Introduction to Cluster Politics by Dr J. Esckeel, PS
[page 174]
Chapter 7 - Stargates
Introduction
Civilian traffic of the cluster is absolutely dependent on the massive space borne structures we call stargates. They are essentially single purpose space stations designed to generate a wormhole connected to a single other stargate somewhere else in the cluster, and the power required to generate these wormholes at will at the appropriate location to allow transport to a star ship as large as a battleship or freighter is considerable. Some of the largest stargates have ranges that dwarf the best jump drives and generate enough power for a single wormhole to sustain and entire industrialized planet for a year.
Even military traffic is dependent upon the stargates for moving the cynosaural field generating ships that enable their jump-capable fleet to transverse the distances. Without stargates travel between solar systems would take months in warp ships for the closets neighbours or every system would have to maintain a cyno beacon and be dependent on massive jump drives in their ships, along with the costs associated with them.
Operation
While the engineering and science behind the operation of the stargate is very complicated and nearly impossible for a layman to comprehend, the operation itself is fairly straightforward. Stargates are paired which means that each stargate has a quantum lock on to a beacon of another stargate in another system. This lock allows the main wormhole generation computer AIs to coordinate instantaneously despite the vast distances. Since the quantum lock is based on physical components and synchronizing the AIs is very difficult, no stargate can easily establish multiple locks; the effort to decouple a stargate from one system and lock on to another is intensive and takes weeks. In the long term it is simply easier to maintain multiple stargates per system and travel between them.
When a ship wants to travel from one stargate to its pair, what happens is that the stargates simultaneously generate a vacuum energy fluctuation; the local stargate to the ship generates it around the vessel, while the distant stargate generates it on a spot at a safe distance, typically 15 km. The fluctuations at both points are calibrated to identical frequencies across many bands and, through obscure quantum mechanics, allow two space time inversion events to "link up" and create a temporary unidirectional wormhole that sucks the hull in and passes it through safely. The stargate "flash" seen after a transfer is the release of waste radiation energy collected from the inversion event and directed away from stargate personnel (i.e. it is not the particles of the ship in disassembled form and transported across the void; that is ludicrous).
CONCORD Stargates
In the four major nation states, the stargates are operated and maintained by personnel from the local government at their expense. Staff stationed on stargates are constantly rotated to prevent any possible local corruption, and stargates are never allowed to deny passage to any civilian vessel in good standing with CONCORD. These terms were negotiated and agreed to at the Yoiul Conference during the formation of CONCORD and were designed to prevent the free exchange of trade between the empires.
With the advent of the nationless capsuleer, this protection was extended. It is unknown at this time if the Jovians still follow the Yoiul protocols in their sovereign space since their withdrawal.
Stargate Clans
During the major expansions of the empires stargates were built to every possible system within reach of exploration fleets. But as we discussed in previous chapters the empires pulled back from their initial claims to the borders we are familiar with today. The renegade societies that were left behind in their wake formed their own empires and administered the lawless space as their own. The major factions are the Guristas, Serpentis Corporation, Sani Sabik cult, Angel Cartel, and more recently the Sanshas Nation. We will discuss these non-CONCORD signatories in a later chapter.
While these major and some other minor factions were forming, the abandoned stargates were mostly occupied1 by people unwilling to return who saw profit in continuing operating for the new space holders. Since the operation and maintenance of a stargate is not trivial the people living on stargates became at first a separate caste from the local populations and then evolved into unique insulated culture. Eventually clans of stargate populations formed and worked mostly in cooperation with each other.
As the renegade empires began to contend over resources during their expansion, stargate control became a very important part of securing space, and assaulting a stargate population to enforce compliance was a looming possibility.
In order to head off this threat of being used as pieces in territorial wars, the stargate clans unified and informed the empires that they were now neutral in all interactions and would provide access to any ship requesting it. And faction that did not agree to this neutrality would be denied stargate access anywhere in the lawless territories. After a few abortive tests of this resolve four of the factions agreed to the terms feeling that a level playing field was better than having no stargate access at all. The Sansha Nation never formally agreed to the terms but has abode by them in practice anyways.
Today all of the clan controlled stargates2 are visible on galactic maps and allow access to all renegade, CONCORD, empire, and capsuleer vessels.
1 - There are hundreds if not thousands of abandoned dysfunctional stargates throughout the cluster, and an unknown number of secret stargate pairs maintained by smugglers or the various military factions.
2 - This text book was published prior to the activation of the Drone region stargates which were found to be automated operation. The stargate clans equally divided the new stargates and colonized them despite the threat of the rogue drone inhabitants of the systems who seem to leave all stargate craft alone.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Deathstrike Missile
I love speculating and ruminating about game mechanics, and attempting to design new ones to overcome perceived problems. My idle speculations in my blog and podcast about a sub cap ship capable of threatening super capital ships has generated some interest and comments and disagreements in the Echo Chamber so I thought I would take a post to flesh out my idea.
Perceived Problem:
A super capital fleet in any normal reasonable situation cannot be countered by anything except another super capital fleet. This is mainly the cause of supercarriers and is due to huge effective hitpoint tanks, tactical flexibility due to jump drive, powerful DPS at all scales of combat due to drone capability, and special immunity to normal electronic warfare.
Possible Solution #1 - Enter Nerf Bat
A general nerfing of the supercarrier is required, including some combination of:
- lower hit points
- limits on fighter bomber targets
- less dps
- fewer non-fighter drones
- lower jump range
- less special ability
- make it harder to make hotdrops
- etc
Issues:
The balance point of finding how much nerf to apply while still allowing the ships to be useful and worth the 15-20 billion ISK price tag can be tricky. If you don't nerf them enough the same problems will exist (i.e. not afraid of a sub-cap fleet) while if you nerf them too much you have the situation with motherships where they are never used anymore, alienating a portion of your dedicated playerbase that has trained for them.
Conclusion:
Yes a nerf is needed, but I think alone it will not suffice unless you nerf the ship back to uselessness.
Possible Solution #2 - SUPER Doomsday!
It was proposed that increasing the doomsday weapon of Titans to make them capable of quickly eliminating supercarriers would be good counter. Sort of a collar on supercarriers being deployed willy-nilly with no fear of death.
Issues:
This does not address the problem of sub-cap fleets being able to have some method to counter a supercap fleet. This simply reinforces the problem that the only counter to a supercap fleet is another supercap fleet. It may make Titans more frontline worthy, but they don't exactly need a boost IMHO.
Conclusion:
Right now Titans feel about right, and I would be reluctant to change them for fear of the ripples.
Possible Solution #3 - Deathstrike Missile
Ever play Stratego?
The pieces are divided into levels and when two pieces clash, the higher level always wins (ties kill both). At the top level we have generals who are able to defeat everyone else except another general that they attack, but at the lowest level there is the spy. If a general attacks a spy, the spy dies but if the spy attacks the general, WHOOPS! There goes the enemy's most powerful piece.
So now we get to my proposal.
Here's the idea: stealth bombers are only effective in relatively few situations and only when flown by a skilled group of pilots. A single stealth bomber against a lone battleship is no contest and usually ends up in a dead bomber; however a fleet of stealth bombers properly flown can decimate a battleship fleet. Flown poorly and the bombers are still toast.
So let's take that dynamic and recreate it at a different scale. Let's say we have Tech II versions of the Tier III battleships (Rokh, Hyperion, Maelstrom, Abaddon) that could only fit a single weapon, call it the Deathstrike bomb launcher. These ships would cost in the 800 mil range, have Tech II resistances and bonuses to tanking but would lack any weapon hardpoints except for one launcher point for the bomb launcher. No cloaking bonus.
The Deathstrike bomb launcher would operate just like the current bomb launcher but can only fit Deathstrike bombs. These bombs are huge, 1000 m3 each, and only one fits in a launcher at a time. These bombs would be fired just like normal bombs: 10 second flight time at 1500 meters per second, straight line ahead (i.e. not targeted), explode. The difference would be that they have a 500 meter explosion radius(instead of 10,000 m) and do not do normal damage. Instead they do damage to shields, armour, and structure all at once equal to 20% of the capacity of shields, armour, and structure, ignoring resistances.
Why the new damage mechanic? Well, simply doing straight up damage would make them useful for any purpose like structure shooting or destroying normal carriers and battleships straight up. By making it proportional to the targets overall hitpoints it means that any fully repaired ship would require 5 hits to kill it, regardless of hull size.
In order to make pilots reserve these weapons for only the most high value targets, the bombs are about 250 mil worth of minerals each.
Consider the implications: here is a weapon that can destroy any ship with only 5-6 hits but is delivered at close range from a non cloaking ship that has to be perfectly aligned and at the right range. The explosion radius is so small that hitting anything but the largest targets or immobile ones is impractical and its cost is not worth using against anything but the largest targets anyways. The bomb size means the ship can't carry any reloads and has to be resupplied from a station, hauler, carrier, etc meaning that they can't easily wipe out fleets.
But a well coordinated small group of pilots in these ships, say 15 of them, could deliver a credible threat (albeit with considerable risk) to a small fleet (5-10) of supercaps that currently is not possible in the game. Combined with a decent regular sub cap fleet, and I think you have a decent balance.
On the defence side of the equation, protecting supercaps from these enemy ships would require a subcap fleet for support, providing a picket to prevent these deathstrike ships from getting into the right position for an attack run. Right now, a sizable supercap fleet has no overriding need for a support fleet.
Issues:
There is a large potential to either create a ship/weapon too hard to use or too expensive to use, thus wasting development resources. There are potential balance issues if the weapon is too useful against structures and stations. There would probably be a limit against using it in low sec like normal bombs so supercaps would continue to be overpowered in that sphere.
Conclusion:
I want there to be a rock-paper-scissors scenario in the sub-cap, capital, supercapital dynamic. I feel that adding a fleet element to sub-cap fleets capable of providing a credible threat to supercaps in skilled hands while still being a risk might go towards introducing that balance.
* * * * *
I'm sure CCP is working on a nerf for supercarriers. Its the easiest of the three approaches to implement and has a decent chance of success, or at least of negating some of the overpowering effects of supercap fleets. But I feel there is room in the game for a sub-capital ship whose role is supercapital killer. Time will tell.
Perceived Problem:
A super capital fleet in any normal reasonable situation cannot be countered by anything except another super capital fleet. This is mainly the cause of supercarriers and is due to huge effective hitpoint tanks, tactical flexibility due to jump drive, powerful DPS at all scales of combat due to drone capability, and special immunity to normal electronic warfare.
Possible Solution #1 - Enter Nerf Bat
A general nerfing of the supercarrier is required, including some combination of:
- lower hit points
- limits on fighter bomber targets
- less dps
- fewer non-fighter drones
- lower jump range
- less special ability
- make it harder to make hotdrops
- etc
Issues:
The balance point of finding how much nerf to apply while still allowing the ships to be useful and worth the 15-20 billion ISK price tag can be tricky. If you don't nerf them enough the same problems will exist (i.e. not afraid of a sub-cap fleet) while if you nerf them too much you have the situation with motherships where they are never used anymore, alienating a portion of your dedicated playerbase that has trained for them.
Conclusion:
Yes a nerf is needed, but I think alone it will not suffice unless you nerf the ship back to uselessness.
Possible Solution #2 - SUPER Doomsday!
It was proposed that increasing the doomsday weapon of Titans to make them capable of quickly eliminating supercarriers would be good counter. Sort of a collar on supercarriers being deployed willy-nilly with no fear of death.
Issues:
This does not address the problem of sub-cap fleets being able to have some method to counter a supercap fleet. This simply reinforces the problem that the only counter to a supercap fleet is another supercap fleet. It may make Titans more frontline worthy, but they don't exactly need a boost IMHO.
Conclusion:
Right now Titans feel about right, and I would be reluctant to change them for fear of the ripples.
Possible Solution #3 - Deathstrike Missile
Ever play Stratego?
The pieces are divided into levels and when two pieces clash, the higher level always wins (ties kill both). At the top level we have generals who are able to defeat everyone else except another general that they attack, but at the lowest level there is the spy. If a general attacks a spy, the spy dies but if the spy attacks the general, WHOOPS! There goes the enemy's most powerful piece.
So now we get to my proposal.
Here's the idea: stealth bombers are only effective in relatively few situations and only when flown by a skilled group of pilots. A single stealth bomber against a lone battleship is no contest and usually ends up in a dead bomber; however a fleet of stealth bombers properly flown can decimate a battleship fleet. Flown poorly and the bombers are still toast.
So let's take that dynamic and recreate it at a different scale. Let's say we have Tech II versions of the Tier III battleships (Rokh, Hyperion, Maelstrom, Abaddon) that could only fit a single weapon, call it the Deathstrike bomb launcher. These ships would cost in the 800 mil range, have Tech II resistances and bonuses to tanking but would lack any weapon hardpoints except for one launcher point for the bomb launcher. No cloaking bonus.
The Deathstrike bomb launcher would operate just like the current bomb launcher but can only fit Deathstrike bombs. These bombs are huge, 1000 m3 each, and only one fits in a launcher at a time. These bombs would be fired just like normal bombs: 10 second flight time at 1500 meters per second, straight line ahead (i.e. not targeted), explode. The difference would be that they have a 500 meter explosion radius(instead of 10,000 m) and do not do normal damage. Instead they do damage to shields, armour, and structure all at once equal to 20% of the capacity of shields, armour, and structure, ignoring resistances.
Why the new damage mechanic? Well, simply doing straight up damage would make them useful for any purpose like structure shooting or destroying normal carriers and battleships straight up. By making it proportional to the targets overall hitpoints it means that any fully repaired ship would require 5 hits to kill it, regardless of hull size.
In order to make pilots reserve these weapons for only the most high value targets, the bombs are about 250 mil worth of minerals each.
Consider the implications: here is a weapon that can destroy any ship with only 5-6 hits but is delivered at close range from a non cloaking ship that has to be perfectly aligned and at the right range. The explosion radius is so small that hitting anything but the largest targets or immobile ones is impractical and its cost is not worth using against anything but the largest targets anyways. The bomb size means the ship can't carry any reloads and has to be resupplied from a station, hauler, carrier, etc meaning that they can't easily wipe out fleets.
But a well coordinated small group of pilots in these ships, say 15 of them, could deliver a credible threat (albeit with considerable risk) to a small fleet (5-10) of supercaps that currently is not possible in the game. Combined with a decent regular sub cap fleet, and I think you have a decent balance.
On the defence side of the equation, protecting supercaps from these enemy ships would require a subcap fleet for support, providing a picket to prevent these deathstrike ships from getting into the right position for an attack run. Right now, a sizable supercap fleet has no overriding need for a support fleet.
Issues:
There is a large potential to either create a ship/weapon too hard to use or too expensive to use, thus wasting development resources. There are potential balance issues if the weapon is too useful against structures and stations. There would probably be a limit against using it in low sec like normal bombs so supercaps would continue to be overpowered in that sphere.
Conclusion:
I want there to be a rock-paper-scissors scenario in the sub-cap, capital, supercapital dynamic. I feel that adding a fleet element to sub-cap fleets capable of providing a credible threat to supercaps in skilled hands while still being a risk might go towards introducing that balance.
* * * * *
I'm sure CCP is working on a nerf for supercarriers. Its the easiest of the three approaches to implement and has a decent chance of success, or at least of negating some of the overpowering effects of supercap fleets. But I feel there is room in the game for a sub-capital ship whose role is supercapital killer. Time will tell.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Fail Fail Fail
Let's check my killboard progress for April, shall we?
Kirith - 0 kills, 0 losses
Kla'strit - 0 kills, 1 loss
*groan*
Its not like I have not been trying. Every week I get one good PvP night where I log in for a straight 2-3 hour stretch and shoot things. In about four nights over a month I usually manage to pick up enough killmails to reach the goal of 10 per month. Its not great but its the best I can do while the kids are small and someday I hope to add a second night of pvping.
But April was just no luck for me. I used my first night of the month to do some ship movement since there was no op up and tried to catch some neuts but had no luck and worked on my sec status a bit. The second night I flew my Chimera in a station repping op that was hot dropped by PL (I docked safely), last week I took Kla'strit out in a fleet and got killed without any retribution, and last night I was in Pure Blind leading a gate camp and then a short roam looking for hostiles and there simply was nothing to shoot.
Gah.
Part of the problem is that I deployed to the East with the idea that I would be using the supercarrier to kill structures and such so I have only my capitals and one clone over there, so since the cap fleet has been held back in April I've been left out hanging trying to get Kla'strit in some action but he has only to two ships, Rapier and Maelstrom.
Oh well, into every life some rain must fall. Here's to a better May.
Kirith - 0 kills, 0 losses
Kla'strit - 0 kills, 1 loss
*groan*
Its not like I have not been trying. Every week I get one good PvP night where I log in for a straight 2-3 hour stretch and shoot things. In about four nights over a month I usually manage to pick up enough killmails to reach the goal of 10 per month. Its not great but its the best I can do while the kids are small and someday I hope to add a second night of pvping.
But April was just no luck for me. I used my first night of the month to do some ship movement since there was no op up and tried to catch some neuts but had no luck and worked on my sec status a bit. The second night I flew my Chimera in a station repping op that was hot dropped by PL (I docked safely), last week I took Kla'strit out in a fleet and got killed without any retribution, and last night I was in Pure Blind leading a gate camp and then a short roam looking for hostiles and there simply was nothing to shoot.
Gah.
Part of the problem is that I deployed to the East with the idea that I would be using the supercarrier to kill structures and such so I have only my capitals and one clone over there, so since the cap fleet has been held back in April I've been left out hanging trying to get Kla'strit in some action but he has only to two ships, Rapier and Maelstrom.
Oh well, into every life some rain must fall. Here's to a better May.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Metablogging Tips
I have transitioned in my real life job from Senior Database guy to User Experience guy and I'm learning a lot about making a good interface for users in the process. One of the links sent around our agile team today has a lot of relevant points for us hobby bloggers as well. Its called "10 Usability Tips Based On Research Studies" and I want to highlight a couple of them.
Your blog posts should be easy to skim, to the point, and be constructed instead of spewed. Unless that is what you are going for. Couple that point with...
4. Make Your Content Easily Readable
Internet users don’t really read content online, at least according to a study by Dr. Nielsen on reading behaviors of people on his website. His analysis shows that people only read 28% of the text on a web page and decreased the more text there is on the page.
Source: Alertbox
To increase the likelihood of your readers getting the most out of your content, utilize techniques for making content easier to read. Highlight keywords, use headings, write short paragraphs, and utilize lists.
TL;DR - Walls 'o Text are not conducive to comprehension. So use whitespace, highlight important points, use headings, images, etc, get to the point and your readership base will appreciate it.7. Whitespace of Text Affects Readability
Easy readability of text improves comprehension and reading speed as well as enhancing the likelihood that a user will continue reading instead of abandoning the web page. There are many factors that influence ease of readability, including font choices (serif versus sans-serif), font-size, line-height, background/foreground contrast, as well as spacing.
A study on readability tested reading performance of 20 participants by presenting them with the same text blocks having different margins surrounding the text as well as varying line-heights (the distance between lines of text). It showed that text with no margins was read faster, however, reading comprehension decreased. Faster reading speeds when the text had no margins can be explained by the text and paragraphs being closer together, resulting in less time needed to move the eyes from line to line and paragraph to paragraph.
Source: Software Usability Research Laboratory
As this particular study shows, the way we design our content can greatly impact the user’s experience. Be wary of the details: color, line-heights, tracking, and so forth and be mindful of sound typography principles for the web to ensure that you’re not discouraging your users from reading your content. Furthermore, study the effective use of negative space in web design.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Artifacts of Inflation
It has been an interesting half year watching PvP fleet combat evolve in null sec from Drake Army fleets that banked on huge hit point buffer, guaranteed long range damage, and a bit of lag.
First we started to see Maelstrom shield alpha fleets that eliminated enemy targets with overwhelming first salvos. However the greatest weakness of the battleships is ships with small signatures and large transversal to make them hard to track, so afterburner-fitted armour-tanked HACs (aka AHACs) became the answer to the Maelstrom threat, a fleet which performed poorly against, you guessed it, Drakes.
But all is not static in PvP tactics and theorycrafting. Quickly pilots discovered that an Abaddon with Mega Pulse Laser IIs sported a huge armour tank and lots of tracking and DPS to rip up both Drakes and AHACs while still having decent range. They were christened Hellcats and their main weakness was enemy fleets at long range like Maelstroms, and the fact that they needed Tech II Large Pulse lasers to work properly (whereas Maelstroms work pretty good with Tech I mods).
Yet the battlefield continues to evolve. Hellcats are pretty good, but are still battleships with the agility of a lame horse and on top of that they are passive armour tanked making them very heavy beasts indeed. So recently Pandemic Legionintroduced unleashed upon the unsuspecting universe a ship they call the Thundercat: Strategic Cruiser Tengus supported by Scimitar Logistics. I'll let Ripard Teg give the details but essentially it is like a smaller and more agile Drake with as much or more DPS and more effective hitpoints. Oh, and significantly more expensive but someone like Pandemic Legion can afford the tech III ships and deadspace modules. The downside of this fleet type is affording it and replacing them when they go down as insurance for the advanced ships is not like Tech I hulls.
Of course, all of these fleet types must bow down to the almighty Supercarrier fleet supported by Titans. This past weekend a battle in Venal was held and, well, I'll let Parasoja tell you:
First we started to see Maelstrom shield alpha fleets that eliminated enemy targets with overwhelming first salvos. However the greatest weakness of the battleships is ships with small signatures and large transversal to make them hard to track, so afterburner-fitted armour-tanked HACs (aka AHACs) became the answer to the Maelstrom threat, a fleet which performed poorly against, you guessed it, Drakes.
But all is not static in PvP tactics and theorycrafting. Quickly pilots discovered that an Abaddon with Mega Pulse Laser IIs sported a huge armour tank and lots of tracking and DPS to rip up both Drakes and AHACs while still having decent range. They were christened Hellcats and their main weakness was enemy fleets at long range like Maelstroms, and the fact that they needed Tech II Large Pulse lasers to work properly (whereas Maelstroms work pretty good with Tech I mods).
Yet the battlefield continues to evolve. Hellcats are pretty good, but are still battleships with the agility of a lame horse and on top of that they are passive armour tanked making them very heavy beasts indeed. So recently Pandemic Legion
Of course, all of these fleet types must bow down to the almighty Supercarrier fleet supported by Titans. This past weekend a battle in Venal was held and, well, I'll let Parasoja tell you:
Yesterday a station came out of reinforced in venal. We formed up about 700 guys and got in system first. When the station came out, hostiles jumped in 154 supercapitals.We can't compete with that, not even close.Something needs to be done to give sub-cap fleets to ability to at least threaten super-cap fleets. Its time for the Deathstrike missile.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Admit When You Could Be Wrong
I stated before that a massive sov war against the Northern Coalition of Alliances was doomed to failure due to the unifying and rallying effect that an existential military threat creates. In essence, minor differences of opinion and disagreements fall to the wayside in order to band together and face the enemy shoulder to shoulder, the large size and resources of the NC providing the firepower and numbers to eventually push back any gains the enemy had made. In my defense, I had Maximum Damage and Max 2 campaigns as well as Pandemic Legions last stay in Venal to reference in the forming of my hypothesis.
However, the Geminate war has continued unabated and now with Pandemic Legion and DRF opening up new offensives into Vale of the Silent, coupled with assistance from NCDot and Ev0ke in Pure Blind to distract and weaken guest alliances such as FCON, things are looking decidedly less rosy. While I have no special insight into the mindset of alliance FCs and leadership, its not hard to look at the attitudes of people left and right of me and facing constant CTAs for what feels like months to know that morale is low and the enemy is eager to put us to the sword.
Pandemic Legion alone is causing untold mountains of grief in US timezone ops with their considerable supercap assets and willingness to commit them to battle, not to mention the Tengu/Scimitar fleets of doom. (Side note: anyone else thrilled at the number of types of fleets these days seen around town? AHACs, Mael shield fleets, Abaddon armour fleets, arty Abaddons, Drake fleets, and now Tengu fleets? Crazy!) There is a definite uneasiness in the rank and file that perhaps the fuel of the war machine was spent in Geminate in the winter and now there is not enough to withstand the renewed onslaught.
I maybe I was wrong. Maybe a well executed sov war over a long period of time will bring the NC crashing down. I think we are pretty far yet from the fail cascade point, but its hard to tell and examples like IT alliance show that sudden implosions can happen anytime.
Of course, there are many scenarios where the impending doom cloud is lifted:
- the Against ALL Authorities offensive against White Noise in the south may distract the DRF from following up recent gains,
- a successful defeat or two of Pandemic Legion including crushing some of their supercaps might drain their enthusiasm for the fight,
- the Deklein Coalition having grown bored on getting rich with no serious sov threats may come wholesale into the conflict and swing the pendulum once more to the NC side.
On the other hand, lots of things may occur to hasten the end of the NC:
- Triple AAA and friends may have no impact,
- PL kills another sizable NC supercap fleet,
- the Deklein Coalition decides to reset NC and attacks in the west.
May you live in interesting times indeed.
However, the Geminate war has continued unabated and now with Pandemic Legion and DRF opening up new offensives into Vale of the Silent, coupled with assistance from NCDot and Ev0ke in Pure Blind to distract and weaken guest alliances such as FCON, things are looking decidedly less rosy. While I have no special insight into the mindset of alliance FCs and leadership, its not hard to look at the attitudes of people left and right of me and facing constant CTAs for what feels like months to know that morale is low and the enemy is eager to put us to the sword.
Pandemic Legion alone is causing untold mountains of grief in US timezone ops with their considerable supercap assets and willingness to commit them to battle, not to mention the Tengu/Scimitar fleets of doom. (Side note: anyone else thrilled at the number of types of fleets these days seen around town? AHACs, Mael shield fleets, Abaddon armour fleets, arty Abaddons, Drake fleets, and now Tengu fleets? Crazy!) There is a definite uneasiness in the rank and file that perhaps the fuel of the war machine was spent in Geminate in the winter and now there is not enough to withstand the renewed onslaught.
I maybe I was wrong. Maybe a well executed sov war over a long period of time will bring the NC crashing down. I think we are pretty far yet from the fail cascade point, but its hard to tell and examples like IT alliance show that sudden implosions can happen anytime.
Of course, there are many scenarios where the impending doom cloud is lifted:
- the Against ALL Authorities offensive against White Noise in the south may distract the DRF from following up recent gains,
- a successful defeat or two of Pandemic Legion including crushing some of their supercaps might drain their enthusiasm for the fight,
- the Deklein Coalition having grown bored on getting rich with no serious sov threats may come wholesale into the conflict and swing the pendulum once more to the NC side.
On the other hand, lots of things may occur to hasten the end of the NC:
- Triple AAA and friends may have no impact,
- PL kills another sizable NC supercap fleet,
- the Deklein Coalition decides to reset NC and attacks in the west.
May you live in interesting times indeed.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Death of a Cynosman
Last night I logged in with anticipation of the big counter-offensive I heard about through the grapevine. The Wyvern was already boarded and fueled and ready to go. I eagerly checked for fleets and saw... no cap fleets. *sad face*
Instead there was an armour HAC fleet and a Hellcat battleship fleet. The resurgence of armour fleets has caught me off guard as Kla'strit had only a Maelstrom and Rapier in hanger and while Kirith had a few more ships available, including an Ishtar that might have sufficed in the HAC fleet I did not have a good PvP clone available and I was loathe to risk the very expensive implants in my capital pilot clone. Sad part is Kirith would be awesome in a Hellcat as he has all the skills.
Sigh.
I made a node to get my extra clone out of Teshkat sometime in the next week and logged in Kla'strit. I figured a Rapier would be decent as support tackle with long range webs in any case and better than running a mission or ratting or something nonconstructive for the war effort.
I joined up with the fleet just as it titan bridged to 04-LQM in Geminate and we attacked the SBUs there to protect the system. I shot at both SBUs but apparently not enough at the first one because I'm only on one killmail. Sigh. I spent a chunk of time with the support fleet guarding the gates as well and we almost caught a Pilgrim.
After that takedown we moved towards a 60 man Pandemic Legion Tengu fleet. We setup on one side of a gate and they were 60 km off the other side with an interdictor waiting for us. The FC choose to jump in because we had good range and firepower and matched well with our foes (plus 2:1 odds helped).
We were bubbled on the other side and I burned towards the edge but was quickly primaried and just as I got to the edge of the bubble I died. Should have burned back to gate as soon as I was lit up to be honest. I got my pod out and made it back the 8 or so jumps to base. As for my fleet, we killed a number of Tengus and took some losses before PL called in the super capitals. I don't know if it counts as a victory overall, I'm trying to get the battle on a neutral site like Eve Kill right now...Hmmm, doesn't look good but where did all those Maelstroms come from? I wonder if its combining two battles.
Anyways, overall I got to see some action so its not a complete loss.
Instead there was an armour HAC fleet and a Hellcat battleship fleet. The resurgence of armour fleets has caught me off guard as Kla'strit had only a Maelstrom and Rapier in hanger and while Kirith had a few more ships available, including an Ishtar that might have sufficed in the HAC fleet I did not have a good PvP clone available and I was loathe to risk the very expensive implants in my capital pilot clone. Sad part is Kirith would be awesome in a Hellcat as he has all the skills.
Sigh.
I made a node to get my extra clone out of Teshkat sometime in the next week and logged in Kla'strit. I figured a Rapier would be decent as support tackle with long range webs in any case and better than running a mission or ratting or something nonconstructive for the war effort.
I joined up with the fleet just as it titan bridged to 04-LQM in Geminate and we attacked the SBUs there to protect the system. I shot at both SBUs but apparently not enough at the first one because I'm only on one killmail. Sigh. I spent a chunk of time with the support fleet guarding the gates as well and we almost caught a Pilgrim.
After that takedown we moved towards a 60 man Pandemic Legion Tengu fleet. We setup on one side of a gate and they were 60 km off the other side with an interdictor waiting for us. The FC choose to jump in because we had good range and firepower and matched well with our foes (plus 2:1 odds helped).
We were bubbled on the other side and I burned towards the edge but was quickly primaried and just as I got to the edge of the bubble I died. Should have burned back to gate as soon as I was lit up to be honest. I got my pod out and made it back the 8 or so jumps to base. As for my fleet, we killed a number of Tengus and took some losses before PL called in the super capitals. I don't know if it counts as a victory overall, I'm trying to get the battle on a neutral site like Eve Kill right now...Hmmm, doesn't look good but where did all those Maelstroms come from? I wonder if its combining two battles.
Anyways, overall I got to see some action so its not a complete loss.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Managing The Minions
Life in the wormhole for my Planetary Overlord alt is a lot slower than usual due to less free time then ever, but when I can the Robotics and Coolant production has continued.
Ever since I moved my lava and plasma colonies to spots closer to the high concentrations of resources, everything has gone perfect on those lines and the processed materials have been moved to the manufacturing planet at a constant stream.
However, my coolant production lines hit a bottleneck. My gas giant producing water ran into severe resource depletion and I had to move the master extractor farther and farther to get more water. However, this crimps production because the upgraded link required more and more power and CPU as a result. I considered picking up the moving the whole colony like I did for the lava and plasma planets but the water resources were thin all over. It was like a straw sucking up the last bit of your drink.
So I checked the other planets in the system, looking for larger deposits of sweet sweet H2O. It was dry except for one planet with massive supplies of water. Unfortunately it was my temperate manufacturing planet which I picked for the nice view and scenic coastlines.
So I tore down my advanced factories for the coolant production and one of the launch pads supporting them and put in an extractor for water instead with five extractor heads. Yeah baby, there's the juice. I moved my coolant production to the ex-water extracting gas giant and we'll see how things go over the next couple weeks.
Ever since I moved my lava and plasma colonies to spots closer to the high concentrations of resources, everything has gone perfect on those lines and the processed materials have been moved to the manufacturing planet at a constant stream.
However, my coolant production lines hit a bottleneck. My gas giant producing water ran into severe resource depletion and I had to move the master extractor farther and farther to get more water. However, this crimps production because the upgraded link required more and more power and CPU as a result. I considered picking up the moving the whole colony like I did for the lava and plasma planets but the water resources were thin all over. It was like a straw sucking up the last bit of your drink.
So I checked the other planets in the system, looking for larger deposits of sweet sweet H2O. It was dry except for one planet with massive supplies of water. Unfortunately it was my temperate manufacturing planet which I picked for the nice view and scenic coastlines.
So I tore down my advanced factories for the coolant production and one of the launch pads supporting them and put in an extractor for water instead with five extractor heads. Yeah baby, there's the juice. I moved my coolant production to the ex-water extracting gas giant and we'll see how things go over the next couple weeks.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Division of Concerns
I spend a lot of time thinking about super carriers and the effect that they have on the current state of the game. That they need to be balanced is obvious, the question is merely how. Simply cut back on fighter bomber DPS? Limit their ability to attack structures? Lower jump range as I've proposed in the past? Fewer hitpoints? New mechanics for spooling up jump drives? Something else?
I'm sure the devs at CCP are reviewing ideas and will come up with something sooner or later (although my faith that they will come up with the right solution has diminished a lot since the sanctum nerf) but today I want to do some simple blue sky re-imagining of the carrier and super carrier classes (as I feel you can't address one without addressing the other).
The Problem
The problem is that carriers and supercarriers do everything.They are Jacks of All Trades.
DPS? Fighters and Fighter Bombers, or hordes of smaller drones! Repair? We get armour/shield/energy transfer bonuses! Fast flexible attack? Hotdrop on a cyno on an enemy gang! Moving assembled ships? Ship maintenance bay! Need to make in space module changes? Ship maintenance array! Need to move modules or fuel? Corporate hangers! Need some leadership bonuses? We can fit warfare link mods!
While it might be realistic that a large ship can do so many functions, it leads to difficulty balancing the ship for a specific role. Or on the other hand, it artificially increases the cost of the hull, which leads designers to increase its main role to be worth that much ISK, but overbalances it to overpowered. Case in point: super carriers.
The Solution
The carrier and supercarrier classes get divided up into 5 classes of ships.
Supply Ship : Ship Maintenance Array / Bay at 1.5 million m3, Corporate Hanger at 20,000 m3. Carrier jump range and hitpoints, small drone bay.
Estimated 500 mil build cost
Logistics Platform: Bonuses to Shield/Armour reppers and energy transfers, can use triage. Carrier jump range and hitpoints, small drone bay.
Estimated 750 mil build cost
Carrier: Can use fighters and fighter bombers, get one additional fighters/fighter-bombers per level (but not drones!). Carrier jump range and hitpoints, large drone bay, bonus to local tank.
Estimated 1 bil build cost
Command Carrier: Can use multiple warfare links with bonus to racial version like fleet command ships. Gets two additional drone per level. Carrier jump range and slightly more hitpoints, large drone bay, bonus to local tank.
Estimated 1.5 bil build cost
Super Carrier: Can use fighters and fighter bombers, get two (not three!) additional fighters/fighter-bombers per level, can use projected ECM. Original super carrier range, decrease in hitpoints from supercarrier.
Estimated 5 bil build cost
Combine these changes with an increase to dreadnought jump range to match carriers and you now have a valid reason to choose dreadnoughts over the lighter super carrier. Sure the SC can produce more DPS (albeit roughly 75% of what it used to be able to do) it is not as survivable as it used to be nor as flexible as the dreadnought.
By giving the Carrier access to fighter bombers, it has roughly the DPS of a sieged dread while having more flexibility (the fighters/fighter bombers follow target through warp). The Command Carriers don't have damage but provide light support drones and leadership bonuses.
Conclusion
Yes, this represents a significant nerf to current super carriers and I'm OK with that. By dividing up the concerns of the current classes into specialist roles the ships are easier to balance and can costed appropriately for their abilities.
Will this ever happen? I doubt it because it represents a lot of development work and sadly major overhauls of existing classes has seem to become a taboo subject in development land in CCP. However, one can only hope that something is done to bring the capital ships inline with each other and with sub-capital ships before it is too late.
I'm sure the devs at CCP are reviewing ideas and will come up with something sooner or later (although my faith that they will come up with the right solution has diminished a lot since the sanctum nerf) but today I want to do some simple blue sky re-imagining of the carrier and super carrier classes (as I feel you can't address one without addressing the other).
The Problem
The problem is that carriers and supercarriers do everything.They are Jacks of All Trades.
 | |
| Got a need? Get A Carrier! |
While it might be realistic that a large ship can do so many functions, it leads to difficulty balancing the ship for a specific role. Or on the other hand, it artificially increases the cost of the hull, which leads designers to increase its main role to be worth that much ISK, but overbalances it to overpowered. Case in point: super carriers.
The Solution
The carrier and supercarrier classes get divided up into 5 classes of ships.
 |
| Do One Thing Really Well |
Supply Ship : Ship Maintenance Array / Bay at 1.5 million m3, Corporate Hanger at 20,000 m3. Carrier jump range and hitpoints, small drone bay.
Estimated 500 mil build cost
Logistics Platform: Bonuses to Shield/Armour reppers and energy transfers, can use triage. Carrier jump range and hitpoints, small drone bay.
Estimated 750 mil build cost
Carrier: Can use fighters and fighter bombers, get one additional fighters/fighter-bombers per level (but not drones!). Carrier jump range and hitpoints, large drone bay, bonus to local tank.
Estimated 1 bil build cost
Command Carrier: Can use multiple warfare links with bonus to racial version like fleet command ships. Gets two additional drone per level. Carrier jump range and slightly more hitpoints, large drone bay, bonus to local tank.
Estimated 1.5 bil build cost
Super Carrier: Can use fighters and fighter bombers, get two (not three!) additional fighters/fighter-bombers per level, can use projected ECM. Original super carrier range, decrease in hitpoints from supercarrier.
Estimated 5 bil build cost
Combine these changes with an increase to dreadnought jump range to match carriers and you now have a valid reason to choose dreadnoughts over the lighter super carrier. Sure the SC can produce more DPS (albeit roughly 75% of what it used to be able to do) it is not as survivable as it used to be nor as flexible as the dreadnought.
By giving the Carrier access to fighter bombers, it has roughly the DPS of a sieged dread while having more flexibility (the fighters/fighter bombers follow target through warp). The Command Carriers don't have damage but provide light support drones and leadership bonuses.
Conclusion
Yes, this represents a significant nerf to current super carriers and I'm OK with that. By dividing up the concerns of the current classes into specialist roles the ships are easier to balance and can costed appropriately for their abilities.
Will this ever happen? I doubt it because it represents a lot of development work and sadly major overhauls of existing classes has seem to become a taboo subject in development land in CCP. However, one can only hope that something is done to bring the capital ships inline with each other and with sub-capital ships before it is too late.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Fiction Friday - Interlude: Time Dilation
The Effects of Sub-Space Distortions on Local Space-Time Continuum
By Professor R. Bradlei, Dept of Astrophysics, University of New Caldari
Chapter 13 - Time Dilation
The effects of relativistic speeds on local frames of reference is well documented and something every first year physics student learn: a spaceship traveling close to the speed of light has time move slower for those on board than it does for observers such that a crew that travels in a circle for a year will arrive back to find many years have passed at their originating point. This is referred to as Time Dilation.
However, with the advent of instant communication across the vast distances of space via the Fluid Router, observations of time discrepancies began to occur. At first it was attributed to poor measurements or perhaps unexpected side effects of the quantum entanglement wave form collapse decoding algorithms but subsequent diagnostics and theory testing proved them to be sound. Indeed, the scientists agreed, time was running faster or slower in different solar systems for no apparent reason, even after correcting for gravitation and planetary/solar orbital velocities.
It took many decades, failed hypotheses, and experiments before a young analyst of the Imperial Navy named Karl Ionaler correlated the observed occurrences of time dilation with naval action reports and noticed an unexpected trend: the larger and more active the Imperial Naval force was, the more pronounced the effect of the time dilation. The Imperial Navy get this insight top secret information for several years while their scientists and experts confirmed and reconfirmed the finding and sought methods to use the information to their strategic advantage. The secret finally came out when Ionaler passed on copies of the research to the Minmatar underground. He was subsquently arrested, tried, and executed for treason but his contribution to science will forever be remembered.
With the greater scientific community alerted to the research results, progress began in earnest to discover the cause of the observations.
Sub-Space
Originally Time Dilation was thought only to occur in moving frames of reference and in the presence of gravity. As it turns out there is a third factor to consider and it is the sub-space frame of reference, or more accurately the flux of the sub-space frame of reference. Further research showed that gravitational effects of time dilation are a special case of the sub-space flux and the most significant in nature, but in most nomenclature they are referred to as separate factors.
The Ionaler research indicated that man-made starships and acceleration gates also contributed to time dilation and the reason that subsequent researchers sussed out was due to the jump drives used in those devices. The process of creating the depleted vacuum bubble for faster than light travel contributes significantly to the sub-space flux and thus contributing fractionally to the time dilation. The effect is so slight for a single warp core drive that it is almost unmeasurable (although a team from University of Caille and Center of Advanced Studies devised an experiment last year that has made progress; reference paper R129433-T) and even several thousand drives operating at the same time would cause less than approximately one sec lost per month time dilation. However, when the distances between operating jump drives closes the effects of the drives on the sub-space flux increases at an exponential rate of 0.01344 (which is referred to as the Ionaler constant). Thus when you have approximately a hundred jump drives in operation within one hundred kilometers of each other, the time dilation factor can increase to one second lost every 20 seconds; one thousand jump drives leads to one second lost for every second.
The number of variables in accurately measuring sub-space flux makes accurately determining current time dilation nearly impossible; it is much easier to use FTL communications to a non-affected frame of reference to measure the dilation. Also contributing to the complexity of the calculations are the effects of high energy weaponry, sub-space anchoring structures, and cynosaural fields which all increase sub-space flux and interact with each other for peaks and valleys in the waveforms of the flux.
By Professor R. Bradlei, Dept of Astrophysics, University of New Caldari
Chapter 13 - Time Dilation
The effects of relativistic speeds on local frames of reference is well documented and something every first year physics student learn: a spaceship traveling close to the speed of light has time move slower for those on board than it does for observers such that a crew that travels in a circle for a year will arrive back to find many years have passed at their originating point. This is referred to as Time Dilation.
However, with the advent of instant communication across the vast distances of space via the Fluid Router, observations of time discrepancies began to occur. At first it was attributed to poor measurements or perhaps unexpected side effects of the quantum entanglement wave form collapse decoding algorithms but subsequent diagnostics and theory testing proved them to be sound. Indeed, the scientists agreed, time was running faster or slower in different solar systems for no apparent reason, even after correcting for gravitation and planetary/solar orbital velocities.
It took many decades, failed hypotheses, and experiments before a young analyst of the Imperial Navy named Karl Ionaler correlated the observed occurrences of time dilation with naval action reports and noticed an unexpected trend: the larger and more active the Imperial Naval force was, the more pronounced the effect of the time dilation. The Imperial Navy get this insight top secret information for several years while their scientists and experts confirmed and reconfirmed the finding and sought methods to use the information to their strategic advantage. The secret finally came out when Ionaler passed on copies of the research to the Minmatar underground. He was subsquently arrested, tried, and executed for treason but his contribution to science will forever be remembered.
With the greater scientific community alerted to the research results, progress began in earnest to discover the cause of the observations.
Sub-Space
Originally Time Dilation was thought only to occur in moving frames of reference and in the presence of gravity. As it turns out there is a third factor to consider and it is the sub-space frame of reference, or more accurately the flux of the sub-space frame of reference. Further research showed that gravitational effects of time dilation are a special case of the sub-space flux and the most significant in nature, but in most nomenclature they are referred to as separate factors.
The Ionaler research indicated that man-made starships and acceleration gates also contributed to time dilation and the reason that subsequent researchers sussed out was due to the jump drives used in those devices. The process of creating the depleted vacuum bubble for faster than light travel contributes significantly to the sub-space flux and thus contributing fractionally to the time dilation. The effect is so slight for a single warp core drive that it is almost unmeasurable (although a team from University of Caille and Center of Advanced Studies devised an experiment last year that has made progress; reference paper R129433-T) and even several thousand drives operating at the same time would cause less than approximately one sec lost per month time dilation. However, when the distances between operating jump drives closes the effects of the drives on the sub-space flux increases at an exponential rate of 0.01344 (which is referred to as the Ionaler constant). Thus when you have approximately a hundred jump drives in operation within one hundred kilometers of each other, the time dilation factor can increase to one second lost every 20 seconds; one thousand jump drives leads to one second lost for every second.
The number of variables in accurately measuring sub-space flux makes accurately determining current time dilation nearly impossible; it is much easier to use FTL communications to a non-affected frame of reference to measure the dilation. Also contributing to the complexity of the calculations are the effects of high energy weaponry, sub-space anchoring structures, and cynosaural fields which all increase sub-space flux and interact with each other for peaks and valleys in the waveforms of the flux.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
OOG: Life With Twins
In the #tweetfleet SincFerguson mentioned he was at the hospital with his wife and his twins may be on the way. We had some back and forth about how he had no idea what was coming and I felt inspired to write this post. It is only referentially associated with Eve so go ahead and leave if horror stories are not your cup of tea.
College guys gone? Ok, on with the show.
Since many twins are delivered by c-section instead of naturally due to possible complications with birth order, etc, you will probably spend four to five days in the hospital. If these are your first kids, you will go from bumbling pretender to accomplished dad pretty quick because your wife will most likely be laid up with a gash the size of your forearm on her belly held closed by FUCKING HUGE STAPLES! Taking them out on day four, by the way, involved wicked looking pliers. But I digress.
Since your wife cannot get out of bed you will quickly learn from the nurses how to change the diapers, swaddle the baby, hold it correctly, bathe it, all the shit that dad's of singletons don't need to learn so fast. You are on an accelerated training program, pilot, SO PAY ATTENTION! Within 48 hours you are flopping those babies from hand to hand like you have been doing it for years, swaddling like a pro.
However, you will start to get very, very tired. Exhausted even. Those babies need to eat every four hours and the nurses in the hospitals are militarized in their precision for waking you up and making sure you get moving. Now singleton dads have it a little easy: maybe the nurse or your recovering wife gets up and changes the baby and your wife breastfeeds the new bundle of joy while you snooze in the chair/cot. You, on the other hand, now have the new title of Baby Fluffer: you wake up and change one baby, hand it to mom to eat, and then comfort and change the other now hungry baby, then pass it off to mom to eat as you take the filled baby back, burp it, talk to it if it want's to visit for a bit, and then put it back to sleep, put it back in the bassinet, and then get ready for the second twin to burp and put back to sleep. You're not parents, you are a full fledged assembly line.
By the time you leave the hospital, the routine is pretty much imprinted into your brain and you begin to believe you can handle this. You poor deluded fool. The first month is easy, albeit exhausting. Sleep deprivation is your worst enemy but if you are fortunate family members and friends offer help so you can grab sleep, check internetz, generally feel human. Your poor wife, if she is breastfeeding, is lucky to get time to put her shirt back on. Best bet is to learn how to dual feed both twins at the same time or else she will be a constant milk bar. But let's assume it works out, OK? You can hope.
Anyways, eventually the family and friends come around less often, you go back to work (at least physically sense long term sleep deprivation turns you into a living zombie for all intents and purposes) and life begins to take its toll. House work slowly falls behind and it begins to become a struggle to keep the basics going like dishes and laundry. Free time becomes a mythological creature. Parent's of a singleton can swap each other out sometimes to give the partner a break; twins are often swapping each other out to make sure both parents are constantly busy. Its two versus two but you are OUTNUMBERED.
And then they start teething. Dear god, how did we survive those months?! First one twin started and he needed constant attention and comfort because "GODDAMIT DAD MY GUMS FUCKING HURT!" and the other twin learns the joys of lying on the floor for long periods of time. Then the fucking white enamel pokes through and you think "whew" when another tooth starts erupting and you go through the process again OR the other twin discovers his teeth hate him too. We were fortunate; we didn't have colic.
Now, you can use some pediatric pain meds to offset some of the pain but really, you can't dope up your kids for the months it takes for all those teeth to work their way through. You have to suffer through it. Our mantra was "This too shall pass" and its true.
After three months we gave up breastfeeding because we just didn't have enough milk. It was heartbreaking to watch my wife slowly devolve into a ball of misery as the twins got hungrier and she never had enough to fill them and she got seriously chapped and agony and constantly in the chair feeding and eating for her often meant at the same time as the twins were feeding, but it had to be done. As soon as we switched to formula things got a hell of a lot easier all round: babies sleep longer as formula is harder to digest and takes longer, I could swap out feedings in the night (she took the 1-2 am feeding, I took the 4-5 am one, so we both upped our continuous sleep period and the kids ate less often.
Slowly, sanity returned. Teething passed, night time feedings became farther separated, the necessary regimentation of the day got the twins into a routine that allowed us to actually make it through the day. At about 7 or 8 months they started sleeping from 10pm to 6am and life became great again. Its amazing what a regular 7 hours of sleep can do for you. By the time we got to their first birthday we were on cruise control and laughing because having two one year olds discovering the world at the same time is hilarious!
Then we accidentally got pregnant with their little brother. That's a story for another day.
College guys gone? Ok, on with the show.
Since many twins are delivered by c-section instead of naturally due to possible complications with birth order, etc, you will probably spend four to five days in the hospital. If these are your first kids, you will go from bumbling pretender to accomplished dad pretty quick because your wife will most likely be laid up with a gash the size of your forearm on her belly held closed by FUCKING HUGE STAPLES! Taking them out on day four, by the way, involved wicked looking pliers. But I digress.
Since your wife cannot get out of bed you will quickly learn from the nurses how to change the diapers, swaddle the baby, hold it correctly, bathe it, all the shit that dad's of singletons don't need to learn so fast. You are on an accelerated training program, pilot, SO PAY ATTENTION! Within 48 hours you are flopping those babies from hand to hand like you have been doing it for years, swaddling like a pro.
However, you will start to get very, very tired. Exhausted even. Those babies need to eat every four hours and the nurses in the hospitals are militarized in their precision for waking you up and making sure you get moving. Now singleton dads have it a little easy: maybe the nurse or your recovering wife gets up and changes the baby and your wife breastfeeds the new bundle of joy while you snooze in the chair/cot. You, on the other hand, now have the new title of Baby Fluffer: you wake up and change one baby, hand it to mom to eat, and then comfort and change the other now hungry baby, then pass it off to mom to eat as you take the filled baby back, burp it, talk to it if it want's to visit for a bit, and then put it back to sleep, put it back in the bassinet, and then get ready for the second twin to burp and put back to sleep. You're not parents, you are a full fledged assembly line.
By the time you leave the hospital, the routine is pretty much imprinted into your brain and you begin to believe you can handle this. You poor deluded fool. The first month is easy, albeit exhausting. Sleep deprivation is your worst enemy but if you are fortunate family members and friends offer help so you can grab sleep, check internetz, generally feel human. Your poor wife, if she is breastfeeding, is lucky to get time to put her shirt back on. Best bet is to learn how to dual feed both twins at the same time or else she will be a constant milk bar. But let's assume it works out, OK? You can hope.
Anyways, eventually the family and friends come around less often, you go back to work (at least physically sense long term sleep deprivation turns you into a living zombie for all intents and purposes) and life begins to take its toll. House work slowly falls behind and it begins to become a struggle to keep the basics going like dishes and laundry. Free time becomes a mythological creature. Parent's of a singleton can swap each other out sometimes to give the partner a break; twins are often swapping each other out to make sure both parents are constantly busy. Its two versus two but you are OUTNUMBERED.
And then they start teething. Dear god, how did we survive those months?! First one twin started and he needed constant attention and comfort because "GODDAMIT DAD MY GUMS FUCKING HURT!" and the other twin learns the joys of lying on the floor for long periods of time. Then the fucking white enamel pokes through and you think "whew" when another tooth starts erupting and you go through the process again OR the other twin discovers his teeth hate him too. We were fortunate; we didn't have colic.
Now, you can use some pediatric pain meds to offset some of the pain but really, you can't dope up your kids for the months it takes for all those teeth to work their way through. You have to suffer through it. Our mantra was "This too shall pass" and its true.
After three months we gave up breastfeeding because we just didn't have enough milk. It was heartbreaking to watch my wife slowly devolve into a ball of misery as the twins got hungrier and she never had enough to fill them and she got seriously chapped and agony and constantly in the chair feeding and eating for her often meant at the same time as the twins were feeding, but it had to be done. As soon as we switched to formula things got a hell of a lot easier all round: babies sleep longer as formula is harder to digest and takes longer, I could swap out feedings in the night (she took the 1-2 am feeding, I took the 4-5 am one, so we both upped our continuous sleep period and the kids ate less often.
Slowly, sanity returned. Teething passed, night time feedings became farther separated, the necessary regimentation of the day got the twins into a routine that allowed us to actually make it through the day. At about 7 or 8 months they started sleeping from 10pm to 6am and life became great again. Its amazing what a regular 7 hours of sleep can do for you. By the time we got to their first birthday we were on cruise control and laughing because having two one year olds discovering the world at the same time is hilarious!
Then we accidentally got pregnant with their little brother. That's a story for another day.
Promotion!
If you are interested in writing for the Trib or have any questions, you can contact me through the email EditorInChief.EveTribune[at]gmail.com. We are currently looking for writers and we pay decent ISK for your work.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Message from E-ON Magazine
Since the release of that free PDF edition, we’ve been inundated with requests for a printed version, a physical product you can hold, pick up and refer to either AFK or while playing the game. We’ve listened, and we’ve responded.
So here it is; ISK Volume 1 as a physical product is now available to pre-order. This monumental near 400 page wiro-bound volume covers everything there is to know about EVE – whether you’re on a 14-day trail account or you’re an experienced long-termer. As a special offer for the early birds among you, there’s even a $5 discount for all pre-orders; in order to receive the discount you MUST apply the code ISK305. If you don’t see the discount being applied immediately, check again before completing your order.
The pre-order period (and therefore the $5 discount) lasts until April 14th. Click here and we’ll take you right along to the Store…
GTFO
Are we in the opening stages of a MAX 3 campaign?
Consider that that Drone Region Forces are pushing hard in Geminate and now Vale of the Silent region, NCDot and Evoke are harassing Pure Blind and Fade regions, and Pandemic Legion is back in the north pushing hard all over and making a play for F-D49D system in Vale (rumoured to be there at behest of DRF and 600 billion ISK).
Its not hard to view this as a full scale invasion and threat to the coalition. The evemails have gone out and forces are being mustered and deployed. RAZOR's vacation down in Curse has been terminated and they are returning to the north to assist in the defence. Its on, the summer should be interesting.
I've argued in the past that any large existential and external threat to the NC will fail as it only causes members to work harder, close ranks, and put aside differences for the common defence. It remains to be seen if my prediction holds out but this I only view this new onslaught as a good thing for now.
* * * * *
In other news, I got my Chimera out of besieged F-D this morning without incident and both it and the Wyvern are safe from the immediate front lines.
Consider that that Drone Region Forces are pushing hard in Geminate and now Vale of the Silent region, NCDot and Evoke are harassing Pure Blind and Fade regions, and Pandemic Legion is back in the north pushing hard all over and making a play for F-D49D system in Vale (rumoured to be there at behest of DRF and 600 billion ISK).
Its not hard to view this as a full scale invasion and threat to the coalition. The evemails have gone out and forces are being mustered and deployed. RAZOR's vacation down in Curse has been terminated and they are returning to the north to assist in the defence. Its on, the summer should be interesting.
I've argued in the past that any large existential and external threat to the NC will fail as it only causes members to work harder, close ranks, and put aside differences for the common defence. It remains to be seen if my prediction holds out but this I only view this new onslaught as a good thing for now.
* * * * *
In other news, I got my Chimera out of besieged F-D this morning without incident and both it and the Wyvern are safe from the immediate front lines.
Monday, April 11, 2011
The "Am I Dead?" Moment
I logged on last night and found things quiet for the moment, but these things can change in a flash so I decided to play the patience game and wait before committing a jump clone and getting stuck on the opposite side of the action.
I was in my Tengu from last week so I worked on the sec status a little bit by *gasp* belt ratting. Almost got fooled by the Dire Gurisitas again thinking they were Dread Gurisitas; I killed them extra hard in revenge.
Then I was faced with three things going on all at once:
- Incursion nearby in Fade with info that The Mittani was there; always fun to be on grid with celebrity;
- A Fade-Pure Blind roam was announced; and
- An op in Vale of the Silent calling for Shield and Armour battleships (and associated support) as well as Triage carriers to attempt to repair a station in F-D49D.
My desire to work for the common good overrode any personal interest in celeb stalking and killboard padding so I clone jumped to Vale, jumped in the good old Ninveah, equipped my first ever Triage module and an extra capital shield transporter, bought some Strontium, and joined fleet. Word was that Pandemic Legion was going to tussle so the nervous meter ratcheted up a notch or two.
"Oh well," I thought, "Its only a chimera."
We jumped into system and landed on the station, orders to enter triage mode given. I got the "can't enter triage as there is not enough fuel" message and cursed as I realized I put the stront in the corporate hangers and not the fuel bay or cargo hold. Twenty or thirty seconds later of fumbling in the dark and I finally got it to where it needed to be and entered triage. I had visions of dying as the rest of the fleet docked in the station while I waited out the last few seconds of my late starting triage cycle, but oh well.
Just over halfway through the cycle, Pandemic Legion arrived in a sizable fleet of Armour HACs and the fight was on. Unfortunately for the good guys (that's us) our alpha strikes were not sufficient to break through their remote repping and local tanks and we started to lose sub-cap ships. The support fleet was given the order to break off and carriers to dock up. I checked my triage cycle and to my eternal relief saw it was done so I quickly followed orders and entered the station.
With PL supers on the field and controlling the system, and my jump clone timer screwed for another 23 hours, I got comfortable and chatted with people and set up the interview with a channel member for the podcast.
I was in my Tengu from last week so I worked on the sec status a little bit by *gasp* belt ratting. Almost got fooled by the Dire Gurisitas again thinking they were Dread Gurisitas; I killed them extra hard in revenge.
Then I was faced with three things going on all at once:
- Incursion nearby in Fade with info that The Mittani was there; always fun to be on grid with celebrity;
- A Fade-Pure Blind roam was announced; and
- An op in Vale of the Silent calling for Shield and Armour battleships (and associated support) as well as Triage carriers to attempt to repair a station in F-D49D.
My desire to work for the common good overrode any personal interest in celeb stalking and killboard padding so I clone jumped to Vale, jumped in the good old Ninveah, equipped my first ever Triage module and an extra capital shield transporter, bought some Strontium, and joined fleet. Word was that Pandemic Legion was going to tussle so the nervous meter ratcheted up a notch or two.
"Oh well," I thought, "Its only a chimera."
We jumped into system and landed on the station, orders to enter triage mode given. I got the "can't enter triage as there is not enough fuel" message and cursed as I realized I put the stront in the corporate hangers and not the fuel bay or cargo hold. Twenty or thirty seconds later of fumbling in the dark and I finally got it to where it needed to be and entered triage. I had visions of dying as the rest of the fleet docked in the station while I waited out the last few seconds of my late starting triage cycle, but oh well.
Just over halfway through the cycle, Pandemic Legion arrived in a sizable fleet of Armour HACs and the fight was on. Unfortunately for the good guys (that's us) our alpha strikes were not sufficient to break through their remote repping and local tanks and we started to lose sub-cap ships. The support fleet was given the order to break off and carriers to dock up. I checked my triage cycle and to my eternal relief saw it was done so I quickly followed orders and entered the station.
With PL supers on the field and controlling the system, and my jump clone timer screwed for another 23 hours, I got comfortable and chatted with people and set up the interview with a channel member for the podcast.
Friday, April 08, 2011
Missing: One Angus
He's been stolen by the miscreants of Eve Commune! They are holding him for ransom to fund their secret operations!
...
Finally the bad Canadian jokes on Fly Reckless might abate.
Ratting Carriers Are Bad, m'kay?
A discussion started up last night in which a member questioned why the alliance and our corp has prohibition on ratting/plexing in a carrier. After all, the reasoning goes, carriers will cost roughly the same order of magnitude as a Golem or Tengu, work just as well or better, and if lost give a better insurance payout.
Win-win, right?
Well, not quite. There are several reasons why we do not like people ratting in carriers.
First off, survivability: a sub capital ship has better agility and warp speed and thus has a better chance to roaming hostiles. Secondly, the gain in ratting performance is minimal over a tech 1 battleship.
Thirdly, capital kills look worse to your allies and better to your enemies, giving a morale boost to the roamers who were just hoping to catch anything. This is more likely to bring them around again and again, making ratting harder for everyone. Plus, they can hold it up in public and point to why your corp/alliance is bad and deserves to die. No one cares if a Raven goes down, and not much is said about a caught Tengu (unless its ridiculously fitted with super expensive mods).
Lastly, and most importantly, carriers are strategic assets. Their size and jump capability makes them far more useful to your corp and alliance and coalition than any ratting ship. They are used for logistics, repair ops, capital fights, structure reinforcements, hot drops... you get the point. No fleet is ever going to call for your Golem or Tengu, but they will ask for carriers and if you lost yours last night due to stupidity in a belt, you let your corp and alliance down.
* * * * *
As part of the discussion, my live event BMTHOKK last January where I piloted a Chimera to its doom on purpose was referenced as an example as to why a pilot should be allowed to rat in a carrier. I responded that it was "the difference between streaking and getting caught with your pants down" but I want to elaborate a bit more here.
It was a carrier purchased for the purpose of destruction in the event (the Ninveah was secured in Placid already), and no hostile force can claim a morale boost for killing it. It was, in fact, great publicity for myself and my corp and generated a lot of goodwill with the larger community, well worth the billion ISK plus I invested in it.
I'm going to do it again this summer, and I'm hoping its going to be bigger and crazier than last time. If my corp or alliance told me I could not do it, I would be very surprised but would ask for a short leave of absence in order to complete it anyways. My death will not be stopped.
Win-win, right?
Well, not quite. There are several reasons why we do not like people ratting in carriers.
First off, survivability: a sub capital ship has better agility and warp speed and thus has a better chance to roaming hostiles. Secondly, the gain in ratting performance is minimal over a tech 1 battleship.
Thirdly, capital kills look worse to your allies and better to your enemies, giving a morale boost to the roamers who were just hoping to catch anything. This is more likely to bring them around again and again, making ratting harder for everyone. Plus, they can hold it up in public and point to why your corp/alliance is bad and deserves to die. No one cares if a Raven goes down, and not much is said about a caught Tengu (unless its ridiculously fitted with super expensive mods).
Lastly, and most importantly, carriers are strategic assets. Their size and jump capability makes them far more useful to your corp and alliance and coalition than any ratting ship. They are used for logistics, repair ops, capital fights, structure reinforcements, hot drops... you get the point. No fleet is ever going to call for your Golem or Tengu, but they will ask for carriers and if you lost yours last night due to stupidity in a belt, you let your corp and alliance down.
* * * * *
As part of the discussion, my live event BMTHOKK last January where I piloted a Chimera to its doom on purpose was referenced as an example as to why a pilot should be allowed to rat in a carrier. I responded that it was "the difference between streaking and getting caught with your pants down" but I want to elaborate a bit more here.
It was a carrier purchased for the purpose of destruction in the event (the Ninveah was secured in Placid already), and no hostile force can claim a morale boost for killing it. It was, in fact, great publicity for myself and my corp and generated a lot of goodwill with the larger community, well worth the billion ISK plus I invested in it.
I'm going to do it again this summer, and I'm hoping its going to be bigger and crazier than last time. If my corp or alliance told me I could not do it, I would be very surprised but would ask for a short leave of absence in order to complete it anyways. My death will not be stopped.
Thursday, April 07, 2011
The Great Skill Hardening of 2011
I've trained up a lot of characters and one thing I've noticed is that at some point you need to go back and train up skills you should have higher but got distracted from before you finishing training them. Its hard to stay the course for some tier 5+ skills to get them to IV or V, but the benefits are so significant that you really should go back and do them... right after X, Y, and Z.
Well, once I completed the Amarr Cruiser V skill and got access to the Zealot, Guardian, Absolution, and Damnation (amoungst others) I figured it was time to be a responsible supercapital pilot and go back and take care of some skills I only trained to IV.
Like Jump Drive Calibration: you can function nicely in a carrier with JDC IV but the shorter range of the dreadnought and supercarrier kind of merit the 39 days or so to get that last level in the skill. I've been working on the skill and will be finished in just over 12 days. High fives!
After that, I'm going to queue up Fighter Bombers V which is a 49 day skill. *groan* But it gives a 20% (!) increase in damage which is like adding four additional Fighter Bombers to my flight of 20. In other words, it takes my estimated DPS from 7200 to 8000.
Then there is Capital Ships skill which I am going to get to IV with 8 days of training. It will give a 5% bonus to agility for all three caps I can fly so worth the effort. Then Marauders IV; I don't rat very often and I use a Tengu when I do, but it feels wrong to leave it at III.
On my supercarrier alt Selia I'm also filling in back skills and levels, getting her up to a Tech II shield tank with capital shield booster, improvements to energy skills and engineering skills, navigation, etc. Ideally some day she will be able to use the Wyvern in a combat situation herself but that is a long way off as she lacks any drone skills and does not have the fancy implants or anything.
Finally, Korannon got to the Tech II transport ships and Orca but lacked a lot of basic module skills as well. So he is in the throes of backfilling too, working on engineering and navigation skills with Energy Management V currently in the queue with 10.5 days left.
There may be no new shinies coming to me any time soon but I haven't had any chance to play with Tech II Amarr ships yet so I'm not worried about that.
Well, once I completed the Amarr Cruiser V skill and got access to the Zealot, Guardian, Absolution, and Damnation (amoungst others) I figured it was time to be a responsible supercapital pilot and go back and take care of some skills I only trained to IV.
Like Jump Drive Calibration: you can function nicely in a carrier with JDC IV but the shorter range of the dreadnought and supercarrier kind of merit the 39 days or so to get that last level in the skill. I've been working on the skill and will be finished in just over 12 days. High fives!
After that, I'm going to queue up Fighter Bombers V which is a 49 day skill. *groan* But it gives a 20% (!) increase in damage which is like adding four additional Fighter Bombers to my flight of 20. In other words, it takes my estimated DPS from 7200 to 8000.
Then there is Capital Ships skill which I am going to get to IV with 8 days of training. It will give a 5% bonus to agility for all three caps I can fly so worth the effort. Then Marauders IV; I don't rat very often and I use a Tengu when I do, but it feels wrong to leave it at III.
On my supercarrier alt Selia I'm also filling in back skills and levels, getting her up to a Tech II shield tank with capital shield booster, improvements to energy skills and engineering skills, navigation, etc. Ideally some day she will be able to use the Wyvern in a combat situation herself but that is a long way off as she lacks any drone skills and does not have the fancy implants or anything.
Finally, Korannon got to the Tech II transport ships and Orca but lacked a lot of basic module skills as well. So he is in the throes of backfilling too, working on engineering and navigation skills with Energy Management V currently in the queue with 10.5 days left.
There may be no new shinies coming to me any time soon but I haven't had any chance to play with Tech II Amarr ships yet so I'm not worried about that.
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
The Mittani
The Eve Report got an interview with the infamous The Mittani. It was all good stuff, no surprises, but I had to stop and do a double-take at this passage here:
First off, let's acknowledge what is right in this statement. If we assume a ratio of 3.6 accounts to actual human beings, that is still 100,000 people playing Eve. According to Eveblogger.com 's list, there are 587 eve blogs and maybe a few more not on there to make it an even 600. How many on twitter not a blogger? Say another 200. And another 1200 people who are readers of blogs but not bloggers themselves (and that is a generous number in my opinion) and we'll use 2000 people who blog/read blogs and/or use twitter. That's approximately 2% of my estimated number of Eve players.
So yes, we are a niche of the game's population, if by niche you mean tiny minuscule fraction of the people logging in every day. I think we are growing as a niche (reference new blogs started by Seleene and Ripard Teg) and will be more influential as time goes on with the ear of CCP in a unique fashion, but that is another blog post for another day. I'm also ignoring the podcast listener which is a larger group due to the ease of listening to podcasts while doing other things.
So, we covered what Mittens got right. Everything else is wrong.
The "community" referenced by the Eve Report interviewer is conveniently defined by the questioner to a group he feels he can brush off easily, but any other definition of the Eve community includes podcasts, forums, in game channels, news sites, and radio stations as well as blogs and twitter. That "community" encases a significant amount of the eve population that is not so easily dismissed. This is called "changing the question".
Next, he calls the blogs and twitter an "echo chamber". Of course, should he spend any real time reading blogs and twitter he would quickly realize the diverse nature of the community represented leads to many disagreements and discussions that do not meet resolution, either about the nature of a ship fitting, the power of a particular class, or the effects of a large coalition or mechanics change. We are not some uniform blob praising the attributes of CSM5 in relgious fervor. However, its easier to dismiss any dissenting opinion of the "community" if we're treated like sock puppets of a few.
If there is any echo chamber to watch out for, its CSM6 with its "working towards unified front" and made up of all null sec residents.
Finally we come to the most egregious statement: "eve bloggers don’t seem to have much to do with nullsec". Well, without looking at my subscribed feeds I can name ten blogs/blog authors that are written by either current or former null sec residents:
Orakkus - 2nd Anom From the Left
Noise - Phoenix Diaries
Mansai - A Mule In Eve
Letrange - Letrange's Eve Blog
PK - Aggressive Tendencies
Easley Thames - Easley Thames
Parasoja - Eve FAIL Posting
Hallen Turrek - A Merry Life And a Short One
Rixx Javix - Evoganda
The Mittani - Sins of a Solar Spymaster (call it a column if you want - its regular, about whatever you want, and on the web; in other words, a blog)
That's just off the top of my head. I think, in fact, if you went through and divided the 600 eve blogs by where their author currently lives, you would find the ratios would match to the population distribution of Eve players pretty closely. Just a hunch.
However, its much easier to dismiss bloggers if you lump them up as low sec pirates or high sec carebears who don't know how the real game works in null sec.
* * * * *
To be fair, I'm not convinced this was a calculated attempt to brush off all opinion of bloggers and twitter users. I suspect its a case of confirmation bias in such that he looks at the "community" and its average opinion and sees that it disagrees with his version of reality, thus he subconsciously dismisses them due to reasons he stated and any evidence that supports his opinion gets noticed and any that disproves it gets disregarded. This is a common occurrence in politics, religion, science, hell everywhere. Of course, one has to be careful about delving the motivations of anyone as good at the metagame as Mittens is.
As for CSM6, I think he is going to be an excellent chair and that the council as a whole will accomplish much in their term. I am worried that CCP might turtle up if they go in to gangbusters, but I'm optimistic that a null sec leader with accolades and accomplishments such as the head of Goonswarm can boast will know when its time for diplomacy and when its time for slapping heads.
6.) Many community members have said that the strong 0.0 message of the elected CSM members, including yourself, is bad for the future of EVE. How do you respond to such accusations?Wow, how much wrong can you fit into one answer?
Two things. First, the ‘community’ in the context of sites like Eve Report means ‘the eve blog community and #tweetfleet’, which is a niche of the game’s population with an unfortunate tendency to assume that their echo chamber actually represents /everyone/, rather than people who blog about a space game – and eve bloggers don’t seem to have much to do with nullsec.
First off, let's acknowledge what is right in this statement. If we assume a ratio of 3.6 accounts to actual human beings, that is still 100,000 people playing Eve. According to Eveblogger.com 's list, there are 587 eve blogs and maybe a few more not on there to make it an even 600. How many on twitter not a blogger? Say another 200. And another 1200 people who are readers of blogs but not bloggers themselves (and that is a generous number in my opinion) and we'll use 2000 people who blog/read blogs and/or use twitter. That's approximately 2% of my estimated number of Eve players.
So yes, we are a niche of the game's population, if by niche you mean tiny minuscule fraction of the people logging in every day. I think we are growing as a niche (reference new blogs started by Seleene and Ripard Teg) and will be more influential as time goes on with the ear of CCP in a unique fashion, but that is another blog post for another day. I'm also ignoring the podcast listener which is a larger group due to the ease of listening to podcasts while doing other things.
So, we covered what Mittens got right. Everything else is wrong.
The "community" referenced by the Eve Report interviewer is conveniently defined by the questioner to a group he feels he can brush off easily, but any other definition of the Eve community includes podcasts, forums, in game channels, news sites, and radio stations as well as blogs and twitter. That "community" encases a significant amount of the eve population that is not so easily dismissed. This is called "changing the question".
Next, he calls the blogs and twitter an "echo chamber". Of course, should he spend any real time reading blogs and twitter he would quickly realize the diverse nature of the community represented leads to many disagreements and discussions that do not meet resolution, either about the nature of a ship fitting, the power of a particular class, or the effects of a large coalition or mechanics change. We are not some uniform blob praising the attributes of CSM5 in relgious fervor. However, its easier to dismiss any dissenting opinion of the "community" if we're treated like sock puppets of a few.
If there is any echo chamber to watch out for, its CSM6 with its "working towards unified front" and made up of all null sec residents.
Finally we come to the most egregious statement: "eve bloggers don’t seem to have much to do with nullsec". Well, without looking at my subscribed feeds I can name ten blogs/blog authors that are written by either current or former null sec residents:
Orakkus - 2nd Anom From the Left
Noise - Phoenix Diaries
Mansai - A Mule In Eve
Letrange - Letrange's Eve Blog
PK - Aggressive Tendencies
Easley Thames - Easley Thames
Parasoja - Eve FAIL Posting
Hallen Turrek - A Merry Life And a Short One
Rixx Javix - Evoganda
The Mittani - Sins of a Solar Spymaster (call it a column if you want - its regular, about whatever you want, and on the web; in other words, a blog)
That's just off the top of my head. I think, in fact, if you went through and divided the 600 eve blogs by where their author currently lives, you would find the ratios would match to the population distribution of Eve players pretty closely. Just a hunch.
However, its much easier to dismiss bloggers if you lump them up as low sec pirates or high sec carebears who don't know how the real game works in null sec.
* * * * *
To be fair, I'm not convinced this was a calculated attempt to brush off all opinion of bloggers and twitter users. I suspect its a case of confirmation bias in such that he looks at the "community" and its average opinion and sees that it disagrees with his version of reality, thus he subconsciously dismisses them due to reasons he stated and any evidence that supports his opinion gets noticed and any that disproves it gets disregarded. This is a common occurrence in politics, religion, science, hell everywhere. Of course, one has to be careful about delving the motivations of anyone as good at the metagame as Mittens is.
As for CSM6, I think he is going to be an excellent chair and that the council as a whole will accomplish much in their term. I am worried that CCP might turtle up if they go in to gangbusters, but I'm optimistic that a null sec leader with accolades and accomplishments such as the head of Goonswarm can boast will know when its time for diplomacy and when its time for slapping heads.
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
That Time Of the Month
With March on the books (got my 10 killmails, barely) I felt justified in using last night's game time to take care of some business once I realized that there was no CTAs or capital fleets up.
First, I had taken Kla'strit from Vale back to Pure Blind last week to pick up a number of skill books for Selia so I made the return trip. They were a number of basic skill books for things like Signature Analysis and Energy Systems Operations to flesh out her skills.
Next, I logged into Korneilia to take care of the colonies and then used alt Kelarran to probe a way out through the static high sec exit to drop off my overflowing cargohold of robotics and coolant. Jade, the money I owe you is coming tonight.
At this point I was getting ready to have Kirith and Kla'strit clone jump back to Pure Blind for some sec status repair when the alert went out of hostile capitals tackled. I got into fleet and sat on pins and needles hoping for some action in the supercarrier involving actual enemy fire when the word finally came out that Br1ck Squad had killed all the enemy carriers and we were too late. Damn! Well, hats off to Br1ck, I hear good things about them.
With the excitement ending unsatisfactorily, I did the clone jump and helped corpmate Greyhound try out his fancy Phantasm on Kla and his Wolf assault ship. Then a neut in a Cheetah was buzzing around and we tried to catch him for something to kill but he fairly easily evaded our gang.
Ah well, next time.
First, I had taken Kla'strit from Vale back to Pure Blind last week to pick up a number of skill books for Selia so I made the return trip. They were a number of basic skill books for things like Signature Analysis and Energy Systems Operations to flesh out her skills.
Next, I logged into Korneilia to take care of the colonies and then used alt Kelarran to probe a way out through the static high sec exit to drop off my overflowing cargohold of robotics and coolant. Jade, the money I owe you is coming tonight.
At this point I was getting ready to have Kirith and Kla'strit clone jump back to Pure Blind for some sec status repair when the alert went out of hostile capitals tackled. I got into fleet and sat on pins and needles hoping for some action in the supercarrier involving actual enemy fire when the word finally came out that Br1ck Squad had killed all the enemy carriers and we were too late. Damn! Well, hats off to Br1ck, I hear good things about them.
With the excitement ending unsatisfactorily, I did the clone jump and helped corpmate Greyhound try out his fancy Phantasm on Kla and his Wolf assault ship. Then a neut in a Cheetah was buzzing around and we tried to catch him for something to kill but he fairly easily evaded our gang.
Ah well, next time.
Friday, April 01, 2011
Fiction Friday - A Retrospective
Warning: Some extreme navel gazing ahead!
When I started Eve in September of '06 I had no intention of role playing or writing fiction for my character or any of that stuff. I just wanted to play internet spaceships. But shortly after I started I created a second character to fool around with, called him Korannon and gave him a beat up look with metal plates in his face (ah, the good old character creator).
I made him Kirith's older brother in my head and asked myself "What happened to you?" That's when this formed in my head (currently my in game bio):
So that scene percolated in my head for three years. Finally in October 2009 I decided to exercise my fiction writing skills once more and started out with the goal to take that scene and make it the climax of a story. Over five months the tale was spun and I had a good time doing it and people seemed to like it. But I found myself with loose ends. How did Derranna get out of slavery? What happened to Korannon? When did Kirith become disillusioned with the Caldari state? And so forth and so on. So began series 2 and the seeds for series 3.
Now that I've written essentially a small novella of text I am struck by how similar all three "stories" in it have a similar arc in that Kirith chooses a course of action which runs into an unexpected difficulty that he has to deal with, and each story highlights how he is powerless in some of the outcomes. I wonder if this says more about me than I care to admit. Hmmmm....
Regardless, I do like how in the third arc he has grown as a character to more readily adapt to unexpected circumstances and deal with them more handily.
I've striven to create believable characters with flaws that we can relate to. Kirith has his drug problem that will continue to play a part in his development, Derranna and her fear of freedom and dependency on a master, Korannon and his social awkwardness (which he is growing out of as well, just off screen I suppose). I haven't had time to explore the issues Kirith will run into with his new family in the IPRC corporation, but next arc will begin to highlight them. Its important to me to not create superheros with my characters because much of it can run into wish fulfillment which leaves me cold. I'm not a fan of Superman who has no fear of bullets or knives and can simply fly to the rescue with his super strength; I'm a Batman guy who likes his hero to have to struggle to defeat his opponent's.
I do plan to take the fiction I've written so far and compile it with some editing into a single document that people can read as a novella instead of weekly installments. While the three series are distinct arcs they may work as Part I, II, and III of a single volume. Opinions are welcome on the matter.
So what's next? Well, the next series delves more into pod pilot corporate relationships, and a bit of an Amarrian honour revenge plot.
When I started Eve in September of '06 I had no intention of role playing or writing fiction for my character or any of that stuff. I just wanted to play internet spaceships. But shortly after I started I created a second character to fool around with, called him Korannon and gave him a beat up look with metal plates in his face (ah, the good old character creator).
I made him Kirith's older brother in my head and asked myself "What happened to you?" That's when this formed in my head (currently my in game bio):
I was on my back looking up at the bank of flourescent lights overhead. My ears were ringing. I could smell something that was like burned meat.Anyone who has read my series 1 recognizes the basis of the climatic fight between Kirith and Korannon against Rusack. Sure the details changed in the actual story but the concept is the same.
I propped myself up on an elbow and saw there was blood on my hands and my shirt. I couldn't move my legs because there was a body on them. My brother.
The side of his face was melted, blood oozing from where his cheek used to be. His right arm was cut off above the elbow, his bright red arterial blood pumping out, slower with each beat.
The man who shot him, the man who tried to shoot me until my brother jumped in the way to protect me, was walking towards me and aiming his pulse rifle to finish the job.
I couldn't move, I couldn't scream for help.
And then I wake up.
So that scene percolated in my head for three years. Finally in October 2009 I decided to exercise my fiction writing skills once more and started out with the goal to take that scene and make it the climax of a story. Over five months the tale was spun and I had a good time doing it and people seemed to like it. But I found myself with loose ends. How did Derranna get out of slavery? What happened to Korannon? When did Kirith become disillusioned with the Caldari state? And so forth and so on. So began series 2 and the seeds for series 3.
Now that I've written essentially a small novella of text I am struck by how similar all three "stories" in it have a similar arc in that Kirith chooses a course of action which runs into an unexpected difficulty that he has to deal with, and each story highlights how he is powerless in some of the outcomes. I wonder if this says more about me than I care to admit. Hmmmm....
Regardless, I do like how in the third arc he has grown as a character to more readily adapt to unexpected circumstances and deal with them more handily.
I've striven to create believable characters with flaws that we can relate to. Kirith has his drug problem that will continue to play a part in his development, Derranna and her fear of freedom and dependency on a master, Korannon and his social awkwardness (which he is growing out of as well, just off screen I suppose). I haven't had time to explore the issues Kirith will run into with his new family in the IPRC corporation, but next arc will begin to highlight them. Its important to me to not create superheros with my characters because much of it can run into wish fulfillment which leaves me cold. I'm not a fan of Superman who has no fear of bullets or knives and can simply fly to the rescue with his super strength; I'm a Batman guy who likes his hero to have to struggle to defeat his opponent's.
I do plan to take the fiction I've written so far and compile it with some editing into a single document that people can read as a novella instead of weekly installments. While the three series are distinct arcs they may work as Part I, II, and III of a single volume. Opinions are welcome on the matter.
So what's next? Well, the next series delves more into pod pilot corporate relationships, and a bit of an Amarrian honour revenge plot.
Theming Redux
Thanks to everyone who commented yesterday. Sorry for the orange assault on the eyes, but I wondered if it would work as a more abstract concept rather than the usual eve scenery approach. Almost everyone agreed that stick to the basics was a better idea.
The Earth I used for the rest of yesterday was stock google image until I could get my own backgrounds uploaded. This is my current favourite but I have three more I'm interested in. Opinions as to which I should use would be welcome.
Finally, I know I need a new header but I'm too low on ISK right now after buying some BPOs to afford a real talented graphic designer like Rixx Javix to make me one, so it will have to do.
The Earth I used for the rest of yesterday was stock google image until I could get my own backgrounds uploaded. This is my current favourite but I have three more I'm interested in. Opinions as to which I should use would be welcome.
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