Video From Last Open Fleet Fight

Here's the video put together by some corp mates including the prolific Vic Vorlon of last Sunday's fight that I FC'd:
 

Yet Another Open Fleet Sunday Night

This Sunday, another open fleet starting around 0115 EVE Time (Monday morning) in Essence low sec and we'll be starting out in Destroyers and Frigates. If you are interested in low sec, faction warfare, or Aideron Robotics then join us in the fleet by x-ing up in the Aideron Robotics public channel.

Project Vulcan - Preparing For Phase III

Production of Orcas at a rate of two a week continues steadily and the profit margin without Ragelle's savings has shrunk to only ~41-44 million per unit so about 80+ million per week. That being said, I'm still pretty happy as the time investment is fairly minimal.

As my wallet bulged from increasing ISK, I knew it was time to start investing in Phase III; carrier production. First thing I did was pick a carrier to build and it was between the two most popular models, the Gallente Thanatos and the Amarr Archon. I decided to start with the Archon as it has larger broad appeal even though it might be less popular in my particular area.

Next I investigated which capital part BPOs I would need to build an Archon.

Capital Armour Plates 10
Capital Capacitor Battery 9
Capital Computer System 3
Capital Construction Parts 7
Capital Corporate Hanger Bay 10
Capital Drone Bay 44
Capital Jump Drive 10
Capital Power Generator 10
Capital Propulsion Engine 6
Capital Sensor Cluster 3
Capital Shield Emitter 4
Capital Ship Maintenance Bay 10

In comparison, here is my Orca production requirements:

Capital Capacitor Battery 8
Capital Cargo Bay 35
Capital Computer System 6
Capital Construction Parts 14
Capital Corporate Hanger Bay 4
Capital Sensor Cluster 4
Capital Ship Maintenance Bay 6

So BPOs I need are:

Capital Armour Plates

Capital Drone Bay
Capital Jump Drive
Capital Power Generator
Capital Propulsion Engine 

Capital Shield Emitter

As well as the Archon BPO itself. Wow! Not as much overlap from the Orca BPOs as I had hoped. I didn't have the capital for that many BPO purchases, but I have a plan.

I went and purchased researched originals of an Archon and Capital Drone Bay blueprints. Then I'm going to price out how much it would be to purchase BPCs for the other parts which require at most 10 units per build. With luck, I can get them cheap enough that the profit for building and selling the Archon is still ~100 million ISK or more.

In theory, it might be more profitable in the short term to continue building Orcas instead of diverting resources to an Archon build, but my goal was always serious capital production and not just stopping at Orcas. 

CSM Elections Loom: Thoughts On Endorsements

So, elections for Council of Stellar Management are looming and candidates are announcing their intention to stand for election in the Jita Parks forum. Once more I'm looking at the candidates and trying to determine who I will endorse for election, but this time I'm considering the step of actually denouncing someone's suitability for CSM election.

I was raised in a "can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" home and while I think it has some merits I've come to realize as I've gotten older that sometimes you need to speak up and tell people what they don't want to hear. Not nice things, but things that will make certain people angry.

In previous elections, I never had strong opinions against any candidates so it was sufficient to simply put my endorsements forward and carry on. This time, however, there is one I think has a chance of getting elected and yet is such a bad fit for being on the CSM that I think I should speak up.

On the other hand, am I letting personal opinions / personality conflicts create bias against a person that might actually be a good or great CSM representative? Should I keep quiet and let others decide for themselves?

Sigh, its going to be a long election cycle.

Welcome To The Danger Zone

Last night I was leading a Destroyer/Frigate fleet and we got word that allies in the Gallente Militia were going into a big fight with a rather famous local pirate group called SniggWaffe (training corp for Sniggeredly of Pandemic Legion) who have been living out of Kinakka in the Black Rise region.

We burned a few jumps to help out and jumped into a big fight in Innia with them and our GalMil allies. The Snigg fleet was flying a Thorax cruiser centre coupled with a significant wing of Exequrors as support. We targeted the enemy logi and threw our firepowered combined with our allies firepower and tried to take them down but to no avail. Their reps were spot on and more than enough to compensate for our damage. On the other side, our logi began to go down and the order was given to flee but not before a few of us were taken out.

We took our shattered fleet back to Fliet and after some discussion and communication with the other GalMil FCs, we up-shipped to cruisers using our Rogue Squadron Vexors (excepting Marcel in a Vexor Navy Issue and me in my old Ishtar) with our own wing of Exequrors and headed back for more pew.

We set up on a gate in Eha as our allied fleets had already engaged them and I waited for intel. Local spike, its Snigg. Where are they?

Suddenly a fleet of suspects warps in on us; the Snigg fleet arrived and its Exequrors and Celestises. I'm torn by indecision... should I engage? Wait for them to make a move? What if they jump and our fleet gets split?

Someone calls "point!" and my momentary paralysis is broken. I start calling targets, assigning my drones, locking up Exequrors. Primary, secondary, primary, secondary, overheat, spread points, primary, secondary... Calls of "Logi Jammed!" and broadcasts for armour ring out. I see my shields dip and I hit the broadcast button. Enemy Exequrors are wiped out and I start directing the fleet into the Celestises and its become apparent that we have won this round.

The rest of the enemy warps off and we kill off the stragglers. We lost one friendly, a non-Aideron pilot in our fleet who was in a Stabber Fleet Issue that got primaried and taken off before logi could react. All in all, a good result that could have gone badly had the SniggWaffe fleet still had been in their Thoraxes from earlier.

Good fight Snigg! See you in space.

Rogue Squadron Infographic

For our newer pilots, our Direction Asherothi created this awesome infographic to help them out for training into our main fleet doctrine, Rogue Squadron:

In related news, I'll be running another low sec roaming Open Fleet on Sunday night, starting around 0115 Eve time in Fliet. Join Aideron Robotics public channel and ask for in invite when you see me there.

Screenshots from September to Decemember 2006

Nostalgia time! I dug out some of my first screenshots from when I started EVE Online in September 2006 to December 2006. Small monitor, old graphics, Noob pilot... its all there! Enjoy!

My first non-rookie ship. Tried to run missions with it. Didn't end well.

The old split weapon layout. Ignore the dual tank!

Yipe yipe yipe!

My first Caracal. Didn't have the skills for the powergrid for all five heavy missile launchers.

Kaboom!

Bought this in south Syndicate, didn't get two jumps with it.

Ratting was always more fun with friends.

Ack! Get off me!

From the inside of the Dominix.

Even pre-Trinity, EVE was beautiful.

No weapon grouping, only 6 turrets.

Kaboom! The old Nebulae.

I tried mining in Null Sec with my alt. Didn't work for me.

One of my favourite hulls, and I love this screenshot.

I was in awe of my friend's new Archon. Now I'm planning on building them.

Mission Running Ravens.

Cover all the damage types!

Faction Warfare Wishlist

First, a disclaimer.

I'm in the Gallente Militia for about two years now, first on my own in Kadavr Crimson Guard and then part of Aideron Robotics. I did faction warfare in the Minmatar militia way back in the original Empyrean Age days and then only really did plexing for standings. So my perspective is heavily biased towards what I see in that warzone.

Now, onto the post.

Overall, faction warfare is in a relatively good place right now. There is a lot destruction occurring in FW low sec space, keeping pace with null sec in a much more confined environment. There is a lot of variety in fleet compositions and sizes, and pilot skill and experience. It can be a great place for a newer player to get introduced to PvP combat, and it is a great place for a veteran to stretch their wings and play in a more personal style than can be found in the big null sec wars.

That all being said, its not perfect. There are some pain points, some places for improvement to put some new shine on this trusty beast. So here is my current wishlist for Faction Warfare.

1) Faction Warfare should not be for Easy Button Farming of LPs

I understand there is a desire for there to be some way to make ISK in Faction Warfare. I agree that capturing plexes for LPs as well as contributing to system control makes sense, and I like the changes that reduced the number of NPC faction rats in the plexes to encourage people to use PvP ship fits instead of PvE ship fits.

But the result is that a pilot can run a plex now with a double or triple warp core stabbed ship with a few weapons strapped on. Attacking them in the plex means they just warp off even if you manage to get a point (unless you start packing double warp scrams).

This is bad enough that those farmers were basically getting LPs almost risk free with low effort, but its made worse by the fact that it allows them to attack system control in the same manner. Sure, you can chase them off but it obviates the core raison d'etre of faction warfare.

There have been many suggestions for fixing this issue, such as Rixx Javix's crusade to get Warp Core Stabs removed or to have them affect the ship they are fitted on even more severely to make fighting even a single NPC near impossible, but I'd prefer to approach the problem from the other direction. Just like the Electronic Surveillance System deployable warp scrams anything within its range with an infinity point, I think faction warfare complexes should do the same. That way, if you are in a plex that has the timer counting down, you are not able to run so easily (or cloak). I would have it so that there is a buffer between the maximum range you can be at and still have the plex timer count down, and a further out point where the maximum range of the infinity point reaches.

2) More Farms and Fields

Controlling a system has some benefits. The stations lock out the other militia and you can upgrade the number of station slots, clone costs, etc. But that is the extent of the benefits. The enemy militia can still own the POCOs and have POSes, and beyond proximity to other pilots or enemy targets, there is no big benefit to living out one controlled station over another in a different system (beyond the usual services available or station topography for capitals).

It would be nice if there was more ways to invest in a system that was directly tied to having control over it. Perhaps temporary deployables that can only be anchored in controlled systems that give higher LP rewards for defensive plexing, but like the ESS you have to go to the deployable to get them and they can be stolen. Or maybe ship repair deployables that can only be anchored in systems your militia controls. Things to give a system a flavour from you living there AND additional opportunities for the enemy militia to attack to disrupt your habitation.

3) Decouple the Factions

Its time to decouple Caldari from Amarr and Minmatar from Gallente. The fact that as a Gallente pilot I can awox a Minmatar pilot with no Gallente faction standing loss is a shame, but it also makes very little sense that pilots in the allied militia can run plexes for the other faction. It leads to a lot of weird gameplay and doesn't promote any interesting gameplay.

However, let's go a step further: make all the factions hostile to each other and devise a system where any faction can try and take any system in all the warzones. This could lead to some very interesting gameplay where more than two sides are trying to take a strategic system. Related to that...

4) Expand Faction Warfare Systems

Make it so that the warzones of Gallente and Caldari share a border with Minmatar and Amarr. If all the factions are hostile to each other, you want them fighting near each other more often.

* * * *
That's all I got for now. Any ideas out there?

Of Monuments and Pilots

CCP never seems to go small when it makes the decision to try something new.

A couple weeks ago on twitter CCP employees started pointing people to a webpage with a timer but no hints as to what it was timing down to. There was lots of excited speculation and when the timer hit zero we found out it was for... a MONUMENT!

No wait, come back! Its a real life monument. Being built in Iceland. Aren't you impressed?  ;)

My reaction when I heard the news was a disinterested shrug, a comment that "it wasn't really timer-countdown worthy", and I went along my way. The reaction of others, however, was not as impassive:

"Underwhelming. Please do not use timers for this kind of stuff, would have thought it was cooler if I wasn't disappointed." 

"Awesome proof of how shallow CCP has become. Game is broken, few (if any) noobs subscribe after trial, new content is beyond lame, sov is ****, lag is hellish but uh oh let's build a monument using customers money cause we are amazing."

"I think this boring and featureless statue symbolize EVE expansions." 

"I can't really imagine anyone caring. Couldn't the money put into erecting this thing have paid a dev to fix some of the abandoned content in this game :/" 

"what a giant waste of money typical ccp wasting money on things not related to eve in any way even when the game is broken"

It was not all negative, but a significant portion is. Ripard Teg wrote a post about this negative reaction and called those people out:

The vast overwhelming response from those players on the forums and on my blog here was overwhelmingly negative both about the monument itself and about the unveiling. Negative about the cost. Negative about the perception. Negative about just about everything.
Some of us really are bitter, aren't we? Shame on you. Seriously. Shame on you.
Let's address the two basest, meanest, crudest, most cynical criticisms first. And I can destroy both of them in just a few words:
- If this monument causes only a few hundred old unsubbed players to spend a PLEX... and they see all of the changes that have made EVE a better game over the last few years, and they resub, stick around, and start playing again, the money spent on the monument will have been worth it.
- If this monument causes only a single EVE developer to look out over the Reykjavik harbor and see the permanent representation of the stories, aspirations, and fun EVE stands for, and that moment of good feeling inspires him to design and develop a better game for the rest of a single day, the money spent on the monument will have been worth it!
And for you EVE players out there whose thinking is that low or that petty, those two thoughts alone really ought to be enough to make you understand what this monument really means. That really ought to be enough.

 While I don't completely agree with the naysayers that the monument is a complete waste of time, I don't think Ripard's chastising is altogether warranted either. Some people might be overly negative about anything CCP does but other's have a valid point.

This monument feels like hubris, as if CCP felt its ego needed to be stroked and decided to do the deed itself. I'm not opposed to that in principle as a for-profit company should be allowed some chest beating for investors and employee morale from time to time. But this, this, .... this just feel over the top to my Canadian sensibilities, not a proclamation or a statement but an attention demand of monumental proportions. (HA!)

I'm all about celebrating EVE's players and content and achievements, as was done in the Skyward Sphere events. But a massive monument in EVE's harbour? I have reservations. I hope, as Ripard says, it will inspire and  celebrate rather and mark another dark chapter in CCP's story of hubris and pride before the fall.

And yeah, I will probably use the web app to find my character's names when its done.

See All The Things

Immediate panic rose in my gut when I saw on Twitter some devs talking about the Overview. One wrong move, I thought, and they could break the whole game.

* * * * *

As an EVE pilot, I have a love-hate relationship with the overview. On one hand, I hate how it looks and how much screen space it can take up on my monitor, all spreadsheet-y and wide as I try and fit three different types of velocities on it.... what's that? Yes, three. The base velocity which tells me how fast the target is going so I know I or anyone else has a chance to catch it, the transversal velocity to give me an idea if my weapons can track it, and the radial velocity which is a measure of how fast they are moving away or towards me as if I was stationary which is useful for seeing when a target is approaching (and how fast) or running away. I also have the militia column so I can keep an eye out for Minmatar Militia awoxers, and the usual Name, description, and distance.

But while it takes up a lot of space, I love how much information it gives me at a glance. Distance, speed, name, type, whether they are a pirate or suspect or ally... an experienced pilot can look at an overview and in a split second know whether or not he is in position or in trouble.

It is the universal tool; every pilot has one, uses it (sometimes incorrectly), and needs it. There is no other option.

And then I started leading fleets.

As a line pilot in a fight, the FC calls the primary and I attack the primary while locking up nearby secondaries. My spatial awareness doesn't need to be very high. As a tackle pilot in a fleet or a solo pilot, I needed more spatial awareness to know which targets to burn for, which direction to burn off, how to slingshot opponents to catch them or get away, but it was all "where am I in relation to everything else" so I didn't need to pay too much attention to everything, just my general orientation and vector.

But as the FC, you need to know even more. The spatial orientation of your fleet including the tacklers, DPS ships, Logistics, and even your EWAR. Then you need to know where your enemy is and what they are flying and doing. The overview alone is not enough and that's why I've started flying zoomed way out with the range view turned on like so:

Click for full size.

In a battle with my fleet of ~20 or more against a hostile fleet I have that zoomed out as far as necessary to see everything happening on the grid, sometimes up to more than 100 km radius. This view, combined with the information in the overview, gives me the on grid information I need to make appropriate decisions.

How Can It Be Better?

That's the million ISK question, isn't it? Some ideas recently thrown around involve having the overview somewhere else: undocked into its own window so it can live on another monitor, or streamed to a mobile device... but these two ideas involve moving he overview away from where I need it most! So I'm not a fan.

Another idea was to suggest we could have more than 5 tabs and that multiple overview windows could exist, giving the possibility of seeing multiple views on the current environment at once. I can see some possibilities with these concepts but doesn't really address the amount of screenspace the overview requires for me.

I've seen some suggestions that more information could be moved out of the overview and to the sceen itself, perhaps things like velocity and type could be attached to the ship icon. However, this idea quickly falls down for me when we start having more than ten ships on the grid and all that information gets harder and harder to see and process.

But there are some things we could do to improve information visibility in the main view. I've suggested multiple times in the past (and CCP even tried it on SISI once) that the icons need to be updated to give more information at a glance than they do now, so you can tell a destroyer from a cruiser or battlecruiser on the grid with looking up the type, or a battleship from a titan. Furthermore, colours of the icons could be used to indicate a number of things from velocity to damage taken. Right now the icons show rough ship types (small, medium, large, industrial) and that's it. Using the icon could free information from the spreadsheet overview and put it on the field without cluttering the view.

I also think that more customization to the tooltip of hovering over an icon in space would be valuable. Right now you can hack in upgrades to your Targeting HUD but it would be nice for CCP to formalize that functionality and improve it.

Overall I think a few small changes like that could go far into giving pilots and fleet commanders more information at a glance without cluttering the display beyond usefulness.

Blog Banter #53 - The Overview

Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 53rd edition! For more details about what the blog banters are visit the Blog Banter page.

* * * * *

Today's topic comes from a tweet from @erlendur in a conversation he was having with a pilot about having multiple overview tabs open in separate windows:


So that is the topic this month: The Overview. Is it sufficient? If not how can it be improved? Is there some way to replace it? Does it give too much information, or not enough? Please be creative and specific as the overview currently is the heartbeat of the GUI.

Participants:

Faction Fit Pod - Tin Cans Sharing Tables
Morphisat's Blog - Dradis
Art Hornbie - The Overview Redefined
Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah - Seeing all the Things
Evoganda - The Pilot's Overview
Sand, Cider, and Spaceships - Blast It, Wedge, Where Are You?
Jester's Trek - Heart transplant
Fua Consternation - Bounty Exodus
Freebooted: The Overview: EVE On Easy Mode
Low Sec Lifestyle - Unstructured Structure

The Federation Strikes Back

Late in 2013 Aideron Robotics moved into Heydieles and fought a pitched battle against our Caldari Militia but ultimately were overwhelmed and turfed out.

We regrouped in nearby Yvangier which is not actually part of the warzone, and after the turn of the new year we decided to get back into the thick of things by moving to the warzone system of Fliet, next door to Heydieles.

Almost immediately after we moved in our old foes in the OLD MAN GANG alliance (part of Caldari Militia) began to assault the system and we quickly moved to a defensive posture, running plexes, recruiting pilots and allies, and holding the line.

Today we can celebrate:

Fliet is stable and in our hands. Now we need to hold the line and start pushing back at Heydieles.

Ships to Command From

Last night I ran another public Aideron fleet and we got up to about 30 members before I turned the fleet over to Marcel and logged off. It was a decently productive evening, picking up on 12 killmails for myself and I know the fleet got more where I was too slow. I did take us into one losing engagement and lost my Enyo to a very prepared and powerful Soultakers fleet (pirates local to Old Man Star) but I had to try for that bait Vigilant before the logi and Stabber Fleet Issues came in. Really, I am surprised we didn't lose more than we did that fight!

I'm continuing to try and determine the best ship for me to be a Fleet Commander from. Two weeks ago I had started in an Enyo and switch to an Ares interceptor and found myself too distracted in the latter as I spent too many of my limited brain cycles worrying about tackling targets instead of thinking about the big picture.

This week I started off in my trusty Enyo once more but lost it early on, as mentioned, to the Soultakers. I liked the ship for its simplicity of use which is basically a shotgun approach with its big blasters and only a single drone... its like a bigger hitting Incursus and my love for that ship is well documented. However, in the fleet last night it was the only Tech II frigate and hence was a primary target for the pirate fleet to take out. It wasn't a big deal in that little fight as we were bailing already when I was going down, but in a longer even fight it would be detrimental to the fleet to have its FC taken out early (barring having secondary FC ready to step up of course).

I reshipped into an Algos destroyer to lead the fleet figuring its longer ranged railguns with Spike ammo and flights of light drones would allow me to fight at range and worry less about piloting and more about FCing. I found I was mostly right and that the ship flew well in some of the engagements where we were on top of the enemy, but any fights where the enemy was fast and running I was frequently out of the action. This is not necessarily bad as it gave me more time to look at the big picture, but when we were scrambling and warping around a lot I found the slower align and warp time taking its toll pretty fast and a couple times I had to designate on-scene FCs to call targets until I got there. Not a big deal, but it had me considering alternatives again.

So to summarize:
- Ares : fast and agile but required too much of my divided attention
- Enyo : solid and simple to use but attracted too much hostile attention in a fleet where everyone else was T1 and faction frigs
- Algos : good range and not too hard to use but slow and fat.

I might try another interceptor but a more combat oriented setup that allows me to get around the field but is not too dedicated on catching targets.

Know Thyself

"Gnōthi Seauton" - Know Thyself


As I get more and more practice as a fleet commander I can start to see my personal strengths and weaknesses reflect on the experience.


I'm good at spatial problems and constructing images in my mind, so that as intel comes in I can picture the various moving parts and how they are interacting. I'm good at reading people, even just through the tone of their voice, and I'm good at teaching and guiding people as I'm patient and tolerant of mistakes, so I can take a newer pilot and talk him through being a scout in the next system. I have a good memory so I can remember most of EVE's mechanics as well as ship type names and their typical loadouts and abilities.


On the other hand, I can panic easily and can freeze in such a spot. The panic comes from situations where I don't know what to do off the top of my head, and my mind races to find a reaction and seems to freeze in the process like a computer program in an endless loop that can't find the exit condition.


Knowing I have this weakness is one of the main reasons I avoided trying to be an FC for so many years; I'd rather have someone else take the pressure and tell me what to do. But since I have finally decided that excuse was insufficient and it was time to push myself in a new direction, I've tried to work around those weaknesses as much as I can.


At first when I started FCing I was extremely cautious as my anxiety of my spastic-ness was very high, but after a while I finally decided that losing was a part of trying and to let go of the fear of loss. Fear is the fun killer, so put it aside.


Next I made sure to practice practice practice... to the point where thinking for the basic things like giving orders and calling targets do not require thinking, and to make sure I constantly am speaking to the fleet to instill confidence in them and prevent general fleet paralysis. FCing is a lot like learning a physical task; if you practice enough at the basics, your "muscle" memory will take over and react faster than your conscious brain can think and react.


Now that I'm getting better at the basics with small gangs, I need more practice with the larger fleets with more dimensions than just tackle and DPS, hence the open fleets with logistics, e-war ships, etc.


Finally, I need to be more careful of the ship I choose to FC from. As mentioned earlier this week, I made a mistake last Friday by trying to FC while flying a tackle interceptor. Bad idea; I was often distracted on getting/keeping the point and not focusing on the battlefield as a whole. So going forward, knowing my strengths and weaknesses, I'll keep to the simple DPS ships that require less thought so I have more cycles for the bigger picture.

PvP Low Sec Is Where Its At

CCP released a Dev blog today by CCP Quant titled Insights into 2013 Production and Destruction and I wanted to highlight one of the charts that was part of that post. He is the (shrunk) image of the Destruction chart with several systems coloured grey (and I'll talk about them in a minute):

Click to embiggen.

Now there are several notable things here.

First of all, there is a lot of destruction in null sec / wormhole space. Eyeballing it, I'd say close to half of all destruction is in the red spectrum, with the rest divided up between low sec and high sec in a 2:1 ratio (i.e. low sec has twice as much destruction as high sec).

Next, there are 7930 systems in EVE broken down into these distinctions (stolen from this thread here so yell at me if they are wrong):

High sec: 1090
Low sec: 817
Null Sec: 3524 (of which 230 are not connected, i.e. Jove Space)
W-space: 2499

Translated into percentages and combining null sec and w-space since they are the same colour on the chart, we get high sec as 13.7% of space, low sec 10.3%, and null sec/w-space as 76.0% of space.

Thirdly, if you took out the top 6 systems from high sec with the most destruction, the amount of space left over for high sec destruction drops significantly. 

In other words, low sec sees more destruction per system spread pretty evenly than any other part of EVE in 2013. If you are looking for consistent PvP action, low sec is the place to be.

Now, about the grey coloured circles, they are low sec systems I recognized as part of the Gallente-Caldari faction warzone and we visited most of them on our roam last Friday night and they are frequent destinations for our fleets. If I coloured in the Minmatar-Amarr warzone systems, most of the other large low sec destruction circles would be grey as well. 

In other words,  Faction Warfare: its where consistent and destructive PvP is at.

Open Fleet Sunday Night

Aideron Robotics will be running another fleet open to people interested in low sec / faction war PvP on Sunday night, starting around 0100 hours Eve Time. If interested in joining us, hop into the AIDERON ROBOTICS channel and say hi, or contact me directly. We'll be forming up in Tech 1 frigates and destroyers around the Fliet / Yvangier systems.

Return To Galactica

Its been a while since the gaming group got together for a game of Battlestar Galactic, but this past weekend I was celebrating my 40th birthday with my friends and we broke out the board game once more (along with a host of other activities).

Game #1 - What Cylons?

In the first game there was just four of us: myself, Chad, Dave, and Udit. The beginning started out eventful with the initial attack but then we jumped to safety and didn't much trouble after that. We got to the halfway point and new loyalty cards were distributed...

Since the humans were doing so well, the Cylon Sympathizer card came out and turned Chad into a Cylon, but without a super crisis or ability to control the Cylon ships. Plus it forced him to reveal immediately. It was really lame and I can see why some people don't like to play with that mechanic. The true Cylon was Udit but Dave and I were on to him right away and had him stripped of powers and brigged soon after. We stopped the game there as it was clear there was unlikely to be a challenge to the humans after that.

Humans Win.

Game #2 - In Need Of A Gas Station

The second game was a lot more intense and exciting. There were five of us in this round: me, Chad, and Udit again along with Evan and Brian. Unbeknownst to each other, both Brian and I were Cylons right from the start and both decided to play the long game with few sabotages or obvious traitorous activities.

But the humans ran into trouble early anyways, losing fuel at a precipitous rate and having three Raptors out of four destroyed. Constant attacks and damages kept everyone busy along with the odd failed skill check to indicate Cylons were out and about.

At the halfway point, Chad decided that Evan and Udit (who were President and Admiral respectively) were suspicious and needed to be stripped of powers and sent to the brig. I was forced to pick a side and decided to work with Chad. This caused Evan to be suspicious of me and used his character's special ability to look at all three of my loyalty cards (I got an extra due to being Boomer) and declared me a Cylon. I of course claimed he was the Cylon and was trying to frame me. After a couple of exchanges we both ended up in the brig, with Evan and Udit saying I was a Cylon and Chad unsure but still wary of Evan. Meanwhile, Brian just tried to keep his head down and wait for the best chance to slit their throats.

Ultimately, the initial fuel troubles caught up with the humans and with two jumps left their fuel was near zero and there was very little hope of a reprieve. They surrendered to the Cylons.

Cylons win.

Thoughts:

I would definitely not play a game with the Cylon Sympathizer as is again. It took far too much control out of the player's hand when they went Cylon, forcing them to reveal and not giving them the fun Cylon tools. In fact, I don't know if I would play the game with fewer than five people again. While the second game was far more exciting and engaging, I'm a little sad that Brian and I didn't get to do major damage in the end, the course of events with the fuel shortage doing most of the work for us. Oh well, not every game can be the best game ever.

Op Success

On Friday night I ran a corp fleet that was open to public interested in flying in low sec and faction warfare. This was a big deal for me because over the past year I've been trying to step into a Fleet Commander role after years of sitting back and letting others do it. And after 11 months, I can really see the difference the practice has made.

We rallied up in Fliet with mostly Tech 1 frigs and a couple destroyers and an assault ship. We started with plexing while people were still joining, making sure to get a few Navitas to make the fleet robust (dear god, what a difference T1 frig logistics have made to the frigate scale warfare!). While we were plexing a Caldari fleet came in and engaged us. They had heavier ships than we did, a couple assaults ships, some faction frigs, a destroyer... but we had a few more pilots and all important logistics. We crushed the first wave, and when a second wave with a couple cruisers showed up, we sent them packing too.

We continued to form up, taking out a few more enemy ships including a RLML Caracal looking for easy frig kills, but the targets dried up in Fliet so we took the fleet on the move into the dangerous and active Black Rise region. We visited Tama and picked up a destroyer and Keres kill before getting word from our allies in the Quantum Cats Syndicate that they were in a cruiser fleet and getting ready for round two with a Templis CALSF fleet. We moved at best speed towards Eha and in Aivonen we met the enemy cruiser fleet. We put the tackle on the Osprey and Scythe logi they had and moved in close. We lacked enough firepower to easily break the cruisers' reps on each other but the QCats showed up in their Vexors and put some hurt on the Scythe to break its reps which allowed us to kill the Osprey. We then chased the remaining enemy fleet a bit, catching two Ruptures in which we killed one and helped the QCats kill the other.

Hitting the 3 hour limit, I turned the happy fleet over to Marcel and docked up.

Thoughts:

What a difference a year makes! Back in Feb of 2013 the thought of taking ~25 pilots out in a fleet and commanding them in dynamic fluid battles across multiple plexes and grids would have filled me with terror, and the notion to send them careening towards heavier ships with the intent to win would have paralyzed me in doubt.

That being said, its not all sunshine and roses. I started in a DPS ship which I find it a good platform for leading from, but shipped to an Interceptor halfway through to increase our long ranged tackling ability. It was fine until we got into the bigger fight where I found myself distracted from FCing by the act of trying to be a good tackle. Maybe in a small gang that would work, but I need more brainpower on leading right now rather than fiddling with my orbits. Fortunately, we didn't suffer any big losses and racked up some very respectable kills.

My next step is to continue to get practice and work up to larger ship classes and more diverse fleets.