Day 641 : Check check

So 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).

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.

 (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 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

1. Lack of flight time. I'm rusty.
2. Fear of the CTA. Time based Call To Arms. 

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.

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 don't want a game to demand my time, I want it to demand my desire.

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. Someone talk me out of it.

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. Good piloting begins before you undock. You should have a preflight checklist. Before today mine had somewhat degraded into a checklist resembling the following:

• Clone check
• Ammo check
• Drone check
• Repair check
• Ridiculous expensive thing left in cargo hold check

After today I'm adding this list

• Flight plan check
• Response plan check

What are these?

The "Flight plan check" is to grasp where you are going, and more importantly who might be there. 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.

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? How will your current ship support you in doing this? 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.

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.

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.

BOOM

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.

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

• Don't fly late on Monday evenings, you idiot.

7o to the Battle Venture roam, thanks for the reminder. Lesson learned.

Up next, people are answering my other questions so I had better have a go too.

EVE Track of the Day

Don't Fear the Reaper - Blue Oyster Cult

Day 638: Return of the Fatman

Going 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.

 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.

Here's where I really put the nerd into "spaceship nerd"

  Front


"Is that a Velator cockpit?"

Face Right


"Fatter yet sleeker"

Back




"Agility vs Power"

Back Angled Northwest




"Wasp vs Bee"

Top




"Strut vs Shield"

Underneath




"Circles vs Hatches"

Summary

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.

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.


EVE Track of the Day

Sheriff Fatman - Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine

Day 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.

 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 The Ancient Gaming Noobs "Show Me The Planets" contest. Head over there to see my entry. I'll add the three I sent to this site at some later point.

 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 Day 8 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 http://evepics.wordpress.com/

 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 EVE Valkyrie demos. I've been keeping my eye on Oculus Rift 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.

 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.

 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.

 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.

 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.

 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.

 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.

 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.

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.

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.

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.

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. Free beer. 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 http://evevalkyrie.org/eve-valkyrie-london.html.

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.



EVE Track of the Day

Ride of the Valkyries - Richard Wagner

(what else?)

I have two pictures that sum up an awesome night (second one follows this) pic.twitter.com/VdPTYVU769
— Chris Smith (@Gamedesigndiary) March 8, 2014

Day 612: Swashbucklin In Brooklyn

Quick post. I was listening to a song and a question occurred to me. Where are the EVE heroes? Against a dark background surely all we have are anti-heroes? A lot of mockery is aimed at any who attempt to be white knights. EVE is a dark place and yet pretty much all other MMO's try to place the player in the role of some form of hero, boosting the ego and taking the player out of the humdrum 1 in 7 billion that is RL. Why have I fitted into EVE? Did I never want to be that?  So I guess my question is:

 Do classic heroes exist in EVE? Is such heroism even possible in EVE? How would you go about being one without opening yourself wide open to scams? Is the nature of the game so dark that heroes can't exist? How do you deal with that irony? What effect does this have on us and the psyche of new players coming in from other MMOs? Is it something special that we don't have classic heroes, or should we? Are our non classic heroes more genuine? 

I guess I'll level this at @kirithkodachi and hope it gets asked after the current Overview BB.


EVE Track of the Day 

Swashbucklin In Brooklyn : Fun Lovin' Criminals

Day 611: Shake Your Money Maker

Another few weeks without a post. Have I abandoned EVE? Succumbed to my first bout of bittervet syndrome early? Nope. I've been "playing" EVE in a different way, despite warning myself about it back in December. Ok. There was a death in the family which made me want to break things in a way that screamed "stay away from social arenas with limited accountability". I could have been one of those internet users. I missed some in game events but frankly my attitude would have sucked. You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em,. Know when to walk away.

The problem for my EVE habit was that my sudden lack of desire for company was in sync with sudden ISK monetary worries brought on by various events:

1. I saw a Providence for sale at less than a billion ISK. I bought it for my alt. It's a backup revenue stream for when T2 manufacture finally stamps me with the sign "RSI victim". T2 manufacture causes arthritis of the hand and wrist, mouse burnout, monkeys flying out of your butt. All that kind of middle class armageddon shit. My alt accounts first CSM9 vote will go to Fuzzysteve.

Editor: He bought it because it looks like a Rebel Troop Transport

2. Finally granted with the chance to play for the first time in weeks I jumped into a hasty op with Brave where we got pasted all over the grid. I couldn't even see the called targets in the overview. As ever with EVE I  learned things. Unfortunately my frustration with the encounter caused me to behave randomly and lose my pod. I'd forgotten to clone jump and 100 million in implants went boom. Kind of worth it since I got to travel to my death through a Titan bridge for the first time but a shock none the less.

3. I can't recall what number 3 was but it was important. Really.

All this caused me to go into alt mode. Not only did I look at and fix how I was doing industry but a work related run in with Python (the language, much as I'd like a job where I ran into giant snakes all the time) started me writing my own tools to keep up and organise the entire thing. I already have basic reports using the API for order/build monitoring and the next things to copy written. Considering these were the two programs I wrote after the obligatory "hello world" program reveals why I'm fast becoming a fan of Python despite the hilarious issues of syntactically valid whitespace and Pythons desire to use different keywords for standard functionality than everyone else.

Currently I'm finishing off this alt-a-thon episode of backup revenue streams. I have the hauler ready to go. I'm working on a missioner stream too but this involves the deadly standings grind. If I told you how many level two distro missions I ran today you would cry so many tears that you'd be knee deep in EVE players drinking their fill.

Oh. I remember number 3 now.

PLEX BASED ALT TRAINING

This is the monkey on my back. If it wasn't possible I wouldn't have to do it. The alt supplying cash and having multiple possible avenues to do this has led to an obsession with PLEX training the alts into the various roles. I have a rule that, while I have two subscribed accounts, I never buy PLEX to convert into ISK. This requires me to generate a lot of ISK to buy the PLEX to train the alts. Since alt training was successful CCP have decided you can not only apply this to multiple alts but you can add as much time to an alt as you like. I need another paid up six months training to be happy and finished. I can then PLEX my second account easily. Ha.

So yes. I am playing, have been playing, EVE Farmville again. There are upsides:

1. I'm nearly done. A month more. I swear. Honest. Then all cash goes towards exploding things.

2. Fuck implants. I was using CA implants for fitting and weapon training. I'm flying with cheap or no implants on my main from now on. The thought of going into null and getting the implant heavy pod out stops me flying. Yes. You'll gain SP 10% faster than me. I'll wait.

3. Knowing I'd need something to code on I managed to revive an old PC to be a Linux based coding workhorse by buying an ancient, cheap graphics card on eBay. This spiralled and turned into an entire project that resulted in a desk with three monitors, two PCs and a laptop running on it. Nerdvana. (amusingly I'd forgotten I'd already installed Linux on it before it broke and when it came back to life I found it's hostname was set to "zombie").

4. Code. I'm amused by how entertained I can be by writing my shitty learning code and yet my third python program ever was 34 lines long and downloaded my assets, checked the blueprint copies and spat out a prioritised list of things to copy. I might have to go read Microserfs again.

5. Reviving the space potato (now looking extra shiny cool - thanks CCP!) I imagine the NPC opponents being surprised by the poor choice of weapon for a level three mission but not as surprised as when they were when they attacked it and I dropped a RLML Caracal on their asses. As Will Smith didn't sing : Boom Cycle Boom 

So the ultimate problem? Guilt. I should be out flying with Brave and laughing. I should be helping the new droves of newbros though their first days in low sec ( my other first CMS9 vote is going to Sugar Kyle ). I should be using winter downtime months to fly spaceships in fight mode. Is a crowded Brave the right place for me? A Brave that more and more looks to null sec? When I get back there I think it is. Brave will never abandon low sec. Cagali. Back me up here.

Anyway. Onwards and upwards and spacewards. As per. Astra.

EVE Track(s) of the day

Seeing Things - The Black Crowes

 The Gambler - Kenny Rodgers

 

Day 584: Choose Your Own Adventure

Here we go. I've never been much of a lore man in games beyond the simple need to immerse myself in the world. I save my lore brain for useless factoids from Lord of the Rings, though EVE has tempted me before now. I've never been much of an RP'er beyond my D&D (and other games) days years ago. Loved the games but my RP talents pretty much came down to an ability for daft voices while being a DM. In any case, bear with me while I blur the lines.

Yesterday I inadvertently got involved in a lore quandry. Whether by the wicked auspices of paracetamol and decongestant or by the sheer boredom that was the illness enforced non-combat role, I found myself captivated by the question of the odd cylindrical feature on the Zephyr. I wondered if the same Intaki polymath, Valsas en Dilat, was involved in the creation of the new Sisters of EVE cruiser, the Stratios. I reached out to Rhavas and Mark726 via the ever trusty Twitter, seemingly the linchpin of the EVE community. They revealed that Dilat was a character of some infamy and at some point player controlled. They pointed me at an article which didn't reveal much but which left a teaser at the end: an abandoned research project in 3-IN0V. Gulp. Nullsec. I have no real Nullsec skills yet. I've done a little exploring, taken a few shortcuts and come to a sticky end once or twice. I need to go out there more and yet view the place with some trepidation. Bombs and Bubbles! Insta-death!

Two factors work in my favour. Firstly 3-IN0V is in Syndicate which can not only be fairly sleepy in the UK morning hours, but is also near my home system of Barleguet (Braves reading this : I'll be back out shooting soon, honest. More on that in another post.). In fact 3-IN0V is only 9 jumps away. Secondly the Interceptor rebalance made them able to ignore warp bubbles. I'm trained to IV in Interceptors and have a Taranis docked and almost ready to go. Looks like breakfast entertainment is sorted. It'll give me something to do while I get a mix of olive oil and tea tree oil into my ear canal. It might help the mild infection that is swimmers ear but it makes you smell like a hippys bathroom. Yep, not just got a cold.

In Barleguet I hastily load up the Taranis with bits and bobs. I'm a little shy on ammo but this is a recce so I'm warp stabbed and probably won't get up to much. I fling a few things in the hold as an afterthought. The game is on the minute I undock into a small cloud of Goons. "Punch it Chewie" I mutter, the story driven mission awakening the barely dormant Star Wars fan within. I warp off safely and engage in a few minutes of comedy where I realise just how bloody fast Interceptors are. I blow through a bubble and through a system where Rote Kapelle have something going on. I note that for later reference. There is a name in local that I recognise.

The last three systems are devoid of capsuleers, as is the final destination. Lucky. I get to nose around in peace. On arrival in the system I can instantly see the Abandoned Research Project on the overview. There is nothing on DScan. I warp over to the Project giddily, forgetting my usual caution. It's not abandoned entirely. Serpentis are there. A couple of Battlecruisers and a couple of Battleships. Now, I've been killing Serpentis since day one of my EVE career. I doubt they'll let me just look around. I hastily warp out to the sun, dropping a bookmark along the way which I promptly warp back to. Hanging in space I dig out one of the things I brought with me. A Mobile Depot. Given a minute to anchor it allows me to refit my warp stabilisers with some armor and an ancillary repairer that I also brought with me. Since there isn't a station in system this saves me precious minutes.

Back at the Project I scream in under MWD, maintaining some transversal before arcing around to shoot at the first battle cruiser. The screen fills with the lurid green light of rounds of metal superheated to plasma and magnetically launched slugs. Might as well be tracer fire to my Interceptor which slips between them with ease. I relax and launch the couple of lads I brought along for the ride, they go to work assisting my 75mm guns which might otherwise take a while to deal with ships this big. Hobgoblins. The little tinkers. Always getting into trouble. I'm packing Javelin rounds. Not cost effective but higher damage. I don't have many of them. I wasn't expecting a fight. Cocky, I turn off my UI to get a better look around. "Trust in the force Luke" whispers a ghostly voice as I turn off the Overview.

I'm doing well. In under the guns they can't track me and the lads are filling in the DPS to offset the enemy repair rate while I slowly chew away at them. I turn to orbit the latter half of my opponents and make a mistake. In an instant my shields are gone. I should have manually arced around instead of hitting the orbit command. I slowed to almost nothing as I turned at range from an enemy.

Son of a bitch must pay.

I turn with a thirst on the remaining Serpentis, hurling a few insults and forgetting that I too once loved the old Space Potato hull. I cycle the armour repairer and curse the Serp' for making me waste a charge of nanites. 

In the lull following the eradication of the Serpentis menace I regret that I didn't bring a salvaging module. The loot is, frankly, awful. I feel like I've robbed drug addicts rather than the drug dealers. Hey ho. Time to look around.

What's this here? Yet another cylindrical structure. A massive and partially wrecked particle accelerator. I'm no science whizz. I got my science skill kicks from mass producing T2 neutron blasters back in the day and then forgot about it when I learned that firing T2 neutron blasters was a lot more fun. I give the surrounding structures a good sweep, mindful of the early warning notice about radiation but trusting to the gold armour of the Taranis. Up close the station is obviously a wreck. There isn't anyone hiding in the "Broken Metallic Crystal Asteroid" though I wonder what use it served. I can't resist buzzing the surface and flying through the rock arch I find. Dilat isn't here, if indeed he ever was. I hang in the shadow of the rock and wait for someone to uncloak but nothing happens and an empty local is too good to be true. Time to get moving. I'll be back for a longer look at the system once I can get a Cov' Ops ship in place. I know just the pilot for that. My scanning alt, the ridiculously named Wildgun Badstar. The fool.

I set my destination for home. Good ole Barle'. I'm wondering what this all means and what I can do next. The investigation has fallen at the first hurdle. I can get a friend to ingratiate themselves with the Sisters of EVE. An afternoon trawling the Blood Stained Stars should do it. I'll see what happens there. I could buy myself a Stratios. Not a small amount of ISK involved there but it might be worth it to have a look. Again I might have to rely on a friend. Flying a Strat' near home would probably draw every devil this side of hell. 

What is the mystery of the cylinder? Is the structure coincidental? Am I almost literally going round in circles? Was some stealth tech' along the lines of guided particle acceleration being researched here? Was Dilat involved? Who the hell is Dilat? Where is that blueberry muffin I was going to have for breakfast? All interesting questions to consider though I fancy I may have accidentally just trod upon the solution to the latter. 

I begin the laughably rapid nine jump sequence back home, passing by the earlier name I recognised.

It's Teg! I'm here with the space famous and the man responsible for putting almost as many hits as Reddit on this blog. Thank you Vice Chairman. Apparently he's been reading too much Goblin of late judging by the Biography header line but he gets a thankful, cheery "7o Mr Teg" from me. I don't have time to stop and chat, RL beckons and my sinuses are clear enough to stand up on the London Underground. I'm docked and done for now.

I chose my own adventure, out in the 'verse, checking shit out. EVE. You've got to love it, no matter your approach. Remember that. Remember that when you're missing out on, or losing, stuff for RL reasons. Remember that when EVE fails to support more players in one system than any other MMO could do. Have you used EVE? Have you paid your dues? Yes sir, the check is in the mail.

[ Apologies for the late tangent. angry responses can be directed at Steel, Sheffield, UK. Internet points for recognizing the reference he inspired me to follow ]

EVE Track of the Day

Shockingly none. Go watch this instead.

Day 583: The Lure of the Lore

I missed Ganked 100 which was the intended source for this post. I was barely awake at the time and in no condition for combat. I spent the time snoozing, watching the great EVE-Kill map, laughing at Top Gun on TV (really Tom? You hadn't heard Sitting On The Dock of the Bay in ages? What planet were you on? Presumably a Thetan one), and doing some more flying around aimlessly for no apparent reason.

This time though I did some retail therapy and picked up a ship I've always wanted. The Zephyr. Pictures follow of me faffing around on the belt of a gas giant, click em to see em. At one point, even though I was static, the belts moved across the ship leaving me underneath. It appears the belts are included in the planets rotation.

The Zephyr is a quiet ship, no AB or MWD can be fit to her since there are no slots bar the single high for the specialised probe launcher. It's oddly calming to fly in though makes you want to rush off and watch the pod racing scenes from Phantom Menace. All in all, and odd ship. The most puzzling oddity was the rotating wheel at the rear of the ship. Being in an weird mood I found myself speculating as to the purpose of this ring. Propulsion? Guidance? Crew gravity wheel? The only other ship I could think of with any similar feature was the Stratios whose "cylindrical structure" is connected with its ability to employ covert operations cloaking devices. The Zephyr is also stealthy in that Sleeper drones won't attack it in wormhole space. So perhaps the wheel is a stealth feature? Is it some kind of super high tech prayer wheel - "Please don't notice me, please don't notice me, please don't notice me....". Does it also mean that "Intaki polymath Valsas en Dilat" was involved in the creation of the new Sisters of EVE cruiser? What would that mean? Dear holy Bob! I've fallen under the spell of the lure of the lore. There are better minds out there that know more than I do about this kind of thing. Quick! To the community-mobile!

Until then, here are the pics of me doing what I referred to as "sailing the sky road" in my Zephyr. It's named the "The Zeppo" in defiance of it's exceptional nature, and for poorly alliterative reasons, and because I recently rewatched a favourite episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I'm ill. Comfort telly required. Sue me. I toyed with Mary Celeste but that's too depressing.

EVE Track of the Day

Sailing - Rod Stewart

Day 582: One Small Step

Under the hammer of Winter, on an endless day.....

ie I have a cold, plus swimmers ear, and it's a Saturday. Whether the illness or the pills taken for the illness I went a little random and flew all the way to a moon. Warping to a moon gets you no where near so it's a ten minute or so journey under Microwarp. It's a shame the damn thing vanishes at 0km but you can circumnavigate them at around 10km with no jarring effects.

An that's all he wrote! Thinking is for when your brain works.


EVE Track of the Day

Bad Moon Rising - Creedence Clearwater Revival

Day 575: BB52 : EVE Mentality

First of all. Happy New Year New Edenites!

Now we've got that out of the way, let me piss you off with an answer to Blog Banter 52 that is long winded, faintly boring, sandbox-violating shocking, unsubstantiated supposition based, and incredibly ill thought out. I'm subverting the BB52 somewhat to get something across that I've been thinking about. I'm shooting from the hip here, it's mostly unresearched (bar a couple of opinions) so take care. It's not like I'm Jester or anything.

and...... on with the show.

BB52 concerns the apparently static concurrent account log in stats for EVE based on the EVE Offline graphs http://eve-offline.net/?server=tranquility

For the past four and a half years, the graph has hovered around that 30,000 mark; it is, for all intents and purposes, a plateau. But everything must come to an end sooner or later and that is what this blog banter is about.
What's on the other side of that plateau?

Is there any path for CCP to follow to raise those numbers upwards for a sustained period, or is EVE going to enter a decline to lower logged in numbers from this point? How soon will we see an end to this plateau? Months? Years? Or will you argue that 'never' is a possibility? Or you can look at the root causes of the plateau and tackle the question if it could have been avoided or shortened if CCP had taken different actions in the past.

Also, what would EVE be like with an order of magnitude fewer or more players?

I took off northwards for most of Christmas and New Year. Some subconscious level of planning allowed me to step lightly between long skill trains so it's been almost fun grinding out the 20 days of Drone Interfacing V, for example. Fun. Well, no, not really. Not in the sense of fun exploding, not in the sense of fun playing. More the fun sense of the potential once completed. The same old EVE trap. The planning and scheming are the fun bit. Waiting for the skill queue to catch up is the boring bit but I've a multitude of other plans and a main in Brave Newbies where things like hilariously out of whack killboards are born http://eve-kill.net/?a=pilot_detail&plt_id=1420949 . I've many fingers in many pies.

However this is the same trap that causes new players, in fact ENCOURAGES new players, to log off once the tutorial is complete. The friends I introduced to the game both got bored with the ISK grind (mining initially) while waiting for the skills to go do something else. There were other issues involved but it's the same symptom as later bittervet log off time. Almost everyone leaves EVE at some point for an extended period. It's a common thing. EVE can be working away for you behind the scenes but you don't feel there is a point to logging until a skill train is complete.

Now you are going to say a couple of things

1) Why not PLEX some ISK

2) There are things to do with a small amount of skills

Firstly PLEX. A big draw of EVE to game players is the lure of earning your game time. Not all players feel this of course but it's a thing. The ISK to cash ratio. A lot of players grow weary of the Real Money cost of battles being shown but it never fails to intrigue the gaming press and their readers. New players are less likely to want to spend more cash on ISK that they feel will soon vanish. Some new players do. They possess an EVE mentality.

Secondly, things to do. There are loads of things to do but there isn't a structured way of doing them, there isn't a reason to do them beyond interest. Gamers are lazy by and large. They want their content on rails if they can. Not all players are like this. Some posses an EVE mentality. They scheme and plot on multiple levels. What can I do now? What can I investigate? How will this contribute to my long term plans in some way. Scheming, invention and patience.

Notice that I haven't mentioned that EVE is hard. It is, but this is a draw. I don't think that EVE being too difficult causes most new players to leave. Tough games are good games. Certainly EVE being difficult doesn't cause older players to leave.

This EVE mentality isn't too common in the gaming world. Why should it be? We live in a world of being entertained rather than entertaining ourselves. Perhaps there is a finite number of gamers, a percentage of gamers as a whole, who have this EVE mentality naturally. Perhaps it's about 30,000 at any one time, new gamers with the natural attitude replacing old hands who've moved on.

What does that say? Has EVE reached saturation point within it's audience? If true, then EVE will take it's share of the gaming community and continue in equilibrium. There isn't anything that can be done.

Actually there is. I refer to the EVE mentality above as a natural thing, a talent. What if this talent can be trained? What if can become a skill? What would the training programme be like?

The training programme I envision follows on from the tutorials. It's an extension of the New Player Experience. It violates the sandbox slightly. It needs to. We are training people to think differently and that requires some guidance. Some rails. Some pushing.

I would allow some kind of grindability of level 1 and perhaps level 2 skills that have no prerequisite. I'd provide faint rails for the rest of the theme park playing work. I'm not mocking here, I still like theme park games and their content even though all of my gaming time vanishes into EVE. I'm currently enjoying the posts on http://tagn.wordpress.com/ where a return to Warcraft is under way. My time vanishes into EVE even when I'm not logging on. From EFT, EVEMon skill plans, spreadsheet work, hammering plans into Trello (I'm not kidding) and in the future coding my own tools.

Back to grinding skills. In a recent thought experiment Jester proposes doing away with the skills I'm looking at in order that new players would have them immediately. I think the skills are valuable for immersion reasons and more could be made of them. I think these skills should be open to being learned more rapidly by actually doing stuff in EVE. We can take the mechanism from earning this experience from the various Achievement systems in theme park games which cause players to do all manner of random things in order to fulfil a vanity type goal project. Often this takes a lot of planning and time. It always draws you out into the game world. Ask anyone who has gone after the various mount acquisition achievements in Warcraft for example. So, aims, planning, patience, less linear content than a normal experience grind. Sounds like a good grounding for an EVE mentality.

Interesting aside: Whenever I say "planning" in regard to EVE players, my mind attempts to insist I write "scheming". What does this tell you about EVE players? Or me?

Some examples of tasks that might advance skills. In each case you'd give more points for doing this in low and even more in null. I guess we should be aware of the potential for older players gaming the system with their alts.


Afterburner : complete a full orbit of a station under afterburner in a system with more than 30 players in it. Only applies once per system

Navigation : points awarded for each system visited where the player does at least two things from a list of, for example, docking, visiting an asteroid belt, visiting a POCO. You could give extra points for visiting landmarks. See http://evetravel.wordpress.com/ for details...

Warp Drive Operation : Award points for merely warping through systems. Give hardly any for hi sec. Get the player to fly to distant and more dangerous places.

Resource processing skills : award the player for mining, refining and building. Get rid of those ISK generation skills out of the way faster but give the player a sense that they are doing something rather than waiting.

Scanning skills : award the player points for finding things, especially where it is more dangerous to do so

Social skills : award the player for missions but award them far more when completing objectives in a fleet. Perhaps award more points for the specialised roles. Get some players flying fleet logi on day one.

You see where I'm going with this. Feel free to suggest more while you deride me for suggesting breaking the sandbox. I lay claim to the name Active Skillpoint Acquisition System, pronounced "ass-ass". Because I'm just in that kind of mood. What I want to see is a new player join the game and in the tutorial system say "Hey, I'm going to fly as far as possible, anyone want to fleet up and do Social and Navigation SP at the same time?". Stuff like that.

Not everyone would develop an EVE mentality from this. Some would pass from the game after they had completed the tasks. Others would however be exposed to the other facets of EVE that it is difficult to plan to do when you are thrown in the deep end and forced to climb the legendary skill cliff on the way out.

What would happen if this caused a slight rise in the graph. What if there was a slow but steady influx of new players remaining longer? There would be more people in space. When there are more people in space things become more interesting for other players. More people log in to see what happens. Organisations develop around these players. You can imagine the EVE University course for skill point acquistion now. What I'm thinking is that some active plan like this will not only cause an increase of new players but will have a secondary effect of reactivating older players who haven't logged in for a while. There is stuff to do. This being EVE there are also people to do.

If all this fails? I think the equilibrium will persist as long as EVE continues to evolve and attract enough attention from the gaming community. New players with the EVE mentality will succeed older players leaving for all the reasons they do.

Hurrah for unsubstantiated opinion!

What I'm really interested in is the question:

"Did you ever introduce a real life friend to EVE who passed the tutorials but then left EVE for good? What were their reasons for leaving?". If you know where this has been asked, point me at it!


EVE Track of the Day

Experiment Number Six, Lemon Jelly


Participants:

Faction Fit Pod - Steady As She Goes
Sand, Cider and Spaceships - Eve is in a Coma
Roc's Ramblings - The Other Side
Golden Crusade - What's on the Other Side?
Warp Drive Active - Falling Down
Freebooted - Homeostasis
Eveoganda - The Graph is a Lie
Morphisat's Blog - Over the hills and far away
Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah - Limits
Life on the Bubble - Art of War Alliance - Enjoy the Ride
In Local, Everyone Can Hear You Scream - There Is No "Other Side"
Mabrick's Mumblings - Causalities of War and Industry
Evehermit - Are we at the base of the mountain, or on top of it?
Pilgrim In Exile - The EVE of the Future
Oz Ox In EVE Blog - But Will It Tick?
Fua Consternation - Just another day as an astronaut
Jester's Trek - Another way of saying "never"
A journey through the mind - Flogging a Dead horse
A CARBON Based Life - Live Fast and Die Young, or...
Mad Haberdashers - Most Plateaus End In Cliffs
Diaries of a Space Noob - EVE Mentality
Khanid Kataphract - Living Space
High Sec Carebearing Extravaganza - The Other Side
The Ancient Gaming Noob - A Horrible Community





 

Day 561 : How Do You EVE?

Tur over at http://turamarths-evelife.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/how-do-you-eve.html put me onto a thing. Apparently Kane Rizzel posted his EVE set up and people started following suit. I'm late to the party but have reason to join. Until lately my computer desk was the same one I'd had since the nineties. It was getting cramped. The wheels had fallen off. Literally. It made it an inch and a half lower when they broke off.

My old man heard about this and being the kind of man he is, he decided to replace my old desk with a fitted corner desk. Now my old man is the kind of person that DIY aficionados look up to, possibly seeing a halo behind his head. I see no reason why he couldn't build a house from scratch. How he managed to raise an utter nerd with a fear of drills is mystifying. I still fix his computers and IT crap. I owe.

Onto the desk. This thing has no legs. The supports are 1x3 lengths drilled into the wall and cantilevered off a custom drawer/cupboard. The edges are moulded to fit the space. 3 inch drilled corner holes group the wires behind things. Not only is there lots of air for the PC unit but I can put a blanket over the front and make a den and regress by about 35 years. Bonus. I'm going under there to continue reading Red or Dead as soon as I finish this.

Counting running the phone and the Nexus 7 I've had five screens on it. Here you see EVE autopiloting down to buy a skillbook on an alt, Twitter, and EFT on the laptop. The can of lager caused the can of Irn Bru (ask a Scotsman) and my EON low sec map sits above the first, main, monitor. On the sub woofer sits my prized Star Wars cinema ticket from 1978.

To cap the whole thing off I bought a new chair, and "executive" office chair. It feels like heaven, if your heaven is the seat of a death dealing starship. They'll find me in this seat dead one day with a smile on my face and the EVE launcher in front of me. Thank god I'm going out for New Years.

Future plans involve upscaling both monitors and adding a fourth and also controlling global thermonuclear war.

EVE Track of the Day
Sittin on the Dock of the Bay - Otis Redding

Day 534 : The Lure of ISK

Tis the season of Scrooge. Be wary.

ISK. The measure, the rule, the validator. It's easy to get caught up in it. Whether it's the vets talking about the translation to real life money ( Oh Poe, why? why? ), the PVP purists talking about ISK efficiency, or my own bugbear: the score. Yes, that's right. Somewhere in my heart a pure carebear exists and I don't care. Over a year of playing EVE Farmville has left me with the compulsion to view ISK as a score. To build it up. I've beat Chunk's top score on Pole Position. And what is that worth?

Sometimes, just sometimes, being ill works for you. It can be the cold that saves you from a meeting, the mild accident that saves you from a wretched family do. Don't tut. You've felt it. This weekend I didn't. I was ill, again, and I really didn't wan't to be. I had plans. Serious plans. Not plans to sit in front of EFT for the day and watch random DVDs (although, frankly, For A Few Dollars More is more epic than I recall).

Today though, the day after, I feel moderately better. At first not well enough to chance low sec where response time and eagle eyes are king. Low sec is the kingdom of having your fingers glued to the keyboard. Fortunately  I couldn't have reached it if I had to. I was boxed into a hi sec station by the curious mix of an Onyx and a Devoter. Neither of which I'd seen in flight before. I suspect mainly because they're predominately Null tools. Tackling big shit, and all that. Null. See you on a rainy day next year.

Anyway.  I have two stock responses to illness denying me things I want.

1) Get drunk and be a whiny coward about it

2) Get drunk and get even

3) Realise my situation and consider the alternatives, thank my blessings and get on with life as best I can. Ha ha. This isn't an option. Try thinking like this when you know exactly what it feels like to be disembowelled bar the mess on the floor.

I chose the latter (realistic option, ie 2) this weekend. I looked at my balance of 1.3 billion and wondered what the hell it was doing. I retain the "I used to live in a rolled up newspaper in't middle o' road" sensibility where cash is concerned but ISK isn't really cash. ISK is just unspent fun. Unless you have a fun aim in mind for your savings then it's a negative score. The happiest man I heard today had just got his ship blown up and said he hadn't enough ISK for ammo anyway. 20K ISK balance. Since I can't be alone in pumping ISK his way I feel he may have been able to afford it later.

Biting my fingernails I spend, spend, spend. Yes. I set a limit of 300 million. I'm not made of money.

Most of my money goes on a triple rep' Myrmidon. I spend the morning, still ill, still unable to spend much time at the keyboard, popping out of a hi-sec station and annoying the Russian war targets camping the station undock. I can sit there for a while and amuse myself but I'm essentially stuck

Later I feel better. Now. You know I'm a player with a solo leaning. I hate it. One of the reasons I joined Brave was to get that out of my system. The bitter irony of a gaming introvert turned real life extrovert regressing to an online introvert is something that shadows this entire blog. I call out with a half formed plan. Brave answers. Enthusiastically . I learn more about forming fleets that I have done in the last 500 days.

My plan is this. I launch and repair on the undock and a secret Brave strike team hits the system once the war targets are engaged ( and so cannot dock unless they "de-agress", ie stop shooting shit, for a minute). The Brave strike team descend upon the war targets like raptors from hell with clown faces on. In a real world plan I would de-agress and dock up. Fuck that. I want to see the play.

Someone in the Brave channel takes charge of my hastily formed fleet and gets them down the Trail of Tears (Barleguet to Stacmon) in good order. I launch as they hit the last gate, reps on, pitiful T1 sentries out, and they jump and warp. It goes well. All hell breaks loose as reinforcements hit the grid. We primary the Onyx and bug out, not before the overheated, over-repped, Myrm bites the dust. Epic. The feeling that I was a miser turns into a 15 man fight on the hi-sec station undock. Kudos to everyone involved, including our scout who was ingloriously killed on the gate before hi-sec. 7o.

We're all left thinking "who flies an Onyx in hi sec" in much the same way as Austin Powers thinks "who throws a shoe?". It was a "good fite" however and this fat bird goes down

http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=20722936

Suddenly I'm free of the ISK balance demon. A shout in comms goes out for Harpy pilots. I've never flown one, I don't have one, it's a 40 million ISK drop. I sort it out. Buy buy buy. Fleet fights happen. Among them

https://zkillboard.com/character/92153026/

I realise, again, as I listen to the FC, that I know NOTHING about this game. There are skills which can only be learned by exposure. That exposure can only be obtained in combat, not in EFT. That combat brings with it a certain ISK loss. Hoard all you like, score it if you will. This game is scored in far, far more ephemeral ways than the long double of a bank balance. Don't get me wrong, I know there is a legitimate form of gaming that involves securing that high score in an economy underpinned by real world people. I still play it myself! It takes guile, skill, empathy and intelligence. Just think that you could use a fraction of that to feed a totally divorced Brave Newbies alt who makes things explode all the time.


EVE Track of the Day:

Gold - Spandau Ballet

EVE Bonus Track of the Day dedicated to heroically ace Logi pilots, a death defying Harpy fleet, and a fleet comms where anyone from old vets to someone hastily learning Caldari Destroyer I was welcome. Welcomed heartily. To the Brave:

Johnny Cash - (Ghost) Riders In The Sky

Day 527: Lord of the Flies

A short one tonight.

Interceptors. The ubiquitous signature of Rubicon. As if a sentence could sound more pretentious than that. Jesus. Ok.

I decided to have a go at catching myself an interceptor and failed. Perhaps I should have set my sights lower than "W Rush". The bane of unsuspecting Brave Newbies, a constant factor of Barleguet and a most, most excellent pilot indeed.

A lot of crap is aimed at this pilot. A lot. In fact enough aimed at him that people facing him were belittled in Brave comms the other afternoon. Something I've not heard there before. An aberration no doubt but a worrying sign of elitism. Don't get me wrong, Brave chat is usually more open and as welcoming as any I have ever heard on the internet. It must have been my misfortune to log in and listen in on a quiet period where lackluster, lackwitt, stoners apparently ruled the roost. Look to your downtimes Braves. Less than appealing. Somewhere along the line the vocal minority have lost the comprehension that people in the chat channel may not have been playing more than a few days and that learning by burning is a thing.

Enough. It was one episode in an alliance of brilliance.

Back to W Rush and the Interceptors of Doom. He can fly. I thought I could put together a fit, Vexor, Warrior based,  that could defeat him. As ever, in EVE, I was mistaken.

I threw together a Vexor kitted out with all the drone boosts you'd think would guarantee victory. Ha ha. EFT warrior loses again. Admittedly the situation was complicated by W Rush's compadre and crimsonshank. A rather excellent proponent of my favourite looking ship - the Catalyst. A gank fit Catalyst bearing down on you makes you throw all your plans out of the window. And yet. Somehow I managed to find the mental agility to disengage from W Rush and slay his gank fit companion. So on this escapade I score, I don't win but I score.

http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=20621179

and the inevitable

http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=20621061

The curious thing was the lack of damage applied to W Rush. I thought I'd be ok. I'd thought I'd estimated the tracking vs speed issue well enough that I'd be ok. My combat log begged to differ. Misses by Warriors all over the place. So how can you fit a Vexor to fight Interceptors? I have another plan. If I can find them, if they're willing. It would be handy if I had the figures to back it up but the entire two minute fight feels like, say, a second long. I have no memory of transversal figures or anything else. Merely a vibrating desire to die in a ball of flame while holding my own. I mean the vibrating bit. I got the pod out and had to sit in station and calm the fuck down. EVE. No other game like it. Needed a drink. Hands shaking too much to pick the damn thing up.

For a strange Brave sign off : 7o W Rush and crimsonshank. Content is content is content. Keep on teaching us. I for one am glad of it.


EVE Track of the Day: Tainted Love, Soft Cell.

Day 519: Don't Get Cocky Kid

Turned 40, got ill, got even more ill, just about climbed out of it and descended into a spiral of work stress triggering illness, triggering work stress, triggering illness. Blah blah blah. Suffice to say, apart from a bit of EVE Farmville I haven't been in space that much, or felt like writing about it that much.

But lo, what light through yonder window breaks, it is a three day weekend and EVE is the sun.

Nervous about flying in low sec I approach it witl all the trepidation of a part time EFT warrior. ie. No trepidation at all. This plus a few experiments with a Federation Navy Comet has convinced me to bling it up on the Assault Frigates and go hunting for tags.

I get my tag, dicking around in a low sec hole somewhere down the Trail of Tears (as my fellow Braves call the Barleguet to Stacmon pipe). 25 million for a single tag seems a lot until you remember that the rat has scram capability and you must furiously pump the Dscan button in an effort to convince yourself that a) no one is coming and b) you are a super brave EFT warrior who is better than downloading X Rebirth.

I fail at both when a Stay Frosty pilot hits the system in a Vigilant which presumably could web me down to  a snails pace. The fear would have been more manageable had I not been in the throes of realising that the Comet, tank aside, is a far superior ship to any shitty Assault Frigate bar the Enyo. Pass me a dual prop Comet and I'm good to go. Even it's police ship nature helps though I doubt the last Serpentis Clone Soldier Negotiator deserved to have the words "Well done sonny, you're nicked" shouted at it from the other side of a monitor in the UK. Poor old Serpentis. Pay attention. When I set the lads on you, don't focus on them because it means in thirty seconds I'm going to let rip with Neutron Blasters up your arse.

I graduate from the Comet to Assault Frigates. I'm trying out the Retribution and the Enyo. Today is the Retribution. Space bling equipped with the hilarity of endless normal ammo and T2 ammo that has ranges that are frankly beyond "OP". I pity the fool who tries to kite this thing in a T1 frigate.

Soaring from the victory I have time to investigate the Incursus that has been cropping up on Dscan in my journey between the belts. He's not in a station, he's not at a planet and, as far as I can tell, not at any belt. I drop into the nearest Serpentis anomaly and sure enough , there is my Incursus. Happily wailing away at the rats, undoubtedly dual rep fit to be doing so well, it's unfortunate that overheated t2 pulse lasers on Conflagration will go through him like a hot (yet seemingly oddly slow) knife through butter. The Serpentis happily wail on us both but only I leave the 'plex in a ship.

I don't feel the need to even try for the pod. I don't actually see the point of getting a pod. I let it roll home and tap out a salute to the pilots repping. The Incursus and the dual rep fit is an old favourite of mine. The pilot docks up without a word and logs off. Suddenly I realise I've looked too long into the Abyss. I'm that guy that warped in an killed me so long ago. I'm the devil. What manner of being have I become? Is this natural for low sec space living? Have I become hardened and bitter (more so than even in real life). Should I question this, or should I question my ego which, somewhere behind me, is doing the Carlton from Fresh Prince dance and singing "Solo kill, solo kill, solo kill".

I tracked a ship down through dscan and knowledge, leapt in without thought of risk and laser beamed someone to atoms. I have another beer.

This turns out to be the most hilarious bad idea ever.

I head to a station to pick up my Enyo for the next round of trials and find myself camped into the station by war targets. An efficient combination of fast tackle and close range battleship is making it all but impossible to leave. What luck then that I have a Brutix here that I fit back in the days when I hit Battlecruiser III. It'll survive the onslaught, check the situation and just dock up. That is of course unless giddy victory fuelled adrenaline should  lead me to hit the weapons. That won't happen. Actually.....

It'd be hard to top this Feat of Fail with something, let alone performed seconds later but I can do this. When the situation calls for fail. See me.

My solution to getting my pod out is to dock up at the station they are both camping. The station isn't going to let me in. I know this. Good job I am hammering the Dock button. That'll make things go faster. Yes sir. We are all in attendance at Amazeballs Brain University. I'll have to step it up and get into Zoolander's school next time.

The TL;DR?

Assault Frigate hull plus fit : 35 mill
Negotiator plus rats plus loot : 36 mill
Dual Rep Incursus : 3 mill of loot plus a 10 mill kill
Daft Brutix fit: 60 mill
Pod : 60 mill

Gross: Zero minus a fuck ton of ISK

Profit: more wealth than you can imagine.

Don't rush back into EVE. Exuberance leads to enthusiasm, enthusiam leads to mistakes, mistakes lead to podding. Nah. Rush back and laugh at your mistakes. If there is one thing I've learned from the Brave it's to post your losses faster than you post any kill. They're more interesting.

I was laughing and back at the undock within five minutes in a speedy Algos designed to fuck over the tackle. They'd buggered off by then, of course. Irritating. Yet somehow I'd forgotten quite how bad I'd felt about jumping someone harmlessly farming a Serpentis site. That was way, way, way back in the past by now. At least an entire hour.

PS are there any groups out there for ancient EVE players like myself.

PPS revealing my age has just probably ruined any chance of chatting up Arianne Stone at any future EVE meet up. (That and the fact that I was 'hilariously' drunk last time we met). I'm joking. Mostly. 7o Miss Stone.

EVE Track of the Day
Get Lucky - Daft Punk ft Pharell Williams



PS PS

[Federation Navy Comet, Solo Tag Roamer]
Damage Control II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Small Ancillary Armor Repairer, Nanite Repair Paste

1MN Afterburner II
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I
Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I

Light Neutron Blaster II, Void S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Void S
Small 'Knave' Energy Drain

Small Ancillary Current Router I
Small Ancillary Current Router I
Small Hybrid Collision Accelerator I

Hobgoblin II x3
Warrior II x3

(yes, I had Genolutions in. Turn off the neut ffs)

Day 437: Sounds of Revival

Finally I find an entire day where I can pretty much just roll through EVE. Monday was a Bank Holiday here in the UK, meaning a three day weekend. Despite the lure of London calling I dedicated myself to the Importance of Being Idle. One of the tasks this magnificent aim required was to spend a day exploring my new space home, the low sec system of Barleguet. It's a well connected system. It's rich in resources, pirates, gankers, newbies, and some bloke called Gray Arachnid shouting a lot. Commonly referred to as Barle, Barley, Le Baguette or variants of the same.

 http://evemaps.dotlan.net/system/Barleguet

I put aside my desire to go and waste as many Talwars as possible without a single kill. That task can wait for a post work evening. Wary of jumping straight to voice comms before I had a handle on the community I kept my eye Alliance chat and jumped in if I could offer advice or random nonsense. While I did this I fired up my Nemesis and used its CovOps cloak facilities as a way to fly around making bookmarks and observing what went on in system. Then I tested the pipe to hi sec several times trying to get a handle on the number of enemy pilots and gate activity while stacking up some gate observation perches as I went.

Today I Learned

1. At one point I got bored of flying at cloak speed to a perch location near a belt. I switched off the cloak and turned on the MWD. Within 30 seconds an enemy fleet of around 8 ships dropped into the belt. No ratting in Barle unless it's Alpha and Away style tactics then. I warped off safe and shaky.

2. The process of grabbing your own set of bookmarks familiarises yourself with the system and the way it gets used. For me it removed nervousness about flying around while preserving wariness of that associated contempt thing.

3. Using a CovOps ship improves your DSCAN skills. Mine had got a little rusty. A CovOps ship in a safe point of your own making is virtually unassailable. It gives you time to relax and to experiment, getting dscan operation and interpretation back to the levels of second nature. Sure you can try this in hi sec but nothing is going on there, nothing potentially threatening anyway. CovOps takes about a month of skilling from scratch and all of it will come in handy elsewhere bar the 4-5 days of cloak training. I'm not talking about probing here. Just the ability to fly a ship that can cloak under warp.

4. Flying around cloaked means you'll get chance to observe fights from the outside. This is worth doing once or twice just to double check your overview settings which you should have followed a guide on. I recently updated my overview to Sarahs Overview Pack so I had new tab settings to get used to in addition to setting up the orders and colours. It was easier to do the latter when something was actually going on that I could watch and interpret.

5. EVE has sound. Following the earlier MWD incident I wanted to try and see what happened with MWD from a safe spot. Combat probes were out in system so I knew someone was looking around but was probably swamped in signatures. I thought I'd crack on the MWD and run uncloaked for a while and see if anyone warped in. No one warped in during the admittedly short amount of time I dared fly uncloaked but I discovered something else. I was zoomed in on my ship at the time and as I turned on the MWD heard sounds changed. I ramped up the volume and spent a minute listening to the entertainingly industrial hum that now accompanies Microwarp Drives. A quick mention on Twitter reveals a) it's fairly recent - I haven't been ignoring it for over a year and b) I didn't know TIL meant Today I Learned, prompting a joke exclamation to hide my irony driven embarrassment (sorry).

6. Barle Is Busy. I took a few side trips and the surrounding systems are massively more quiet. I don't think much will actually get done outside of fighting in Barle itself. The day to day subsistence, exploration and general mucking around will get done elsewhere. The pipe out to hisec is busier than most of the surrounding systems but it isn't so busy that you can run it in relative safety if you pay attention. It's good to realise you aren't trapped in a thunderdome. I took to flying out in shuttles I was building in Barle, breaking them down and flying the Tritanium back with me in one of the pre-rigged ships I've got stashed in hisec. I'm too cheap to lose the rigs by repacking the ship and having BLT freight all my stuff into Barley.


Next up : Less: recce. More: fleets, voice chat, and probably ship loss.

EVE Track of the Day

The Importance of Being Idle - Oasis