Warship Wednesday - Grinding Pattern

There are two ways to grind experience in the World Of X games: you either pick one or two ships/tanks/planes and constantly play them in matches until you get the next version and then upgrade and use them instead; or you grab a wide selection of vehicles across multiple tech tree lines and play them all equally, or at least occasionally.

With World of Tanks I did mostly the former, running up the German tank destroyer and heavy tank lines exclusively at first, and then when I reached a plateau I started up the light and medium tank lines, etc.

In World of Warships, because I got in on the Humble Bundle Bungle and have so many port slots open, I decided to cast my fleet net wide and have lots of ships from both tech trees. While it means I level up my main ship lines (the IJN battleships and carriers) more slowly I still get experienced with what the other lines and nations are capable of and I tend to make a lot more credits as the big money makers tend to be lower-mid tier ships and not the higher tier ones.

IJN Nagato

All of that to say that I'm still on the same ships for the past couple weeks for the most part: tier VII IJN Nagato battleship and Hiryu carrier which are my primary go-to-first ships, along with USN ships New York battleship (tier V), Cleveland cruiser (VI), Bogue aircraft carrier (V) and IJN ships Kuma cruiser (IV) and Minekaze destroyer (V). The only core line I'm not currently running up is the USN destroyer line and mainly because I don't do very well in destroyers. I also periodically take out the premium KM

With the Russian destroyer line and German cruiser line coming, I plan to add them to the rotation... sigh, and I might as well get the American destroyer line going.

As the grind goes, having lots of ships with different play styles to choose from has kept the game fresh for me. Taking the Nagato in a battle with experience players is very different "clubbing seals" in a battle with newbies with my Kuma (an amazing little ship BTW). Still, I'm getting closer with the main two, both the Nagato and Hiryu are around 100K experience racked up and the tier VIII ships are ~132K required. I estimate getting to them in another 15-20 games each which should take a couple weeks. The good news is that I have all the credits required for one of them straight up without selling anything.

I had the tier VIII Amagi in closed beta and remember enjoying it, and I feel I'm a better battleship captain now than I was then, so all indications point to that being the ship I purchase, and I'll probably use free experience to get out of the stock hull. In World of Tanks, the gun was often the delimiting factor to success, but in Warships I find the hull is.

Whether I get the IJN Shokaku is up in the air and depends on how the ranked battles continue to play out. You see, you can only use tier VI or VII ships in the ranked battles and to get both the Amagi and Shokaku would require my selling of the Nagato and Hiryu, my main ships for ranked battles. I'm hesitant to do that because I've been enjoying the ranked battles and the Shokaku doesn't have any major selling points over the Hiryu; sure, better planes but also in higher tier battles.

Speaking of ranked battles, I've been having lots of fun in them. Since the teams are smaller (seven per side instead of 12) and the composition more tightly defined (only tiers VI and VII, max one carrier per side) AND the battles are domination mode with a cap of 800 instead of 1000, I find the battles tighter and bloodier since you pretty much have to take a cap or find yourself outscored too fast. In regular random battles, you have time and lots of dumb targets to keep the score close without jumping on the caps.

I've done 32 ranked battles and have a 62.5% win rate, helping me up to a modest rank 18 (lowest starting rank is 25, highest possible rank is 1) . I'm far more dangerous in my Hiryu (11 battles and 9 wins) compared to the Nagato (19 battles, 9 wins) and I think that is due to the far fewer number of cruisers (typically 1 or 2, rarely 3) so less AA and only one opposing carrier so unless its a Air Superiority Ranger or Hiyru I know I have fighter parity or superiority, and even when I don't I find the holes in the air defense to drop some torpedoes and bombs.

The only downside to ranked battles is that the wait in line can be longer due to a smaller pool of players to select from with more strict team composition rules. When I run into a wait longer than a couple minutes, I just jump into a random battle instead and run with the plebes :)

Next week I'm going to take a review of all the current maps and thoughts on them.

What is the Value?

What is the value of a unit of tritanium?

You might think this is a trivial or even stupid question. You can go on the market and look it up using EVE Central's home page and say its selling for 6.01 ISK in Jita. There, question answered.

But that's just the current price of tritanium and we all know price changes as supply and demand fluctuate, just like in this graph I screenshot today:

The reason I ask this loaded question is because as I entered dreadnought production and brought investors into my Project Vulcan operation, I decided to keep a closer eye on the books and more accurately track profits for dividend payout reasons. This led me into the question of the best way to calculate profit and that leads to what is the actual value of the minerals I use in building a ship.

The easiest answer, and the one I have chosen to go with as its the most obvious, is that the value of the minerals I buy is the price I pay on the market.

However, follow me along on this thought experiment. Say I buy a piece of trit at 2 ISK (there was a time...) and then use it to build a paperweight (no blueprint required) with a factory cost of 1 ISK. So it cost 3 ISK to make, correct? And I sell it for 4 ISK so my profit is 1 ISK, correct? But what if the market changes while my paperweight is building and the new price of trit is 5. Is my profit still 1 ISK or is it now -2 ISK because the cost of production went up to 5 (price of trit) +1 (factory costs) = 6 ISK?

Obviously, my wallet is 1 ISK higher so my profit must of been positive, right? Well, let's say I took my paperweight and reprocessed it back down to tritanium (assume perfect recycle and no overhead cost for this example) and I then sell that piece of tritanium for 6 ISK. Now my wallet is 3 ISK higher instead of only 1 from selling the paperweight.

In other words, should I calculate my profit based on actual wallet balances or potential wallet balances?

The real example is when I'm building a dreadnought, and the prices of minerals have changed so much between when I bought them and when I'm ready to sell the ship, should I consider the current prices of minerals and calculate profit based on the new prices?

As I said, the obvious answer here is no, and go with the actual wallet balance after selling as the profit, but I find the question fascinating for some reason.

This and That

Several small topics I want to comment on but not worthy of a whole blog post.

* * * * *

CCP is giving brand new players 400,000 skill points to start (assigned in skills) instead of the current 50,000. I don't think it goes far enough, personally, as I wrote last year in a post called Unnecessary Limitations:

I encourage CCP to look into getting rid of the support skill grind. Level the playing field for new players by putting those bonuses they provide right into the ships and modules from the start and just remove the skills. Alternatively, start all players with a few million skill points and all the support skills trained to IV or V (preferably the latter). There are a zillion ways veterans have advantages in terms of ISK for faction mods, implants, boosters as well as the sheer experience advantage, so penalizing new players with lower stats adds insult to injury.

Nevertheless, I applaud the first step. 

* * * * * 

Our home system of Fliet has seen a lot of action recently as Cal Mil pushes a few systems. Last night I led a defense/deplex fleet and saw some bouts of action which got us some sweet kills including a Cerberus and a Jackdaw with deadpsace faction mods coming out to about 170 million ISK. Of course, neither deadspace module dropped.

* * * * *

I love this artwork from CCP of the internals of a Navy Comet.

Takes me back to my days writing the Fighting Spacecraft articles for Project Athena and looking at the models and trying to make real engineering sense out of them. Hope to see more of these.

Migrations

Picture I actually took!

Over at Target Caller blog Talvorian Dex had a post called Into The Great Wide Open in which he discusses his dissatisfaction with null sec under the new sov mechanics and how he has decided to move elsewhere in EVE:

For my part, I’m not interested in sov null right now, at least as a defender. I want to search for those enjoyable fights, fight outnumbered, and use the sp Talvorian has, similar to how we did when RP was based in lowsec. As I considered the kind of content I enjoyed and looked at the time zone activity of corporations who engaged in it, one strong option came to the top.

Adversity. is a slightly smaller corporation with a good pedigree and the kind of activity that really appeals to me. Their doctrines are expensive, but perform admirably. I haven't even moved all my assets out yet (Archon 2.0 on the way...), but I've already gone on a few fleets with them. I've gotten to fly my dreads and T3 cruisers. So far, everyone I've spoken to has been friendly, welcoming, and very capable. I'm always impressed and energized by how friendly dirty pirates and criminals are to members of their community. We have, I believe, one blue. It’s the wild west, baby, and I should have plenty of opportunity to shoot all the things.

And while null may have had the wind knocked out of its lungs, lowsec is getting more crowded by the day.

A couple days later Stabs at Stabbed Up blog posted about his first day in Faction Warfare with Brave:

All told I've spent about 8 hours of the last 24 doing FW and had really good fun. Of the 10 Merlins I brought down 8 are dead but I've got 7 kills and am the corp's top killer!

A couple weeks ago I posted about seeing famous faces in my roams lately, like Elo Knight of former Black Legion fame.

Low sec, especially in the Caldari-Gallente war zone and neighbouring systems, is getting very busy lately. There definitely seems to be a migration from null sec to low sec this fall and I wondered exactly why that is. There seems to be a general flow of unhappiness from current null sec overlords about Fozzie Sov but as Rixx Javix on the most recent A Podcast Apart episode said, the complaints actually describe the system working as intended for the most part.

I have a theory.

As much as the null sec coalitions were unhappy with Dominion Sov, they largely adapted their social structures and operations around it. The large entities developed No Attacking Sov treaties and simply roamed and farmed each other for the "good fights". The static stagnation of null sec was boring in one sense, but offered a rich environment to make ISK relatively risk free and still have fights with each other that were all about the killmails and less the strategic objectives.

Fozzie Sov combined with Phoebe jump changes modified the environment purposely to break up the stagnation, and as much as the null sec overlords have adapted to the new rules the line members have found themselves thrown out of their comfort zone. AS much as everyone hated Super Capital Enforced Sov and wanted Occupancy Based Sov, it required a lot less effort on the part of the alliance members to maintain it the former compared to the latter. Suddenly its not just make ISK and have good fights, its work to defend your space and keep indexes up.

So these disgruntled pilots look around and what do they see? Relatively safe space and plenty of good fights going on in low sec all the time. As and former allies and enemies make their home in low sec, more pilots are enticed to leave null sec and give it a try.

But its not all bad news for null sec, oh no! Although the existing power structures have some crumbling around the edges there are still a lot of pilots invested in staying in null and maintaining their empires. And, a lot of small groups previously locked out of the null sec game are squeezing in using the new mechanics to dip their toes in null and have some fun. Additionally, a portion of the newcomers to low sec will eventually get the urge to try their hand at null sec domination once more and will migrate back. But for now, the cluster is turned on its head.

Where will you be?

Warship Wednesday - Battleships

The situation had gotten dire.

I was in my Tirpitz battleship sitting around half health. A friendly Tirpitz and North Carolina battleship had gone towards the enemy capture point but had gone in separately and were now sunk. The remainder of the fleet, a cruiser and carrier, was way off on the west side of the map. A hostile Tirpitz battleship, New Orleans and Pensacola cruisers, and a Hatsuhara destroyer were ahead of me. Four to one odds.

My allies had softened up the cruisers down to less than 20% health, and all but the Pensacola were on the other side of a point. The Pensacola was running away from me, about 15 klicks off and growing, hoping to open up range while his allies moved into position. I could not let him get away and distract me. I fired and my aim was true and the cruisers foundered. I swung my guns back to the starboard side and turned the rudder hard port, knowing the Hatsuhara would be aiming torps right around the point. I predicted correctly and as I came around the point the destroyer and cruiser were close and bearing down on my position. The torpedoes missed me and I turned my guns on the New Orleans and sent her down to the bottom of the see. Down to two to one.

The enemy Tirpitz was farther back and the Hatsuhara pulled range from my secondaries. I swung my rudder back to the starboard to turn my fire on the enemy battleship and start to approach to try and use my own torpedoes. We started exchanging fire and while hid health points were higher than mine, my armour angling reduced the incoming damage while he was taking big hits from my guns. We were pulling even in HPs when I saw him start to turn to try and fire his torps into me, so I pulled port hard again and fired my torps in a tight spread. I ate one of his torps fired in a wide spread, but my torps slammed into him and he sunk.

As I turned to finally deal with the ineffective Hatsuhara, the game ended on points in our favour.

I told this story not because I look awesome in it (although it helps) but because it highlights a lot of subtleties in commanding a battleship that neophytes might not realize coming into the class: angling armour, pre-turning to avoid torps, picking targets, etc. It also highlights nicely the sheer staying power and hitting power of battleships, something no other class has in such a combination.

Today's post I'm going to give a short list of tips about commanding Battleships.

1) Don't let the South Carolina and Kawachi get you down. The first battleships you run into in the tech tree at tier III are horrible. They have the hit points and long load times characteristic of battleships, but combined with incredibly short range main weapons and dismal slow speed. They are shorted ranged and slower than same tier cruisers and thus can be burned to the ground without ever getting in range if the enemy is smart enough. Worst of all, they have no AA defense and sometimes are in battles with tier IV carriers whose torpedoes can be a pain in the ass. Good news is that you can push through it pretty fast and things start to get better with upgraded Myogi and Wyoming.

2) Learn to turn. Going in a straight line for any length of time makes you a perfect predictable target. Torpedoes from destroyers love battleships that continue in a straight line, and so do Torpedo bombers. Just doing constant half turns is often enough to throw a shot off enough to miss, and if you even suspect a destroyer or torpedo bomber is coming your way you should be turning hard to one side, preferably towards the incoming torps but not necessary.

3) Learn to aim. You have to make your shots count in a battleship since you only get to fire twice a minute (or less!). This take practice to get the long range shots to hit, but under ten klicks you need to be nailing every target. And just hitting anywhere is not enough, you need to know where to hit. Check out this guide from the forums. This means using AP ammo against everything except destroyers (with occasional exceptions) and trying to get those juicy juicy citadels which can cripple enemy ships very quickly.

4) Angle your armour. When facing enemy battleships, you need to avoid as much as possible presenting your entire broadside as it gives the enemy shells the best chance to penetrate your citadel. I realize you need to turn to your broadside to fire your own guns, so I try to weaving approach where I alternate half turns through my firing cycle, coming far enough to one side to fire and then turning back to try and bounce the return fire. If you do this, and your opponent does not, you can make him pay.

5) Be conservative with damage control ability, liberal with repair. Don't use your damage control party on the first fire to start on your decks, because sure enough as you put it out they'll start another and you just have to watch it burn. Try to save it until you are low in hit points or have multiple fires going on. Or, if you suspect you are going to take a torpedo any time soon, save it for that because flooding lasts longer, slows you down, and does a lot of damage over time. Conversely, the repair ability should be used as soon as its reasonable, i.e. after you have taken a significant amount of light and moderate damage. Hitpoints don't get wasted if you use it early and it will be ready sooner that way for next time. Be warned, make sure you use it after you've taken significant damage or you might end up only repairing a bit. I aim for 75%, 50%, and 25% health point totals to activate it.

6) Don't go alone. Try your hardest to get a cruiser or two to come with you early in the battle, or if not turn around and follow them. While I've been able to kill destroyers with my battleship in the past, its bloody hard and even a success can mean eating a handful of torpedoes in the process. Cruisers, on the other hand, eat destroyers like no body's business. Plus, while your own AA is constantly getting better as you go up the tiers, its always good to have more AA to protect you from bombing runs as much as possible.

7) Constantly evaluate the situation. Your long gun reload times can be seen as a boon if you take the time to look around and see what's going on. Count the DDs on the minimap so you know how many could be near you, see what enemy is approaching in case you want to angle your armour differently, see what the flight squadrons of the carriers are doing, pick your next target. Use the Shift key to switch from zoomed in to zoomed out views, look around, be aware. Too often I see battleship captains focused too much on the nearest target that they miss what's happening around them.

Whatever you do, have fun! Remember its only a game.

Citadels, Entosis Links, and Low Sec

The recent dev blog titled "Citadels, Sieges and You V2" there was a very surprising change in direction from CCP:

Long story short, we have had long meetings about the structure attack system, and came to the conclusion that, while Entosis Links do indeed achieve our design goals for the Citadels, they are not actually delivering an experience we are satisfied to provide.
- It’s not fun being shot by massive structure weapons while being unable to retaliate in kind, it gives players the feeling to be helpless while they watch a timer go down
- There is gameplay involved in applying damage that Entosis Links do not preserve, like range, speed, falloff or positioning
- It devalues capital ships as a whole, especially Dreadnoughts, which were specifically introduced to assault and destroy static structures
- Last but not least, there is a visceral connection in shooting a structure down to destroy it. Having guns blazing while watching the target hit points go down is a very strong visual and adrenaline factor that Entosis Links remove out of the equation.

Well that was certainly an about-face!

This feels like an admittance that the gameplay in the current new sov mechanics, while "achieving our design goals", is not exactly lighting the community on fire with excitement. They don't want to back 100% out of Entosis Linking as the attack method for sov control as they have invested so much into that design mechanic, but they've decided they don't want to use it for new game play. Its like Strategic Cruisers all over again.

By deciding to go back to a modified damage system with mitigation beyond a threshold:

The way damage mitigation is going to work is pretty simple:
- We set a maximum limit on a structure, say, 4000 DPS
- Every time damage is applied to that structure, we check all cumulated damage done before that within a specific time frame – let’s say 30 seconds
- If cumulated damage on the structure would exceed 30*4,000 = 120,000 then any further incoming damage is reduced, or negated to preserve that amount over the last 30 seconds
- Mitigation is counted after shield, armor or hull resistances are applied to incoming damage

What this amounts to is a limit to how many ships can effectively pound on a structure. I won't bore you with the probably changing details but suffice to say the bigger the citadel, the more ships you need to reach the damage threshold. This allows CCP to pretty much guarantee the minimum amount of time required to attack any citadel, which in the dev blog seems to be a goal of about 30 minutes.

TLDR; The fastest you can attack a structure is 30 minutes assuming you meet or exceed the damage mitigation threshold.

This is a huge win for null sec and a minor loss for low sec.

In null sec, attacking something with an Entosis link that is unoccupied or untended deep in an alliance's space is relatively easy. But now Citadels are going require a fleet in order to attack in any reasonable time frame, something that is hard to accomplish on the down low deep in enemy space. For all intents and purposes, alliances are not going to have to pay much attention to their assets in the back field unless the enemy commits a significant investment to attack them, at which time its worth defending for the fights and kills.

In low sec there is no safe backfield. Almost every system is within range of several threatening entities. With the Entosis link as the attack method, it means the big boys on the block now have the the hammer for both defense and offense. This is already something we see with flipping systems in faction warfare when we try to attack the IHUB; it has to be quick and fast and full of fear of a drop. Entosis linking, which can be done with less investment, would have even the playing field a bit for smaller entities.

I think. I'm not sure. We'll have to see how it plays out in the coming months.

Blog Banter 67 - CCP TurkkDMC

Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 67th edition! For more details about what the blog banters are please visit the Blog Banter page.

I am CCP X
There has been a catastrophic accident in the CCP Offices in the style of the Robbie Coltrane movie "The Pope Must Die". A leftover open bottle of Brennivin hidden behind a filing cabinet from the last Christmas party has mutated and released fumes affecting several senior CCP staff leading to some staffing changes. CCP Chair is now the CEO and CCP Cub is Executive Producer assisted by CCP Kitteh. In a freak accident your player account has just been upgraded to a senior CCP staffer leading a development team! With CCP now led by an inanimate object supported by a very young child and a fluffy cat, there is nothing to stop this from happening!

You are now CCP -Insert Your CCP Name Here- and have a team of developers eagerly awaiting your commands. So CCP X, what are you going to have your team work on?

Call me Turkk. Actually, CCP TurkkDMC.

Playing World of Warships has again brought to mind the differences between open sandbox PvP and arena PvP. In the former there is rarely a balanced fight, you are often chasing after targets or running from a larger fleet. Occasionally two fleets rush into battle but usually one side has the upper hand and wins handily. Only rarely, very rarely, is a pitched battle won by the slimmest of margins in EVE. Even in the tournaments a lot of the battle is fought and won or lost in the pre-match planning and meta maneuvers, with only the result being revealed in the unfolding battle.

In World of Warships and other "arena PvP" games, the opposite is true as the game is designed to pitch two equally matched teams against each other and allow (as much as possible) the players with the better overall skill to come out on top. While blowouts are not uncommon, there are a lot more close battles and occasional draws.

I enjoy both kinds of PvP. The hunt and chase, with scouting and intel gathering and marshaling forces and fleets, really appeals to the planner and strategic thinker in me. On the other hand, the pitting of pure piloting skill in the arena PvP is awesome for the visceral rush of hand to hand (or ship to ship) combat.

It bugs the ever living crap out of me that EVE producers have not seen the wisdom in expanding the sandbox to encompass both kinds of gameplay, literally freezing out a large potential pool of new players who want spaceship combat without the meta-battle that requires so much experience and friends virtually all the time.

Yes, there are tournaments, but they are modeled after EVE's DNA as well, dominated by the rich groups with tons of meta experience and practice. There is no drop in and play a match there, it is significant commitment and effort and then the battle's outcome is mostly determined before ships start moving. There is less imbalance than free form PvP in the wild, so to speak, but its not a large measure of individual PvP skill so much as its a measure of group meta-PvP skill.

Yes, there is the dueling mechanic, but its a small tool in the sandbox that is easily used and abused by the nefarious against the unsuspecting. Its just another tool of the meta-game, for the most part, and rarely actually used for a contest of PvP ship flying skill.

"Let the players handle it", I hear the cry! Things like the Syndicate Competitive League are held up as examples where players can get involved in arena PvP at a lower barrier to entry. But like all of EVE's tournaments, its afflicted with the same meta-gaming overhead and time commitment requirement that exclude the casual drop in and play crowd. Not to mention that CCP has been derelict in providing any readily available tools to facilitate these functions.

No, given the reigns of CCP what I would do is formulate a plan to introduce actual casual drop in PvP arenas, free of the meta-gaming overhead and massive time commitment that currently plagues arena PvP in EVE.

I would designate a number of systems, probably around ten, spread throughout the high sec, low sec, and NPC null sec regions, where a special station exists where arena battles are held. Each station would host battles for certain ship classes, for example, one station in high sec hosts battles only for tech 1 frigates and only with tech II modules (i.e. no faction or deadspace modules or ships) while a station in low sec hosts battles between cruisers and smaller.

You dock in the station with your ship or ships and enter a queue with your current ship (assuming it meets criteria) and the match maker transports you and 13 other queued players to a deadspace pocket with various terrain in system where you are divided into two teams and you have 15 minutes to battle it out to victory. In this pocket links, boosters, fleet bonuses, and implants have no affect. Just you and your ship, good luck.

Victors receive modest rewards in the form of ISK and Loyalty points for the special store in the new stations.

"But!" I hear many players wailing, "this will kill normal PvP in EVE!" No. No it will not. Because the people who want this gameplay, casual drop in PvP, are not currently in space or tournaments doing "normal" PvP, they are off playing other games. Adding arena PvP like this will increase normal PvP as players come into the game and try everything it has to offer.

Its time to expand the sandbox and CCP TurkkDMC is the one to do it.

Warship Wednesday - On a Thursday Because Screw You

World of Warships is officially Live which besides adding the Tirpitz to the shop means very little as we're basically still using the 0.4.1 patch which nerfed carriers hard.

On the upside, the beautiful Tirpitz:

So Pretty....

One last comment on carriers in the post 0.4.1 patch world and next week I'll delve into making Battleships work.

I've been working hard on getting my tier VII Hyiru to work adequately in the fire frenzy of fighters and cruiser AA now and I'm starting to get the hang of it after some very disappointing initial games. I'm continuing the 2/2/2 strike loadout and typically only send my torpedo and dive bombers after battleships whereas pre-patch I felt comfortable lining up the occasional destroyer and cruiser. But the 33% fewer torps per run and the increase in hostile air traffic means its harder to get sufficient damage for that to work.

On top of that, I've had to work a lot harder at multi-tasking three different groups instead of two. I found myself leaving planes landed or just circling nothing a few times but I've developed strategies to deal with that and the last few games have paid dividends. For a while I was down to only 4-6 torp hits a game but lately I'm back up to 8-12.

On the other side of the coin, I'm up to a fully upgraded tier V Bogue USN carrier and I've fit it out for fighter domination. With its two deadly fighter squadrons I've made life difficult for a few Hosho and Bogue carriers recently, but as noted everywhere the rewards for such gameplay are pathetic. I can get over 1400 base exp for a win with my IJN carrier, but lucky to break a 1000 with the USN counterpart. One dive bomber actually causing damage is frustrating. Fortunately the squeaky wheels on the forums are on the case and I'm hopeful a little more reward balance is coming soon.

Next week: my ranked battles experience and Battleships!

9 Years

In all the excitement last week of expanding my manufacturing enterprise and planning fleets for Aideron Robotics, I completely forgot my 9th birthday on Sept 9th. Huh, 9,9,9.... eerie.

Its hard to believe its been 9 years. But looking back it makes sense, I've basically played three different games for three years each. The first three years was low sec pirate, sometimes null sec bear, who made a lot of mistakes and didn't really accomplish much. The second three years was in m3 Corp and finally became proficient in PvP in low sec and null sec and really got into serious manufacturing through invention. And the last three years was all about faction warfare in Essence and area at first mostly alone but quickly joined with Aideron Robotics for the last two years and 7 months, as well as moving into capital manufacturing for my ISK needs.

Time to start planning what I'm going to do to celebrate ten years next September!

No Winners Here

Here we have an example of a no win situation.

Over on EN24.com a headline screams "WARLORDS OF THE DEEP PILOT ADMITS FOUL-PLAY IN ALLIANCE TOURNAMENT XIII", which to be fair, is a little misleading as the aforementioned pilot himself is quoted as saying "[a]ll things that I hated because they are underhanded but are / were absolutely legal". The article is basically a re-posting of an EVE Online forum post found here.

Feel free to go read it but basically it boils down to accusations from a pilot of the winning alliance of Alliance Tournament 13, Warlords of the Deep, colluded with second place alliance Camel Empire to fix the results of their matches and share the prize pool.

The next day there was a response from a Warlords of the Deep representative on EN24.com dismissing the accusations and the pilot, DHB WildCat, that made them:

The DHB has been part of Hydra for 3 years, during AT12 he happily accepted his Chameleon prize without any feelings of remorse of dishonour, and furthermore he won roughly 280bn isk betting on the fact that Camel would infact win with evebet, during AT13 he also acquired his AT ship quite happily and netted a modest 360bn on bets of us winning. Any such self loathing or feelings of despair would be believable, however if the DHB was truly as principled as he wants to sound he would not have accepted the chameleon he was given a year ago and the uniques he was given this year for his efforts.

Hopefully CCP takes this seriously and investigates to the best of their abilities, but until collaborating reliable witnesses step forward it because a case of he said / he said, and most of the evidence (if any) to be found will be on hidden on servers and forums that CCP does not control. In other words, it will be nearly impossible to prove any malfeasance or collusion unless more people come forward.

There are no winners here. DHB WildCat is either a lone whistleblower with a sudden bout of conscience (or vengfulness) or a troll that has alienated former friends, most people will assume the worst about Warlords of the Deep and call their victory tainted at best or CCP will determine that they did violate the spirit of tournament rules and remove their prizes at worst, and no matter what CCP's alliance tournament takes another huge credibility blow while its still suffering from previous controversy like Alliance Tournament 9.

Perhaps it is time to restructure the Alliance Tournament and stop giving away insanely valuable prizes which seems to only increase the temptation to work against the spirit of event. And if supporting reliable evidence comes forth that the collusion did occur, even within the letter of the law so to speak, I think both Warlords of the Deep and Camel Empire team pilots lose the prizes and get permabanned from future tournaments to send a strong message.

Interesting Time in the Warzone

Its been an interesting few weeks since coming back from August vacation in the warzone.

The Caldari have been running around in a tight Cerberus fleet lately that just scares the crap out of me. You've got to have confidence you can handle anything you run into when you are roaming around null sec in Tech II cruisers and these guys got swagger.

On top of that, it seems like remnants of Black Legion's implosion have landed in the warzone as the alliance Carpe Noctum (ticker: N.O.X) and are roaming around, last night in a Gila Scimitar fleet which we joined up with allies RDRAW and sent them packing.

And some famous names in the neighbourhood now, as this character was spotting in local:

Elo Knight, now part of Snuff Box. Never thought I'd see the day.

Project Vulcan - MOROS

After a crazy summer of rising mineral prices and falling capital prices, things stabilized and my production picked back up slowly into a regular routine again. With Archons rolling off the lines and selling at decent profit once more I looked at the operation and considered next steps.

Coincidentally members in corporation were talking about getting Moros dreadnoughts and asked if I built them.

I don't but I looked into what I needed to get started and saw I was missing only two component BPOs, a Capital Siege Array and Capital Turret Hardpoint blueprint. A quick search on contracts showed them costing about 2-2.5 billion ISK each. With my liquid ISK being less than that I decided it was time to turn to investors to see if I could jump start Moros production.

I sold half of the shares in my alt corporation to Aideron Robotics to raise 5 billion ISK and then used the ISK to purchase a faction Machariel with officer fit mods and lost it on the Jita undock. JUST KIDDING! I purchased the two missing blueprints and moved them to my staging system without issue.

Next I'm going to work on getting the massive amount of minerals I need and moving them to the build system, along with a cheap off-contracts Moros ME10 BPC, and get the build going!

Exciting times in Project Vulcan.

Warship Wednesday - Warship Stats

There is a player run site call WarshipStats that compiles searchable warship stats from publicly available sources and allows some research into various ships, leaderboards, and players. Once a player is searched on the site, they upload all the stats for that player and continue tracking them. They also provide a new little signature banner you can use.

Up to date.

It also allows an easier way to analyze your own stats in handy graphs and charts. For example, my performance per ship class:

As you can see, my performance in carriers has far outstripped my ability in the other classes, a result of the imbalance that was just recently corrected in the 0.4.1 update as I've discussed last week. BTW, my predictions were correct and there are a lot more fighters in the sky these days as even some IJN carriers are taking the fighter loadout over damage. I'm still trying to make the 2/2/2 for my Hiryu work and having some success and some fail. I suspect that chart above will slowly see the carriers come in line as the result of that patch continue to be felt.

I have some quibbles about the site. I'd like the individual ship statistic section to include some filters so I could look at some of my ships for comparison instead of all (I really don't care about that one battle I did in the Erie), but its a work in progress.

If you're playing World of Warships, check it out!

Attack Piece Disguised as Opinionated News

Over at TheMittani.Com there is an article that the editors of that site should have rejected and asked for a re-write. Titled "The Sunt Flores Ban" it is an obvious attack piece that I would expect from a bombastic blogger and not a site that was founded on trying to improve games journalism.

For example, take the very first two sentences:

"Adapt or wait for the fixes."
These six words got a prominent Eve Online player banned.

Well that was inflammatory. And completely wrong. Those six words falsely attributed to a CCP dev are what allegedly got the player banned.

The article goes on to explain what happened, or rather what allegedly happened as we know CCP does not comment on bans and the reasons thereof.

Further on we see this line:

In short, players are mad. They are furious. Frustrated. Fed up. 

There is no supporting information to go along with that line. That is pure writer opinion, very subjective and very unrealistic. Most players never even heard of Stunt Flores or his ban.

The player in question obviously did not intend to impersonate a developer.

Again, more evidence this is an attack piece. Often when we see some claim innocence in a ban most players look askew at him and ask "Really? You did nothing wrong? Are you sure? wink wink nudge nudge". Every convict in jail is innocent, am I right? This writer has made a decision from only a part of the whole truth and decided to unload both barrels because of it.

At the bottom of the article we see:

Editor's Note: As an opinion article, the opinions expressed above are those of the writer and do not reflect TMC as a whole.

*Throws hands up* That makes it ok I guess, right? Seriously, if you want to be better than other gaming news sites, you need to remove garbage like this. I'm not saying that CCP is in the right here or that Stunt Flores deserved his ban, but theMittani.com can't claim the high road in game reporting and allow attack pieces to be hosted on their site as "opinion pieces" without some semblance of trying to get to the bottom of the actual facts at the same time.

 

This and That

Several small items not worth a whole blog post on their own.

* * * * *

When prices of minerals and carrier hulls were goign crazy at the beginning of the summer, I stopped production until such time that the profit margins in the spreadsheets reappeared. Over the past month I saw that the values for Archons had recovered in my markets of choice and I started to get production up again, albeit at a slower pace while I determine if the correction is over. I'm happy to say profits have been considerable on the last two builds and another is in the over.

* * * * *

I love speed when I'm in space, and I'm wondering if the Garmur is a good fit for me when I'm out in kitchen sink fleets. Right now I'll take my Dramiel which is pretty fast but very fragile, and I've used Navy Comets quite happily, but never tried a Garmur. Any opinions?

* * * * *

Should faction warfare have a resource to be fought over by the militias? Right now the only resource is system control which influences loyalty points earned. But winning the warzone actually can decrease the value of your side's loyalty points as markets get saturated and gives the other side some impetuous to get back in the war. And sometimes you don't want to take system control as its better to farm the enemy systems for sweet offensive LPs.

I think it might be nice if there was a unique resource that did not get de-valued through winning the war, and that you needed control of a system to exploit. I know there are some buffs to station services and clone costs, but that has never been a reason to want to take a system.

* * * * *

What is going on with the Drifters? Why are they attacking Amarr space? Where are they coming from? I know there are a lot of theories and clues but its time for a big lore reveal payoff.

* * * * *

That's all for now, see you monday!

Warship Wednesday - IJN Carriers Update

Last week I talked about how powerful Imperial Japanese Carriers were in World of Warships and rumours of the incoming nerf in the next path. Well, the patch arrived today:

Zuiho: changed the composition of the Type 5 mod. 1 flight control to contain 1 torpedo bomber, 2 bomber and 1 fighter squadrons instead of 2 torpedo bomber, 1 bomber and 1 fighter squadrons
Zuiho: changed the composition of the Type 5 mod. 2 flight control to contain 2 torpedo bomber, 1 bomber and 1 fighter squadrons instead of 3 torpedo bomber, 1 bomber and 0 fighter squadrons
Ryujo: changed the composition of the Type 6 mod. 1 flight control to contain 1 torpedo bomber, 2 bomber and 1 fighter squadrons instead of 2 torpedo bomber, 1 bomber and 1 fighter squadrons
Ryujo: changed the composition of the Type 6 mod. 2 flight control to contain 2 torpedo bomber, 2 bomber and 1 fighter squadrons instead of 3 torpedo bomber, 2 bomber and 0 fighter squadrons
Ryujo: changed the composition of the Type 6 mod. 3 flight control to contain 1 torpedo bomber, 1 bomber and 3 fighter squadrons instead of 2 torpedo bomber, 2 bomber and 1 fighter squadrons
Hiryu: changed the composition of the Type 7 mod. 2 flight control to contain 2 torpedo bomber, 2 bomber and 2 fighter squadrons instead of 3 torpedo bomber, 3 bomber and 0 fighter squadrons
Hiryu: changed the composition of the Type 7 mod. 3 flight control to contain 1 torpedo bomber, 2 bomber and 3 fighter squadrons instead of 2 torpedo bomber, 2 bomber and 2 fighter squadrons
Shokaku: changed the composition of the Type 8 mod. 2 flight control to contain 2 torpedo bomber, 2 bomber and 2 fighter squadrons instead of 3 torpedo bomber, 3 bomber and 0 fighter squadrons
Shokaku: changed the composition of the Type 8 mod. 3 flight control to contain 1 torpedo bomber, 2 bomber and 3 fighter squadrons instead of 2 torpedo bomber, 2 bomber and 1 fighter squadrons
Taiho: changed the composition of the Type 9 mod. 2 flight control to contain 3 torpedo bomber, 2 bomber and 1 fighter squadrons instead of 3 torpedo bomber, 3 bomber and 1 fighter squadrons
Hakuryu: changed the composition of the Type 10 mod. 2 flight control to contain 3 torpedo bomber, 3 bomber and 2 fighter squadrons instead of 3 torpedo bomber, 4 bomber and 1 fighter squadrons

Yeah, that's a terrible wall fo text to me too. The new loadouts in chart form (old in brackets):

Tier	Name	Stock	Damage Mod	Fighter Mod
IV	Hosho	1/2/0
V	Zuiho	1/1/2 (1/2/1)	1/2/1 (0/3/1)
VI	Ryujo	1/1/2 (1/2/1)	1/2/2 (0/3/2)	3/1/1 (1/2/2)
VII	Hiryu	1/2/2	2/2/2 (0/3/3)	3/1/2 (2/2/2)
VIII	Shokaku	1/2/2	2/2/2 (0/3/3)	3/1/2 (2/2/2)
IX	Taiho	2/2/2	1/3/2 (1/3/3)	3/2/2
X	Hakuryu	2/3/2	2/3/3 (1/3/4)	4/2/2

So instead of having three torp squadrons at tier V you don't see them until tier IX, and instead of adding dive bombers, which I thought was the approach, they went with adding fighters to the mix. Interesting, if the new fighter ability for area barrage and smoother power curve between tiers makes a difference.

Life for carrier pilots it definitely going to be a lot harder on both sides with the dramatic increase in fighters from carriers, especially with Japanese carriers having the option of a 3 fighter squadron loadout starting at tier VI.

Art By Any Other Name

Eve Blog Banter 66 - Caldarification

The art team has been working on many art assets recently and there has been talk of the "Caldarification" of Eve related art. Recently examples have been the WIP images of the Thrasher class destroyer redesign and the citadel. Do we need to keep the lines between the races designs clear cut or is some blending of more generic sci-fi styling a good thing? Should Matari be flying/floating scrap heaps? Should Gallente be 'all about the bass'? Or is a bit of generic sci-fi styling needed to bring new life to our important internet spaceships even if it leans a bit to Caldari?

Let's take a look at examples of these WIP images:

Yes, the aesthetic of the models does seem to invoke a lot of the designs of Caldari ships and structures, especially when viewed without colour as in these images. The Thrasher in particular could be a mutant brother of the Jackdaw Tactical Destroyer:

So what's going on here? Being a 9 year veteran to the game gives me some perspective on art in the game so let's dig up some old screenshots of mine to look at what being Caldari used to mean:

Excepting the Badger, every ship in those images are asymmetric. There were some mostly symmetric ships in the Caldari line when I started, like the Merlin and Caracal, but they were the exceptions. Over the years and redesigns that started to go away from all the empire's lines, replaced with a more generally pleasing symmetric look to new ships.

Another thing to not is how plain the ships look on their skins. Not a lot of shadows, tones, spikes, lights, moving parts, etc. They still looked very sci-fi but also a little plain compared to the gorgeousness we see in game now.

Let me get to the point I'm trying to make: EVE's overall look for ships has changed over the years from many asymmetric designs to symmetric ones. In addition, the capabilities of the graphics over the past decade have advanced so that the designers can be more imaginative on smaller scales to differentiate the empires, and as the artists get these new abilities their designs change and grow in new directions.

Looking at WIP images tend to look like Caldari right from the start because Caldari over-arching design concept leans heavily on the blue-gray spectrum, but I bet that once the Thrasher gets its multiple layers of shading and skin it will no longer evoke the Caldari aesthetic.

Finally, its not unusual that in a galaxy getting more and more connected via internal social changes (i.e. rise of the casuleers) and pushed together via external threats (Drifters, Sansha, Rogue Drones) that technology would coalesce as well and more overlapping in designs could evolve from that.

And I for one, welcome our Caldari engineer overlords. :)