Holy Crap!

Visits for the past 20 months:

Jul	47
Aug	69
Sep	61
Oct	33
Nov	73
Dec	46
Jan	72
Feb	47
Mar	47
Apr	62
May	35
Jun	46
Jul	50
Aug	67
Sep	75
Oct	150
Nov	162
Dec	315
Jan	502
Feb	439

So why is my blog suddenly taking off? Well I've been writing comments on other MMO blogs and leaving my address, so hopefully people are coming by and checking out what I have to say. We'll see if the torrid pace continues into 2008. :)

Worth noting: Andrew's blog Of Teeth and Claws about World of Warcraft raiding and guilds and such gets over 500 hits a day.

Nintendo DS Game Review: Panzer Tactics

As a huge fan of Panzer General and Panzer General II on the PC, I was very intrigued by the thought of trying out Panzer General Tactics which is based on mostly the same mechanics but for the Nintendo DS. So when Andrew purchased it for me as a Christmas present, I was stoked.

I've been playing the German campaign in my free time and just finished this morning. At first I thought it was a cakewalk game with easy missions and no thought required. And then I hit Suez canal and everything changed. The next three missions or so were bloody and hard and I lost a lot of good virtual men of the Wehrmacht. I successfully took Stalingrad this morning after one abortive attempt and several counterattacks by the Soviets that I managed to push aside.

Now I start the harder (!) Soviet campaign before getting into the American/British campaign at the hardest setting.

Good: easy interface, interesting mission objectives, nice combat system, lots of unit types.

Bad: Not much variance within the unit types (i.e. each type had an early, middle, and late game version with the late game version being easily better), aircraft are still annoyingly fragile, and Russian tanks are still a bitch to kill. Small screen is frustrating at times in large spread out missions.

Overall I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars, a solid rating.

What Would Happen...

... if my current obsession with Eve was merged with my long standing Warhammer 40K obsession?

TOTAL ANNIHILATION!!

Also known as, the Warhammer 40K MMO in development somewhere in the bowels of THQ.

I've had various discussions with my buddies on Deep Space about what form this game will take. They are almost unanimously agreed that Space Marines of some sort will be playable characters but I hope beyond hope they are wrong because there are several things wrong with such a concept.

First off, how do you balance it? Basic space marines are seven to eight feet tall genetic super humans, capable of taking abuse with ease that would kill a normal human several times over. Faster, stronger, more durable, able to breath poison atmospheres, and typically equipped with the best wargear in the known universe, at level 0 they would be superior to every other human combat character class imaginable. At high levels their progression would be unmatchable. Unless you forgo the decades of background material and make space marines... well... human.

The next problem is that space marines are soldiers in an army. Outside of Tabula Rasa almost all MMOs have the characters be independent agents in the universe they inhabit, free of direct affiliations to the established military. Quite simply put, space marines do not have a choice of where to go, they are deployed as units in armies and strike forces in decisions beyond their control. Unless you expand the established decades of background material and allow for some sort of space marine agents that are outside of the normal Chapter command structure.

Lastly, how would you prevent almost every subscriber from playing a space marine character? In the table top game Space Marines (both loyalist and renegade) are the most popular army because they are cool with some of the best models and visuals. In an MMO, most new players would gravitate to the space marine because they are supposed to be the best and have the most established fan base. But in the background space marines are exceedingly rare compared to the billions upon billions of humans in the galaxy. Unless you create a setting where the large number of space marines in contrast to the small numbers of others are explained (i.e. an unrealistic situation).

So basically you would have to make space marines less formidable, more independent, and more common than what has been postulated by decades and numerous tomes of background information. In other words, why bother having space marines at all?

Caveat: there is one way I can see space marines being a playable characters and that is if space marines are the only human characters in the game (loyalist faction and chaos faction). Other player characters could be from the other Xenos races for something like: Space Marine, Chaos Marine, Eldar Aspect Warrior, Ork Nob, etc. I think it would be easier to balance a Space Marine against the elite of other races from the table top game much easier than it would be to balance again other basic humans where numbers overcomes lack of skills. Of course you still have to ignore the military aspect and relative rarity of space marines, and in order for all these races to interact, one has to have an appropriate setting which leads to coalitions of Order versus Disorder, and I think that is not as attractive as what I'm about to propose.

* * * * *

My proposal? Simple. Pick a setting first.

Setting of a MMO is important. For a 40K MMO, it could make or break the game. And one of the most visually inspiring aspects of 40K is the Hive Cities and I think one of these should be the setting.

Secondly, forget about the Xenos races as playable characters for the first version. They introduce too much fantasy elements of space orcs and space elves. Concentrate on 40K's strength, a vision of a dark millennium where humanity is holding on to civilization by the skin of its teeth, constantly fighting itself to hold together or fall apart.

The factions within humanity are multitude and lend themselves to the big three factors: balance, independence of characters, and lots of diverse attractions. Some examples of factions: there are three major inquisition branches, and they usually do not work well with each other and within those main branches are further divisions; there are chaos followers of the various dark gods; hive gangs; Adeptus Arbites police (although getting into paramilitary structure there); rogue traders; hive nobility; mutants in the underhive; Xenos sympathizers; and so on.

Best part of all is that most of those factions are constantly fighting with each other so no great need for Order versus Disorder dichotomies.

Space Marines thus can remain as NPCs, perhaps giving out missions to players of allied factions, or being the big bad that have to be killed. Same with Xenos races (maybe the hive is surrounded by the remnants of a failed ork invasion in the wilds outside the hive).

Later on they can add expansions as other worlds where the various xenos (one at a time mind you) can be added as NPCs or even PCs. But I think the basis of the game should remain as the human factions.

Optivus Up For Sale

The last roadblock to selling Optivus cleared when the original owner commented last thread that he felt no more attachment to him (which was my main concern) so I posted the auction today. Details found here.

Will I get 3 billion ISK for him? Remains to be seen. What will I buy with the ISK I do get?Not sure. Some BPOs are in mind, perhaps Raven, Drake, and Ferox. Or maybe some Rokhs to play with and lose for fun. If I get the full 3 bil I'll definitely get the Fenir freighter for Derranna that she is trained up for.

Ending the Double Life

Being truly addicted to Eve, I have a few characters as I have mentioned before. Three of them have been my main characters in corporations like m3 and Strife; Kirith as combat pilot, Barak as freighter and carrier hauler, and Optivus as Cyno alt. The other three have run Razor Technologies for me; Korannon as CEO and trader, Derranna as main researcher and inventor, and Sun as research assistant.

But now that Razor is closed and on the shopping block (see sale post here) I find myself with several characters I don't need. After the sale Korannon will be out of a job and not needed anywhere as his only unique skills are CEO management. Optivus only does cyno generation work for Barak and Derranna can do that just as easily. Sun Tomah is not required for research as Strife has enough pilots with skills to run the labs.

I'll keep Korannon. I have some sentimental attachment to the old boy and if I ever need to start up a corporation again, he'll be point man once more. But Optivus and Sun are tempting to sell for ISK and clear up the alt slots once again.

Someday, after Kirith has trained up for his Carrier, Barak will see his carrier go to Kirith and his freighter go to Derranna and he will officially be redundant as well. But for now, I still need him.

Monday Night Mining

Once a week we have a corporate operation to generate minerals for the production division. Its called Monday Night Mining.

Last night was a successful operation where at one point we had 3 retrievers and a hulk mining asteroids in a high sec system while three other pilots were hauling the ore to station.

Its activities like these that build bonds and friendships in a corporation which are so important for long term success.

Eve Tribune #8

Another week, another article. This week its an interview with an author of an Eve comic, Far From Homeworld.

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Last week I complained of too much money. Well I solved that problem.

The Good: One of the side goals of the corp is to get as many people as possible running level four Caldari Navy missions in Lonetrek as a method for generating ISK, loot, and salvage. I had access to level two agents so I decided to power through on the weekend and get to level three.

The question was, what ship to use? The Rokh is overkill by a mile, so I considered the Drake but I wanted more speed. Assault Frig? Tempting, but that money was burning a hole in my pocket so I splurged and bought a Cerberus. With 5 assault launchers and an afterburner, I could zip through missions in seconds. I ran about twenty missions before I got the magic 3.1 standing with Caldari Navy and was able to get into a good level three agent closer to Nonni.

I'll continue using the Cerberus in level three missions just because I bought it and want to make good use of it.

The Bad: Of course, using the Cerberus made me think I should perhaps finish my training of Heavy Missiles V and get tech two specialization as a way to compliment the Tech 2 HAMs. It would take about 8 days to finish as I already have it at 43%, so I'll do it and then have the option for damage with HAMs or range (~143km) with heavies.

Then, I promise, I'll do my large hybrid V.

The Ugly: I was stupid on Saturday.

Feeling cocky and lucky, I tried to sneak in a load of POS fuel into low sec without scouting first and ran into a large gate camp in Daras. They made no mistake and my Tech II Mastodon went down in a ball of flame. A costly mistake to be sure, but a lesson I apparently needed to feel pain for to learn. So that cost 50 million for the ship, 20 million for the fuel, and another ungodly amount for the two rigs I had on it. Sigh.

So much for being rich!

Money Problems...

...But not the kind you think.

As I liquidated some assets from Razor Tech in preparation of its upcoming sale, I sold some things I didn't feel I needed and finished the last Razor Tech project of building and selling 10 CCC rigs from market salvage (quite successful too, made 40 million isk profit).

The first 500 million in ISK I needed to buy back the shares from the shareholders as I wanted to leave them with a good taste in their mouths. For my original investors, they made a killing of at least 500,000 - 750,000 ISK of profit per share over the year and a bit Kodachi Enterprises/Razor Technologies was paying out. But I found there was some leftover ISK and it went into my wallet, a tidy sum.

Along with that windfall, I started writing for the Eve Tribune which has paid nicely for my first article and I have another article (an interview this time) coming up next week.

Those incomes combined with no recent expenditures and I find my wallet with a nice healthy surplus of over 300 million. The problem? I want to spend it!!! But I don't know what to buy.

I was thinking of splurging for a Cerberus for fun, or another Battlecruiser. Maybe I should save up for a command ship or Black Ops? Sigh, too many choices!

Memoir 44

Last night I visited Andrew and we played some Memoir 44. We like this game a lot, its our current favourite because of its simplicity of rules yet still having a deep amount of tactics, strategy, background, and flavour. Together we have all the expansions except the Pacific Theatre and the new Airpower.

We played a mission called The Gates of Moscow last night, and in it the outnumbered Soviets attempt to prevent the Germans from advancing further into the capital. Normally the missions were balanced but this one is extremely in favour of the attacking German forces. We played it twice, switching sides in the second round, and neither of us as the Soviets could prevent the Germans from running roughshod over the defenses. Just too many of them!

In the first game I was the Germans and I collapsed the left flank with a series of advances and attacks. In the second game Andrew's German advance rushed and destroyed the right flank in short order. Still, we had fun and it all took only 90 minutes.

Tech II Missiles

Well, last night I completed Heavy Assault Missiles V and started into Heavy Assault Missile Specialization for those Tech II launchers and Tech II missiles.

Which means its time for another round of trying to decide what to train next. I'm still torn between three main choices and a couple other minor possibilities.

1) Large Hybrid Turret V to get heading towards those Tech II large railguns and another step closer to Tech II large blasters. But still, it only benefits the Rokh in my hanger of ships and future ships. One month of training.

2) Vulture of Doom command ship. Probably the most reasonable choice as the ship is not overly expensive and is useful in small gang PvP and larger fleet PvP. But its 115 days of training and a lot of the skills don't lead to other larger vessels.

3) Black Ops Battleship. More expensive and a lot of the skills will lead up to the carrier I want someday, but again, a lot of training at 97 days.

And other possibilities:

4) Maurader Battleship: could be fun to fly but I really should have Tech II cruise missiles to make it worth it. 73 days

5) Tech II Cruise Missiles: useful on stealth bombers, Raven and Scorpion battleships, Tech II Widow and Golem battleships. 34 days

6) Tech II Heavy Missiles: useful on all the cruiser and battlecruiser ships I got Heavy Assault Missiles for. But then again, I like the HAMs more anyways. 12.5 days

7) Perfect ECM skills: The ultimate in modern jamming. Downside: I'm pretty good already. 54 days.

8) Gallente Cross-training. Get Gallente Frigate and Cruser to V to open up all their tech II cruisers and frigates, and then get Gallente Battleships. It would practically double the number of ships I could fly effectively, but greatly distract me from going forward into new abilities and classes of ships. 44 days.

And there's more but they are even farther down the list.

I've got a few says but more and more my gut tells me to finish off the Tech II rail guns and get that over with. Then I can buckle down into serious training for bigger tech II vessels.

Published

The Eve Tribune is a weekly newspaper put out by Eve players containing a mix of News articles, interviews, guides, and fan fiction. I joined the paper last week as a writer and my first article was published this week: Running Level Four Missions In A Rokh Battleship.

Circle Puzzle

Can you figure this circle puzzle out? Don't look for the answer in the comments, that's cheating!

It took me a couple minutes to get the answer.

Coming Together

Things are really starting to come together for Strife Mercenaries. To wit:

- POS is up and running and this week I'll anchor the mobile labs to get R&D&I going.

- Corp mining night was held last night with good turnout and lots of asteroids raped

- Plans for Tech 1 cruiser operations are getting support from the corp members and seeing some action

- Recruitment is continuing and we are swelling our numbers slowly but surely.

It may be another few weeks before we are ready for 0.0 action again, but we I can feel we are gelling as a team and when we do hit the big time we'll have a great core of infrastructure and pilots to get us there.

* * * * * *

Side story: on the weekend I was using Kirith and Derranna to setup and fuel the new POS called Strife Prime. After dropping off a week's worth of fuel Derranna was heading back to Nonni with the empty Mastadon (Tech 2 Minmatar Hauler). I hadn't experienced any problem with gate camps in the low sec blip that is called the Aunenen system but sure enough this time I jumped in without a scout and ran into a pilot camping the gate.

Now I had one warp stab which would get my away from some pirates, but this guy was in a Gallente Phobos Heavy Interdictor which meant that if he had a Warp Disruption Field Generator like my Onyx boasts, nothing could get away from him. Sure enough, I was warp scrambled and looking to be in trouble.

He opened fire and I watched as my shields slowly went down, all the time spamming the Warp button in the vague hopes he would turn off the disruptor. At about 30% shields I got the "Warping" message and after what seemed forever due to the slowness of the Deep Space Transport ship I was flying, I warped off.

How did I escape? Well, I speculate that he was trying to do three things: warp scram me, fire his weapons, and tank the sentries. For whatever reason, I think he lacked the capacitor to do all three and hoped I might not realize the scram was off. No excuse for it though, with 4 mid slots and no need for a warp disruptor in them he could have easily fit a cap injector and had enough cap to deal with me.

Ah well, his loss. To cap the story off a corpmate reported seeing his frozen corpse at a gate later in the day. Heh, fail.

Last One To Leave...

...turns out the lights!

Razor Technologies (née Kodachi Enterprises) is closing down and is slated to be sold once I complete current business. Yes, its a sad day but it is coming about for good reason.

I'm moving all operations into Strife Mercenaries to facilitate both my invention efforts and production efforts for the corporation. I considered putting Strife into hibernation as it were but have now decided to just sell it off, anchored tower included.

Shareholders: there will be an announced share buyback in the mailing list so no worries. You will come out ahead.

Promotion

I've been officially made a Director of Strife Mercenaries. I say "officially" because since we are all close friends and made decisions and actions together, I felt like a director anyways. But it was made official in light of our recruitment drive and desire to increase numbers.

There was a set of promotions. Myself and Lucius to directors, and Minessis and Seven Six to fleet admirals for lack of a better term. I'm taking it upon myself to set the POS and production lines for Strife as Derranna and my BPOs come over from Razor.

Not much actual action lately though since I'm using my carrier to move stuff for the corp members and get us set up in our new headquarters.

Training Update

While finishing Warp Drive Operation V for Derranna and pondering what to train next, I purchased a full set of +3 implants to increase her training time. Then it occurred to me: I never completed her Learning Skills!

For the uninitiated, Learning Skills are skills where each level increases a base attribute by one, thus increasing your speed at training other skills. I had trained the basic skills to IV which unlocked the advanced skills which I then trained to III (except Presence, the Charisma advanced skill). But a real character should have the basics trained to V and the advanced trained to IV. So I'm not beginning that process (or completing it) and that will take about 66 days.

Kirith? He's still beavering away on Heavy Assault Missiles V for another 6 days and a bit.

Reorganization

With the drama of the weekend behind us and the corporation successfully extracted from Sylph's 0.0 space, we sat down and regrouped the remaining pilots to determine a plan of action.

A large component of the new plan is aggressive recruiting to bolster numbers and make us more attractive to an alliance. We're looking for North American and Western European pilots initially to activity in those time zones where we have some pilots already. We've reduced the skill requirements as we feel a dedicated, dependable, and intelligent newbie is more valuable than a jerky, unreliable, idiot of a veteran.

Another part of the plan is to run more operations in Tech 1 frigates and cruisers with cheap fittings. Part of the benefits of that type of operation is the corp can easily produce those frigates and cruisers for minimal costs thus allowing us to be more cavalier with them.

The third part is to produce some sort of income for the corp and I'm heading up that charge using science and industry programs that worked well in Razor. As such, I expect Razor's Hiatus to continue indefinitely so I'll be looking to institute a share buyback program to appease investors.

Upheaval

At the end of last week I had my small POS up in the outpost system in 0.0 space, all my ships and gear in the outpost, and I was finally starting to rat in my Drake (which I love BTW, and I was going to write about it, but that is another post for another day).

And then all hell broke loose.

First off, the space we were living in was not that attractive to some hardcore miners in the corporation who were looking for the rare Arkanor asteroids, are even Bistot or Mercroxit. Best we had access to was Crokite. Secondly the alliance demands of two large towers seemed excessive by we were told we would have two systems to ourselves. Turns out, not really. Sharing systems with other alliance member corps was not attractive as it meant greater competition for the good rats and moons. Thirdly, and the straw that broke the camel's back, our CEO was leading an alliance fleet on an op and he got replaced by another alliance FC (Fleet Commander) and was then berated for his ship choice.

Excuse me? They what? At that point, the corp unanimously voted to vacate the alliance. That was Saturday night. So I proceeded to dismantle the POS and Sunday morning I carrier jumped everything back to Derelik and then freightered it back to Gulfonodi.

But something else came up Saturday night. Three fifths of our corp's leadership (CEO and four directors including myself) came from a corp called Exile which is part of the ATF alliance out near Triumvirate's space. Don't worry if all of that is greek to you, its Eve macro politics and too complicated to cover as an aside in one post; suffice to say its 'over there'. Well the CEO of Exile really missed the guys that left to help form Strife and made some changes and wanted to invite them back along with the rest of us Strife pilots.

Well, there was some serious excitement. The space Exile occupies has great ores, easy access to good moon mining, and some awesome PvPers I'm told. As a bonus, they are on war footing so lots of action was promised in the near future. Sounded like everything we were looking for.

Except they wanted the pilots, not the corp. In other words, we would be absorbed into Exile corp and Strife would be closed.

Last year when we were running with Strife 1.0 we were in a similar situation: looking for 0.0 access. We joined with No Quarter who were based in Venal region and closed down Strife, but it turned out to not be a good time, I personally nearly lost my shirt in the adventure and ended up working for myself in Razor for a couple months to recover. Now I'm not saying joined Exile would be the same experience but it raised some concerns immediately to me, namely that I would have no control over Exile and I would go from being a director of Strife to a foot soldier in Exile.

Well, after sleeping on it I decided that was a deal breaker for me. When the offer was put up for voting on the forums, I was the first to step up and say, No, I'm staying in Strife. The voting turned out that about 2/3 of the corp agreed with that option and unfortunately the few that wanted to join with Exlie and give it a try decided to go without us. We parted amicably and left the door open to their return should Exile not work out.

So we are now at a new crossroads for Strife, time to review options, get input, and decide on a new course of action. Its unfortunate that the Sylph alliance venture did not pan out, but these things happen and I lost nothing but time and some carrier and POS fuel. Peanuts in the grand scheme of things.

Gaming Blogs I Read

I subscribe to the RSS feeds of a number of blogs so I thought I would share.

Massively - News website for all MMO games. I only actually read a small percentage of the posts and a lot of columnists are completely ignorant of Eve Online's unique rules and stlye AND too many posts are about Second Life, but in general a good site to keep a finger on the pulse of the industry.

Aeon's Eve - Eve blog, lacking updates the past few months. I'm hoping it picks up again but if not it will soon be dropped.

The Ancient Gaming Noob - This guy has an excellent blog, dabbling in lots of games including Eve, Wow, Everquest, and many more. Highly recommended.

Chimps In Space - Another blog lacking recent updates, down to one post a month.

Clockwork Gamer - A group of authors cover the industry, a nice site with lots of viewpoints.

CrazyKinux's Musings - Just coming back from a month long sabbatical, the Eve blog is pretty good if lacking a lot of posts.

Ironfleet Towing And Salvage - An amusing blog amount the adventures of a high sec salvager who sees no issue in securing unanchored items for his corp's coffers. The hilarity ensues when other pilots foolishly oppose this activity.

MMOG Nation - A decent blog covering lots of games in the industry with a decent rate of posts.

Odd Pod Out - One pilot's view on Eve and its happenings. Irregular posting cycles but good quality stuff when posts do appear.

Of Teeth And Claws - A WoW blog written by a close friend covering guild progression in 25 man raids. Highly technical and well written with consistent posting rate. Too bad it wasn't Eve or it would be the BEST BLOG EVER!!!! ;)

Plaguelands - Another generalist blog covering WoW and Eve at the very least, with about a post-a-week schedule.

pΘtshΘt - Yes another generalist MMO gamer blog! It focuses on LotRO, WoW, and PotBS, but on the upside, this one sees multiple posts per week.

Ryan Shwayder's Nerfbat - Need I say it? A generalist blog but this one is different! The author appears to be more than just a gamer, but an actual developer (or at least with insight into the development of MMOs). A good read, with active forums.

The Wizard of Duke Street - The blog covers not only MMOs, but science fiction in entertainment, other forms of gaming, and so forth. Sporacid posting lately though.

winterblink.com - A well-known pilot in Eve, Winterblink writes from the veteran's perspective on the games goings-ons. Also has a Eve-themed webcomic called Warp Drive Active.

--- - Ah Alasseo, we meet again. :)

Alden's Take On Reality - A new blog of a corp mate, not sure he's found his blogging feet yet.

Bitter Old Noob - The author is another veteran pilot of Eve and just started this blog recently. I'm looking forward to see how it unfolds, if the first five posts are any indication.

Flavan's Adventures In Empire Space - In contrast to the veteran pilots, we have a player that started in October of last year writing this blog. Decent posting rate lately.

* * * * *
That's it! If you have a gaming blog, please post a link to it in the comments.

UPDATE: Feeling ambitious, I looked into using Google Reader to give me my list of subscribed feeds as a blog roll and what do you know?! It worked! Check it out on the sidebar.

Space Has Eyes...

Last night I logged in without any major responsibilities requiring attention. POSes? Fueled. R&D? Queued. Hauling? Nothing of import. So I decided to jump into my ratting Drake battlecruiser and hit some belts for some iskies.

I undocked and headed for the gate. And ran into a big gang sitting on it. A big gang of alliance members fortunately, but it gave me pause. I figured they were hunting something on the other side and if I warped through and got attacked and ganked, that would make me look like the biggest loser ever. So I acted all nonchalant and x'd up for the gang.

Note: To "x up for a gang" means to volunteer to join a group of players working together in a group called a gang or a fleet. You volunteer by typing an 'x' into a chat channel, and gangs have special abilities to make working in a group easier such as group warping, being able to warp to a gang member, getting boosts to speed/armour/sheilds/sensors from trained individual or command ships, and communication tool called broadcasts.

As usual, my timing was horrible. The gang had already killed some hostiles and it seemed the action had died down. There was interest in a roaming gang so we docked up to restock and use the facilities and then would head out again.

Before docking up the Fleet Commander (aka FC) asked if anyone could see what was going on in the next system. Apparently the fleet was lacking adequate scouts since everyone was in cruisers and battlecruisers (and one Marauder Battleship, a Golem, which was like 'what the hell!?') so I jumped into my Buzzard covert ops frigate and decided I would be the scout.

For the next hour I scouted ahead of the roaming gang as we looked for reds to engage. Unfortunately, it was quite and I docked up with no fresh killmails. But at least I got the Strife banner waved in front of the alliance and showed a willingness to be involved. Perhaps more action will be found on the weekend that starts tonight.

Razor Secondus Up And Running

Last night I got a good amount of time to play so I powered through and set up the R&D POS in 0.0 space for the corp. It required hauling stuff from Molden Heath to Derelik, four carrier jumps, and three different characters to pull off, but I did it.

Razor Technologies will be going into hibernation and invention efforts will be renewed in 0.0 with extreme prejudice as we try and produce ships for the corporation and the alliance.

In other news, I'm going to try out writing for the Eve Tribune, a weekly news production put out by players. We'll see how it goes.

Time Is Not On My Side

I don't get as many hours to play an evening as others do. I can usually manage a few minutes here and there and then one hour solid, so I need to expend my efforts wisely. As a result, I often don't do much with other players and I have to do a lot of solo activities.

Our corp is setting up some POSes in 0.0 and I really want to help as I want to make Strife Mercs a success. But its hard to work with a group when my schedule doesn't match up with theirs. So I look for solo activities I can do asynchronously to help out. Hauling, moon probing, carrier jumps, buying stuff, it all needs to be done.

Recently I volunteered to setup the small POS in the outpost system for our research and development cause. I know I can run a small POS and it needs to be done. In order to make full use of it, I plan to put Razor Tech on hiatus for a while and focus all efforts on Strife.

In other news....

Last night I was out in my new Drake battlecruiser trying to see how ratting in it was. As I was looking for a quite place to try it out, I ran into a system with a couple reds in it as I jumped through the gate. Worried about running into a gate camp I activated my cloak just as a Cheetah covert ops frigate warped in. I sat still for a while, waiting to see if something else would happen. After a few minutes more, I decloaked and warped to my next gate and sure enough the Cheetah decloaked and gave chase. This went on for a couple system and then I warped to a safe spot and cloaked.

Thank god for the cloak. A covert ops with scan probes can, with max skills and rigs, find a ship in space in less than 30 seconds. So the cloak protected me from that possibility and he knew it. He left and I was able to get back to testing my ships.

The tank is amazing. With two large shield extenders, invul field, EM and Thermal hardeners I barely even knew I was being fired upon. Damage was sucky but since I'm still weeks from tech II HAMs I didn't feel like laying down millions for better named launchers so it has 7 basic HAM Launchers, a difference of almost 100 point per second. Still, I might go back to base and gimp my tank a little more to get another Ballistic Control Unit to up the damage.

Missiles Now In the Down Stretch

My last planned Missile support skill, Warhead Upgrades IV, completed today. With that complete I can focus on heading to Tech II Heavy Assault Missiles for my Falcon, Onyx, and Drake. It will take about 14 days for Heavy Assault Missiles V, and then another 5 days to train up to Heavy Assault Missile Specialization IV.

At that point, the rest of the missile types can wait as I will go off and train something else. Maybe Large Hybrid V finally.

Activate Jump Bridge!

Last night I wanted to get the rest of my ships to the 0.0 outpost using my alt's Barak Vorn's carrier. Normally it would be one jump except the alliance has several POSes with cyno-jammers which means my cyno-pilot Optivus can't make the cyno field for the carrier to jump to.

What to do?

Fortunately Sylph is actually, you know, organized. The have a POS with a Cyno beacon setup at a nearby system that Barak, being part of the alliance, can lock on and jump to without the need of another pilot. Then from there, in theory, he can jump to the outpost system using a POS structure called a jump bridge which can link POSes in different systems and allow ships to jump there and back.

So I cyno jump to the beacon and right click on the jump bridge. No option to jump.

"Hmmm, maybe my capacitor has to be at 90% or better like normal jumps", I think. So I settle down and wait for the recharge to occur.

A few minutes later, I'm recharged. Right click, nothing. What the heck? Am I not doing it right? Do I need fuel in my cargo hold? Nope, that didn't work. What is going on here?

Just as I was about to ask for help in corp chat I realize I'm just over 5000 meters away. Probably too far away to use it and I approach. Sure enough, the option to access fuel and jump to another jump bridge structure appears as I close the distance to the right amount. Sigh.

I jump to the outpost system, warp to station, and dock safely. Now Kirith has his selection of vessels and is ready for wild and woolly adventures in 0.0 again.

Outnumbered, Outgunned, but never Outclassed

Yesterday Games-Workshop St Laurent held a Battlefleet Gothic megabattle of all things! And even more surprising, my wife let me attend! On a Sunday! SWEET!

I love BFG, the thought of kilometers-long behemoths firing world-destroying weapons at each other gives me a kind of thrill, so I broke out a 1000 pt Chaos fleet and went to join the action.

Black Storm Hunter Fleet - 1000 pts
Caligo Eternus - Archeron Heavy Cruiser commanded by Lord Diomedes
Dark Viper - Carnage Cruiser
Darknight's Pride - Devastation Cruiser
Capricorn Retaliation - Slaughter Crusier commanded by Lord Kirith and the 6th Company
Cosmic Fire - Slaughter Cruiser

Along with my fleet, there was another Chaos 1000 pt fleet and two ork fleets totaling 1000 pts, all guarding an activated 750 pt Blackstone Fortress.

Out to kill the fortress was 3000 pts of Imperials... and 3000 pts of Eldar.

HOLY CRAP BATMAN!

Badly outnumbered and outgunned, we went to battle with prayers to the Gods of Chaos to support us. It was bloody as the Eldar fleets pounced on the Orks and demolished 75% of their fleet in turn 1 while the Chaos fleets tangled with the Imperial Navy and Ultramarine battlebarge. We took down the battlebarge eventually while taking moderate losses to our ships, but the Eldar fleet ran up and started smashing the Blackstone fortress with repeated volleys despite losing many ships to its fearsome warp cannons.

In the end the huge fortress died as it was destined to do.

My fleet suffered only one causality as the Dark Viper bore the brunt of firepower from three Imperial cruisers. In return my fleet accounted for a space marine Strike Cruiser, some damage on the battlebarge, and crippling of two more Imperial Crusiers that were on the edge of destruction had I one more turn.

A good time, I now have the urge for a one on one game of BFG.

Moving Again

On Friday our CEO announced that negotiations for a trial period in a new alliance had gone well and we were joining Sylph Alliance on Saturday. Its a medium sized alliance based in the Providence / Catch regions and friendly with CVA, and from what I hear, red to both Goons and BOB.

They also operate under NRDS policy opposed to NBSI. 1 This will be a significant change for most Strife pilots but not as much for me since m3 operated under NRDS for the most part.

With this new organizational change comes logistics of moving the corporation from Molden Heath region to Derelik. Having Barak makes this fairly easy for me, just throw everything into the carrier and freighter and bam, I'm done. My current PvP hanger has the following ships:
Onyx Heavy Interdictor
Falcon Force Recon
Raptor Interceptor
Manticore Stealth Bomber
Buzzard Covert Ops
Harpy Assault Ship

I sold the trusty Thorax as I don't do a lot of solo work in 0.0 and I'm really hooked on the Falcon anyways for now. But I needed a ratting ship so I was faced once again with what to go with. My battleship options were:

Rokh - Powerful and expensive. Raw DPS 501 (with rails, higher if I go with blasters)
Raven - Not as powerful, not as expensive. Raw DPS 467 (Cruise missiles)
Scorpion - Least powerful battleship, cheapest. Raw DPS 297 (Cruise missiles)

The problem with battleships is their speed (slow) and expense (high). So I considered the success I had in Fountain back in the Exuro Mortis days with the Myrmidon and looked at battlecruisers:

Mrymidon - 577 DPS with blasters and a shield tank.
Drake - 460 DPS with Tech II HAMs.

So I went with the Drake. Fully equipped it cost less than the Scorpion ship alone and still gives decent DPS and tank. And while the Myrmidon does the better damage (and no surprise with bigger drone bay and blasters), the Drake has the advantage of one more high slot for a cloaking device, useful for ratting when you need to safe spot from roaming unfriendlies. Downside, I'm still two weeks from using the tech II Heavy Assault Missile Launchers so I'll need to improvise in the meantime.

The goal for ratting will be to get enough ISK to afford a proper Rokh for 0.0 that I will be able to use for sniping in fleet battles and blasting in gang warfare.

In other news...

This sudden exit of Strife from Molden Heath puts on ice any plans Razor had for a low sec POS. I had hoped that Strife would occupy a low sec area and set up a POS so Razor could benefit from the security of blues in local. But now we're on our own again. I'm considering options which include but are not limited to:
1) Stay the current course of inventing/building/selling
2) Approach Sylph for renting a moon in 0.0 and getting access to their outpost2
3) Mothball Razor and move wholesale into Strife

Of course, I'm not taking any immediate action until I see how the 30 day trial for Strife works out in Sylph and whether I think it would be worthwhile for me to do anything. (Note to Shareholders: if Razor does shut down, there will be a share buyback option.)

Finally...

The developers have been announcing several balancing changes coming down the pipe and the biggest news for me has been the long awaited change of adding an extra turret hardpoint to the Moa cruiser, Eagle Heavy Assault Cruiser, Ferox battlecruiser, and Raptor interceptor. As a rail pilot I'm ticked pink as these ships were terribly underpowered compared to their blaster counterparts in the Gallente navy and while these rail ships would never shine as damage dealers, the increase to their bonused DPS is muchly appreciated. It will be interesting to see what setups bubble to the top of the community and how the rolls and use of these ships will evolve.

Footnotes:
1 - NRDS = Not Red Don't Shoot, NBSI = Not Blue Shoot It. In Eve, you can set positive standings or negative standings to other players/corporations/alliances. Those with positive standings are friendlies and show up with blue symbols, while those with negative standings show up with red symbols. The policies above stem from who your alliance allows you to attack.

2 - There are three types of "bases" in space: Station, Outpost, and Player Owned Station (POS).
A Station is a massive structure that you can dock in, cannot be attacked, and usually is owned by a NPC corporation so is accessible by anyone, although there are a number of player conquerable stations. These cannot be built.
An outpost is similar to a conquerable station but are built by player alliances.
A POS is more like a fort owned by a corporation and can be dismantled by the owning players and moved, or attacked and destroyed by enemies.

One Falcon Too Many

Last night I was bombing around Gulfonodi running some missions. My agent assigned the three part Recon mission to me again, he seems to come up with it every 5 missions or so, but its easy and gets me to the next storyline faster so I don't mind. And Recon 3/3 is so damn cool, I wish CCP would make more unique environments like that.

Anyways, the call went up in corp chat that four battleships were camping the Teonusude gate in Bosena. I jumped in my falcon and went to Bosena the back way to scout it out for my three gangmates.

I got there and sure enough the pirates came into view, flashing the red symbol of criminal flags, a Dominix, a Hyperion, a Raven, a Typhoon, and something new... a cruiser... a Falcon. Since I was sitting in a Falcon myself (cloaked of course, I'm being a recon pilot here!) I could easily imagine what my counterpart had: covert ops cloak, ECM, and who cares what else, that would be enough.

Our gang had a Scorpion Battleship, Sacrilege Battlecruiser, and another battleship along with my Falcon and we were confident we could take on the four enemy battleships: lock a couple down, hammer the other two quickly, and win (its worth noting that the Sacrilege may only be a Battlecruiser but the pilot is very good and the damage he puts out is extreme).

But the enemy Falcon effectively negated one of our two ECM ships and could turn an advantaged battle for us into a pitched battle or a disaster in seconds. Negating that Falcon is going to be hard because, sure enough, he just cloaked. We called off the operation. It was far too risky without a few more pilots on our side.

But for a moment there, when I was cloaked and I knew there was another cloaked Falcon out there somewhere, I felt like a WWII sub commander eyeing up a convoy and worried about the ships I couldn't see, knowing if I took the first shot I might never see the return shot coming for me.

Cloaking is so cool.

Commenters Must Die!

Just kidding.

Last post where I talked about how Tech 1 frigates and cruisers are mostly outclassed by their Tech II equivalents prompted this comment from Alasseo who seems determined to keep me honest:

That said, I do take some issue with your suggestion that t2 cruisers are winnage. With the exception of the Falcon, Rapier, and Huginn, they've either been nerfed into oblivion (hello pilgrim, lach) or absurdly outclassed by cheaper and/or cloaky ships (hello rook, every hac except sac and vaga and a muninn if you try REALLY HARD).

Well, I feel the need to respond. Here is what I said near the beginning of my post:

Their more advanced counterparts are superior in every way. They tank better, do more damage, have better range and abilities, and are even usually faster. One can argue that the higher cost is the balancing point except... well... it isn't. Tech II ships are not that expensive for the increase in performance they give and every pilot worth his salt knows it.

It may not be clear, but what I meant is that when given the choice between a Tech 1 cruiser and its corresponding Tech II variant, most pilots will choose the Tech II version due to the increase in power and the fact that the higher price is not a stumbling block. The fact that some Tech II cruisers are outclassed by other Tech II cruisers is another point entirely and not what I was posting about.

Now he is right that many Tech II cruisers are outclassed by cheaper battlecruisers or other Tech II cruisers as I discussed here and here for Caldari to the point where only a handful of them are seen in low sec and 0.0 with any great frequency (usually the Force Recons with their Covert Ops Cloak and Electronic Warfare).

But if you really want a cruiser based Railgun platform, your choice is the Moa and Eagle and barring being really really broke and no time to get some ISK, you will choose the Eagle. Unless of course, its a suicide mission. Then all bets are off.