite amusing. Can they really be that naïve?

If CCP wanted to limit the outrage, create a fairer system where everyone had a chance at loot, they would have run a lottery. "Hey, everyone, we're giving away 75 PLEX. We'll randomly raffle them off to any non-trial account created and paid for before December 07 2011." Boom! Who the fuck can bitch and moan about that? (I'm sure a couple people would find a way "This favours people with multiple accounts! Waugh!", but far fewer whiners overall.)

When you want to limit whining, think socialism. (In their real lives, Americans treat socialism like it's a plague rat, but they fucking love it in their MMOs.)

Because Cyanide & Happiness is Awesome

2011-12-09T10:59:00.001Z

And it has an MMO theme today.

-- from Cyanide and Happiness

Hauling - Holy Shit Balls II

2011-12-08T23:46:00.001Z

First of all, someone needs to tell Iceland that barely scratches does not mean what they think it means. It does not mean your ship has been half killed.

Again. Second time, inside 24 hours, that a gank attempt has been made on my hauler within a station's docking ring. I think the new Tier 3 battlecruisers have re-vitalized the alpha-gank game, whether attempting an alpha-gank in a T3 battlecruiser or not. This time it happened in lowsec, Olfeim, where I expect it. Except, I don't expect people to try it while I'm inside the docking ring, in the process of docking.

You're all familiar with that delay that sometimes occurs between "Docking requested" and "Docking request granted"? Thank goodness that artillery has a 17 second cycle. One shot and my Viator was "barely scratched" past 50% armour damage. Still didn't stop me from yelling at my monitor: "Dock now, bitch! Dock! Dock!!"

[ 2011.12.08 20:23:45 ] (combat) 1400mm Howitzer Artillery II belonging to Tungulria Lightfingers barely scratches you, causing 2248.9 damage.

You can't let them know you were rattled, so had to engage in some light trash-talk.

Poetic's Alt > Is everyone in White Noise as bad as you, Tungulria?
Tungulria Lightfingers > yes
Cruz77 > im' worse
Tungulria Lightfingers > he is
Tungulria Lightfingers > yet ide bet u still about shit your pants
Poetic's Alt > Almost? I'm wiping it up now. :)
Poetic's Alt > Second time in a day that I've been half-killed at a station ... never happened before.
Tungulria Lightfingers > ive never tried to pop a viator before, didnt know if it would work
Poetic's Alt > If you would have got a second shot off, I'd be dead or nearly.
Tungulria Lightfingers > ya but artys have a 17.8 sec cycle
Tungulria Lightfingers > so not goiung to happen
Tungulria Lightfingers > :p
Poetic's Alt > Thanks to slow arties, you didn't put me down 700M ISK. :)

They were cool people, though, let them know that, yeah, they did rattle the hell out of me.

Meta Levels and Module Naming

2011-12-08T22:55:00.001Z

The latest blog entry by Ripard Teg got me thinking about one of my biggest pet peeves about EVE Online. The naming of modules.

The naming of nearly every module, between meta level 1 and 4 is seriously confusing and fucked-up. Take the Damage Control modules in the image to the left. Field Array? Containment Field? What parallels do those names draw to the damage controls that they are? There's no relationship at all between the names, they aren't even close to being synonyms of each other.

The most frequent response to my complaints on module naming has been that the current naming is immersive. Um. Bullshit. Hardly immersive when the names sometimes bear no relationship to their use. It's just fucking confusing. Plain and simple. And as the commenter pointed out in Ripard's blog entry, an unnecessary hurdle for new people trying to understand the game.

Here is a simple proposal for renaming all modules (except faction and deadspace, the naming of which are fine, as is.)

First, if the item is a damage control, then have Damage Control in the goddamned module name. Basically, the meta level 0 name should be replicated across every meta level.

Second, use a version numbering system:

Tech Level 1 - [tech level (roman numeral)].[meta level + 1 (decimal numeral)]
Tech Level 2 - [tech level (roman numeral)]

So a tech 1, meta level 0 damage control would be called Damage Control I.1. A tech 2 damage control would continue to be called Damage Control II. A tech 1, meta level 3 150mm railgun would be called 150mm Railgun I.4.

Simple. Concise. No confusion. Not a barrier for new players. I don't think it adds or detracts from immersion.

Hauling - Holy Shit Balls

2011-12-08T08:19:00.001Z

My heart is still racing. CONCORD saved the hell out of me tonight, outside Jita 4-4. Almost lost 2B ISK in courier collateral. That's 80% of my cash.

[ 2011.12.08 08:12:42 ] (combat) Da Smasher [S0C0]<WTF>(Tornado) barely scratches you, causing 1787.0 damage.

Barely scratches me? WTF?! Took my Viator 50% into armour. Another hit and I would have been dead. Hardly a scratch, my Gallente white ass. If CONCORD hadn't been littering the undock, that Tornado would have had me. (Powerful ships, those new Tier 3 Battlecruisers.)

Had I died, there might have been actual tears for someone to feed off.

This is the first time anyone has taken a highsec potshot at my haulers. It had to happen sometime, but when I have an empty ship, that would be preferable.

If I had been killed, that would have been damned ironic, since just 20 minutes earlier I was in Pure Blind with the Viator, taking a shortcut to pick up a contract. (Torrinos to Saranen. Three nullsec systems versus sixteen empire systems.) Jumping from Torrinos to EC-P8R, landed straight into a bubble camp by Kil2 (of Alliance IX tournament commentary fame) and buddies. That was damned exciting, though, slipping through that.

To get through nullsec, and then get killed outside Jita 4-4. That would have been aggravating as all-get-go had it happened.

(I'll be back to 100 Tristans tomorrow. I have me a kiting Tristan fit I'd like to try out against that Rifter.)

EVE Blog-a-Day #012 - Favourite System Names

2011-12-07T04:40:00.001Z

The systems in EVE have a wonderful variety of colourful names, drawn from many different cultures. Even some of the nullsec systems, the arrangement of letters and numbers, can have amusing, pronounceable results. What are some of your favourite system names?

My Response

Uhodoh - This system just screams accidental death. It should be a unique missioning pocket, where every mission is named Mission and what you get is completely random -- level and actual mission type. Just to prompt as many "Uh oh" and "D'oh" exclamations as possible.

Teonusude - TEE-oh-NOO-su-DAY. I love the pronunciation of this system name. Very lyrical; rhythmic. (The unfortunate side-effect, is that hearing this system spoken reminds me of Phil Collins.)

Participants

I also call on folks to send me their questions to ask the community. I'll post them, crediting you for the question, as well as a link back to your blog (give me your blog address too.)

When posting a link to your blog entry on Twitter, use the #eveblogaday hash tag, as well as the usual #tweetfleet hash tag.

If you partake in a particular question, please post a link to your blog entry in the comments. I'll compile them all, and every 25 questions, I'll post a big recap.

Hauling - Scamm³ed!

2011-12-06T07:19:00.000Z

Damn it. I wasn't paying attention. Was in a rush to pick up some contracts, and fell for a scam.

Picked up a contract that required 962500m³ of cargo space. My Obelisk holds 862500m³. I was already carrying cargo, so I was flat-out not paying attention. More enthralled that it was a short run with a really good payout. That it was in the direction I was already heading, without any jumps to side systems. Basically it was money on top of money I was already in the process of earning.

When I discovered it wouldn't fit in my cargohold -- after a few brief moments cursing -- I decided that maybe I could salvage the situation by contracting it again. If I was lucky, someone might haul it for me. I would price the reward at double what I was going to get paid. I needed to entice someone to deliver it for me, and quickly. Better to lose a fraction of the collateral, than all of the collateral.

But that proved to be impossible. The contract contained containers containing [schwing!] other items. Another short burst of cursing ensued. I was backed into a corner. So I break the damned seal and fail the contract.

What did the damned thing contain? Eight General Freight Containers and six Minmatar Shuttles. About 1.5M ISK worth of items.

Thankfully my loss was only 80M ISK on the collateral. It could have been much more. I routinely take contracts that require over a billion ISK collateral. So, I'll take the 80M ISK loss on the chin. Annoying, but not disheartening.

(I'm not going to mention who scammed me. There is no point, as far as I am concerned. I don't blame him at all. Kudos to the gentleman for earning some hard cash on my inattention. The only person at blame here is myself.)

I was up to 74% of my debt paid off (the cost of an Obelix, Viator, and Iteron Mark V.) Adding 80M to the debt column, I'm 68% paid off. A 6% loss, not that big a deal, really.

I am double checking the m³ on each and every contract now.

Hub to Hub Travel: Think of the Pirates

2011-12-05T03:05:00.001Z

The perfect route design in this game is Jita to Hek/Rens (Hek for brevity, from here on out.) It's the route that most exemplifies a risk/reward design philosophy. Yet, it's only one of two hub to hub routes in EVE Online that offers reward for risk as a travel option.

This is a shame.

Travel between every pair of trade hubs should offer two distinct routes, with one route rewarding risk. The reward for that risk would be time.

Take Jita to Hek. The highsec, safe, reasonably risk-free route is 19 jumps. The riskier, much shorter, route through lowsec is 9 jumps. This is why Rancer is such a popular spot for pirates. There should be popular locations for pirating. These locations should be along shorter hub to hub routes. I argue that there should be more of them.

Another route that is perfectly designed is Amarr to Rens. It is 20 highsec jumps, 11 jumps via lowsec. Again, risk versus reward design. The reason why Amamake is a popular pirate destination.

Shorter routes aren't going to get freighter pilots and carebears into lowsec. That is not the argument I am making here. Those people are still going to take the longer routes. That's fine and okay. But there are a subset of people who will take the shorter routes, when they are available. They don't mind the risk of facing pirates, if simply to save some travel time. I'm arguing for the pirates, that they need more opportunity and more locations in which to ply their trade. There need to be a few more Rancers and Amamakes on the starmap.

I'm making the argument for them, but I am not a pirate. I'm a freighter pilot. I'm also an impatient son of a bitch. As a freighter pilot, longer routes would be a detriment to the hauling that I do. But I'm also damned impatient, and dislike long travel times, if I can avoid them. When I'm in the appropriate ship (frigate, covops, blockade runner) I do take the Rancer pipe frequently when travelling between Jita and Hek. I've been killed in Rancer, it still does not deter me.

For other hub to hub travel, there needs to be an adjustment in the routes. For instance, Jita to Amarr needs more highsec systems between the two hubs. Currently it is a 9 jump highsec route, but it should be a 16-19 jump route; it then needs a 7-9 jump route that passes through some lowsec. The same goes for Jita to Dodixie, currently a 15 jump highsec route versus a 12 jump route that passes through lowsec (the differential needs to be greater.) Dodixie to Hek is 9 highsec jumps, it needs a lowsec route that is 4 jumps. Dodixie to Amarr is 16 highsec, 14 lowsec; that lowsec route needs to be decreased to about 8 jumps.

Think of the pirates, man!

100 Tristans - Jar of Flies

2011-12-05T02:06:00.000Z

If you want to learn anything about Tristan combat. You don't want to be reading this blog. I lost five Tristans to the same Rifter fit, and I could not once get hull damage on the ship. I tried a variety of different variations on my standard fit through five losses.

I met corpmate, Flies Incandenza, in Villore for some PvPing. He's actually quite good, and is soon to be joining The Tuskers. So, who better to practice with and get some tips from. I was hoping for at least two kills. It ended up being completely embarrassing.

(You can click each Tristan header for the respective killmail.)

Tristan 006
Here I used the same fit I've been using for the last five Tristans. It's a good baseline, I figure. From this fit I can tweak. I don't even think I get him below 50% armour.

Tristan 007
I decided I'd give a Small Armor Repairer II a try. I drop the 200mm Rolled Tungsten for it. (Probably should have dropped the Adaptive Nano Plating II, instead, though I don't think it would have made much of a difference.) I fare even worse in this configuration. Everything I've been taught up to this point has informed me that active repping is for PvE, passive repping is for PvP. Yet, so many people seem to use Small Armor Repairer modules on their armour-tanked frigates.

Tristan 008
For the hell of it I decide to use an ECM Burst II. With this fit, I'm just hoping to confuse Mr. Incandenza. Maybe he won't notice his target lock has dropped for a good ten seconds. Not to be the case. Flies is on the ball. The ECM Burst II cycles extremely slowly, so do not get a second chance to drop his target lock before he sends the magic signal that tells my ship it is time to eject the pod.

Tristan 009
The 125mm Railgun IIs are not doing enough damage. So I switch to Light Neutron Blaster IIs using Null S ammo. My optimal is down to 1.4km (less than half of what it is with the rails.) I never get into range for more than a moment or three. At some point during the fight, I try to slingshot Flies (I turn 180 degrees, fly out beyond his web range, then immediately turn, burn back, hoping to shoot into my optimal.) It works briefly. But it isn't enough.

Tristan 010
I decide to stick with the previous fit again. If I can get into range, this has to be the winning combination. Since I know he's warping to our combat area at zero, I decide to do the same. At least I'll start the fight at under my optimal. He moves faster than I do, each of us webbed. So it doesn't take long before he's outside my optimal, then outside my first falloff. I have to resort to slingshotting him again. He's more prepared for it this time. I'm getting used to this final result. Being despondent might be my lot in life when it comes to PvP. I imagine that my one kill, four days ago, might be my last.

=========

There were occasional mistakes made. Once, forgot to web him entirely. Another time, forgot to sick my single drone on him. Even with the odd silly mistakes, they were not the difference between winning and losing. The fights where I didn't make any human error, I never came close to winning.

I have an approximate 1.5M SP advantage on him in the Gunnery skills area (my 3M SP to his 1.5M SP). So a tad frustrating that it didn't seem to give me the advantage I was hoping for.

What did I learn?

I learned that I can't beat Flies armor tank. I learned some stuff about overheating. The first fight I waited 6-10 seconds before starting to overheat weapons. I learned that in frigate fights, you should start overheating ASAP; it takes awhile before the modules burn out, usually longer to burn out than a frigate fight lasts.

I also learned that I can keep within proper weapon range with the railgun fit. The Rifter easily dictates range on me when I use the blaster fit. Most frigates seem to have optimal/falloff ranges comparable to my railgun fit. Of course, that is sort of bad, since we're both fighting in our optimals. I should maybe try different railgun ammo that gives me a range of perhaps 16km ... keep the enemy in their second or third falloff, while I'm in my optimal. That, of course, will be very slow, plinky damage, would probably never get through their armor before I run out of ammo, capacitor or patience.

This is Flies standard fit, the fit I went up against five times.

[Rifter]
150mm Light AutoCannon II x 3 (Republic Fleet Phased Plasma S)
E5 Prototype Energy Vampire

1MN Afterburner II
Warp Scrambler II
Stasis Webifier II

Damage Control II
Small Armor Repairer II
200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I

Small Projectile Burst Aerator I
Small Projectile Ambit Extension I x 2

Any advice out there?

EVE Blog-a-Day #011 - Playing, Yet Not Playing, EVE

2011-12-04T22:57:00.001Z

On the days that you do play EVE Online, how many hours (on average) are you in the EVE client, playing the game? On the days that you do play EVE Online, how many hours (on average) are you not in the EVE Client, yet still thinking about EVE? And, on the days that you aren't playing EVE Online, how many hours (on average) are you thinking about EVE?

My Response

I'd say I'm in the client, playing EVE Online, around four hours per day, on the days that I do play. I probably spend another 4 hours, outside of the client, thinking about EVE (even on the days that I'm not logging in.) This is certainly a lot different than other MMOs I've played. My hourly playtime with World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online (before I discovered EVE; I no longer play those games and miss them not even a little) was probably in the four hours per day range, but when not playing, I spent little time thinking about those games, maybe an hour or two extra, the run-up to playing, and the run-off from playing.

Participants

I also call on folks to send me their questions to ask the community. I'll post them, crediting you for the question, as well as a link back to your blog (give me your blog address too.)

When posting a link to your blog entry on Twitter, use the #eveblogaday hash tag, as well as the usual #tweetfleet hash tag.

If you partake in a particular question, please post a link to your blog entry in the comments. I'll compile them all, and every 25 questions, I'll post a big recap.

100 Tristans - The Silence of the Lambs

2011-12-03T20:11:00.001Z

I was originally going to title this post 100 Tristans - Hot Drop These Motherfuckers, Please. I was peeved and pissed off. Not at any loss mind you, just a ridiculous rule that was keeping me and some others from having some good fights. Anyhow, before writing what was likely going to be mostly an angry rant, I decided to sleep on it. I'm still annoyed over the entire issue (which I'll explain at Tristan 005), but less so. I'd still love it if someone hotdropped them, especially while they were doing their carebear ratting in their shiny ships. I just have no need to call them motherfuckers anymore. Sleep cures all ills.

So the next three ships continue to use the same fit from the last 100 Tristans post.

Tristan 003
I log on, Bei per usual. When I reach the gate to Hagilur, I jump in. The system is mostly Unistas. As I've come to expect. Without even having to broadcast in local, I get a private conversation from Horatio de Gaulle. He's the dude in the Imperial Navy Slicer that I fought in my very first Tristan, the fight where I had the "Why is all my ammo in the cargohold?" problem. This time I wasn't going to be hogtied by courier contract mechanics, so I agreed. I knew I was likely going to die again. But there's still something to learn in how well (or not well) one fares in a fight with a superior ship. As I expected, I popped. Even with me firing ammo the entire fight, I fared exactly the same. A strong tank and an active repper. I didn't get him more than 10% into armor at any point during the short dance. A Small Energy Neutralizer probably would have been good to have this fight (it will certainly be something I will experiment with during the 100 Tristans experiment in the days ahead.)

Tristan 004
This was my screwup. I forgot about gate guns. I saw a University Rupture sitting on the Hagilur gate in Dudreda, so decided to attack. (I apparently have a thing about going up against larger ships.) I was killed by gate guns. Not sure where the Wolf on the killmail came from. He wasn't on grid when I began the short attack. He must have just been passing through. Odd, though, that the Rupture did not fire back. I did aggress him. Was he AFK on a gate in lowsec? Who knows?

Tristan 005
I return to Dudreda. There are 12 or so Unistas in system. I send out a friendly request in local.

Poetic Stanziel > Any Unistas want to 1v1 in T1 frigs? I am flying a Tristan.

Complete silence. Zero response. Odd. I'm a little confused. There must be a couple of them who want a fight. I fly about for awhile. Avoiding small groups of Unistas in battle and heavy assault cruisers. Seriously? If they think they're going to catch me in heavy, slow locking ships, then they're kidding themselves. If they want me on a killmail, then I want a fight where I have some reasonable chance of prevailing. Flipping the finger to my monitor.

I'm beginning to wonder where good ol' Horatio de Gaulle might be. So I private conversation him this time. There must have been some yammering on the University Mumble server about my requests for a 1v1, because he's already in Hek putting together a T1 frigate. A Punisher. I check show info on the ship and find out that it has an EM hole, it's also a little weak on explosive damage. I load up the EM rockets. Eventually he arrives and we fight at the Dudreda III customs office. Really good, lengthy fight. He's active repping his armour again. Until his cap breaks, I'm not getting anywhere at all. His damage on my armour is light but steady. For whatever reason, I figure he's probably plugged up his EM hole, so I make the decision to change ammo on the rocket launchers, mid-fight. So ten seconds without rockets. He's still repping, of course, eating through his cap. By the time I've got the explosive rockets loaded, his cap is gone and I start taking chunks out of his armour. Not very large chunks, though. Damn it. I should have kept with the EM rockets. I'm into his hull, maybe about 10%, when my ship goes boom.

[Note: The Punisher actually has high EM resists to armour, as pointed out to me in the comments. I was apparently reading the shield resists, which do not matter at all on an armour-tanked ship. I should have been using my explosive rockets from the beginning.]

I am now anxious for another fight. This time I will equip a Small Energy Neutralizer. That should win me the fight handily. Our conversation window is still open, so I throw him a message.

Poetic Stanziel > Go repair ... I'll grab another Tristan. :)
Poetic Stanziel > I have another 20 in Bei.
Horatio de Gaulle > :) maybe another time - but I was going to go run sites with the guys and honestly I am breaking the rules : /
Poetic Stanziel > What rule?
Horatio de Gaulle > Communications with -10 to the uni is prohibited.
Poetic Stanziel > Stupid rules should be ignored. :)
Horatio de Gaulle > :) hence this - we have all been kind of lax with it but with all of us getting a little more piratey down here I think I might want play along for awhile
Horatio de Gaulle > lest we have to leave or something
Horatio de Gaulle > its fun down here - and I like being in the uni for all its rules and such
Horatio de Gaulle > but yeah - next time I see you I'll ask 1v1 in local - and hopefully it will be as exciting as the last one

I am fucking incensed. (I know, me incensed? Crazy talk!) Not because he won't take the fight, it seems to me that he wants too, but that he has to break a goddamned stupid rule just to chat and fight with me, and doesn't want to get into trouble doing it.

I throw off some tweets to my favourite EVE University director, Darian Reymont. I'll apologize now to him (because he's a good guy) for the tone and the language, but not for being utterly flabbergasted at the stupidity of the rule, especially for someone just asking for some 1v1s. It's not like I was looking for intel or trying to scam anyone. For. Fuck's. Sake.

So instead of some of the newer students learning anything at all about their weapon/ammo setups, it's more important to just keep them around as tackle for the battlecruisers and heavy assault ships and strategic cruisers. I guess when it comes to training newbs, old methods die hard. Newbs = tackle. So sad.

I hope to hell Horatio de Gaulle gets in no kind of trouble for deciding that he actually wanted to PvP, rather than be some insignificant part of some multi-ship killmail; that he didn't want to be just another wool sweater.

At least one of the flock had the good sense to break free from the silence of the lambs.

That Ishkur Really Pops

2011-12-03T09:50:00.000Z

This is the original texturing on the Ishkur model. That green on all of the Gallente ships. My one pet peeve. So glad it is being phased out. It looks like freaking moss. Moss, goddamn it. Moss. As though all the ships were kept in a cool, damp place for far too long. The ships that Endor forgot.

I don't normally comment on textures and models. Everyone has their own opinions. I like Gallente ship design. Most people don't. No need for me to be hollering about the awesomeness that is the Vexor, when most people think it looks like an old boot. But. This new texture on the Ishkur. I'm have to sing its praises briefly. The lack of moss is calling to me.

Holy ravioli. The green. Darker. Doesn't come across as anything but a design choice. The Creo-dron logo, so crisp. Corporate. (CCP should do corporate branding on the side.) The metal too, it really pops. Reflects. Looks like polished aluminium.

(click image for larger view)

CCP. You did a fantastic job here.

EVE Blog-a-Day #010 - How Real is EVE?

2011-12-02T03:25:00.001Z

"EVE is Real." True? Not true? What does it mean to you?
-- question by John Carter (@john_carter)

My Response

Plato would have applauded this sort of examination. (Or maybe I'm confusing Plato with Morpheus.) To what extent is EVE Online the Cave. How much red pill, how much blue pill, what ratio of the two does New Eden represent to us?

What makes EVE Online real for its players is that there are consequences to the game play. In other games, loss translates only to time. You lose a boss fight in a game like World of Warcraft, all that you've lost is the time it takes to make your way back to the encounter. You lose to a fellow player in EVE Online, you lose not only time and items, but pride and ego.

What makes EVE Online real for its players is that this game is a shared experience between 50,000 players. That every player shares the same gamespace has an emotional weight. There's the real notion of the butterfly effect. That everybody contributes to the game as a whole. Other games, the shared experience is limited to groups of 5, 10, or 25 people. In other games, everything is rinse and repeat, there's nothing to lose, thus nothing of consequence that can ripple throughout the gamespace. In other MMOs, the gamespace is like a generic sitcom, there's no continuity, the characters, the environment, everything is reset at the start of every episode. EVE Online is Lost, Fringe, The Wire, Battlestar Galactica, it's a soap opera, a continuing drama. In other games, the drama is created by a game company and the players react to that drama; the players are never the storytellers. In EVE Online, the drama is created by the players and the players react to each other. Shared experience. Players as authors of their gamespace.

What makes EVE Online real for its players is that consequence ripples throughout the gamespace for weeks, months, and years. From the simplest personal loss, to the largest alliance conquests, winning and losing has meaning. Take the recent annihilation of the Northern Coalition. Or even the destruction of Band of Brothers. These events still have impact, even though months and years have since passed. The metrics for success in this game are not transient. You plant your flag for all to see. You dare others to tear it down.

What makes EVE Online real for its players is that the arrow of time is all too evident. There are no do-overs. You cannot go back. There are no repeatsies.

What makes EVE Online real for its players is the meta-game. In other games, the accomplishments of the players are insular; what you accomplish has no bearing or effect on anyone else. In EVE, what you accomplish has effect on the entire game world. In other games, the game itself exists only while the client is running. In EVE, the game exists well outside of the client. Accomplishments in EVE require planning, politics, subterfuge, which, by necessity, are mostly achieved away from the pixels of spaceships. People think EVE well after they've turned their monitors off.

* * *

This dude's 7425 word essay on the scourge of the highsec miner speaks to how real EVE can be.

* * *

Further discussed on the EVE Online forums.

Participants

I also call on folks to send me their questions to ask the community. I'll post them, crediting you for the question, as well as a link back to your blog (give me your blog address too.)

When posting a link to your blog entry on Twitter, use the #eveblogaday hash tag, as well as the usual #tweetfleet hash tag.

If you partake in a particular question, please post a link to your blog entry in the comments. I'll compile them all, and every 25 questions, I'll post a big recap.

Changes in the University

2011-12-01T11:23:00.000Z

I hope this doesn't come across as the usual EVE University bitch post, because that isn't the intention this time around. I actually want to point out a few of the positive changes the University has recently made that I think move the institution in a direction more in keeping with the principles of EVE Online -- that of conflict.

There will, of course, be a couple of small criticisms, but then I'm not a University fanboy. I appreciate that they train newbs (they helped train me, although that isn't much of an advertisement for them). I appreciate that they help the new player retention rate. EVE Online needs new players; EVE University helps in this regard. I won't get into any of the carebear bloat and risk averse criticisms, because you've heard them all before, but maybe, just maybe, these new changes will go towards solving those problems over the long term.

Forward Bases
Previous to a few months ago, to post corporation recruitment advertisements required an office in the region in which you were recruiting. That changed during the summer, either with Incarna or sometime shortly thereafter. A corporation can now recruit across New Eden freely. So, over the summer months, the University shutdown all of the offices it no longer needed. No point spending ISK on office rental if you don't need them.

The University is once again looking to open up remote corporate offices. But not for recruitment purposes. Darian Reymont refers to them as forward bases. The long and short of it? The University will open up remote offices in lowsec and NPC nullsec so that Unistas can set-up base in those areas, getting benefit from the use of corporate hangars. Ostensibly, the University could stock these remote corporate hangars with PvP ships, extending their ship replacement program to players interested in PvP beyond that of the usual blob roam (which are generally pretty boring and not all that instructive.)

This is a fantastic opportunity for the University to involve its student body in the type of PvP that is the norm in non-sovereignty space -- small gang and solo PvP. Players get to experience PvP for extended periods of time (days and weeks, versus hours), while still maintaining that all-important sense of community.

The Forward Base Program is likely another nail in the coffin of the Ivy League Navy (ILN) -- a division of the University that has been in a slow-decline since May 2011. The Forward Base Program is simply going to encourage dedicated and skilled PvPers to move away from Aldrat. PvP teaching is going to shift even further away from the ILN. This is of course a good thing, since PvP training, previously under the auspices of the ILN, generally revolved around blob warfare. Roams are a hit-or-miss affair, and infrequent at best. Forward bases will put more emphasis on PvP as a lifestyle, something the ILN lost when the battlegroups were disbanded. The ILN's only remaining role is that of a defender during wartime, and we all know the current state of the war declaration system. Without wardecs, the ILN is on its last legs.

Wartime Standard Operating Procedures (WSOP)
The University has recently rewritten their infamous WSOP. Rather than being the strict set of rules it has always been -- basically squirrelling away Unistas from the realities of EVE Online -- it has now been changed to be a set of guidelines. The WSOP is now the RSOP (Relaxed Standard Operating Procedures) of old. The new WSOP is a document to describe safe operations during wartime. It is a set of guidelines, suggestions. It is a teaching document rather than a shackle and a hindrance.

The WSOP only reverts from suggestions to a firm set of rules during travel advisories, which will only apply to certain constellations for short periods of time (in areas where the enemy is currently very active.)

Like forward bases, this change allows the University to embrace the nature of EVE Online, rather than try to hide from it. It will encourage new players to accept conflict as a vital part of the game. Conflict is not something any player should fear or shirk away from. This change will teach players that risk is manageable.

Which brings me to my one small criticism. Considering the University is now, effectively, impossible to wardec, making this WSOP change is almost moot. It sends the right message to the student body, for sure, but it's very easy to say "Hey everyone, you can now use your own best judgement during wartime" when there's small chance of ever being at war. I would wonder exactly how long this new and open WSOP would last if a proper war declaration system were to return to EVE Online.

Shedding Vets
Azmodeus Valar and Darian Reymont are working on programs to move veteran players out from under the sheltering wings of the University -- to push them out of the nest and into the game at large. The programs will also assist new players wanting to move on from the student's life. It will involve work fairs and opportunities for corporations to introduce themselves to the student body via Mumble. A lot of the initial work is being done with existing ex-Unista corporations and alliances (such as Sleeper Social Club, The Graduates, The Red Circle, and Shiva), but will eventually expand to any corporation looking to recruit from the University student body.

Sounds like a fantastic program. My concern is some crossed-wires between the University departments. For instance, Smoogle, the EVE University forum moderator, has been /dev/null'ing 0.0 discussion threads recently. Basically threads populated with ex-Unistas now with various alliances in nullsec. This seems the wrong tact to take here. Even if those 0.0 threads are mostly trollish and argumentative, that happens to be what 0.0 forum warfare is all about. There's no sense hiding Unistas from that reality. Hell, some Unistas may actually find that aspect of the meta-game interesting, and the existence of those threads may encourage new and veteran players to seek out nullsec as a new challenge and destination.

Conclusion
Some great and necessary changes happening in the University as of late. I like that the University is moving in the direction of accepting the core principles of EVE Online, rather than hiding from them. These new changes serve their student body far better, as well as serving our great game in better stead. Kudos to the directors and management responsible. Keep up the good work.

EVE Blog-a-Day #009 - Describe Your First Solo Kill

2011-12-01T03:42:00.001Z

Describe your first solo PvP kill.

My Response

I want to hear the stories of others. But here are links to my first two solo kills. A Mackinaw gank. And a lowsec 1v1, frigate on frigate action.

Participants

I also call on folks to send me their questions to ask the community. I'll post them, crediting you for the question, as well as a link back to your blog (give me your blog address too.)

When posting a link to your blog entry on Twitter, use the #eveblogaday hash tag, as well as the usual #tweetfleet hash tag.

If you partake in a particular question, please post a link to your blog entry in the comments. I'll compile them all, and every 25 questions, I'll post a big recap.

100 Tristans - My First Solo Kill

2011-11-30T09:23:00.000Z

With Crucible released, I was hoping I might have the powergrid and CPU room for 150mm Railgun IIs. That is not going to be the case. Whereas I do have some spare powergrid and CPU, not nearly enough for the 150mm's.

I changed up the current fitting a bit. Not really to take into account anything concerning Crucible, but to take some of the advice given in the comments of previous 100 Tristan posts. Made two small changes. Switched out the 200mm Reinforced Steel Plates II for 200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I (for a reduction of 3hp, the Rolled Tungsten has 50000kg less mass, not too mention a cost that's 500K ISK cheaper per unit.) I also got rid of one of the Small Trimark Armor Pump I rigs in exchange of a Small Anti-Explosive Pump I rig, to shore up the explosive resistance hole that most Gallente ships have.

[Tristan, Solo PvP]

2x 125mm Railgun II (Javelin S)
OE-5200 Rocket Launcher (Caldari Navy Gremlin Rocket)
OE-5200 Rocket Launcher (Dread Guristas Phalanx Rocket)

Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
'Langour' Drive Disruptor I

Adaptive Nano Plating II
Damage Control II
200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I

2x Small Trimark Armor Pump I
Small Anti-Explosive Pump I

1x Warrior II

Tristan 002
The University is really taking a liking to the Hagilur pocket. Seems to be a recent thing. There are usually fifteen or so of them split between Hagilur and Dudreda each evening. Has the Uni already implemented their Forward Bases initiative? If so, this may be the start of that program.

I jump into Hagilur. There's a lone Uni on the gate, Hindrance Mercer. A Hurricane. I warp off, heading for Dudreda. Halfway there, I think it might not be a bad idea to see how I fare against a battlecruiser. So, I warp back to the Bei gate at zero. Land 3km from the Hurricane. I target him, but do nothing. I wait for him to fire first, so that he has gate guns to deal with as well. Fire he does. The race is on. We eat through each others shields at about the same rate. He starts eating through my armor, but I cannot seem to break into his. He eventually pops me, and I'm only about 10% of the way through his armor. The gate guns were not any sort of problem for him, obviously. Plus, he was neuting me to hell.

Tristan 003
After grabbing a new Tristan in Bei, I head back to the pocket. I skip on by Mr. Hurricane and head for Dudreda. As I've come to expect, Dudreda is loaded with Unistas. It doesn't take long, and Victor Breau asks for a 1v1. He's flying a Thrasher, so I decline. Destroyers just got a major Crucible buff, making them into actual destroyers. I'm not going to fare well against that. He offers to go get himself a frigate. I agree. It's a Rifter.

Rifter's can be fit about 6 million different ways, but I load in the EM rockets just the same. Play the odds, hoping he hasn't plugged the EM hole. We start about 20km off. I afterburn in, to start orbitting at 3.2km. He seems happy to orbit at the same (I'm thinking the choice of railguns was a good one, since I don't have to struggle to get in closer with a blaster fit.) I pretty much tore him apart. By the time he popped, I was only 50% into armor. I quickly looted the wreck, and warped off as a Taranis, flying Uni colours, landed on grid (wasn't going to stick around to see if he wanted to get some revenge for his buddy or just a cheap killmail.)

My first solo kill. (I do have a Mackninaw gank to my name, but I'd like to think that a gank and a solo kill are different -- that one warrants more hurrah than the other.)

Hauling - Freighters Side-by-Side

2011-11-30T07:11:00.000Z

I talk about using the Obelisk quite a bit for my hauling. I didn't choose the Obelisk because I think it's the best freighter available. Hell, I checked out zero stats when I created my hauling alt. I fly an Obelisk because I chose Gallente as my character's race. The only reason I did so is because I like the Gallente ship designs (one of only six people who do.) So I fly the Obelisk for that reason alone.

For those who are more pragmatic, let's compare all four racial freighters. There are only a few stats that are important, that give each freighter their little niche.

The Charon has the greatest cargo capacity, but is the slowest and least agile of the bunch. It can only haul pancakes and waffles. To reach the Red Frog capacity minimum (860,000 m3), you'll have to train Caldari Freighter II.

The Fenrir is the speediest, most agile freighter, but has the smallest cargo capacity. It looks like a rusted-out mechanical bull; this is not a cool look, but it does look freighterish. To reach the Red Frog minimum, you'll have to train Minmatar Freighter IV.

The Obelisk is the toughest of the bunch, the hardest to gank. It looks like a condominium, which may not be cool, but it does look like a freighter. It sits in the upper half for freight capacity and in the bottom half for speed and agility. To reach the Red Frog minimum, you'll need to train Gallente Freighter III.

The Providence looks the coolest, but the least freighter-like. It is bottom half for capacity, top half for speed and agility. To reach the Red Frog minimum, you'll need to train Amarr Freighter IV.

	Charon	Fenrir	Obelisk	Providence
Cargo Capacity (m3)	785,000	720,000	750,000	735,000
Max. Velocity (m/sec)	60	80	65	70
Mass (kg)	960,000,000	820,000,000	940,000,000	900,000,000
Structure HP	106,250	100,000	120,000	112,500
Armor HP	20,000	21,250	22,500	24,000
Shield HP	6,000	5,625	5,313	5,000

EVE Blog-a-Day #008 - Crucible Fluff

2011-11-30T06:01:00.000Z

What is your favourite fluff feature in Crucible?

Fluff can be defined as something that doesn't necessarily impact the mechanics of the game. Things like ship/module nerfs and buffs, those would not be fluff. Nebulae, loot all buttons, fonts, UI scaling, and autopilot features, those would be fluff. Use your best judgement. If you're unsure, maybe justify why you believe the feature to be fluff.

My Response

Autopiloting to stations. I autopilot a lot through high security space. Doesn't matter the ship, if the route is through highsec, I'm likely autopiloting.

I'll spend the time my ship is getting to a destination doing something else. Making a sandwich, doing some work, or looking at porn. Jumping 20 systems through highsec is one of the most boring aspects of EVE Online, and I've always mitigated it by using autopilot.

Now that I can autopilot straight into a station, my chances of getting ganked are greatly reduced. Not that I've ever been ganked, or had anyone even try. (Which is odd, considering how many people seem to think I'm a douchebag.)

Participants

I also call on folks to send me their questions to ask the community. I'll post them, crediting you for the question, as well as a link back to your blog (give me your blog address too.)

When posting a link to your blog entry on Twitter, use the #eveblogaday hash tag, as well as the usual #tweetfleet hash tag.

If you partake in a particular question, please post a link to your blog entry in the comments. I'll compile them all, and every 25 questions, I'll post a big recap.

Hauling - The Crucible Effect

2011-11-30T02:20:00.001Z

While working, I decided to do some Obelisk hauling in the background. Seventy jumps so far and am making more per jump than I've ever made in the Obelisk pre-Crucible. Hell, I'm making a little more per jump than I usually do in the Viator. Currently at 456000 ISK/jump.

Everybody must be hauling materials hither and yon so they can beat everybody else to the punch on T3 Battlecruiser and POCO (Player-Owned Customs Office) production. Not too mention all the new T2 modules. And fuels. Hopefully this mad rush of hauling necessity keeps up for a week or two.

Concerning some of the new Crucible features, as they relate to hauling. Gotta say, loving the ability to set autopilot straight to a station and have it dock up. Makes AFK hauling that much more passive. Also enjoying the new nebulae; seeing the relationship of the regions to one another ... pretty sure that's Metropolis I can see here from The Citadel ... oh, and there's The Forge ... some of these other reddish smudges, not quite sure what regions they are yet (the reddish smudge near Metropolis might be Heimatar.)

A question for other freighter pilots. Do you insure your freighters, if you're only keeping to highsec? I know it's possible to gank a freighter in highsec (with something like 10-15 battleships), but that seems like a few and far between occurrence. Platinum insurance on my Obelisk is nearly 200M ISK. That's pretty pricey, and I'm thinking "Am I really going to lose one of these in three months?" Seems to me that I'd just be throwing 200M ISK away. So have not insured it yet.

100 Tristans - Damned Bubble-Wrap

2011-11-29T07:51:00.000Z

Finally got killed. One down, ninety-nine to go. I wanted some sort of action before the Crucible downtime and got it. Thanks to Horatio de Gaulle of EVE University. His Navy Slicer versus my Tristan.

Tristan 001
So this loss was a major fuck-up for me. For the first 20 seconds of the fight, the only damage I was delivering was from a single drone. All my weapons were mysteriously unloaded. Holy crow. That had me completely baffled. I load my ammo straight into their respective weapons when I fit a ship. So every time Aura announced that I was out of ammo, it made no sense to me. For the first ten seconds, I was wondering if there was some sort of mod that unloads a target's weapons. So ten seconds into the fight, I have to load the railguns and the rocket launchers. Twenty seconds into the fight, I actually start doing damage.

Given that giant fuck-up, I did okay. He was nice enough to be orbiting at my optimal, so the weapons where hitting hard. By the time the Slicer popped my ship, I had it 25% into armour. Not saying if I had been firing my weaps for the first 20 seconds that I could have won, but it certainly would have been damned close. I'd like to have a rematch on that fight.

I did figure out why all my ammo was sitting in the cargo hold. Earlier in the day, I was out in Enden, but it was completely dead. So I bubble-wrapped five rigged Tristans for hauling out to Bei (to roam the Hagilur Pocket.) As it turns out, bubble-wrapping a ship transfers the ammo from the weapons and launchers straight into the cargo bay. Had no idea that was a side-effect of contracting assembled ships. So that was lesson #1 learned in this little adventure. When I got the pod back to Bei, I immediately jumped into each of the four Tristans and loaded all the weapons and launchers. Not going to let that happen again.

---------------------

Logged out now. Forty-five minutes until downtime. Today is the winter expansion. Woot. Going to be a bit of a different story flying Gallente in eight or so hours.

Crucible will change things tremendously, with respect to fitting out a Gallente ship. For the frigates alone we get the following:

All small hybrid turrets now receive a -1 CPU reduction, with the exception of the 75mm Railgun.
Hybrid turrets now use 12% less powergrid, rounded to the nearest number, with the exception of the Light Electron Blaster I, Light Ion Blaster I, 125 mm Railgun I and 75mm Railgun I which remain unchanged.
All hybrid turrets have had their reload time reduced to five seconds.
The capacitor usage for all hybrid turrets has been reduced by 30%.
Small, medium and large blasters will now receive +20% to tracking.
Small, medium and large blasters will now receive +5% to damage multiplier.
Small, medium and large railguns will now receive +10% to damage multiplier.
Small, medium and large railguns will now receive +5% to tracking.
All sizes of Javelin ammunition have had their capacitor penalty removed.
Javelin, Gleam and Quake have had their tracking penalty turned into a bonus. The tracking speed multiplier has been increased from .75 to 1.25 x.

My gunnery skills are half-decent for a 10.7M SP character. Especially for frigate PvP.

Advanced Weapon Upgrades IV
Controlled Bursts V
Gunnery V
Motion Prediction IV
Rapid Firing IV
Sharpshooter IV
Small Blaster Specialization IV
Small Hybrid Turret V
Small Railgun Specialization IV
Surgical Strike IV
Trajectory Analysis IV
Weapon Upgrades V

Every one of those skills is in the queue to V. Once that is done (85 days), then it is onto drones (120 days), then missile launcher operation (144 days.)

If I can get competent at the PvP, I'm going to have the skills to be a wrecking machine (in frigates, at least.) Of course, that all hinges on becoming a competent pilot.

EVE Blog-a-Day #007 - Scheduled Downtime

2011-11-28T09:07:00.001Z

Today, Monday November 28 2011, CCP will announce the scheduled downtime for the Crucible expansion. Specify when the servers will come back on line, in hours and minutes, before or beyond when they are scheduled to be live. Use a negative number if you think the servers will come online early, use a positive number if you feel the servers will come online late.

The person closest to the actual online time will win 50M ISK.

Answer as a comment. Everyone needs to see all of the answers. If you need to keep your identity a secret, simply use EVEMail to tell me which comment is yours. Again, only answers given as a comment will be considered. One answer per comment. One answer per person.

Post your guess before Crucible's scheduled downtime begins (Nov 29 2011 08:00 UTC). Answers posted after 08:00 UTC will be ignored.

For the servers to be considered online, they have to be up and running for three (3) continuous hours with no downtime.

So, the downtime is currently scheduled for 6 hours (08:00 to 14:00 UTC.) If your answer is 4.25 hours, then you expect that the servers will come back online 10.25 hours (18:15 UTC) after being initially shutdown.

My Response

I don't get to answer this one.

Participants

I also call on folks to send me their questions to ask the community. I'll post them, crediting you for the question, as well as a link back to your blog (give me your blog address too.)

When posting a link to your blog entry on Twitter, use the #eveblogaday hash tag, as well as the usual #tweetfleet hash tag.

If you partake in a particular question, please post a link to your blog entry in the comments. I'll compile them all, and every 25 questions, I'll post a big recap.

100 Tristans - The Beginning

2011-11-27T23:05:00.001Z

So, gonna take some advice from the Who's a Carebear? thread at the EVE Online forums. As Khanh'rhh wrote "You 'kinda suck at PVP'? Well, guess what. Everyone does when they don't try." So, instead of just procrastinating about it (I'll wait until this eight day gunnery skill is trained), it's time to dive into it. One hundred Tristans.

Much like the nullsec circumnavigation, I'll document all the results and learnin' from this exercise. Fight by fight.

This will be the initial fit. It was tight, even with a 3% powergrid implant. 155.5/156.25 CPU. 48.56/48.93 powergrid. I'll likely use this fitting, up until Crucible is released. The changes at that point to hybrids should make it easier to come up with some more powerful fits. My thinking with the rails, at the moment, is that with the Trimark rigs and the 200mm plating, it might be easier keeping range between 3 - 9 kilometres, rather than the sub-1.5 kilometres with a blaster fit. We'll see how it works out. (Comments are, of course, welcome.)

[Tristan, Solo PvP]

2x 125mm Railgun II (Javelin S)
OE-5200 Rocket Launcher (Caldari Navy Gremlin Rocket)
OE-5200 Rocket Launcher (Caldari Navy Phalanx Rocket)

Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
'Langour' Drive Disruptor I

Adaptive Nano Plating II
Damage Control II
200mm Reinforced Steel Plates II

3x Small Trimark Armor Pump I

1x Warrior II

Will spend the first 25 Tristans in the Metropolis region. Will start off in Enden, and if that proves to be dull, will move to the Hagilur area. Afterwards, will use the next 75 Tristans in lowsec around Old Man Star.

EVE Blog-a-Day #006 - The Alright Capsuleer List

2011-11-27T16:20:00.001Z

Name three capsuleers you've not met in-game, but who you would like to meet at a future fanfest and shake their hand.

Bonus: Name one capsuleer who should diaf (die in a fire). Figuratively, of course.

My Response

I'm not the type of person that needs reciprocation. To respect someone, I do not need their respect first. The three people I'd like to meet, I have respect for different reasons. All of them, though, I talk to regularly, either via the forums or the twitters. I'll link them either to Twitter or to EVE Gate, the location through which I communicate with them most.

Bagehi
Ever since Bagehi was brought into EVENews24 as an editor/reporter, the quality of the reporting there has gone way way up. The reporting is orders of magnitude better than it's ever been. Not only does he understand punctuation, sentence structure and spelling (something most of the EN24 reporting in the past lacked), he understands how to engage his readers in the coverage of an event. He does his best to just report, not to insert his own alliance prejudices into what he writes. He also seems to have a tonne of respect from the unruly readership at EN24 (which is saying something, because the EVENews24 readership will shit on pretty much anything.) He's also a funny, pretention-free dude.

Darian Reymont
He's my favourite director in EVE University. Actually, that would suggest that I have other favourite directors. I don't. (But I won't get into bitching about them.) Darian would be an excellent representative for any large corporation, much less the University. He's easy to talk too. Intelligent. Not conceited or full of himself or his organization. He has a good outlook on the big picture. Unfortunately his director role is an internal one (human resources) when he has the better skills for dealing with outside influences (he really should be the Public Relations director.)

Khanh'rhh
Khan gives me a hard time continually on the forums. That's okay, though. (Fuck, if I had issues with everyone who gave me a hard time, I'd be one bitter-assed man.) I think on most issues, Khan and I agree. I understand where his bitching comes from. I bitch about people like me as well on the forums. That said, he seems like a pretty alright guy.

DIAF List
The capsuleers who can diaf are the ones who want highsec to be even safer. They want a PvP-free zone in New Eden. There are too many to list. (I don't literally want them to die in a fire, but they can literally fuck off and go play SW:ToR.)

Participants

I also call on folks to send me their questions to ask the community. I'll post them, crediting you for the question, as well as a link back to your blog (give me your blog address too.)

When posting a link to your blog entry on Twitter, use the #eveblogaday hash tag, as well as the usual #tweetfleet hash tag.

If you partake in a particular question, please post a link to your blog entry in the comments. I'll compile them all, and every 25 questions, I'll post a big recap.

EVE Blog-a-Day #005 - EVE Podcasts

2011-11-25T10:16:00.001Z

Do you listen to any EVE Online podcasts? If so, what are your favourites?

Bonus: What podcasts have you tried but did not enjoy? Why?

My Response

I currently only listen to one. The Voices from the Void (VandV) podcast. They keep on the topic of EVE, but keep it light and fresh. The rapport between the hosts, Arydanika and Seismic Stan, is fabulous. (Seismic Stan is a new co-host for Arydanika. I cannot comment on the previous co-host, since I am a new listener, but I hope to hell that Seismic sticks with VandV.) The audio quality is great as well (I just can't listen to any podcast if it has crappy audio quality.)

Arydanika is bubbly and cheerful. Her voice is sunshine. She also does some great voice impressions, such as Natasha on episode #28. And what can you say about Seismic's accent; if the dude were a woman, I'd want to bang him.

So huge props to the VandV podcast. If you aren't listening to it already, you should ask yourself "Why?"

Participants

I also call on folks to send me their questions to ask the community. I'll post them, crediting you for the question, as well as a link back to your blog (give me your blog address too.)

When posting a link to your blog entry on Twitter, use the #eveblogaday hash tag, as well as the usual #tweetfleet hash tag.

If you partake in a particular question, please post a link to your blog entry in the comments. I'll compile them all, and every 25 questions, I'll post a big recap.

Who's a carebear?

2011-11-24T08:01:00.000Z

I'm a carebear? I get accused of it. Not quite sure why. I suppose when it comes to EVE specifically, I have a different definition of carebear than other people. Hell, I think I have the better definition.

On the face of it, the way I've been playing up until now, you might mistake me as a carebear. I kinda suck at PvP. I mission. I incursion. I haul and do industry. I pretty much mind my own business and do my own thing in the game. If that is someone's definition of carebear, then it is far too broad. That could apply to a majority of the people playing EVE Online.

I see carebears as dangerous entities to this game. Thus, I get a tad more specific in my definition.

To me a carebear is ultra-risk averse. A carebear will rarely, usually only under duress, leave highsec. A carebear may engage in activities similar to mine, the difference is that the carebear feels entitled to do those things and to never be bothered while doing them. A carebear loses a ship in highsec to a gank or a wardec, the fault does not lie with the carebear for being inattentive or naive. No, it's the fault of low-life psychotics, which the game should be actively trying to curb. A carebear loses ISK in a scam? Not the carebear's fault, the game should protect people from the unscrupulous. A carebear's bottom line is affected in any way, they are bitching to anyone who will listen that the game needs to change, that their choice of playstyle needs to be accommodated. The game mechanics should allow them the choice to engage in conflict at their whim, not at someone else's whim. When a carebear seeks out conflict, it's because of a desire to achieve a perfectly reasoned goal. When a carebear is forced into conflict, it's due to purposeless unmotivated aggression from players with anti-social disorders.

That's not me at all.

I love risk. It is why I play this game. It reminds me of the glory days of Ultima Online (the first two years), when it was the only wild-west anything-goes environment available. They tried to create a sandbox. It had an economy. It was dangerous -- you died in UO, you got looted and lost all your stuff, "Ooo ooo oooooooooooo!" Those days of UO are long gone. We have EVE as our replacement. A better replacement. Ultima Online was the pinnacle of MMO play until CCP developed their little flying in space game.

So yeah, I go about my business in game. People might mistake me as a carebear. Except. I'm well aware that anyone at anytime could come along and try to ruin my day. And I accept that. Happily. I've lost ships. I've lost billions in ISK. I would never complain about losing stuff. It sucks when it happens, but afterwards it is really why I love this game.

I'm fucking passionate about this game. EVE is conflict. I don't want that conflict to ever go away. It needs to permeate every iota, every segment, every nook and cranny of this game. And I will fucking scream and shout and point fingers at anyone who says it should be otherwise. Carebears ruined Ultima Online with their incessant whining and screaming and demands to curb non-consensual conflict. I do not want to see that happen to EVE Online. It's the only sandbox on the block. Where the fuck am I going to play if the carebears take this sandbox too?

EVE Blog-a-Day #004 - EVE Online Fiction

2011-11-23T19:56:00.001Z

Do you read any EVE Online fiction, either player-created or CCP-created? If you do (or do not), why? Do you have a favourite piece of fiction? If so, what is it? And if player-created, post a link to share.
-- question by Darth Skorpius (@skorpion352)

My Response

I haven't read any of the novels. Have not read any of the stuff put out by CCP Dropbear. I have dipped a toe into the fan fiction pond, just in the last month. Small amount due to participating in a writing contest being run by Darth Skorpius (more on that later), and listening to a story-telling showdown on the VandV podcast between Seismic Stan and Mord Fiddle.

If you've not engaged any EVE fiction, I'd at least suggest listening to Seismic and Mord's Throwdown Showdown in Blogtown on Episode 29 of the VandV podcast. Both stories were quite good, and their voice acting equally so. It all starts at 39:45 of the podcast.

There's only one week left in Darth Skorpius' fiction contest. The task, to help him expand on his character bio. He makes writing about his past quite open-ended, given his character has amnesia. There are two Plexes up for grabs.

Participants

I also call on folks to send me their questions to ask the community. I'll post them, crediting you for the question, as well as a link back to your blog (give me your blog address too.)

When posting a link to your blog entry on Twitter, use the #eveblogaday hash tag, as well as the usual #tweetfleet hash tag.

If you partake in a particular question, please post a link to your blog entry in the comments. I'll compile them all, and every 25 questions, I'll post a big recap.

EVE Blog-a-Day #003 - What is a nullbear?

2011-11-22T19:18:00.001Z

What is EVE Blog-a-Day?

I'll add this little preface to the first bunch of EVE Blog-a-Day posts.

Similar to the EVE Blog Banter, which occurs once per month, EVE Blog-a-Day will pose a short simple question for EVE's bloggers. It's meant to give bloggers a jump start into posting. You want to post something, but you're stuck for a subject? EVE Blog-a-Day can help. Feel free to use it every time a new question is posed, or only when a new question piques your interest.

Even though it is called EVE Blog-a-Day, questions won't come daily. Probably around four to five per week.

I also call on folks to send me their questions to ask the community. I'll post them, crediting you for the question, as well as a link back to your blog (give me your blog address too.)

When posting a link to your blog entry on Twitter, use the #eveblogaday hash tag, as well as the usual #tweetfleet hash tag.

Question #003

Use of the word nullbear has been seeing more frequent use on the forums and in blogs. How do you define nullbear?

My Response

I suppose I would define nullbear as a player belonging to a nullsec alliance, yet spending most of their time either:

earning ISK in highsec
performing industrial activities
performing PvE activities in nullsec

When most people think of the nullsec player, they assume a player spending most of their time engaged in PvP activities. Thus the nullbear monicker evolved to describe the nullsec player engaged mostly in non-PvP activities.

I've yet to see the term used as anything other than an insult or criticism.

Participants

If you partake in a particular question, please post a link to your blog entry in the comments. I'll compile them all, and every 25 questions, I'll post a big recap.

Hauling - The Blockade Runner

2011-11-22T06:48:00.001Z

The hauling has been pretty good. Got into a blockade runner two days ago, my Viator. So have ditched Obelisk hauling for the time being, simply because hauling through lowsec is a bit of fun. And generally more lucrative.

I'm not using the best Viator setup. The lows are all Expanded Cargohold IIs and the rigs are Medium Cargohold Optimization Is. Nothing to help increase align time, which is probably a no-no with most folks using blockade runners. My setup has 10279m3 cargo space, which gives me more choices in the types of cargo I can accept. Until I'm blowed up good, I'll likely stick with this for lowsec hauling. I know it is vulnerable due to lack of align buffing, so am playing it cautious.

I'll take any lowsec run (which of course sounds like I am throwing caution to the wind.) Have delivered to Auga, Amamake and Criliere, some of the more infamous lowsec systems. I do all my Jita to Hek/Rens runs through the Rancer pipe, it saves 10 jumps -- it's all about the ISK per jump in the hauling trade.

I am playing it safe, though. I make good use of the starmap to show me which systems are PvP active. If there's currently a lot of ship losses in the last hour along a particular lowsec route (or destination), I'll sit on the cargo and deliver something else, until those ships losses are down to under five per hour. Five per hour, I've determined, is acceptable risk going through a lowec system. Any more than five per hour, I deem the system too active.

I'm still doing most of the blockade runner hauling away from the keyboard. If there's lowsec along a route, I'll simply set a waypoint for the last highsec system. When I hear Aura announce "Autopilot disabled; waypoint reached", it means it is time to tab over to the hauler alt, and begin manually piloting through the lowsec systems.

The earnings so far:

I've got my three hauling setups. The Obelisk (862500m3), highsec only. The Iteron V (38000m3), highsec only. The Viator (10279m3), high/lowsec.

I've been tempted by a couple of nullsec (NPC systems), but have not yet taken one. If I do, I'll have to build out a proper Viator for nullsec runs, align and warp disruption buffed.

EVE Blog-a-Day #002 - Influential Alliances

2011-11-21T07:45:00.001Z

What alliances have had the greatest positive (or negative) influence on EVE Online? Why?

My Response

In the old days it might have been Band of Brothers. They don't exist any more, which leads me to what I feel is the most obvious choice. Goonswarm Federation. They've had a hand in shaping sovereignty nullsec, having successfully moved three (four?) separate times. Their CEO is currently the chairman of the CSM. They're fighting in Delve to set-up something called Freeport. They manipulate fuel markets by ganking highsec miners. They have non-aggression pacts with nearly everyone that matters. There's not a person in this game who isn't aware of Goonswarm at some level. They intimately understand the premise of this game, and play it to the fullest. They are both the greatest villians and the greatest heroes in New Eden.

My second choice would be Ivy League, home to EVE University. My few issues aside, they still do train new players (and older players returning from long breaks.) Without a doubt many players who might have otherwise quit the game in frustration have grown to love the game under the tutelage of many knowledgeable EVE University instructors. The ex-Unista network is over six years old and ranges far and wide across New Eden; you'll find ex-members in every corner of the universe. Whereas Ivy League does not have a direct impact on the politics of New Eden, their presence is still felt upon the game in the good relations they have with nearly all the major alliances.

I cannot think of any alliances that have had a negative impact upon EVE Online. Such alliances do not exist for any length of time. Due to the dangerous and devious nature of EVE Online, many who might view an alliance negatively are actually impacting the game positively.

Participants

If you partake in a particular question, please post a link to your blog entry in the comments. I'll compile them all, and every 25 questions, I'll post a big recap.

EVE Blog-a-Day #001 - Alliance Logos

2011-11-20T20:30:00.000Z

What is EVE Blog-a-Day?

Similar to the EVE Blog Banter, which occurs once per month, EVE Blog-a-Day will pose a short simple question for EVE's bloggers. It's meant to give bloggers a jump start into posting. You want to post something, but you're stuck for a subject? EVE Blog-a-Day can help. Feel free to use it every time a new question is posed, or only when a new question piques your interest.

Even though it is called EVE Blog-a-Day, questions won't come daily. Probably around four to five per week.

I also call on folks to send me their questions to ask the community. I'll post them, crediting you for the question, as well as a link back to your blog (give me your blog address too.)

When posting a link to your blog entry on Twitter, use the #eveblogaday hash tag, as well as the usual #tweetfleet hash tag.

Question #001

I recently posted a list of all the active alliance logos. What are your five favourite logos? Why? What makes a good logo?

Bonus: if you don't mind potentially annoying someone, what is your least favourite logo, and why?

My Response

I enjoy simple, memorable logos. Simplicity is best in logo design. Simplicity allows a logo to be easily used across all forms of media. Simplicity allows a logo to remain recognizable at different sizes. Simplicity allows recognition at a glance. Detail is clutter. Detail does not scale.

Favourites:

Goonswarm Federation - Cute, memorable, ironic.
EVE Engineering - Iconic engineering symbol; font style/size is readable at all logo sizes.
Tear Extraction and Reclamation Service - Memorable, scalable, speaks to the stated purpose of the alliance.
Rote Kapelle - Not sure what the logo represents with respect to the alliance, but I still quite like it. Good use of colour. Even with small bits of detail, the logo is scalable and recognizable.
Razor Alliance - Very iconic EVE alliance logo. Simple, yet effective.

Least Favourite:

Death or Glory - looks like it was designed on a Commodore 64. A weird three colour palette (excluding the white and black.) Why is Death wearing a pink robe? Too much detail. Does not scale well.

Participants

If you partake in a particular question, please post a link to your blog entry in the comments. I'll compile them all, and every 25 questions, I'll post a big recap.