tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4567896374600649572024-03-05T22:23:34.920+00:00Diaries of a Space NoobThe diary of an ex WoW addict and all round geek in EVE Online. Take me out to the black.Cheradenine Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06822231437454134489noreply@blogger.comBlogger160125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-456789637460064957.post-58172565625961813892019-05-19T17:48:00.000+01:002019-05-19T17:48:05.436+01:00Day 2531: Boring Rocky Sandbox InterludeA slow Sunday. Warning. A fairly boring post follows. As much as anything else I'm trying to remind myself about the nature of playing.<br />
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Aside from the five minute high of claiming my 16th anniversary 1 million SP and blowing it on Salvaging V nothing much is going to get me moving today. I'm idly browsing the corp hangars and find a half completed project. It's a very noobish project, just the kind of thing for a slow Sunday. It means and achieves absolutely nothing of any consequence and yet involves planning, travel and a little danger.<br />
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It's the kind of thing I most like doing in games, apparently pointless tasks where all the fun is in the plan, the journey, and any emergent story. Any real material gain in money, skills, stats is irrelevant and likely incidental. Sandbox games encourage and thrive on similar behavior, though generally there is a material aim intended. Not with a Space Noob at the helm! Similar episodes have led me to climb mountains in Warcraft, build stupidly huge bridges in Subnautica, drag boats overland in Archeage, and all kinds of EVE journeys.<br />
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I jump into my trusty Prospect. By this I mean I find I have spare Prospect hulls for some reason, and so unpack one, throw a cloak, a couple of mining lasers and some other junk onto it and then undock. Not before naming it Scent of a Rock mind you. I resist the temptation to name it "B8" in order to throw off nosy Dscanners.<br />
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Fortunately, during some earlier adventure in Syndicate, on the other side of EVE from where I'm headed, I picked up the Mercoxit I need. That means I don't need a pair of Deep Core Miners and a Mobile Depot for refitting.<br />
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I zoom through hisec without a care in the world, just watching the scenery go by. I've a few intermediate low sec systems to traverse before hitting nullsec where I've sourced a -1.0 system that has pretty much all the remaining ore types I require. There's a group of wrecks on one gate, looks like I might have just missed trying to warp through a scrap. There are people in system, more than in the low sec systems I usually lurk in, but nothing worrying. Down into null and the population drops, even in those systems where sovereignty has been claimed. I pass an Eagle on a gate but I'm aligning and instantly cloaking so don't have a problem. It's handy living in London. A couple of systems have cynos lit and only one or two pilots around, I'm guessing it is a quiet time for everyone and these are logistics going on. I'm tempted to wait but how wrong could that go? So much for emergent story, the yellow stripe wins. In the final destination system I'm anticlimactically on my own.<br />
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A couple of hours or so later I am back in my home hisec station, fortunately still in the Prospect and not in a pod.<br />
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That's all I materially achieved. The mild levels of panic while journeying to A2V6-6 (thanks <a href="http://evemaps.dotlan.net/system/A2V6-6" target="_blank">Dotlan</a>), and while orbiting around the rocks there, are the real purpose here. In the end it was absurdly easy. I saw one player on gates and Angel rats are as half asleep as everyone else on Sundays.<br />
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It's nothing like the weeks I spent <a href="https://diaries-of-a-space-noob.blogspot.com/p/the-eve-gate-journey.html" target="_blank">delving into the story and sights around the EVE Gate</a> in terms of story. I need to think up some more plans. It was still an interesting diversion on a day when my brain simply wasn't up to the task of roaming low sec looking for trouble or even up to the task of my normal industry and trade activity.<br />
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Note that there are no rare 15% ores in the collection. I'm odd and tired, not insane. I'm not sure those ores really exist in the wild.... Now I'm going to have to look into it.<br />
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So, all in all, probably one of my dullest posts ever for you but an interesting, if short, trip for me and a useful revision of navigation skills in dodgy space. I'm thinking about some wormhole delving, fitting a Prospect for the gas equivalent of this run. I've got to use up this odd abundance of Prospect hulls and my scanning skills could use some work.<br />
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<b>EVE Track of the Day</b><br />
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I spent the entire post laughing while listening to the podcast <i>This Paranormal Life </i>(available on iTunes, Soundcloud and Spotify at least). Maybe what I need is some kind of EVE conspiracy theory to investigate.<br />
<br />Cheradenine Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06822231437454134489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-456789637460064957.post-56084557098761159822019-05-04T20:53:00.001+01:002019-05-04T20:53:55.246+01:00Day 2514: Omega<i>A couple of months later in a galaxy far, far away...</i><br />
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Gibbering madly about EVE for free as I was it still didn't take long for me to slip CCP some dollars.<br />
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What was it? The lure of shiny ships? Well I had a ton of fun racing a shuttle as far as I could, "demonstrating the sandbox". T2 hulls are shiny and fun but I had fun in something that didn't even have guns. Delving the depths. There are customs offices still owned by Interbus down there.... To be fair T2 hulls did give me interdiction free travel again and the ability to go pick up some junk in NPC null and get it back to Jita for sale.<br />
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Could I blame the lack of T2 covops? Despite the lure of jumpshock EVE, tootling around lowsec and darker venues while exploring in a T1 isn't all that relaxing. Yes, I play EVE to relax and experience fear. Don't ask, just think "hey this is some great game that can provide both ends of a spectrum". It wasn't the T2 covops. I made more ISK while racing around lowsec hunting Clone Soldiers and grabbing a couple of Garmur blueprints. I used a Fed Navy Comet, a fearsome hull that I think has a little too much drone bandwidth. I felt ready to take a fight even while orbiting under the point of a Clone Soldier.<br />
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Skills? They're limited but not so you'd notice with my level of faffing around. I suspect they came in handy while trying out Abyssal content but didn't stop me being surprised at how difficult it actually was and blowing 75 mill on the thing. I suspect I can also say goodbye to the Rupture, Omen and Caracal I have in waiting. Abyssal T2 was a near miss, something I'll try again. T3 abyssal in a T1 hull was like being spanked. Some people pay for it, but not me.<br />
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PVP? What would I know? I'm terrible at it anyway. I've had some great adventures in a brick tanked Punisher. 20k EHP in a 5M ISK frigate allows a lot of leeway in terms of time to learn. No more analysing 20 seconds of terror, more analysing a minute or so of utter confusion. I've been dropped by a Sin. I've crashed the gate on seeing a gatecamp and been chased across two systems by angry Russians. I've got bored of a system wide, DSCAN based, chase and triggered a medium FW trap, "nearly" bagging a kill and escaping pod intact with "gf" fired. I've even got a couple of kills, mainly thanks to local gate guns, but hey... I laid the trap. If you've ever tried PVP and thought I can't tell what's going on, it's too expensive to learn, then try wasting about 10 of these. I've still got about 6 of them fully fitted and ready to roll if I'm ever bored. I'm also done with my implants so not a care in the world. You probably won't kill anything but you'll learn a ton of things.<br />
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<pre>[Punisher, Brick Punisher]
400mm Rolled Tungsten Compact Plates
400mm Crystalline Carbonide Restrained Plates
Damage Control II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Adaptive Nano Plating II
5MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive
J5b Enduring Warp Scrambler
150mm Light AutoCannon II
150mm Light AutoCannon II
150mm Light AutoCannon II
150mm Light AutoCannon II
Small Trimark Armor Pump I
Small Trimark Armor Pump I
Small Trimark Armor Pump I
</pre>
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It's about 3 UK pence a go. For some reason I'm not wary about spending 500 UK pence on a pint in London that lasts half an hour if I'm lucky, yet I'm wary about losing less than 1% of that in a scrap I lost that I'll be bending peoples ears about for years.<br />
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So really in the end, what was the driving factor?<br />
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I hated the lack of industry slots.<br />
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I really am that much of a carebear nerd. The collapse of the Faction Warfare and Low Sec market really annoyed me. I knew people still had to be making cash from industry. I knew I couldn't do it with so few slots as an Alpha. So I zipped around potential markets, settled on one, switched to Omega and relearned the whole T2 small scale industry thing.<br />
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Half the time I'm sure that effectively I'm just optimising the amount of space required to transport PI materials. The Robotics burn alone is killing me. Even after all these years I don't understand why Gatling Pulse Laser II's require 5 Robotics a unit. I might have to deconstruct the elaborate and time consuming hisec Nanite Repair Paste thing I have going and replace it with boring Consumer Electronics. I'm just about surfing my needs for Transmitters and Miniature Electronics.<br />
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In the end I made about 5 billion in profit in a month by hammering it. It's labour intensive in terms of PI and build. Way more effort per ISK than the arbitrage pursued by <a href="http://marketsforisk.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">marketsforISK</a>. I don't care. I like the feeling of being a small scale local gun maker. I like managing the small things. I'm halfway through an Django app designed to automate my build and invention choices but unfortunately I've done the fun ESI integration work and now I've got the "boring" database, algorithm and interface work to do. Yep. Not that boring. I'll be playing the game in Visual Studio Code for a while.<br />
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The aim, of course, is the purchase of more BPOs. I'm a collector...<br />
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I'm not all that bad, there are a pair of Leshaks purchased and awaiting skill queues. I'd like to try them out on a structure, especially since that was kind of my last rage quit trigger. That's going to require anchoring something in a world of easy wardecs. There is a Raitaru in my hangars. It's a sunk cost. I'll see what happens at some point down the line.<br />
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Faffing around with Disintegrators might have to wait. The quiet in Low Sec is getting to me and things seems to be on a cusp in null. It might be time to finally try that experiment. It looked interesting in a shuttle. Imagine the trouble I could cause in other kinds of hull? Life woes are beckoning and I need some place to go that isn't random TV ( GoT aside because a man might have no name but it turns out he can catch up by watching 70 hours of TV in a month ).<br />
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<b>Track(s) of the Day:</b><br />
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It's too easy to become stuck in care bear land, fighting industry slots and not people, so something epic and current to keep me going.<br />
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<a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/2exOqFZpfHpQE8E870qz1A" target="_blank">The Avengers : Alan Silvestri</a><br />
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And a travelling song in honour of shuttle runs:<br />
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<a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/46MX86XQqYCZRvwPpeq4Gi" target="_blank">Lake Shore Drive : Aliotta Haynes Jeremiah</a><br />
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And finally one for my friend <a href="http://turamarths-evelife.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Tur </a>who also found himself back in the black, and so turned this return into a recursion.<br />
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIU4A_TiGeo" target="_blank">Blue Ridge Mountains : Fleet Foxes</a> (that was about as close as I could get to Virginia, hoist the sails!)<br />
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<br />Cheradenine Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06822231437454134489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-456789637460064957.post-70167644320693148692019-03-10T22:26:00.001+00:002019-03-10T22:26:46.484+00:00Day 2428 : Alpha<i>TLDR for Bittervets: \o/ get back in on Alpha and relive it all.</i><br />
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<i>This post may be edited. I'm old, I'm tired, I've actually been playing EVE, kind of...</i><br />
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EVE. It's legendary for the Hotel California aspect of play. Once you've played for any amount of reasonable time, that's it. You're done. <i>You can check out, but you can never leave</i>. Long past the end of the game we'll all be sat in some space simulator crying that it's not complex enough; that it's not deadly enough; that there is no real world impact; where is the market? The irony is that if EVE does die then the sub reddit that has been predicting it since 2004, /r/eve, will go on long after it's death.<br />
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I came back to EVE this time by an odd route. I was looking for the same sense of loss and jump-scare that a full run through of Subnautica provided. Cool ships was a bonus. If you haven't played Subnautica to the end then just go do it.<br />
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A Google search picked up some EVE posts. I read and discovered Alpha. I could play for free? I could go back and see how those characters were doing for nothing? Tick, tick, tick, boom. I'm gone.<br />
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I'd been back in Warcraft after a long break, apart from submarine excursions, loving the landscape, hating the dungeon meta. That dungeon meta of running around. It's like every dungeon should have a Benny Hill soundtrack. Screw it. I'll save my sub for Classic in the summer. I reserve the right to climb mountains on my motorbike though.<br />
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I can't get too bitter about Warcraft. It saved me. I've spent years lurching from one disaster to another. Health wise, Crohns tried to do me in. Work tried to do me in. I spent years using alcohol to escape both. It shows in a lot of my posts. Alcohol not that unusual with Crohns victims but I got lucky and the meds kicked in, as awful as they are. At some point I figured I should give a "Relationship" a go. That <b>really</b> tried to do me in. Christ on a bike that was some level of hurt. Let's not do that again.<br />
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So fuck it, here I am, healthier than I've been in ten years despite the fags and the borderline alcoholism, better at work, and dedicated to celibacy and so full of free time. Warcraft. I played the hell out of that for four months. Plunged all my spare time into it and had a great old time, dungeons aside. Saved my life, but damn, it fades fast.<br />
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Dungeons and half a dozen internet television subs took their toll but Subnautica woke that itch. Crafting like crazy? Danger around every corner? Lusting over vehicles? Uh oh.<br />
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So, Alpha. Things have changed. There is no way I'm going to be able to convey how much.<br />
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Space is full of player made stations. They are simultaneously annoying and useful. I guess I'll go into that in some later post. Suffice to say players have an even more permanent way of stamping their genitals onto space. That's harsh. There are lots of themed names that are quite amusing. I recall flying around the prototypes using the first person camera. It's kind of impressive to see lots of them in one place. Go look at Perimeter.<br />
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EVE is even more gorgeous than it ever was. I can't tell if half of this is my upgraded PC or not. Stations blink and gleam with life. The PC upgrade can't cover the ship remodels. Too many discoveries to go into here but I even found myself lusting after the Caldari industrial models, the Badger and the Tayra, Just watching and spinning is a pleasure. Don't get me started about the Navitas. I wanna fly Logi. I'll leave you to discover the warp animations, remodels, and generally "art" for yourselves.<br />
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I was hooked almost immediately. Like I'd slid the monitor cable into a vein rather than the second monitor Google interface that's almost required. No in game browser anymore. Learning is external!<br />
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Huge amounts of my industrial corp stuff was crippled by limits and extra taxes, but to be fair Faction Warfare is fairly dead and so too my small T2 module border markets. Hey ho. Something to research.<br />
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Half of the Interceptors aren't interdiction nullified anymore so you can't run gatecamps with them and so they're worth half as much. Don't worry though, you can't fly T2 hulls as an Alpha! Yeah. That's gonna suck you back in. I want my Magnum PI style, ruby red, Ares.<br />
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I can't really tell you everything in a succinct post. I've started to babble. I'll list some stuff. Maybe you can vibe off that.<br />
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<ul>
<li>Why do I have a freighter? I don't recall even buying it. It's cool. It's surely way too scary to fly. </li>
<li>SKINS: I'd like to hate the real money grab but I've already bought half a dozen... There are LOADS of them now.</li>
<li>Tristan: looks good in any SKIN</li>
<li>How come my indy alts have that much cash? They've been paying station office bills for years and it's not even made a dent.</li>
<li>WHY FACTION WARFARE? WHY? Low sec is quiet as quiet can be. </li>
<li>Overview learning is hard. Just give up and download one of the nullsec recommended ones as a start and then add the stuff you need.</li>
<li>If you see NPC miners in a belt and there is some "Pirate" base nearby then align out, like, right now. They ain't joking with new AI based NPCs.</li>
</ul>
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It all feels at once familiar and yet full of changes. I'm not even covering the new ships and weapon systems that you can't access as an Alpha.</div>
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Eventually I calm down and decide to do some PVE and see what happens. Practicing Dscan reveals some Salvage drones. I jump into a hard fit Expanded Probe Launcher T1 scanner hull and manage to get to them, abandoned by some fellow noob. I can't use them because they, like so many hulls and ships, are behind the Omega paywall.</div>
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Flush with confidence over scanning I roll out and attempt some sites I can find. Check out the "Agency" thing. I'm scalped a couple of times by a Stratios stealing the final loot but get an escalation.</div>
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At one point I have to pass through low sec into a high sec pocket in Placid and run across two Goons camping the gate in Oulley. One of them gets a long point on me (is that the right term? I’ve forgotten). Shields are stripped in half before I squeak away thanks to a single warp core stab. More of those need fitting in travel. I avoid Oulley on the way back, taking three quieter low sec systems and the long way round hisec to the next encounter, thinking how right I was that those kills in the last hour stats on the map were surprisingly high. Long dormant instincts are coming back.<br /><br />In the end it nets me some drone related crap. I dimly remember this kind of stuff as worthless. I’m wrong. One drop is 44 million worth of capillary fluid. The other stuff fills the gaps. So much for being cheap hauling around my hull and armor reppers. You can park at player stations and get free repair while "tethering" these days anyway.<br /><br />The last encounter gets a tad tasty, I’m down to half hull but its got a repper on it and I’m a hull tanking mobile kennel here, 8K tank in a cheap destroyer, whipping out drones while Black Sabbath Iron Man plays in the background. The hull is wrecked and I sit outside a station calming down while it all repairs itself. <b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<br /><br />About 800K for the hull, 2 million for the fit ( if that ), and about 4 mill in drones (overkill since no drone gets even slightly damaged) and ammo. I flog all the crap at buyout prices in TEST's new Perimeter trading hub, because why not dock there?<br /><br />Overall about 50 million profit for a couple of hours work, as an Alpha, in a fit you could buy for hi sec ratting money or a couple of filled Venture ore holds ( hey, you can't fly any other mining ships). I guess this ignores the fact that I had a Heron to do the initial scanning and the vague memories of having scanned down stuff before. I’d of got carried away and done more but Six Nations rugby on TV is too much of a distraction.<br /><br />There are many, many things not mentioned here, I’ve re-learned less than a tenth of the mechanics of a complex game in the odd hour or two over a week. Essentially though, if you are a bitter vet of any kind and haven’t been back in years, it’s worth a dangerously free visit. You’ll make more of it than me I’m sure. Back in the day I effectively rage quit about not being able to two man a customs office takedown. Sure I was drunk, on horrid combinations of drugs and generally pissed off but what the hell? Really I spent most of my time playing EVE like Stardew Valley. Hello again Spaceship Valley. Can I resist the attempt to PLEX for ISK so I can ship spin in my own space home?<div>
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Second TLDR: Come take a look for free, don't fly angry, more worth it than the best solo game on a PC I ever played.<br />
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<b>Track of the Day:</b><br />
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Hotel California - The Eagles.<br />
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<i>Then stop it halfway through and put on this instead</i><br />
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Raiders March - John Williams<br />
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Cheradenine Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06822231437454134489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-456789637460064957.post-45868144023920516992015-12-19T20:53:00.000+00:002015-12-19T21:04:37.521+00:00Day 1282 : Danger : Space Philately and the Greatest PVP plan ever.Sounds rude doesn't it? No rude here for you. Jog on.<br />
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I convinced myself that my return to EVE would involve a proper community, a vocal involvement in an internet community. Yes Sion. We have those.<br />
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I failed. Life took over, as usual, Crohns is hilarious, and EVE became an intermittent joy. It's EVE.You make your own fun. Gradually things coalesced. It turns out that a minor industry addiction is equivalent to my old Civ addiction. No, Dan, I am not going to get involved in epic Civ V battles with you, I play only to get to nukes anyway. Play EVE damn you.<br />
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So what did I really become involved in? There's only so long that you can chase ISK for the purposes of a total. What's your top score in Pole Position, Chunk?<br />
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Well, crafting in any game I've played has always fascinated me. Add classic EVE complexity and you've got a Space Noob trap. Add a personal desire for self sufficiency and you've got one holy hell of a trap. I became convinced that the plan was to be able to build up from zero ISK without buying anything other than materials I couldn't realistically obtain in a decent time wise fashion. Imagine: one contract or market mistake and the ISK balence is zero. Where to go? Imagine: ganked to death in a corp war. Where to go? Well. I'm nudging researched 500 BPOs at the moment. Not all to top material levels of course. These include all the T1 frigates, insanity like a Dominix, all the parts needed for T2 small industry. Why? I can't make money off them. The market is still swamped with pre revamp battleships. I can save a couple of ISK making my own frigates and cruisers. Maybe.<br />
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But I can make EVERYTHING I might lose. EVERYTHING. Where else can you do that? What other game? Let us not talk of Shroud of the Avatar. Let us not talk of a possible exit from space.<br />
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So I'm a carebear at heart and these are my badges:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUIiV7PeaAHKXBPJwINnsDjQO-sUJdrcIrtNHy3gmvpqcszwy6E1Qarla_AC_fYtu0a1chAKoM7P-BM7jlN3SUc7LoCM2MERM_zdqpiFyb2E-pZE_M3kx8wlZmvnooptRWmFJEeAHv0PF7/s1600/bpos.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="207" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUIiV7PeaAHKXBPJwINnsDjQO-sUJdrcIrtNHy3gmvpqcszwy6E1Qarla_AC_fYtu0a1chAKoM7P-BM7jlN3SUc7LoCM2MERM_zdqpiFyb2E-pZE_M3kx8wlZmvnooptRWmFJEeAHv0PF7/s320/bpos.png" width="320" /></a><br />
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They are stamps. I have pretty much no need to activate their value, but damn, is it fine to just own them. I glory in the ownership. Any political affiliation I have to the left ends at EVE. As is only proper.<br />
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These are more useful. God knows why the script BPO is in there. I do occasionally add to the collection while drunk.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DmbeaQFerAU/VnW9yhlgEfI/AAAAAAAAB2E/4AIb5Hz-6QE/s1600/parts.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="164" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DmbeaQFerAU/VnW9yhlgEfI/AAAAAAAAB2E/4AIb5Hz-6QE/s320/parts.png" width="320" /></a><br />
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BUT<br />
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All this exaggerates my loner personality. I don't want that. I want to branch out. I want to be an active member of a vibrant community.<br />
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So I will, in the new year, probably submit an app to Stay Frosty. I was in there before but. alas, I was already on the down and out of EVE and trailed away before they could save me.<br />
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This time I will employ the lessons I've learned elsewhere. There will be an aim. I'm not your classic EVE player so no killboard stats for me. I will instead aim to kill other players ....<br />
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to incongruous music!<br />
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That's correct, I'm going, in 2016 , join a PVP corp and try to get kills while playing certain tracks.<br />
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I'll report them here but here is the initial taster<br />
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1. <i>If You Leave Me Now</i> - <b>Chicago</b><i> this will be hard because I'll be laughing about ex's all the way through</i><br />
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2. <i>Land of 1000 Dances</i> - <b>Wilson Picket. </b>Crazy orbit MWD shit<br />
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3.<i> With a Little Help From My Friends </i>- <b>Joe Cocker</b>. Has to be a fleet fight.<br />
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4. <i>You Give A Little Love </i>-<b> Paul Williams. </b>Might have to use ECM. Sorry.</div>
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5. <i>Ain't No Mountain High Enough </i>- <b>Marvin Gaye, Tammi Terrell</b>. This one devoted to an upclass kill, frigates vs a battlecruiser</div>
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6. <i>Spooky</i> - <b>Dusty Springfield</b>. A cloaky torpedo kill here. </div>
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I'll come up with some more, but essentially I need to spend 2016 shooting people to my odd taste in music rather than obsessing about small blue squares. </div>
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<b>Track of the Day</b>: <i>Don't Give Up On Me</i> - <b>Solomon Burke</b></div>
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PS. Must get a kill to <i>Then He Kissed Me</i> by <b>The Crystals</b>. </div>
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Cheradenine Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06822231437454134489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-456789637460064957.post-22582296581323617302015-11-14T23:55:00.001+00:002015-11-14T23:55:08.548+00:00Day 1247 : The Price of Knowledge and How To Be BackI'm back spending some time in New Eden. Lured back by news of upcoming changes. The greatest of these being the announcement of the plans for the sale of skill points. I don't really need to use it but I love the idea of it. I've read so many wary acceptance statements, and quite a lot more fearful declarations but I can't help feeling it's good for the game. Part of me suspects that it's another step on the road to free-to-play (even before I read this excellent <a href="http://crossingzebras.com/why-dust-for-pc-and-a-f2p-eve-are-more-likely-than-you-think/" target="_blank">tinfoil hat version</a>) . I'm still thinking about the impacts of F2P but since EVE will always be "hard" no matter your skills, or even your wallet, how bad could it be? Good job they're updating EVE with Brain In A Box then they can handle the influx. Presumably the increase in the number of explosions on grid will be as exponential as the dreaded learning curve.<br />
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Back to the skills. Why do I love the idea of the ability to buy knowledge (thought not the ability to apply that knowledge)? I guess it's because I'm a fan of plans. Having a plan, finding out how to enact a plan and then bending your effort towards completing that plan. There is fun. EVE is great for plans, there is always something else to try and do. The method of obtaining the ability to do something is much more important than actually doing it once you can. It's a journey thing. But. The amount of times in EVE I've had a plan and then it's turned into "made the skill plan, now sit back and wait". See, I have a problem. I can't just go off half cocked. I'm a coward. Fools rush in and have all the fun. I sit back and glory in the safety of my cloud based harp performance. Essentially I'm bored because of fear. In a game where fear is the underlying element of attraction. The shakes this game can cause, the visceral dread, the adrenaline spikes. No gaming experience I've ever had matches it. Enough of fear, that's a story for another day. And yes, I have a plan to get over that too.<br />
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Within a day of returning I had a plan for an alt. I grabbed an old PLEX, I activated the characters training with the month worth of skills it would take me to get there. Then I sat back. I did nothing. I thought to myself "I'll be able to explore that part of the game in a month or so". I was about to crash back out of EVE, just like the last couple of times I'd restarted. I couldn't help but think of when I'd felt the same in my early EVE career. What had kept me going back then? I had plenty to distract me. I had aims that could only be completed by engaging with the game. Despite this there were always those moment where I thought "So, next week" or "In a month or two". Thankfully I was off exploring and experimenting back then. Hell, sometimes I was even mining.<br />
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Fortunately I'd started reading round the blogosphere again. I can't recall what particular post caused it but it was <a href="http://nevillesmit.com/" target="_blank">Neville Smit</a> writing somewhere. Talking about plans and returning to EVE. So I looked up my old plans notes. There was a wealth of minor achievements there that I'd never got around to. Tiny things, lots of pointless things mainly but lots to do. I put one foot on the road and a week later I was shouting as I warped a Stratios home from an ill thought out attempt at a Ghost Site. For the record, the cruisers appeared after a minute and also, they hit very, very, hard. Thankfully they get distracted when an alt Caracal warps in and side swipes them with a rash of rapid lights before warping out. Either that, or they are unforgivably slow. Warp disruption icons are the scariest thing I have ever seen.<br />
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Maybe I played too many theme park games where you actively play/work towards a goal. Maybe, if new players, inevitably mainly from theme park world, could work towards their goals they could <i>play</i> the game as a mean to an ends <i>in the game</i>. Maybe then they could feel the possibilities we all have and they'd be in game while they realised them. Then they'd have the experiences which are more important than what they were actually working towards. Difficulty and loss would be part of the game and not a threat.<br />
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Maybe "theme park" has become a swear word and we're scared of it when it comes to our sandbox. I'm probably just dancing around the topic of "player engagement".<br />
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Maybe I confused "plan" with "skill plan".<br />
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Maybe I'm just a boring old coward. That has to end. I have a plan. This one can only be actioned by playing the game. What's the worst that could happen? The plan I have doesn't have any skill points attached to it, otherwise I'd wait another month or two before engaging.<br />
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<b>EVE Track of the Day</b><br />
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I Need Never Get Old - Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats<br />
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<br />Cheradenine Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06822231437454134489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-456789637460064957.post-356745764580577812015-10-31T13:27:00.000+00:002015-10-31T13:27:44.060+00:00Day 1233 : BB68 - Back In The Saddle?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 68th edition! For more details about what the blog banters are please visit the <a href="http://sandciderandspaceships.blogspot.com/p/blog-banters.html">Blog Banters Page</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://sandciderandspaceships.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/eve-blog-banter-68-this-is-my-rig.html">BB68: This is my Rig, There are Many Like it...</a>What do you play Eve on? I'll show you mine if you show me yours! Are you pew-pewing on a laptop? Plotting universal domination on a 12 monitor set up? Mining away on a 50" TV? Is your set up located where your other half can speak to you or do you lock yourself away for hours in your Eve themed shed? How do you play your important internet spaceships?<br /><br />Banter on!<br /><br />===============================================================</blockquote>
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Heh. Is this thing on? Does it still work? Brush the dust (not that DUST) off the blog and wonder why, as Winter Is Coming, I find myself spending the last few evenings digging through mountains of crap stored in a set of hangars in a series stations scattered all across New Eden.<div>
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Picture The Rig time eh? Blimey, I haven't done this in oooh, <a href="http://diaries-of-a-space-noob.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/day-561-how-do-you-eve.html" target="_blank">672 days</a>.<br /><div>
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The PC isn't anything special, an i7 with 14Gb of RAM crippled slightly by a poor disc and an ageing graphics card. Replacements for both the disc and the card are scheduled for next year. Disc swapping hassle. Urgh.</div>
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i7-2600 3.4Ghz</div>
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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti</div>
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A pair of smallish monitors in the 22-24" range, running at 1980x1080</div>
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Sound comes from a set of Logitech speakers that I forget the specs of but that I can't run even halfway up without aggressing the neighbours. EVE has sound you know. The Moa warp configuration made a noise yesterday! My God!</div>
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I can run a couple of EVE clients on this with fairly high graphics settings as long as I don't start thinking about how I need to hoover the inside of the PC case when the graphics card fan starts whirring. The desktop itself is tucked away underneath the desk. You can just see a Kindle charging cable draped across the dusty top of it at the bottom of the picture. It's parked next to a printer I hardly ever use.</div>
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Right of that is an old (ish) laptop that gets used for EVEMon, EFT, Netflix, etc when the two main screens are in use. </div>
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Right of that you can just see a third monitor which is hooked up to a 10 year old PC running Linux. This I occasionally use for coding experiments and quick parsing of text files such as CSV exports from EVEMon. It's a fairly new addition to the desk. In reality it probably sees less use than that bottle of whisky sat in front of the monitor and certainly less use than the NERF crossbow that sits on top of that monitor (bow not pictured, other fake weapons are available). Theoretically it will one day host my own trade&industry managing web app. Theoretically.</div>
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The desk has stood the test of time. Custom built by the old man, cantilevered so there are no legs to kick out, and fitted exactly to the corner of the room. I spend a LOT of time at it. Until recently not much of that time has been EVE time. The last return didn't take.</div>
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Minor detailing includes a ramekin full of RPG dice that I make important decisions with (do I nip into lowsec? Wooo, 19 on a d20. Etc, etc) and, somewhere, a tiny Millenium Falcon!</div>
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Homeward Bound - Simon & Garfunkel</div>
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Cheradenine Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06822231437454134489noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-456789637460064957.post-48963354787510086822015-03-28T17:21:00.002+00:002015-03-28T23:00:12.997+00:00Day 1016: The AltsGigantic overhead spotlights burst into life, harsh electric cracks reverberating around the cavernous station storage bay. Dust cascaded slowly downwards like grey waterfalls in the newly activated gravity. With a hiss the observation deck airlock iris closed, leaving three men standing imperiously over a seemingly endless array of battered cargo modules.<br /><br />“Huh, dust” said one, “I thought this place was hermetically sealed? No place for Dust here.”<br /><br />“I think it’s a poorly executed descriptive device to indicate extreme age or abandonment.” replied another, warily.<br /><br />The third man, their leader, strode forward. His featureless disposable combat fatigues, obviously freshly printed, hissed as the fabric moved. The impression was that of a snake, readied to strike.<br /><br />“Bugger” he muttered.<br /><br />“Shit, bollocks, and and bugger again for good measure.”, this time slightly louder.<br /><br />His compatriots waited. Similar descriptions had crossed their minds.<br /><br />“Boss wants this sorted. Potential of use he says. Wants the entire operation reactivated.”<br /><br />Snidely: “Just in case”.<br /><br />There was a moment of consideration, furrowed brows, a dangerous economic calculus beyond mere scientific estimation. Each face bore the hallmarks of accidents in such intellectual wars. Each man paused to consider the technical ramifications of such an exercise. A conclusion that couldn’t be articulated:<br /><br />“Boss is fuckin’ mad then”.<br /><br />“Yup” said the third, “Bonkers, wacko and more besides. Never made a good decision in his entire afterlife. Nevertheless, boss says jump, and by jump he means a billion in disposable ISK a month. As if he ever spends it, the lackwit, danger averse nutter. I’m gonna wake the scanner and the idiot. If I’m up, so are they.”<br /><br />“I need to kick the tyres on the old Iteron then”<br /><br />“Called summink else now, all of em. Concord knows what else has changed since we were last doing this crap.”<br /><br />The two men walked off the deck, airlock irising open silently to receive them.<br /><br />“Hey”, said the last, to himself, “I think we left some Radioactive Material down there, for like, months!?”<br /><br />He was alone, no one to hear him scream. Which he wasn’t going to do. Because he felt it would have been a bit girly. And he wasn’t in space.<br /><br />“I think there’s bound to be some dead Fedos and Militants in those pods ‘n all by now. This op is gonna stink in more ways than one.” he muttered. “This isn’t going to work”.<br /><br />He turned and walked from the observation deck, slightly spoiling his exit by failing to trigger the iris.<br /><br /><i>“I’m bad at EVE”</i><br /><b>EVE Track of the Day </b>: New World in the Morning - Roger Whittaker<br /><br />(had to start on an odd note, you can blame me watching Calvary the other night for that. And you can blame Fan Fest coverage and the <a href="http://www.evealtruist.com/" target="_blank">Altruist</a> for this attempt to return to EVE. )<div>
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PS. Thanks Google Docs for the formatting. Fixed that</div>
Cheradenine Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06822231437454134489noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-456789637460064957.post-56244988515938825202014-09-24T14:30:00.000+01:002014-09-24T14:33:45.833+01:00Day 832 : Roid Rage and the EndNow then, don't be rushing in on the title alone and thinking I've been ganked by CODE while mining, subsequently gone postal, quit and denounced EVE just because of a single set back that the game set me up for in the first place. The Roid Rage I'm talking about here has nothing to do with asteROIDS and more to do with steROIDS. Prescribed ones. I'm not taking steroids to build up muscles because, really, WTF would I use those for? I've been taking them for a good reason - see <a href="http://diaries-of-a-space-noob.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/day-767-postcard-from-nexus.html" target="_blank">http://diaries-of-a-space-noob.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/day-767-postcard-from-nexus.html </a><br />
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They didn't tell me that "roid rage" was an actual thing. After several encounters with it I reserved my EVE play to my industry characters. I was left exhausted by almost PVP on my front door step in RL at one point thanks to these drugs. Don't keep ringing my doorbell late at night when I'm on steroids. There's a life lesson for you. God alone knows what I would have done had I entered rage mode during a low sec frigate scrap. Probably smashed my keyboard out of the window using the monitor as a bat or something along those lines. I'd of been famous on reddit for a day.</div>
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They don't tell you that roid rage has a sinister euphoric equivalent. I didn't think that wandering the haunted lanes of low sec was advisable in this state either. It'd be like seeing someone skipping through a field of daises, singing at the top of their voice, whilst actually in The Walking Dead. Inadvisable.</div>
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I was on the cusp of trying something new when the Roid Redaction descision was made. I'm going to get back to that soon but you know what it's like when you abandon some project for a couple of months in EVE. You get back to your hangars whose contents probably reflected some masterplan, you look at said contents with a sense of discovery, and you say "what the living fuck is all this crap?". It might take me a few days to sort out.</div>
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The last month has been largely filled with optimising the industry plan outlined in <a href="http://diaries-of-a-space-noob.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/day-780-abandoning-margins.html">http://diaries-of-a-space-noob.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/day-780-abandoning-margins.html</a>. A lot of that is downtime. Autopiloting, the odd amount of mining, staring at stock levels, staring at the cash icon in the sidebar, daring the bugger to blink. That kind of boring old nonsense.</div>
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I did get up to some other stuff that caused a little more excitement but not so much that I stood the chance of turning into The Incredible Roid Hulk. </div>
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Firstly, a round of reorganising turned up an odd faction blueprint that I'd missed. I generally keep these aside for some future use. I got them out of COSMOS missions on my first character, grinding reputation for a POS (back when you needed reputation to anchor them). Idly I checked the blueprint in the new industry interface. Then I checked it again. Then I made a spreadsheet and did all the calculations myself. Then I flew to Jita, sat in 4-4, and looked at the prices. I read them aloud. I counted the numbers. In other words, standard EVE levels of paranoia and nothing drug related. A 3 run BP was going to make me around 2 billion profit. Somewhere I'd picked up a 3 run BPC for <a href="https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/'Radical'_Damage_Control_I">https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/'Radical'_Damage_Control_I</a></div>
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I expressed out loud how much of a "shame" it was that I couldn't remember where I got it. I've quoted the word <i>shame</i> as it covers a series of expletive based tirades that I couldn't utter in a prison, let alone a blog.</div>
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Anyway I built all three, spent several hours deciding on the best way to get them to Jita, got annoyed with the whole thing, ran them to Jita one by one in an Interceptor. Not, in hindsight, the greatest idea. Exciting though. The most exciting and adrenaline laden twelve mouse clicks that there has ever been.</div>
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I received a less sizeable windfall, but a surprisingly large one nonetheless, when using a pair of destroyers to run hi sec sites. There's a DED 3/10 that crops up now and again in high sec and a few of those left me 200 million richer in a day. The money was eclipsed by the surprise at how much fun I had running the sites with two destroyers. It was a lot more hands on than normal PVE and somewhere along the way I fell in love with an MWDing rocket fit Corax. I'd have my Algos and it's drones gather up all the attention and then yell "Dive!" and drive right into the center of the mobs exploding as many things as possible with rockets. Who said EVE PVE can't be fun? It might be the closest I'll ever get in EVE to the run of the Killing Time in Excession by Iain M Banks. What can I say? It killed some time.</div>
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The same pair of destroyers also encountered some weird station scenery attached to the bizzaro Gallente science station model. I'd go and make sure it's common scenery of some form but I'm rather attached to the notion that it's an alien UFO. "No one would have believed, in the last hours of a steroidal nightmare, that Gallente affairs were being watched by a small, green, blinking light."</div>
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Midnight Confessions - The Grass Roots</div>
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Cheradenine Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06822231437454134489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-456789637460064957.post-65920897238149682502014-08-04T15:26:00.002+01:002014-08-04T15:54:26.859+01:00Day 780: Abandoning the MarginsCrius was released, and with it the great Hoover Dam level EVE block I've had. The waxing and waning of interest in EVE is something that initially worried me but that since I've come to view as something natural. Not just for myself, I see it in others. While I've had other reasons for a ebb in EVE interest I'm probably just as much affected by the summer of the northern hemisphere as the rest of us are. There is something about EVE that lends itself to play during the dark.<br />
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All I did to break this block was log back in to evaluate the changes to the industry and the effect it would have on my profit margins. When I do industry (it's been a while) I cook up small scale T2 module production for things common to all PVP fits with a side order of frigate guns and a smidgen of riggery.<br />
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The UI was an instant joy. Gone are the boring lists and constant menu clicking. The entire process of T2 production was previously an RSI inducing nightmare of clickage against a dull background. Now the process is more "get picture, press buttan, circle appear, pretty, press buttan, receive shiny". That's about it, the UI serves as a both a pretty visualisation, a guide and a useful approximation of the process and costs. I've my quibbles with the UI outside of the bugs. The bugs I've seen are generally to do with it not updating fast enough or claiming I can't build due to lack of components when I can. I can live with them as long as I press the button and it works, which it generally has. Other problems are slightly more irritating<br />
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<li> Missing price per unit in the cost approximations for materials. As a small scale producer the total cost of the batch of say Quantum Microprocessors is just annoying. I want the price per unit. Because I'm lazy. Yes - I can do the mental arithmetic but I don't want to. The approximations job is to do that, the market displays in PPU, why not the estimate based on the market? </li>
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<li>Missing value in the System Cost index. The single bar isn't enough. Where is the actual percentage? I'm not losing any sleep over it mind, I actually don't care that much about it. It is annoying. Maybe I've missed it, certainly the values are available via the CREST API</li>
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<li>The Invention calculation cost summary factors the decryptor in every time when in fact the decryptor isn't used up so it's cost is really amortised over every Invention job you do with it. Having it there just makes the approximation useful if you're only ever going to do one Invention run and then throw the decryptor away.</li>
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By and large though I love it, it's graphical yet concise, informative yet clean.<br />
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Possibly the greatest thing about Crius is the removal of the queue system for available task slots in stations. Queues were one of the main reasons I first ran a POS. The entrance barriers to a new player wanting to perform research on a BPO and get into industry were dictated by queues of older players hogging the system of limited slots. Now a new player can buy a BPO and get started straight away. Sure there is a cost associated with it but there is no absolute block as there was before. If I have the BPO and the ISK and the station has the facilities then I just press the button. While previously manufacturing slots were generally available somewhere within reach there were still queuing occasions. Now a new player can just hit the button, and go do something while the result cooks up. It's a fantastic removal of frustration and a fantastic addition of fulfillment. It also led to my idea for <a href="http://diaries-of-a-space-noob.blogspot.co.uk/p/project-appleseed.html" target="_blank">Project Appleseed</a>, as did build times.<br />
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The times taken for various tasks have all been revamped. Copying takes forever though the new system of Invention taking just one run from a BPC rather than the whole thing makes this even out for me. Invention times are scarily longer and are a possible bottleneck for me. Manufacturing time seems to be massively down across the board. Again this is very handy for new players. It's probably the speed of manufacture that makes me so wary of the Invention times - I'm going to consume T2 blueprints faster than I can produce them if I'm not careful.<br />
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Much has been written about the added costs of industry. Even POS owners are being charged a tax on their industry tasks. POS now mirror the sure things in life. Death and Taxes. I looked into the station charges with some trepidation only to find out that the impact on low volume, high margin trade goods isn't going to be that bad. Even building in a station where I have bad standings. I did some quick mental calculations, dangerously eschewing my usual "resort to spreadsheet" solution. Erring on the side of utter disaster there was a chance I'd take a 5% cut in profits. 5%. Five. Even now I'm sure I got something wrong. A day after I caved in and did this in a spreadsheet (because the phrase "spreadsheets in space" doesn't just come from the Overview). That spreadsheet claimed my entire station charges averaged down for a single run (don't ever actually run singles off 10 run T2 BPCs, EVER. Make all 10 at once, or at least enough so that low ME percentages are applied effectively) added 10,000 ISK raw profit drain to the item in question. It was an extreme case but that was about a single percent of the margin. Even so, it did make me glad I wasn't in the business of T1 production where it's generally high volume, low margin. I should note here that the system I'm in seems to have a fairly low cost index.<br />
<br />
Not only are POS owners being charged tax but they must now store the blueprints in the POS modules themselves rather than at a local station, increasing the risk substantially. Now, on the surface, Crius is a POS popularising release. You no longer need standings to anchor a POS and you can anchor in higher security systems. There are plenty more locations for POS now. Given the calculations above it didn't seem worth it to throw up a POS for me. I'd guess maybe for refining and maybe for T1 work but not for me. I'd be saving a ton on fuel blocks too, eating into the profit impact of station charges.<br />
<br />
So, my old business looked interesting again. I didn't investigate Teams because the process and interface feel like the spectre of the old industry UI for some reason. That and the fact that they aren't useful at my volume of production. The only problems facing me if I were to take up my old business again were:<br />
<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li> Invention was going to take some more planning due to the time taken. The previous hour long runs made it possible to submit two sets in the mornings on my inventor, and even more in the evenings.</li>
</ul>
<div>
<br /></div>
<ul>
<li>POS are actually more annoying in Crius than before, despite being easier to put up. It's as if CCP would rather us not use them. I'll leave speculation about that to others for now but there is a big fat question mark hanging over POS use.</li>
</ul>
<div>
<br /></div>
<ul>
<li>My home station only had manufacturing capabilities.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<br />
So I came up with a plan and like that I was back in EVE. In addition to this, the ease of starting industry for new players (mainly the removal of the time barriers) made me come up with Project Appleseed. Things to do! Returned to the fold by Crius! Who can say that?<br />
<br />
<b>The Plan :</b><br />
<br />
1. Move to a station with the capability to perform all the necessary science jobs. Don't put up a POS. Given that the station I'm in has been home to one or more characters for pretty much my entire career this meant a lot of moving. Thankfully my main alt can fly Orcas, Freighters and now Transport ships. I bought a Transport ship to speed things up. I tried not to apply the cost of this to my thoughts on profit margins but strangely the worst bit of the entire thing (apart from the one point I got bored and jumped several billions worth of stuff in an unscouted and unfit Freighter) was<br />
<br />
2. Revitalise the industry character and the two support alts, making sure they all have 10 science and manufacturing jobs each. Easily said. I spent 1.5 billion on PLEX to activate the training queues. I definitely tried not to apply this to my notions of profit impact. This is the longest step and should be complete by the end of the month. I might squeeze in Frigate Construction V on one of them too though theoretically it's getting to around the time that I need to think about getting Cyno' IV on them all.<br />
<br />
3. Bulk submit jobs or whatever, whenever, rather than for optimal reasons. There will be some plan but essentially industry will be less demanding. The same timing will apply to market sales. I'll let them roll on their own for longer and restock at longer intervals.<br />
<br />
4. Reactivate my PI farm but put it on slow mode, basically as a minor source of income and materials that I activate once every few days or more rather than the 24 hour cycles I had going previously. Coolant and Uranium were being produced for fuel which means I'm now carrying something to Jita when I go for materials I can't produce (or reasonably source locally).<br />
<br />
5. Produce stuff once a month for <a href="http://diaries-of-a-space-noob.blogspot.co.uk/p/project-appleseed.html" target="_blank">Project Appleseed</a>.<br />
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6. Produce ships and modules for my main character, who now also has new plans that will be focused around having a little more relaxing fun than normal.<br />
<br />
Basically I decided to abandon my fear of the margins after what I discovered. No small business min/maxing. I'm taking my cue from the industry UI and making the entire thing easy fun rather than a cerebral exercise (fun, of a sort, though that may be). Sure, it won't support as much but the ease of industry now makes it a hobby rather than a full time EVE pursuit. I applied this to PI to and found myself deluged by the result anyway. More than enough for some useful spending cash which comes in handy when you start thinking about 10000 ISK increments and then suddenly spend 1.7 billion. This too had it's advantages. I always felt before that ISK was an anchor, that it was important and that I had to have a certain amount of it rather than spending it. Logically I knew that liquid ISK was just losing value all the time but I was wedded to that bank balance for weird and paranoid reasons (as natural as they are in EVE). Now I've decided I'll just spend some stuff. As ever I went too far and, after a drink or three, I woke one morning to find that the outlay described above had a fully fitted Naga added to it. Not only that but it was named the "Sulaco" and the hold contained ten Marines and three Tourists. I guess even drunk I wasn't prepared to use a Slave or a Janitor to represent Bishop.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-alLLR-B9LNY/U9-X9KIga1I/AAAAAAAAA8k/mYu-7LUyCBg/s1600/sulaco.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-alLLR-B9LNY/U9-X9KIga1I/AAAAAAAAA8k/mYu-7LUyCBg/s1600/sulaco.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
I'm thinking I should have called this post "How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Spend My ISK" or maybe "Stop Criusing Your Heart Out"<br />
<br />
<b>EVE Track of the Day</b><br />
<br />
I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free - Nina Simone<br />
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<br />
<br />Cheradenine Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06822231437454134489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-456789637460064957.post-70317026480882219572014-07-22T20:37:00.000+01:002014-07-22T20:37:00.240+01:00Day 767 : A Postcard from NexusIt was inevitable that I'd give Wildstar a try sooner or later. I just didn't think it would be sooner, or that it would take over so rapidly for various reasons I'll go into. So there is going to be some discussion of a theme park MMO here.<br />
<br />
For those who think I've fallen from the true path then you might read something that today gave me giddy nostalgia for the realms of New Eden. Over on <a href="http://www.lowseclifestyle.com/" target="_blank">Low Sec Lifestyle</a> Sugar has written about how she became an FC for a bunch of self professed carebears under the hammer of a war dec. She learns to FC and they learned to be FC'd. It reminded me that the glory of EVE isn't really those stories that the mainstream media pick up on. It isn't the Burn Jita or Titanomachy videos I send non EVE-playing friends. Instead it's the smaller narratives woven by the innocents that compels. I care more about the story of the newb who went to war in a frigate he could barely fly or afford to lose than about the story of a Titan pilot who can shrug off the loss. Go read, be entertained, jump in a frigate. With both this and the Crius release on my mind I feel I'll be back between gates sooner or later. Anyway, this is the story in order I think:<br />
<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.lowseclifestyle.com/2014/07/and-suddenly-random-decision-stampedes.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" target="_blank">http://www.lowseclifestyle.<u></u>com<wbr></wbr>/2014/07/and-suddenly-<u></u>random-<wbr></wbr>decision-stampedes.html</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.lowseclifestyle.com/2014/07/defiance-fleet-first-encounter.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" target="_blank">http://www.lowseclifestyle.<u></u>com<wbr></wbr>/2014/07/defiance-fleet-<u></u>first-<wbr></wbr>encounter.html</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.lowseclifestyle.com/2014/07/defiance-fleet-first-roam.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" target="_blank">http://www.lowseclifestyle.<u></u>com<wbr></wbr>/2014/07/defiance-fleet-<u></u>first-<wbr></wbr>roam.html</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.lowseclifestyle.com/2014/07/defiance-fleet-feisty-ventures.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" target="_blank">http://www.lowseclifestyle.<u></u>com<wbr></wbr>/2014/07/defiance-fleet-<u></u>feisty<wbr></wbr>-ventures.html</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.lowseclifestyle.com/2014/07/defiance-fleet-kittens-making-kills.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" target="_blank">http://www.lowseclifestyle.<u></u>com<wbr></wbr>/2014/07/defiance-fleet-<u></u>kitten<wbr></wbr>s-making-kills.html</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.lowseclifestyle.com/2014/07/defiance-fleet-blob-on-loose.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" target="_blank">http://www.lowseclifestyle.<u></u>com<wbr></wbr>/2014/07/defiance-fleet-<u></u>blob-<wbr></wbr>on-loose.html</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.lowseclifestyle.com/2014/07/defiance-fleet-rykkis-reflections.html" style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" target="_blank">http://www.lowseclifestyle.<u></u>com<wbr></wbr>/2014/07/defiance-fleet-<u></u>rykkis<wbr></wbr>-reflections.html</a></li>
</ul>
<br />
<br />
<br />
So I'll be back, or I will once things get sorted. Summer hit England and with it (and the usual lull and changes in my gaming habits) the annoying news that I was getting more ill. I have Crohns disease. I generally refuse to call it that and refer to it as the "Witches" and it's intermittent attacks as "witchfire". Punning cheers you up. I'm lucky though, it's a fairly mild case compared to some, including at least one EVE player we've lost to it this year. However, an MRI result revealing it spread sent the doctors into a preventative panic. Since I felt well beforehand and haven't felt worse in years afterwards I'm assuming I'm a victim of the interpretation of shitty JPEG compression coming out of a 15 year old MRI machine but what do I know? They put me on immuno suppressants which promptly made me so ill I had to go on a course of steroids too. Entertaining fact - I have to phone up if I have "strange or frightening thoughts". Newsflash doc'. I have them all the time. I have to phone up if I "see or hear things which aren't there". A) How do I tell and B) I'm a gamer and a nerd. I purposefully try to "see or hear things which aren't there" all the goddamn time.<br />
<br />
What does all this grim medical shit (ah ha ha) have to do with a theme park MMO? Well, it's easy to pick up. The game, not the disease ( not that it is a disease technically). At the start Wildstar is easy. No fiendish plans, no secondary backup plans and no disaster plans required to go and do some basic PVE. I'm not in the kind of place where I want a nervous, adrenaline laced, edge to everything I do in a game.<br />
<br />
But "it's just Warcraft!" I hear you cry. Well, it is and it isn't. At first you are just in a standard theme park. Go there, kill these guys, come back, press button, receive reward, add "Pavlovs favourite" to your character title. That kind of thing. It was a relief just to have nonsensical stuff to do without fear, whether the adrenaline laden fear of EVE is a good thing or not ( and it is ), considering what was going on. Then the game started to make me laugh. It's a cheesy humour but it's rife with it. The first few times my character levelled up just made me laugh. Not just the incredibly over the top animation but the messages played over the top of that. And I do mean "over the top". It's like an answer to the old message of "ding!" you'd say when you messaged a friend in Warcraft to say you had levelled up. In Wildstar you might as well play the first bells of Big Ben in comparison. As I said to someone at the time, "That's a big fuckin' ding". Humour and exuberance are rife. Of course this makes the game less "serious" which at the time was a big a draw as anything for me. I needed a non-serious refuge.<br />
<br />
Then surprisingly the game turned out to have a hard edge.<br />
<br />
Combat isn't target, click buttons, loot. It's target, run around trying to aim, plan your boosting mechanic, try not to aggro everything in range, and then try and stay out of the red. I knew top class raiders in Warcraft that couldn't stay out of the red. They'd be dead every ten minutes after level 20 in Wildstar. Dungeons are apparently challenging from the get go. I refused to get involved in long term group things for reasons I've covered above.<br />
<br />
Healing is worse, in a good way. I used to be a healer in Warcraft and it could be tough up at the raid and heroic dungeon level. I've healed one five man mob in Wildstar and it made me swear to get to 50 on one character and then go back and consider the entire thing again. Having to aim heals while people are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, while dealing with odd class mechanics and damage that has to be avoided is a lot harder than it looks. It certainly made flying logi in EVE a lot more appealing, something I avoided like the plague after my Warcraft healer days.<br />
<br />
The market is more complex than Warcraft. Admittedly it is no where near the free market of New Eden but it's there. Buy and Sell orders are possible. Knowing what these where and having certain experiences in EVE to back me up meant that I was pretty much sorted for cash from about level 15. I've calmed it down a bit but there is still no way I'll need to worry about cash until I do something stupid like raiding ( which I won't be doing ) and even then I think I'll be ok. I'm not at the levels of purchasing CREDD ( the equivalent of PLEX ) but who cares? I could do it if I wanted<br />
<br />
Crafting in the game is a little more involved than Warcraft. Not that excitingly so, in fact occasionally random and annoying to the point of difficulty, and not the satisfying result of intellect that it is in EVE. My main skills were easy enough to level so that I was sat around getting the materials from buy orders because I'd never been to the places where the materials I needed were available to gather. Then I discovered the "hobby". Cooking. It became an obsession to get 15 talent points in it. They had deliberately made it trying and difficult and so I got addicted to it. In the end I just used the market to avoid the otherwise incredible level of grind that it represents and got what I wanted. It took some planning and my conclusion was that I'd gone from being a starship and weapon manufacturing expert to a character having some difficulties making a certain type of sausage. The humour was not lost on me and again the game made me laugh.<br />
<br />
Housing. Yes. I wasn't going to get into virtual doll housing either. Then I did. Finding the optimal position for the liquor filled bar you are installing in your house, finding the optimal position for the huge eyeball you found in some random challenge, finding you can install personal challenge tasks. They take their toll. Let's face it, if CCP turned around with a working Walking in Stations implementation tomorrow where decor for your quarters was paid for in AUR then the spike in PLEX prices would make the last six months of PLEX inflation look like a one pence increase on your favourite snack bar. At one point I seriously considered what EVE would be like had Walking In Stations worked, and worked well. It looks like the guys at Wildstar just took all the crap they made the world out of, stuck it in various places for you to find and then gave you a blank canvas. I can't imagine it was a lot of work to make a player version of their own world building tools compared to developing the rest of the game and it's worked out well for them.<br />
<br />
Are there any bad points to consider? Absolutely loads but I'll stick to two comparisons to give you an idea.<br />
<br />
vs Warcraft : The world is too zoned. You always feel like you are in a zone rather than just a part of the world. Often zones in Warcraft had long running borders and it made you feel like part of the world. You'd pass through old areas on the way to somewhere else and reminisce. In Wildstar you just teleport around and follow the paths through the gaps in scenery to the next zone. Open world it is not, not really.<br />
<br />
vs EVE : Damn Wildstar is visually noisy. I had to log back into EVE to calm down and make sure my eyeballs got a rest. There is so much shit going on all over the shop, it's a visual assault. The most powerful muscles in my body right now must be in my eye sockets. Give it a rest guys and put some calm places in.<br />
<br />
Will I continue to play Wildstar? Well I don't think I'll ever be able to fully leave EVE. I've been keeping characters skilling over the past month mainly because I had plans but even if I let my sub drop I'll be back one day to use them. It's an old EVE story we've heard before. The Hotel California of games. There are other games nudging gently into my awareness, Landmark and ArcheArge among them. I'll continue to monitor the situation but for now, with my own body conspiring with the NHS to kill me, I'll leap from a precipice on a hoverboard, flip out my twin pistols and gun down a ton of angry something or others and laugh. Then two minutes later I'll switch off and go and watch some TV, secure in the knowledge that I had a little thing to do and a laugh.<br />
<br />
While I watch TV that little thread of thought, almost autonomic now, that didn't exist until two years ago, will be plotting and scheming. Perhaps just as it was always meant to.<br />
<br />
<b>EVE Track of the Day</b><br />
<br />
Hotel California - The Eagles<br />
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<br />Cheradenine Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06822231437454134489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-456789637460064957.post-55076078084065830482014-06-17T20:56:00.001+01:002014-06-17T20:57:31.386+01:00Day 731 : SabbaticalThe 16/06/2012 is the second birthday of my first character. Forgive me Bob for I have sinned. It's been two years since I joined EVE and I still haven't lived in a 'hole. One day, perhaps.<br />
<br />
The summer of 2014 promises abundant sport on TV and radio with the World Cup, Wimbledon and the cricket. The summer of 2014 promises a metric ton of work stress. The summer of 2014 promises a lot of days and weekends out with friends. The summer of 2014 does not promise a lot of EVE.<br />
<br />
Don't get me wrong. I'm not quitting, I'm not even retiring one of my accounts. My plans for the summer include EVE plans but the ones that involve flying a ship will probably be short treks here and there, perhaps a little bit of mining or industry. As usual with EVE they include a metric ton of training.<br />
<br />
<b>Main</b> : All cruisers to level V and to round off a few missile support skills. All cruisers to V and all medium weapon skills to V means I'll be able to use T2 weapons on any T1 hull under Battleships. I'll nudge those all to IV at some point and inevitably start contemplating null sec, a project best left for winter.<br />
<br />
<b>Scanning alt </b>: I idly trained a scanning alt up to max scanning skills and it's been a boon while living in lowsec. The focus on belts has reduced the concentration on anomalies. I'm going to train him into some half assed mining/ecm/logi roles and see how much use that is. Prospect pilot FTW.<br />
<br />
<b>Industry alt:</b> My ill fated industry alt is waiting for the industry changes in the next patch. Then I'll investigate more. His skills were already as high as needed so I've been training him elsewhere as discussed in earlier posts. In a slight diversion from that plan he's being aimed at Transport ships because I can build pretty much every T1 frigate and can't get them anywhere without the beast of slowness (an Orca) being pulled out of dry dock.<br />
<br />
<b>Industry support alt:</b> A comedy sideline in missile firing battleships proved entertaining but I'll probably stop PLEX training this one when it runs out at the end of the month.<br />
<br />
<br />
So, I have plans for training and while I've had some entertaining times dodging the newly busy low sec belts (Mordus - god send for activity, and an excellent scrap and a kill to boot) I'm going to be far away for the most part. My gaming energy this summer is fairly minimal and intermittent. Neither traits are conducive to a proper EVE experience so it's time for a holiday. Not a real bittervet holiday, not a log off and curse EVE until some big news item draws me back in holiday. A big, lightweight, Cliff Richard on a bus, style holiday. A break from plotting, scheming, and surreptitious belt ratting holiday.<br />
<br />
So where is the smidgen of gaming energy going? Wildstar I'm afraid. It's Warcraft with the humour restored. I've not laughed so much at a game for a long time until I levelled up in Wildstar. Rest assured I refused to sign on with the Dominion after finding out they were in league with Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers (almost as bad as Pandas). Content on a plate, no thinking involved. That's my summer. When the nights start to close in, and the beer gardens aren't as appealing, then I'll be back to deep space. One more factor keeps me logging into EVE. Themeparks, while providing me with easy entertainment, are so visually intense I've had to log onto EVE just to calm down. The cool, calm, depths of space, dangerous as they are, were a godsend. EVE is home. Holidays have beaches and swimming pools and beer in the sunshine.<br />
<br />
Someone let me know how the industry patch moon rush goes. I'm expecting carnage.<br />
<br />
<b>EVE Track of the Day</b><br />
<br />
Something a didn't mention, a fond farewell, and a tribute, to Jester. What a great blog. Even if you hated his opinions you have to have respect for thought and output. As with everything in EVE he was labelled as a paragon of everything he thought about and discussed rather than a conversational catalyst of epic proportions. He'll be missed more than you think and to him I dedicate this track. You'll need to listen to find out why. Fly like you won it dude, you did. o7<br />
<br />
I'm Just A Singer (In A Rock And Roll Band) - The Moody Blues.<br />
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Cheradenine Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06822231437454134489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-456789637460064957.post-38892189729954628332014-06-03T14:20:00.003+01:002014-06-03T14:20:53.975+01:00Day 717 : The Fall of Minas IthilNot really a story of the day but something I've been pondering for a while. Since my own thoughts have started to go in circles I thought I'd put down here.<br />
<br />
Since the start of 2014 I'd been engaged in T2 industry using my old corp and a set of alts. I found it so fascinating that it soon became my game of EVE. I slowly forgot about my main character and focused almost exclusively on the logistics and economic elements of a small scale T2 industrialist. I produced small guns and popular modules, guided by the meta of the day, for PVP markets in Essence and Placid.<br />
<br />
Markups tend to be large over ten jumps from Jita and at least five jumps from Dodixie. On the edge of low sec there is a very instant demand driven market of faction warfare and corp' PVPers to whom a ten jump supply trip is anathema. They are prepared to laugh off 50% module markup simply to get back into action. It's a faster, more vibrant market than that of selling drones into mission hubs which I did before. The unstable meta fit nature of these niche markets creates some dedicated competitors further increasing the entertainment value. I loved it. A puzzle of planning and logistics. A game within a game. It was entertaining enough that it slowly absorbed more and more of my EVE time as I expanded operations and planned for further ones. The only thing stopping me from going further, from joining some kind of industry corp or alliance to pool resources, or to scale up operations myself was the muted subconcious raging of the spaceship pilot in my mind. All the flying I did now was either raw material runs from a trade hub (fuel block components that I couldn't be arsed to ice mine, and other components resulting from moon goo that I couldn't make myself) or market runs shipping a day or two's produce to market or moving stalled sale items between regions.<br />
<br />
Eventually the spaceship pilot broke down the walls after my ISK balance reached a personal target and also after I accidentally reduced the strategy element of the game by delegating it to a few Python scripts I wrote. Off I flew to the arse end of High Sec and beyond to investigate our origins around the EVE Gate, a mission that remains incomplete following the <a href="http://diaries-of-a-space-noob.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/day-703-caravans-of-dead.html" target="_blank">Encounter at Dead End</a>.<br />
<br />
So, it was only through the agency of EVEMon and it's notification tracking that I found that my old corp, and now industrial house, had been wardecced. A quick investigation revealed that Forsaken Asylum had declared war on me. As far as I know they are mercenaries and must have been hired to take the tower down. Were they bored and indulging in a little hisec shenanigans for once or had I angered someone? If the latter then had I angered them in game somehow - in the market or merely by an in system presence? Had I angered them in the metagame? Here on the blog or my involvement in a couple of recent issues surrounding the game and it's mechanics? One thing was certain. A bunch of industry characters were not going to be able to fend off well known mercs' like Forsaken Asylum and there was no way my main character would abandon his studies to pointlessly assist.<br />
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Initially the root causes had to take a back seat because the war dec had been declared a while before and I had less than twenty four hours to prepare. I had even less than this in reality since I had to go out in Real Life for reasons where "internet spaceship issues" would be ill-regarded as an excuse.<br />
<br />
I quickly surveyed my POS and it's contents and realised I'd let a lot of crap build up in the various modules. More even than an Orca could deal with in one run so I took a risk and shipped a lot of it out of the POS in a freighter. What could go wrong? Not much in fact. I doubt prepping for a freighter gank is either planned or profitable when you are hired to take down a station. As far as I could tell the mercs were not even watching the system, though I knew they'd be back. I flew out for one last run to grab the tower itself and stopped. The unanchoring process would probably make me late going out. All the expensive stuff was stashed away in a nearby hisec system. A small tower isn't worth that much on it's own compared to the billions I'd just recovered. Even fully fuelled it's a maximum of 100 million ISK. There was an opportunity here, a chance to see a station be taken down. A chance to watch how merc ops dealt with things and how efficient they were. An expensive lesson, but if EVE teaches you anything it's to learn new stuff all the time as best you can. I onlined various minimal defences to extend the life of the station by a fraction, stuck a few pages about station grinding in my phones browser cache, grabbed my coat and ran for the Underground.<br />
<br />
I was back in space flying a covert ops exploration ship the next day in time to observe mercs grinding down my poor station. Ops initially comprised a Dominix and an Oracle with a Tengu, the latter presumably for defence of the former more than for damaging POS shields.<br />
<br />
Of course I was noticed in system and a few more pilots arrived but considering my capsuleer had almost zero weapon skills there was no chance of me offering a fight. I was there for observation only. I was also there for conversation. I picked up two pieces of intel straight away. Firstly the mercs assumed I wasn't the same person as the corp CEO. They knew where the target was but not all the nature of the target. Secondly, although they tried (slightly juvenile at one point but hey, not everyone is as old as I am), they quickly realised there would be no tears and I was content to chat along for a while. In fact once they stopped attempting tear extraction they were quite entertaining, in addition to being leaky buckets of intel. I'm not sure they knew I was a few tens of kilometers from them at the time but that was largely for my own amusement.<br />
<br />
A focused target and half hearted attempt at tear extraction? That doesn't sound like griefers so it's a hire job. Was someone deliberately targeting me? How cool is that? It's a sign that, despite my loner PVE ways, I'm very much an EVE player : as soon as I realised I'd probably gotten under someones skin I broke out in a wide smile.<br />
<br />
The Asylum were back the day after to finish off the tower at a time which I missed. Another lesson for me, working out the amount of strontium to set an entertaining timer. In the meantime I'd quickly learned a few skills, jumped into a new ship (another plus!) and just to be a bastard while testing the new ship out, repped up the two POS guns. Industrialists with bad gun skills AND bad logi skills now.<br />
<br />
In conclusion a great experience and a chock load of lessons. The only problem was that I no longer had the standings required to set up a new POS. While that changes with the release of Kronos (as far as I recall - maybe it's with the later industry changes) no POS left me with no real income stream apart from belt ratting loot from my explorations elsewhere.<br />
<br />
I switched my alts to new skill plans. I'd previously prepared for the loss of the tower by training a trading freighter pilot but I found I couldn't face it when the time arrived. The new plans were based around investigating PVE as both an income stream and as an activity but now they'd also serve as potential skills in a POS defence. Fighting back could be a great piece of gameplay. Expensive maybe, but fun.<br />
<br />
Despite all the positives I was left feeling a bit odd. I couldn't put my finger on why. I definitely enjoyed my time exploring but I spent less time in EVE overall. I didn't like EVE any less and didn't feel like quitting. Did I so badly rue the loss of the tower I'd owned so long? I didn't think I did. When I thought about the tower I felt relief if anything. Was I defensively claiming a sort of "didn't want that tower anyway"?. It didn't feel like it.<br />
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What then was this last element of the experience that I couldn't pin down? Was it another lesson? Another thing to learn about the gloriously dark game of EVE ? Sort of. A conversation in the pub at the weekend made me realise quite how much watching film and TV and reading I've done over the past month compared to the earlier part of the year. Where did the time for all that come from? From not nerding out over my industry projects. It appears the endless complexity of EVE extends to games within games. I did learn a lesson. Don't fall into that type of game so readily or it will be just like Civilization all over again. ( I really should shout at Wilhelm Arcturus over at <a href="http://tagn.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">TAGN</a> for tempting me back to that game with his stories )<br />
<br />
In the end I enjoyed the entire thing for one reason or another. One last niggling detail remains. Who hired the mercenaries? Do I have a mysterious nemesis or is it something more dull? Maybe I should try and find out. That, and maybe that I should use all my extra time to try Wildstar instead of watching too much TV.<br />
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<b>EVE Track of the Day</b><br />
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Helpless - Kim Weston<br />
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<br />Cheradenine Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06822231437454134489noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-456789637460064957.post-43948805407393014862014-05-19T21:30:00.000+01:002014-05-19T21:30:14.575+01:00Day 703 : The Caravans of the DeadI arrive in the optimistically named system of Dead End in an odd mood. The colonists I'm following have left no real trace. I'm becoming disillusioned with the hunt, idling around quiet systems, keeping out of the way. I'm generally a solo non-combat pilot but I like to fly with a noisy background. I'm trying to hold to my project but I'm becoming sure that our ancestors had ample reason to flee this backwater. Thousands of years later I'm coming to the same conclusion, which makes what happens all the stranger.<br />
<br />
Despite the gloom there is reason to be optimistic for the system. Not only are there two temperate planets but the authorities have dropped a becon highlighting the presence of something unusual called a Monolith. I take the planets first.<br />
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Neither have a station nor any indication of civilisation. By this point I'm unsurprised. Why settle here when the cluster beckons? The second of the planets I look at confirms this. It's grey.<br />
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An impending ice age? An unusually active hydrosphere reflecting light? For a second I ponder a colony overrun by it's own nanotech, a world down there in a slow, losing battle with terraforming nanobots unleashed by the desperate people who washed up in this pit of a system. You can see what kind of mood I'm in. I shake it off. My targets aren't here. I doubt they're in the pipe out to the cluster. I might as well indulge this dark storm of imagination and go and survey this Monolith thing.<br />
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Of course there were others there before me. The Blood Raiders are here. Gathered around the becon like vultures circling a potential meal site. For some reason this infuriates me and before long I've got a contact flying in a Coercer destroyer. This will enable me to do three things<br />
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1. Kill blood raiders.<br />
2. Kill blood raiders quickly in a low powered ship and hence mocking them while setting some kind of low level challenge to boost me from my current apathy.<br />
3. Feel better by "Flying Bling". I give the Amarr a lot of grief but damn. The Gold and Ivory and Guns of Light. Kudos.<br />
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Once my HUD is clear of annoying red crosses and my cargo hold full of surprisingly interesting things like meta Damage Controls I investigate the monolith itself. Defeating sensors other than simple optics it's a dark hyperectangle that reflects the background sky . Stare too long and too darkly and you'd swear it was full of stars. Though simple in appearance its mystery is hypnotic. Isolated, free standing, apparently purposeless, it nevertheless manages to convey the impression of patience, of waiting. I can't shake the feeling that not only am I being watched, even judged, but also that I'm being affected somehow. A more suspicious person would wonder where this information was being sent and what conclusions were drawn from it.<br />
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Perhaps this accounts for a sudden bout of free roaming violence. I visit the two belts of the system in turn, quickly magnifying the value of the cargo hold with some Clone Soldier tags. I fly these out to high sec but feel compelled to return and attempt the haul again. The next bag of loot is of less value which makes it all the easier to cope with being ganked by a gate camp on the way out. Members of the Easily Excited alliance camp the trail out with alarming regularity. Come here at your own risk.<br />
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Despite this I want to return. I want to see the monolith again. Spend more time near it. I have more hardware flown in. An Omen cruiser with a specific cargo load in addition to a belt combat fit. A gate running fit and a Mobile Depot. The latter is a space caravan (note to Americans and other non UK life forms : A Caravan is the UK term for a mobile home mounted as a trailer behind a vehicle). I spend a couple of weeks roaming the Dead End system living out of this box since there is no station in system. It even holds repair units for my hull and shield, and remote repair units for my drones. So much for my fear of wormhole lifestyles.<br />
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I trawl the system idly. As if I have no choice. I run the belts every now and again. At the depot I refit the ship to a gate camp running spec' and fly out tags, meta damage controls, webifiers and neuts. I make a lot of money with a fairly low amount of effort. Each time I'm out though, I return to the scene of these solo pilot crimes and make an orbit of the monolith.<br />
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I begin to think that the name of the system is prophetic in more than one way until one morning I find my caravan has been scanned down and destroyed. I hadn't even noticed it being reinforced such was the level of my apathy. Fortunately I'm fit to fly out, even though I think it might be late. I'm right. A few jumps down the pipe out to the cluster I'm caught by a Devoter and a Fleet Issue Stabber which trap me and take down my gate running Omen fit. Lesson learned. Prop mod required. Out in my pod though I feel free and bounce off the sun and out, down the pipe, past the odd rock bound gate in Djimame (which I really must have a closer look at) to the calmer waters of Imya.<br />
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Once docked I realise the mild adrenaline has broken whatever hold the system of Dead End had on me. It's unlike me to not care about the loss of a ship that made so much ISK. I'll be back one day to investigate again and continue the trail of the colonists but for now I need to get out of the vicinity and far away from this strange addiction to lonely gloom. Good luck to any other prospectors that try the lifestyle a young pilot with a T2 fit Coercer and a bunch of luck could make some ISK down here. Getting out alive is another matter.<br />
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<b>EVE Tracks of the Days</b><br />
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(I was here a while)<br />
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A Hazy Shade of Winter - Simon & Garfunkel<br />
What Am I Doing Hanging Round - The Monkees<br />
The Blue Danube - Strauss<br />
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<br />Cheradenine Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06822231437454134489noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-456789637460064957.post-20733045637497085512014-04-24T20:11:00.000+01:002014-04-24T20:11:00.320+01:00Day 674 : A Paradise of Perhaps<div>
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<i>Canard (n) : an unfounded rumour or story.</i><br /><br /> Even from two light years away our intrepid colonists must have seen the soft blue-green glow of not one but two worlds with a potential biosphere. One was bound to be viable. Right?<div>
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You know what they say about viable colony worlds. They're like buses. You wait ages for one and two arrive at once. They're my target. On arrival I quickly and superficially scan the rest of the system. I'm in a hurry. I'm the worst system surveyor of all time but even here I see hope. The inner system is full of rocky worlds handy for industry and there are enough belts to draw mineral resources from. A pair of gas giants stand sentinel further out into the system, guarding any potential life zones from higher than average impacts from wandering space debris. We're in a cul-de-sac system here, one way in and one way out. In short, we've hit potential space suburbia. Move in, settle down, raise a horde of ravening space maniacs to take the cluster by storm.<div>
<br /><b>Canard VI, Oceanic</b></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 15.600000381469727px;"><br /></span><br /><br />A single vast shallow ocean is pulled different ways by a pair of small moons. With the majority of large cyclical storms confined to the polar regions, initial impressions are good. Is it a surfers paradise? Skip a couple of rocks past the gas giants, land them on one side of the equator to make a reef. Spend your days surfing the waves, chilling out, and smoking gene-tech altered kelp.<br />
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Is land required for a colony? No. Float one, and roam the world. Dome one for an aquatic, if vulnerable, paradise under the seas. The planet is a little small though, a bit warm. Low pressure and gravity is probably going to make it a little steamy down there. Surfers in facemasks.<br /><br />There is life down there already. A huge amount of micro organisms, a fair amount of planktonic lifeforms, and a small amount of complex organisms. I'm imagining that some kind of giant cross between a manta ray and a bird hoovering up the air borne life cycle of the local plankton. It's a shame my planetary scanning mechanisms don't reach so far.<br /><br />
In short, it has potential. In the longer term the colony might die from an outbreak of chronic athletes foot. There's a rocky world with a biosphere further up the slope of spacetime. Onwards to our next candidate.<br />
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<b>Canard VIII, Temperate</b></div>
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<br /><br /> She's a water world, nightly lit by the reflections from a single moon. Fractured land masses resembling island chains thread the seas. Is this a sign of bad tectonics or are we safe? Gravity is lower than normal but high enough to be an advantage rather than a problem. The average temperature is just shy of perfect so I'd expect some of the gaps between the islands to be clogged with ice for half the year. We are, after all, a massive 7 AU from the local star. Some of the highlands might be chilly enough to pose a problem.<br />
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Oddly though, most of the indigenous life congregates in the more barren highlands. Most of the obvious vegetation hugs the coast. Something odd is going on here. Perhaps the deep seas are dangerous in some fashion? Perhaps there is something that lives along the coasts that convinces everything else to stay inland.<br /><br />
I fly to the night side of the planet looking for signs of civilisation. Light. There isn't any. It's dark down there. None of the large light sources you'd normally see on an occupied world. In itself that's interesting but I'm grasping at straws now. Perhaps the lack of light is sign of a hidden colony? Perhaps the lack of light discourages whatever lifeform makes the coasts so dangerous from making it's way inland? Perhaps the colony regressed and the light sources they have aren't large enough to register from way up here in the icy black?<br />
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In desperation I inspect the land more closely. Is that signs of agriculture or local flora variation? Are those roads or signs of riverine or tectonic action?<br />
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I think the time for dreaming is over. In the end I prepare to leave the system with a heavy heart, was the "canard" the potential to settle? Perhaps it was that they had found a home? Perhaps a few did. Perhaps a few of our ancestors descendants are still here, perhaps I couldn't reach them and perhaps they are happier for it. Too much "perhaps" in this study. I'll leave the story of the tribal native hitching a ride to the capsuleer POCO in orbit to another writer. </div>
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Alternatively, knowing our colonists sense of humour, perhaps they couldn't settle because of an indigenous and violent form of giant water fowl. Given the nature of both worlds it wouldn't be such a reach. Perhaps they just ducked this system, and perhaps I just about got my joke in.<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 15.600000381469727px;"><br /></span>
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<b>EVE Track Of The Day</b><br /><a href="http://open.spotify.com/track/5Zk3hU2xZdxtGCYxm91Xoa" target="_blank">Turnin' My Heartbeat Up - The M.V.P.'s </a></div>
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<i>Sustained by my Northern Soul.</i><br /><br /><b>Acknowledgements</b></div>
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This post found me, for various reasons, in the heinous grip of writers block. Thanks must go out to the members of tweetfleet that helped me along with advice. <a href="https://twitter.com/Voodoo_Ginger">https://twitter.com/Voodoo_Ginger</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/noizygamer">https://twitter.com/noizygamer</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Sugar_Kyle">https://twitter.com/Sugar_Kyle</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/spanky_ikkala">https://twitter.com/spanky_ikkala</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/tigerears">https://twitter.com/tigerears</a><br /><br /><i>Books that also helped:</i></div>
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The Engines of God - Jack McDevitt</div>
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The Legacy of Heorot - Niven, Pournelle and Barnes</div>
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The Mysterious Island - Jules Verne</div>
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Cheradenine Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06822231437454134489noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-456789637460064957.post-49834614724546749032014-04-19T11:24:00.002+01:002014-04-19T11:24:57.076+01:00Day 672 : Liminal StateWe're around five light years from the EVE Gate now and it's time for a little analysis of my subjects and a little introspection on how I view them.<br />
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First, a quick look around the system of Central Point. It's quiet. Like every system I've visited so far on the journey. Capsuleer activity is muted, there are a few stations running but plenty of empty moons. The belts are pristine and chock full enough of interesting amounts of minerals that I almost consider moving here. A man with a mining plan could make a lot out of a system as quiet as this. Even the planets are underused. Half of them still have the infrastructure of the old Interbus customs office racket in orbit. They must have been here for years.<br />
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In fact the only activity I really see in space is the presence of the Blood Raiders. I've heard they now hunt for capsuleers in the their pursuit for the red stuff. This is about as clever as it sounds. A craving for rusty water leads them to the only place in the cluster I've ever seen quiet. There's less life here than anywhere else. It's a shame I've no guns on board. I've a inkling to get a rack of hybrid blasters fitted, load them with damp Iron Charges and roar in shouting "hey you guys, here's another mix of water and iron". I'm sure they'd appreciate it.<br />
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Planet wise there is nothing to write home about. The only planet you'd consider setting foot on is a barren world about 1.5 AUs out from the star. It's value? You could get a good sun tan before leaving a good looking corpse. I wonder what our ancestors thought when they passed through here, which brings me back to my central theme.<br />
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Crossroads are odd places in the minds of humans. The obviously required decision causes our poor monkey brains to overheat when they start over-thinking and begin to ponder all kinds of other decisions and perhaps even the nature of decision. Here we are. East or West? Why West? Why travel at all? What's the purpose of it all? What am I in the grand scheme of things? Hey presto, you've gone from a simple choice of direction to the last stop on the line, Existential Dread, by falling asleep on the philosophy train. Nevertheless I'm going to use this effect. I'm going to consider how I've been thinking about my subjects and lay some ghosts to rest here, burying the criminal corpses of old ideas at a crossroads so that their intellectual shades don't follow me on the rest of my journey.<br />
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I've been romanticising the notion of our ancestors in two ways. Firstly, in their identity. I've grouped them into a single tribe. A people of purpose. In fact we have the evidence to suggest they were just as fractious, greedy, opinionated and political as, well, as we are now. The Gallente and Caldari ancestors must have aimed straight at Luminaire, the Amarr for what was Athra, and the Minmatar for what became Pator. I doubt they hung around to enjoy the view. The evidence suggests they knew exactly what they were doing and where they were going. It's not those "successful" colonists that I'm following. It's the ancestors of the smaller groups who either vanished altogether or turned up later in places like Intaki. Particularly the former. The independent explorers who never formed viable colonies after the EVE Gate shut down. The directness of the larger groups brings me to the next myth I've invested in.<br />
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I've been romanticising the colonists mode of travel, imagining rag tag convoys at sub light speed, slowly being whittled down to a hard core of solid explorers by their arduous travails through the void. This didn't happen. I've listened to too many tellings of the <a href="https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Old_Man_Star_(Chronicle)" target="_blank">chronicle of Old Man Star</a> perhaps. I've made the mistake of thinking that they had less tech than us, when there is evidence to suggest they had more. They terraformed and put up stargates to speed travel after all. They left all this behind for us to find. Additionally they picked home worlds far from the gate. Luminaire is somewhere around 15 light years from the New Eden system. It's unlikely that they'd look at the results of an astronomy survey, pick a planet and think "Hey, brilliant, we'll be there in two or three decades. This was a great idea. To the cryo chambers!". They either had warp capable ships that could sustain indefinite, or long periods of, warp, perhaps at low FTL speeds, or they were able to focus jump drives on natural gravity wells at distances as much as or more accurately than our current technology can. They had something. The dispersal across the cluster doesn't match sub light speeds.<br />
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So who am I following? I'm following the independents. I'm following the people who made the journey into the cluster system by system. I'm following the people who named each waypoint on this star road and left the names behind as a story of the experience. I'm following those who vanished afterwards, and along the way I'll think about why.<br />
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I look back towards New Eden and see the gate and the star glowing together, distinctly separate even here.<br />
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No wonder the Amarr looked at the night sky and dreamed of the distant. Mind you, the Amarr could take significance from just about anything. I hear you can't even do sleight of hand tricks in Amarr cities for fear that it will cause a religious schism or be taken as proof of validity of whatever genocidal, human rights violating idea they come up with next. The muppets. Still, the star and the gate are an inspiring sight, as long as you don't take it too far. I'll bury my mysticism and my annoyance with the Amarr here at this crossroads and keep a smidgen of spirituality for the rest of the trek. Slightly ironic but also vaguely amusing.<br />
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In the end it's back to the simple choice. Where next? I decide randomly rather than try and figure out what the travellers would have done. Decision made. It's a short hop as the duck flies to Canard.<br />
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<b>EVE Track of the Day</b><br />
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Blowing Up My Mind - The Exciters<br />
<br />
(back to rolling down the space lanes to Northern Soul again)<br />
<br />Cheradenine Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06822231437454134489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-456789637460064957.post-85653153212924223732014-04-16T18:50:00.000+01:002014-04-16T18:50:34.793+01:00Day 670: Broken PromisesWhen the travellers from Earth arrived in the one horse town of New Eden you could have forgiven them for turning around and heading back home. They had whatever they brought with them plus solar power plus whatever they could scavenge from a single barren planet. Let's hope they never had to put down there and build anything. I wonder if they were surprised to find the planet teeming with microorganisms or whether that too was true back in the old Earth system. I can't help but find it odd that we're the only ones out here despite all this low level life on every barren planet you visit. Perhaps our ancestors seeded the entire place. Perhaps space going sentience is rare. Or perhaps we're a blip and some regularly scheduled astronomic event will press the reset button sometime soon. It's nice to think, isn't it?<br />
<br />
Anyway, the reason our ancestors stayed you can see in the name of the next system onwards into the cluster. Promised Land. With whatever telescopes they had they must have seen the squat, cool star and sighed. However they must have also seen the system was chock full of stuff. Unlike New Eden: Planets and belts. Only one light year away. No previous owner. Chain free! Perfect. Who knows what goodies could be hiding in the system? Perhaps one of the planets was viable for terraforming. They were going to be disappointed, but they had named the system anyway and kept it. As I've said before, I like their sense of humour.<br />
<br />
Arriving in system you quickly realise that there was to be no settling here. The two Barren planets are on the edge of the system surrounding an already cool sun. The glimmer of hope you get from a close in gas giant possibly providing an inhabitable moon ( not that I can recall any such thing in the cluster but it might be possible) is quashed, again, by the suns reach. The gas giants have icy balls. Even in close.<br />
<br />
There is one chance. A Storm planet. While wreathed in permanent violence it sits in a potential garden zone. Perhaps the surface, with a little coaxing, could be viable for a while. Hey, they'd just crossed half a galaxy. Nuking a storm into submission has nothing on it. Disregarding capsuleer legends about the stormy planet of LV-426 I make the Storm planet my first destination, diving sunwards, looking for traces.<br />
<br />
I then leap almost out of pod in fear. The planet is looking back.<br />
<br />
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<br />
I calm down and salute the Cyclops, climb down from my Solaris moment, mutter something about Sauron and wonder if I can ever fit more genre breaking lack of consistency into one sentence.<br />
<br />
According to my instruments this "Violent Wormhole" is tagged<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Though the wormhole seems stable, the exotic radicals pouring from the tear imply that using it would be catastrophic.</blockquote>
This is so bizarre for so many reasons that despite the exotic radicals spewing from it (focus on physics, this isn't pouring Amarrian priests out into space) I go in for a closer look. I've forgotten the planet because a brief look at it's statistics reveals you'd need to be a masochist to even go down there once, let alone set up a base there. Suppose you overcame the storm, the storm reflecting off most of the suns heat. You could settle down there and raise huge strong redneck sons who'd never seen the outside and who would snap in standard gravity. Nah.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
Things don't get any less spooky by looking around</div>
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<br />
I go in for a closer look. I'm seeing hints of Caldari space and I'm seeing hints of Cloud Ring. The wormhole goes further into the cluster? I hit the usual books, by which I mean <a href="http://evetravel.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/violent-wormhole/" target="_blank">EVE Travel</a>. It looks like this is a <a href="https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Sansha's_Nation" target="_blank">Sansha</a> relic. Intriguing and weird as it is, I've no desire to get turned into a cyber-zombie by the original owners. It's fascinating, unlike the rest of the system but it might be time to do a runner and head off further down the line.<br />
<br />
You can imagine the original colonists gathering raw materials here, perhaps doing some repair and patching, but you can't imagine them staying. Even capsuleers haven't done much with the system. Only three planets have customs offices and most of the moons are unused. Central Point with it's choice of direction beckons. It's time to follow the trail again.<br />
<br />
<b>EVE Track of the Day</b><br />
<br />
L'Estasi Dell'oro (The Ecstasy of Gold) - Ennio Morricone<br />
<br />
<br />Cheradenine Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06822231437454134489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-456789637460064957.post-25521761247935023232014-04-12T09:01:00.001+01:002014-04-12T09:01:38.182+01:00Day 664: The PilgrimIn the six hundred and odd days I've played EVE there has been one thing I've always meant to do and never done. For various reasons really. Wariness. Fear. Lack of skill. Some more Fear. I've always meant to visit New Eden. Home of the cluster, origin of the cluster if legends are true. Home to the EVE Gate. Coincidentally rumoured to also be home to chock loads of ancient tech style loot. All hidden of course, and that's not really the reason I'm going. But a guy can get lucky, you know?<br />
<br />
I guess if you've never been and the pilgrimage is on your cockpit list too, you should probably stop reading right now.<br />
<br />
The first task is to pick a ship. A proper explorer would take an exploration ship, a Covert Ops frigate at least if not the Sisters of EVE ships. The latter would fit very well since the Sisters are rumoured to be down at the EVE gate doing whatever it is they do. They've probably used these hulls before. Then again I have my doubts about the Astero and I suspect the Stratios would be like flying a one man honey trap down there. Additionally, in my mind, this "pilgrimage" has more of an aspect of "joyride" than most pilgrims would like. "Tourism" wouldn't be far off the mark. I'm EVEs first tourist. I'm Twoflower in space.<br />
<br />
To ameliorate this image and inject a suitable amount of macho bullshit back into the mission I pick a muscle car. The Ares.<br />
<br />
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It's fast, armoured enough to probably survive an insta locking gate sniper, and red. I keep thinking that it would look good if it had the Gallente shield badge on it but with the shield having a yellow background instead of a green one.<br />
<br />
I've not pimped my ride. This isn't a case of "how fast can you go" it's a case of cheap, suitably amusing, cap stable, 5k per second speed, high warp speed, and manoeuvrability.<br />
<br />
The route to the EVE gate is fairly short. Fourteen jumps or so of hi sec and another nine of low sec. Thanks to the Ares I'm at my last hisec waypoint in record time. Along the way I notice that some Amarr stargates have a rotating ring built into them. Given my recent obsession with all things rotaty and ringy I note it down for future inspection.<br />
<br />
I arrive at Imya and decide to take a break, I spend this manually flying the Ares round a spike on one of the systems stations. I tell myself this is to test the manoeuvrability of the ship under MWD but mainly it's because my inner RP geek is imagining the stations inhabitants looking on with abject fear at 1.5 million kilos of spaceship travelling at 4km per second less than a kilometer from their windows. It's good practice for the PVP technique of spiralling too. Circling something by clicking halfway into a tangential vector and producing a rough, ever decreasing, circle.<br />
<br />
Enough faffing. I check my route. This is when the plan changes. After a few jumps in the systems all have meaningful names. Access, Exit, Gateway, Central Point and Promised Land. There's a story here. I'm going to be here longer than I thought because I'm going to trace the earliest arrivals route out into the cluster and see if I can get a feel for what they might have seen. This is now Space-archaeo-social-anthropology. It also gives me an excuse to roar through the systems at top speed. I'll see them at length on the way back.<br />
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<br />
On arrival in New Eden the gate isn't hard to miss though I'm briefly confused by the sun having a distant nebula at it's back. That's a messy origin story structure. I turn around and see what I'm really here to see.<br />
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<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
The Gate</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Apparently over three light years away there isn't any chance of reaching it. There isn't even an indication that it's there in any of the navigational sensors. The rest of the system is as quiet as the grave. A single barren planet without even a moon sits in a tight orbit around the sun. There isn't even a station in the system. Had I been the Amarr, who own this neck of the woods, I'd of dropped a station just for research and the tourist trade. Scratch the latter.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
Dscan on the other hand is crowded. While there are only two other pilots in system, on of whom arrived after me, there is evidence, scattered all over the first 100,000km of the system, of other visitors. Cans are anchored everywhere, each bearing a message. Being capsuleers these are the usual variants of "Here I am!", "I am important!", "I was here!". Wolves howling at the moon. Honestly, who would have the gall to believe that others would be that interested in where they've been and what they thought they'd achieved. Er. Lets leave that thought while I finish this informative, and not egotistical at all, post.<br />
<br />
I pay attention to local for the first time. There is something odd going on. From the tone of the messages I think these capsuleers are here to do something not too far from worship. Like the Amarr who, along with the other crime of thinking that hoods are a good year round fashion statement, decided that the supernatural is a go-to excuse for doing whatever you want, these capsuleers hold a reverence for the EVE Gate that borders on mysticism. Despite a few attempts to get me involved in their ritual greetings I'm still thinking of announcing that I've filled the hold full of explosives and I'm on a collision course with the gate. Of course I won't get there for several hundreds of millennia but I'm still tempted to say I'll try. I'm immortal. There's bound to be enough TV to keep me entertained for epoch making levels of time. No.<br />
<br />
Instead, I'm tempted to leave my own can, undoing all the good work of mocking everyone that I wrote above. The main reason is a can emblazoned with this message<br />
<br />
<i>"Know, Pilgrim, that you do not travel alone. Palcus Jan 26, 2007"</i><br />
<br />
For some reason this message resonates. I look around the system and try to think what it must have been like to end up here after a legendary journey. Apart from the gate itself, something of a depressing anti-climax. I like these early, supposedly legendary, colonists. They had balls. They named the system after a garden, origin implied or not. They had a sense of humour. I would have taken one look at the half frosted, half burnt ball of rock in orbit around the sun and said "Guys, wait, I think I forgot something. You go ahead, I'll just nip back and get it and then catch up." Perhaps they had their eyes cast towards further stars. I'm going to follow their route and see what it's like.<br />
<br />
Before I go I travel 50,000 km out from the arrival gate and leave my own can, my own message. It's there now if you care to go and find my own identity claim in a bottle. In a highly confused and hypocritical way I leave a token behind, a single Ultraviolet laser charge. Suddenly I'm understanding the "why" of votive offerings that I never really understood from my Archaeological studies. There's a palpable sense of deep humanity here in the emptiness for some reason. Something that almost contrasts the electromagnetic glory of the EVE Gate itself. Something that demands acknowledgement. Here we began.<br />
<br />
Having waxed lyrical and morally perjured myself enough for one day, I turn the ship around. Next stop. Promised Land.<br />
<br />
<b>EVE Track of the Day</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
The Eve of the War - Jeff Waynes War of the Worlds<br />
<b><br /></b>
<i>(It works on so many levels! There's also a tenuous joke in the lyrics about my journey here for those that care to figure it out. )</i><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b><br /></b>
<b><br /></b>
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<br />Cheradenine Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06822231437454134489noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-456789637460064957.post-30841796406270569642014-04-08T21:26:00.001+01:002014-04-08T21:26:17.913+01:00Day 662 : Game of Cards in a West House Thrones WingYep. It took a few days to get round to writing up the weekend so I leap forward in time once more. Into the "Politics Zone". It's that fun time of year where you get to not vote for everyone you hate, and slightly more importantly get together a crowd of people you do like to make sure CCP don't do one with the game.<br />
<br />
Don't worry. This post will be short, fast and nearly painless. Well. It'll hurt me less than it hurts you. Some idiot (me, I ran across it browsing my amazon account) decided to reveal that I could watch all of Grimm online and that I'd never seen it. I need to get back to that.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Resources</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
I'd link you a précis of STV, the Single Transferable Vote system, but my sadism has its limits.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://match.eve-csm.com/" target="_blank">Vote Match is here </a>This will get you started with some ideas.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://nosygamer.blogspot.co.uk/p/blog-page.html" target="_blank">Nosy Gamer going insane and not only listing but having listened to all the podcasts, producing a great resource along the way</a><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Blogodorsements</span><br />
<br />
Endorsements are all over the blogosphere and the summaries may tip your hand. Read with bias awareness intact please. Here is a sample of some but not all of the things I read.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.ninveah.com/2014/04/endorsements-for-csm9.html">http://www.ninveah.com/2014/04/endorsements-for-csm9.html</a><br />
<a href="http://sandciderandspaceships.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/csm-who-gets-my-vote.html">http://sandciderandspaceships.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/csm-who-gets-my-vote.html</a><br />
<a href="http://nosygamer.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/the-nosy-gamers-csm-9-election.html">http://nosygamer.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/the-nosy-gamers-csm-9-election.html</a><br />
<a href="http://jestertrek.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/my-endorsements-for-csm9.html">http://jestertrek.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/my-endorsements-for-csm9.html</a><br />
<a href="http://interstellarprivateer.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/csm9-endorsements/">http://interstellarprivateer.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/csm9-endorsements/</a><br />
<a href="http://mikeazariah.wordpress.com/2014/04/08/who-to-vote-for-pt-2/">http://mikeazariah.wordpress.com/2014/04/08/who-to-vote-for-pt-2/</a><br />
<a href="http://eveoganda.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/eveogandas-csm9-official-endorsements.html">http://eveoganda.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/eveogandas-csm9-official-endorsements.html</a><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The CCP Official Bit</span><br />
<br />
The full official candidate list is here <a href="https://community.eveonline.com/community/csm/candidates">https://community.eveonline.com/community/csm/candidates</a><br />
<br />
<b><u><i>The actual voting tool</i></u></b> is here <a href="https://community.eveonline.com/community/csm/vote">https://community.eveonline.com/community/csm/vote</a><br />
<br />
If you don't vote then you are being a tool, not using one. Sort it out.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">My Endorsements</span><br />
<br />
I have two accounts and I'll vote twice, I'll probably mix the order slightly over the two.<br />
<br />
<b>Primary</b><br />
<br /><a href="https://community.eveonline.com/community/csm/candidate?id=8394375" target="_blank">Sugar Kyle</a><div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Low sec, POS use, new player experience, small gang warfare, lots and lots of interesting opinions, runs a great blog, writes great fiction. Still able to apply a little whimsy to the game while ferociously mastering it.<br /><br /><a href="https://community.eveonline.com/community/csm/candidate?id=7933451" target="_blank">Steve Ronuken</a><br /><br />The Industry Adept. The maintainer of <a href="http://evebloggers.com/">http://evebloggers.com/</a> His Fuzzworks tools have saved my life in the past and it turns out from interviews that he knows what he is talking about. A regular out of corp social player too.<br /><br /><br /><b>Secondary</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
These candidates represent some or all of the qualities I'm looking for but were trumped by the top two.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://community.eveonline.com/community/csm/candidate?id=3914486" target="_blank">Mike Azariah</a> - The casual hi sec player, all round good guy and voice of reason from what I've seen.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="https://community.eveonline.com/community/csm/candidate?id=2583909" target="_blank">Ali Aras</a> - I was seriously impressed with her CSM8 performance for reasons too long to list here. A testament to the power of the newbie everywhere. She now adds experience to an already great CV</div>
<div>
<br /><a href="https://community.eveonline.com/community/csm/candidate?id=294286" target="_blank">Mangala Solaris</a> - Master of RvB, dabbler in everything, experienced on the CSM, interested in more out of corp social tools. Also from Preston so a bit of a pity vote gets added in. Hurrah for Preston Bus Station!</div>
<div>
<br /><a href="https://community.eveonline.com/community/csm/candidate?id=4705908" target="_blank">Xander Phoena</a> - His interviews of the CSM candidates last year revealed exactly the kind of mind and desire for EVE that we need on the CSM. It doesn't all have to be about in game experience when you can digest all the relevant information easily and then make experts on it squirm with questions you've devised. Also his temperament may prove amusing.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="https://community.eveonline.com/community/csm/candidate?id=8568068" target="_blank">Jayne Fillon</a> - Basically for the non corp affiliated social content he's devised. A slight wildcard but worth a vote. Also likely a fan of Firefly.</div>
<div>
<br /><a href="https://community.eveonline.com/community/csm/candidate?id=370636" target="_blank">DJ Funky Bacon</a> - Another low sec expert. I had a little disagreement with something he said recently but it doesn't really impact the rest of his expertise so he has made it in anyway. Considering what a grouch I am, this should speak volumes.</div>
<div>
<br /><a href="https://community.eveonline.com/community/csm/candidate?id=5901506" target="_blank">Matias Otero</a> - Technically my old boss. Fun Per Hour (TM)<div>
<br /></div>
<b>Tertiary </b><br />
<b><br /></b>
While these guys I either don't agree with or don't represent my gameplay I consider them useful to health of EVE in general. In no particular order.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://community.eveonline.com/community/csm/candidate?id=5982936" target="_blank">Corbexx</a> - POS and industry wildcard who I've heard some good things about<br />
<br />
<a href="https://community.eveonline.com/community/csm/candidate?id=7075762" target="_blank">Psychotic Monk</a> - While I disagree a lot with some of the things he stands for, he is making sure hi sec does not get stale<br />
<br />
<a href="https://community.eveonline.com/community/csm/candidate?id=4869942" target="_blank">Mynnna</a> - While a Goon and in no need of a vote, he is good on the CSM, he is an master of the economy and last but not least a Legend in Lego<br />
<br />
<a href="https://community.eveonline.com/community/csm/candidate?id=6092168" target="_blank">James Arget</a> - A Wormholer and so out of my sphere of interest but I've heard good things<br />
<br />
<a href="https://community.eveonline.com/community/csm/candidate?id=2256587" target="_blank">corebloodbrothers</a> - A last wildcard, just pipping Progodlegend, he's here for his mention of the initial SP curve.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>EVE Track of the Day</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Subterranean Homesick Blues - Bob Dylan<br />
<br /></div>
Cheradenine Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06822231437454134489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-456789637460064957.post-21479505107685758352014-04-07T21:37:00.000+01:002014-04-07T21:37:25.909+01:00Day 659 : The CurmudgeonThere's no mistaking that I'm a bitter and whiny old man that's harder to move than a donkey grazing a marijuana field. It didn't get any better when I turned 40 last year and it's unlikely to get better the more I get stuck in my ways and start refusing to do things I just don't want to do. I look on the bright side. I'm still sociable. I may be an introvert but I have my wits and a modicum of social ability. I use it to my advantage. Rage powered stubbornness will often cut through to the decisions that need making. Sounds like the antithesis of the attitude you need to thrive in EVE. Turns out, not so much.<br />
<br />
An extremely bad work week while feeling run down kicked me into rage mode. You've been there. The brutal willingness to cut dead wood just to get along and do what the hell you want. I logged into Cheradenine with a particularly bad attitude. I hadn't done much with the character since Brave moved south spouting fun per hour and a dalliance with null. I don't like null. It's too random for my current skill levels and while it's on my list to fully investigate it one day, today is not that day. I want to mooch around. I want to revel in my misery, I want to poke my nose in where it isn't wanted and I want to discover some stuff that will cheer me right up. Miserable I might be but it isn't my preferred state of being.<br />
<br />
I look at doing something brave. Brave have gone. Some Notifications and a quick recce round Barley and the Trail of Tears reveals that pretty much all assets and space have been transferred. Brave are gone. The Logistic exercise in moving back I estimate at somewhere around the "gigantic pain in the arse" level. The old Trail of Tears, the pipe between Barleguet and Stacmon, is quickly becoming a quiet country lane (with occasional Hells Angels on it perhaps). While the locals of Barley are blue to me much of hisec still feels off bounds due to bands of reds hunting stragglers like me. An effort in other words. I'm thinking about logging off when the rage kicks in. I'd put off moving south with Brave and come up with some excuses that I was eloquently talked out of and yet still didn't go. I've not been on my main character that much at all bar a couple of training runs. Basically I've been talking myself out of logging into the main because it begs a question I can't answer. I can answer it now. I shift an unbelievable amount of crap out of Barley and up to Stacmon, marvelling along the way that it's so dull on the Trail. I even pilot an unscrammed Oracle down there just to see what happens. They're surprisingly agile but still a sitting duck. The only entertainment I get is when transporting a bulk load of T1 modules from stripped tackle ships. I'm in an experimental Nereus packed to the gills with shield rep and see a command ship on the gate. He's tried to tackle me a couple of times already. I wonder about gate guns and their increasing damage, flick the ship around and fly right at him. Turns out Ancillary Shield Boosters eat charges for breakfast and then sit around doing nothing for ages while they reload. Sounds like me actually. It did not go well. I didn't stop laughing for five minutes.<br />
<br />
I drop corp. Sayonara Brave. It was fun. And then it wasn't. Don't get me wrong, I wish you all the luck in the 'verse down there and one day I'll get to trying this null thing and maybe rejoin. I'll still be recommending you to new people and returning people. It's me. Not you.<br />
<br />
I park my lazy arse in a slow low sec system with a few ships after a few minutes marvelling at the luxury of stress-less hi sec flight. I'll sit around and watch what happens. I'm solo and it can be a hard game to play like that. Once I'm up to it I may go back and resume flight testing my frigates. Looks like it's going to be the slowest non-event of EVE weekends ever, akin to my earlier avoidance of my main character. I promptly go out and do more in a couple of days than I've done in a couple of months<br />
<br />
I dust off my scanning alt. He's been skill training while pretending he'd never heard of the loot can explosion in exploration sites. The crappiest thing in a game ever, bar Pandas in WoW. 16 days until across the board full scanning skills?! You're kidding me? You're coming with me, pal. He drops corp too.<br />
<br />
I zoom around the local belts shooting up Serpentis with idle ease. I'd forgotten what a rack of 200mm railguns on a Thorax will do to NPCs. It's almost funny.<br />
<br />
I have a look at moons and then get an idea for the scanning alt. I send him looking for Siphons. After a false start I end up being entertained by how fun it is to take siphoned moon goo out of siphons. Not only do you have the thieving from thieves thing but the whole swooping in and grabbing it is quite fun. It turns out it's even more fun when you get back and realise it was an N64 moon and you're paltry haul is worth ten times what you thought it would be.<br />
<br />
Poking around in a system looking at moons turns out to be entertainingly scary when a Goon moon defence op kicks off and there are suddenly over 100 pilots in the system and at least 9 carriers. I sit at a safe cloaky distance. I try to work out what the hell is going on but it's largely beyond me at this distance. I come back with another idea that doesn't work. I torch another industrial trying to steal abandoned drones off the edge of the battle site after things calm down. Warp disruption from the tower apparently. Who knew? Still I've already wandered off with around 10 million in drones so the exercise pays its way.<br />
<br />
I manage to grab a Clone Soldier Negotiator tag in a belt somewhere which I take to generally mean "this Thorax has been paid off. Now you can waste it safely by doing something stupid"<br />
<br />
While ratting I run across a five day old character wandering the belts of low sec in a Velator. He's apparently unconcerned by the fact that I'm there. Anyone else would instantly teach him some weapon based lessons. I send him a chat invite (which I miss the content of somehow) and a mail warning him about the danger of doing what he is doing. I see him on and off all weekend. I think "good show" and "well done" and "nice courage" and "I'm gonna shoot your ass off next time that happens".<br />
<br />
I generally zoom back and forth looking into systems and wondering why. I think I'm nesting. It's scaring me. I form my own corp and call it "Ankh-Morpork Holiday Homes". It cheers me up.<br />
<br />
At one point a formerly quiet system erupts as the RvB ganked roam flies through. I say hi and try to get them to fill Local full of dance but I think they're busy. I do talk to Green Gambit who's on duty and who I've talked to before. I realise I'll be able to get in public roams like this easily now. Guilt free mass social events outside corp'. I'll have to get on a Ganked roam soon. I can't do next weekend but it's high up on the list of my things to do. See. I am social after all. Just not every day. I must look into Spectre Fleet too.<br />
<br />
I make a whole host of other plans which I promptly forget while still worrying that I appear to be settling. This gets so bad that I take out the scanning alt and run a few Data sites and a Relic site. Can spew. Still more awful than worrying about becoming a fuddy duddy loner in the middle of nowhere. Thank god it's going. Difficult and random I can handle, that's a challenge. Difficult and random because the interface is shit is just unfair. I realise I'm running the sites because I quite like the hacking mini-game.<br />
<br />
After a period of idleness I end up escalating a simple combat site. Despite my best intentions I wander low sec doing the next five stages of it. Something goes wrong in the last stage and I end up with a cloud of red crosses sensor dampening me. I could sort this out despite the non PVE nature of the ship I'm in. I could draw out the faster ships and take them out with drones or lucky shots between damps. I could fit ECCM and see if it works. I've never fitted an ECCM module in my life. I don't start now. I divebomb the cloud aiming for the lead dampener. "I'm on the leader" I yell as my Thorax gets utterly toasted. Whoops! Still, funny, and the Thorax was paid off even without the bits and bobs that dropped along the way.<br />
<br />
All in all, an entertaining solo weekend. Do what you want to do and damn conventional wisdom and forward planning. If you ever find yourself not doing anything and not logging in because your character "has" to do something then log in and do the opposite. Just go and look at stuff or something. It's a damn game and it's a sandbox. It's gorgeous out there. The only rails you should be building for yourself are 200mm T2 ones to shoot stuff with.<br />
<br />
Now I'm off to consider shooting an apparently abandoned POS purely because I've got an Oracle I didn't think I'd have.<br />
<br />
<b>EVE Track of the Day</b><br />
<br />
Go Where You Wanna Go - The Mamas & The Papas<br />
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<br />Cheradenine Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06822231437454134489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-456789637460064957.post-54169900278560195642014-03-31T20:36:00.002+01:002014-03-31T20:41:56.408+01:00653: Nails In The Coffin Of Space<i>Cool title eh? This was meant to be called "Failing to Relax by Moonlight" and then things escalated.</i><br />
<br />
Well. I needed to calm down a bit obviously. In keeping with by inner 'bear character I abandoned my pursuit of flight status (don't fly angry, remember?) and went back to wandering around high sec, doing some aimless clicking, listening to the football on the radio, mining and "interacting with the meta" (reading Twitter).<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">My main achievement for the weekend - figuring out how to look up to the sides and ceiling in the docking hangar.</span></div>
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Eventually I tired of mining. I thought about seeing how far I could get a Venture. I'd get the relaxing clank of the mining lasers and the adrenaline laden nerves of low sec at the same time. Given my mood I'll save that lark for another day.<br />
<br />
There was something I'd been meaning to do and that was to continue my aborted investigation into the Sisters of EVE ships from <a href="http://diaries-of-a-space-noob.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/day-584-choose-your-own-adventure.html" target="_blank">Day 584</a>. Was it really that long ago when I went mildly RP and discovered not only no trace of Valsas en Dilat but also a Randian quote on Ripard Tegs biography?<br />
<br />
Time needs making up. I leap into the newly assembled White Witch.<br />
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My initial intention is to compare the output from the cylindrical structures. I duly go about this task.<br />
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I quickly reach the conclusion that I'm missing something. Possibly interest. I can't tell anything purely from the output and I feel I'm missing some vital clue in the structure or markings on the hull. I'm no lore master either. Again I should call on <a href="https://interstellarprivateer.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Rhavas</a> or <a href="http://evetravel.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Mark726</a>. The latter is too busy trashing up space elsewhere presumably. So much for science, though I guess that's how Penicillin got discovered.<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://twitter.com/EVE_Rhavas">@EVE_Rhavas</a> we all like to litter vOv ::throws a wrapper out the space window:: <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23tweetfleet&src=hash">#tweetfleet</a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
— CCP's Lapdog (@webspaceships) <a href="https://twitter.com/webspaceships/statuses/450624089804136448">March 31, 2014</a></div>
</blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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I decide to fly the Astero on a tour of the systems moons. Nosing around and using its ability to use a Cov Ops cloak should prove a good field test. I quickly find a new use for the Covert Ops cloak. I can warp around and not see the ship. Here's the thing. The Astero gives me the willies. It scares me. Something about it does not like the exploration fit I've given it. At first I thought it was just the hygienic, almost acerbic, hull paint scheme but realised it wasn't. The hull gives off subtle hints of aggression. Alien aggression. At one point I couldn't shake the medical bay scene from Aliens from my mind. There is an element of almost unstoppable biological aggression radiating from the Astero hull. I'd delve into it a little deeper but I have the fear and concentrate on our tour of the local moons.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">I catch sight of these two sunbathers along the way</span></div>
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Travelling from moon to moon, or actually stopping at planets and practising my dscan techniques, I come to three conclusions<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>It annoys me that Overview tabs share sort order. Let me keep the sort order along with the selection.</li>
<li>It annoys me that moon numbers aren't zero padded for sorting (Moon 2 comes after Moon 19)</li>
<li>There are dead sticks everywhere</li>
</ol>
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Somewhere in the space around virtually 80% of moons there is a POS. A Player Owned Starbase. I'd say at least 50% of these were inactive. They were still anchored and so, in hisec, untouchable without a wardec to hand. They simply didn't have any force field, meaning that they had abandoned or deliberately unfueled and left to hold the space for future use. Once anchored it requires no further effort to claim that space. An incoming war declaration would warn you to go and sort stuff out. <i>So basically in the meantime you have to do nothing</i>. I took offence at this for a second until I realised I'd done the same. I'll go and take that thing down. Then avarice took over and explained in patient terms to my role playing head (which I appear to have put on today) that it it was unfair that this space should be so statically claimed so easily. How unlike EVE that you can so easily claim something and have it made so difficult that it can be taken from you. If you aren't putting any effort into keeping it then it should be easy to take it. War Dec? Don't make me laugh. The wardec cost is cheap at the price for harassing care bear corps and uneconomical for effort and the potential gain involved in taking one of these things down.<br />
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Once my tour was complete I realised something else. At several offline starbases I saw defence and offence modules, at one of them I saw quite a few. <b>At none of them did I see an industrial module</b>. <u>None</u>. That means the towers production power, the central reason for it being in hisec in the first place, has been taken down on purpose and stashed away. These towers aren't abandoned, they are rock solid claim notes on moon space that take no effort to maintain. Presumably some low, or probably null, sec corp likes to make things safely every now and again. Just leave the tower there. <i>Doing nothing for nothing</i>. Like a nail in the coffin of space.<br />
<br />
This gets me riled and sends me to Twitter to see what people think. This rapidly gets out of control because in WH space this thing is a <a href="https://interstellarprivateer.wordpress.com/2014/03/30/repo-man/" target="_blank">bit of a bigger deal</a> than my latent avaricious trashman role. See <a href="https://twitter.com/EVE_Rhavas" target="_blank">Rhavas</a> feed for an example, and for a non WH perspective also <a href="http://www.lowseclifestyle.com/2014/03/hacking-sticks.html" target="_blank">read this</a> and follow <a href="https://twitter.com/Sugar_Kyle" target="_blank">Sugar Kyle </a>. Trust a Noob to put his foot in it. Or his Astero.<br />
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What could CCP do about these dead sticks? They've admitted the POS code is scary and that deployables are the iterating means to replace them. That means complicated solutions are out. My favourite, using Hacking, preferably where the POS owner had designed the defence matrix themselves, is right out. Timers seems to be the order of the day since, as <a href="https://twitter.com/MorwenLagann" target="_blank">Morwen Lagann</a> pointed out, there is a difference between offline and abandoned. In W-space I can understand that. In K-space, particularly Hisec, though these things have been abandoned on purpose. There has to be some timer that can't be confused with the Strontium timer that has to be easily implemented. A week without shields? Abandoned. Maybe. Like maybe I'll get my dirty, greedy mitts on what's inside anytime soon. I'll have to have a think about it after I've stopped thinking about another random thought that's been bugging me in one way or another. So if you don't like the thought of dead stick removal then think about this and let me know what you think<br />
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<b>"What would you do with a hi sec alliance of a hundred corporations that only had one member each". Who would form such a rag tag bunch of individualists and to what purpose?</b><br />
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<i>It's at this point I realise that the fever I have isn't a scotch hangover and that I had better stop thinking. I'm off to read Dark Eden which I've been putting off.</i><br />
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<b>EVE Track of the Day</b><br />
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<a href="http://open.spotify.com/track/7F7iU4t2IGL5VrmVOASbpW" target="_blank">Too Late - Larry Williams and Johnny Watson</a><br />
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(originally dedicated via EVE Radio to all those who fled EVE simply because they heard about the Bonus Room)<br />
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<br />Cheradenine Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06822231437454134489noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-456789637460064957.post-87209263627257238862014-03-29T08:35:00.000+00:002014-03-29T08:35:56.657+00:00Day 651 : I Wouldn't Like Me When I'm AngryI swore I wouldn't write about the Bonus Room incident but it's got to me and it's got me raging in the oddest of ways. I might upset someone. I got upset and I hold some odd views at times. If my response upsets you then I apologise in advance but I've reached the point where some barely reasoned cathartic venting of opinion is required.<br />
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If you don't know what the Bonus Room incident is then I suggest you avoid it all together or read up using the first opening shots over at <a href="http://jestertrek.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-bonus-round.html" target="_blank">Jesters</a><u> </u>and then use <a href="http://thecoffeerocks.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/brave-voices.html" target="_blank">Coffee Rocks handy collation of the various response sources</a>. My stance? Lets get it over with.<br />
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<b><u>The Perpetrator and his henchmen</u></b><br />
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Well. You took that too far didn't you? Didn't expect this storm? I should imagine your real life has been impacted negatively in some way by now. I'm sorry about that. But, well, that's what you get for abandoning civilised behaviour. That's what you get for turning a game into a weapon. That's what you get for adding another small stanza to the litany of vile practices the human mind can come up with. That's what you get for sadism. That's what you get for checking your humanity and empathy at the door. Oh, you're a sociopath? Then you will have to have to check your behaviour with your mind rather than your empathy. Can't manage that? Then we'll have to lock you up, away from us, the humans, the same way we'd guard against any other "thing" that's dangerous.<br />
<br />
I think your behaviour is terrifying and vile to the extent that I almost pity you, but that's just my opinion. I might have missed that sadistic pleasure was "in" right now.<br />
<br />
<b><u>The Victim</u> </b><br />
<b><br /></b>
I feel only sorrow and frustration. I hope you manage to walk away and become stronger and wiser for the experience rather than letting it consume you any more than it did during the event. I get the feeling you might have broke a rule or two yourself. I'd pick another game.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b><u>The Victims detractors</u></b><br />
<b><br /></b>
The victim turned around and used threats after an hour and a half of mental anguish? Well, good golly gosh, there's a bloody surprise. Next time I'm being tortured and am screaming my lungs out I'll remember to get you to cite me for breaking some noise ordinance laws.<br />
<br />
I'm not going to call you out on tacit support of sadistic torture because you already missed the entire point so I doubt you'll get the implications of anything I say.<br />
<br />
<b><u>The "Free Speech" advocates</u></b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Free speech is a necessity. It comes with a price. That you be a guardian of the value of it. You don't incite violence with it. You don't use hate speech of any form, whether that be racist, homophobic, or any of the other myriad of innovative ways human beings have come up with to describe someone else as unequal for the most trivial of reasons.<br />
<br />
"Free" speech is not licence to use language as a weapon against the wellbeing, soul, mind or body of another, for your own amusement or just because you can.<br />
<br />
<b><u>The "Can't ban" advocates</u></b><br />
<b><br /></b>
I really don't have any idea but my down the pub reaction would be something like:<br />
<br />
Bah ha ha ha ha. That's good. CCP owns whatever you do in this game. It's their game. They can probably ban you for looking at them the wrong way should they ever feel like it was a good idea. The EULA constrains them? I bet it doesn't. I never felt that any game EULA enshrined my rights to play a game despite what the owners of the infrastructure say. I'd need a lawyer to make sure but I wouldn't run around holding it up as a document that prevents CCP doing anything it wants to players it doesn't like in their own game. I know if I ran a game and had a EULA I certainly wouldn't be held to much more than agreeing to provide a service for as long as I felt like it and that wouldn't include looking after freaky evil people. Corporate law isn't there to look after you. EULAs are for restricting your rights to a hazily defined set, not for protecting you.<br />
<br />
<b><u>The "Shouldn't ban" advocates</u></b><br />
<b><br /></b>
What's the benefit to not banning? That someone who performed an act that's been almost universally denounced as horrid should carry on being associated with us through the medium of a game, for most of us consider ourselves "gamers" don't we? Oh, it didn't happen in game did it? It began in game, the MO (apart from sadism) was game assets, the people involved carried identities over from the game. The only thing that's missing from the game is a starry bloody background.<br />
<br />
I'm not even going to go into the damage it could potentially do economically to the company owning the game, though to be fair it was pointed out to me that capitalism is just as amoral as the perp' and probably nothing would happen. Probably. It's worth the gamble isn't it? Isn't it? Yes. Lets gamble with the future of EVE....<br />
<br />
<b><u>The morality lawyers</u></b><br />
<br />
The thing that bothers me most about this is not that they have a point, in that we should always check ourselves before launching accidentally into some awful moralistic crusade that turns pogrammatic, but that most of the people asking the questions sound like they're asking them because it's a purely intellectual puzzle. This isn't a petri dish of the mind. Even worse, some people sound like they're just jumping on the liberal-intellectual bandwagon and asking to stand with the smug and the holier than thou. I can almost hear the snooty tone of voice when they ask their questions in text. "Oooooh but who are youuuu to decide". Had a good think about it. My approach is common sense and harms no one really, while yours just brushes the problem under the carpet so other people get hurt. Enough?<br />
<br />
In the end a human being came to harm of a form that was in no way deserved or asked for. Don't give me that tripe about greed or I hope you fall over on the way to buy a lottery ticket. What grey area were you talking about?<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>The "it's not Cyber <i>Bullying</i>" advocates</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
I'd buy a dictionary if I were you.<br />
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<b>The "Victim of his own stupidity" advocates</b><br />
<br />
The rights of the individual have nothing to do with their apparent level of intelligence. I'm not even taking into count varying types of intelligence. I've met people that could intellectually stomp me into the ground in academia that would have fallen into the scam we're talking about. Your effective estimation of a persons worth and access to security by only what <i>you</i> regard as intelligence sickens me. One blogger and CSM candidate that I usually agree with used this argument (and an amusing early attempt to paint himself as an authority on the definition of torture). I greatly disagree. You're entitled to your opinion. I'm sure I've been guilty of this opinion before now (I think I'm doing it somewhere above which is stupid. Arggh! I did it to myself) and it sickens me too that I might have at some point in responded in the same way. I'll scourge my own soul, you deal with yours. Till then I'll wait for the ballot box.<br />
<br />
<br />
In the end though, you know what made me really, really angry? None of the above. That just made me shake my head, rant a bit and feel a little sad. What really got me angry were:<br />
<br />
<b>The people saying they are taking a break from EVE because of this</b>.<br />
<br />
That's great. That'll solve the problem. Perhaps next you'll advocate giving assets to them in game to keep them quiet? That policy worked so well for Neville Chamberlain as I recall. Oh. It didn't? You cowards. Running away from bullies never solved anything. Thanks for leaving us in the lurch. Don't let the jump gate hit you in the arse on the way out.<br />
<br />
Or is it a ransom demand to CCP? Ban them or I leave. Well that's so much better.....<br />
<br />
<b>The people reporting that they knew people who left or never wanted to play because of this.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Don't tell us. This isn't valuable information, unless you count valuable as meaning "just as harmful to the game as the scandal" or "this is what I am going to hijack the situation with". Why don't you spend the time using the almost excessive examples of EVE gameplay that don't involve scams to convince the people otherwise. Why don't you spend the time pointing out that this is an anomaly, an exception.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
You know what I feel that these latter two do in addition to the things I've already mentioned? I feel that they are tarring me with the same brush they used to tar the perpetrator, which brings me to the other person I'm angry at.<br />
<br />
<b>Me</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Look at that rant. It might be too late but I wouldn't read it if I were you. Half of it is probably backlash from watching a racist little Englander in a debate on British TV the other day. Look at me elevate an event that could be ignored as an anomaly or resolved with common sense into a furious argument. I think I hate myself more than I do anyone else. I think I need to calm the hell down. I might have to go mining which calms me down.<br />
<br />
I guess that's the best response to this particular perp. You drove me to mining. Well done.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>EVE Track of the Day</b><br />
<br />
Walk the Line - Johnny Cash<br />
<br />
<b>Disclaimer</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
No ones mother was asked to listen to The Bonus Room during the writing of this blog post.<br />
<br />
<br />Cheradenine Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06822231437454134489noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-456789637460064957.post-73652527653696982982014-03-23T17:19:00.001+00:002014-03-23T17:22:59.880+00:00Day 646: Money Grabber<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<br />
Well, another EVE aim complete. I can get back to actually doing stuff.<br />
<br />
There's lots of talk about how stupid it is to save ISK, to generate a serious amount of liquid ISK. If it isn't working for you then it's dead, it's nothing but a score. It's not like we've been playing video games for just scores for years or anything. Nevertheless I tend to agree. Your liquid ISK buffer should be a disaster fund. It should be able to get you back on your feet (well equipped feet) within a day. That's about it. The size of the buffer depends on the size of your feet. I don't have caps or anything like that so my buffer needs are fairly small. Still, real life interruptions handed me the opportunity to play EVE Farmville so I did. To the tune of ten billion ISK out of small scale industry. I wanted to do it. It was a target. It was a target I cordially hated by the end but a target that had to be completed.<br />
<br />
Within an hour 5% of it had gone and 50% would have gone had I not flipped when I saw PLEX prices. How I'm not seeing rampant inflation in the module market is beyond me. There are a couple of odd signs but they could also be from the current meta in the area of the markets I sell into. I don't do economics so if anyone can explain what's going on, please do.<br />
<br />
So mostly my liquid ISK will shrink back to an emergency fund of around 1 billion. My industrialists will slow down, and probably try some other ISK making endeavour just to see how it goes. Level four missions or trading using some of the ISK I've obtained. Probably missions first as I feel the need to shoot things rather than right click things. T2 industry is an RSI lawsuit waiting to happen.<br />
<br />
So what of my main, the actual Space Noob? He's back out there learning to fly again. It's a good job I can derp T2 fits until kingdom come. I'm bad. I'm bad at EVE but that's no surprise since I'm bad at all computer games and have been since I started playing them thirty years ago. You get used to it. I was a bad priest in Warcraft (well. bad-ish. I could have tried harder). I was bad at Civilisation. Well, in the sense that I raced to nukes all the time to wipe people out and have swamp warfare. I didn't care about the score if you can believe that after what I told you at the start of this post. Once game I was fairly good at, for no reason I can discern, was Silent Service. <a href="http://mabricksmumblings.com/2014/03/21/the-15-games-that-made-mabrick/" target="_blank">Mabrick reminded me about it </a>. Perhaps the first hints of an EVE mentality?<br />
<br />
Anyway, learning to fly to a standard that everyone else would regard as terrible is going to be a process. I'm four T2 fit frigates in. I've relearned gate guns, I've relearned the slingshot (though have yet to employ it successfully), I've relearned not to fly when you have five minutes to play and a lack of modules. The latter comes from throwing together a fit out of any old thing. Search out my killboard. By next month there should be a about a billion ISK in losses on it. A man has to learn.<br />
<br />
At this point I'd like to thank the Stay Frosty guys in the area I was roaming. It was good to know I could be bad without someone being an asshole about it afterwards. In particular an old friend who now flies with the frosty gang, SeaElder4. He was kind enough to meet me at the sun for a duel and tell me off for doing that last minute fit. Still. I got a fight in before I had to dash down to the pub. Also - dude I remember when you used to fit Exequrors with guns in order to get an edge at the start of a fight. You are Mr Wacky Fit. I remember these things! In fact meeting you reminded me of brawling with Tuskers at the sun over a year ago. Fun times. Fun times I should get back to.<br />
<br />
So what's on the cards for the future? A horrendously busy RL week. Well quel surprise. I'll attempt to work around it. Here's the plan<br />
<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Learn to fly again. There is no way I'm going out in a T2 frigate or Navy cruiser fleet with skills at this level.</li>
<li>Visit some landmarks. I'm an explorer by nature. There are some things I need to see.</li>
<li>Get down to the Brave deployment area. I owe it and them a visit and some effort.</li>
<li>Have the alt try missioning. I've dusted off the old <a href="http://diaries-of-a-space-noob.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/day-131-attack-of-space-potato.html" target="_blank">Space Potato</a> and donated it to him. It will go badly.</li>
<li>Spend all those lovely ISKies on nice things and projects. Here's one of them already:</li>
</ul>
<br />
<br />
<span id="goog_870858000"></span><span id="goog_870858001"></span><br />
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<br />
<br />
I'm bad, but I've finally got some bling. I'll be spinning that till I'm dizzy as fuck.<br />
<br />
<b>EVE Track of the Day</b><br />
<br />
<a href="http://open.spotify.com/track/6XHbEhTKH37ENRV5z8ep5V" target="_blank">Money Grabber</a> - Fitz and the Tantrums<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Cheradenine Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06822231437454134489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-456789637460064957.post-89573409208481864992014-03-18T13:42:00.001+00:002014-03-18T13:46:09.320+00:00Day 641 : Check checkSo I haven't been flying. Not what most of you would call flying anyway. I've been space mooching. Dawdling down the trade lanes on alts, mindlessly meandering though belts, constantly configuring my PI. Leaving my main characters skill quietly ticking away (it's a horrible twenty dayer).<br />
<br />
I've mentioned it before and it has to end, my targets aren't targets I want any longer and so, happily, that phase is about to come to an end.<br />
<br />
<i> (Don't talk to me about stupid ass subconscious plans to get 10 billion liquid ISK. I've done it but it's split across characters and my brain still won't shut up about it. I know it's stupid but good ol' neanderthal fish brain back there isn't having any of it. I've a plan in place to deal with it. At the weekend it all gets spent on a list of new targets and projects.)</i><br />
<br />
I thought I had better get flying properly. Realistically I should be down in Catch with the rest of Brave Newbies but two things get in the way<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>Lack of flight time. I'm rusty.</li>
<li>Fear of the CTA. Time based <b><i>C</i></b>all <i><b>T</b></i>o <i><b>A</b></i>rms. </li>
</ol>
<br />
The former can be solved and so I've set about a plan to solve it. Somewhat amusingly, it involved even more logistics than my last couple of months of Space Farmville. At least I was well trained in surviving the boredom of long jump times. Thank god for warp speed mechanic changes on large ships. Everybody hates it. Me? I can get a page of a book read between gates. Bonus.<br />
<br />
The latter, the fear of the CTA, is an old wound. I once swore, after a last pointless evening wasted hammering against some heroic level WoW boss with people that only half turned up, that I would never again run home for a particular time to game specific content. I would never not eat because I didn't have time before things started. I would never again consider not going out in the Real because of some organised content in the Virtual. It's a series of radical declarations that I mostly broke straight away. My friends in the Virtual are friends in the Real and sometimes I'm anxious to meet up with them. Still, the wariness of timing persists. <i>I don't want a game to demand my time, I want it to demand my desire.</i><br />
<br />
Brave Newbies are down on the border of Catch, causing trouble in null space and having all kinds of fun no doubt. For me, null sounds like too much trouble, too little fun per hour (not that I've been up to much of late myself). Too much requirement for large fleets. Less content available simply by undocking (unless by content you mean getting torched by a perma camp). All this might be, probably is, my rusty wariness and a lot of FUD. I'm probably just being a coward. Add to this though the logistic hassle of getting ships down there, or even buying down there while alliance level logistics is still hammered by demand and the market still in it's infancy. Add to this my disdain and contempt for what I shall call the "legendarily amoral vocal tendencies" of certain partners comms in the HERO coalition. Add to this the old fear of the CTA. The math adds up at a Space Noob stranded back in Placid, stalking semi abandoned space lanes and using too much alliteration. <i>Someone talk me out of it.</i><br />
<br />
Until someone does talk me out of this cowardly attitude then I need a project. That project is, as I said, solving the flight time problem. It's going really well. I've learned, or relearned, my first lesson in less than an hour. <b>Good piloting begins before you undock</b>. You should have a preflight checklist. Before today mine had somewhat degraded into a checklist resembling the following:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Clone check</li>
<li>Ammo check</li>
<li>Drone check</li>
<li>Repair check</li>
<li>Ridiculous expensive thing left in cargo hold check</li>
</ul>
<br />
After today I'm adding this list<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Flight plan check</li>
<li>Response plan check</li>
</ul>
<br />
What are these?<br />
<br />
The "Flight plan check" is to grasp where you are going, and more importantly <b>who might be there</b>. I neglected to remember that I'm (ironically given some of the above) in Brave. Space is littered with enemies who will gradually become aware that you are randomly flitting about and plot your demise. That's after you get unlucky and crash a camp or fleet that was sat there anyway. Hi Sec is often more dangerous than other space. I forgot.<br />
<br />
The "Response plan check" is to have a mental plan of responses to various situations you might run into. What do you look for? What will you aim to do? <i>How will your current ship support you in doing this?</i> How will you fly it? Sprint back to the gate when you drop into space full of bads? Target the leader or the weak point and fight until your glorious demise? Sit there slightly dumbfounded, stare myopically at the screen and maybe launch the wrong drones? The latter isn't a plan. It's what I did.<br />
<br />
I was casually setting up a project and thought that "one last ship" moved before retiring for the night would do it. I was reduced to hulls fit for an old set of implants so I could only fly one ship I had ready. I jumped into it. It looked interesting and I could look into using it after it was in position. WRONG. I should have slapped myself on thinking this and gone to bed instead.<br />
<br />
A couple of jumps away from the station, half awake and paying less than half the attention I had available, I dropped into a cloud of flashy red. I sat there dumbfounded and with half a glance at a missorted Overview decided to run for the next gate on my route. I didn't check the layout in space. I didn't prep anything. I didn't have a strategy. I'm not even sure I had an IQ that registers on the scale.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://zkillboard.com/detail/37589627/" target="_blank">BOOM</a><br />
<br />
Amusingly torched by a flock of Battle Ventures with a couple of backup ships. My apologies for the lack of a "gf" in local. Adrenaline reached my brain at around 50% hull and I managed to use it to bounce the pod off the sun and get the hell out. The Corax followed me to the sun and if I hadn't been an idiot and warped to zero then would have probably caught me. There's no planning for what an idiotic Space Noob will do next, especially since podding me would have resulted in me getting where I was going faster and going to bed sooner.<br />
<br />
So. In future I will hold to my preflight checklist. To it I will add the flight and response plans. I may also add to it<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Don't fly late on Monday evenings, you idiot.</li>
</ul>
<br />
7o to the Battle Venture roam, thanks for the reminder. Lesson learned.<br />
<br />
Up next, <a href="http://www.ninveah.com/2014/03/blog-banter-54-heroes.html" target="_blank">people are answering my other questions</a> so I had better have a go too.<br />
<br />
<b>EVE Track of the Day</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Don't Fear the Reaper - Blue Oyster Cult<br />
<b><br /></b>Cheradenine Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06822231437454134489noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-456789637460064957.post-69871829471633287692014-03-15T12:34:00.002+00:002014-03-15T12:34:50.052+00:00Day 638: Return of the FatmanGoing visual ( and rapid as you'll see by the image widths I made a mess of ) today as I prep to watch the entire last day of the Six Nations rugby.<br />
<br />
Rubicon 1.3 arrived this week and with it, among many other exciting things, came a change to the look of an old favourite. The Tristan. Possibly the oddest looking of the frigates, I always had a fondness for it. Aside from anything else you always felt that you were flying around in a Transformer. The new look is beefier, losing some of the anthropomorphic layout of struts and modifying them into shielding. There was a small sense of loss on realising that the agile little fat man had become a beefy couch potato. This soon vanished when I flew it out and went into warp. It has to be seen, and hopefully some equivalent effect retro'd back onto other ship types.<br />
<br />
Here's where I really put the nerd into "spaceship nerd"<br />
<br />
<b>Front</b>
<br />
<b><br /></b>
<br />
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<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzrJcW29nOOAFvcq94islS3zweNV4IJAucR1VXwU61qCVODUuJJI9Lq60w8B0aP3zFld06wLGThLgu5_4GBbg6gwEAucg417IN-MSLJtM0LR5TlrAlRSv01DCIfDBfuAnBsgUxszVpwmwm/s1600/2014.03.12.08.37.40.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzrJcW29nOOAFvcq94islS3zweNV4IJAucR1VXwU61qCVODUuJJI9Lq60w8B0aP3zFld06wLGThLgu5_4GBbg6gwEAucg417IN-MSLJtM0LR5TlrAlRSv01DCIfDBfuAnBsgUxszVpwmwm/s1600/2014.03.12.08.37.40.png" height="320" width="256" /></a>
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<td> <a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PX3zvmAY1B0/UyQ_3P7kDmI/AAAAAAAAAtI/WfQ0j7lNREw/s1600/2014.03.13.08.32.04.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PX3zvmAY1B0/UyQ_3P7kDmI/AAAAAAAAAtI/WfQ0j7lNREw/s1600/2014.03.13.08.32.04.png" height="320" width="253" /></a>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<i>"Is that a Velator cockpit?"</i><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Face Right</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<br />
<table><tbody>
<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJoGWRcvbPz-vFsTKbky5YnBq6mh0pnwKwDHvqSnPoRygV2cZWOgAHYJ6n0b2C903J2wJI3gZHMYVdL52xHDZrLPeTeIUri9oo3At7sCeT8hG86wuDNAjNWGOuPG8i-m8uS8eQnN2UyVIr/s1600/2014.03.12.08.37.44.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJoGWRcvbPz-vFsTKbky5YnBq6mh0pnwKwDHvqSnPoRygV2cZWOgAHYJ6n0b2C903J2wJI3gZHMYVdL52xHDZrLPeTeIUri9oo3At7sCeT8hG86wuDNAjNWGOuPG8i-m8uS8eQnN2UyVIr/s1600/2014.03.12.08.37.44.png" height="320" width="260" /></a>
</td>
<td><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-G6_fPlRiBBU/UyRALTbsS-I/AAAAAAAAAtc/Vp0_VX8bTmQ/s1600/2014.03.13.08.31.54.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-G6_fPlRiBBU/UyRALTbsS-I/AAAAAAAAAtc/Vp0_VX8bTmQ/s1600/2014.03.13.08.31.54.png" height="320" width="281" /></a>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<i>"Fatter yet sleeker"</i><br />
<br />
<b>Back</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<br />
<table><tbody>
<tr><td><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yK-Ya4VtakQ/UyRAguWnUlI/AAAAAAAAAtk/gUDrA7HB1dA/s1600/2014.03.12.08.37.47.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yK-Ya4VtakQ/UyRAguWnUlI/AAAAAAAAAtk/gUDrA7HB1dA/s1600/2014.03.12.08.37.47.png" height="320" width="271" /></a>
</td>
<td><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zh2qOcArLPM/UyRAg4D-TAI/AAAAAAAAAto/LN8Ie7R6U0Q/s1600/2014.03.13.08.31.41.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zh2qOcArLPM/UyRAg4D-TAI/AAAAAAAAAto/LN8Ie7R6U0Q/s1600/2014.03.13.08.31.41.png" height="320" width="251" /></a>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b><br /></b>
<br /><i>"Agility vs Power"</i><br /><br />
<b>Back Angled Northwest</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<br />
<table><tbody>
<tr><td><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-V7bGfQPTJdM/UyRAmFLidQI/AAAAAAAAAt0/KrsN6T5iyec/s1600/2014.03.12.08.37.50.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-V7bGfQPTJdM/UyRAmFLidQI/AAAAAAAAAt0/KrsN6T5iyec/s1600/2014.03.12.08.37.50.png" height="320" width="298" /></a>
</td>
<td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-6ZMHylloWy9t69TZGhI-pYCVyYiraBYc_oQ7to1p6toGa7UIH1wVW9jA5-NOz0v9W6vNxiIUKZuwJZ66JRwBFxgUT1-0TawkvAO928KufGMRVZBcIdPJ1gTyJajXp_pMF1g-LHSDbJAP/s1600/2014.03.13.08.31.21.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-6ZMHylloWy9t69TZGhI-pYCVyYiraBYc_oQ7to1p6toGa7UIH1wVW9jA5-NOz0v9W6vNxiIUKZuwJZ66JRwBFxgUT1-0TawkvAO928KufGMRVZBcIdPJ1gTyJajXp_pMF1g-LHSDbJAP/s1600/2014.03.13.08.31.21.png" height="320" width="294" /></a>
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</tbody></table>
<b><br /></b>
<br /><i>"Wasp vs Bee"</i><br /><br />
<b>Top</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<br />
<table><tbody>
<tr><td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGxbO5l2hlDBjhZPsWvRrRBb0Hu72agBwFVpQlxGwWB6IZr2P15NUF2CrAQlOqQfr3lQtugPVC-0sqm0sCFfoZq8jNAYJQT_pR7DTD3IA3Lv6T_lmUcDPK3Epxyb2dhfLpEJdxZSINDcvH/s1600/2014.03.12.08.37.53.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGxbO5l2hlDBjhZPsWvRrRBb0Hu72agBwFVpQlxGwWB6IZr2P15NUF2CrAQlOqQfr3lQtugPVC-0sqm0sCFfoZq8jNAYJQT_pR7DTD3IA3Lv6T_lmUcDPK3Epxyb2dhfLpEJdxZSINDcvH/s1600/2014.03.12.08.37.53.png" height="231" width="320" /></a>
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<td><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aw6s_bvzR2w/UyRDdxD0qdI/AAAAAAAAAuM/5tYrfKQqoa8/s1600/2014.03.13.08.31.06.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aw6s_bvzR2w/UyRDdxD0qdI/AAAAAAAAAuM/5tYrfKQqoa8/s1600/2014.03.13.08.31.06.png" height="294" width="320" /></a>
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<b><br /></b>
<b><br /></b>
<i>"Strut vs Shield"</i><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Underneath</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<br />
<table><tbody>
<tr><td><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-75w1NjfQ4f8/UyRDl68XmRI/AAAAAAAAAuY/HDQkqwVYIYs/s1600/2014.03.12.08.37.59.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-75w1NjfQ4f8/UyRDl68XmRI/AAAAAAAAAuY/HDQkqwVYIYs/s1600/2014.03.12.08.37.59.png" height="245" width="320" /></a>
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<td><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eSOL1z_akUk/UyRDmBSSGgI/AAAAAAAAAuc/Ezp8UfOX6C0/s1600/2014.03.13.08.29.56.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eSOL1z_akUk/UyRDmBSSGgI/AAAAAAAAAuc/Ezp8UfOX6C0/s1600/2014.03.13.08.29.56.png" height="301" width="320" /></a>
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<b><br /></b>
<b><br /></b>
<i>"Circles vs Hatches"</i><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Summary</b><br />
<br />
I kind of miss the thin struts that gave the Tristan personality, sort of miss the lit circles under the top wings and the almost insectile look of the original from the top. On the other hand the new Tristan is built like a tank, adds animated running lights in several locations, has shielding instead of struts, has shielding that animates in and out of warp and, for some reason I can't figure, I like the detail of what I assume are drone docking hatches on the underneath. Shame they aren't animated when you release drones.<br />
<br />
In short, looking good CCP though if I could I'd buy one of your new skins/paint jobs to get a retro version for nostalgia reasons. Speaking of which, I must dash off and see how cheap I can get a Police Comet paintjob.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>EVE Track of the Day</b><br />
<br />
Sheriff Fatman - Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b><br /></b>Cheradenine Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06822231437454134489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-456789637460064957.post-69746937460602825442014-03-08T12:53:00.001+00:002014-03-20T21:32:13.275+00:00Day 635: Ride on the Valkyrie No, that title is correct, and no I haven't suddenly had the opportunity to socially meet large breasted mythological warrior women from Valhalla. I'll get round to explaining in a bit.<br />
<br />
An extremely tough day at work yesterday was brightened by two events. The first was a prize. I won something! I never win anything so it was with some delight that I came a surprising second in <a href="http://tagn.wordpress.com/2014/03/07/show-me-the-planets-contest-results/" target="_blank">The Ancient Gaming Noobs "Show Me The Planets" contest</a>. Head over there to see my entry. I'll add the three I sent to this site at some later point.<br />
<br />
I was a bit behind on my blog reading and found out about the competition late on so it was a scramble to compile three screenshots. The one that came second I took when I was but a week old Space Noob, on <a href="http://diaries-of-a-space-noob.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/day-8-faffing-on-weekend.html" target="_blank">Day 8</a> I think. Now I'm sliding towards two years in the game and am, thankfully, still a complete Space Noob. The other entries in the competition are great and TAGN keeps a regular stream of interesting shots from our most gorgeous galaxy over at <a href="http://evepics.wordpress.com/">http://evepics.wordpress.com/</a><br />
<br />
The second event that got me through the day had been planned for. CCP were in good old London town, hanging round the usual EVE meetup pub near Tower Hill and packing a rack of <a href="http://evevalkyrie.com/" target="_blank">EVE Valkyrie</a> demos. I've been keeping my eye on <a href="http://www.oculusvr.com/" target="_blank">Oculus Rift</a> progress in general and Valkyrie in particular. As has my pal, Alec, at work who, while not an EVE player as such, is regularly bombarded with tales of EVE. So at exactly 5pm we leapt up, abandoned several data loading processes and dashed out of the office heading for Tower Hill. We aimed to be there early, ahead of the inevitable queue.<br />
<br />
When we got there the pub already had a fair sized contingent of fellow space nerds and there were eight or nine people already queued up in front of three chairs set next to glowing blue PC cases. We grabbed a beer and fell into the line which soon doubled in length. A few minutes later and we were ready for our first three minute match.<br />
<br />
I was wary because the game is played using a console controller and not only have I not used on in about five years, I also suck at playing video games. I enjoy them, as you can tell, but inevitably I'm terrible at them. I attempted to memorise what I was told about the controls and so came away knowing only where the accelerator was and a vague idea about missiles. I sat down and put the Oculus over my head. Reality as I knew it vanished.<br />
<br />
The headset is light. So light in fact that you ignore it. I'd dreaded some kind of weight that would drag my head forward but you could wear this thing as easily as a pair of swimming googles.<br />
<br />
I found myself in a red lit hangar, surrounded by basic displays and the frame of a cockpit. I looked around. It was SEAMLESS. There was no lag, no perceptible lack of synchronicity at all. I forgot I was wearing the headset after a few seconds. I could have cheerfully sat there and looked around amazed had I not been so aware of an imminent launch.<br />
<br />
It says something about the seamlessness of the experience that within ten seconds I'd looked down to double check where the buttons were on my controller and was amazed to find some other persons legs there. There was no sign of the controller. I'd become immersed in the experience in the space of a few seconds.<br />
<br />
Suddenly there was a burst of movement and I was shot from the carrier into space. This was followed the quickest three minutes of my life as I struggled to gain some sense of what was happening and how to effect it. Halfway through I realised that the autocannons were rubbish and, with my flying skills, unlikely to hit anything. I kept my thumb jammed on the accelerator which was probably a bad idea.<br />
<br />
I only had a loose sense of how fast I was travelling and where I was. This is likely more due to the nature of the experience than the game itself. There's almost an element of sensory overload to it as you are thrust into combat right away and with time limited there wasn't any option to orientate myself and calmly evaluate anything.<br />
<br />
I did realised how the missile system worked after a couple of minutes. It's all about where you are looking. I spent the rest of the game flying while looking all over the place, getting locks on enemy ships and releasing missiles. It became instantly natural to track enemies in space, even following them as they vanished behind you and became obscured by the back of the cockpit. There was no sensation of neck ache afterwards. You are just moving your head and there is little added weight on it. I'd get more neck ache from using a couple of screens on my home PC.<br />
<br />
In short, a stunning experience. I must have one. It's the future. I managed to queue up again later in the evening and get another three minutes and somehow do worse than the first time while feeling that I did better. It'll take some mastering, as you'd imagine suddenly being a high octane combat pilot would.<br />
<br />
While normally I set my monetary input in games to around £1 an hour, I would cheerfully fork over ten times that, maybe more, for just the Oculus and Valkyrie. That's only one game. There are going to be other games with Oculus Rift support. I will have one. We discussed the danger of being early adopters but in the end, pardon my French, fuck that. I'm going to have to wait too long as it is. Buy It and Fly It is now my mantra.<br />
<br />
The rest of the evening was the usual EVE meetup brilliance, running into old friends and new, finally meeting some people in the real that I'd talked to virtually. EVE has a great community, in game and out, and CCP Games looks after us. I had free beer. <i><b><u>Free</u> beer</b></i>. On top of Valkyrie. They also raffled off an entire table sized pile of EVE related stuff. What a day. Added to this I was somewhat overwhelmed by CCP Guard's admiration for my custom designed Space Noob Tshirt (quick Space Noob, to Cafe Press!). I also got to watch my friend Alec steal the show somewhat by being pictured attempting to play Valkyrie with a horses head on. You can see the pictures from the evening here <a href="http://evevalkyrie.org/eve-valkyrie-london.html">http://evevalkyrie.org/eve-valkyrie-london.html</a>.<br />
<br />
I'm off to revisit the gorgeousness that is EVE, break out of my now two month long hibernation and also contemplate dragging all my shit halfway across the universe to help HERO destabilise Curse. As if Russians didn't have enough to worry about at the moment.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>EVE Track of the Day</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Ride of the Valkyries - Richard Wagner</b><br />
<br />
(what else?)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
I have two pictures that sum up an awesome night (second one follows this) <a href="http://t.co/VdPTYVU769">pic.twitter.com/VdPTYVU769</a><br />
— Chris Smith (@Gamedesigndiary) <a href="https://twitter.com/Gamedesigndiary/statuses/442252157539323904">March 8, 2014</a></blockquote>
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Cheradenine Harperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06822231437454134489noreply@blogger.com2