Rumble In Rens: Result

When I was deciding what ship to use in my third duel with Nashh Kadvar, I went through a lot of options. With my level of skill points and cross training I can fly Amarr ships with lasers almost as well as I can fly Caldari ships with missiles and everything in between. Only Minmatar ships with projectiles elude me still.

So I considered a lot of setups in Eve Fitting Tool (aka EFT). And I did some research on ships Nashh and his alt have been known to fly from kill boards and previous Celebrity Death matches. I came to the conclusion that I was about 75% sure I would be facing a Tech II torpedo Raven and started there by comparing all possible setups to a couple possible setups in EFT with perfect skills.

Eventually I came down to three possibilities:

- Blaster ship: get close and wail away.

- Pulse Abaddon: go to about 40 kilometers, out of range of torps, and shoot from there.

- Sneaky Neut Dominix: get out of range of torps and let drones do the work, using neuts to keep his cap down if he tries to MWD into range.

- Torp Raven: get close and wail away, winner is pretty much whosever skills are better.

At one point I settled on the sneaky Neut Domi and had a shopping list but I changed my mind after soliciting advice from my corp mates and my CEO and a director said to go with the Mega. The blaster boat approach appealed to a visceral side of me and it didn't take much persuasion to abandon all other pretenses and start focusing on the straight forward and simple "approach and shoot".

So why Megathron instead of the Rokh? You all know I love the Rokh and I sing its praises to the heavens all the time, but in a situation like this where I needed to provide my own tackle I had to be pragmatic. The Rokh cannot fit a webber and a scrambler without sacrificing shields and if I went with armour tank on it I'd have to sacrifice damage. The Megathron does not suffer in this regard. Had it been for a gang I would always pick the Rokh over the Mega. I also considered the Hyperion but I wanted to avoid an active tank to conserve on cap as much as possible.

Once the strategy and ship had been decided upon, the setup was very easy: 7 Heavy Neutron Blaster Cannons in the highs; MWD, web, scram, and medium cap booster in the mids; some plates and resistance mods in the lows along with a couple magnetic field stabs. All tech II.

At this point, its a very affordable ship. Insurance covers the cost of the hull and the modules are not very expensive. But now I was faced with the decision to rig it or not which adds about 60 million ISK on to the price tag.

Well bitches, I'm Kirith-fracking-Kodachi, the terrible yet rich PvPer. Of course I rigged it. So my ship looked like this:

2 x Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Damage Control II
2 x 1600mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
2 x Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

Quad LiF Fueled I Booster Rockets
Stasis Webifier II
Warp Scrambler II
Medium Capacitor Booster II, Navy Cap Booster 800

7 x Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge L
Heavy Unstable Power Fluctuator

3 x Large Trimark Armor Pump I

However, I had a great fear. In our Battlecruiser duel many moons ago I took a blaster Myrmidon against his Drake and lost primarily because I could not catch up to him fast enough and when I did an ECM drone broke my lock and he sped away. While I wasn't sporting an active tank this time and no ECM was allowed, I still had visions of chasing him for minutes before I could get within range of the web and scrambler.  To counteract this scenario, I looked into buying a Domination Web with a 15 km range (19 km overheated) which would give me better ability to grab him. And if I am getting one of those I might as well get a Domination Scrambler as well with 11 km range (13 km overheated) to kill his MWD sooner so I can turn mine off and save some cap.

Well, if I'm springing for two faction mods, why stop there? I looked over the rest of the modules and settled on upgrading the EANM IIs to Amarr Navy versions, the extra resistances couple make my buffer tank hold on just that little bit longer that I might need.

I wanted to use Praetor II heavy drones for the EM damage (assuming Raven) but lacked the skills so I spent a week training Amarr Drone Specialization to level IV. And I wanted to reduce the effect of the armour rigs so I trained Armour Rigging up to IV as well.

Then I spent some time checking out Synth boosters and purchased a couple, one to give 3% more capacitor and one for 3% more tracking. They were cheap and have no side effects so why not?

At this point I went a little crazy. With more and more invested into the ship I felt more and more need keep looking for advantages to win the duel. So I went and bought an implant, the Eifyr and Co 'Gunslinger' CX-2 which costs about 200 million ISK and gives a 5% bonus to all turret damage. Now in my defense, this implant is an investment for my empire mission running clone and was not at risk in the duel which was just to the pod and not to the death.

That clone also has an implant for 3% bonus to damage of large hybrid turrets and one for 3% bonus to all turret tracking speed from my days of running missions in the Rokh.

This is the final result:


Now for the actual battle.

We met at Rens I and I breathed a vast sigh of relief when I saw it was a Raven which meant I was probably facing a ship that would stay in my range. We exchanged a unit of ammo and warped to planet II, him at zero and me at 20 km.

The next two minutes and twenty seconds were the most intense I've ever had in high sec.

I quickly jumped on him and got my overheated web and scram and his speed dropped to below 70 meter per second. I switched off the overheat and the MWD as I settled into an orbit of 4000 kilometers. Drones were launched and blasters and neutralizer activated.

My shields were gone almost instantly from his hard hitting torpedoes and it looked like he was not repairing so I think we both realized it was a race to 0 hitpoints. Checked my drones? Not being attacked. Checked his speed? Still almost stationary. Overheat weapons for a cycle or two, turn off overheating before they burn out. Pop cap charge, make sure it reloads. Check his hitpoints, he's down to about 80%. Me? 75%. Yikes.

I got into a groove, checking cap to see if I need to pop another charge, checking heat indicator to see if I can risk another cycle of overclocking, checking range to make sure I was in my optimal, check my damage notification to make sure I'm getting sufficiently good hits, and check our respective hitpoints to see how the battle was faring. Then repeat.

The good news was that his shields were going down faster than my armour as he hit 50% slightly before I did. The bad news was I didn't know how well his armour would hold me off once it was gone and I had no second like of defense.

The hitpoints ticked off slowly as both our big buffers were whittled down. When I say slow, it felt like forever but the entire fight lasted only two minutes and twenty seconds. Time, relative, yadda yadda yadda.

Just as I reached about 25% armour his shields were gone. Now the question is how much can he tank without shields? The answer: not much. As I hit 19% armour left his ship exploded and victory was mine.

Click here for Nashh's report of the fight.

Analysis

On paper (i.e. EFT) the Raven Nashh used has better resists, more hitpoints, and more DPS. Until, that is,  you take missile damage reduction into account. If you run the DPS graph you will see that the signature of the Megathron (400 meters) is lower than Rage torpedoes by enough to give a damage reduction of about 50%. Had he used faction torps his damage reduction would have been only around 20%. My ship, on the other hand, suffered almost no damage reduction from his speed since I had him almost stationary at my favourite orbit.

The missile damage reduction saved my life. A single target painter would have made my life much harder if he could fit it in there.

I feel a little guilty about the faction mods and the expensive implants, but the Domination modules made no difference (he had no MWD) and the Amarr Navy EANMs made only a slight difference on the tank (122K EHP compared to 116K EHP with EANM IIs). As for the implants, well, I don't know what implants he had from his mission running days so I'll call that even.

All in all, a great time and good fight. See you on the flip side Nashh.

EDIT: I renamed my Mega after the fight from "Going for Broke" to "Nashh Kadvar's Bane". MUHAHAHAHHA!

Fiction Friday: Chapter 6

Previously:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5

* * * * * *
I woke up after a short nap to an insistent buzzing. I was disoriented and it took me a moment to realize it was the hanger door indicating someone was requesting to be let in. I thought hopefully it was my brother coming back and he simply forgot that his thumbprint would unlock it but a quick glance at the security cam revealed it was some official with a e-clipboard and a stern expression.

I hurriedly opened the door to the office and mumbled an apology about falling asleep and too much work. He looked at me doubtfully as I was a mess from not having shaved or showered in a couple days combined with very little sleep, but he came in anyways.

"Hello Mr Kodachi," he started, "I'm the inspector for the Port Authority and I'm here to check out your," he paused to check his board, "frozen vegetables."

OK, I'm lying a bit here. My surname 'Kodachi' is a fake name I legally changed to when I was in the Navy. It is an ancient Achuran word meaning "short sword" and in my youth I thought it was a cool moniker. But when this tale takes place I was still using my father's family name. While an intrepid investigator could probably figure out who my family is, I see no reason to drag my father's name through the mud right off the bat. So I'll use my adopted name instead. Back to my story.

I began to panic a little. I had no idea if this was Rusack's contact in the Port Authority or someone else that was going to be very surprised to see the "frozen food" was not food much less frozen. Plus I wasn't sure where the forms were or which ones I needed and Korannon wasn't back to take over that part of the task.

I fumbled my way with the assistance of the inspector in getting the forms out of the terminal and answering questions he was asking. All seemed to be going well and I was starting to relax when he said, "Ok, now we just need to take a look at the crates."

"Of, of course!" I stammered, getting very nervous again. I led him into the warehouse proper and we went to the nearest container. Then I ran back to the terminal to get the code for opening the container, and with shaking fingers I pulled it up, printed it out, and ran back to the waiting inspector.

We opened the container and by the packaging inside it was quite obviously several brand new Gallentean ATVs. I was sweating furiously at this point and I looked at the inspector trying to keep my panic from registering on my face, my mind racing with possible excuses and denials.

"Well, well, what do we have here," he said with a stern frown on his face. He put his clipboard's reader over the nearest ATV package bar code and read off what it detected. "One unit of Desirree Incorporated HC-1200 All Terrain Vehicle... well that's a problem, son."

Before I could stammer out the first of my excuses he pulled a card out of his breast pocket and ran it over the reader's scanner. "There we go! Two hundred kilos of frozen carrots." Then he winked and put the card back in his pocket. "Had you going there for a second, didn't I?"

As relief flooded me I started to laugh and became a little light header. I bent over and put my hands on my knees and the inspector cracked up howling at my discomfiture."You prick," I muttered, half pissed and half appreciative of the prank.

I stood up straight and took a deep breath while the inspector watched me with a shit-eating grin. "You new guys are so easy," he said. "Anyways, you're done with the Port Authority. Contact Rusack and let him know the 'frozen veggies' are free to go."

I thanked him and we shook hands. He left and I sat down to let the adrenaline get out of my body.

Rumble In Rens Back On

The Battleship duel between Nashh Kadvar and myself that was postponed due to hardware issues is back on, scheduled for tomorrow night at around 0100 in Rens. We will be meeting at planet 1, exchanging a unit of ammo to become shootable by each other, and warping to planet 2 to duke it out.

Observers welcome.

The Lure of Star Trek Online

I went to a friend's birthday party when I was around 8 years old. The family had one of those newfangled VCR machines and rented a new movie for the party goers to watch: Star Trek II, the Wrath of Khan.

Well, a gang of eight year old boys will quickly lose interest in that movie as the action is not very intense except for a few moments.

I, however, was enthralled. And the part that was most enthralling was the few moments of space combat.

I had already begun my love of space combat with Star Wars a few years earlier but Star Trek II fueled a fire that burned bright ever since. It was a different kind of space combat from what Star Wars offered which focused on X-wings and TIE fighters and the capital ships in the background. In Star Trek the combat was between capital ships and I loved it, hence why Eve appeals to me far more than Jump Gate Evolution or Black Prophecy do.

Hence the lure of the upcoming MMO Star Trek online. I played Starfleet Command and enjoyed it for many hours in the year before I found Eve Online, so the thought of playing a new game with that type of combat is very intriguing especially when set in the Star Trek universe.

I think I'll give Star Trek Online a trial when it comes out to see if it can fit in my "casual MMO" slot. We'll see if I have to still do the landing parties or if the space combat is sufficient to keep me interested.

No worries about me abandoning Eve though... three years running and its still my number one obsession.

Dominion Trailer

Awesome sauce... and almost realistic. A little faster paced than normal Eve combat but the events and their order is accurate IMHO.

Capital Ship Gap

So ignoring the way that CCP dropped the ball on the mothership/supercarrier changes for Dominion, let's talk about what should be done.

The graph above reflects my opinion of the four combat capital ships effectiveness in combat and logistical (i.e. moving stuff, jump portals, repairing POS shields) roles and it reflects the problem with the current mothership: its effectiveness is not much superior to the carrier and dreadnought but its cost is far greater.

Side Note: I think this is because the original cost of the mothership took into account the supposed power of the clone vat bays, but they are virtually unused for a variety of reasons.

There are two ways to address this disparity: make the mothership more effective or bring the price down.

CCP tried the first on the test server with a huge hit point buff and fighter-bomber drones and it was well received by the playbase but for whatever reason was not acceptable to CCP. Then they proposed the second by making motherships effectively tier II carriers and lowering the price but the playerbase howled in outrage (especially current mothership pilots whose asset would drop in value by half with no recompense).
So now CCP has backed out of any changes.

What's the right answer? I propose two strokes to solve the issue.

1) Introduce new ships called supercarriers that would represent what CCP Nohz tried to do in the second phase of mothership changes.

These would be tech II carriers costing about 7 billion, have superior stats to regular carriers in terms of hitpoints but still be limited to +1 drone/fighter per level, can dock, have bigger ship bay and corporate hanger, same jump range, and can use Fighter-bombers unlike normal carriers.

These ships would be feasible as flagships for smaller corporations and alliances and fill the price point gap between Dreadnoughts and Motherships.

2) Change motherships by removing the ability of clone vat bays and introducing a new capital module for motherships only called Teleportation Device or something else suitably sci-fi sounding. This module would allow for ships in the fleet with a new high slot module called a Teleport Homing Device fitted to be transported immediately to the mothership as if they jumped there.

In essence the Mothership would be able to act as a focal point for a fleet, bringing in new pilots arriving on the scene or pilots reshipping from so many light years away. This would give the ship the intended role of the clone vat bays without all the downsides that made it pointless to use, and in protracted conflicts would be an important driver in a fleet's ability to maintain numbers.

As well, Motherships would be due a hitpoint buff and perhaps the ability to use fighter-bombers.

Pictures!

From the past couple months, some selected pictures for your enjoyment.

Yipe yipe yipe! One mission was a little too hard for my noob alt.

Megathron resting in a safe spot. 

Some reds came to camp our station a while back so I kept an eye on them with the Crow.

In HED watching some hostiles beat up on other hostiles. Good times. 

Widow in flight.

Megathron in warp. Love the graphics. 

From the battle in D-G a few weeks ago, my Abaddon surveys the wreckage. 

Battleship wing preparing to warp. 

Aligning to the next fight from the POS. 

Death to the enemy POS.

Dominion: Kicking it When Its Down

I've seen a lot of angst and anger over the next Eve Expansion Dominion lately on blogs and forums. A lot of people kicking it and saying "whatever" or "worst expansion ever" mostly in response to the twin debacles of initial sovereignty costs and the mothership changes.

So I figured being a dyed-in-the-wool Eve fanboy I'd list the big features of Dominion and weigh in on them to put everything in persepective.

No Mothership Changes - Makes me sad panda. Whether you're talking about the first edition supercarriers with massive waves of fighter bombers or the Nohz edition with affordable cost and docking privs, I supported anything to make this class more prevalent. I have hope they will address this in the near future.

Sovereignty Changes - Massive overhaul of the core 0.0 political mechanic moving away from Dickstars and POS spam. Good. System upgrades. Good. Massive logistic networks costing lots of ISK. Good.

R64 Moon Goo Nerf - I think they didn't go far enough personally but I look forward to any loosening of single point static income sources.

Planet and Moon graphic overhaul - Take a good hard long look at Eve of 2004-2005 and then compare to Eve of Dominion. Ships, stations, asteroids, and now planets. Eve looks amazing and I can't think of another MMO that started in 2003 or thereabouts that has made the effort to upgrade their graphics like Eve has. Brilliant.

New Navy Battleships - Navy Dominix? Yes please! Navy Armageddon? DROOL! Navy Scorpion? Meh. new rare ships is always a treat. Not to mention some other navy ships getting rebalanced.

Rebalanced Pirate Faction Ships - Huge overhaul to make the pirate faction ships cool again like the Sanshas Nightmare and its ilk. Good stuff.

Pirate Speedboat Missions - More variety to PvE is a good thing and I know a lot of people are looking forward to working for the pirates even more.

Titan Doomsday Device Rebalancing - The proliferation of Titans means that the DDD needs a change. I look forward to seeing killmails of carriers and dreads killed by the new version.

Capital Ship Weapons Rebalancing - Good stuff and appears well thought out to my untrained eye.

New Email Client - *Angels Singing* Can't wait.

Moondoggie akak new in game browser - Oh hell yes. That is a must have for me.

Projectile weapon balancing - having almost no familiarity with projectiles I can only guess if its good or not, but at least they are looking at it and trying to improve them.

Conclusion:

Dominion is huge in terms of changes, from politics to quality of life. There is a lot of good in there its just not big and flashy in one area like Apocrypha was with the wormholes or Empyrean Age with factional warfare.

Keep up the good work CCP, and work on improving your conversation with the playerbase over changes. That's your weakness at the moment.

Battle in F9E

When comms opened up last night I found my corpmates in a fleet next door in F9E-KX system, an Against All Authorities alliance system. They were part of a larger fleet and sniper battleships was the call of the day. I hopped in my old standby Rokh, Insisto Oblivum II, and joined the fleet.

Just in time too as the fighting began not minutes after I was in position. We had sniper battleships and a support fleet while the enemy decided to roll with a carrier fleet and support. Despite outnumbering them, their capital ships made the battle much more even.

For the next twenty minutes my world contracted to my computer screen. Targets were called, weapons activated, warp outs, warp ins, and two close calls with interdictor bubbles that caught some of our battleship wing... it was intense and a hell of a lot of fun. This is the pinnacle of Eve PvP, excitement delivered directly to your nervous system.

During the engagement I discovered a misstep on my part. Originally when I put together this Rokh as a sniper I included one or two tracking computers which allowed me to use Caldari Navy Iridium as my ammo to reach 150+ km. However I reconfigured the ship to a "Paxton Approved" setup which involved removing said modules and I forgot to restock my ammo with longer ranged stuff so my optimal with the Iridium was an unacceptable 129 km (with 24 km falloff). Fortunately I travel with a cache of Spike ammunition for extra long range engagements and was able to participate in the battles with it instead.

In the end I got on 7 kill mails including a particularly juicy Tengu kill. I recognize the setup on the strategic cruiser: probe launcher, covert ops cloak, interdiction nullifier... exactly the same as my 0.0 runner which is very hard to catch unless you jump into the waiting arms of a wing of interceptors who prevent you from cloaking and get insta-points on your ass.

The enemy got setup with scan probes and interdictors so that when we warped the BS wing into combat they were right on top of us within seconds so we pulled back to a POS and waited for reinforcements. They got bored and left for HED and we decided to cap the night off with a POS that we put into reinforced.

I got pictures but no time to clean them up for publishing. Maybe tonight or tomorrow.

Friday Fiction (On Sunday) - Chapter 5

Previously:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4

* * * * *

The next couple days were very busy and we never had enough time to go back to the rooms we rented in one of the station's hotels. Instead we purchased a used cot from a station engineer for cheap and took turns catching a few hours late at "night". It's true what they say, though; Stations never sleep.

The crew we hired to move the packaged ATVs from Barak Vorn's freighter to our hanger arrived in what my borther and I thought was the middle of the night, but a quick check of our contract showed that they were on time and we would just have so suck back our tiredness and get to work. While we did very little actual work, there was a constant steady stream of forms to give our digital signature on and questions to answer to the shift foreman like whether we wanted them stacked two or three levels high or if we needed access to all containers or not.

The ship hangers were a couple thousand meters above us and were much larger than our little space. One time during the first day I took the lift up to Barak's hanger in hopes of running into him and apologizing for my attitude in the bar. I didn't see him but I did get to see the vast space his Obelisk freighter occupied in several antigravity field generators, and I watched as automated armatures directed by the half the work crew unloaded package after packed from its hold via access doors in its hull and deposited them on the station trolleys that pulled back into the large shaft to lower them down to the warehouse levels.

After an hour I made my way to the concourse and picked up a meal for my brother and me, some Gallentean restaurant that was reccomended to me by the station warehouse staff. When I got back to our hangers it seemed small and unimportant after the vast granduer of the pod pilot's ship hanger.

The next day (although it felt like the same one to us) we had visitors. Rusack arrived all smiles and handshakes and with him was an Amarrian named Blodel and his Minmatar servant, Derranna. Well, Rusack said servant but we could quickly tell the real word was slave. She had that haunted empty look about her.

As Rusack explained, Blodel was a businessman working in the State due to some "unpleasantness" back in the Empire. I never found out what the exact problem was as it never was important to me after everything went down. I'm sure someday I'll need to know since I was the one who killed him, but so far I've been able to ignore it.

Blodel was the largest of the dealers that was going to buy the ATVs from us once they cleared the Port Authority. He planned to take 1500 of the 2500 to the surface of Pimebeka and he assured us that he had buyers for most of them already. Deranna had come along with forms and schedules to coordinate with us how to move the units to the surface, and she and my brother went to the terminal to work on the details while I talked with Rusack and Blodel about inconsequential news and opinions.

We sat there for about an hour and once during the conversation I glanced over to see my brother and the Minmatar slave in deep conversation. I realized immediately they were not just talking business as my brother had that look on his face, that earnest puppy dog look of admiration that he often had for unobtainable women it seemed. For Deranna's part, she wore a smile and warm eyes that I had not seen when they first arrived.

I knew it couldn't end well, but I had no idea how badly at the time. I thought it was merely going to be a broken heart and a moping brother. How wrong I was.

When the planning was done they left and Korannon turned to me. "That Deranna girl is really nice. We got to talking and she was telling me about growing up on Sarum Prime. I really like her, Kir."

I frowned at him. "That's great, Kor, but you need... you need to forget about her."

"What do you mean? She's not seeing anyone. I asked."

"You idiot," I exasperated. "Of course she's not seeing anyone. She's Blodel's slave. She can't do anything he doesn't allow."

"Slave?" Korannon was taken aback. Slavery was not legal in the State but the government has been known to turn a blind eye to it imported by Amarrian nationals as long as they are discrete about it. "Slavery is illegal."

Ah my brother. Things were so black and white for him back then.

"It may be illegal but that doesn't mean its not practised," I told him as if I was talking to a child. I was getting frustrated, the lack of sleep and pressure of the task at hand getting to me.

"Well, I'll go to the authorities and we'll get her freed! We'll force him to let her go!" Tired was affecting his thought process too.

"You idiot! We're not exactly above the board here ourselves, are we? You gonna go to the cops and get us thrown in jail, you dumb shit!"

"But slavery is wrong!" he yelled as if that won the arguement. His insistance on doing the right thing made me all the more angry.

"WAKE UP! We're not in some fucking school anymore! This is the real world and bad things happen! You need to grow up you big fucking baby!"

Again my words struck home for the second time that week. I saw the pain and hurt in his eyes before his anger rose and he ran out of the office, calling me some names as he left. While I regretted my words, I was too angry and tired to bother to chase after him to try and take them back.

Hell Yes!

A newer recruit to the ranks of m3 corp had this to say at the end of one of his posts on our forums:

I'm starting to think joining this corp was the best move I've made in eve. Thanks guys!!

This was not something said by a wet behind the ears pilot just out of the academy but a veteran pilot older than I am (3+ years) who has been in various 0.0 alliances and well known corps throughout new Eden. At one point he flew with my old gang in IPORC and Strife days and recently in a channel I was chatting up m3 and how its become home to me. When he considered moving corps again I pushed him to try this corp as I figured it would be exactly what he's been looking for for the past 3 years. So far I've been right.

Why do I think m3 is a great place to be? I've probably said it before, but let me say it again: the leadership core is made up of dedicated, mature, and talented pilots that actually understand that having fun and balancing real life is the key to longevity in this game. They know that pilots that have a great time are more likely to show up when you need them than pilots forced to log in for alarm clock mandatory ops. And I know if the shit hits the fan and whatever political alliance we are in of falls apart, m3 will weather the storm and come out the other side smiling and shooting.

It helps that the core of the corp has a lot of wherewithal in terms of skill points and resources, and while we don't boast of being the best PvP pilots in the game we are definitely experienced enough to hold our own in many combat situations. And we work hard to help our members get better and get the chances to get out and shoot things.

We're having a blast in Providence with Paxton Federation and shooting at the constant parade of hostiles that come through. And we're recruiting; join our public channel at "m3_public" for more details or just to chat us up.

One final note: hats off to our current neighbours AAA, Atlas, and Ushra'Khan. The better you guys are, the better it forces us to be.

That's Better

Dev blog today had some good news compared to the last one.

For one thing, costs have been rationalized and reduced across the board. Improvement indices remain even if the upgrade hub is destroyed and can be taken by an invading force. The cosmic anomalies "Pirate Detection Arrays" has been upped from 2 static complexes to 4 per level:

Pirate Detection Arrays

Each level of this upgrade gives you four anomalies per level, each of which re-spawns instantly upon completion.  This mean that at Level 5 you are guaranteed to have twenty anomalies at all times in a system.  These are basically dungeons which spawn waves of NPC's for you to happily shoot.  The top level anomalies in terms of ISK per hour are among some of the most profitable content in the game.
These anomalies are awesome because there is a constant supply of them and there are no skill requirements to scan them down.  They can be found by anyone using the onboard scanner with a 100% success rate.  Basically, if you are in a system that's small enough to be covered by one probe, you will get the full list of available sites instantly and you can warp to them.
These anomalies also have a percentage chance to spawn NPC faction commanders, as well as escalate to other dungeons.

Based on my experiences last night, that could be very valuable to a system indeed.

Probing Questions

The great thing about Providence is that it is a very populated region with lots of friendlies and always some pew pew somewhere nearby (quality of said action notwithstanding, although Atlas have really livened things up lately).

The bad thing about Providence is that it is a very populated region with lots of friendlies running the belts and complexes found there.

Last night I was without voice comms (couch laptop to make TV less boring) and I decided to pass the time with some exploration close to base in Providence.

In one system I found a nice Sansha complex already being run by a couple of blues.

In another system I found a wormhole leading to unknown space where there did not appear to be anyone online but a tower. I debated going in and killing some sleepers, but figured the risk of getting surprised ganked or getting stuck and having to find a long way home outweighed the possible rewards. Besides, the wormhole looked like it was ready to collapse soon.

In a third system I found two signatures and I put Derranna's elite skills to work to scan them both down at once. One was another wormhole that I ignored and the other was a Radar complex that was untouched. However I lacked the time to exploit it myself so I offered to a corp mate. By the time he arrived (like, within 5 minutes) the complex was claimed and being run by a couple of blues.

Well shit. No easy cosmic anomalies either.

Now I did stay in a very populated part of space and next time I'll have a combat pilot on hand close by to claim the complex I find, but it is a little frustrating how space is vacuumed clean so quickly with all the blues in Providence. I vainly hope Dominion or future releases gives us a chance to develop space better for ourselves. Having 8-10 constant anomalies would be nice at this point.

That's Mr Editor to You!

The management at Eve Tribune slipped up and let me play at being editor once in a while. Enjoy issue 47, my first attempt! Also, I wrote about the public relations disaster that the test server has been this past couple weeks.

The Long Slow Redemption of Kla'strit

An old friend from the Strife Mercenaries days was leaving Eve and asked if I wanted his character Kla'strit. I was loathe to see a perfectly good character get biomassed and after I agreed to not sell the character to someone else we transferred the character named Kla'strit to my account.

This character has about the same number of skill points as Kirith but doesn't have any put into capital ships. Where Kirith has specialized in Caldari with some Amarr and Gallente crosstraining, Kla'strit is pure Minmatar up to an impressive Command Ship level V. Where Kirith has tech II Hybrid skills, Kla has near perfect gunnery skills for Projectiles up to tech II Large Autocannons. Where Kirith has good EWar skills, Drone Skills, and missile skills, Kla has intermediate levels and abilities in those areas.

In essence, Kla'strit was purely trained to fly mean Minmatar tech II combat ships, especially Command Ships.

The character had in his assets four ships worht mentioning. Two interceptors which can go incredibly fast, a Vagabond (with a cloak fitted, natch), and a Sleipnir Command Ship that has an impressive gang PvP setup.

And Kla'strit came with a -6.30 security status. This was a big pain in consolidating the assets by the way.

I decided to put Kla'strit into m3 corp and use him as an alternate PvP character if Kirith is up in Empire for some reason. It also allows me to move him down into Providence and begin the long trek of reapiring his sec status with some prudent and occasional ratting. I purchased and fit up a cheap Cyclone battlecruiser for that purpose (and spent some nights learning about projectile ammo in the process).

Last night I was ratting with Kla when some reports of reds being hunted nearby went up so I docked and reshipped into the Sleipnir and joined up with the fleet. His Skirmish Warfare link module gave a 21% boost to the fleet's AB and MWD speeds and they were suitably impressed.

We failed to catch any of the reds floating around, their stealth bombers and vagabonds proved too elusive for our small gang, but I started to get a feel for what the Minmatar ships could do... and got Kla's sec status to -6.29. Sigh.

Stuck In The Middle With You

So I talked earlier today about my adventures in the Abaddon battleship as I used it to act like a medium ranged battleship. It sufficed but demonstrated a distinct lack of DPS on the killmails except in the one case when a Drake came close enough for me to use Multifrequency crystals. I'm going to look at why and what a good medium range battleship looks like.

Battleship Ranges

There are three accepted range brackets for battleships: close range (<20km), long range (>150km), and medium range (~70-80km). The close range battleships are meant for DPS, tanking, and tackle while the long range use sniper weaponry and concentrated fire to eliminate the enemy while being out of range of non-sniper return fire.

Medium range acts sort of like snipers but at a shorter range to allow greater flexibility of logisitics ships to repair both the sniper battleships and the short range tackle ships.

My Abaddon was a very poor medium range battleship last Sunday for two reasons:
1) Its optimal range was 54km and falloff was less than 10 km with longest range crystals meaning its effective DPS was pathetic.
2) It was setup with massive armour buffer tank instead damage mods magnifying its anemic damage output.

Had I been targeted, I could have taken a lot of abuse but I was never threatened at all during the battle.

So, I need a new medium range battleship. What are the options?

Rokh

As always I turn first to my old favourite. His ability to reach long ranges means I can use higher damage ammo and the shield tanking nature means its easy to fit tank and gank. With 350mm railguns I can get slightly better range than my Abaddon and twice the DPS. I can get to 70 km optimal (+24km falloff) and still have ~80% the damage over the Abaddon at a worse range.

The downside is that the Rokh is not an accepted ship in corporate and alliance fleets because it is a shield tanker. Since most logisitics pilots are armour repairers the Rohk does not work well with them, and an armour tanked Rokh sacrifices its built in bonuses and DPS in order to work. Sadlu, overall there are better options.

Abaddon
By fitting an Abaddon differently from my short ranged / armour tanked version, we get better results. Optimal can get up to 68 km (+9.6 km falloff) and DPS increased by ~40%. Still not as good as the Rokh, but armour tanks so fits in with logisitics. However its still fighting at the extreme end of its range and there are better options.

Megathron
The venerable Mega with 350mm railguns can reach the appropriate ranges and cause more damage than the Abaddon (but less than the Rokh in this setup) and armour tanks enough to work with the logisitics cells. It also has the utility slot for a large remote armour repper and a big drone bay. And its cap stable with MWD and remote repper turned off, always a plus.

Apocalypse
Another Amarr ship entry, the Apocalypse with pulse lasers can reach better ranges than the Abaddon and is more cap stable due to its bonuses. This allows it to match the DPS of the Megathron while being cap stable at 66km optimal and sports superior tracking by twice as much. It armour tanks as well as the Gallente ship, and if need be it can push up to 88 km optimal with Radio crystals.

It doesn't have the remote repper though, and my lack of tech II lasers really shows in this ship and the Abaddon. If I did, on the Abaddon I could use tech II Scorch crystals, get optimal of 88km and a DPS that knocks the socks off the other ships.

Conclusion
I'll probably go with the alliance/corp approved Megathron for now as much as it pains me to do so with a perfectly good Caldari Battleship V skill level.

When It Rains... It Pours

Friday:
I logged in to find myself in my Manticore in HED. Right, I was looking to bomb something to add to my paltry one kill assist this month.

I scouted around and found a large juicy Atlas Alliance fleet camping a gate. While I was scouting and getting into a bombing position, I saw an icon for a small mobile warp bubble but no actual bubble itself so I wondered if it was deployed but not anchored thus inactive. Now normally I would err on the side of caution and not try anything stupid, but I was impatient and the fleet was full of small fragile ships...

Well, let's just say that the small bubble was working fine thank you.

Frustrated and back at base I jumped into a Crow and decided to do some gate camping. A corpmate joined me with his Onyx and we moved into a position to catch any stragglers running around. Then we got word that a large Atlas fleet was moving up from HED and we burned back to base to avoid getting caught with our pants down. Out of time, I logged off with only an implantless clone to show for my efforts.

Saturday:
On for a bit Saturday, my horrible playing schedule and real life responsibilities screwed me twice. First in the morning when I was moving some stuff around and an op was called for repping a POS and scouring low sec of hostiles, neither of which I had time for.

Then in the afternoon I logged on to switch some skills and I saw there was a huge fleet battle on and I could not participate. It killed me to have to log off and leave my corp and alliance mates to the fight themselves.

I was getting quite frustrated and begining to wonder what I'm doing in 0.0 space when I can't help out. (Pity party! Woot!)

Sunday:
Sunday night I logged in for my weekly "long" Eve session (i.e. about 2 hours) and heard that Libertas Fidelitas Alliance was organizing a defense fleet. It seems Atlas was once again futzing around in Providence but in the Northern part this time and it seemed likely that when they came back home they would come right through us.

Last month I had some great success in getting Pew Pew in LFA fleets so I x'd up and offered my services in a Crow. The FC accepted the 'x' but emphatically told all of us in small ships to get bigger, medium range Battleships and battlecruisers prefered. Seeing someone told to get their "pulsepoc" (aka Apocalypse battleship with pulse lasers) I figured my Abaddon Callisto with pulse lasers would suffice as it can reach to 54 km optimal with Radio crystals. Hoping that would suffice, I joined up with the fleet at the rally point.

It started poorly when some reds in an adjacent system were reported and we were told to "warp yourselves to the gate" which I interpreted to mean to warp to your own optimal range,  so I landed 50 km off the gate while everyone else landed on it, jumped through, and killed a small handful of ships.

"Goddammit, I'm stupid and cursed!"

We rallied once more and the reports of the Atlas battlecruiser heavy fleet came to us. They were next door. We warped to the gate, this time actually at range for our battleship squadron, and Atlas jumped in. It was on.

The next ten minutes was simply listening to the primaries get called, locking them, activating weapons, and repeating while watching my cap and looking out for being primaried myself so I could call for reps if I was targeted.

The enemy fleet used warps to break locks periodically, and ships from both sides died as the battle continued but our battleships gave us the firepower edge and soon the hostiles warped off en masse leaving the field to us. The Atlas killboard has the most accurate view of the kills on each side; the battle I'm talking about occured from 1:46 to 1:57 and the kills per side were pretty even but we held the field at the end.

Personally, I got in on 12 kills in that battle although my damage output was typically poor as I was fighting at extreme range for my weapons. However one Drake drifted close by me and when he was called primary I dropped the web and point on him and opened up with the Multifrequency crystals and demonstrated what the Abaddon could do at shorter range.

After the field was cleared of debris we were about to stand down when the Atlas fleet came back for another go. It looked like we were going to fight at longer range so I swapped out to the Rokh Insisto Oblivium II (the one I saved from DIZ a few months ago) and got into a little tussel but Atlas seemed to want us to follow back to HED and we declined the offer, knowing that a Titan's Doomsday was the most likely end of that pursuit. I did get a few points of damage on a Zealot in the process though.

So with my name on 13 kill mails for the night and no losses on our corp's side I logged off feeling quite pleased with myself and the result of my first ever fleet engagement. Usually my schedule makes it impossible to join in such operations but this time the stars aligned.

*lights cigarette, puts feet on desk, and leans back* Yeah, that's the ticket.

Vote Now!

CSM voting is happening now, make sure to get your vote in and make a difference. My votes have been cast.

Intel Failure

I was going to log in and start a gate camp if no one was doing anything but imagine my surprise when I saw one was already going with a good 20+ pilots. I got into my Crow and joined in.

Meanwhile a ~20 pilot Ursha'Khan fleet came into a nearby system. We didn't know their ship types so while we tried to find out we waited with one finger on the lock and one on the warp.

Then in the Citadel intel channel we see this:

XXXXXXXXX > Some 22 reds in bk4...that's a dead-end system if there's a fleet up in search of some u'k bashing.
YYYYYYYYYY > what ships are they flying?
ZZZZZZZZZ > bombers
ZZZZZZZZZ > a few tackle
ZZZZZZZZZ > there was also a curse earlier

Now out gate camp is an eclectic mix of mostly interceptors, interdictors, and a few heavier ships. We do a quick weighing of options and decide to move to try and engage the hostile fleet because Stealth Bombers are not great in a full on fight without support and interceptors are the solution to any stealth bomber problem in a fight.

I reshipped into my Onyx as we had a slew of inties already and the bubble might come in handy. We moved to an adjacent system as they came out of the deadend system of BK4. We sent a scout in. A hostile Malediction Interceptor and Vagabond HAC came into our system but avoided our tackles and zoomed out of range. Then we get word the rest of the hostile fleet is warping to the gate to jump into us.

"Rapier, Huginn, Onyx, seven vagas! Headed towards you!"

"Warp to the jump bridge! Get off the gate!"

Caught off guard by the unexpected tonnage of the enemy fleet, we still managed to get most everyone out except a Drake and Ishkur that either were too slow or didn't hear the sudden command on Teamspeak. Our scout then corrected the record in the intel channel:

YYYYYYYYYY > UK gang: ares, huginn, manti x2, muninn, rapier, rifter, stabber, taranis, vaga x8, vengance onyx

As you can see, "bombers [and] a few tackle" does not match the actual fleet. That's almost flown blown HAC fleet, one of the most feared roaming fleets in 0.0 space.

Still, if I had been FC I would have stayed and fought. I'm a little crazy like that. I would have preferred to lose the battle and take a couple down with us than to run and lose a couple ships for no reason at all. Of course, that is one of the main reasons why I don't FC... I don't care about losing ships and others might feel differently.

Thoughts On Anaomalies

While reading the Eve Tribune last night an article on the dev blog about sov changes and upgrades and costs made for an interesting read. Specifically these parts:

Pirate Magnet: adds two additional guaranteed anomalies per level to your solar system

 And:

Now, the initial thought when reading this is that CCP has just added over a billion ISK per month in upkeep costs to all of our systems, and yet these upgrades as listed are never going to add even a billion ISK per month total into the alliance coffers, let alone several billion per system! However, a number of the dev replies buried within the thread do offer at least some reason for optimism compared to the bleak outlook presented by the blog itself. If these facts had been part of the initial blog rather than buried on page 18 onwards of the thread then the reception might have been slightly less rabid. One of the two most important dev posts in that thread is the first one, found on page 18, in which CCP Soundwave says:

Anomalies are a good way of injecting single player content into a certain system. The way it's currently set up is that the site instantly re-spawns when run, meaning it's not three sites per day; it's three sites constantly. Financially, having guaranteed access to NPCs should provide a much more solid stream of income than jumping from belt to belt, hoping that rats have re-spawned. We could have added more belts to systems, but why would we want you to jump around in a growing list of belts when we can just have you jump into a single anomaly and make money?

They were not put in as "OH GOD I STRUCK GOLD" sites. You don't make 0.0 financially inhabitable for thousands by adding extra officer spawns, you do it by providing a constant flow of content that makes a good amount of money, which is what the anomalies do. The distribution of sites is made so that the higher the upgrade, the higher quality anomaly. Financially, the top tier anomalies that will be spawning are much more profitable than mining and ratting currently is, and pretty much on par with level 4s. Added to that, they have a chance of escalation.

So the upgrade gives a number of constantly re-spawning anomalies - with the level of the anomaly being guaranteed based on the development index of the system. Suddenly that sounds a lot more promising, although it will still only keep a few ratters busy at a time per system. He also clarified that these are anomalies not signatures and that you can scan them down very quickly using just the on-board scanner or a single probe.

I've run anomalies before when living in crap space in Syndicate and can verify that they can be more profitable than ratting. If we get the Pirate Magnet to level 4 or 5 and there are a constant supply of 8-10 anomalies in the system at all times, that is a lot of ratting potential, possibly equal to one or two systems of asteroid belts.

Very interesting. I can see how such an upgraded system might support 10-20 ratters easily and a constellation with a few such upgraded systems could house a large corporation.

Maybe CCP has thought this out more than some people think. Time will tell.

To Do: Get Monkey Off Back... Check!

Last night I logged on and had the fortune to find that 1) my jump clone wait timer was just expired and 2) my corpmates were ready to go on a roam. SWEET! Five minutes later I was in base and loading up into my Myrmidon Vexo's Special for a small gang roam.

As the roam started out we came across an Atlas alliance pilot in a Rapier that jumped into us at a gate and we quickly made short work of him. Ah, that felt good.

We continued on and later we were tracking some hostiles. The intel channel reported 9 reds in the next system, and our gang was only seven. We sent in our scout and there the reds were, engaged with some blues. We jumped in with weapons primed and saw we faced a lot of stealth bombers and assault frigates.

I went after a Jaguar as it was closest. I got within 16 km but he turned away from me and I could not close the gap anymore as his afterburner kept him out of range of my web and warp scrambler. He got out of the bubble and warped off, but out interceptor pilot snagged a Purifier and... well... purified it.

At that point the wife was ready and I logged off, pleased I got in on the Rapier kill and ticked the Jaguar got away from me. Hopefully with the goose-egg on kills for Nov broken I can keep it up.

Goose-eggs

Here it is, November 10th, a third of the way through the month, and how many kills do I boast in my effort to acheive 10 this month?

None. Nada. Zippo.

Well crap. After having a great month in October my efforts to find pew pew have come up dry. And its not like I haven't been trying. I've been out there in my my interceptor or stealth bomber almost every night for 30-60 minutes and for a couple hours each Sunday doign nothing but looking for PvP (well, last Sunday I spend an hour doing corp logisitics to be fair) and still miss the PvP. Either the action happens after I log off or it happens on the other end of Providence.

Gah. I blame Ursha Khan, they're too good at slipping in and out of Providence. More crappy enemy pilots please!

So, in order to not start ruining my enjoyment of the game, last night I decided to stop trying so hard. Ten kills or not in a month, the pew pew will come when it comes. Variety is the spice of life and all that.

I had about 30 minutes or so last night so I jump cloned up to Empire to buy a Nighthawk and fit it out for some PvE action in Providence next time I run the carrier up and down, and tonight I'll set up my Ishkur and Taranis that I will qualify for as soon as Gallente Frigate V finishes in a few hours. Then its back to leadership skills.

Live Blogging the QEN - Q3 2009

Keeping with tradition, I'll live-blog the QEN as I read it. Enjoy!

Page 4 - Editorial paraphrased: "Blah blah blah"

Page 5 - Population holding steady but only covers up to June 09.

Page 5- Ships used: at the time of the snapshot, 42% of the ships were shuttles, rookie ships, or capsules. MY GOD! Is there ever a market for tech II shuttles!

Page 6 - "The Condor advanced from 13th place to 10th, making the Top 10 for the first time." - HUH? Why?

Page 8/9 - Huge drop in volume of Morphite traded in Sept, yet no change in price. Interesting.


Page 10 - "The deflation in the SPPI for September measured 8.6%, which is an exceptionally large decline. This drop was almost exclusively fuelled by a 24% collapse in the price of salvaged materials, which weigh heavily in the index. This was the effect of introducing different sized rigs, which is discussed further under the Consumer Price Index section." - Take that mission whores!

Page 13 - Avg CPU per user drop is illustrative of why macros are bad for the game.

Page 15 - Poor Wrath Cruise missile producers!!! LOL!

Page 21 - W-space is being used as evidenced by supply of Neurovisual Input Matrices.

Page 22 - Stealth Bomber changes still obvious. Tengu prices seem to have reached the plateau.

Page 24 - "Figure 41: Glossy Compound is a material that can be looted from the wrecks of Rogue Drone battleships and refined to yield various minerals. This item has been significantly affected by actions against real money trade accounts, with sharp declines seen in both March and July after the two large-scale bans of real money trade accounts were performed." - RMT players dealt in drone poo? Really? Odd.

The Post In Which I defend CCP

I'm sure you've heard of the dev blog post that came out last week and caused some head explosion amoungst the playerbase, myself included. It was easy to look at the costs listed above and see that a basic claimed system with no upgrades was 600 million isk every month and wonder what the hell CCP was thinking.

But in that very post CCP told us what they were thinking. Allow me to quote:

The base cost is currently 20 million ISK a day and mirrors the approximate current daily operational fuel cost of five starbases fuel cost.

And they are correct:  five large POS will cost upwards of 600 mil in fuel costs per month.

So the question becomes why is the majority of the playerbase especially those in large alliances so upset? Well, simple really. Most territory is claimed by only one or two starbases, sometimes not even larges. Only the crucial systems get the larger POS networks for defense and industry.

Some players claim that these costs would prevent small alliances from ever moving to 0.0 space but really, if they can't afford to run 5 large towers should they be in 0.0 space? Going out to null sec unprepared for the harsh realities of large alliance warfare will lead to a lot of crushed dreams.

So, I say that the costs originally published by CCP were logicial and ultimately reasonable.

HOWEVER...

I would like to point out that I am not pleased to see its a static cost instead of rising one as an alliance claims more space. And I have serious doubts that the listed upgrades will allow 50-100 pilots to live in a system once its fully upgraded.

Time will tell.

Fiction Friday - Chapter 4

Previously:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3

* * * * * *

The next couple days were a whirlwind of meetings.

First we had to go to the Department of Commerce to meet with Rusack's contact and fill out reams of forms and sign multiple copies of legal documents to start up our own corporate entity. It cost a bit of money to buy the permits and pay for the legal signatories, but we could afford it and soon K & K Corporation was a reality.

After wasting a day in the dreary offices of the government we checked out of our hotel and caught the shuttle up to the station where we had to make an appointment with the Station Warehouse Manager to rent some space to store the 2500 packaged ATV units we wanted to unload of of Barak Vorn's ship. I expected it to take a few hours but it was surprisingly quick and easy once we paid the exorbitant fees to rent the space. I commented on the speed of the process to the man on the other side of the desk and he responded that they had lots of space to accommodate the sheer amount of traffic they could expect to see on a daily basis.

I guess I never realized how large orbital stations really were before. When you are in a shuttle approaching one it looks impressive but its hard to grasp scale and distance in space because everything looks so clear and close unlike the effects of astmospheric blur when looking at a distant mountain. But as we left the public spaces of the station and into the more functional parts I began to realize I had vastly underestimated the extent it size.

We passed by the administrative level once through security and then into an area that could be better described as a elevator hub. There were banks of elevator doors and signs pointing to various ones as "express to ship hangers", "express to living quarters", "executive offices", "CONCORD", etc. We headed towards one bank of doors listed as "express to warehousing".

The lift dropped us into the bowels of the station where we picked up a conveyor walkway and walked/rode for about ten minutes, chatting with the attendant assigned to guide us. The conveyor walkway was in a small corridor only a few meters wide and the guide explained that the warehouses all connected up with a large automated trolley system on the other sides for moving stuff from warehouse to warehouse and up to the ship hangers.

We arrived at the door to our warehouse and the electronic display beside the locked door said "K & K Corporation" which made Korannon and I smile and laugh at each other in a kind of "can't believe it" way. The attendent set up the biometric sensor to our thumbprints and voice and we went inside.

The first part of the warehouse was a small office with a station console on a desk and a few chairs. The office had a window that looked out on the warehouse floor which was 100 meters by 200 meters of empty space and about 30 meters high. Across from us was the other warehouse door, a massive set of sliding panel doors that went almost to the ceiling and was about 50 meters across.

The attendent took his leave of us and Korannon pulled a bottle of cheap champange and a couple plastic cups from his bag. I smiled and took one of them as he popped the cork, filled our cups, and said "Here's to K & K!"

I laughed and gulped back the sweet drink. "Tomorrow," I added with a grin, "the real work begins!"

Vroom!

So I'm in the middle of my first effort at Tech II cross training as I count down the days of Gallente Frigate V. As a Caldari Hybrid pilot I've spent a lot of time over the past year looking enviously at a lot of the Tech II Gallente ships with the bonuses to blasters, so I'm very excited at finally flying a few that I've drooled over more than others.

The first on my shopping list is the popular Ishkur, perhaps the most used of the Assault Ships. Don't get me wrong; I love the Harpy in both Blaster and Railgun forms, but both version lack the ability to effectively PvP solo. The Ishkur will give me a fast platform to try out roams looking for trouble.

This is the setup I'm considering.





As you can see, decent DPS and a solid little tank with some tracking disruption to help out. Not so useful against missile ships but anything else is fair game. Of course, I'll have to train tracking disruption but its on my list of things to do anyways.

The other ship is the fearsome Taranis, well known for being a top combat interceptor.

It can dish a lot of DPS for an inty, and the MWD/AB combo gives it the ability to get a fast speed even when webbed and scrammed giving you the option for fighting or fleeing. No extra skills needed for this ship beyond the Gallente Frig V.

Beyond this, I'm seriously thinking about when I can fit in Gallente Cruiser V to give me access to Ishtar, Deimos, Phobos, Arazu, Lachesis, Oneiros, and Astarte. Twenty two days for 7 ships? Seems worth it.

Fighting Spacecraft Series V - Prophecy

I had a lot of fun writing the Prophecy fighting spacecraft article but it took a lot of work. There are a lot of angles to cover on a ship that has seen a lot of years and has a lot of variants.

As usual, here is the high res image.

Into the Black

Last night I logged in and decided to give the Stealth Bomber a try again. I packed up some bombs and set course for HED-GP in catch, a AAA alliance station system a mere three jumps from Paxton Federation space and a portal to high sec nonetheless. I considered going deeper into Catch and visiting the U'K pilots but I was lazy.

Once in HED I went about making bookmarks, warping around cloaked, and keeping an eye out for potential targets of my primed bombs. At one point a friendly fleet came in and I watched it dispatch a couple enemy interceptors, but they left and most of the time it was me and a host of reds in local.

But not all of the reds were blue to each other as local chat will attest to:

[ 2009.11.04 02:16:54 ] HateMeMore > u guys oughta camp the planet 2 jb
[ 2009.11.04 02:17:11 ] HateMeMore > tasty targets jumping in
[ 2009.11.04 02:17:16 ] Sola Lodi > k
[ 2009.11.04 02:25:45 ] Bline Dist > wow - slumming i see
[ 2009.11.04 02:28:48 ] Bline Dist > i've never seen so many T1 frigs in my life
[ 2009.11.04 02:33:17 ] Honour Gaurd > that many people and not one of you could point me?
[ 2009.11.04 02:35:01 ] dracice > do you always ask stupid questions?
[ 2009.11.04 02:35:46 ] Stratus Fang > that is not a stupid question minor homo, that was an observation with a question mark
[ 2009.11.04 02:36:35 ] Altair Mogwa > we were busy pointing a pilgram and more expensive shit, sorry to burt your ego for attention
[ 2009.11.04 02:36:52 ] Altair Mogwa > please stay around so we may repoint you after killing the juicy stuff. kthx
[ 2009.11.04 02:36:55 ] dracice > your still stupid
[ 2009.11.04 02:37:01 ] Elliot McElhone > ^
[ 2009.11.04 02:37:07 ] Altair Mogwa > well said
[ 2009.11.04 02:37:14 ] Honour Gaurd > do the math son and price the ships out ha
[ 2009.11.04 02:37:26 ] Altair Mogwa > last night they onlined the avatar for 6 bombers, tonight, wil it come to the gate?!?
[ 2009.11.04 02:37:45 ] Honour Gaurd > no wonder you lost your space, cannot deligate points in gang, how sad
[ 2009.11.04 02:38:00 ] Altair Mogwa > indeed
[ 2009.11.04 02:38:06 ] Altair Mogwa > you have solved the mystery
[ 2009.11.04 02:38:14 ] dracice > we didnt lose it tho, we left it
[ 2009.11.04 02:38:28 ] Honour Gaurd > of course you did
[ 2009.11.04 02:38:31 ] dracice > your really but hurt man over a pilgrim
[ 2009.11.04 02:38:36 ] dracice > jesus christ get laid or something
[ 2009.11.04 02:38:40 ] Elliot McElhone > ^\
[ 2009.11.04 02:38:56 ] Elliot McElhone > IF you need a hug come back please.
[ 2009.11.04 02:39:19 ] Altair Mogwa > free hugs!!!!!!!
[ 2009.11.04 02:39:20 ] Honour Gaurd > hold on, let me geta  few guys to pound you, then you can jump and run away
[ 2009.11.04 02:39:28 ] BuckStrider > ok
[ 2009.11.04 02:39:31 ] Elliot McElhone > GET THE TITAN QUICK
[ 2009.11.04 02:39:33 ] Decime > fail repsonse
[ 2009.11.04 02:39:39 ] Altair Mogwa > COOL STORY BRO
[ 2009.11.04 02:39:51 ] Dikaios > i could go for a pounding
[ 2009.11.04 02:40:02 ] Elliot McElhone > I TURNED CAPS ON TO FIT IN WITH ALL THE COOLNESS IN THIS SYSTEM RIGHT NOW
[ 2009.11.04 02:40:10 ] Elliot McElhone > CAN WE BE FRIENDS ?
[ 2009.11.04 02:40:15 ] Viktoras > and you still failed
[ 2009.11.04 02:40:24 ] BuckStrider > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs_OacEq2Sk
[ 2009.11.04 02:40:47 ] Elliot McElhone > O/
[ 2009.11.04 02:40:52 ] Honour Gaurd > yea run

Near the end of my night I saw a red fleet with some juicy targets warp to the gate I was watching, so I moved into position and just before I uncloaked the fleet started to jump. I decided to launch the bomb anyways to catch any potential stragglers but to no avail. I warped and safe spotted up, pleased that the practice in New Mexico was serving me well here.

E-ON Article - Electronic Attack Ships Testflight

In E-ON Magazine #17 you will find my second article for Zapetero, this time on Electronic Attack Ships.

Crystal Ball Time

Dominion is a weird expansion compared to previous ones.

For one things, the majority of ships and modules and the mechanics that govern them are not changing. Sure, projectiles are getting some love and Minmatar focused pilots are thrilled about that, but everything else is pretty much business as usual.

Faction ships are getting overhauled, but they make up a small percentage of the ships in space. Capital ships are getting overhauled, but for the majority of the playerbase that is not going to affect them, and even amoung Capital pilots only those rare few with Titans and Motherships will be greatly impacted.

If that is all there was to Dominion, I'b be tempted to call it a content patch instead of expansion. But its not.

Sovereignty. Its the basis of the endgame for Eve as much as it has one. Large groups of players working towards a single goal of taking and defending their own space. That it is due for an overhaul is not questioned. The real question is how is it all going to shake out?

We can guess what the developers want to happen. They want more Providences, that is to say, they want more pilots per system such as you find in Providence. CVA's unique NRDS policy (and working hand in hand with the Holder alliances like Paxton Federation) may be a bookkeeping nightmare when neutrals wander into the region, but it has allowed a larger population than you would find in normal NBSI space. Couple that with the agressive station building and the "crappy" region of Providence is one of the most dynamic and active regions in null sec space outside of NPC space like Curse or Syndicate. Development is the key to CCP's vision; they want alliances to invest in the space they occupy.

The upshot is that in order for an alliance to populate and development an entire region, you need a hell of a lot of active pilots. So there is either two end results if you want to maintain control of a whole region: you either have a lot of pilots working the new mechanics to develop the majority of the systems; or you charge of lot of isk per pilot to pay the fees to own the empty undeveloped systems.

Faced with two hard choices (bloat or bankrupcy) I expect very large space holding alliances to contract. A lot. If a properly developed system can support 20-50 active pilots' money-making enterprises, that would replace an entire constellation of pre-Dominion systems. Its feasible that a 1000 pilot alliance could live comfortably in a single constellation.

So let's say most large alliances do shrink from region spanning empires to one or two constellations that they develop agressively. What happens to the space they vacate? Well, they don't want just anyone moving in next door so there would be negoiations, truces, and alliances of alliances so that a pre-Dominion single colour region map becomes a patchwork of colours working together... much like CVA and the holders in providence.

The upshot of this is that you have the ability to fit a lot more friendly pilots into a region and gives you a larger pool for calls to action, but faced with communication hazards a single alliance would not face like which comms to use, who is the FC, where to rally, etc.

On top of all this space contraction and local development, the new mechanics means it will be harder for alliances to engage in campaigns far from home for long periods of time. In order to develop systems alliances will need ratters, miners, explores, builders, etc and combat pilots to defend them. Combine that with Moo Goo getting nerfed, alliances will definitely need these carebears to generate income to pay for the control of their space.

I expect some alliances will become nomadic rather than become slaves to carebears. Maybe even become hired guns for alliances that hold space and make money but lack the interest in intense PvP. Will Mercenaries become sexy again?

All in all, Dominion is going to change the game for the entire player base. Even high sec dwellers will feel the impact as null sec space becomes more populated (or more empty if Dominion is a failure). December first is coming, brace for impact.

* * * * *

As a side note, I was so looking forward to the Dec 1st scramble of alliances in the new sov regime. So I was quite disappointed to hear that there will be a grace period overlapping the sov systems to allow alliances to maintain their cyno beacons, jammers, etc while the new system takes effect. I've heard the grace period will be indeterminiate amount of time and I've heard 35 days (5 weeks).

While I understand the reason the developers will be doing this as to not piss off existing loyal customers in the existing space holding alliances, I will miss the chaos that was promised from a sudden switch on Dec 1.

Sunday Night Sucks

One of the corp directors issued a challenge for pilots to get in on at least 10 kills per month from now until April.

I foolishly accepted said challenge.

Now it was not foolish because of lack of targets; Providence is a target rich environment and getting in fleets. No, it was foolsih because I get one night a week for good solid fleet PvP and that means I need to be in on about 2.5 kills a session. And sometimes you just don't have that luck, and with my current game night being Sunday evenings when things really seem to quiet down for the most part, I have my work cut out for me.

Like last night. When I logged in there was no fleet action going on so I decided to try my hand at some solo roaming in the hopes of finding something to shoot. I picked out my Crow and set a route through Providence and with one eye on local and the other on the intel channels, I set off.

It was pretty uneventful for the most part in the first circuit. I didn't go looking hard for reds because I figured they would be cloaked if not actually active. I went up to YMPL where reds are almost always lingering around, and then headed back to the hub system of 9UY. On the way I ran into a blue gatecamp and considered hanging out with them for a while when a hostile Malediction warped in.

Hmmmm, I thought, could be interesting. Then three things happened at once: the blue fleet warped off as a red fleet warped in and the slightly damaged Malediction interceptor jumped through the gate. Throwing caution to the wind I jumped through as well.

On the other side I quickly engaged and pointed him, my reaction times working better than the first interceptor foray last month. As my missiles took out his shields and bit into his armour he simply went back to the game and jumped through, not interested in tangling with me. Knowing there was a red fleet on the other side, I carried on my way.

There were some reports of hostiles near D-G in Paxton space so I made my way over there. Local spiked and a fleet of about 15 AAA ships of mostly heavy hulls arrived and camped the station. I set in a 200-300 km orbit of the fleet and hoped that the lone Malediction in that gang would come play with me but it was for nought. I kept providing intel about the fleet and x-ing up for a defense fleet but none formed.

I considered forming the fleet myself and had it been a less imposing enemy fleet I might have done just that, but the looks of the AAA fleet was intimidating (remote rep battleships, logistics, and battlecruiser DPS) and I figured leading a bunch of people to their doom was not advisable. Maybe next time.

Eventually the red fleet got tired of no fighting and left, and I continued on my roam chasing down reds reported in intel only to have them be gone by the time I got there.

Night tally: 0 for 2.5.

Maybe I'll try going into AAA space in a stealth bomber.