Day 88 : Frillgasm

I am editing Fridays entry, trying to keep up with the ever increasing backlog, when tweetfleet goes wild with the news of the Winter rebalancing. Of particular interest at the start was the return of the Frill to one of the Minmatar ship models. The story and mock outrage over its disappearance by Rixx Javix was among the first threads of sandbox and metagaming that drew me deeper into the EVE mire, an internet version of one of the many tentacles of the Watcher in the Water outside the Gates of Moria. I really am locked into the dark halls of EVE now.

The announcement hijacked the end of that post, not least because I was waiting to see how long before Rixx heard and went bonkers (twenty minutes), but also because I had a funny feeling that CCP had a lot up their sleeves for Winter. I was pipped to the post by their own announcements, I think veteran EVE players were expecting less. Why did I think differently? Do I retain a sense of optimism because I haven’t been through a disappointing expansion? Is it some lingering transferred respect, despite Pandagate, that I have for Blizzard? Is that I got bugger all done this summer and CCP managed to make good changes to frigates during summer? Maybe it was because that was the first change I’d seen, or had the wit to pay attention to, while playing.

Anyway see Rixx Javix over on EVEoganda for a summary of the story at http://eveoganda.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/the-frill-of-victory-agony-of-defeat.html

In the evening I zoom around generating standings, the EVE equivalent of reputation with NPCs, having just found out about Data Centers. Its easy to do and an excuse to fly the Comet in something other than toy mode. Actually these are all level one missions so it pretty much still is toy mode. I almost feel sorry for the rats. I line up the level 2 courier missions for tomorrow but its been a long day and I’m off to bed. Thanks to Einia for pointing me at http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Gallente_COSMOS_Guide

Hopefully I’ll be ready to run level four missions by the time I can fly an Ishkur. Hopefully the Ish will be able to handle them otherwise its a run up through Battlecruiser skilling for me. So much for diverting away from combat skills for a while.

Thanks also to @vagueness on twitter who pointed out that, for a certain amount of refined minerals, transport elevates plagiolase above scordite in value. Presumably this is because mexallon is so expensive per m3. I’d update my spreadsheet but that thing has already exhausted my repertoire of swear words and if I have to consider 14 or more full Retriever mining runs I might just go mad. Even I have mining limits. This might all be more important if I end up in a large mining operation at some point. If have problems hauling and I’m at that stage then I’ll buy a freighter. The problem with this is that I don’t like the Gallente one and I love the Amarr version. It reminds me of the rebel troop transporters from The Empire Strikes Back. Freighters are a long way in the future but dreaming about flying just about everything is one of the things that keeps me hooked on EVE.