Back in fall of '06 I was seduced by tales of adventure in deep space by friends in my then-extensive Warhammer 40K organization. Unbeknownst to me my best bud Andrew was getting started into the high adventure of World of Warcraft. A while later we discovered this and I always lamented a little bit that I hadn't know about his foray into WoW because there is a large percentage chance I would have passed on Eve and gone into WoW. Remember the motto: Do Things With People. And despite Andrew's poor choice in hobbies he is one of my peeps.
Flashforward through a couple years of good natured bickering about each other's MMO of choice and comparisions of the vast differences and few similarities. I would like to participate in a MMO with him and I think he reciporcates on the idea, but I have no interest in slogging through 80 levels of WoW and he considers Eve to be something akin to heroin den without the euphoric high.
So we need a neutral MMO to join together, one we can both agree looks fun and entertaining and worth our effort as our second game. Unfortunately, there are a few to pick from.
So I've been casually browsing other games and getting a feel for what Andrew likes in terms of genre, theme, and mechanics. I'm pretty flexible after all, and don't need a game emulating all of Eve's strong points in order to start playing it. High fantasy, apocalyptic, Sci-fi, etc all appeal to me in one way or another. Quality is a big sticking point for me; I want a game that looks good and plays fun.
A lot of people in the podcasts I listen to play LotRO and seem to really like it, but Andrew didn't seem all that impressed with the idea; he heard it was boring. He's also not into Comic Book Hero MMOs so DCUO and City Of X were out.
I didn't feel like Star Trek or Jump Gate Evolution even if Andrew had enthusiam for internet spaceships; I'm getting my fill from Eve thanks. We looked at some apocalypitic games like Earthrise and Fallen Earth but they appear to be more first person shooter type games and neither or us in into that.
Eventually we were able to settle on waiting for Star Wars: The Old Republic. I enjoyed the Knights of the Old Republic games and Andrew hasn't had all childhood memories smashed by the pulp that was the new triology, so it might be workable as a casual game we progress in together once or twice a week.
Now, just to wait until it comes out. *drums fingers*
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Friday, February 27, 2009
Having Nightmares
Or rather, having dreams about a Nightmare.
Faction battleships were once the pinnacle of solo ship ownership outside of capital vessels. Then the loyalty point store and the advent of the Marauders lowered the price point of the empire faction ships to practically reasonable levels. I bought my Navy Raven for under 300 million ISK. The prices of the Navy Megathron, Navy Apocalyse, and Fleet Tempest are similarly depressed from times past.
But the pirate faction battleships are still hard to get a hold of and are still very expensive: The Vindicator, Machariel, Rattlesnake, Bhallgorn, and the aforementioned Nightmare. Last year at this time I bought a Vindicator as a splurge but ended up selling it as I came to my senses a month later as Carrier skillbooks and parts costs came to my attention.
But now the urge to own a bling boat is coming across me again. The Navy Raven didn't do it enough for me, the rarer pirate battleships call out to me.
Machariel - Requires Gallente and Minmatar Battleship skills and projectile training. One of the sexiest looking battleships in the game, known for speed and short ranged damage.
Vindicator - Also requires Gallente and Minmatar skills, it combines hard hitting blasters with more performant MWD and huge armour tank.
Bhallgorn - Requires Amarr and Minmatar skills. I don't know much about it but it seems to be a close range neutralizing boat, using a bonus to webs to snare a target and a bonus to nos and neutrs to train its energy before killing it.
Rattlesnake - Requires Gallente and Caldari skills. Best known for an amazing passive shield tank, but split weapon damage bonus makes it less attractive for DPS. Since I already have the skills for it now and its a Scoprion hull it is attractive to me except that the Navy Raven can out DPS it in a similar configuration.
Nightmare - Requires Caldari and Amarr skills. This is the ship that intrigues me the most. First off, it looks very deadly and awesome. Secondly, pulse lasers, even tech 1, are WTFBBQPWND deadly. Thirdly, training for Amarr Battleship IV and Large Energy Turret IV takes about 19 days total. Ultimately I can get a Nightmare to have an equivalent tank to the Navy Raven but with more DPS at 30km plus 9.5km falloff and the option to go to 85% more damage then the CNR at 15km plus falloff.
(Click to give yourself a nightmare!!!)
Downside, the ship alone is a billion ISK. Bling boat indeed.
However, I have been considering cross training to Amarr ships and lasers lately in order to broaden my horizons. Tech II Khanid ships with bonuses to heavy assault missiles also appeals to me.
* * * * *
You may notice that since Faction ships are combinations of two empires, that there are two Gallente-Minmatar lines creating the Angel Cartel ships and the Serpentis pirate ships, and there is a whole bunch of combos missing. Furthermore, only the Angels and the Sanshas get their own unique ship models while the other pirate factions have to slum it with the copies of empire ships.
Since there are only 5 pirate factions and they are all represented, we will probably never see anymore faction ships added. Here are my wild musings on model and basic concepts for the missing ships.
Amarr/Gallente - This should have been the combination for the Serpentis pirates instead of a second Gallente/Minmatar combo. The ships would use the Gallente line like they do now, but get bonuses to armour tanking instead of MWD usage.
Caldari/Minmatar - New pirate faction using Minmatar ship hulls as the basis of their fleet. Have combined missiles and speed bonuses.
Faction battleships were once the pinnacle of solo ship ownership outside of capital vessels. Then the loyalty point store and the advent of the Marauders lowered the price point of the empire faction ships to practically reasonable levels. I bought my Navy Raven for under 300 million ISK. The prices of the Navy Megathron, Navy Apocalyse, and Fleet Tempest are similarly depressed from times past.
But the pirate faction battleships are still hard to get a hold of and are still very expensive: The Vindicator, Machariel, Rattlesnake, Bhallgorn, and the aforementioned Nightmare. Last year at this time I bought a Vindicator as a splurge but ended up selling it as I came to my senses a month later as Carrier skillbooks and parts costs came to my attention.
But now the urge to own a bling boat is coming across me again. The Navy Raven didn't do it enough for me, the rarer pirate battleships call out to me.
Machariel - Requires Gallente and Minmatar Battleship skills and projectile training. One of the sexiest looking battleships in the game, known for speed and short ranged damage.
Vindicator - Also requires Gallente and Minmatar skills, it combines hard hitting blasters with more performant MWD and huge armour tank.
Bhallgorn - Requires Amarr and Minmatar skills. I don't know much about it but it seems to be a close range neutralizing boat, using a bonus to webs to snare a target and a bonus to nos and neutrs to train its energy before killing it.
Rattlesnake - Requires Gallente and Caldari skills. Best known for an amazing passive shield tank, but split weapon damage bonus makes it less attractive for DPS. Since I already have the skills for it now and its a Scoprion hull it is attractive to me except that the Navy Raven can out DPS it in a similar configuration.
Nightmare - Requires Caldari and Amarr skills. This is the ship that intrigues me the most. First off, it looks very deadly and awesome. Secondly, pulse lasers, even tech 1, are WTFBBQPWND deadly. Thirdly, training for Amarr Battleship IV and Large Energy Turret IV takes about 19 days total. Ultimately I can get a Nightmare to have an equivalent tank to the Navy Raven but with more DPS at 30km plus 9.5km falloff and the option to go to 85% more damage then the CNR at 15km plus falloff.
(Click to give yourself a nightmare!!!)
Downside, the ship alone is a billion ISK. Bling boat indeed.
However, I have been considering cross training to Amarr ships and lasers lately in order to broaden my horizons. Tech II Khanid ships with bonuses to heavy assault missiles also appeals to me.
* * * * *
You may notice that since Faction ships are combinations of two empires, that there are two Gallente-Minmatar lines creating the Angel Cartel ships and the Serpentis pirate ships, and there is a whole bunch of combos missing. Furthermore, only the Angels and the Sanshas get their own unique ship models while the other pirate factions have to slum it with the copies of empire ships.
Since there are only 5 pirate factions and they are all represented, we will probably never see anymore faction ships added. Here are my wild musings on model and basic concepts for the missing ships.
Amarr/Gallente - This should have been the combination for the Serpentis pirates instead of a second Gallente/Minmatar combo. The ships would use the Gallente line like they do now, but get bonuses to armour tanking instead of MWD usage.
Caldari/Minmatar - New pirate faction using Minmatar ship hulls as the basis of their fleet. Have combined missiles and speed bonuses.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
Last night I logged in for a bit before bed and while on teamspeak one of the corp directors asked to talk to me in a private channel.
Now in real life, say with your wife or at your job, when the boss wants to talk to you privately out of the blue its either good news or bad news. Never neutral. So with trepidation I joined him and asked "what up?".
This time, good news.
Since my time in m3 I've recruited ex-Strife Mercenaries pilots that I felt would be a good fit. They've come in and have done very well and in the process raised my stock in the eyes of the corp leadership. In fact, most of the recent recruits have come from my past associations.
So I was offered last night to be the recruitment manager for the corporation with the goal of finding candidates, interviewing them, and preparing dossiers to pass to leadership on the new pilots. I accepted of course as I wanted to do my part to help m3 corp and its a role that might fit with my erratic schedule. The "punishment" part of the post title comes in as it means I have a role to live up to and goals to meet, i.e. keep recruiting pilots.
Its not something I've done before but I'm a fairly friendly guy and can chat up a storm when given a chance so I'll do my best and see what comes of it.
Now in real life, say with your wife or at your job, when the boss wants to talk to you privately out of the blue its either good news or bad news. Never neutral. So with trepidation I joined him and asked "what up?".
This time, good news.
Since my time in m3 I've recruited ex-Strife Mercenaries pilots that I felt would be a good fit. They've come in and have done very well and in the process raised my stock in the eyes of the corp leadership. In fact, most of the recent recruits have come from my past associations.
So I was offered last night to be the recruitment manager for the corporation with the goal of finding candidates, interviewing them, and preparing dossiers to pass to leadership on the new pilots. I accepted of course as I wanted to do my part to help m3 corp and its a role that might fit with my erratic schedule. The "punishment" part of the post title comes in as it means I have a role to live up to and goals to meet, i.e. keep recruiting pilots.
Its not something I've done before but I'm a fairly friendly guy and can chat up a storm when given a chance so I'll do my best and see what comes of it.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
I Missed This Month's Blog Banter!
For some as of yet unknown reason, I didn't get informed of this month's blog banter and since CrazyKinux was busy in real life I figured it was just postponed or something. Imagine my surprise when I saw a couple this morning on A Mule In Eve and The Wandering Druid of Tranquillity.
I'm sure my invitation just got lost in the mail.
*Quickly checks the Eve Blog pack to make sure he's still there.*
Yep, lost in the mail.
So let's pretend this post is on time and all that and CrazyKinux still likes me. ;)
* * * * *
Welcome to the fifth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other EVE Blog Banter
This month’s topic comes to us from Mynxee of Life in Low Sec. She asks "Alts and Metagaming: Is playing two accounts who are logged in at the same time and work together (hauler/miner, explorer/combat associate, trade alts in trade hubs) a form of metagaming that is 'ruining the game'?"Well, first off lets try and identify how having an alt logged in at the same time and working with your main changes the game.
For one thing, it allows people to do things more efficiently that they could not do alone. For example:
Hauler & Miner - if alone, the pilot would have to stop mining to haul his ore thus cutting into profits.
Explorer & Combat Pilot - if just one character, the exploration would have to be done to find the site, then switch for the combat ship to kill the rats, and then probably switch back for a suitable hacking ship. And if the rats come back, another two switches.
Trade alt in hub, usually a hauler as well - if only one account, the player would have to travel to the hub, do its buying and selling, and travel back to base of operations. If in 0.0 this can be a lot of travelling. With the alt, the buying and selling and hauling can be done with autopilot while the main continues on playing.
As you can see, efficiency is a big driver for why alts are used. Now you can argue that another player could do the same tasks but then you are effectively cutting any profits in half (unless you are taking advantage of that other person). An alt allows a person to save time.
Also its worth noting there are some functions that cannot be done alone at all, like the infamous cyno alt for moving a carrier around. Or scouting ahead through pirate infested low sec.
Finally, another big reason for having alts is to make skill training more focused and allow you to get to two different goals quickly; the combat pilot training for tech II large weapons while the industrial alt trains for Jump Freighters. A single player would wait twice as long to reach those goals.
So we see how having multiple accounts changes the game, but does this mean it ruins the game? To answer that question, we have to understand what we mean by "ruin the game".
Definitions of Ruin:
1. ruins, the remains of a building, city, etc., that has been destroyed or that is in disrepair or a state of decay: We visited the ruins of ancient Greece.
2. a destroyed or decayed building, town, etc.
3. a fallen, wrecked, or decayed condition: The building fell to ruin.
4. the downfall, decay, or destruction of anything.
5. the complete loss of health, means, position, hope, or the like.
6. something that causes a downfall or destruction; blight: Alcohol was his ruin.
7. the downfall of a person; undoing: the ruin of Oedipus.
8. a person as the wreck of his or her former self; ravaged individual.
9. the act of causing destruction or a downfall. –verb (used with object)
10. to reduce to ruin; devastate.
11. to bring (a person, company, etc.) to financial ruin; bankrupt.
12. to injure (a thing) irretrievably.
13. to induce (a woman) to surrender her virginity; deflower. –verb (used without object)
14. to fall into ruins; fall to pieces.
15. to come to ruin.
I've highlighted some relevant definitions. In essence, for dual-boxing to "ruin" Eve we would have see the game moving towards an unplayable state; in essence, Eve would be dying. This is demonstrably not true.
But let's be realistic and assume that the question is more meant to be asking if multiple accounts is harming the game. This is more difficult to answer because it is so hard to measure without removing the ability to play two accounts for a few months and compare the results.
I suspect, and have no evidence to support my supposition, that if you removed the ability to have multiple accounts active at once that the inconvenience would not entice people to work together to do what the single player and alt did before in most cases, but rather force players to adapt to a less efficient and more time consuming method or quit altogether.
In addition, I am of the opinion that allowing dual-boxing is not an advantage to a single player that two players could not achieve in its place, as per the Falcon alt. To another player being attacked by a combat pilot and his alt there is no difference than if he were attacked by two players. That is to say, the advantage of a player collaborating with himself is no greater (and in fact is less advantageous) than two players collaborating which is definitely allowed and in fact expected (unlike an online board game where everyone is supposedly competing with each other and two players collaborating is detrimental to the game).
Thus I am going to say no, multiple accounts working together is not harming the game. As long as a single player playing two accounts has no advantage that two players working together also could have, its acceptable in my opinion. It definitely changes the game but I do not think the change is harmful.
(One could have suspected my final answer from knowing how I play the game but the mental exercise was fun anyways.)
Participants:
I'm sure my invitation just got lost in the mail.
*Quickly checks the Eve Blog pack to make sure he's still there.*
Yep, lost in the mail.
So let's pretend this post is on time and all that and CrazyKinux still likes me. ;)
* * * * *
Welcome to the fifth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other EVE Blog Banter
This month’s topic comes to us from Mynxee of Life in Low Sec. She asks "Alts and Metagaming: Is playing two accounts who are logged in at the same time and work together (hauler/miner, explorer/combat associate, trade alts in trade hubs) a form of metagaming that is 'ruining the game'?"Well, first off lets try and identify how having an alt logged in at the same time and working with your main changes the game.
For one thing, it allows people to do things more efficiently that they could not do alone. For example:
Hauler & Miner - if alone, the pilot would have to stop mining to haul his ore thus cutting into profits.
Explorer & Combat Pilot - if just one character, the exploration would have to be done to find the site, then switch for the combat ship to kill the rats, and then probably switch back for a suitable hacking ship. And if the rats come back, another two switches.
Trade alt in hub, usually a hauler as well - if only one account, the player would have to travel to the hub, do its buying and selling, and travel back to base of operations. If in 0.0 this can be a lot of travelling. With the alt, the buying and selling and hauling can be done with autopilot while the main continues on playing.
As you can see, efficiency is a big driver for why alts are used. Now you can argue that another player could do the same tasks but then you are effectively cutting any profits in half (unless you are taking advantage of that other person). An alt allows a person to save time.
Also its worth noting there are some functions that cannot be done alone at all, like the infamous cyno alt for moving a carrier around. Or scouting ahead through pirate infested low sec.
Finally, another big reason for having alts is to make skill training more focused and allow you to get to two different goals quickly; the combat pilot training for tech II large weapons while the industrial alt trains for Jump Freighters. A single player would wait twice as long to reach those goals.
So we see how having multiple accounts changes the game, but does this mean it ruins the game? To answer that question, we have to understand what we mean by "ruin the game".
Definitions of Ruin:
1. ruins, the remains of a building, city, etc., that has been destroyed or that is in disrepair or a state of decay: We visited the ruins of ancient Greece.
2. a destroyed or decayed building, town, etc.
3. a fallen, wrecked, or decayed condition: The building fell to ruin.
4. the downfall, decay, or destruction of anything.
5. the complete loss of health, means, position, hope, or the like.
6. something that causes a downfall or destruction; blight: Alcohol was his ruin.
7. the downfall of a person; undoing: the ruin of Oedipus.
8. a person as the wreck of his or her former self; ravaged individual.
9. the act of causing destruction or a downfall. –verb (used with object)
10. to reduce to ruin; devastate.
11. to bring (a person, company, etc.) to financial ruin; bankrupt.
12. to injure (a thing) irretrievably.
13. to induce (a woman) to surrender her virginity; deflower. –verb (used without object)
14. to fall into ruins; fall to pieces.
15. to come to ruin.
I've highlighted some relevant definitions. In essence, for dual-boxing to "ruin" Eve we would have see the game moving towards an unplayable state; in essence, Eve would be dying. This is demonstrably not true.
But let's be realistic and assume that the question is more meant to be asking if multiple accounts is harming the game. This is more difficult to answer because it is so hard to measure without removing the ability to play two accounts for a few months and compare the results.
I suspect, and have no evidence to support my supposition, that if you removed the ability to have multiple accounts active at once that the inconvenience would not entice people to work together to do what the single player and alt did before in most cases, but rather force players to adapt to a less efficient and more time consuming method or quit altogether.
In addition, I am of the opinion that allowing dual-boxing is not an advantage to a single player that two players could not achieve in its place, as per the Falcon alt. To another player being attacked by a combat pilot and his alt there is no difference than if he were attacked by two players. That is to say, the advantage of a player collaborating with himself is no greater (and in fact is less advantageous) than two players collaborating which is definitely allowed and in fact expected (unlike an online board game where everyone is supposedly competing with each other and two players collaborating is detrimental to the game).
Thus I am going to say no, multiple accounts working together is not harming the game. As long as a single player playing two accounts has no advantage that two players working together also could have, its acceptable in my opinion. It definitely changes the game but I do not think the change is harmful.
(One could have suspected my final answer from knowing how I play the game but the mental exercise was fun anyways.)
Participants:
- Epic Misadventures, This is my Alt - There are many like it but this one is mine.
- Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah, I Missed This Month's Blog Banter!
- A Mule in EvE, Meta what? Is it hurting EvE?
- Morphisat's EVE Online Blog, Me, Myself and I
- One Man And His Spaceship, Me and My Shadow
- Ombeve, Blog Banter edition 5
- Diving into PsycheDiver's Psyche, CK's Blog Banter #5: Everybody Needs Somebody
- Dense Veldspar, Blog Banter
- Ecliptic Rift, OOC: Blog Banter #5 Metagaming
- The Ralpha Dogs, Me, Myself and I
- Mad Rant, "Blog Banter - It's my party, and I'll alt if I want to...."
- EVE Chick, The Handicapper General
- The Wandering Druid of Tranquility, "...you see mate, it's a matter of leverage, savvy?..."
- New Eden Diaries, It's only a game
- Oz’s House of the Evil Dead, If You Can’t Ride Two Horses At Once, You Shouldn’t Be In The Circus
- Diving into PsycheDiver's Psyche, Everybody Needs Somebody
- CrazyKinux's Musing, Leave what you know at the door please!
- Diary of a Pod Pilot, [OOC] EVE Blog Banter #5 Metagaming
- Roc's Ramblings, February Blog Banter - Meta Me
- Drunk in Space, Metagaming....so that's the name.
- X1376's Space Odyssey, Blog Banter #5: Army of One
- A merry life and a short one, EVE Blog Banter #5: Uh...
- Zero Kelvin, Are alts ruining the game?
- DeafPlasma's EVE Musings, Blog Banter #5: Alts & me!
- I am Keith Nielson, EVE is All About the Metagame
- Everyday EvE, Two Accounts Edition
- Blogging from inside the pod, EVE Blog Banter #5: Arletta and I
- Speed Fairy, Meet Paul
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Stepping Up Production
At one time, last October to be precise, I had a plan to produce 100 Invulnerability Field IIs per week. The linchpin of that plan was getting a steady supply of BPCs to invent from an ally's high sec POS lab, but he got war decced and took the tower down and I've pretty much been suffering with the public queues ever since. Which means I get my 20 BPCs every 3 weeks or so instead of every 5 days.
I've decided to step up production by buying two more Invulnerability Field BPOs and putting them in for copies staggered with the original one. The idea is that I get 20 BPCs three times a month or so allowing me to produce about 300 Tech II mods a month for about 150 million ISK profit.
On top of that, my growing wallet disturbs me: if your money is not invested somehow, its being wasted. So with another batch of Moa BPCs coming in, I decided to do some Onyx invention. I purchased the 96 Mechanical Engineering and Caldari Starship Engineering Datacores and the 12 User Manual Decryptors and started 6 of the 12 invention tries yesterday, with the other 6 to go in once the first batch comes out in a couple days.
The estimated odds of success is about 30%. If I get 3/12 successes my invention cost per run is 20 million ISK, while if I get 4/12 successes it drops to 15 million, an overall difference in profit of 45-60 million. If I get freaky good luck and get 5/12 success, the invention cost per run goes to 12 million ISK.
I've decided to step up production by buying two more Invulnerability Field BPOs and putting them in for copies staggered with the original one. The idea is that I get 20 BPCs three times a month or so allowing me to produce about 300 Tech II mods a month for about 150 million ISK profit.
On top of that, my growing wallet disturbs me: if your money is not invested somehow, its being wasted. So with another batch of Moa BPCs coming in, I decided to do some Onyx invention. I purchased the 96 Mechanical Engineering and Caldari Starship Engineering Datacores and the 12 User Manual Decryptors and started 6 of the 12 invention tries yesterday, with the other 6 to go in once the first batch comes out in a couple days.
The estimated odds of success is about 30%. If I get 3/12 successes my invention cost per run is 20 million ISK, while if I get 4/12 successes it drops to 15 million, an overall difference in profit of 45-60 million. If I get freaky good luck and get 5/12 success, the invention cost per run goes to 12 million ISK.
Apocrypha: Probing Update
Remember all that work I did on probing in the new system? A lot of it may be useless.
Currently on Sisi the probing mechanic (when the map is cooperating) does not give any visual cues to hits. No blue spheres, no red circles, no red or yellow or green dots.
Some pilots are celebrating this as a good thing . It makes exploration harder they say, weeds out the dumb players and makes it more worthwhile and elite to be a true explorer.
Excuse me while I roll my eyes.
I'm flying around in a god damned space ship, I expect this advanced technology is capable of showing me on the screen the stuff that it can figure out itself without me having to do it manually by moving the probes around in a game of infantile hot & cold. Yeah, I'm pissed. I liked the visual cues and I seriously hope they come back. I stopped doing exploration in the old method because it took so goddamn long with special bookmarks to get the best probing spots to find the sites. I could do it, but the hassle wasn't worth my limited time online.
Bring back the visual cues. It made probing enjoyable and not an annoying game of hide and seek.
(Less ranty opinion was posted to Game Development Forum)
Currently on Sisi the probing mechanic (when the map is cooperating) does not give any visual cues to hits. No blue spheres, no red circles, no red or yellow or green dots.
Some pilots are celebrating this as a good thing . It makes exploration harder they say, weeds out the dumb players and makes it more worthwhile and elite to be a true explorer.
Excuse me while I roll my eyes.
I'm flying around in a god damned space ship, I expect this advanced technology is capable of showing me on the screen the stuff that it can figure out itself without me having to do it manually by moving the probes around in a game of infantile hot & cold. Yeah, I'm pissed. I liked the visual cues and I seriously hope they come back. I stopped doing exploration in the old method because it took so goddamn long with special bookmarks to get the best probing spots to find the sites. I could do it, but the hassle wasn't worth my limited time online.
Bring back the visual cues. It made probing enjoyable and not an annoying game of hide and seek.
(Less ranty opinion was posted to Game Development Forum)
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
The Fearsome Breacher!!!!
Latest Eve Tribune article on the Minmatar Breacher frigate. Once more my awesome graphic got downgraded in quality to allow the Tribune to swallow the bandwidth, so here is the high res version for my loyal readers:
(Click for full size)
Someday I'll take all these 'fighting spacecraft' articles and compile a PDF booklet for download.
(Click for full size)
Someday I'll take all these 'fighting spacecraft' articles and compile a PDF booklet for download.
Finally!
Last night things quieted down enough for me to log into Eve for an actual sit down session (as opposed to a fly by to change a skill / update order / deliver lab or manufacturing job).
As was typical for a Monday evening there was no signs of war targets around so a few of us set up a fleet and camped the Sukanan entrance in case any bad guys came wandering through. I originally brought out my Kitsune Electronic Attack Ship for some jamming support but as an old friend pointed out, agress anything but a war target or true pirate and the sentry guns would ruin me.
Good point, Xreed.
So I flew back and picked up something with a bit more ommmph: Brooklyn , my Dominix brawling battleship. Despite not having Tech II Orges yet it still dishes out some pain from the Orge Is and the 6 Tech II Heavy Blasters while having a solid tank. It was the first time Brooklyn and I did anything so it was nice to let the crew shake off the new ship jitters and cycle the systems.
Unfortunately nothing of interest came through except a Crusader interceptor and we had no luck catching that speedy frigate before it was off.
After about forty minutes the call went out for assistance clearing a 5/10 Rogue Drone complex that an alliance mate scanned down. Right up my alley: Do Things With People. So the gate camp dissipated and I went back for something more appropriate for NPCing. To my surprise, I was fresh out!
You see, I have 5 battleships each with a different purpose. Brooklyn, my Dominix for solo or small gang PvP; Hudson, the wormhole exploration Dominix; Vera Causa, the blaster Rokh for when you just need lots of DPS; Insisto Oblivium II, the rail Rokh for fleet operations and sniping; and Memento Mori, the Navy Raven for running missions.
Normally this type of operation would call for the latter but it was up in high sec at my mission system and I didn't want to run it back during war and through low sec just for half an hour of complex clearing. Of the other four battleships, in a group anything but the rail Rokh would suffice (and even the rail Rokh would do if it was equipped with tank instead of Tracking Computers and Sensor Boosters for range) but none of them were optimal as all three were set up for blaster range and while the Dominixs had the drones as well I wasn't sure Tech I heavy drones would cut it.
Since we were running in a gang and the other three pilots had a Navy Apocalypse battleship, Dominix, and Basilisk Logisitics cruiser, I decided to downgrade to my mission running Drake, Elusive, and target the smaller frigates and cruisers which my long range heavy missiles and light drones could chew through quickly.
We warped in formation to the complex and made quick work of it. I needed have worried about the suitability of the Dominix as we had more than enough tank and firepower to reduce the rogue drones inside to dust. So I made a little scratch and made a note to myself to use the next Eve Tribune paycheque to look into setting up another battleship for NPCing in low sec.
As was typical for a Monday evening there was no signs of war targets around so a few of us set up a fleet and camped the Sukanan entrance in case any bad guys came wandering through. I originally brought out my Kitsune Electronic Attack Ship for some jamming support but as an old friend pointed out, agress anything but a war target or true pirate and the sentry guns would ruin me.
Good point, Xreed.
So I flew back and picked up something with a bit more ommmph: Brooklyn , my Dominix brawling battleship. Despite not having Tech II Orges yet it still dishes out some pain from the Orge Is and the 6 Tech II Heavy Blasters while having a solid tank. It was the first time Brooklyn and I did anything so it was nice to let the crew shake off the new ship jitters and cycle the systems.
Unfortunately nothing of interest came through except a Crusader interceptor and we had no luck catching that speedy frigate before it was off.
After about forty minutes the call went out for assistance clearing a 5/10 Rogue Drone complex that an alliance mate scanned down. Right up my alley: Do Things With People. So the gate camp dissipated and I went back for something more appropriate for NPCing. To my surprise, I was fresh out!
You see, I have 5 battleships each with a different purpose. Brooklyn, my Dominix for solo or small gang PvP; Hudson, the wormhole exploration Dominix; Vera Causa, the blaster Rokh for when you just need lots of DPS; Insisto Oblivium II, the rail Rokh for fleet operations and sniping; and Memento Mori, the Navy Raven for running missions.
Normally this type of operation would call for the latter but it was up in high sec at my mission system and I didn't want to run it back during war and through low sec just for half an hour of complex clearing. Of the other four battleships, in a group anything but the rail Rokh would suffice (and even the rail Rokh would do if it was equipped with tank instead of Tracking Computers and Sensor Boosters for range) but none of them were optimal as all three were set up for blaster range and while the Dominixs had the drones as well I wasn't sure Tech I heavy drones would cut it.
Since we were running in a gang and the other three pilots had a Navy Apocalypse battleship, Dominix, and Basilisk Logisitics cruiser, I decided to downgrade to my mission running Drake, Elusive, and target the smaller frigates and cruisers which my long range heavy missiles and light drones could chew through quickly.
We warped in formation to the complex and made quick work of it. I needed have worried about the suitability of the Dominix as we had more than enough tank and firepower to reduce the rogue drones inside to dust. So I made a little scratch and made a note to myself to use the next Eve Tribune paycheque to look into setting up another battleship for NPCing in low sec.
Monday, February 23, 2009
News Flash: Sleeper AI
Just as I was typing that last post a Eve Dev Blog was posted about the new Sleeper NPC AI. Most of it is not a surprise to anyone following the threads and reports from the test server, but one line really jumped off the page for me:
It shouldn't be a surprise that Eve is implementing it because its a successful mechanic as evidenced by how many other games use it for their NPCs in order to create something more than mindlessly attacking the first person on the screen as Eve does now. I'm slightly concerned that having groups manage threat so the DPS and healers don't get aggro from the tanks might create a new "holy trinity" way of running raids into Sleeper space that is far too familiar across the MMO genre. I'm concerned because instead of making PvE more like PvP, they might just make a new form of PvE that is based on the "holy trinity" and "managing threat" mechanics and will not do anything to make players ready for real PvP.
That being said, it remains to be seen what this all shakes out as. Since Eve does not allow third party add ons, perhaps managing threat without them will prove to be too difficult, and the actual mechanics for generating threat might be very convoluted and hard for the average group to control. Perhaps it will be enough of an evolution from old mindless PvE to move players closer to being able to PvP in the same groups and ship fittings.
Regardless, time will tell.
In very basic terms: modules and weapons generate threat; as the threat goes up and down the NPCs will change targets and allocate secondary targets.Threat? Threat? Where did I hear that term before...? Oh yeah. And here. And here. You get the idea.
It shouldn't be a surprise that Eve is implementing it because its a successful mechanic as evidenced by how many other games use it for their NPCs in order to create something more than mindlessly attacking the first person on the screen as Eve does now. I'm slightly concerned that having groups manage threat so the DPS and healers don't get aggro from the tanks might create a new "holy trinity" way of running raids into Sleeper space that is far too familiar across the MMO genre. I'm concerned because instead of making PvE more like PvP, they might just make a new form of PvE that is based on the "holy trinity" and "managing threat" mechanics and will not do anything to make players ready for real PvP.
That being said, it remains to be seen what this all shakes out as. Since Eve does not allow third party add ons, perhaps managing threat without them will prove to be too difficult, and the actual mechanics for generating threat might be very convoluted and hard for the average group to control. Perhaps it will be enough of an evolution from old mindless PvE to move players closer to being able to PvP in the same groups and ship fittings.
Regardless, time will tell.
In Other News...
The few minutes here and there I can log in to change skills and such I've been using to continue to prepare for Apocrypha.
Kirith finally completed the Heavy Drone Operation V skill along with Gallente Battleship III on the weekend. Now he is working on Gallente Drone Specialization IV to allow use of those powerful Ogre IIs, then another level of Gallente Battleship to bring the Dominix up to optimal levels.
Derranna completed some more navigation skills and is finishing up Seige Warfare V so she can train Seige Warfare Specialist should I decide to take the Orca into w-space. The 90 Invulnerability Field IIs completed production and went on market with a nice healthy profit margin of about 50 million ISK once they all sell. This should put my wallet over 600 million again and I don't have any major purchases planned at the moment. Saving up for something special perhaps.
And I'm still waiting for the next Sisi test patch. Come on CCP, fixing test probing, I wants to find me a wormhole and go see some Sleepers... :)
Kirith finally completed the Heavy Drone Operation V skill along with Gallente Battleship III on the weekend. Now he is working on Gallente Drone Specialization IV to allow use of those powerful Ogre IIs, then another level of Gallente Battleship to bring the Dominix up to optimal levels.
Derranna completed some more navigation skills and is finishing up Seige Warfare V so she can train Seige Warfare Specialist should I decide to take the Orca into w-space. The 90 Invulnerability Field IIs completed production and went on market with a nice healthy profit margin of about 50 million ISK once they all sell. This should put my wallet over 600 million again and I don't have any major purchases planned at the moment. Saving up for something special perhaps.
And I'm still waiting for the next Sisi test patch. Come on CCP, fixing test probing, I wants to find me a wormhole and go see some Sleepers... :)
WTB: Time To Play
Real Life has been very busy for me lately, with weekends taken up by lots of visiting and housework, and the week by work and more housework.
Its especially frustrating because the day after the war with INCA ended our new guests in Sukanan constellation, Mugen Industries, decided we looked like someone they would like to tangle with and they war decced us.
Mugen Industries are very good coupled with a larger base of pilots than we have faced recently against INCA or Hunters Imperiale / Legi0n and have given us a couple bloody noses. I want to be online more to help with the war effort and it frustrates me to no end that I have not been there for some major conflicts.
I hope tonight I can get online and fly around some. I need to kill something, but at this point even getting killed would be preferable to not being online at all.
Its especially frustrating because the day after the war with INCA ended our new guests in Sukanan constellation, Mugen Industries, decided we looked like someone they would like to tangle with and they war decced us.
Mugen Industries are very good coupled with a larger base of pilots than we have faced recently against INCA or Hunters Imperiale / Legi0n and have given us a couple bloody noses. I want to be online more to help with the war effort and it frustrates me to no end that I have not been there for some major conflicts.
I hope tonight I can get online and fly around some. I need to kill something, but at this point even getting killed would be preferable to not being online at all.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Just Because I'm Not Posting About It...
... Doesn't mean I'm not doing it. Of course I'm talking about my manufacturing side job.
I last posted on Jan 30th about how I had 130 Invulnerability fields to build and four cloaking invention jobs in the labs. In all the excitement of Apocrypha and such I haven't updated you all on the progress. I'm sure some of you are just frothing at the mouth to find out what happened next, aren't you?
The 130 Invulnerability Shields sold quite quickly over a couple days bringing in a good chunk of profit while the four invention jobs only gave me one success again. Still, those 10 Covert Ops Cloaks when built and sold brought in more profit than the 130 shield mods so I shouldn't complain.
Meanwhile another 20 Invul Field BPCs were done and I ran another set of invention, this time coming in under average with 9 successes. I am currently building those 90 Tech II modules.
Speaking of building Tech II, most of the cost of the invulnerability field mods comes from the crazy price of Ferrogel right now, over 50K ISK per unit in Amarr. I might have to see about visiting Jita to see if I can get some lower prices.
No ship invention at the moment. I'm still scarred from the Vulture debacle as well as concentrating on preparing for the upcoming expansion. Come March 11th I plan to be living in w-space for a while and a lot of preparation is required to get ready for that expedition.
I last posted on Jan 30th about how I had 130 Invulnerability fields to build and four cloaking invention jobs in the labs. In all the excitement of Apocrypha and such I haven't updated you all on the progress. I'm sure some of you are just frothing at the mouth to find out what happened next, aren't you?
The 130 Invulnerability Shields sold quite quickly over a couple days bringing in a good chunk of profit while the four invention jobs only gave me one success again. Still, those 10 Covert Ops Cloaks when built and sold brought in more profit than the 130 shield mods so I shouldn't complain.
Meanwhile another 20 Invul Field BPCs were done and I ran another set of invention, this time coming in under average with 9 successes. I am currently building those 90 Tech II modules.
Speaking of building Tech II, most of the cost of the invulnerability field mods comes from the crazy price of Ferrogel right now, over 50K ISK per unit in Amarr. I might have to see about visiting Jita to see if I can get some lower prices.
No ship invention at the moment. I'm still scarred from the Vulture debacle as well as concentrating on preparing for the upcoming expansion. Come March 11th I plan to be living in w-space for a while and a lot of preparation is required to get ready for that expedition.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
I AM A WINNAH!
Nickmacedo over at Everyday Eve ran a screenshot contest on his blog which I entered and won! Yay me.
Disregard the fact there were only two entries. ;) I'm sure as traffic builds the next contest will have more pictures to choose from.
Thanks to Nick for the first prize of 10 million ISK which I plan to put forward into my wormhole space expeditions.
Disregard the fact there were only two entries. ;) I'm sure as traffic builds the next contest will have more pictures to choose from.
Thanks to Nick for the first prize of 10 million ISK which I plan to put forward into my wormhole space expeditions.
Reports from Wormhole Space
When the dev blog on the Sleepers came out I speculated that the new NPCs might not be as tough as advertised because the devs may have been talking to the <10 href="http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1002086">Welcome from Wormhole Space
Sleeper Cruisers and Frigs Own Dominix and Abaddon
3 Sleeper Battleships Beat Mission Drake Tank
Dueling with a Carrier
Observed Behaviours
At one point someone complained that there appears to be no soloable Sleeper spawns but a dev did respond that there will be some. A lot of the encounters described above and elsewhere are against GM spawned NPCs for testing and demonstration. No telling what real average w-space spawns will be like.
I admin some discouragement in the initial reports. My playing schedule means that organizing fleets to go after hard Sleeper spawns is unlikely so solo efforts is all I will manage most of the time. If I can't manage to do anything alone in w-space, I'll be very very pissed.
Another thing to think about is currently drone boats are useless against the Sleepers; they are turning on the drones and killing them pretty damn fast apparently. I guess the exploration Dominix might not be such a hot idea after all. Maurader with half ammo usage and big cargo space is looking very nice at the moment.
Ah well, time will tell.
UPDATE:
Found that dev post about soloable content. To quote CCP Ytterbium:
Sleeper Cruisers and Frigs Own Dominix and Abaddon
3 Sleeper Battleships Beat Mission Drake Tank
Dueling with a Carrier
Observed Behaviours
At one point someone complained that there appears to be no soloable Sleeper spawns but a dev did respond that there will be some. A lot of the encounters described above and elsewhere are against GM spawned NPCs for testing and demonstration. No telling what real average w-space spawns will be like.
I admin some discouragement in the initial reports. My playing schedule means that organizing fleets to go after hard Sleeper spawns is unlikely so solo efforts is all I will manage most of the time. If I can't manage to do anything alone in w-space, I'll be very very pissed.
Another thing to think about is currently drone boats are useless against the Sleepers; they are turning on the drones and killing them pretty damn fast apparently. I guess the exploration Dominix might not be such a hot idea after all. Maurader with half ammo usage and big cargo space is looking very nice at the moment.
Ah well, time will tell.
UPDATE:
Found that dev post about soloable content. To quote CCP Ytterbium:
"Originally by: Reven CordelleSo I have hope.
Was kinda hoping some W-Space encounters would be a solo affair, (for no where near as much potential isk obviously) but.. you know, as something other than L4s. "
But some are. Not all of them of course, and even the solo encounters will give you challenge, which is the point. As some players already stated it before, don't expect to face a level4 mission when going into wormhole space because Sleeper capabilities are far different from pirate factions in known space.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Apocrypha: Probing IVb
This shall be the last major post on probing in Apocrypha.
Previously:
- we looked at the new probes and launchers
- hunted down a Cosmic Anomaly
- hunted down a Cosmic Signature (with update from forums)
- and tried but failed to find a frigate
This time I will search for a ship in space and will not stop until I see it on my overview! On with the search.
Figure 1 - On board scanner makes a return. No idea if it works as I didn't find anything. Right now I'm assuming it will work just as it did before, giving 100% hits on really easy to find Cosmic Anomalies.
Figure 2 - Ordat is not big system so I could easily use one combat probe (which goes up to 64 AU) to cover the whole thing... except that only gives me a big blue sphere and I still need multiple probes covering all the space to narrow down the search area. So I go right to 6 covering probes along with 1 larger covering probe. The large 7th probe will ensure that if only one of the 6 smaller probes hits a target, it will still intersect with the 7th one and give a red ring instead of blue sphere to work with.
Astrometerics is supposedly going to determine how many probes you can control with current implementation being that Astrometerics V allows 8 probes.
Since the latest update, you move the probe scan area on the map but not the probes themselves. They warp automatically when you hit analyze to get into position, then you hit analyze again to do the scan. Here's hoping they change that to warp then analyze with one button press.
Figure 3 - Probes warping to position. The grey scanning spheres of the moving probes flash on and off which is hard to tell in a still frame.
Figure 4 - Lots of hits! Notice that in the scanning window the distance column reflects distance from my position at time of scan, and not distance from the nearest probe.
Figure 5 - Notice the selected hits in the scan window. Same strength, same distance, two red dots on the map... this is the case where its one target covered by three probes giving two points where the ranges from each probe intersect. If I were going to scan down that target I would have to make sure I get four probes covering both red points. Specifically in this case I would move a probe out of range into the area to get it to one point.
Figure 6 - I decided I would go for the highest strength hit I got, this red ring where Probe 4 and my covering Probe 7 both detected it.
How do I know which probes detected it? Well, its obviously in range of Probe 4 and the orientation of the red ring points to the second probe that detects it. Draw a line from probe 4 through the centre of the red ring and you will intersect with probe 7. Had I not had Probe 7 at 32 AU covering all the rest, that hit from Probe 4 would have been a blue sphere and required an additional step to narrow it down.
Figure 7 - I lowered the range from 16 AU (32AU for Probe 7) down to 4 AU and covered the red ring of my chosen target. I could have thrown an eighth probe in there to cover it all but forgot about it in the excitement.
Figure 8 - The result. Its another red ring from two probes, but a lot small area. Notice the signal strength went up to 12% due to the shorter ranged and high strength probes.
Figure 9 - I sent four of the probes in at 1 AU with each one covering the whole red ring. I wanted to see if I could resolve it to 100% with only four at second highest strength for Combat probes.
Figure 10 - Some interesting things here. We have a single point after the scan but its yellow meaning it is not resolved enough for a definitive warp in, only 53.27%. Also notice that the scan window now can tell us its a cruiser we are hunting whereas prior to this scan we only knew it was a ship. Somebody is probably making a database to cross reference your skills, the probe range, and the ship base signature to figure out what scan strength you will see when you get a hit so you know early on what ship class you are chasing, but that's more obsessive than I've got time for.
So what do we need to do to resolve this hit further? I heard on the forums that more than 5 probes won't help as only the 4 highest strength hits are used and if all 4 are at best strength than nothing will help. Rumour so take it for what its worth. Fortunately for me, I've got one more level of resolution to try...
Figure 11 - This is as close as Combat probes can get, 0.5 AU. Core probes can get one level closer but don't pick up ships apparently. So with four Combat probes at best strength if I can't get this resolved to 100% I'll have to look at skills, ship bonuses, rigs, and implants to increase their probing strength.
Figure 12 - A few seconds later, success! We have 100% signal strength, green dot means go, and we can see in the scan window that the type is Exequror, a Gallente Tech 1 cruiser. I can now right click the entry in the scan window and choose to warp to it. I pick 100 km as I'm nervous its at a POS or something.
Figure 13 - "Captain, we have visual. Target vessel is abandoned."
* * * * *
It took about 15 minutes from start to finish this time. I think I can shave about 5 minutes off that with practice and a few different probe placement techniques. But still about 10 minutes to get a warp in on a cruiser... that's harsh.
Perhaps even more time can be shaved if you use the directional scanner to narrow down the search area faster. That is to say, get within 15 AU of a target, cover the region around you with multiple overlapping probes to get it narrowed down to a single point as quickly as possible, and then send in the 0.5 range probes to resolve target. Downside of that is the warping from object to object time to find the target in the first place. Maybe clever placement of larger ranged probes early on could accomplish the same thing. I'll leave that theorycrafting to the readers, my work here is done.
When I was talking about this with my friend Lucius he pointed out that PvPers will like that safe spots are much harder to bust, but mission runner who tend to stay in the same spot longer will be more vulnerable. Especially if the rumour I heard about deadspace no longer causing interference to probes is true. Regardless, since it appears that if your ship is in space and in range of a probe it will be detected, probers will know you are out there. Hiding is going to be more difficult in mission deadspace.
Next in our Apocrypha testing I will be seeking out a wormhole and travelling to w-space (once its open that is) to get up and close with our new Sleeper overlords.
Previously:
- we looked at the new probes and launchers
- hunted down a Cosmic Anomaly
- hunted down a Cosmic Signature (with update from forums)
- and tried but failed to find a frigate
This time I will search for a ship in space and will not stop until I see it on my overview! On with the search.
Figure 1 - On board scanner makes a return. No idea if it works as I didn't find anything. Right now I'm assuming it will work just as it did before, giving 100% hits on really easy to find Cosmic Anomalies.
Figure 2 - Ordat is not big system so I could easily use one combat probe (which goes up to 64 AU) to cover the whole thing... except that only gives me a big blue sphere and I still need multiple probes covering all the space to narrow down the search area. So I go right to 6 covering probes along with 1 larger covering probe. The large 7th probe will ensure that if only one of the 6 smaller probes hits a target, it will still intersect with the 7th one and give a red ring instead of blue sphere to work with.
Astrometerics is supposedly going to determine how many probes you can control with current implementation being that Astrometerics V allows 8 probes.
Since the latest update, you move the probe scan area on the map but not the probes themselves. They warp automatically when you hit analyze to get into position, then you hit analyze again to do the scan. Here's hoping they change that to warp then analyze with one button press.
Figure 3 - Probes warping to position. The grey scanning spheres of the moving probes flash on and off which is hard to tell in a still frame.
Figure 4 - Lots of hits! Notice that in the scanning window the distance column reflects distance from my position at time of scan, and not distance from the nearest probe.
Figure 5 - Notice the selected hits in the scan window. Same strength, same distance, two red dots on the map... this is the case where its one target covered by three probes giving two points where the ranges from each probe intersect. If I were going to scan down that target I would have to make sure I get four probes covering both red points. Specifically in this case I would move a probe out of range into the area to get it to one point.
Figure 6 - I decided I would go for the highest strength hit I got, this red ring where Probe 4 and my covering Probe 7 both detected it.
How do I know which probes detected it? Well, its obviously in range of Probe 4 and the orientation of the red ring points to the second probe that detects it. Draw a line from probe 4 through the centre of the red ring and you will intersect with probe 7. Had I not had Probe 7 at 32 AU covering all the rest, that hit from Probe 4 would have been a blue sphere and required an additional step to narrow it down.
Figure 7 - I lowered the range from 16 AU (32AU for Probe 7) down to 4 AU and covered the red ring of my chosen target. I could have thrown an eighth probe in there to cover it all but forgot about it in the excitement.
Figure 8 - The result. Its another red ring from two probes, but a lot small area. Notice the signal strength went up to 12% due to the shorter ranged and high strength probes.
Figure 9 - I sent four of the probes in at 1 AU with each one covering the whole red ring. I wanted to see if I could resolve it to 100% with only four at second highest strength for Combat probes.
Figure 10 - Some interesting things here. We have a single point after the scan but its yellow meaning it is not resolved enough for a definitive warp in, only 53.27%. Also notice that the scan window now can tell us its a cruiser we are hunting whereas prior to this scan we only knew it was a ship. Somebody is probably making a database to cross reference your skills, the probe range, and the ship base signature to figure out what scan strength you will see when you get a hit so you know early on what ship class you are chasing, but that's more obsessive than I've got time for.
So what do we need to do to resolve this hit further? I heard on the forums that more than 5 probes won't help as only the 4 highest strength hits are used and if all 4 are at best strength than nothing will help. Rumour so take it for what its worth. Fortunately for me, I've got one more level of resolution to try...
Figure 11 - This is as close as Combat probes can get, 0.5 AU. Core probes can get one level closer but don't pick up ships apparently. So with four Combat probes at best strength if I can't get this resolved to 100% I'll have to look at skills, ship bonuses, rigs, and implants to increase their probing strength.
Figure 12 - A few seconds later, success! We have 100% signal strength, green dot means go, and we can see in the scan window that the type is Exequror, a Gallente Tech 1 cruiser. I can now right click the entry in the scan window and choose to warp to it. I pick 100 km as I'm nervous its at a POS or something.
Figure 13 - "Captain, we have visual. Target vessel is abandoned."
* * * * *
It took about 15 minutes from start to finish this time. I think I can shave about 5 minutes off that with practice and a few different probe placement techniques. But still about 10 minutes to get a warp in on a cruiser... that's harsh.
Perhaps even more time can be shaved if you use the directional scanner to narrow down the search area faster. That is to say, get within 15 AU of a target, cover the region around you with multiple overlapping probes to get it narrowed down to a single point as quickly as possible, and then send in the 0.5 range probes to resolve target. Downside of that is the warping from object to object time to find the target in the first place. Maybe clever placement of larger ranged probes early on could accomplish the same thing. I'll leave that theorycrafting to the readers, my work here is done.
When I was talking about this with my friend Lucius he pointed out that PvPers will like that safe spots are much harder to bust, but mission runner who tend to stay in the same spot longer will be more vulnerable. Especially if the rumour I heard about deadspace no longer causing interference to probes is true. Regardless, since it appears that if your ship is in space and in range of a probe it will be detected, probers will know you are out there. Hiding is going to be more difficult in mission deadspace.
Next in our Apocrypha testing I will be seeking out a wormhole and travelling to w-space (once its open that is) to get up and close with our new Sleeper overlords.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Skills Update
I was pleasantly surprised to see Kirith has only 3.5 days left on Heavy Drone Operation V this morning when I logged in. It's nice when you set a long skill and then get distracted by other things only to find its almost done when you check again. Once I get that skill done its a few days for Gallente Drone Specialization and Gallente Battleship III and IV and then my exploring Dominx with Ogre IIs will be ready to take on the Sleepers. I also plan to get Caldari and Minmatar Drone Specialization IV for the trifecta of tech II heavy drones. Amarr Drone Specialization is not a priority.
Meanwhile, Derranna has been working on Siege Warfare V while periodically jumping into some new navigation skills like Acceleration Control, High Speed Maneuvuring, and Fuel Conservation. Micro Warp Drives and better afterburners are useful on combat and industrial ships alike so it's high past time I time I trained them. Once complete those skills to level IV I can train Evasive Maneuvuring V so I can fly Minmatar Interceptors. No need for them, just like the idea of having the option.
Meanwhile, Derranna has been working on Siege Warfare V while periodically jumping into some new navigation skills like Acceleration Control, High Speed Maneuvuring, and Fuel Conservation. Micro Warp Drives and better afterburners are useful on combat and industrial ships alike so it's high past time I time I trained them. Once complete those skills to level IV I can train Evasive Maneuvuring V so I can fly Minmatar Interceptors. No need for them, just like the idea of having the option.
Apocrypha: Probing IVa
I tried probing out a ship on the weekend on the test server after installing the latest patch (sorry, no pics). It was not easy.
First I tried to probe out one target only to have it disappear on me. I was quite confused and ended up looking for another target, but later on I remember about the double image you can get with three probes on a target and only covered one of the two locations. Doh.
Anyways, I searched for another target and found one. It too slipped from me at one point but I backtracked a probe and picked it up again. I was using Combat probes as they are the ones you are supposed to use even though according to my math they have the same strength at the same range as the Core probes but can't go to 0.25 AU and 40 points of strength. This is a problem as you will see in a bit.
As I narrowed down the target to about 50% signal strength I could see in the scan window it was a frigate. With four overlapping probes I could not get it to 100%. In fact, even with 5 probes at shortest ranges I could not resolve the position of that damn frigate. At this point I logged vowing to try again later.
I wondered if using the Core probes would have got that frig. If so, I wonder what use the Combat probes are besides a slightly faster warp speed.
Also, although finding Cosmic signatures and anomalies will be much easier I think that finding enemy ships is going to be near impossible unless they are AFK and not moving. I've read a dev post that suggests this is intended so that safe spots can feel a little safer instead of people warping to and fro multiple spots. But what I really suspect is going on here is setting of the stage for a nerf to cloaked ships sitting in space for hours and being undetectable. If safe spots are considerably safer for longer, then a penalty to cloaks to make them not last indefinitely or make them probe-able somehow could be feasible from a gameplay standpoint. All pure speculation of course.
Anyways, I will attempt to probe a ship again this week. This time with pictures. ;)
UPDATE: From the game development forum thread, the devs say:
- Core probes won't be able to detect ships (and drones I assume) hence hwy combat probes are needed
- Current scan duration improving skills/rigs/implants/ship bonuses will be switched to scan strength and vice versa since the 10 second base time is here to stay.
- Current strength improving stuff is not working on Sisi... hence why finding the frigate proved difficult.
I'll keep y'all posted.
First I tried to probe out one target only to have it disappear on me. I was quite confused and ended up looking for another target, but later on I remember about the double image you can get with three probes on a target and only covered one of the two locations. Doh.
Anyways, I searched for another target and found one. It too slipped from me at one point but I backtracked a probe and picked it up again. I was using Combat probes as they are the ones you are supposed to use even though according to my math they have the same strength at the same range as the Core probes but can't go to 0.25 AU and 40 points of strength. This is a problem as you will see in a bit.
As I narrowed down the target to about 50% signal strength I could see in the scan window it was a frigate. With four overlapping probes I could not get it to 100%. In fact, even with 5 probes at shortest ranges I could not resolve the position of that damn frigate. At this point I logged vowing to try again later.
I wondered if using the Core probes would have got that frig. If so, I wonder what use the Combat probes are besides a slightly faster warp speed.
Also, although finding Cosmic signatures and anomalies will be much easier I think that finding enemy ships is going to be near impossible unless they are AFK and not moving. I've read a dev post that suggests this is intended so that safe spots can feel a little safer instead of people warping to and fro multiple spots. But what I really suspect is going on here is setting of the stage for a nerf to cloaked ships sitting in space for hours and being undetectable. If safe spots are considerably safer for longer, then a penalty to cloaks to make them not last indefinitely or make them probe-able somehow could be feasible from a gameplay standpoint. All pure speculation of course.
Anyways, I will attempt to probe a ship again this week. This time with pictures. ;)
UPDATE: From the game development forum thread, the devs say:
- Core probes won't be able to detect ships (and drones I assume) hence hwy combat probes are needed
- Current scan duration improving skills/rigs/implants/ship bonuses will be switched to scan strength and vice versa since the 10 second base time is here to stay.
- Current strength improving stuff is not working on Sisi... hence why finding the frigate proved difficult.
I'll keep y'all posted.
Time Frustrations
I begged, borrowed, and stole some time on Sunday afternoon to log into Eve for a corporate op, specifically a battlecruiser-only roam looking for fights. INCA called off the war with us late last week (temporarily or permanently we don't know for sure) and their friends Mugen Industry are a different timezone so not active in North American afternoons.
The operation was scheduled to rally at 2000 hrs and head out at 2030. I managed two free hours so logged on at 2000 looking for action.
Of course, I was too optimistic; large operations almost never leave on time.
Some people were late.
Others were not ready and had to setup their ships.
Others got into discussions about to fit on their ship; sensor booster or more tank? DPS drones or ECM drones.
I grit my teeth and held my tongue as I knew this was pretty standard across all of Eve. The discipline to have pilots and ships ready ahead of time is rare for casual roams.
Everytime I thought we were ready, someone else had to "pick up one more item" or was "just a few more jumps out". To make matters worse, living in our low sec pocket meant we had to travel to find space to roam which in turn led to twenty jumps through high sec to Gallente space.
The end result was that after two hours we were ready to enter low sec and find something to shoot. And I had to log. Sigh.
At least I got out and showed I was there. Unfortunately for them, they didn't get any kills and ultimately they ran into a nasty gate camp which had superior firepower that annhilated most of the gang.
The operation was scheduled to rally at 2000 hrs and head out at 2030. I managed two free hours so logged on at 2000 looking for action.
Of course, I was too optimistic; large operations almost never leave on time.
Some people were late.
Others were not ready and had to setup their ships.
Others got into discussions about to fit on their ship; sensor booster or more tank? DPS drones or ECM drones.
I grit my teeth and held my tongue as I knew this was pretty standard across all of Eve. The discipline to have pilots and ships ready ahead of time is rare for casual roams.
Everytime I thought we were ready, someone else had to "pick up one more item" or was "just a few more jumps out". To make matters worse, living in our low sec pocket meant we had to travel to find space to roam which in turn led to twenty jumps through high sec to Gallente space.
The end result was that after two hours we were ready to enter low sec and find something to shoot. And I had to log. Sigh.
At least I got out and showed I was there. Unfortunately for them, they didn't get any kills and ultimately they ran into a nasty gate camp which had superior firepower that annhilated most of the gang.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Apocrypha: Probing IIIb
Probing facts confirmed from Eve Online forum dev responses:
- Probing is no longer chance based. If there is something in range of a probe, you will detect it. Mashing "analyze" will not change your results.
- Each step of increasing the scan range of a probe halves its strength. Not sure about scan deviation.
- You can scan whilst cloaked.
- Wormholes show as Cosmic Signatures, not the easier to find Cosmic Anomalies.
- Probing is no longer chance based. If there is something in range of a probe, you will detect it. Mashing "analyze" will not change your results.
- Each step of increasing the scan range of a probe halves its strength. Not sure about scan deviation.
- You can scan whilst cloaked.
- Wormholes show as Cosmic Signatures, not the easier to find Cosmic Anomalies.
Apocrypha: Probing III
Searching for a Cosmic Signature!
Last time we determined that finding a Cosmic Anomaly was fairly easy. But Cosmic Signatures are much weaker strength and usually much harder to find in the current mechanics. How does it compare in the new expansion?
I logged in last night and once I had figured out the graphic problems again, I was off to get a new Cheetah and probes before heading out into the black once more.
Figure 1 - I started with Deep Space Exploration probes because the Core Probes, while higher strength, have a maximum range of 32 AU compared to 1024 AU for the former. By setting the range to 64 AU, I was able to cover most of a system. Here we see a hit where the surface blue sphere represents the possible locations for the selected item.
Figure 2 - The minimum range of the Deep Space probes is 16 AU (or 8?) so I switched over the Core probes to cover the surface of the blue sphere and narrow down the search area.
Figure 3 - Notice that there are three Cosmic Signatures showing up now whereas before there was only two? This confused me at first before I realized it was the same signature but only covered by three probes. Since each probe only gives a range to the target, one probe gives a sphere, two probes a circle, three probes give two points representing the possible locations that all three ranges given by the probes intersect. You need four probes to eliminate on of those possibilities so I need to move the one outside of the two points in closer.
Figure 4 - Resolved to one point but only with 2.52% strength. I'm assuming that reducing the range of the probes corresponds to an increase in strength.
Figure 5 - After reducing the range to 0.5 AU and scanning I get the strength up to 22.14%. Need more resolution!
Figure 6 - Down to 0.25 AU, the shortest range the Core Probe can go. I get a hit with a strength of 92.98%. Notice how the map shows the signature as yellow now? No idea if that means anything besides "getting warmer". Obviously four probes is not enough, so I launch a fifth and move it into position.
Figure 7 -With the fifth probe in place, the scan quickly comes back with 100%, a green icon, and ability to warp to it.
Figure 8 - As I enter warp, the information box to point me in the right direction: need archaeology analyzer.
Figure 9 - The promised land!
So from start to finish it took exactly 16 minutes and I think with practice I could shave another couple minutes off there as there was a point I had to recall the probes and redeploy when I deactivated them to clear up the display to move one at a time and reactivating them had the graphics all screwy and out of place.
So far the new probing mechanic makes finding exploration content easier for me: no annoying warps and bookmarks, no mysterious signals that cannot be found, easy to narrow down. Of course, I am assuming that if a signature exists in system that the Deep Space exploration probe, even on its high ranges, will still detect it. If some complexes are missed than it might be more difficult to find the good ones. Dev blog required to fill in the details I suppose.
One more task left in this exploration expose: finding enemy ships. My gut tells me it will take longer to scan down pilots in missions and safe spots but I will have to actually test it and see.
Last time we determined that finding a Cosmic Anomaly was fairly easy. But Cosmic Signatures are much weaker strength and usually much harder to find in the current mechanics. How does it compare in the new expansion?
I logged in last night and once I had figured out the graphic problems again, I was off to get a new Cheetah and probes before heading out into the black once more.
Figure 1 - I started with Deep Space Exploration probes because the Core Probes, while higher strength, have a maximum range of 32 AU compared to 1024 AU for the former. By setting the range to 64 AU, I was able to cover most of a system. Here we see a hit where the surface blue sphere represents the possible locations for the selected item.
Figure 2 - The minimum range of the Deep Space probes is 16 AU (or 8?) so I switched over the Core probes to cover the surface of the blue sphere and narrow down the search area.
Figure 3 - Notice that there are three Cosmic Signatures showing up now whereas before there was only two? This confused me at first before I realized it was the same signature but only covered by three probes. Since each probe only gives a range to the target, one probe gives a sphere, two probes a circle, three probes give two points representing the possible locations that all three ranges given by the probes intersect. You need four probes to eliminate on of those possibilities so I need to move the one outside of the two points in closer.
Figure 4 - Resolved to one point but only with 2.52% strength. I'm assuming that reducing the range of the probes corresponds to an increase in strength.
Figure 5 - After reducing the range to 0.5 AU and scanning I get the strength up to 22.14%. Need more resolution!
Figure 6 - Down to 0.25 AU, the shortest range the Core Probe can go. I get a hit with a strength of 92.98%. Notice how the map shows the signature as yellow now? No idea if that means anything besides "getting warmer". Obviously four probes is not enough, so I launch a fifth and move it into position.
Figure 7 -With the fifth probe in place, the scan quickly comes back with 100%, a green icon, and ability to warp to it.
Figure 8 - As I enter warp, the information box to point me in the right direction: need archaeology analyzer.
Figure 9 - The promised land!
So from start to finish it took exactly 16 minutes and I think with practice I could shave another couple minutes off there as there was a point I had to recall the probes and redeploy when I deactivated them to clear up the display to move one at a time and reactivating them had the graphics all screwy and out of place.
So far the new probing mechanic makes finding exploration content easier for me: no annoying warps and bookmarks, no mysterious signals that cannot be found, easy to narrow down. Of course, I am assuming that if a signature exists in system that the Deep Space exploration probe, even on its high ranges, will still detect it. If some complexes are missed than it might be more difficult to find the good ones. Dev blog required to fill in the details I suppose.
One more task left in this exploration expose: finding enemy ships. My gut tells me it will take longer to scan down pilots in missions and safe spots but I will have to actually test it and see.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Starting Over?
My old CEO and friend left Eve a few months back. Despite having a forty million skill point character and lots of big powerful ships, he just was burnt out.
Flash forward to this week. He shows up asking us, his old corpmates, should he sell his main character and start over? You see, Apocrypha is tempting him back and he feels the need for a fresh start; he misses being a newb.
Dude. GIVE YOUR HEAD A SHAKE.
You forget how long it takes to get the support skills for a decent cruiser? You want to be faced with the year long training to get back in a Thanatos? You want to have to learn the learning skills over again?
You won't recapture any magic that you can't capture by strapping your current 40 million skill point character in a Rifter and go barrelling through Evati. The adventures open to the low skill point character are still open to your experienced character, but your new character will be months before they can even sniff a level four mission, much less Sleepers in the wormholes and Tech III Strategic Cruisers.
Sell all your stuff and pretend to be a newb. Hell, even start training a new character in place of your current one. But don't jump in with both feet until you are sure you are ready to abandon all the content you have access to.
Flash forward to this week. He shows up asking us, his old corpmates, should he sell his main character and start over? You see, Apocrypha is tempting him back and he feels the need for a fresh start; he misses being a newb.
Dude. GIVE YOUR HEAD A SHAKE.
You forget how long it takes to get the support skills for a decent cruiser? You want to be faced with the year long training to get back in a Thanatos? You want to have to learn the learning skills over again?
You won't recapture any magic that you can't capture by strapping your current 40 million skill point character in a Rifter and go barrelling through Evati. The adventures open to the low skill point character are still open to your experienced character, but your new character will be months before they can even sniff a level four mission, much less Sleepers in the wormholes and Tech III Strategic Cruisers.
Sell all your stuff and pretend to be a newb. Hell, even start training a new character in place of your current one. But don't jump in with both feet until you are sure you are ready to abandon all the content you have access to.
Apocrypha: Probing II
Continuing my investigations on the test server of the new probing mechanics, I logged in again to see if I could figure out why I could not see how to position the probes and their spheres on the solar system map. Eventually I figured out that the graphic setting for shadows was somehow screwing it up and once I turned it off, all became clear. Being able to see and position the probes, I was able to work on scanning something down.
Figure 1 - Seeing the probe positioning arrows and their range sphere.
Figure 2 - Whoa! Expanded to maximum range of 32 AU (Core Probes). Slight overlap ;)
Figure 3 - A hit! When something is detected by only one probe, you see a pale blue sphere indicating the area it can be found in. You can click through the items in the scan list to see the respective blue spheres of various sizes. Even though some items are at 100% scan strength, you need to have it in the range of three probes in order to triangulate and warp to it.
Figure 4 - When in detected by two probes, you get a red circle indicating the intersection area. Each red circle represents a different item in the list, click through them to see each one in turn.
Figure 5 - Just showing one red circle from the list. Notice how the scan strength of the Cosmic Signature is really low? I assume you need to really zone in with low range / high strength probes to find that sucker. Next time I'll work on that but this time I'm going for a much easier to find Cosmic Signature.
Figure 6 - Triangulated! When a signature is within range of three probes, it shows up as a dot on the map. Red dots means the scan strength is not 100% and you cannot warp to it, thus you need to get stronger probes with shorter range on it. Green dots are 100% strength and warpable. As you enter warp, sometimes you get DED announcements like the one below.
Figure 7 - At this point, Twin B woke up and in the process woke up Twin A so my wife and I rushed up stairs to spend the next fifteen minutes settling down the babies and putting them back to bed. What did I come back to?
Whoops! I guess I should have cancelled warp. Oh well, test server. Everything is on the cheap there.
Overall the whole process took me 30 minutes to figure out, most of which was spent fiddling with moving probes around, playing with the ranges, and trying to figure out how to overlap properly. Once I had the two probes giving red circles, the triangulation was child's play.
Next time I'll work on tracking down a harder signal and see how long that takes.
Figure 1 - Seeing the probe positioning arrows and their range sphere.
Figure 2 - Whoa! Expanded to maximum range of 32 AU (Core Probes). Slight overlap ;)
Figure 3 - A hit! When something is detected by only one probe, you see a pale blue sphere indicating the area it can be found in. You can click through the items in the scan list to see the respective blue spheres of various sizes. Even though some items are at 100% scan strength, you need to have it in the range of three probes in order to triangulate and warp to it.
Figure 4 - When in detected by two probes, you get a red circle indicating the intersection area. Each red circle represents a different item in the list, click through them to see each one in turn.
Figure 5 - Just showing one red circle from the list. Notice how the scan strength of the Cosmic Signature is really low? I assume you need to really zone in with low range / high strength probes to find that sucker. Next time I'll work on that but this time I'm going for a much easier to find Cosmic Signature.
Figure 6 - Triangulated! When a signature is within range of three probes, it shows up as a dot on the map. Red dots means the scan strength is not 100% and you cannot warp to it, thus you need to get stronger probes with shorter range on it. Green dots are 100% strength and warpable. As you enter warp, sometimes you get DED announcements like the one below.
Figure 7 - At this point, Twin B woke up and in the process woke up Twin A so my wife and I rushed up stairs to spend the next fifteen minutes settling down the babies and putting them back to bed. What did I come back to?
Whoops! I guess I should have cancelled warp. Oh well, test server. Everything is on the cheap there.
Overall the whole process took me 30 minutes to figure out, most of which was spent fiddling with moving probes around, playing with the ranges, and trying to figure out how to overlap properly. Once I had the two probes giving red circles, the triangulation was child's play.
Next time I'll work on tracking down a harder signal and see how long that takes.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Couple Quickies
Quickie the First:
I tried to get online on Sisi (a.k.a. Singularity, our test server) but it was down and didn't come back until later today. Since I was chilling on the couch with the wife watching some TV, I didn't log into Eve as I couldn't use voice comms so wouldn't be much use in a war situation.
Quickie the Second:
I had an evemail today from a war target in Incarnation of Evil corporation that informed me he was searching for information on our corp and found my blog, and he liked it. I won't mention names in case he prefers to remain anonymous, but here's a shout out to him. Kudos to INCA for bringing the fight to us consistently and not letting us have any breathing room; these are the kind of wars that make or break alliances.
Quickie the Third:
Sold the last forty invulnerability fields and got paid for the Tribune article. Wallet is back over 500 million. Now I'm going to work on the 10 Covert Ops Cloaks... could a Widow be in my near future?
I tried to get online on Sisi (a.k.a. Singularity, our test server) but it was down and didn't come back until later today. Since I was chilling on the couch with the wife watching some TV, I didn't log into Eve as I couldn't use voice comms so wouldn't be much use in a war situation.
Quickie the Second:
I had an evemail today from a war target in Incarnation of Evil corporation that informed me he was searching for information on our corp and found my blog, and he liked it. I won't mention names in case he prefers to remain anonymous, but here's a shout out to him. Kudos to INCA for bringing the fight to us consistently and not letting us have any breathing room; these are the kind of wars that make or break alliances.
Quickie the Third:
Sold the last forty invulnerability fields and got paid for the Tribune article. Wallet is back over 500 million. Now I'm going to work on the 10 Covert Ops Cloaks... could a Widow be in my near future?
Shut up, I'M talking!
For the past two podcasts the group on "Shut Up. We're Talking." have talked briefly about Eve. First off they talk about the recent "scandals" in Eve and ask why the players put up with it, and this leads to a general discussion in the latest episode of why players even play Eve with its scamming, possession loss, "griefing", etc. Unfortunately they have talked about the game without a hardcore Eve player present to give counterpoint (no offence to Jon from The Ancient Gaming Noob, whom I have the utmost respect and admiration for, as he was present the first episode but represents a very casual Eve player who partakes of only a sliver of what the game is about).
On the topic of scandals I think there should be an acknowledgement that there are two types of scandals: acceptable in terms of the game, and unacceptable.
Of the scandals listed on the show, most fall into the former category. Player scams, assassination attempts, pilfering corporate wallets, pilfering bank resources, and the most recent example of a disgruntled director disbanding the BoB alliance are all deemed as fair game in the enviroment of Eve. So the reason Eve players "put up" with those scandals is because they are part of the game; if you play Eve you accept that these things may happen, sometimes to you.
The only two examples of unacceptable scandals in my memory has been the Tech II BPO spawning by a developer for his alliance a few years back (who was caught and presumably punished... the incident led to the first phase of the BoB / Red Swarm war) and the more recent POS Exploit that went unnoticed for a long time but when it was detected it led to the banning of 134 accounts. Only the first was facilitated directly by a CCP employee; the other was overlooked by inefficient bug tracking in a notoriously convoluted part of the game and then exploited by players. To see players leave en masse over these two incidents seems unlikely.
Now, on to why people even play Eve in the first place.
After all, it sounds really harsh, doesn't it? Your stuff can be destroyed or stolen, your peaceful industrial corp war dec'd, you personally hounded across the galaxy by people who want nothing more than to kill you. Not to mention the aforementioned scams. Why would anyone want to play that game?
A few reasons.
1) There is no other game like it. No other game currently on the market has as much emphasis on all forms of player versus player interaction. When other players are the end game content, you never know what to expect and the thrill can be intense. The item loss makes combat feel very visceral as you fear for the loss of your stuff and thrill in the pain your opponent feels when you cause him to lose his stuff.
Furthermore, the single shard architecture allows for a larger and more indepth market play; it allows for all Eve players to interact with all others, and it allows for massive long term conflicts on scales of thousands of players.
Once you accept the basic premise of the game, i.e. that anything goes up to a point, and learn to let go of the fear of losing your stuff, you can really enjoy the freedom the Eve sandbox gives you.
2) The harshness is mostly illusion. Unless you are willfully incautious, your stuff can be very safe.
In high security space, someone has to either trick you into attacking them first before they can kill you or they have to suicide themselves to kill you. And the devs have been making the latter more difficult. Additionally, your stuff in a station cannot be stolen or destroyed unless you trash it yourself. Guaranteed 100% safe. So as long as you don't put all your possessions in one ship and fly it out in space, you are never at risk of losing your shirt.
All tech one ships can have insurance that makes them extremely cheap.
With a bit of healthy paranoia, getting scammed is nearly impossible.
You get a warning before venturing into low sec or null sec space.
Your empire corporation got war dec'd? There are lots of options including fighting back, hiring mercenaries, hiding until they drop the declaration, or just plain leaving the corp and living in the NPC corporations that cannot be war dec'd.
As you get experienced, your wallet grows and you learn to fly ships you can afford to lose, you realize an important fact: the two most valuable possessions you have, your experience and your skill points, cannot be taken away from you by anyone else in game. From the starting point of those two things empires can be built and destroyed.
3) You get to fly internet spaceships.
For some people this is a big thing. We are the people that were raised on Star Wars and Star Trek, who spent hours with little models of the ships pretending to have space battles over the couch. Its amazing what people like us will put up with for the chance to sit in our own ships and command them (usually to their inevitable doom).
While there are other internet spaceship games, none currently look as gorgeous as Eve with all its other features.
So there you have it Darren and Karen et al, from a hardcore Eve player for the past 2 and a half years.
On the topic of scandals I think there should be an acknowledgement that there are two types of scandals: acceptable in terms of the game, and unacceptable.
Of the scandals listed on the show, most fall into the former category. Player scams, assassination attempts, pilfering corporate wallets, pilfering bank resources, and the most recent example of a disgruntled director disbanding the BoB alliance are all deemed as fair game in the enviroment of Eve. So the reason Eve players "put up" with those scandals is because they are part of the game; if you play Eve you accept that these things may happen, sometimes to you.
The only two examples of unacceptable scandals in my memory has been the Tech II BPO spawning by a developer for his alliance a few years back (who was caught and presumably punished... the incident led to the first phase of the BoB / Red Swarm war) and the more recent POS Exploit that went unnoticed for a long time but when it was detected it led to the banning of 134 accounts. Only the first was facilitated directly by a CCP employee; the other was overlooked by inefficient bug tracking in a notoriously convoluted part of the game and then exploited by players. To see players leave en masse over these two incidents seems unlikely.
Now, on to why people even play Eve in the first place.
After all, it sounds really harsh, doesn't it? Your stuff can be destroyed or stolen, your peaceful industrial corp war dec'd, you personally hounded across the galaxy by people who want nothing more than to kill you. Not to mention the aforementioned scams. Why would anyone want to play that game?
A few reasons.
1) There is no other game like it. No other game currently on the market has as much emphasis on all forms of player versus player interaction. When other players are the end game content, you never know what to expect and the thrill can be intense. The item loss makes combat feel very visceral as you fear for the loss of your stuff and thrill in the pain your opponent feels when you cause him to lose his stuff.
Furthermore, the single shard architecture allows for a larger and more indepth market play; it allows for all Eve players to interact with all others, and it allows for massive long term conflicts on scales of thousands of players.
Once you accept the basic premise of the game, i.e. that anything goes up to a point, and learn to let go of the fear of losing your stuff, you can really enjoy the freedom the Eve sandbox gives you.
2) The harshness is mostly illusion. Unless you are willfully incautious, your stuff can be very safe.
In high security space, someone has to either trick you into attacking them first before they can kill you or they have to suicide themselves to kill you. And the devs have been making the latter more difficult. Additionally, your stuff in a station cannot be stolen or destroyed unless you trash it yourself. Guaranteed 100% safe. So as long as you don't put all your possessions in one ship and fly it out in space, you are never at risk of losing your shirt.
All tech one ships can have insurance that makes them extremely cheap.
With a bit of healthy paranoia, getting scammed is nearly impossible.
You get a warning before venturing into low sec or null sec space.
Your empire corporation got war dec'd? There are lots of options including fighting back, hiring mercenaries, hiding until they drop the declaration, or just plain leaving the corp and living in the NPC corporations that cannot be war dec'd.
As you get experienced, your wallet grows and you learn to fly ships you can afford to lose, you realize an important fact: the two most valuable possessions you have, your experience and your skill points, cannot be taken away from you by anyone else in game. From the starting point of those two things empires can be built and destroyed.
3) You get to fly internet spaceships.
For some people this is a big thing. We are the people that were raised on Star Wars and Star Trek, who spent hours with little models of the ships pretending to have space battles over the couch. Its amazing what people like us will put up with for the chance to sit in our own ships and command them (usually to their inevitable doom).
While there are other internet spaceship games, none currently look as gorgeous as Eve with all its other features.
So there you have it Darren and Karen et al, from a hardcore Eve player for the past 2 and a half years.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Amarr Augoror
Eve Tribune is back with my latest work, the fighting spacecraft background on the Amarr Augoror.
Apocrypha: Probing
There is so much new stuff in Apocrypha that my original plan of providing cohesive explanations of new mechanics for all the new features seems impossible without it becoming a full time job, so I decided to concentrate on one thing and let others work on the rest.
Finding wormholes is big on my radar for things I want to do in Eve so I figured exploring the new probing mechanic (heh, see what I did there?) would be a good start. So last night I downloaded the patch and got on the test server to check out the probing changes.
First off, bonus image: the new fitting screen.
(Click for Massive Awesomeness... really, its a big image.)
As you can see, on a large screen it looks pretty good. Smaller screens might have trouble fitting the bigger size on there. The side "panels" can be minimized into the ring and you have the option of fitting items from your personal modules and personal charges as opposed to having to go to your items. However, those of us with items sorted into cans appear to be out of luck. Boo hiss! I was also disappointed that I could not move the window around. What the hell? I guess it makes sense if you wanted it centred on the ship but man, I really think this is a step backwards in many respects, trading some utility for flashiness. They probably did the ship-in-the-centre thing for the tech III ships that change appearance as sub-systems are added.
Ok, on to the probes. All my exploration and ship scanning probes were turned into thee types while moon scanning probes were untouched:
(Click to read attributes of the probes)
Basically the Core Scanner Probe has the lowest range but highest strength, Combat Scanner Probes have medium strength but move a faster, and Deep Space Scanner Probes have lowest strength but longest range. The requirements were all Astrometrics I.
Now there are two launchers:
(Clickiness Ensued)
The Core Probe Launcher can only fit the Core Scanner probes as its capacity is 0.8 m3 while the Expanded Probe Launcher can fit all of them with 10 m3 capacity. They have the same base scan duration of 10 seconds (down from 600 seconds base on current models!!!) and the fitting requirements were 15 tf CPU and 1 MW powergrid for the Core, 220 tf CPU and 2 MW for the Expanded. The Sisters Probe Launcher is a variation of the Expanded and has only 210 tf CPU fitting difference and nothing else. Again, the skill required was only Astrometrics I.
Its worth noting that no On-Board Scanner was seen during my tests. Take that as you will.
In space the operation of the probes was either not clear or plainly bugged. I suspect the latter in this early test release. Regardless, what I was able to do (and I apologize for not taking screenshots, next time perhaps) was launch probes, see them warp to points (but I'm not sure if they did so of their own volition or it some weird spell from mouse movements and clicks caused them to do so), and set their ranges to various values. The max range for the Core probes was 8 AU I think, for the Combat probes I think it was 32 AU, and the Deep Space probe went up to 1024 AU.
No skills seem to impact the available ranges for the probes that I could find. In fact, all the probing skills appeared to be the same, i.e. Signal Acquisition still reduces scan time. However its impact is far less noticable. With the base scan time of 10 seconds, the savings from the skills and implant I have barely mattered. If the devs don't change the bonuses for the implant and the stats for the Sisters Probe Launchers, there are going to be a lot of pissed explorers out there come March 10th.
I did some scans of various items, but while I got hits I was completely prevented from warping to anything. I don't know why. If its a feature I'll need the dev blog to explain it to me. If its a bug, later patches will address it.
* * * * *
So there you have it, my inital foray into Apocrypha scanning. I won't go too much into my impressions until the bugs have been worked out and I have a chance to do some serious scanning.
UPDATE: Hugely useful thread on Eve Online Forums on how to scan. I'll try it out tonight.
Finding wormholes is big on my radar for things I want to do in Eve so I figured exploring the new probing mechanic (heh, see what I did there?) would be a good start. So last night I downloaded the patch and got on the test server to check out the probing changes.
First off, bonus image: the new fitting screen.
(Click for Massive Awesomeness... really, its a big image.)
As you can see, on a large screen it looks pretty good. Smaller screens might have trouble fitting the bigger size on there. The side "panels" can be minimized into the ring and you have the option of fitting items from your personal modules and personal charges as opposed to having to go to your items. However, those of us with items sorted into cans appear to be out of luck. Boo hiss! I was also disappointed that I could not move the window around. What the hell? I guess it makes sense if you wanted it centred on the ship but man, I really think this is a step backwards in many respects, trading some utility for flashiness. They probably did the ship-in-the-centre thing for the tech III ships that change appearance as sub-systems are added.
Ok, on to the probes. All my exploration and ship scanning probes were turned into thee types while moon scanning probes were untouched:
(Click to read attributes of the probes)
Basically the Core Scanner Probe has the lowest range but highest strength, Combat Scanner Probes have medium strength but move a faster, and Deep Space Scanner Probes have lowest strength but longest range. The requirements were all Astrometrics I.
Now there are two launchers:
(Clickiness Ensued)
The Core Probe Launcher can only fit the Core Scanner probes as its capacity is 0.8 m3 while the Expanded Probe Launcher can fit all of them with 10 m3 capacity. They have the same base scan duration of 10 seconds (down from 600 seconds base on current models!!!) and the fitting requirements were 15 tf CPU and 1 MW powergrid for the Core, 220 tf CPU and 2 MW for the Expanded. The Sisters Probe Launcher is a variation of the Expanded and has only 210 tf CPU fitting difference and nothing else. Again, the skill required was only Astrometrics I.
Its worth noting that no On-Board Scanner was seen during my tests. Take that as you will.
In space the operation of the probes was either not clear or plainly bugged. I suspect the latter in this early test release. Regardless, what I was able to do (and I apologize for not taking screenshots, next time perhaps) was launch probes, see them warp to points (but I'm not sure if they did so of their own volition or it some weird spell from mouse movements and clicks caused them to do so), and set their ranges to various values. The max range for the Core probes was 8 AU I think, for the Combat probes I think it was 32 AU, and the Deep Space probe went up to 1024 AU.
No skills seem to impact the available ranges for the probes that I could find. In fact, all the probing skills appeared to be the same, i.e. Signal Acquisition still reduces scan time. However its impact is far less noticable. With the base scan time of 10 seconds, the savings from the skills and implant I have barely mattered. If the devs don't change the bonuses for the implant and the stats for the Sisters Probe Launchers, there are going to be a lot of pissed explorers out there come March 10th.
I did some scans of various items, but while I got hits I was completely prevented from warping to anything. I don't know why. If its a feature I'll need the dev blog to explain it to me. If its a bug, later patches will address it.
* * * * *
So there you have it, my inital foray into Apocrypha scanning. I won't go too much into my impressions until the bugs have been worked out and I have a chance to do some serious scanning.
UPDATE: Hugely useful thread on Eve Online Forums on how to scan. I'll try it out tonight.
Monday, February 09, 2009
Test Server Screen Shots
I haven't gotten on the test server Singularity myself yet since the alpha Apocrypha patch was installed but I plan to check it out tonight after I download the 1 GB patch.
However, many others are not bound by the same issue of being at work, so here are some links to some pictures for you all!
First off fellow blogger Biomassed gives a sneak peek.
Then head on over to Eve Online forums and check out the four pages of this thread with links to lots of things including the new Tech III ships.
Finally, if you are not easily offended, check out the Scrapheap Challenge forums for more picture goodness.
So far my impression of the screenshots is "wow". The new graphics for asteroids and ice rocks are impressive. Not too sure on the new fitting screen, need to see it in action and see if it has some customizability to it. New scanning window holds a lot of promise; I always thought the plethora of probes was a considerable pain in the ass.
I'm not getting too hung up on the Tech III ship stats yet. This early on the values are mostly shots in the dark by the devs and not to be taken seriously. Once we get closer to March I'll sit down and give a hard look but with the sheer number of possible configurations it will be difficult to come up with anything more than "COOL!".
However, many others are not bound by the same issue of being at work, so here are some links to some pictures for you all!
First off fellow blogger Biomassed gives a sneak peek.
Then head on over to Eve Online forums and check out the four pages of this thread with links to lots of things including the new Tech III ships.
Finally, if you are not easily offended, check out the Scrapheap Challenge forums for more picture goodness.
So far my impression of the screenshots is "wow". The new graphics for asteroids and ice rocks are impressive. Not too sure on the new fitting screen, need to see it in action and see if it has some customizability to it. New scanning window holds a lot of promise; I always thought the plethora of probes was a considerable pain in the ass.
I'm not getting too hung up on the Tech III ship stats yet. This early on the values are mostly shots in the dark by the devs and not to be taken seriously. Once we get closer to March I'll sit down and give a hard look but with the sheer number of possible configurations it will be difficult to come up with anything more than "COOL!".
Preliminary Apocrypha Patch Notes
Hat tip to my twitter feed, here is the link to the preliminary patch notes. For those allergic to the Eve Online website, here is a copy and paste Google Doc.
Of great interest is the section on Tech III:
Sounds like two new POS structures are needed:
- Experimental labs for reverse engineering the T3 BPCs
- Subsystem Assembly Array for manufacturing the things
Not surprising, hopefully a new dev blog soon will give more details on reverse engineering skills and manufacturing skills required. Please don't let them be skill books you have you explore for... I hate that game mechanic.
Of great interest is the section on Tech III:
]Tech 3
Strategic cruisers
* Loki (Minmatar), Tengu (Caldari), Legion (Amarr), Proteus (Gallente)
o These ships are made each out of 5 subsystems (electronic, defensive, engineering, offensive, propulsion) and a connecting base hull
o All subsystems are interchangeable (inside their own race and slot) and make for a lot of possible ships
o Subsystems can only be changed in a station
o The attributes and balancing are NOT FINAL!
o Bigger is not better, just different (refer to them as variations and not tiers)
Reverse Engineering
* Basis: Ancient item found/salvaged in wormholes
o They can be reverse engineered in experimental labs at a POS or Caldari outpost
o There are several degrees of success
Best success results in a BPC for a T3 subsystem or T3 hull which can then be manufactured
T3 manufacturing
* Works similar to T2 manufacturing, but T3 components made out of material found in wormhole space and material from normal space are needed
Subsystems can be manufactured at a new Subsystem Assembly Array or an Amarr Outpost
Sounds like two new POS structures are needed:
- Experimental labs for reverse engineering the T3 BPCs
- Subsystem Assembly Array for manufacturing the things
Not surprising, hopefully a new dev blog soon will give more details on reverse engineering skills and manufacturing skills required. Please don't let them be skill books you have you explore for... I hate that game mechanic.
Bloodlust
The past two weeks have been hard on my Eve career. I had inlaws staying for one week and sick twins that fought at bedtime and had a hard time sleeping through the night the second week. I did get online on the weekend inbetween but spent it on the test server. I had the bloodlust... I needed a kill.
To make matters worse for me, our alliance scored a huge victory on our war targets when they caught a hostile carrier playing station undock games. I always to seem to miss out on the awesome kills... but then my crappy schedule means I miss out on a lot of kills. Sigh.
So it was with frothing-at-the-mouth bloodlust I logged in looking for a fight. If I couldn't find one at home, I was prepared to clone jump to Evati and go looking for pirates to tangle with. Fortunately, our war targets were out and about.
As I logged in a fleet was just disbanding as our war targets had all docked up, but a few minutes later they started to poke around again and a report came of a Thorax cruiser on a local gate. I wasn't sure if a fleet would respond in time so I jumped into my gank Falcon and flew to the scene of the crime. There I found a conflict brewing as our alliance rallied and got into position.
The report was that a hostile Phobos Heavy Interdictor and Falcon were also in the area with the Thorax. They showed up at the gate and all three jumped through into the next system. Moments later they jumped back in and a friendly Drake battlecruiser moved to engage. The enemy responded in kind and out fleet received the order to pounce.
We vastly outnumbered them and chose the Phobos as the target of our ire. The Phobos in turn, picked me. He charged out at me with guns blazing, perhaps hoping to outrun tacklers and kill me before making an escape. Falcons are weak targets and had he not got jammed up the wahzoo I might have had a problem. If he hoped to escape through me, he might have been surprised to find me webbing and scraming him as well. The Phobos died and the other two escaped.
Side note: first actual kill against a war target in two wars. I've been trying just never on for the big action. :(
With the enemy gang stillborn, we were back to camping stations. One war target was playing undock games in his Astarte Command ship with my CEO's Absolution Command ship, so I thought I would play around too. I was tired of the Falcon and was eager to try out some other ships in my arsenal. Too often I reach for the warm blanket of Covert Ops and ECM; time to branch out.
I undocked in a Harpy Assault Ship but after a minute or so decided it was not right for the job. The hope was the enemy would slip and get aggro and we would pound it to dust before he could redock. So I went back inside station and picked something with more "ommph". Out came the Vera Causa, my Blaster Rokh Battleship.
We played with the Astarte a few times, once getting him down to structure before he docked. Then the call came out of a red in our constellation floating around in an Ishtar Heavy Assault ship. Well that just won't do! The fleet reforms and out we go.
We caught him at a gate and he took a pounding but escaped back to the gate and ran deeper into the pocket into the dead end system with no station. We set up camp and waited to see if he would log or try to make another run for it. Fifteen minutes later he made a run for it.
He did not get very far.
I was pleased as punch to get the killmail on that one even if it wasn't a war target and his setup was not overly impressive. I fired two salvoes on him and the second hit while he was in structure with no hull resistances; my faction antimatter obliterated his ship and earned me the top damage as a fluke. Still, it gets my name out in front of the corp and alliance leadership and shows I'm getting in some activity.
With two kills in one sitting including a war target kill and a top-damage/final-blow kill, my bloodlust was sated.
To make matters worse for me, our alliance scored a huge victory on our war targets when they caught a hostile carrier playing station undock games. I always to seem to miss out on the awesome kills... but then my crappy schedule means I miss out on a lot of kills. Sigh.
So it was with frothing-at-the-mouth bloodlust I logged in looking for a fight. If I couldn't find one at home, I was prepared to clone jump to Evati and go looking for pirates to tangle with. Fortunately, our war targets were out and about.
As I logged in a fleet was just disbanding as our war targets had all docked up, but a few minutes later they started to poke around again and a report came of a Thorax cruiser on a local gate. I wasn't sure if a fleet would respond in time so I jumped into my gank Falcon and flew to the scene of the crime. There I found a conflict brewing as our alliance rallied and got into position.
The report was that a hostile Phobos Heavy Interdictor and Falcon were also in the area with the Thorax. They showed up at the gate and all three jumped through into the next system. Moments later they jumped back in and a friendly Drake battlecruiser moved to engage. The enemy responded in kind and out fleet received the order to pounce.
We vastly outnumbered them and chose the Phobos as the target of our ire. The Phobos in turn, picked me. He charged out at me with guns blazing, perhaps hoping to outrun tacklers and kill me before making an escape. Falcons are weak targets and had he not got jammed up the wahzoo I might have had a problem. If he hoped to escape through me, he might have been surprised to find me webbing and scraming him as well. The Phobos died and the other two escaped.
Side note: first actual kill against a war target in two wars. I've been trying just never on for the big action. :(
With the enemy gang stillborn, we were back to camping stations. One war target was playing undock games in his Astarte Command ship with my CEO's Absolution Command ship, so I thought I would play around too. I was tired of the Falcon and was eager to try out some other ships in my arsenal. Too often I reach for the warm blanket of Covert Ops and ECM; time to branch out.
I undocked in a Harpy Assault Ship but after a minute or so decided it was not right for the job. The hope was the enemy would slip and get aggro and we would pound it to dust before he could redock. So I went back inside station and picked something with more "ommph". Out came the Vera Causa, my Blaster Rokh Battleship.
We played with the Astarte a few times, once getting him down to structure before he docked. Then the call came out of a red in our constellation floating around in an Ishtar Heavy Assault ship. Well that just won't do! The fleet reforms and out we go.
We caught him at a gate and he took a pounding but escaped back to the gate and ran deeper into the pocket into the dead end system with no station. We set up camp and waited to see if he would log or try to make another run for it. Fifteen minutes later he made a run for it.
He did not get very far.
I was pleased as punch to get the killmail on that one even if it wasn't a war target and his setup was not overly impressive. I fired two salvoes on him and the second hit while he was in structure with no hull resistances; my faction antimatter obliterated his ship and earned me the top damage as a fluke. Still, it gets my name out in front of the corp and alliance leadership and shows I'm getting in some activity.
With two kills in one sitting including a war target kill and a top-damage/final-blow kill, my bloodlust was sated.
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