State of the Blog

Yesterday on Twitter Jaggins_Eve suggested I run for the 4th term of the Council of Stellar Management. (Thanks man, I appreciate the vote of confidence.) I had intended to run for it but plans have changed.

I also intended to start a podcast called Broadcasts from the Ninveah, but that plan is on hold as well.

Finally, plans to go to this year's Fanfest had to (reluctantly) be put on hold, thus causing Roc's posts from Iceland to be even more envy-inducing.

The reason all these plans have been post-poned is because this past summer my wife became pregnant again, much to our collective surprise, and is due in March 2010. There is a lot of work that needs to be done to make our small home ready for another addition, and money to be spent on new items that we can't use from the twins' babyhood and decorating the office as a nursery.

So I don't have the time to properly dedicate to being a good CSM canidate, nor to getting a podcast off the ground and keeping it running through next spring and summer which promises to be utter hell in terms of busy-ness. Twin boys at 2 years old and a newborn? Egads.

Hell, managing to play Eve is hard enough now, with one good gaming session a week on average and many short spurts before work or before bed the rest of the time. Next summer could be difficult to find any time online. Sigh.

On the upside, childhood is fleeting. The twins are already turning into little boys instead of little babies, and in no time they'll be asking for help with homework and going to Jiu Jitsu classes with their old man.

Eve on the other hand, is forever.

The Art of Logisitcs

You the hardest part of blogging for me? Coming up with unique and relevant post titles. Pain in the ass, I tell you.

Anyways...

Last night I decided to take the carrier back to low sec to load up on more ships because while I had a good selection, it didn't cover all the bases. I had my Armageddon Memories of Mynxee which is a good all round battleship but lacks range for the odd sniper fleet fight, and I had my Onyx and Cerberus along with Manticore and Raptor, and a Basilisk for repping, but I lacked a good solid cheap battlecruiser and an alternate HAC for such roams that the Onyx was not required. And what if I wanted to do some serious probing? I need a ship for that.

So with the Ninveah back in low sec I started to ferry some more ships to its hanger while splitting my attention between the laptop and the TV that I was watching with the wife. Compromise keeps everyone happy.

I grabbed the Insisto Oblivium II Rokh battleship, refitted to Paxton/CVA fleet standards, for fleet fights. I also snagged the Vexo's Special Myrmidon, an Eagle whose name I can't recall (it doesn't get much action in High Sec), and a Buzzard named Voyager. I also ferried a corp mate's Taranis for him.

With the ship hanger near full, I then brought a load of fuel and miscellanous items to fill up the gas tank and corp hanger. Then this morning before work I made the quick jump down and safely docked in base.

* * * * *

Funny story:

I was sitting cloaked in my Buzzard watching the low sec to high sec gate while bringing Derranna through with some stuff for the carrier.

I watched a Charon frieghter, sitting there 15 km off the gate, while a pirate in an Ishtar tried to kill him. The sentry fire was too much for the Ishtar so he warped out, came back, and tried again. The Charon just sat there. It looks like the pilot set autopilot for the low sec system and then hit autopilot, forgetting or not realizing that the destination was low sec.

The Charon was lucky. The Ishtar lacked tank, DPS, and friends and no one else stumbled by to kill it, so the pilot came back, crapped his pants I imagine, and then docked.

If the Ishtar had a few more minutes under the sentry fire, I was going to go grab my Myrmidon and make his day very interesting.

Eve Mobile

Welcome to the twelfth 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 articles at the bottom of this post!

This month's banter comes to us from CrazyKinux himself, who asks the following: First there was the MMO on the PC, and now with the recent announcement of DUST 514, EVE will soon be moving onto consoles. But what about mobile? Allow your imagination to run wild for a second and describe how you would see EVE being ported to mobile devices, whether the iPhone/iPod touch, Blackberrys or Android-based devices. Dream the impossible for us!

* * * * *

My wife has an I-Pod touch and it makes me jealous. It connects to our home wireless router and she can check email, download stuff, read blogs... I tried to convince her she wanted Capsuleer but she said "Back OFF! Get your own sandwich!"

With COSMOS plans in motion from CCP, one can start to imagine the lines blurring between in-game and out-of-game activities. And once you start moving things out of game, its a small jump to the mobile devices to today and tomorrow since the line between desktop PC and a handheld has been shrinking every day.

These are the things I would like to see out of game:

- Everything in Eve Commander. That means absolute inventory browsing (in remote cans and fittings on ships), current market orders, research projects, and skill training info.

- The ability to view the market and change my buy and sell orders.

- The ability to change my skills and skill queue.

- Access, create, and reply to Evemails.

- Access to channels for chatting.

- Access to my stored ship fittings.

- Ability to browse and bid on contracts.

Essentially I want everything I don't need to be sitting in a ship to do available to me out of game and accessible by mobile clients. I know that's ambitious but it would add so much to the experience.

List of Participants:

CrazyKinux's Musing - Tying the dots and locking me in!
A Merry Life and a Short One - I Don’t Own a Working Phone
Yarrbear Tales - EVE on Mobile Devices? Eh.
Hands Off, My Loots! - EVE Mobile…Possibility?
Achernar - Trapped on Planet Horror
Rettic’s Log - The Cronofile – Blog Banter: EVE Mobile
A Mule in EVE - EVE Mobility
Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah - EVE Mobile
My Life in EVE - 12th Blog Banter
My God, it’s Full of Stars! - 12th EVE Blog Banter
The Wandering Druid of Tranquility - WOW, look at that ‘micro-Dust’
Adventures in Mission Running - 12th EVE Blog Banter
Ecliptic Rift - EVE Everywhere
Roc’s Ramblings - EVE Mobile
EVE Monkey - EVE on a Mobile Device?
Nashh Kadavr’s EVE Blog - I-pod Capsuleer
Escoce – EVE Trade - Dynamic System Security
Break Vol - EVE Blog Banter 12
Mikeazariah - EVE Mobility
Pods and Pills - The 12th EVE Blog Banter: EVE on the MOVE!
1. Lords of Space - EVE on my Iphone?
2. Cle Demaari - Is that EVE in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
3. Life in Low Sec - Wormholes On the Go
4. The Elitist - EVE On Mobile Devices
5. Many more to come...

Rifter and Breacher

Crazy Kinux is starting a new series of guest posts on ship setups and I got the honour of writing the first one on the Rifter and Breacher Minmatar frigates. Check it out!

"Hi, My Name is Kirith"

Joining a new alliance is a lot of work.

First, you have to find out where your corp is going to be basing out of. Then you need to find out the best routes to and from empire for logisitics, because the shortest route is not always the best if hostiles know about it or live there.

For capital logistics, you need to find out where the friendly towers are, jump beacons, jump bridges, POS passwords.

You need to find out and join all the intel channels and make sure you know which are for joining fleets and which are for hostile spotting, and in some cases which intel channels are for which areas of space.

You need to find the link for the forums and register with them. You need to get the address for the voice comms server and get registered there.

You need to get a map of the relevant regions ready and then spend weeks getting to know the system names and who tends to be found where.

You need to read all the alliance evemails, filter out the unimportant ones, and get a feel for who the alliance leadership and fleet commanders are.

Then you need to actually move you entire corp and their required assets to null sec space safely and timely 'cause no one wants to lose a few billion due to a bad frieghter op.

Once all that is done, then you begin the actual effort of integrating into a completely new group of people who don't know you from jack, trying to show them that you and your corp is worth their salt and bring something good to the mix. Its like dating only the end of the date ends not with sex but shooting enemy ships in the face.

CCP GOING DOWN!

OK, who's attacking CCP Engineering Alliance!?

Don't worry CCP, just open up those Jove Stargates and me and The Ninveah will come rep your towers! I promise.


(Note to self: Ask about borrowing corp dread)












EDIT: Its worse than I thought! FAILCASCADE!

Skilling Alts

Over at Teeth and Claws Andrew has been discussing the Eve subscription model postulating that CCP is taking advantage of the skill progression model limitations to get more subscriptions.

Read the whole thing. His last comment requires a response but I felt I needed more room.

@Kirith:

"On one hand you say non-Eve MMOs still have progression beyond max level in terms of gear, money, faction standings, acheivements etc, and then on the other hand you say they don't."

Argh.

Okay - by my reckoning in EVE skill training is analogous to gaining exp/skill points in any other MMO.

I assert that YOU think that too based on your original comment which included this phrase: "Since Eve has no level cap, a character never stops progressing."

In EVE skill training happens in real time and has an end point that is unattainable due to CCP's algorithms. In other MMOs there is a cap that is generally pretty easy to reach.

Everything else - money, achievements, gear, raid progress, territory, housing, etc - is equatable in both EVE and everything else, and cannot be accomplished offline. So EVE has no advantage/difference here.

So, non-EVE MMOs stop your xp progression quickly, while EVE draws it out. CCP then slaps an arbitrary rule in place that disallows training multiple characters on the same account at the same time, which.

As discussed - psychologically most players can't handle hitting the STOP button on their main, and then capitulate and buy a second account when the decide that the need to experience OTHER aspects of the game. CCP knows this is the case, and probably loves it.


----
It comes back to this:

What would change in EVE if tomorrow CCP were to remove the simultaneous training rule???

I assert that NOTHING would change except that CCP would suddenly not have ~30-50% of their accounts due to people not actually needing them.

I think their are two discussion points here. On the top part of his comment about progression stopping early in most MMOs but not Eve, most if not all Eve players consider this a good thing as it allows for a player to take his character into deeper and more varied roles in the game. HOWEVER, the upshot is that players feel compelled to keep training instead of using their other character slots to progress other characters. I think we agree on this.

The second point of Andrew's comment is the meat of his contention and the assertion is what I disagree with.

I agree that some accounts would not exist as people who simply train second characters for other activities not related to their main could use only one account. I think these people are in the minority. 

Most people who have two accounts do so for the ability to dual-box because so many activities in Eve are faster/safer/more profitable to do with two or more pilots:
- mining with miner and hauler
- missions with Tank/DPS and looter/salvager
- exploration with combat and prober/hacker
- pvp with cloaky scout and combat ship
- capital logistics with capital pilot and cyno bitch
- Alliance CEO and combat main
- Super capital pilot and pilot that can actually dock
- etc

Furthermore, I think we would see an explosion of characters in the game as everyone would have two alts at the minimum. I don't know for sure if this would be a good thing or not but my intuition tells me that the potential for mindless griefing/corp theft/scamming would climb exponentially with the proliferation of skilled alts. Not to mention the bottom dropping out of the datacore market! (Ok, a little too esoteric on that last one... time to bring it home.)

The fact of the matter is that the game has been developed and balanced with the current mix of accounts to highly skilled characters and to say that "NOTHING" would change is a bold statement, and in light of other complex systems in which a small change can have numerous ripple effects, I think it is overly optimistic.

Could the game be rebalanced to support skilling on all characters of an account? Perhaps.

Look Out Providence!

Here we come!

After the debacle in Wicked Creek with the Tactical Narcotics Team alliance our corp sat down, had a discussion, and came to a few conclusions: we are still strong and cohesive despite the setback, we want to be in 0.0, and we're remaining red to Goons forever.

With that common understanding in place, we reviewed our criteria for seeking a new home and decided to approach Paxton Federation, part of the CVA power bloc in Providence, as they were looking for new corps to join their alliance. Although its NRDS and it means playing by the CVA KOS checker, we decided to accept that restriction in exchange for joining an established and relatively secure organization with a good reputation that would give us a chance to integrate the recent new recruits and train up the newer-to-PvP pilots in 0.0 tactics and strategies.

Last night we got the news that we are accepted on a trial basis, so preparations are underway. With that, I jump cloned down to my Tengu Golgotha that I left behind back in Wicked Creek and made the journey through 0.0 to low sec. I wish I could give a tale of hostile gate camps, split second maneuvures, interdiction bubbles, close escapes, and daring jumps, but in reality it was uneventful with only the local Angel rats gate camping.

Next stop, Providence!

Tech 3 Prices

In my latest Eve Tribune article, I take a snapshot of tech 3 ship and subsystems prices from three major hubs.

Does Eve Need Arenas?

One of the most brilliant aspects of Eve is the number of player run organizations that transcend typical MMO life.

- Eve Online Hold'em poker

- Interstellar Racing Championship

- BIG Lottery along with many other lotteries including ones done by Chribba (THE Eve Celebrity)

- EVE Bank

 And those were just the big ones off the top of my head. Many hundreds of smaller initiatives exist and add to the tapestry that is the Eve experience. One of the more recent has been the Eve Celebrity Death Match duels of Nashh Kadavr  and various Eve bloggers and personalities (myself included).

Its common to see outside of major trading hub stations to see people battling it out in consensual PvP, usually 1v1. One player drops an item in a jet can, the other picks it up to become hostile to the former, the former aggros the lattter, and then they start fighting to the death.

Sometimes friends will seek each other out for duels in a less structured manner than Nashh has done, and Corporations and alliances will sometimes have tournaments with cheap frigates. There are even full blown Eve PvP Tournaments run by players, and Massively ran an article on how to organize your own.

But at the top of the heap is the Developer organized and run Alliance Tournaments such as the 7th iteration that finished last weekend. It has huge entry fees but even larger rewards such as unique faction ships and billions of ISK.

Its a fact: People want the option of fair equal fights.

I'm not saying the whole game needs to be centred around this concept, but its obvious that people want the option to fight someone in fight where both sides come prepared, equipped with relatively the same class of gear, and fight to the structure/ship destruction.

While its great that there are many player initiatives to fill this need, I think that demand outpaces supply. Or more accurately, players need more tools in which to allow them to self-organize consensual PvP.

Eve needs arenas.

Whoa! Did you feel the knee jerk reaction of Eve players everywhere preparing to tell me to shove off? Fortunately, I am prepared to push forward.

What we need is the simple ability to arrange duels of 1v1, 3v3, 5v5, and 10v10 that have all the trappings of the alliance tournaments: massive warp bubble to keep ships in the area and kill them if they stray beyond the bounds of the zone, point system for selecting ships into the duels, non-interference from other non-dueling pilots (especially remote repping!), and a mechanic for time limiting the fight, counting points, and awarding/recording the win.

Although a lot of this can be done by player effort and agreeable participants, it would be far more accessible to the playerbase if the mechanics were built into the game. It would free up organizers to do more in the way of advertising and organizing tournaments, it would allow for players to have quick one off duels without large amounts of paperwork and communication, and it would add another layer of PvP to the game without detracting from actual PvP in low sec, war decs, and null sec sov wars.

Come on CCP, give the players what they want. Give them the chance to fight in battles like the Alliance Tournament without the billion ISK entry fee (or the skills ;) ).

Cocky Never Pays Off

Three weeks ago I was talking about how the level 1 Epic Mission Arc was going and I've been continuing to run my little noob alt Kornielia through them (its easy to sit down for 10-15 minutes and run a quick mission). I came to a mission at the end of a mini-arc within the overall arc in which I was to catch a rogue drone plaguing Gallente and Caldari systems.

I was getting cocky, walking through missions fairly easily with my increasingly capable pilot. I warped into the mission and got a message that the drone escaped through the acceleration gate. I afterburned past the drones guarding and zoomed in the next room. Another gate, another message, and I turned on the afterburner again.

Except this time, there was webbing and scramming drones. Uh oh!

Needless to say, caught off guard and having aggro'd the whole room, I was unable to escape and I was put down hard.

Ouch.

Fortunately, I had enough ISK to get a new Rifter and outfit it again, this time upgrading the shield booster from civilian class to military.

I went back and with more prudence I cleared the rooms before chasing after my quarry, only to see it escape in a Mystery ship piloted by some NPC capsuleer. My agent was furious and I was dispatched back to Minmatar space to track down this guy who was supposed to be dead.

The Epic in the Epic Mission Arc is starting to show through. I figure I must be getting close to the end of the arc soon.

Eve Master Class - Jump Portals

Since I have recently acquired both the skills and a Widow Black Ops Battleship to fly, I figured I would find out how to properly use the Covert Jump Portal Generator. Finding official information on the Evelopedia or item database proved impossible, and the general Eve forums were filled with guesses, half answers, and confusing short hand. Thus I decided to filter the wheat from the chaffe and present here the offical account of how to use a Jump Portal.

Modules

There is the Jump Portal Generator which can only be fitted to Titans, and the Covert Jump Portal Generator which can only be fitted on Black Ops Battleships.

Skills

Both modules only require Jump Portal Generation level I to use. Further levels of the skill reduces the amount of Strontium Clathrates (aka Stront) by 10% but since the Covert Jump Portal Generator requires no Stront for activation, training it past level I is useless.

Module Fuel Consumption

The Jump Portal Generator requires 500 Stront per activation minus 50 units per level in Jump Portal Generation, and 1000 GJ of capacitor. The activation lasts for 60 seconds.

The Covert Jump Portal Generator requires 0 Stront per activation and 100 GJ of capacitor. The activation last for 20 seconds.

For both modules, during the activation the ship's velocity is 0.

Jumping Ship Fuel Consumption

For each ship that jumps through the Jump Portal to the cyno beacon on the other ship, there must be enough Isotope fuel of the correct type in the cargo bay / fuel bay of the Titan or Black Ops ship. Reminder: Amarr = Helium Isotopes, Caladari = Nitrogen Isotopes, Gallente = Oxygen Isotopes, Minmatar = Hydrogen Isotopes.

The amount of fuel required depends on the mass of the porting ship, the Jump Portal Mass Consumption Factor (aka MCF) of the module, the Titan/Black Op pilot's skill level in Jump Fuel Conservation (JFC_level), and the base amount of fuel the Titan/Black Op ships needs to jump itself.

Mass * MCF * ((base fuel cost) - (base fuel cost * 0.10 * (JFC_level))) = fuel required / light year

Example 1 - A 1 million Kg ship using the jump portal of a Titan with a MCF of 1e-9 which itself requires 1000 isotopes per light year operated by a pilot with Jump Fuel Conservation IV will require:

1,000,000 * 0.000000001 * 1000 - (1000 * 0.10 * 4) = 0.6 isotopes / light year

Example 2 - A 1 million Kg ship using the jump portal of a Black Ops with MCF of 1.8e-7 which itself requires 300 isotopers per light year operated by a pilot with Jump Fuel Conservation IV will require:

1,000,000 * 0.00000018 * 300 - (300 * 0.10 * 4) =  32.4 isotopes / light year

If we assume that any decent pilot has Jump Fuel Conservation IV then we can prepare the following little reference chart.
 

Ship Class	Approx mass	Black Ops Isotopes / lyr	Titan Isotopes / lyr
Frigate	1,100,000 Kg	35.64	0.66
Cruiser	12,000,000 Kg	388.8	7.2
Battleship	103,000,000 Kg	3337.2	61.8

Jump Portal Range

The range is dependent on two factors: The base jumping range of the Titan or Black Ops ship and the pilot's level in the skill Jump Drive Calibration. For a Titan with a pilot that has Jump Drive Calibration IV, this is 7 light years. For a Black Ops with the same pilot the range is 4 light years.

Ship Restrictions

Any ship class may use the Titan's Jump Portal Generator.

Only ships that have Jump Harmonics 2 as a property may use the Black Ops Covert Jump Portal Generator. Currently those ships are Covet Ops Frigates, Stealth Bombers, Force Recons, Blockade Runners, and Black Ops Battleships. Oh, and Strategic Cruisers with the Covert Reconfiguration subsystem installed.

Jump Portal Operation

In order to make use of a ship's Jump Portal, all jumping pilots must be in a fleet with the pilot of the Titan / Black Ops ship and of course the pilot generating the cyno or covert cyno beacon in the target system.

The first step is the cyno is created. Then the Titan / Black Ops pilot activates the jump portal generator by clicking on the cyno pilot's name in fleet and selecting "Bridge To". (Note: I am unsure if the module needs to be manually activated prior to creating the bridge, or if it is activated by the bridge creation. I will confirm this week. UPDATE: Confirmed that no manual activation of module required.)

Next every jumping pilot right clicks on the portal generating ship and selects "Jump" to make use of the portal. They have to be within 2000 meters in order for this option to appear, just like using a stargate or Jump Bridge POS module. Of course, the correct amount of fuel needs to be in the generating ship as well.

The amount of time all ships have to make it through the jump bridge is 60 seconds for a Titan, and 20 seconds for a Black Ops ship.

Once all jumping ships have bridged through the portal and the activation time is complete,  the Black Ops ship itself can jump to the covert cyno beacon whose duration is 60 seconds.

(Note: I have read conflicting reports of whether or not Black Ops can create a bridge to normal cynos. Again, I will confirm this week.)

Update On Navy Scorp and Typhoon

I talked about the proposed Naval Scorpion and Typhoon last weeks but an update based on testing and feedback has been proposed:

Scorpion Navy Issue:

• Slot layout: received an additional launcher slot (for a total of six)

Typhoon Fleet Issue:

• Slot layout: weapon layout back to 4 turrets and 4 launchers, receives an additional low-slot instead (for a total of eight)

Ok, now that is a Navy Scorpion I can get behind. Missile firepower of a Raven with the tanking of a Rokh, that could be a fierce combination. As for the Typhoon change, I can't help but thinik its a step back but I'm not a Minmatar specialized pilot.

The HICtor and the Rifter

Last night I logged in and pushed for a roam. I was eager for some action and with everything safely secured I figured it was time. The corp was full of eager people and we rallied up in Tash Murkon and headed out into the unknown.

Ok, not really unknown. We went into Domain low sec. But pretend its unknown.

We've been strictly following CVA's NRDS policy as we want to hang around Providence and perhaps make some political headway, so a lot of targets we had to ignore and a few reds were wise not to engage us. Two Mrymidons (including mine), Hurricane, Onyx, and a new corp member in a Rifter, we had a decent amount of firepower. Later on I brought in Derranna in a hastily constructed Rapier for tackling and scouting, deciding to work on my dual-boxing skills.

We had no luck or close encounters in low sec so we set course for Providence and jumped in.

A few jumps into 0.0 our forward scout reported an Ushra'Khan Ares interceptor warping to the gate we were on the other side of. "Bubble up!" called the Fleet Commander and HICtor pilot, and we were enveloped in its shimmering glaze. The gate flashed and we braced for the kill.

As the Ares materialized, our Rifter went in for the tackle before it could MWD out of the bubble. He got his Scrambler and a webber on it, killing any MWD and slowing its speed by at least half. I had Derranna throw her two 34km webs and a Disruptor on it just to be sure and then switched to Kirith but by the time he had locked it, the Ares was down.

We recorded the kill and the pod and cleaned up after ourselves. This was the first kill mail in M3 for our Rifter pilot Novon Toll (good work!) and this is the first kill mail ever where Derranna is on it and is not the victim. Woot!

We carried on deeper into Providence and our scout reported a Triumvirate pilot in the system ahead. Then as he continued scouting local count spiked with a lot more Tri pilots and he picked up what looked to be a big fight on a gate. I offered to send Derranna in with the Covert Ops cloak on the Rapier and was accepted. I approached the gate from a safe angle and saw about 10-15 hostile ships destroying a handful of other ships.

"Yeah, let's go back boys. I'm not putting us in the way of that!" our FC proclaimed. We rallied and warped back out the way we came, looking for more opportunities to kill but finding nothing more.

Not the most successful of roams, but enough to satisfy my bloodlust for one night and everyone got out alive.

One Year

A couple weeks ago my main Kirith turned three, and today I celebrate another anniversary. One year ago today M3 Corp took mercy on this corporate hobo, forgave me for leaving them nin months before, and accepted me into their corporation again.

Its been a great year and I look forward to more adventure in the coming months.

Sober Thoughts On New Sov Mechanics

Image courtesy of Dev Blog on Sisi testing schedule.

Known Mechanics:

- Claiming sov of a non-claimed system takes one "Claim Marker" and 24 hours to online.

- To make the "Claim Marker" vulnerable to attack, you need to disrupt its communications with the stargates of that system. You do this with Disruptors anchored and onlined at stargates which takes 12 hours to online.

- All stargates must be disrupted to make the Claim marker vulnerable.

Thoughts:

- I hope these claim markers and disruptors have blueprints and can be manufactured.

- Systems with one stargate will be easy to remove sov from an enemy alliance. Conversely, systems with many stargates, i.e. hubs, will be harder to assault as the defenders only need to destroy one disruptor to stop the attack.

- I wonder what happens if the claim marker is vulnerable but before its destroyed the defenders destroy a disruptor? Does it switch immediately back to invulnerable?

- Depending on the hitpoints of disruptors and claim markers, this could either be better or worse than POS bashing and tower spamming. On the upside, claim markers may not have any defenses other than its vulnerable invulnerabilty and hitpoints.

Why 0.0?

In my Escape from Q-GQ post yesterday ReatuKrentor said...

why is your corp so frantic about finding a 0.0 alliance to join?
2nd time it went sour iirc.
And every time it adds another notch on your corp's alliance list of a failed alliance.

Why indeed? Allow me to list the general consensus reasons the core of M3 wants to move to 0.0 space. NOTE: These are not personal reasons, they are group reasons. For example, I wouldn't mind a month to try out the Epic Level Four missions or more Level 5 missions, but the gestalt is not interested in it.

1) Missions are boring. We are a PvP corp, we want PvP dammit!

2) Empire war decs are often more sound than fury. Nothing, NOTHING is more boring than station camping someone who refuses to undock.

3) Low sec has some PvP but we don't want the painful security status penalties. Plus we want big PvP as well as small roaming gangs; carriers and dreads for the win!

4) We want access to 0.0 resources like belt ratting and exploration content, for both ISK and challenge.

5) We want to be part of a larger pool of pilots for easy grouping and constant activity.

6) We want to be part of greater 0.0 alliance politics. Collolary: we want to make a good name for ourselves.

So that's why. We've done the low sec thing, Empire war decs, missions, we're ready for 0.0. We thought we had it in IRC until everyone in Eve kicked them out, TNT turned out to be a bust, but we have new leads and we are going to give it a good hard try.

Dominion - Biggest Change Ever?

The new Navy faction battleships combined with the overhaul of current Navy ships and the lower cost of said ships in Factional Warfare provide new shinys to Empire dwellers.

The pirate faction ships are getting overhauled and rumours of new pirate epic missions swirl about.

Awesome new planet graphics to take your breath away.

Titan doomsday turning into a death star super laser, Motherships becoming Supercarriers with powerful anti-capital Fighter-Bombers.

Yet all of those combined does not reflect but a ripple compared to this:

The massive Sovreignty changes will reshape null sec space and perhaps open it up to hundreds if not thousands of new pilots currently stuck in Empire.

Its like Eve II is coming.

Skill Training Update

I purchased a Widow Black Ops battleship before the TNT fiasco so my current skill traing objective is to be able to use it well. For that I've been working on Astrometrics V skill which finally finished this morning after a 12 day slog. Now I have to train only two skills, Black Ops up to IV and Jump Portal Generation to IV, a 21 day effort overall.

After that I am going to spend a week getting my Astrometric Acquisition and Pinpointing up to par at level IV for both, followed by some more effort into my Tengu training.

Meanwhile, Derranna has been continuing her crash course in weapons training starting with lots of levels in missile skills. She has got a lot of the support skills trained up to III and IV, and she is prepped for Rockets and Standard missiles right now, with Heavies and Heavy Assaults as soon as she buys the skill book. Her overall skill queue has about 35 days left on it and then she will sling missiles as good as a novice Caldari pilot as well as dropping bombs from her Hound stealth bomber.

After that, she'll start hitting the books hard for basic and advanced projectile training. My goal is someday to have her in a Maelstrom just because it looks cool.

Sweet Jesus!

Now THOSE are planets!

Escape From Q-GQ

Continuing our sorid tale of betrayal and what it means to be told you're blue but not on Goons blue list from yesterday...

The corp had an immediate meeting right then and there as they rushed from ZLO back to Q-GQ. We had been fed a line of stories upon inquiring about joining TNT alliance and have been discovering one disappointment after another. To be frank, I was surprised they were able to hold space and not surprised that the Goon NAP Train turned on them. The strong and powerful often despise the weak.

Leadership decided to blow this popcycle stand. Plans for full evacuation were made and we decided to make an immediate run out right then and there with inital assets, including my precious Rokh Insisto Oblivium II.

One of our corp members had probed out a four wormhole space route from Wicked Creek to Etherium Reach only four jumps from low sec. We went that way, a fleet of about 8, slipping through the wormholes with adventure in our hearts and smiles on our faces. Yes, the alliance we joined was a complete disaster but the corp bonds were stronger than ever. Through the fire armies are forged.

We arrived in Etherium Reach and began to make our way through the quiet systems when we experienced severe node lag and incipient node crash. It was late and Derranna, who was ironically in the same area as she was half way to Wicked Creek in a Prowler to deliver carrier fuel, could scout me out the next day I decided. I logged and let the rest of the gang carry on in their smaller ships, safer without the slow Rokh holding them back.

* * * *

The next morning I logged in and the systems that were abandoned the night before were hoping with neutrals looking for things to kill. I made two jumps but it was fraught with danger and I decided to safe spot up my two characters and wait for the evening to try.

* * * *

The evening came and with only a couple disinterested neutrals in the 0.0 systems I was able to sneak the Rokh out and into a station in low sec. I had come so far (35 jumps through 0.0, 4 jumps through wormhole space, another 4 jumps through 0.0) that I didn't want to lose the Rokh on a run through pirate infested low sec during a busy evening. I waited until the morning before downtime to get the last four jumps through low sec and dock my sentimental ship in Teonusude.

Whew!

Most of the corp is evacuated now and we're planning our next move. More on that as it develops.

Navy Typhoon

With the recent announcements of changes to Pirate Faction ships, the Sov Mechanics, Titans and Motherships, my head is spinning.

I'm going to finish this review of the proposed Tier 1 Navy battleships and then take a break to absorb it all in.

So on with the Navy Typhoon:

Typhoon Fleet Issue:

• Slot layout: 8 high, 4 med, 7 low, 5 turrets, 5 launchers
• Fittings: 660 CPU, 13125 powergrid, 350 calibration, 3 rig slots
• Hitpoints: +50% hit points on hull (9316), armor (9316) and shields (8203)*
• Dronebay increased by 25m3, bandwidth unchanged
• Speed: +10% max velocity and agility increased by 10%
• Sensor: +25% ladar sensor strength

* Standard Typhoon armor and shield values have been swapped as well

What we have here is no new fitting slots  but an extra hardpoint of each type, a decent boost to CPU and powergrid, and a lot more armour and shields with more emphasis on armour now. Combined with better speed and agility. The increase of drone space means that the Typhoon can now carry a full flight of heavies, mediums, and lights for maximum flexibility.

Overall its is a nice damn ship. It won't win any competitions for over poweredness but it will be very quick for a battleship and the increase of weapons using its damage bonus will be noticiable for pilots speciailizing in one type over the other.

And Then The Goon FC said "Bend Over..."

I logged in last night looking to join in a fleet to kill a small undefended tower near our space. I had finally gotten the Ninveah and its cargo of ships to Q-GQ so was lokign forward to some fleet action.

"Kirith, your carrier is in empire, right?"

"No," I tell my director, "I got it to Q-GQ last night."

"Well, get it out right now. Shit is hitting the fan."

Well it turns out that a large 300+ pilot Atlas (or AAA, not sure which, both are hostile) came down to our space and put our POS on a Dysprosium moon into reinforced. The general feeling is that our small alliance would not survive a full on attack by a major player and all high value assets needed to be secured in Empire space.

So I packed up the carrier and quickly made the two jumps to the waiting cyno back in Molden Heath. That taken care of, the order was to join into the Call To Arms fleet that was busy repairing the damaged tower in anticipation of a second wave. This time we had reports of a large Goonswarm and allied fleet coming to assist to repel the invaders. We're blue with Goons, xXDeathXx, Zenith Affinity, etc you see. Well, was, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

So everyone available clone jumps to Q-GQ and gets ready to join the fleet but I've got a quandry. All I left in Wicked Creed was my travel Tengu and it would not be a great help in the scheme of things for this operation. So my thoughts drifted to my last remaining asset deep in Etherium Reach region, tucked away in the DIZ station; my special Rokh, Insisto Oblivum II.

It got left behind when the call went out to evacuate during the fall of IRC and I couldn't repackage it and sell it when the dust settled because it means a lot to me. It was my second Rokh battleship (RIP Insisto Oblivum the first) and the one I ran many level four missions in. I came to age in that ship, I had to try and save it. And since we are (read: were) blue to xXDeathXx, now seemed the most opportune time.

I jumped to the clone I had left in that DIZ station and jumped into the Rokh. It was a sniper fit and no chance to refit for travel, so it felt like a suicide mission. Better to go out in a blaze of glory than to slink away and leave it rusting or worse, on the market.

It was 35 jumps to Q-GQ. I gulped and undocked.

I saw NO ONE for 20 jumps. Etherium Reach, The Spire, most of Insmother were empty, devoid of life, not a single soul. Desolate.

When I got to RA Prime in C-J I saw some (former) blues and emboldened by the success I carried on towards Wicked Creek. And that's when the shit hit the fan.

You see, while I was making my Epic journey through the wastelands, the rest of the m3 guys were in fleet. The Goons arrived and requested we take the cyno jammer offline so they could bring in carriers to rep the POS faster.

And then they turned on us. Scorpion, two Osprey, a Basilisk and a Thanatos were destroyed before they turned on our tower and removed it, replacing it with a Minor Threat tower.

Tomorrow I'll conclude our sorid tale.

Totally Missed My Birthday

Kirith Kodachi turned 3 years old in Eve on Sept 9. Yay me.

Logisitcs Hell

Here is the Eve Universe map courtesey of my favourite online map sit, DOTLAN maps.




Back in IRC days, the distance to the home base in D-IZ system was long, but the logisitics were fairly easy even for a jump frieghter. Etherium Reach had nothing between it and low sec and the region was peppered with Cyno Beacons such that the only cynos you needed generated for you were in low sec itself.


Let's zoom into the area I'm living in now, Wicked Creek. The distance is not as far but the journey is far more fraught with danger. Both Great Wildlands and Curse are NPC regions and are home to lots of hostiles that would like nothing more than to kill my poor, defenseless Jump Freighter.


Unfortunately, the ways around these two regions are very long and as number of jumps increases so does time, cost, and chance of deadly encounter.

It looks like the chance to do solo logistics is not very likely in this regard. Not until we can secure some safe routes through these NPC region.

Breakdown of a Dev Blog

One of the Eve endgames is null sec alliance warfare and at the heart of that is Sovreignty; literally putting your alliance name on the map. With the changes coming in Dominion the dev blogs are important for gathering a feel for what is coming.

The latest offering from CCP Greyscale is titled "Sovreignity: Emergence is Neat" and I'm going to pull out the facts from the fluff for you.

A system to do this can be fairly lightweight. It needs to handle systems changing hands, of course, but it can afford to be descriptive, rather than prescriptive. Currently we have a prescriptive sovereignty system: you fight over sovereignty explicitly, with the sovereignty mechanics determining who owns the system. A descriptive system says who's in charge, so it only needs to change hands after the dust has settled and one side has emerged triumphant. The actual fighting is deregulated - rather than mechanically telling you what to do (shoot sixty hardened starbases), you just need to do whatever it is you need to do so that at the end of the day the enemy goes away.

Of course, there's one class of thing that can't be left entirely free-form, and they're the things that helped bring about the current sovereignty system in the first place: stations. Outposts and conquerable stations are the river-crossings of EVE - each one lets you project power all around it, and as a result they're pivotal military objectives. Station ping-pong - waking up in the morning and finding that someone in a different timezone had taken your station, and the first thing you had to do was shoot it again to take control of it so you could re-dock - was very silly and we don't want that to come back.

There's no reason that the solution to this has to be the sovereignty system, but it does need to be timezone-proof. There's also no reason that it needs to take two weeks for an outpost to change hands - while comparatively shorter switches give the defender less time to mount a defense, they also make re-conquest easier. The combination of a lighter, descriptive sovereignty system and a separate mechanism for outpost conquest should (we think) lend itself much better to emergent outcomes.

I quoted a lot there but there is a lot to consume. Essentially what we have here is a capture the flag mechanic. I'm saying that without a lot of details but based on other information from people looking at the Sisi code base to see messages, I'm confident that is where this mechanic is headed. Think Faction Warfare complexes and bunkers writ large and based on special modules and stargates.

Where to start? Resource density in nullsec is too low to support a high player density, which limits the number of people that could theoretically live in nullsec. Moon mineral values mean that there's no need at an alliance level to worry about other resources anyway, which limits the number of people who are actually allowed to live in nullsec. A lack of population or vulnerable resources means smaller fleets have little strategic relevance. Alliances hold vast tracts of space that they have no actual use for, simply because they can, locking out other groups from using it.

Yeah, rare moon minerals is broken at the moment I'm afraid, and I've been saying density in null sec is far too low for a long time. I like the direction they are going here because it is very true: null sec is often vast swathes of empty systems. That sucks.

 These problems are all interlinked, and solving them with a few key changes should bring a lot of good results.

Firstly, let people upgrade their space, and in particular its resource density. By increasing the resource density, you increase the potential population density, and by letting players do it rather than simply seeding more resources, you open up more decisions and more emergence.

Secondly, reduce the amount of income that can be derived from mining moons. In conjuction with the first change, this means that the best way to raise funds for an alliance will once again be to fill your space with as many people as possible, upgrade your space as much as possible and watch the money roll in.

If I were a large alliance holding a lot of rare moons right now, I would begin to get nervous. The implied threat in that bolded part means that the gold farm that is moon minerals is going to be threatened if not removed. You might have to work hard to make your isk now and it might be harder to protect easily. The days of holding a region while fighting an extended war on the other side of New Eden could be coming to an end.

Thirdly, charge rent on systems. This allows us to scale the rent based on how well-developed a system is, which means it's less of a no-brainer to upgrade (meaningful decisions!), and also reinforces the idea that the more people are using a system, the more money it'll make you. In conjunction with a few well-placed additional penalties, it also combats alliance sprawl, leaving more space up for grabs and again letting more people experience nullsec.

Ah, exponential costs. The weapon the devs used against Privateers alliance war dec frenzy will be the same they use to combat region sprawling alliances.

Overall I really really like the way they are headed with this change. By getting more people into null sec it will create more dynamics and social interactions.

I'm very excited.

Navy Dominix

Continuing the series of reviewing the proposed new Navy battleships, we are going to look at the new Navy Dominx.

Dominix Navy Issue:

• Slot layout: 6 high, 6 med, 7 low slots, 6 turrets, no launchers
• Fittings: 660 CPU, 9900 powergrid, 350 calibration, 3 rig slots
• Hitpoints: +50% hit points on hull (9961), armor (9316) and shields (8203)
• Capacitor: +5% max capacitor (5250 capacitor, 1087.5s recharge)
• Dronebay increased by 25m3, bandwidth unchanged
• Sensor: +25% magnetometric sensor strength

Overall, this change is unexciting to me. While the big improvement in hitpoints is welcome and more capacitor is nice, the ship does not boast an improved DPS at all, and the extra mid slot is of utility value at most.

Don't get me wrong, the Dominix is a fearsome beast capable of lots of different roles and the Navy Dominix is even more fearsome with a huge hitpoint boost. Its just not probably worth the large price tag this sucker is going to have compared to the plain jane Domi. I'm expecting at least 10x the price right now.

Tomorrow, the Typhoon Navy Issue.

Yeah, I Suck

In an effort to be clever, I was trying to setup a cyno spot for Derranna to get Kirith's carrier to 0.0. I was going to do the cyno around downtime during the week, but decided to get into position and get the cheap cyno ship ready.

I decided to try to jump to one of the NPC stations in Great Wildlands on my way to Wicked Creek. I got Derranna there with no issue in her covert ops and purchased a cheap Probe frigate to be the Cyno ship.

Last night I had to go one jump to pick up the cyno ship but instead of waiting until the weekend was over, I figured I was safe in my sneaky covert ops frig and undocked...

... right into the waiting arms of a Flycatcher interdictor and Deimos HAC. Bubble up!

Normally I would wait out the undock timer and simply redock, but it was one of those Minmatar stations that quickly ejects you beyond the perimeter. I foolishly turned around and had an 18 second wait until I could dock, but now I was exposed. I didn't survive.

In hindsight I would have been better served to punch the MWD and try to get out of the bubble and warp, but I admit I panicked a little and tried to dock like a carebear bitch. I suck.

In further hindsight, I should not have undocked in hostile territory on a Sunday evening with no solid escape plan. I've been in high sec too long, instincts have gotten rusty and I've gotten cocky. Lesson learned.

Random Pics

Here we have a hulk getting repaired by some logistic drones while mining some ice a while back. Love the effects.

Here are some mining drones helping me out with a piece of dense Veldspar:

Close up of mining drone. Scary looking things.

My Tengu on its maiden voyage and shake down cruise:

A scam I saw when travelling once. Description says Charon, item is actually Carbon. And someone bid on it. DOH!

New Amarr Navy Armageddon

Well, Talinthi asked nicely for write ups on the other new faction battleships in the Navy Scorpion post and how can I resist a request like that? Let's jump right into the win sauce that is the Navy Armageddon.

Armageddon Navy Issue:

• Slot layout: 8 high, 4 med, 8 lows, 7 turrets, no launchers
• Fittings: 557 CPU, 17325 powergrid, 350 calibration, 3 rig slots
• Bonuses unchanged next to normal hull
• Hitpoints: +50% hit points on hull (9316), armor (9961) and shields (8203)
• Dronebay: +50m3 dronebay, bandwidth unchanged
• Sensor: +25% radar sensor strength

Sorry, couldn't type for a second there... I was wiping up the drool on my keyboard. I love the basic Armageddon, its a solid ship all round. This ship here has more CPU, more powergrid, vastly more hitpoints, improved sensor strength, utility drone space for a flight or two of smaller drones to take on smaller targets (GAH!), and an extra mid slot. This is pure win.

Its got the great DPS of the Armageddon with more hitpoints than an Abaddon (albeit less resistances). The flight of 5 HEAVY drones is complimented by mediums or two flights of lights, and it can do the holy trilogy of tackle (MWD, Web, Point) as well as a cap booster.

Dear god, this is how a navy vessel should be. A marked improvement over ALL tech 1 basic battleships in the Amarr lineup (whereas the Navy Scorp is argueably not better than the Raven or Rokh).

Mark my words, this ship will be in high demand from the get go. People will run missions and complexes in faction warfare with alts just to get these things to sell as they will go for many multiple of millions.

Next week we'll look at the Navy Typhoon and the Navy Dominix.

Still Moving

Due to real life pressures and the patch yesterday morning, the logistics went slowly. I did buy all the mods I needed for my new ships and spent a while figuring out what ships to put in the carrier for the eventual flight into 0.0:

- Armageddon Battleship, the Memories of Mynxee - Good for brawling or POS bashing.

- Onyx Heavy Interdictor, the Sticky - Bubble? Yes please.

- Falcon Recon, the Bracket - Cloak and ECM make for a decent scout and backup in HAC gangs.

- Raptor Interceptor, the Speedy - Another scout and good for moving around fast.

- Manticore Stealth Bomber, the Reloading... - Bombs are just plain fun.

- Basilisk Logistics, the Medic - For POS repping mostly, when its not safe for the carrier.

And if there is room:

- Myrmidon Battlecruiser, the Vexo Special - Cheap, high firepower, good for when you suspect you're not coming back in your pod.

Today's goal is to get the carrier packed up and ready and then get myself and Derranna the scout / cyno bitch into 0.0 to pave the way for the carrier.

New Caldari Navy Scorpion

The Navy ships are getting a rework in Dominion and some new naval ships are being released, specifically the Tier 1 battleships: Dominix, Scorpion, Typhoon, and Armageddon.

I want to take a close look at the new Naval Scorpion.

Scorpion Navy Issue:

• Slot layout: 7 high, 8 med, 4 low slots, 5 launchers, 4 turrets, 350 calibration, 3 rig slots
• Fittings: 787 CPU, 10350 powergrid, 350 calibration, 3 rig slots
• New bonuses: 5% bonus to cruise and siege launcher rate of fire and 5% shield resistances per level
• Hitpoints: +50% hit points on hull (8203), armor (8203) and shields (9961)
• Dronebay unchanged next to standard hull
• Speed: +10% max velocity
• Sensor: +25% gravimetric sensor strength, -50 signature radius next to standard hull

My thoughts:
1)  Its a split weapon system with bonuses to missiles, or a low DPS missile ship (i.e. one launcher less than Raven). Either way, it sucks. I HATE split weapon system ships, and 5 launchers on a naval ship seems too low. Especailly since...

2) Its not an ECM ship, so what the hell does it need 8 mids for? Take two of those mids and give it one more launcher hardpoint to make it DPS equivalent to a Raven.

3) It has a Rokh-like tank. Its got almost the same in the way of shield points and the 5% per level resistance bonus. Even with only 6 mid slots it would be able to match the Rokh's tank. I shudder to think of the tank it could do with 8 slots.

4) On the other hand, the extra mid slots could be useful for electronic warfare, just not ECM. Warp Disruptors, Webbers, Target Painters... you could tank like the Rokh and tackle. Interesting concept.

So, my conclusion is that the CNS as it shall be known will have piss poor DPS but tank like a son of a bitch and still have tackle gear, a potentially interesting combination but not the one I would prefer.

My ideal CNS would have 6 launcher points, 6 mid slots, 4 or 5 lows, and the rest as above. The missle DPS of a Raven with the tank of a Rokh.

(I would like to see DPS numbers from a CNS with a couple hybrid weapons with the five launchers, but I don't hold much hope for it.)

Could Eve Be Free-To-Play?

With the Dungeons and Dragons Online going to a Free-To-Play model with microtransactions and premium memberships as the method of making money, and with a lot of commentators saying that the traditional 15 dollar a month subscription is going to be obsolete in the future, I wonder how Eve could become a microtransaction based game.

I can see existing account services like character transfers and avatar changes remaining but they would be low money makers I suspect.

Perhaps some customization options like more character avatar upgrades or perhaps custom ship skins. Could the player community agree to some ships being available in a microtransation store?

Maybe allowing players to buy Loyalty Points in bulk. They can use the LPs to buy from the Loyalty Point Stores items not available to be built from blueprints and then turn around and sell them on the market for ISK to get whatever they want.

Do we allow certain ship classes to be available only through LP stores?

Perhaps once Incarna arrives (that is the new code name for Walking In Stations / Ambulation) there will be hordes more opportunities for a microtransaction store (although while typing this post I really became enamoured with selling Loyalty Points... seems like a good wedge point for the concept in the player base).

Comments? Discussion?

Black Ops Widow Secured

Last night as I was bringing all my crap together I kept checking the market of various regions for a good price on a Widow. I'm halfway through Astrometrics V for the Covert Jump Portal and with us going back to 0.0 I figured it was high time I get my ship.

Finally in Placid region I found two at a good price of 800 million and I scooped one up. Its in the process of getting back to base via the good ol' Orca.

The next step is getting my ships ready for transport to Wicked Creek. The Memories of Myxee Armageddon battleship is top on the list as its good for a lot of different tasks and requires less ammo leaving more room for cap charges and such that others may need. I'll probably take a Falcon for scouting, Stealth Bomber for fun, and an Onyx for bubble time. Hopefully get all that setup tonight so I can hit the weekend on the ground and running.

Back Into The Fire

So, I went camping.

Before camping I bought a bunch of ships all over hell's half acre.

Before camping our search for a 0.0 alliance to join was going nowhere with no indications of it improving.

I'm gone 4 days.

I come back, log into the forums, and WHAM! We're joining Tactical Narcotics Team alliance, we're moving out to Wicked Creek, and we're doing it ASAP!

So the past couple days has been travelling around picking up all my shit and getting it to base so I can figure out what I need to take and how to get it there.

I've got about half of it taken care of, hoping the other half can be dealt with tonight. As usual, I'll be late to the party. Sigh. Hopefully the party lasts longer this time than it did with IRC.

News The Second

The first details of the sovreignty changes have been annouced! Hat tip to CCP_Fallout over twitter.

Let's jump to the important things shall we? Here are snippets from the blog post:

Sovereignty will no longer be tied directly to starbases.
[...]
There are no sov ‘levels' anymore; you either have sovereignty or you do not.  The mechanic for claiming a star system will be much more simplified and symbolic.  You will plant your ‘flag' in the form of a new claiming module and it will sync up with the traditional ‘borders' of a star system, namely the stargates.
[...]
When Dominion is released, the answer is simple - if you want to control the space accessed by these stargates, you will be responsible for their monthly maintenance and upkeep.  The current design calls for this to be a simple ISK transaction, representative of things like duct tape for reactor maintenance, Amarrios breakfast cereal and other important stuff.
 [...]
Essentially, we are going to give you the tools to improve the space you hold.  There will be many ways you can do this, but they will all fall under one of three categories: Military, Economic and Industrial.
 [...]
The idea is that some areas of space are obviously considered of less worth than others and always have been.  This is going to change.  YOU are going to change it.  Through the investment of time, money and effort at all levels, an alliance will be able to directly affect the value of and develop the space they hold.  This will consist of things as simple as investing in improvements that allow your members to discover new riches in systems long thought barren and useless.  The resources were always ‘out there', hidden or out of sight, and now you will have the tools to access them.  Other developmental areas will concern the expansion and efficiency of your industrial base. 
[...]
The goal is to provide incentives for you and your allies to not have to spread out so much in order to provide reasonable rewards for your pilots.
 [...]
Without going into too much detail, Treaties will be a fully functional mechanic that formalizes many of the agreements already in game.  The plan is to give alliances the tools to ‘rent' out areas of their space to other alliances or corporations, create formal military treaties and establish diplomatic boundaries with regard to your alliance interests.

I swear CCP devs must read my blog! ;-)

A lot of the ideas I've had are shining through here, a case of great minds think alike. Stargates being important in sovereignty, making each system capable of supporting more pilot's income generating activities, more development opportunities in systems... its very good stuff.

For the first time I'm excited about the sov changes in Dominion. Let's get more details!

News The First:

Larkonis Trassler is caught trying to do insider trading based on information he recieved as part of the Council of Stellar Management and:

CCP, who is monitoring us closely, almost instantly discovered his actions and has banned his accounts.

Holy crap.

I can understand the allure of making the big buck based on moving quickly on information not widely known to the public. I can understand the temptation of having the opportunity placed in front of me and knowing its wrong but still wanting to do it. If there are billions to be made, it can be quite strong.

But I would like to think I would have the integrity to NOT do it. I guess I won't know until I am faced with the choice.

Larkonis, you reap what you sow. Hopefully you take that lesson with you going forward.

News Flash: News About Dominion

Huge hattip to Iambeastx for the link to this news post at IGN:

Along with that, they are rebalancing the power of ships, making adjustments so that no one type of ship will be heavily favored. It's always been thought that the outcome of a battle was more or less settled with the presence of a Titan capital ship, the largest ship in the game, as its doomsday weapon could potentially wipe out an entire fleet. However, in the expansion this weapon is being changed from an area-effect to a single-target one. On the other end of the spectrum, they are introducing fighter-bombers, small ships much like the current fighters but which can destroy capital ships. Also in the pipeline are so-called "speedboat missions" for smaller ships, as most of the existing PvE missions tend to focus on the larger battleships.

Whoa. Emphasis mine.

That is a HUGE change for Titans. I'd go so far to say it is a huge nerf. Doomsday weapons are a primary defense tool for cyno jammed systems at keeping enemy battleship fleets from jumping in. With it changed to a single target weapon the defensive ability is useless.

On the other hand, it the Doomsday is capable of one-shotting another capital ship, like say a Dreadnought, it might be a useful change for making Titans more offensive in nature.

Too much to think about. Along with the sov changes and new faction battleships (and faction ships overhaul!) the next expansion promises to be very interesting and exciting.

For more thoughts on the news, go to Ecliptic Rift.

Out of the Woods

After a long weekend out in the woods, I made it back alive with only a few bear gnaw marks on my leg.

Before I left, I did some shopping for new ships as I felt my hanger was getting a little low since losing the Nighthawk and the ships I had to leave behind in Etherium Reach. So I purchased the following:

Myrmidon: Nothing is better for low sec roams than battlecruisers, the toughness to survive sentry guns, firepower to kill lots of ships, and cheap for when you run into trouble. I've got a Drake and Ferox for two different roles (DPS and bait/tackler respectively) and the Myrmidon is going to fill a third role of heavy tackler and DPS.

Rook: Sometimes ops are designated as HAC roams and a good Recon is welcome in that gang. I have Falcons but for low sec its not ideal anymore. The Rook can carry a bit more tank and DPS while still providing some ECM. Mainly I just want to try it out.

Cerberus: DPS for HAC roams and a decent 0.0 ratter, I love my HAM Cerb.

Nighthawk: A replacement for the fallen Sleep Thru This command ship, I plan to set it up for Level IV and V mission work, maybe some complexes. It may not see a lot of action but I like to have it on hand.

Vulture: Purely for PvP, I'm not sure the best use case for it yet but I plan to give it a good ole college try.

Tengu: I'm still vacillating between several builds but I bought the hull and a couple sets of subsystems to get me going.

And next on the shopping list, I need modules for all the above ships as well as a new Widow Black Ops Battleship. That should drain the wallet. Anyone know of a good deal on a Widow? Contact me.

Clues

When was Empyrean Age expansion released? June 10th, 2008.

When was the Empyrean Age novel published? June, 2008.

* * * * *

When was Apocrypha expansion released? March 10th, 2009.

When was the latest Eve Retail box released? March 12th, 2009.

* * * * *

A new Eve novel is coming out called The Burning Life and according to Massively.com:

[I]t will focus on the game's pirate factions. Hjalti explains more about this in his most recent dev blog: "For quite some time I've been dying to put more focus on the pirates. They've been there with us all this time, like creepy nannies - watching over us when we mine, hanging out to greet us at the gates..." 

A new Eve expansion is coming out called Dominion and will focus on the Sovreignty overhaul as well as "includes the introduction of pirate epic arcs".

When is The Burning Life novel being published? According to Amazon.com, March 2nd, 2010.

When is the Dominion Expansion being released? They say Winter 2009. Maybe it will be pushed back to March 2010? Or will we see another expansion called The Burning Life on March 10th, 2010?

Curiouser and curiouser....

Epic? No. Good? Yes.

So I'm going through the Level 1 Epic mission arc with brand new character Korneilia and I have to say I'm impressed and disappointed, more the former than the latter.

Impressed:
- I like how the missions are challenging for my couple day old character without being impossible (like having Worlds Collide thrown at you upon just getting your first Frigate... I'm not bitter...)
- I really like how the missions form a narrative and lead you to be part of an unfolding story.
- I like how you get sent a few jumps to another agent to work for them in a different part of space, and how sub-plot points get developped in the overall story arc.
- I like how missions were varied into kill stuff, retrieve stuff with killing, retrieve stuff without killing, and dropping something off(!).
- I like the background blurbs in the mission descriptions explaining concepts like the origins of Serpentis Corporation or the tension between Gallente and Caldari
- I like the rate of rewards for a new character; having bought a Rifter, modules, several skill books, I still have over a million in the bank. When I started, a million was a far off dream for weeks.

Disappointed:
- The missions are still lacking a lot of variation in terms of mechanics. I've seen some improvements, but nothing that screams EPIC to me. I want missions to be adventures!

That being said, I'm not done yet. I'm not sure where I am in the overall arc, but it feels approaching mid-way.

Last night I had my toughest mission yet. I'd skilled up for armour plates and an afterburner so I was feeling like hot shit when the mission called for me to go kill some Serpentis priates. I warped into 3 little frigs and shot them up real good. Then a second spawn of five frigs showed up.

Wait.... is that... a Destroyer? Two Destroyers?! Crap!

The Destroyers went to town on my little Civilian Shield Boosting ship and I had to do the ol'warp out to repair and come back trick a few times, each time staying long enough to kill one more rat. Once the Destroyers were down, the next wave spawned with a bigger red cross... a cruiser!

Fortunately, the cruiser lacked the tracking to adequately get me and I swept away the enemy with authority.

Overall, enjoying this enough to know that the Level 4 mission arc is going to get a try in the coming weeks.

Eve Master Class - Caldari PvE Ships

A good friend emailed the other day and asked "whats another good PvE ship? Any recommendations that I should shoot for?"

I know he is a Caldari pilot and I'm a Caldari pilot and the topic is one I am very familiar with, so I figured a post on the subject would be called for.


There are several types of PvE in Eve:
- missions that require you to tank a lot of damage over a long period of time
- exploration complexes that vary in size and difficulty
- belt ratting that has less demands on tanking (usually)
- high sec NPC pirating (yes, its true! I've done it myself. The rewards suck though... hmmm, another blog post?).
- Sleepers

For the purposes of this post (i.e. keep it from becoming too long) I'm going to cover the experienced pilot's goals: Level 4 or 5 missioning, tough exploration encounters, Sleepers, and null sec belt ratting.

Drake Battlecruiser
The Drake is often the first bigger-than-cruiser ship Caldari pilots get into and it serves them well. With proper training the Drake can tank a lot of damage with little effort and its DPS is not too bad with its 7 heavy launchers. I've heard it can tank the DPS from some level 4 missions but I've not tried it.

The Drake's success lies in the fact that it can passive tank so much damage that you just sit there and let the enemy fire roll off you, and since it requires next to no capacitor you can take your time to thin the herds of enemies. And takes time it does; in order to have that super awesome passive tank, you pretty much have to abandon damage mods and accept the lower DPS.

In belt ratting the Drake performs adequately if slowly. Against Sleepers passive tanking is not ideal, but the eighth high slot can try and fit some sort of remote repping to work in the confines of a gang. Not an ideal solution.

Pros: Cheap, easy to train for, tanks very well for little capacitor.
Cons: Low DPS, sort of slow, can't handle large damage situations.
Good for: some level 4s / complexes, belt ratting

Cerberus Heavy Assault Cruiser
The Tech II Caracal is the smallest ship we will visit today. As befits a cruiser hull, it is fast and agile compared to the rest and has the ability to shoot very far with Heavy Missiles, or hit decently hard with Heavy Assault. It tanks very well due to its high base resistances  and can alleviate some incoming damage with a speed mod and small signature.

The "Cerb" is not the best choice for missioning but makes excellent work of belt rats and lower end Sleeper and exploration complexes. With heavy assault missiles and an afterburner it can rip through belts in 0.0 while still be agile enough for a quick warp out if local spikes. Downside is that its got the Tech II price tag and lack of good insurance.

Pros: Fast, agile.
Cons: DPS like the Drake, expensive with no insurance
Good for: belt ratting and low end complexes / sleepers

Raven Battleship
The ubiquitous Raven is the ultimate mission running ship. Relatively cheap and insurable, great DPS, solid tank... it defines the perfect ship for running lots of level four missions.

Equipped most often with cruise missiles and an active boosting shield tank, there are few level four missions that will force it to warp out before its done its assigned task. Its drone bay allows it flexibility in dealing with frigates or cruisers, and the long range of the cruise missiles ensures all rats are within range.

But the big Raven is not so ideal for other PvE scenarios. Exploration complexes are similar to level four missions for the most part, but Sleeper complexes can prove disasterous since most players prefer remote repping armour and not shield transporters. Belt rats pose no threat but the lumbering battleship might get caught by a quick enemy pilot interceptor.

Pros: Cheap and insurable, good DPS and tank.
Cons: Slow, lumbering, tank requires lots of cap
Good For: Solo running level 4 missions, exploration complexes

Raven Navy Issue
With an extra launcher and more hitpoints, there is no reason to not like the Caldari Navy Raven, aka CNR. Well, except the fact that it can only be gotten from the Loyalty Point Store and thus is very expensive with no covering insurance. Everything that applies to the Raven in terms of capabilities applies to the CNR only a bit more so.

Pros: Great DPS and tank
Cons: slow, lumbering, tank requires lots of cap, expensive with no good insurance
Good For: Solo running level 4 missions, exploration complexes

Rokh Battleship
The only non-missile ship on the list, I would be remiss in not including it as it is the ship I used to run level four missions for many months.

The Rokh is a tanking battleship getting bonuses to its shield resistances. As such, it boasts a better shield tank option than a Raven. In addition, when equipped with large Railguns it can use different ammo to reach incredible distances to smash even approaching Frigates instantly as their direct path can lower the transversal to near zero.

In belt ratting, the rail guns can be exchanged for short ranged but hard hitting blasters that make quick work of rats.

Furthermore, in Sleeper complexes the Rokh can make a decent armour buffer tank and fit a remote repper to work with pilots from other lineages. Not ideal, but it works.

The downside is the hybrids themselves are cap intensive putting even more pressure on your capacitor (along with shield boosting) and they are limited to Kinetic/Thermal damage types meaning some rats will take forever (Angels for example were always a pain, Serpentis soooo easy).

Pros: Great solid shield tanking, long range instant damage or high powered short range damage, can armour tank for Remote repping in a pinch. Insurable.
Cons: Single damage type, battleship-slow, small drone bay.
Good for: Solo running level 4 missions, exploration complexes

Nighthawk Command Ship
If you took the Cerberus and mashed it up with a Drake, what you might get would look a lot like a Nighthawk. Based on the old Ferox hull but bonused for missiles, it boasts Tech II resistances and six launcher hardpoints that can fit a passive shield tank superior to a Drake's.

A Nighthawk is perfectly capable of going through level four missions like a battleship, and belt ratting in a 'hawk is a joke. The downside to this ship is that its very expensive and not worth insuring, making the worry of taking it out of high sec to low sec or null sec an expensive proposition.

Pros: Good DPS, great passive tank, faster and more agile than battleships
Cons: Very very expensive and crap for insurance
Good For: Solo running level 4 missions, exploration complexes, belt ratting if you can afford it. Low to mid end Sleeper complexes.

Golem Marauder Battleship
The final word in mission running, the Marauder is a Tech II Raven that boasts the equivalent firepower of 8 launcher hardpoints while still having high slots for utility items like tractor beam and salvager. It also has a bonus to shield boosting and another for a target painter along with a low slot changed to mid slot to fit it without sacrifcing tank. It also has some improved resistances to add to its tanking abilities along with an improved cap recharge rate.

The idea is that the Golem can kill the NPCs while tractoring in the wrecks and Salvaging them on the spot into its large cargo bay. The target painter adds to its ability to take on smaller ships by making their signatures bigger. Any incoming damge is easily negated by the powerful active shield tank.

For all of this, it carries the heaviest of price tags, beating out the Navy Raven for base cost and having no worthy insurance options. It might be capable of handling belt rats, but would you want to risk the better part of 700 million ISK or more doing it?

Pros: Awesome shield tank, awesome DPS, ultility slots and cargo bay
Cons: Damn hell expensive, uninsurable, terrible at PvP due to low sensor strength
Good For: Solo running level 4 missions, exploration complexes. 

Rise of the Noob

In order to understand where I'm going with this, let's back up. Way back to when my main hobby was Warhammer 40K.

Back then (in the Dark Ages I like to call it) I was not just a participant of the hobby, I was a true hardcore fanboy. I ran a gaming club, internet forums, tournaments, the whole shebang and I loved it. I had multiple armies in multiple game systems (3 armies in 40K, two Battlefleet Gothic fleets, and an Epic army at my peak) and almost all the rulebooks.

It was expensive. Spending 100 dollars a month was the usual (models, paints, rulebooks) and a couple times of year I would "treat" myself with an extra purchase or two (like a $200 Hell Talon fighter bomber from Forgeworld).

Egads that seems all so insane now.

Eve is much cheaper. The rules updates are free, new models are free, the only thing I need is a good computer to run the program and a subscription that amounts to about $15/month. When I started back in 2006, I started with two accounts so I could experience the game more fully. After all, what was $30 a month to a guy used to spending three times that much?

The problem is I still get the urge to splurge once in a while and Eve does not provide a lot of opportunities to do that. I bought the Eve Map book and the Eve Box, but they didn't give me the visceral feel of spoiling myself that I'm accustomed to. (Somewhere a Free to Play MMO developer is trying to woo me...)

So this rambling tale is all to explain how last December I decided to spoil myself with a year subscription to a third account which I used to start training the ultimate miner. It was foolish in hindsight but I'm weak and my Eve-fu was lacking in the area of Hulks and Strip Miners. MUST EXPERIENCE MORE CONTENT!

So Grumhold was the result, a super miner and super refiner with the ability to pilot an Orca if need be. I used him in several mining operations and was very impressed at the rate of asteroid depletion he could cause.

But, alas, I decided it was not for me. The only way I could see really enjoying it was taking him into a corporation with other miners and doing massive operations on grand scales in the best ore fields you can imagine. But that would take away from my true love of PvP and that is unacceptable.

So Grumhold has been put aside and will be disposed of shortly. It was a good experiment and experience but time to move on.

I don't plan to renew the third account when it comes due in December but I still have months left to train a character. So now we actually come to the subject of the title: I created a new character called Korneilia who I am going to use to experience the Level 1 Epic Mission Arc. Once that is done, she will train for a frieghter and then either be sold or transfered to one of my main accounts.

The reason I'm trying out the Level 1 Epic Mission Arc is because I want to see how well its done and if it makes me interested in trying out the Level 4 arcs with Kirith. I've run a few of the missions last night already and my impressions of them so far will come in a later post this week.