Redesign Eagle Contest - Results

Going through the 7 entries was not easy.

Judging the mechanic proposals required looking at not only how well they make the Eagle better, but how they fit in with the larger game, how easy they would be to implement, and if there were any unintended pitfalls. On top of all that was whether I liked the idea or not. Judging the aesthetic design changes was easier since only three of the entries made any effort at all to change the design, and only one actually included visual aids for me to look at.

I gave a score out of ten for the mechanics proposals, and a score out of ten for the aesthetic design, and thus everyone had a score out of twenty.

3rd Place Winner - 1 x Pirate Frigate (list) ==> Ripard Teg of Jester's Trek blog

I liked his entry for keeping the Eagle as a nominal sniper, but deducted points for his suggestion of creating 280mm railguns which I think is an unlikely extreme that CCP would go to for fixing this ship. His entry didn't have any pictures for changing the design of the hull but at least made some minor proposals in that regard.


2nd Place Winner - 1 x Pirate Cruiser (list) ==> Logan Fyreite of Eve Opportunist blog

This entry was solid on the mechanics and the one entry which I felt had a the best chance of being implemented, very much in line with what I would have proposed for myself. On the graphic changes his entry was weak but at least he offered some pictures of birds to assuage my wrath.

1st Place Winner - 1 x Pirate Battleship (list) ==> aidenmourn of the Finders & Keepers blog

I'll be honest: I was not a big fan of his proposals on mechanic changes. I think that giving a HAC (and a Caldari one at that) a big bonus to warp disruptor range and more damage to effectively turn the Eagle into a Diemos (but better) is not the way to go. However, he more than made up for that by having a thought out proposal and he made a real effort to show a new design for the hull to make it less toaster-oven-ish. So by a slim one point margin he takes first place.


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Winners, could you please evemail me the choice of ship you would like and the character name to contract it to?

Sponsor

Thanks for everyone who submitted an entry, and special thanks to Eve News 24 for adding to the prize pool!

Endorsing Alekseyev Karrde for CSM 7

A Face You Can Trust. No, seriously.

For what its worth, I'm throwing my votes and support behind Alekseyev Karrde of Noir Mercenary Group for a seat on CSM 7.

I feel that the CCP and the players are best served by a CSM with a broad experience in their background and that more support for null sec candidates is unnecessary. Aleks, as leader of Noir., has seen the game from null sec to high sec, wormholes to low sec, all over the cluster and is well situated to talk about things that pure null sec candidates would not be as prepared to discuss intelligently. In addition, as a well known player by all those sectors he has electability potential that others with similar backgrounds would lack. Name recognition and respect counts for a lot in these things.

CCP and The Just-Don't-Get-It File

On January 27th in a dev blog discussing community events at Fanfest (still so mad I can't go) CCP Navigator gave this piece of news when talking about the prizes for the poker tournament:

The first in-game Ishukone Scorpion skin will be awarded to the overall winner as well as having their name added to the in-game description of this ship.

 Excellent! I've been waiting for any vanity ship customizations since Incarna was on the drawing board. Then he had to ruin my excitement with the next paragraph (emphasis mine):

This leads on to another question, does this mean we will be seeing ship skins for sale in the NeX store or by some other method? That is currently not the plan and is not in development so the short answer is no. The Ishukone Scorpion was already created as the first prototype and Game Design plan to release it to everyone at some stage. The winner of this event will just be granted the first one, before anyone else has ever owned it, along with the bragging rights of having their name in the lore.

 The one bright spot about the NeX store for most pilots in Eve was the thought of being able to spruce up the hanger with various different ship skins. The technology is there, the NeX store is there, this is a no-brainer to push the cart over the finish line and at least get some useful mileage out of the debacle that was Incarna and you are not going to do it?

Sirs, I am disappointed.

Seriously, disappointed.

Fiction Friday: Series 4 - Part 17

Previously:
Prologue Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13
Part 14 Part 15 Part 16
 
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"In position on Nase gate," I reported to the fleet. The big Rokh battleship eased to a stop only 1500 meters from the stargate that would fling me to the Nasesharafa system at my command. Other ships in the fleet came to a stop around me, mostly cruisers and battlecruisers.

"Roger," fleet commander Greyhound67 acknowledged. "Hold until we see what this guy is going to do."

Flying with m3 Corp was a very different experience from my time with Strife Mercenaries. For one thing, its not that the raw skill of the pilots was better or worse, but the discipline was much higher and m3 Corp's fleet commanders had a higher expectation of pilot performance. For another thing, m3 Corp had a lot of friends from other nearby corporations and alliances whereas Strife was always more of a lone wolf corporation.

I joined the corp after talking to Max (and a thorough background check) and quickly started to rebuild my bank account and hanger contents. I started working for a Chemal Tech agent in Naseharafa (helped along by good reccomendations from agents I used to work for in Republic Fleet) and by working with other m3 pilots I soon got solidly back on my feet. A few weeks of hard work and I was able to purchase a brand new Rokh battleship as well as several other smaller vessels including a nice used Falcon recon cruiser that I had trained up for.

In between the constant battle against the hordes of desperate Sansha Nation drones there were occasional battles against capsuleer forces, usually roaming pirates / anarchists with time and ISK to burn. Sometimes they got the better of us, but usually our cooperation and numbers carried the day.

Thus how I came to be in a fleet on a gate waiting for instructions. The fleet was over half made up of pilots from m3 Corp, lead by one of our directors called Greyhound67, aka Grey. The other 5 ships of the 11 in fleet belonged to two other corporations that made their home in the Sukanan constellation. The fleet was hastily assembled when a Vexor entered through the gate system of Teshkat and scouts reported him as having a CONCORD sec status of -5.6. Just our type of target.

Grey was in a Falcon with covert ops cloak in Nase surreptitiously shadowing the Vexor. He was checking the asteroid belts and planets for targets to engage, hopefully unaware of the fleet that scrambled in his wake.

"He's warping to Tirbam gate, get ready to jump." Tirbam was a dead end system; if he jumped in there we could trap him. Tension rose but the comms remained quiet. Suddenly Grey ordered, "Jump! Warp to Tirbam gate and hold!" As one the fleet activated the gate and spun through the artificially generated wormhole to the target system. As my consciousness cleared in Nase I directed my ship to align and begin warp ramp up towards the Tirbam gate. Around me the other 9 ships did the same.

"He saw me jump in, he's approaching the gate, get ready," Grey said. My ship was slower than the smaller vessels but still arrived in time. The gate fired and seconds later my sensors picked up the hostile cruiser, followed almost immediately by targeting calculations. "Point," Max intoned. The fleet began fire as my lock resolved and I saw the shields of the target dip. I sent a mental signal to my 16 neutron blaster cannons and eight of them with firing arcs on the target erupted in super-excited particle explosions. The hyper charged magnetically coupled balls of electrons and neutrons ejected from the cannons at the speed of light and smashed into the Vexor, bending the very subspace structure of the atoms that made up its hull and armour. Vast swathes of metal composite disintegrated and the energy released blew massive chunks off the rest. One salvo and the Vexor has lost the rest of its shields and half its armour.

I detected the flurry of reconstruction nanobots trying to stem the damage to the crippled ship but the fleet's combined firepower was quickly overcoming it. Another salvo blasted from my weapons the the Vexor simply flew apart in every direction. The pirate capsuleer, obviously disoriented by the assault, was quickly locked and destroyed and woke up in some distant cloning facility somewhere.

"Good work, fleet," Grey congratulated us over comms.

A pilot who was acting as a scout for us back in Teshkat jumped into our channel. "Cyno in Tesh."

Redesign the Eagle Contest - Judging In Progress

Just and update: the Redesign the Eagle contest is closed to entries and I am in the process of evaluating the submissions. I will post who the winners are next week. I wanted to be able to do this today but I've been especially busy.

From The Shadows We Strike!

As of today the Kadavr Black Guard is officially a member of the Shadow Cartel alliance.

If you are interested in joining us, join the "Kadavr Public" and speak to Nashh Kadavr or Anabaric or anyone else you spy in there from the corp. :)

Curse You Twitter!

This morning on twitter our resident statistics lord pumped out this little tidbit:

Well, I've now got full Jan stats, so new drone totals! Most built, 935,857 Hobgoblin I. #2 471,937 Hammerhead I. 

I responded with:

Those drone totals only highlight the utter lack of desirability for any other drone other than the highest damage ones.

Now I was going to add "(except the fast Minmatar ones)" but I was three characters off the 140 character limit for a tweet so I hit enter anyways and was going to follow it up but got distracted. I come back a minute later to see Cobalt_Valkryie saying:

I disagree. Most people I know use warriors in pvp because they're fastest.

Gah! Alright, I quickly respond:

Yes, I was going to inlucde the exception for the Minnie drones but curse twitter and 140 characters. :P

But its too late. I'll forever now be know as the guy who doesn't think Mimatar drones are useful.

To set the record straight, yes, Warrior IIs and even Valkyries IIhave uses due to their high speed for intercepting and engaging faster targets. But the use case for Berserkers and all Amarr and Caldari combat drones is very limited and, in general, you are better off going with the bigger damage Gallente drones rather than the others.

The Tuskers Of Doom!

The Kadavr Black Guard moved out of Minmatar low sec out to Gallente low sec so we could partner up the notorious Shadow Cartel, the goal being to give us more opportunity to have friends with which we can shoot things with while we recruit and grow.

Since the Christmas break I've been getting out at least once a week and the last two times our illustrious leader and corp namesake Nashh Kadavr has stayed up late to go out for a short roam with me. *Sniff* I love you man!

Last week we went out in a Firetail (him) and Daredevil (me). I like the Daredevil, it is very straightforward to operate: aim, point, shoot; very much like a Rifter. In Onne we ran into Tusker Abellona in a Malediction interceptor and while she hesitant to engage both of us Nashh lured her into an engagement while I was at the sun waiting and then pounced to finish it off before Nashh was killed (the third pilot on the killmail was from a previous engagement Abellona had).

We continued on to the Tusker's home system of Hevrice where we prowled around. Infamous Tusker Grog Drinker came out to play in a Coercer destroyer and engaged Nashh at the sun. He called for me to come in but I was at a safe spot pretty far out and arrived too late to save the Firetail a second time. Nashh grabbed a Rifter in system and we tried to catch Grog Drinker but he was very cagey and just as I warped out Nashh tackled him. Unfortunately, by the time I got back the poor Rifter was a wreckage.

Fast Forward a week.

I log in and Nashh rallies another late night to roam again, this time with corpie Anabaric and Shadow Cartel member Smarnca. We decided to fly in Assault Frigates since they are all the rage and headed out for Hevrice once more. Nashh and Smarnca in Enyos, Anabaric in a Hawk, and myself in an Ishkur.

In Hevrice we run into the notorious Grog Drinker and his Coercer at the sun once again, but this time Nashh's more powerful ship and fast MWD are enough to capture and burn the destroyer (with a touch of help from me). However Grog will have the last laugh...

The Tusker reshipped to a Vengeance and is joined by corp mate Suleiman Shouaa in a Retribution. Anabaric and Smarnca arrive from next door system where they were hunting a ratting Thorax (it got away). The Tuskers warp to a faction warfare complex acceleration gate and we arrive to try and engage. Long story short, the MWD fit ships were expertly flown and while I almost had a tackle on Suleiman (inches I tell you) the end result was Ishkur down, Hawk three minutes later, and then Smarnca's Enyo soon after (with help from a late arriving Abellona in a Ishkur).

Nashh got out alive but since he felt bad that we all died he went and got himself blown up fifteen minutes later in Vitrauze by a trap laid by the Black Guards corp (not associated to Kadavr Black Guard corp).

The Tuskers blew up daddy's ship!

Not our best outing to put it mildly.

Ah well, it was fun to engage and I learned some valuable information about engaging at faction warfare plexs... did you know that the gate leading to the plex itself is considered in dead space as well so you can't do short warps on grid with it either? My fleet mates knew that but I didn't. *shame*