Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah

Skill Point Distribution for Relicc

2012-01-25T07:58:00.000-05:00

ReliccJan 23, 2012 07:38 PM
How many SPs do you have?
Kirith KodachiJan 24, 2012 05:07 AM
94,622,000 approximately.
ReliccJan 24, 2012 05:05 PM
What in?!

Well, Kirith is a combat pilot that can fly all Tech I sub-capital combat ships and all Tech II combat ships except Tech II battleships that are not Caldari. As well, I can use Tech II versions of all weapon systems and can Tech II tank in any method. And I trained for a supercarrier. So with those capabilities, my skill distributions are fairly striaghtforward:

Now you know.

Fixing The CSM Voting

2012-01-24T09:46:00.003-05:00

Depending on which definition of "Fixing" you apply, the title of this blog post is very ambiguous. And that's the point.

Ever since CSM 6 was voted in there been much discussion about how to ensure equal representation on the CSM. (In fact, there was discussion before that but the null sec takeover in the 6th iteration really prompted the panels to wax about it.) CSM 5 was primary devoid of a lot of null sec representation and some of the comments in the minutes there caused much consternation amoungst the alliance elites and caused the backlash and voting blocs to arise. This in turn caused hand-wringing and proclamations of doom.

The major concern of the talking heads is that as long as null sec alliances care about the CSM they will continue to dominate it and thus the conversation with CCP and its developers. There may be more pilots in high sec but they are splintered and/or apathetic. "How," they moan, "can we ensure that representation is equal?"

The most common refrain is that the CSM should have 2 representatives each from null sec, high sec, and low sec as well as a single rep from wormhole space. This is how it works in real life, right? However the comparison to meatspace politics quickly falls down when you realize the fundamental difference: Bill the player lives in a house in a town in a country; Kirith Kodachi lives wherever the fuck he wants.

Any scheme to divvy up seats on the CSM fails because while you can assign roles to seats you can with any certainty assign roles to players. A player may put himself forth as a High Sec Candidate while have four or five alts in a null sec alliance and the votes associated with that bloc. Or another candidate may live part time in wormhole space and part time in low sec; which seat is he up for? And if he chooses to run for one, what prevents his buddies in the other area from throwing their votes for him anyways?

You could try and limit votes by forcing pilots into specific arenas much politicians can only run for office in their home state (and that never gets gamed, right?!) but remember we get one vote per account, not pilot. An account with three characters all in different zones gets to vote where? In any of the three?

Furthermore, if you put yourself forward as a null sec candidate but during the election period your alliance gets booted out of null sec and you move into low sec, which seat are you running for? Can you still represent null sec interests if you spend the term in CSM as living in low sec?

Any effort to codify and legislate voting into specific roles or seats fails because pilots are plastic in their own careers and living environs and Eve players are rarely focused on a single style of game-play through a single character. And stringent restrictions will simply be gamed by savvy and organized voting blocs (e.g. null sec alliances) while the individuals will be left out in the cold regardless.

I say we let the process evolve organically. The null sec voting alliances came about as a response to the evolving CSM and if we let it I'm sure a counter-reaction to null sec dominance will come from the players, not over-engineering processes. But only if we let it.

Bang Bang You're Dead

2012-01-23T09:00:00.003-05:00

In the fall I finished the training for the Proteus (got two in the hanger now) and was faced once more with the eternal Eve question: What Do I Train Next?

I decided it was time to do some polishing on useful combat skills and picked Gunnery as the category of choice since the few percentages picked up there on secondary skills applied equally to hybrid, projectile, and energy weapons.

It took a month and a half but I completed on the weekend and all secondary skills are up to level V.


Oh Yeah!

There is still all the tech II specialization skills to do but I decided to move on to Mechanic category where things were horribly untrained...


"Whadda mean my armour compensation skills are only at level III?!"

Yeah... its pretty rough. I'm going to take three weeks and get all those rigging skills and compensation skills up to IV and then re-evaluate. Sigh.

Shameless Plugging - Kadavr Black Guard, Eve Tribune, Tech 4 News

2012-01-20T14:48:00.003-05:00

Kadavr Black Guard is recruiting! We're hanging out in Sinq Laison with the Shadow Cartel and want more pilots to give us more options for roams and picking fights.

KBG recruitmemt info
OK listen up grunts, we still have a few limited places available for the right people.
If your attitude sucks, if you act like a hormonal teenager, then don't bother applying even if you have a "elite" killboard, you won't get in.
We're not interested in Drama llama's.
There is a few specifics you will need to have, or be close to flying:
1 racial T2 cruiser hull, with full T2 weapons/modules and Tank. ie HAC/Recon/Logi
1 racial T2 frigate T2 Weapons/modules where required.
Battlecruiser trained to 4 minimum, with approriate fittings.
This means you will have a bare minimum of 10m skillpoints, and in the right areas.
We fly the following gangs, you will be expected to be able to have fitted and be able to fly something suitable from your hanger.
Frigate wolf pack
Shield Battlecruiser
Shield Nano Battlecruiser
Tier 3 Battlecruiser Alpha
Battleship, Dread / Carrier fleets - we do these, occasionaly.
Corp ops are non mandatory, however if you don't want to fly with a gang, why join a corp?
Combat experience is preferable, as is a positive kill / death ratio, however for the right people that are willing to listen, we can break your bad habit of dying and make you into a solid combat pilot.
We have solid logistics in place, with regular freighter runs to/from Jita, and lowsec/highsec hauling.
You will also need the following:
Working Mic, and audio. We use Mumble/Vent/TS3 depending on who we are flying with.
Self sufficent isk source. We can assist by providing Alt access to lvl4 missions, and to our WH for isk.
We are mainly EU/US timezone. Background checks may apply.
Contact Anabaric, Acute Dragonis, or Nashh Kadavr in game, or Join Kadavr Public for more information.

* * * * *

Eve Tribune is recruiting!

Share your experience
Write for the EVE Tribune

I'm gonna keep on plugging that phrase because I like it. I almost changed it to "Share your EVEsperience, write for the EVE Tribune". And sure it's a bit funny, building on the "EVE is real" slogan and so, but it's a it over the top really.

Share your experience
Write for the EVE Tribune

For those who don't know it the EVE Tribune is the longest running EVE Online eZine. We've been around since 2005-ish and until today we've published over 200 issues with articles spanning from news and pvp guides to philosophy, with a pinch of cookery in it. An unknown number of writers have shared their EVE Online experience with thousands upon thousand of readers.

So are you a writer? Or a sharer? Would you like your words to be read by thousands of people? Send me a mail at recruiting@eve-tribune.com and tell a bit of yourself. Who are you, what's your EVE experience, and what would you like to write about.

See you at the Tribune
/Mr M

* * * * *

Interested in Eve fiction in small digestible bites? Check out Tech 4 News!

WHAT IS TECH4 NEWS?
Welcome to Tech4 News; an independent media outlet dedicated to bringing news and current events concerning baseliners and capsuleers to the general population of New Eden.

Site Statistics and Blog Banter Archeology

2012-01-20T12:54:00.000-05:00

For the curious, here is what my site statistics overview looks like:

Since I've been using Google Analytics in May 2009, I average below 20,000 page views per month with that spike in January 2011 coming from when I hosted the guest fiction from CCP Headfirst.

I also took a second to find the list of participants from the very first Blog Banter Crazy Kinux hosted back on October 29, 2008:

Participants:

CrazyKinux's Musing: Exotic Dancers, Corporate Meetings & more
The Wandering Druid of Tranquility: Ambulation - what I hope to see
Semper EVE: Ambulation and Me
Roc's Ramblings: Blog Banter #1 - Ambulation
The Ralpha Dogs: Ambulation/Walking in Stations: A "Second Life" for EVE?
Drunk in Space: Look at how much weight he put on…
Diving into PsycheDiver's Psyche: Ambulation and Her
Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah: Eve Blog Banter - Ambulation
I am Keith Neilson: Going For A Stroll Through EVE
Life in Low Sec: Ambulation Fantasies
Shahirs Journey: Hopes for Ambulation
A Mule in EVE: Ambulation
Protosolus: EVE: Gawking in Stations
One Man, One Ship: Ambulation
Achernar: Avatars in a spaceships game
The Shard: Ambulation
Mad Rant: Saturday Night Fever
I May Find Peace Within The Emptiness…: Walking Around…
Ombeve: Ambulation
A Merry Life and a Short One: Ambulation

The four bolded one are the blogs with posts since September 2011. Some blogs went silent just last summer and others are gone entirely or haven't posted in years.

Food for thought.

Fiction Friday: Series 4 - Part 16

2012-01-20T12:32:00.002-05:00

Previously:
Prologue Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13
Part 14 Part 15

* * * * *

Max and I talked for a few hours and I got a good feel of what the corporation he represented, m3 Corp, was about. Essentially they were a multipurpose capsuleer corporation working out of a nearby constellation called Sukanan. Although ostensibly part of the Amarr empire, the patrols of the Navy and Ministry of Internal Order were sporadic at best and then only in force. Many Sansha Nation fleets and installations had broken down security in the pocket to the point where not even CONCORD could enforce security adequately.

That's where corporations like m3 came in. They were working for agents of the Imperial Navy in trying to blunt the Sansha presence, as well as trying to combat the rampant capsuleer criminal activity that began with the withdrawal of regular CONCORD patrols. Max's corporation was one of several working together in an official capacity as the BlackWater alliance (ticker: BWA). They weren't large like the null sec capsuleer alliances but they were large for a pocket like Sukanan and had some success improving security for lone pod pilots and some corporate fleet from Impro and Chemal Tech.

"Its not easy work," Max opined. "The automatic sentry guns run off a CONCORD database of who the pod pilot criminals are so we can engage them without interference, but we know of several pilots who are smart enough to keep off that list so we can't engage them first without taking sentry fire." He took a swig of his beer. "We've gotten pretty good at baiting some of them but they learn quick."

They weren't only a passive anti-pirate force. "We also do patrols in low sec space around Tash Murkon and Domain regions, and we've made friends in Providence so we're starting roams in there as well."

"Null sec space?" I said surprised. "You looking to move out there?"

"Yeah, that's the goal."

"But CVA, they're old school Amarr, right? Slaves, castes, etc?"

"They're conservative internally but they are still capsuleers and recognize the need for pragmatism like any good Caldari," he replied with a wink. "They don't interfere in allies internal policies as long as we continue to work towards securing Providence and Domain for the Empire."

"I've got a soft spot for the Republic," I said with a grimace, "I don't know if I like the idea of working against them with the enemy..."

"You mean the Ushra'Khan? A bunch of terrorists and pirates," he spat, "with more interest in the kill than fighting for the Republic. Hell, even the Thukkers are considered better upstanding citizens back in Pator."

I nodded and took a sip of my wine. "You've given a lot to think about, Max. I need to talk to my brother and see if he needs me but if not..." I left the question unfinished.

Max beamed his friendly smile and said enthusiastically, "Of course! I mean we'll need to run you by Grey and Darth, but I'm sure there won't be any problems!"

"Great," I said. "I could use fresh start." Another one, I added in my head.

Nerf The Drake

2012-01-19T08:44:00.001-05:00

I admit I don't read the CSM minutes. Never have, probably never will. I let lots of other people with more time on their hands read them and post the summaries and relevant bits on the forums and blogs for me to comment on.

Case in point: Corelin over at Mad Haberdashers points out this:

Source: http://www.eveonline.com/council/transcripts/2011/CSM_CCP_Mettings_7-9_12_2011.pdf
The Drake: The CSM and CCP both acknowledged the need to rebalance the Drake, which ‘does everything too well’. CCP is considering giving it a more offensive role like a Raven or Caracal where it would lose the shield resistance bonus and the 5% Kinetic damage bonus and instead gain a rate offire bonus and a missile velocity bonus. The CSM vehemently approved of this idea. CCP and theCSM also agreed that this possible change to the Drake would help add more uniqueness to theNighthawk, which is presently overshadowed entirely by the Drake.

[Emphasis mine]

If you study the Caldari lineup you know there is a pattern in the ships of the line: there is a missile based ship and a hybrids based ship (excluding Destroyer class). In all cases the missile ship gets two missile offensive bonuses, and the hybrid ship gets an optimal range bonus and a 5% shield resistances bonus per level.

Except the Drake. It gets one missile bonus and the 5% shield resistance bonus per level. The result is that the Ferox was doomed. You see, the pattern is that the missile ship is a varying degree of a glass cannon and the hybrid ship has a big passive shield tank and long range sniping. But the Drake breaks that rule with decent missile damage (7 bonuses hardpoints) and a shield tank superior to that of its sister ship. There became very little reason to select the Ferox over the Drake from that point forward.

This is all to say that I support getting rid of the Drake's resistance bonus and giving it another missile bonus (preferably one to missile velocity for more range). Combined with the hybrid boost and the 6 turrets it now has (one was added only a couple years back) the Ferox might even stage a comeback.

BB32: Say Yes To Reasonable Protection

2012-01-18T09:09:00.000-05:00

This month's Blog Banter comes from Drackarn of Sand, Cider and Spaceships. He has foolishly chosen to poke the hornet's nest that is the non-consensual PvP debate. Whilst you read his question, I'll be finding a safe place to hide.

"A quick view of the Eve Online forums can always find someone complaining about being suicide ganked, whining about some scam they fell for or other such tears. With the Goons' Ice Interdiction claiming a vast amount of mining ships, there were calls for an "opt out of PvP" option.

Should this happen? Should people be able to opt-out of PvP in Eve Online. Should CONCORD prevent crime rather than just handing out justice after the event? Or do the hi-sec population already have too much protection from the scum and villainy that inhabits the game?"

* * * * *

How many subscriptions are lost because of suicide ganking, a practice in which players with so much ISK to afford to throw away ships on a constant basis "just for the tears"? How many new players quit in disgust when they are trying to mine to start out and a Thrasher comes in and pops them before CONCORD shows up?

Even without insurance payments if killed by CONCORD, suicide ganking in belts and at gates is rampant in Eve. We talk so proudly about how there is no levels in Eve and players can all mix together and even new players can contribute to a fleet, but then ignore how ISK creates a barrier between new and old where old can throw away ships in suicide ganks with nary a second thought while new players are devastated by the resulting loss.

So yes, I think there should be some minor for of protection from PvP in certain situations.

Its not like CONCORD doesn't already impact what you can and cannot do. Your ship can't even activate bomb launchers or bubbles in low sec, you can't activate smart bombs near stations, you can't cloak when being chased by NPC police even when they are not on grid with you, etc. So it makes sense that they would build in some override commands to prevent your ship from targeting other ships with what I'm calling an Isolation Matrix.

Here's how the Isolation Matrix works.

Its automatically installed on all Tech I sub-capital ships (i.e. not faction, Tech II, Tech III, or capital ships). Its on by default and can be manually turned off by right clicking on your ship and choosing Configure Ship, then a window comes up with a check box for activating or deactivating it.

While it is on, your ship cannot be targeted by any other player for any reason. Your row in other player's overview shows as grey to indicate you are not a valid target and anyone that tried to target you will get a message stating "You cannot target a ship with an Isolation Matrix active".

The isolation matrix will be deactivated if you perform one of the following actions:

- steal from someone's can or wreck

- target another player or player owned structure

- join a fleet

- activate smart bomb, ECM burst

- jump or undock or log on into a 0.5 security status or lower system

- launch scan probes

- are not in a NPC corporation1

- your sec status is below zero
- fit faction or Tech II modules on the ship

Anytime an action will cause the Isolation Matrix to deactive is about to be performed, a message box will pop up informing the player of this fact and if they want to proceed, much like the loss of security status.

The idea is that the active Isolation Matrix will allow a player to experience Eve without the threat of immediate annihilation and that by the time you've started to branch out into fleets and player corps or lower sec space that you have learned enough to be aware of the threat of suicide ganks. At the same time, they don't have the ability to act as an invulnerable scout. At best they can mine or mission in relative peace, and because the restrictions on the Isolation Matrix are pretty severe for an experience player, it will be mainly new players with limited resources that will benefit.

1 - I considered limiting it to only the starting newbie NPC corporations. Also, idea for marking footnotes shamelessly stolen from Ripard Teg or one of his robots.

* * * * *

My knee jerk reaction when I read the blog banter topic was "hell no, your undock button is your pvp flag!" like a lot of other posts (heck, all of them?!) are going to be. I decided to actually sit down and think about the subject and try to play the devil's advocate and come up with something that prevents suicide ganking, a practice I find abhorrent from an immersion breaking perspective, from impacting the players least able to deal with its occurrence, especially when the suicide ganking is being done by the players most capable of absorbing losses (i.e. people with ISK to throw away ships).

If you read this post and are filled with consuming hatred of me, please don't bother commenting. If you disagree (or agree, but I doubt that) with my idea, please comment with your points.

Cool Kids

2012-01-17T12:47:00.001-05:00

Over at Freebooted blog last week Seismic Stan wrote a post about the impending end of the Evebloggers.com portal and then he said:

Clique Favouritism?

Personally I have seen other signs that the community team may be operating under a siege mentality, with evidence of a lack of resources or understanding of some areas of EVE's complex society. Some examples that I have recently experienced suggest a bias toward the "cool kids".

For example, Mintchip produced a brief and awkward interview with Lead Designer CCP Soundwave at roughly the same time CCP Dropbear and CCP Headfirst gave an insightful and entertaining interview about EVE's storylines, live events and some exclusive DUST 514 info for Voices from the Void. Which interview got some CCP love in the December newsletter? Yep, you guessed it. The Mintchip/Soundwave non-event.

Another example of lop-sided favour concerns the recent podcast produced by one of CCP's favourite sons, Kil2 (of Alliance Tournament commentary fame). Along with Kovorix they have started a podcast focusing on solo combat. More power to them, however I felt for Arydanika who despondently pointed out the My EVE section of the official forums, where her thread which she regularly updated with the latest podcast episodes and information was vastly overshadowed by Kil2 and Kovarix's new effort. Which one had been tagged by both CCP developers and GMs? Yep, the new one by the cool kids.

[...]
Has anyone else noticed this change? Is the need to focus on the numbers forcing an understrength community team to leave some of us out in the cold? Or is being sensitive to these issues indicative of an over-inflated sense of entitlement?

Then last night there was the sudden and unexpected end of the awesome Starfleet Comms podcast:

As they say, all good things must come to an end and unfortunately this is true of the Starfleet Comms Podcast and Radio Show.
Those shows are on a hiatus. Once circumstance changes then maybe they will return either in the same format or in a different one, who knows?

In of itself it seems unrelated, right? Except this part near the end of Max torp's post:

I am appreciative of those podcasts, sites and individuals that supported, liked or mentioned us. Especially those that returned compliments and generally behaved in a courteous manner. The cliques can fuck off and die, you know who you are and a special place in hell is reserved for you, you miserable pieces of shit.

Whoa! That was a very jarring note of vehemence in an otherwise sanguine "hiatus" post.

In any community/society large enough, there are going to be groupings. These groupings will often have something in common that binds them together, something that can be small or quite significant. Individuals may belong to multiple groupings, or even to none.

In Eve's society there are a lot of different groups. Null sec'rs, low sec'rs, pirates, industrialists, pvpers, carebears, wormholers, goons, russians, griefers, botters, scammers, roleplayers, etc etc etc. The list goes on a long way with ever more distinct and smaller groups, some overlapping and some never coming close.

One of these groups can be call the celebrities of Eve, the glitterati, the 'cool kids'. They are the 'big names' in Eve that almost everyone recognizes, and they got there either through hard work or charm or luck or a combination of all three. This group (or possibly multiple groups with different levels of fame/recognizability) has special access to parts of CCP and the developers that has come about due to working with them in the past through special projects like the Alliance Tournament, CSM, forums, ISD, EON magazine, role playing, fanfest, etc. The upshot is that this special access results in a positive feedback loop: CCP is more likely to recognize and celebrate the efforts of this group because they know them, and the individuals get further fame and access as a result of the recognition. This has similar analogs in real life of course.

The down side to this phenomenon is that a small company like CCP with limited resources for community management, especially since the layoffs last month, can miss a larger but less visible group of people who are making efforts just as intensive and worthy of recognition as what was done by the glitterati. This is a fact of life in any similar situation and the best way to combat that is to work together to highlight the good work of all kinds done by everyone and do our best to get the word to CCP about how they should look further afield than the closest sources.

Regardless, it is not acceptable for anyone who has made it to the big leagues to look down upon others toiling in degrees of relative obscurity and disparage their efforts just because they don't happen to have the visibility and official support that others have. I don't know who did what to make Maxtorps so angry, but I know the feeling of frustration that can come from not being part of the "cool kids cliques".

Fiction Friday: Series 4 - Part 15

2012-01-13T12:55:00.001-05:00

Previously:
Prologue Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13

Part 14

* * * * *

He was big, even for a Caldari Civre, and had close cropped hair and expensive clothes. He looked mean until he smiled which came easily to his face and if there was any deception or malice behind the smile I could not detect it. He waved to a hostess for a drink and snack and looked back to me with his elbows on the table. "You're a long way from home, my friend," he said conversationally.

I grunted noncommittally and debated if I should just leave and go back to my quarters to mope there with a bottle of booze (and no food, easier to get stinking drunk that way).

"My name's Max, Maximus Decemus to be precise, and I'm a capsuleer looking for crew." He lifted his hand and started counting out benefits from a well practices spiel. "Empire space only, good benefits, decent crew quarters, reasonable shifts, I take care of my crew you know, no sweat ships..."

I held up my hand to stop him. "I've got my own ship, thanks."

"Oh! Sorry then, captain. Didn't mean to presume. You just looked like a man looking for work."

"Yeah," I snorted as a took a sip. "More like looking for a purpose."

He scratched his face while thinking. "Well, my corporation could use another contractor for shuttling staff and minor supplies... what kind of ship and work you looking for?"

I found myself not minding the company. Finally someone who didn't judge me on my baggage. "I fly a Ferox right now but I've been brought up to specs on battleships," I said with a bit of pride. I turned my head and pulled down my collar to show my main neural implant.

"A podder? Are you trying to recruit some new crew too?" he asked.

"Nah, I just like the ambiance more. Besides, if I was recruiting I would just use the Association, wouldn't I?"

The Association, more properly known as the United Ship Crewman Association, was the name of the Amarrian union that helped people find berths for there skills on capsuleer vessels. When the CONCORD accords came into effect and capsuleers began to ply the trade routes and amass power and riches, an unexpected side effect of that was that the new immortals started to use multiple ships in relatively short periods of time. One might dock at a station in a battleship and depart in a frigate, leaving hundreds if not more crew behind for days or even weeks. At first these crews simply waited but soon station managers all over New Eden found themselves with thousands of idle hands and the troubles that the devil found for them. Another problem was when a capsuleer purchased a ship and wanted it prepared and fully crewed within hours; finding enough crew for larger ships sometimes caused recruiters to headhunt the station staff with promises of better pay and a life of excitement. More than a few station managers found themselves suddenly short staffed.

In response to this growing crisis a station manager in Botane, Sinq Laison, came up with the idea of a flexible pool of crew that capsuleer ships would add to when docked for long periods of time, and draw from as needed. This solved the problem of idle crew members and recruitment shortages in one fell swoop as long as capsuleers could be convinced to agree to the program. As it turns out, 99% of the capsuleers found that they didn't give a rats ass if they left with the same crew they arrived with as long as they had crew.

Almost overnight the concept spread to other stations and soon entire constellations set up programs to shuttle required crew around to meet the growing demand. In Gallente space the unions were referred to as the Society of Engineers and Technologists, Caldari space had Station Capsuleer Professional Unions, the Matari called them Brotherhoods of Spacial Experts, and in Amarr empire space they were the United Ship Crewman Associations. You need a new crew anywhere in populated space and your local union will deliver.

"The Association is OK for filling up a roster," Max shrugged, "but you know the Amarr - everything is done by seniority. I ask for three shield techs and I get the first three bozos in the system who have been paying their dues the longest with the slightest bit of experience. One time I got a Gallentean tech whose experience was modulating shower pulse walls." We both laughed at that thought. "I like to come down to the promenades and as around, avoid the bureaucracy."

I nodded. It made sense to take a personal approach in picking a crew. Although a capsuleer controlled almost all aspects of a ship's performance the work done in maintenance and repairs could be the difference between life and death if it was a matter of millimeters.

"So what kind of work does your corporation do?" I asked.

Max smiled and leaned back. "Looks like my recruitment work at the table is not wasted after all..."

CCP's 2012 Resolutions

2012-01-13T11:55:00.002-05:00

I made a list of new year's resolutions I think CCP should adopt. Find them here at the Eve Tribune.

On that note, we are looking for more writers. Get paid to write about Eve! Go here.

The Origin of Honour Tanking

2012-01-13T08:50:00.001-05:00

You ever hear someone talk about "honour tanking" in a joking manner in Eve? Essentially it means to have no tank whatsoever in a combat situation and is especially relevant if your low slots are filled with cargohold expanders.

Do you wonder where that expression came from? Well, let me point you to an Eve Tribune article I'm going to reprint here for prosperity's sake.

Scius and the Dreadnaught
The tale of the worst pilot in Eve

Many people call themselves great PVPers for a number of reasons. Some point to amazing killboard statistics, while others boast about how many systems their troops have conquered. Others snicker and roam about with dampening warp stabbed ravens and somehow absolutely murder people.

This is not their story.

This is the story of Scius, which upon Friday, August 24 was a proud member of Omen Incorporated, a new corporation that had joined the 0.0 based alliance Exuro Mortis. He was well regarded with a fairly decent corp history stretching back quite a while. He had a pretty fair amount of personal wealth, and could fly a Dreadnaught. A player like this normally would be quite an asset to any alliance.

Nobody knew that he was a complete and utter noob with an account he purchased from a respected veteran. Nobody also knew that he’d be such a world class fuckup.

Early that morning, he flew his faction-equipped Nightmare-class Faction Battleship (With 5 Billion Isk Officer Fittings) into Aunenen, a notoriously dangerous 0.4 security system. He didn’t use a scout or even ask what was there. He somehow got caught and killed by a Mothership on the other side after foolishly trying to engage it. Never once did the thought of warping off before the horribly awkward ship could lock and get a warp disruptor on him. Never once did he think of flying back to the gate and going home. He went down like a bitch.

Later, he would comment on it casually onto alliance chat.
[02:21:32] Scius > There's a mothership camp in Aunenen.
[02:23:35 ] Scius > Mr Xtreme
[02:23:43 ] Scius > He has the Nyx.

Okay. Fair enough. Thanks for telling us what was going on 90 jumps from where the rest of the alliance was. We don’t care.

[02:23:49] Scius > I went out with my dread and went down shooting.
…

http://killboard.eve-triumvirate.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=51051
What the fuck!?

This heroic defender of the alliance had apparently become filled with rage at the destruction of his precious faction-fit battleship. He singlehandedly charged a single, unsupported Dreadnaught against a lowsec, completely invincible Mothership. And while he was at it, that Revelation-class Dreadnaught had nothing but cargo expanders in it’s low slots.

Flabbergasted, the alliance responded to his actions in throwing away a Capital Ship.
[ 2007.08.24 02:24:34 ] Righteous Fury > you
[ 2007.08.24 02:24:38 ] Righteous Fury > are fucking retarded
[ 2007.08.24 02:24:46 ] Akat > doesnt fucking matter, you dont do that shit
[ 2007.08.24 02:24:46 ] Scius > Why, because I'm not a coward?
[ 2007.08.24 02:24:55 ] Righteous Fury > get out of my fucking alliance, seriously
[ 2007.08.24 02:25:03 ] Righteous Fury > you have won the award for the stupidest shit ever done
[ 2007.08.24 02:25:47 ] Scius > What was I supposed to do after he popped my battleship?
[ 2007.08.24 02:25:49 ] Scius > Just go "ok"
[ 2007.08.24 02:26:13 ] Akat > well you dont throw more isk at them without a support fleet
[ 2007.08.24 02:26:14 ] Yokujin > i agree with RF here m8 =/
[ 2007.08.24 02:26:15 ] Scius > No one wants to come.
[ 2007.08.24 02:26:23 ] Righteous Fury > you know why nobody wants to come?
[ 2007.08.24 02:26:26 ] Righteous Fury > because we are in FOUNTAIN
[ 2007.08.24 02:26:31 ] Righteous Fury > FOUNTAIN IS NOT LONETREK
[ 2007.08.24 02:26:37 ] Righteous Fury > do I need to point you to a fucking map?
[ 2007.08.24 02:26:37 ] Scius > cyno.
[ 2007.08.24 02:27:45 ] Righteous Fury > you intended to kill it…
[ 2007.08.24 02:27:47 ] Righteous Fury > with a single dread
[ 2007.08.24 02:27:52 ] Scius > Hardly.
[ 2007.08.24 02:27:54 ] Akat > then what exactly did you "intend" to do?
[ 2007.08.24 02:28:13 ] Scius > Well, I assumed I would be aided, however, my call was unheard.
[ 2007.08.24 02:28:16 ] Scius > So, I died alone.

That’s right. He was so upset his ship got taken out, that he expected our whole alliance to suddenly get their capital ships up, make four cynosural jumps down, and engage an enemy, untacklable, E-war immune Super Capital in lowsec. All within three minutes. For those of you who don’t do much capital ops, the minimum time for this is easily 30 minutes. Probably closer to an hour. In three minutes, it’d be a bitch to reach him from two systems away, much less 50+.

I am shocked. This man is in my alliance. What was his defense of this blatant stupidity?

[ 2007.08.24 02:28:26 ] Scius > Most alliances I've been in don't take that lightly.
[ 2007.08.24 02:30:59 ] Scius > If you think I am stupid for defending my honor, fine.
[ 2007.08.24 02:35:58 ] Scius > Most alliances would've supported me.

Afterwards, he argued at length that losing 10 Billion isk out of stupitidy is ‘nothing’ to him like a mentally disabled child in denial of doing anything wrong. It goes to show how some people just have way too much RL money, going to buy way too much Eve Isk. He blamed the Alliance for being ‘jealous’ of his wealth, as he proceeded to buy another Dreadnaught. Presumably, he’s going to have that one killed by gate rats or something idiotic later.

[ 2007.08.24 02:39:39 ] Evelgrivion > Evidently, It is our fault that Scius decided to engage a Nyx in low-sec, with a cargo revelation with multiple billions of ISK in modules inside, when we were at minimum 4 cynosural field jumps away from offering backup.

His CEO booted him out of his corp immediately afterwards. For good measure, the guy who referred him to join the corp in question was also booted.

The full unedited Transcript of this ‘superb’ PVPer’s chat can be read here. Trust me, it’s ugly, yet hilarious in it’s own way. Hats off to you, Scius, for defending our honor by being a complete, but amusing moron.

-Aries Acheron

[Apologies for the broken killboard link, I'll see if I can find a replacement... here we go!
Nightmare: http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=126530
Revelation: http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=126531

~~The reason a lot of mods are missing is that as the game updates and ids get changed, old killmails with different module names become lost as a result~~.

EDIT: I got this in my inbox, shame on me.

Hello,

Just read your latest post about the nightmare and Rev, I remember when that happened too.

Just wanted to mention one thing, you said about km's using different id's back then which is completely false.
ID's have not changed at all, back then killmails only showed destroyed items and not items that were dropped, hence only half a ship showing. You should remember this!

Anyway, I enjoy reading your blog so keep up the good work.

Trony

I stand ashamed and corrected.]

When this happened I was in the same corporation as Scius, Omen Incorporated, and I logged in an hour after this and was immediately told "don't say anything in alliance chat! They are furious with us right now" because we let this idiot into our corp and thus tarred the whole alliance with a bad rep.

Our CEO salvaged the situation by tossing Scius and his sponsor out of the corporation but the meme had been created and "honour tanking" is forever part of the game's lexicon.

I was there... sorta. After the fact. But close!

Tank Tuesday - End of Line

2012-01-11T09:53:00.001-05:00

(yeah, I know its Wednesday)

It's been fun but I feel like I've reached the end of line for continuing in World of Tanks.

I'm not frustrated with the game. I think the game is moving in the right direction. I can even still have fun in matches. I bought gold twice, once nearing the beginning and once in the middle of my run and I got my money's worth. But I'm not willing to continue to invest in purchasing gold and I feel that my progression without a premium account, and possibly a premium tank, has slowed to a crawl making the grind very very noticeable.

I've been at the Tier VII Tiger tank with all upgrades except the King Tiger for a while and grinding experience for the next level has not been too bad. However, grinding the necessary credits is horribly slow as the Tiger's repairs and ammo and consumables are expensive enough that if I have a poor round I lose credits in the process. And if I have a good round, I only make a small profit; only the rare great round makes me feel like I make progress.

Compounding my sorrows is that I upgraded my Jagdpanzer tank destroyer to the Tier VII Jagdpanther but I only have the short 88 gun and I still need to grind a lot of experience to get the long 88 like I have on the Tiger, much less the superior 105mm gun.

So end result, I either need to become an elite player or grind for many hours to get the credits to get the King Tiger, or I purchase gold to get a premium account (doubles earned credits and experience). Well, I don't want another subscription game thanks, so I'm going to take a pass and accept that I'll never see the King Tiger.

Also, I have no interest in running up another tank tree at this time.

Will I still play? Probably. Its a good game for quick matches of vehicular PvP. I suppose I could use a Tier V or VI tank to grind credits as their repair costs are not as severe but I'm not sure I want to go back to that level of play after having the Tiger and the long 88. Time will tell.

But I'm definitely not investing more real money.

Review: Batman Arkham City

2012-01-10T11:26:00.002-05:00

I'm Batman!

I love Batman, and I absolutely loved Batman Arkham Asylum when I got it two years ago for Christmas. I played it through with terrible graphic performance on my old computer and then a second time on my new computer. It was a game that was fun to play and captured the feeling of being a superhero.

So it was with great expectations that I hoped for Batman Arkham City as a Christmas present and I was finally reward on New Year's Eve and I admit its been the only game in my limited free time since then (except Minecraft Pocket Edition on my tablet but let's not go there).

I'm halfway through the main storyline and I feel I can give an initial response to the question of "is Arkham City any good?". My answer is definitely. I'm having a blast. Is it better than Arkham Asylum? Yes and no.

In Arkham Asylum (aka AA) the areas, especially the external areas, were necessarily cut off by natural obstacles so that Batman would have to go through a tunnel or doorway / gate to pass between them. This didn't bother me, but in Arkham City (aka AC) the exterior areas are seamlessly connected so that there is incredible joy traveling across the mega-prison as Batman by gliding and grappling hook. Its freaking awesome. The interior areas are similarly better connected and more organic than in AA although its not as obvious.

In terms of combat, AC has extended both the opponents you have to face as well as Batman's arsenal. This is an improvement in AC over AA as things in older game did start to get a little repetitive near the end, however my lack of hand coordination can be problematic in the newer game with its increased options.

The "predator" areas where Batman has to take out armed thugs with stealth rather than brute force are still as fun as ever and includes some exterior areas where you can really feel Batman's ability to move around is a powerful advantage in combat. I love sneaking up on bad guys and taking them out right under their associates' noses.

The one downside to AC however has to be the sheer multitude of distractions they have thrown in via the form of side missions. These are optional short missions that Batman can accept or stumble on but don't really need to be accomplished in order to move the main story line forward. The problem is that its hard to buy into the main story line plot's urgency if Batman is running around doing minor superhero work all over the place. Some side missions can be accomplished "along the way" but the ones that require you to go way out of your way to work on are just plain distractions.

I realize the developers put them in there to increase playability and there is some value in gaining more experience for more upgrades by completing them, but they are very distracting and I wish the main story line had organic pauses in it to allow me to feel like I have the latitude to investigate the sniper bullet trajectory. Instead since I'm DYING OF POISON JOKER BLOOD I NEED CURE NOW it feels a little silly to not go as quickly as possible to the next part. You know, I'm dying and all that.

Still, the game is good and the side missions are well constructed, I just need to allow myself to investigate them more and not get so hung up on the pretend urgency.

Is the game groundbreaking? Not really. But it does make me hopeful that someday we'll see a fully realized Gotham city that Batman patrols and the main storyline and side storylines are tightly and seamlessly integrated into it. Here's hoping!

Assault Ships and the Threat of Over-Boosting

2012-01-09T16:07:00.000-05:00

There are some people that are worried that the current proposed changed to assault ships would make them overpowered in light of all other frigates (faction and tech II) and be the root cause to another round of power-creep to the existing lineup.

I'm of two minds on the matter.

1) I Agree - assault ships are not too far off of being balanced right now and the proposed changes go too far. They should be scaled back with only a couple ships getting a much needed mid slot and only a role bonus being assigned to ships, i.e. no second frigate skill bonus.

2) I Disagree - I think assault ships need the significant boost to make them superior to faction frigates and on par with pirate faction frigs, and I want them to be capable of taking on Tech I cruisers reliably without serious concerns. They should be dangerous and feared in space and will be a good counter to the dominance of battlecruisers in a lot of areas.

Right now, I'm leaning towards the latter as it feels like there is rarely a good reason to take an assault ship over even a tech I cruiser. But I'd love to hear some opinions in the comments on the matter.

Meanwhile, I'm going back to drooling over Harpy and Enyo fits.

Fiction Friday: Series 4 - Part 14

2012-01-06T14:49:00.000-05:00

Previously:
Prologue Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13

* * * * *

Bars in Amarr space are weird.

For one thing, they don't call themselves bars because that has connotations of being "dens of inequity" as found in the regions of the less pious races and the ecclesiarchy would have none of that. So they tend to be referred to by various names such as inns, establishments, taverns, and one of my favourites, prayer meeting houses. As to what god the patrons are praying too that they expect to find in the bottom of a glass, I do not know.

Another weird thing is that you can't appear to be having fun. Look like you're having too much fun and the authorities think you are drunk and thus the establishment that allowed you to get that way is promoting sin and corruption. No, at an Amarrian bar - sorry, I mean tavern - you need to act sober and if you get a little loose in the gums then the host will ask you to leave with two big bouncers at his back.

But the weirdest thing of all is that you have to have a dish of food in front of you at all times while drinking. A drink without food is indulging in sin, apparently, and you had best be going on. So no matter if your goal is to just to get stinking shit-faced you have to have a bowl of Kor-Azorian wings in front of you even if they cost more than three drinks combined.

Hypocritical assholes.

I wonder if those customs are why all the drunkest Amarrians I ever see in these places are so huge around the midsection, what with such rich foods and a very intense need to not be drunk - hard to get a 150 kg man drunk quickly you know.

Oh I nearly forgot: Amarrian bars don't have bars, only tables. Weird, right? Part of that "you can't just be drinking for drinking's sake" deal. Whatever.

So there I was in a prayer meeting house on a station in Pimebeka (I don't remember which one, I was quite drunk that day), with an untouched plate of wedges in front of me that cost more than my last ammo purchase, trying to drown my sorrows of the last three months in a glass of Gallentean pale ale ("got anything harder?" I asked with dirty looks the only answer).

After leaving Nhi'Khuna and Strife Mercenaries behind I had tried to make my own path by joining a null sec alliance called Vae Victus and trying to make a new fortune battling Guristas pirates out in Venal region, but made some errors in judgement and ended up getting my brand new Raven battleship blown out from underneath me by a bunch of capsuleer pirates when I tried to move it out by myself. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Then when out on patrol I lost a Drake battlecruiser to the Guristas. I was quickly asked to leave the corporation I was in after those debacles. Stupid.

I was nearly out of ISK at that point so I started working for the Republic Security again but then the whole "Project Athena" thing occurred and I left on bad terms with my agent there. So I came to Amarr space where my brother Korannon was starting to make a business for himself heading up some production business that he and Derranna Elkadar started together, but the tension with Derranna is still there so I can't stay around them long.

No friends, no prospects, no money, and a small little Ferox in the hanger. Yep, another beer ale-seller. I was on my third (and trying to figure out where to go to score some blue pills) when a large Civre ambled up and asked "This seat taken, friend?"

Redesign the Eagle Contest - Update

2012-01-05T13:09:00.001-05:00

The Eagle contest is still running (remember, with bigger prizes!) and runs until the end of the month. Here is a listing of the current entries I am aware of in no particular order.

1) Ripard Teg (in comment):

I wrote about the Eagle some weeks back in both the rail and blaster roles:
http://jestertrek.blogspot.com/2011/10/fit-of-week-utter-fail.html

tl;dr: Eagles are under-powered and SLOW.

My conclusions, though not explicitly stated in that piece, are:
* Increase power grid by +100;
* Add a 6th turret slot;
* Remove the missile slots;
* Remove the HAC range bonus, replace with a speed bonus.
* Create a 280mm Railgun module (with associated meta, faction, and T2 modules).

I'm going to go against the grain and say that I like the look of the Moa hull just as it is. Is it ugly and symmetrical? Sure! But it's ugly and symmetrical in a way that makes sense for a Caldari spacecraft. I might tweak the engines somewhat to make the propulsion look more balanced, similar to what was done to the Raven. But I actually like the base hull. It's got a Serenity from Firefly feel to it.

2) Logan Fyreite: From mehgle to EAGLE!

3) Ender (in comment):

From: Tsilo Ralttilo (Head of Ishukone Corporation Security Division)
To: Ekulela Siakkawai (Head of Ishukone Corporation R&D Division)
CC: Landea Vrankef (Head of Ishukone Watch Security Division), Mens Reppola (CEO of Ishukune)
Subject: Eagle Class Heavy Assault Cruiser
Classification: Confidental

Dear Eku,

Since the recent deployment of Naga class Battlecruisers, Hyasyoda had been gaining an increasing market share on the equipment provided to Caldari Navy. Today I have witnessed a discussion among our own troops in Ishukone Watch on whether our Eagles should be replaced with Nagas or not.

As a person with military background I couldn't agree more with the idea(Naga is a damn good ship) but as the head of ICSD I know this would spell the beginning of the end for Ishukone's part in supplying Caldari Navy.

So I joined to the discussion with my subordinates. An hour later we came up with the conclusion that Eagle needs to be revised. Here are the main ideas that came up during the discussion:

* We all feel that Eagle was, is and always should be a sniping rail platform that can reach beyond 200k range. There are 3 basic requirements of being a sniper. Range, Volley Damage and Mobility.

* Right now Eagle is mainly outranged due to presence of BS class weapons. Those bigger weapons can reach further than eagles optimized weapon range. Still, being with smaller signature guns that have higher tracking has its advantages so most of the soldiers were content with the range Eagle provides. There were some concerns about acquiring a lock on targets at 200k. Right now Eagle needs to spend considerable resources to be able to lock on targets far away. The sensor boosters used for this purpose could be changed to more benefical modules, if the onboard targetting system can be improved for both range AND locking times.

* The volley damage of an Eagle at 200k using spike ammo is lower than what some frigates do. What the sniper pilots love doing is making a "Hit'n-Warp" run. Right now it is "Tickle'n-Try to Warp, get tackled and die". I know we are limited to Hybrid weaponry in Eagle. But an optimization of firing timers to provide us with two(three?) consecutive weapon activations with longer(much longer?) cooldown times would be much more desirable on this platform.

* The mobility of Eagle remains a bigger issue. Align times are simply too long. Many of our pilots stated that they would prefer having a faster and nimbler ship to optimized shield resistances. Is it possible to divert some of the shield optimization routines on energy core to engines to prodive this.

* Most of our experienced (read: Old) pilots are complaining that sniping has been dead since Gallente scientists introduced new means of probing. Eagle is already benefiting from its smallish signature. But we believe you guys can optimize our shields even further to reduce the signature radius. We also believe an increase in gravimetric sensor strength will make our ship much harder to scan.

* One crazy guy had an idea we all laughed about. But I'll put it here regardless. It was about the regular cloaking devices. The stealth bombers utilize special subroutines to be able to lock immediately after decloaking. We were wondering if it was possible to implement these subroutines to Eagles. Crazy right? Initially I thought so too. But whatever changes you come up with Eagle, its competitors will be on a different scale and league. This will make Eagle unique again.

* Oh and one other guy suggested something about changing the hull. I've sent him to run solo surveliance runs in Angel space...in an ibis.

These were the main points that came up in our discussion. I know our company has a good relationship with Hyasyoda but if we don't intervene, Hyasyoda is going to be the main contractor for Caldari Navy in a few months. We need to make sure they don't. With these changes to Eagle we just might do that.

Best Regards,
Tsilo Ralttilo
Head of ICSD

TL;DR version:

Increase Base Locking range to 150k
Increase Base Scan Res to 450mm
Increase Damage by 200% Reduce RoF to 1/3. (Same DPS 3 times volley)
Change the shield resistance bonus to a mass reduction bonus.
Reduce Base Signature to 115
Increase Base Gravimetric Sensor Str to 24
Reduce Sensor Calibration timme after decloaking by 100%

The ship hull screams caldari. Bird beak, non-symmetrical. Please don't touch it.

4) aidenmourn: Talons of Doom: A Re-Imagined Blaster Eagle

5) Justin Cody (in comment):

I'll pencil something up...scan it in to PS and maybe get something resembling creativity out of it.

In the end it has to remain Caldari, so a long range standoff rail platform. The Moa also has missile slots which are not useless but are under-utilized

10% to hybrid optimal range is fine, drop the shield resist bonus for 5% to damage/level, drop the missile hard points...add 6th turret hardpoint and pump up the base grid by 40. The Moa can sacrifice tank in a sniper encounter to hit well and hard.

The Eagle should also have 6 turret slots, give it a 25m3 drone bay instead of 15 on the moa. HAC bonuses: 10%/level to hybrid falloff/level and 7.5% to hybrid tracking/level. This will let its 250's hit well and hard from nearly any range. Make it the long range gunboat of choice for cruisers.

6) Kitaro Phoenix (in an evemail):

This is my entry the Eagle contest... but it really ended up more as both an Eagle / Cerberus proposal as they share similar issues.

In general I believe that those who are trying to return the Eagle to it's sniper glory really need to let go. That role is now served very well by T3 Battle Cruisers and Maelstroms. I don't think that the Eagle can really be changed to match them.

Instead let us attempt to bring the Eagle (actually Caldari HACs in general) in line with the other race's HACs.

Proposal #1:
HACs with dual bonuses related to range should only have 1 bonus to range. (Cerberus, Eagle)

This will mean they no long are able to shoot missiles @ 180km or hit with rails @ 145km (without any tracking enhancement). This is just fine because they can't lock at those ranges anyway.

On the Eagle the 10% optimal bonus (per level of Caldari Cruiser) should be replaced with a 5% rate of fire.

On the Cerberus the 10% bonus to Heavy and Heavy Assault flight times (per level of Heavy Assault ships) should be replaced with a 7.5% reduction in signature radius.

This gives a close range brawler Eagle slightly more dps than Deimos with mildly better range or similar DPS in the medium long range (30km-80km) role with rails compared to a Beam Zealot.

The Cerberus can do a similar Medium range HAM fit or a longer HML fit doing dps comparable to Pulse and Beam Zealot respectively. The signature radius reduction will give a Cerberus a similar signature to the Zealot and increase it's survivability.

Proposal #2:
Both the Caldari HACs are slow. Increase the Eagle speed by 35 m/s (which makes it comparable to the Deimos/Zealot) and the Cerberus by 15 m/s (comparable to the Ishtar/Sacrilege).

Proposal #3:
Since they are no longer snipers, drones are useful! Give the Eagle 25m3 of space and bandwidth while leaving the Cerb with a token 10 m3 drone bay.

This would make Caldari HACs have the 2nd smallest drone bay instead of the first.

* * * * *

If I have missed any, please let me know! Remember, any mechanics or sketch entries will be considered.

The Mittani the Podcaster

2012-01-04T09:00:00.001-05:00

(Note: I was going to post about assault ships and the upcoming changes but super-robo-blogger from the future Ripard Teg did it already and I don't see the point of parroting his already good post.)

The last two episodes of the esteemed Fly Reckless podcast, episodes 66 and 67 (to be fair, only 33% through episode 67), have been really interesting. Not only has the content been good and varied but the hosts have been very articulate, informed, and had engaging personalities with varied opinions on subjects. Priest Kristoff is no surprise but his verbal companion has me thinking. You see, the last two episodes have featured The Mittanni1 as the guest and damn if he's not good at podcasting.

Calling The Mittanni to stage 3...

Its should not be a surprise. He is, afterall, the charismatic leader of one of the largest alliances in the game, a (retired) lawyer by profession thus requiring good communication skills, and a long time participant in the Eve universe and close to the the machinations of null sec politics and CCP developers through the CSM. In other words he's a good communicator, knowledgeable, and passionate. Get that guy a microphone stat!

In all seriousness I hope The Mittanni continues to co-host the Fly Reckless podcast as its an engaging window into the game that is missed in a lot of other podcasts or only briefly touched in the occasional interviews and guest hosting spots.

1 - Is the "The" supposed to be capitalized? I am never sure....

Happy New Year!

2012-01-03T12:48:00.000-05:00

I'm back from prison, er, I mean, spending time with the family! Yeah, that's the ticket.

There was no Eve for me over the holidays as the warden, er, family took up all my attention along with a late gift of Batman: Arkham City which I played last night quite obsessively. (I'm BATMAN!)

Have no fear, we'll get back into the swing of things this week and with She Who Must No Be Named leaving town for a couple nights next week I plan to get into some serious trouble in Amamake and environs.

I also plan to revisit the Eagle contest with the round up of the current entries, get back into the Fiction Friday writing, and taking a hard look at assault ships and the current ideas / changes CCP is toying with on the test servers. So stay tuned!

Dear CCP: I'm Sorry I Claimed Credit...

2011-12-22T15:43:00.000-05:00

... for the revised ship icons we saw on Sisi one day in last March. I rescind my claim. Can you make them happen now?

Today I had 15 minutes free so I logged into Sisi to fool around with the player character and check out any changes and I was shocked to be presented with new icons in the overview:

Their is a unique icon for capital (same one for the Wyvern FYI), battleship, cruiser/battlecruiser, and I dropped a kestrel from my hanger to see the new one for frigate. The effect is that you can immediately tell there is different hull types on the field at a glance without having to compare pixels on squares.

I approve.

Thanks, Kirith.

Happy Holidays!

2011-12-22T14:21:00.003-05:00

I'm off work tomorrow and next week and coming back Tuesday Jan 3rd. As such, blog will go dark until the new year. Some tidbits:

* * * * *

The Redesign the Eagle Contest runs through the month of January. I'll review the current entries in the first week of the new year.

* * * * *

Fiction friday will continue regularly on a weekly basis again starting in January. Apologies for the long interlude.

* * * * *

Bring Me The head of Kirith Kodachi III will be coming in the early spring. I'm going to be borrowing a lot of ideas from the Flight of a Thousand Rifters event Marlona Sky did to help encourage a larger diversity.

* * * * *

Was out roaming last night and lost a Rifter to a Cormorant destroyer that was camping the inside of a minor factional warfare complex. Blasters, web, scram = one dead frig. Didn't have a destroyer on hand to challenge it. Later on found a Kestrel afk at a safe spot and brought in the alt fresh out of the wormhole to probe it down and kill and pod it. Only a cyno frig but better than nothing.

* * * * *

Still recruiting in the Kadavr Black Guard, check out Kadavr Public channel in game.

* * * * *

Possible stats for revised Assault Frigs being rumoured on Failheap Challenge. My initial impression is "meh". I mean, the ships look like they are getting buffed with extra slots and MWD bonus but I would have preferred an afterburner bonus instead. We'll see how things pan out.

* * * * *

Happy Holidays and fly safe!

Idea: Make Hull Tanking Viable

2011-12-21T13:02:00.002-05:00

I heard a story once. It was that there was supposed to be three main ways to tank your ships in Eve, one for each of the race and Minmatar who as the improvisational race would borrow from all three.

Caldari would use Shields and thus had a lot of mid slots for shield modules.

Amarr would use Armour and thus had a lot of low slots for armour modules.

Gallente would usee Hull and thus had relatively equal numbers of mid and low slots as hull modules were spread between them.

However somewhere along the way hull tanking became unfavourable to armour tanking, even for the Gallente ships, and while the modules still exist the only viable ways to tank are shield or armour (and less commonly speed or e-war depending on the ship).

So I have a proposal: let's make hull tanking viable for front line combat ships, particularly the Gallente. Why? For two reasons: variety is nice, and it maybe the last change to take Gallente blaster boats over the finish line into respectability. NOTE: To be fair, Gallente boats are looking pretty good for the most part now, but I had a bee in my bonnet about hull tanking so here we are.

Each tanking method has trade offs.

Shields
Pros:
- use mid slots which leaves low slots for damage mods
- have passive recharge
- active tank very well
Cons:
- take up slots needed for propulsion, tackle
- tend to increase signature radius making it a better target
- cap energy hungry

Armour
Pros:
- use low slots which leaves mid slots for tackle and propulsion
- have passive Energized Adaptive Nano Membranes for resists
- overall uses less cap than shields
Cons:
- adds mass to ship thus cuts into its top speed
- takes up slots for damage mods
- does not active tank as well as shields

So where would hull tanking fit in? Well, I envision hull tanking having the following trade offs:
Pros:
- uses both mid and low slots so ships have room for some tackle/propulsion and damage mods
- does not increase signature radius or mass (i.e. reduce speed/agility)
- actively does not use as much energy as either shield or armour tanks
Cons:
- does not active tank as well as shields or armour tanks
- cannot get as high resists as shields or armour tanks
- you're often fighting in structure which means there is not a lot of room for error

So the result is that a ship choosing the hull tank might not have as powerful tank as an armour or shield tanked ship but it has a smaller signature and moves faster and uses less cap for tank, ideal for blaster ships.

To implement this would not be that hard as the mods for hull tanking are already mostly in the game and require only moderate tweaks to be more useful. Then Gallente ships could be tweaked to make hull tanking an option or even preferable to armour tanking.

Mods
Damage Control - (low slot) already a very useful mod on many ships, this one would be mandatory on a hull tanked ship as it (i.e. tech II version) gives 60% resist bonuses on hull hit points. No changes required.

Reinforced Bulkheads - (low slot) gives a percentage increase to hull hit points (25% for the tech II version) but penalizes top velocity and mass. At the very least I would remove the penalties, but a more thorough solution would be to make varying sizes of reinforced bulkheads with set amounts of additional hit points like shield extenders and armour plates and then you could scale the CPU/power grid reqs. As it stands right now, only ships with decent amounts of hull hitpoints benefit from this mod.

Hull Repairer - (mid slots) much like an armour repairer except it goes in a mid slot. Comes in large, medium, and small sizes. Right now its fitting requirements are much lower on power grid but double on CPU compared to similar armour repairer, but repairs a lot less hit points. For example Medium Armour Repairer II fits with 173 PG and 28 CPU and repairs 26.6 pts/sec for 13.3 capacitor/sec, while a Medium Hull Repairer II fits with 50 PG and 66 CPU and repairs 2.5 pts/sec for 2.5 cap/sec. I would fiddle with the stats to get it in the 20 pts/sec for ~10 cap/sec region, and higher fitting reqs.Also, add capital version.

Hull Resistance Plating - (mid slots) currently nothing like this exists in game, but I would add it in to allow a bit more resistance tank for hull tanked ships. Four types with a tech I, tech II, and four meta versions for 24 mods. Each type covers one of the resistances, giving a bonus of 10-20% depending on meta level (stacking penalties apply). Fitting requires are 1 PG and 10-20 CPU depending on the meta level.

Rigs - (rig slots) We would need an additional rig category for hull rigs and the usual rigs for resistance boosting, hull repairer effectiveness, and hull points.

Remote Hull Repairers - (high slots) Currently the mods exist but are very inefficient compared to armour repairs. I would tweak their stats to make them viable for hull tanking fleets.

Gallente Ships
I'm not going to go ship by ship and detail the changes I would make, but I will say that I would in general switch the armour hit point values with the hull hit point values and change any armour repair bonuses or armour resistance bonuses on ships to corresponding hull bonuses.

Furthermore, any ships with remote armour repair bonuses I would change to remote hull repair bonuses.

Information Warfare
The whole slew of information warfare skills and modules I would probably toss in favour of hull boosting skills and modules. I am not aware of any major fleet doctrine that utilizes the Gallente warfare mindlink or modules.

Conclusion
From when I started writing this post to now I've come to realize that this is a more significant undertaking than I first realized. It could have the effect of neutering Gallente from any type of fleet warfare much like Caldari shield ships were for the longest time (and missile ships still are).

Still, I think there is value in at least exploring the concept and seeing if a third way can be found, a less efficient tanking method but more conducive to close range hit and run attacks or straight up bare-knuckled brawling. Last one with structure left wins.

Rifter versus Rifter

2011-12-19T16:28:00.002-05:00

Nothing special, just a little video of me attacking a Rifter in Amamake a couple weeks ago.

Go to youTube for a better quality.

Flight of a Thousand Rifters Report

2011-12-19T14:19:00.004-05:00

So Saturday afternoon arrived a rare set of circumstances: I was home, housework was under control, kids were sleeping or occupied, and an event was happening in Eve. Specifically Marlona Sky's Flight of a Thousand Rifters.

I logged in the morning to see where the event was being held as it was only announced that day and saw it was in Vlillirier in Placid region. Ew. That's pretty far by any standard. However I was determined to make it so I found an available medical facility only 5 jumps away in Onnamon in Black Rise region and pod-killed myself there. Then I purchased an Incursus and parts on the local market and made my way to the system, ready for the event.

When the event started I warped to the station where it was happening at 100 km for a look-see but was quickly locked up by a sniping Cormorant almost immediately. With 180+ in system and me being -8.9 sec status there was lots of people looking for frigate kills and I was a prime target. I warped in again from a different angle to make a bookmark and then again 100 km from there to have a 200 km distance perch spot to observe without being easily target-able.

However, Marlona Sky burnt out her repair mods prematurely and the dreadnought started to go down hard. I decided to warp in at zero and at least get on the killmail, but when I warped to station I forgot I was on the other side and even warping to zero put my over 45 km from the dreadnought! CRAP. I figured I would make a suicide run so afterburner on and guns a-blazing I made the head long dash and got targeted almost immediately. Still, I made it close enough for getting on the killmail and got my pod out. I went back in an Ibis for another run but the Moros exploded just as I got there. Oh well.

A good time and I look forward to more events like this from Marlona.

Here is a bit of video I managed to snag.

Eagle Contest Update - Now With Moar Prizes

2011-12-15T17:26:00.000-05:00

I've partnered with EveNews24 to increase exposure on the contest and they've added to the prize pool so now the prizes are:
1st Place Entry - 1 x Pirate Battleship (list)
2nd Place Entry - 1 x Pirate Cruiser (list)
3rd Place Entry - 1 x Pirate Frigate (list)

Get cracking!

Promotion: Flight of a Thousand Rifters

2011-12-14T21:08:00.001-05:00

Marlona Sky is running a big player event this Saturday:

Flight of a Thousand Rifters: A Player Event

On 2011.12.17 (December 17th, 2011) at precisely 19:00 GMT (game time) I will undock, in a low security system (location announced the day of the event) I will be sieging a station with Intigo, my Moros dreadnought. It has been irrelevant for a good couple years and it is high time it dies of a fiery death explosion.
I want to give players a change to do some damage and win some prizes so I will be running a player event to destroy my dreadnought. There are a few rules to follow for you to be eligible for prizes. The top three players with the most points gained with a frigate or destroyer class ship will each win one of three prizes. The player leaving the final blow on my Moros or the final blow on my capsule will each receive a special prize.

Tier 1 Prizes: (Can be won only with a frigate or destroyer class ship)
1st place: Vindicator (a.k.a. Freak of Nature)
2nd place: Apocalypse Navy Issue (courtesy of Rooks and Kings)
3rd place: 300 million ISK (courtesy of Taladool)
4th place: Vigilant
5th place: 100 million ISK (courtesy of The 0rphanage)
6th place: Daredevil

Tier 2 Prizes: (Any ship qualifies)
Final blow on my Moros = 1,000x Rifters
Final blow on my capsule = 1x PLEX
On the most non-frigate/destroyer kill mails = Fully T2 fit Legion with 5x subsystems and two T2 CCC rigs (courtesy of T'Amber)

Rules:
To receive any prizes or gain points you must follow these rules or you will be disqualified or receive a penalty multiplier against your total points.
Only frigate and destroyer class hulls on my Moros kill mail will qualify for points.
Event time starts 30 minutes before I undock in the Moros and lasts 30 minutes after my capsule is destroyed.
Any contestant found to be in a ship other than a frigate or destroyer class during event time will be disqualified from the points based prizes.
If any contestant’s corporation members are listed on a kill mail during event time is using a ship other than a frigate or destroyer class then you will forfeit 50% of your base points.
Alternatively if any contestant’s alliance members are found on a kill mail during event time using a ship other than a frigate or destroyer class then you will forfeit 25% of your base points. (NPC alliances do not count)
Damage done on the Moros kill mail is a players base points.
Kill board used to verify kills will be: eve-kill.net (all other kill boards will not be considered so please post kill mails there)
If you are on any kill mail with a frigate or destroyer class hull counts as a 1x point multiplier. (members of your player made alliance/corporation do not count)
In the event of a tie in points; the player listed higher on the kill mail will win.

Environment setting:
The system location will NOT be announced until the day of the event. Sorry.
I will be in siege mode from the start of the event until my death. This prevents me from being remote repaired and relying only on my personal tank. I will not dock or warp off.
I will be outlaw so anyone can legally me without the player taking a security hit or be shot by the station guns. (frigate/destroyer friendly )
I will have all three guns fit and the siege module. So by simply looking at my ship you will know I do not have smart bombs fit.
I will be directly on top of a station so other players will not be able to activate smart bombs. Smart bombs do not work within 5km of station dock range. (keeping it a frigate/destroyer friendly environment )
I will be petitioning CCP to reinforce the event system so lag and other such monsters are kept at bay.
The system will be in low security space with an ongoing Incursion. (this means no normal cyno can be activated for capital ship shenanigans)
DO NOT FLY WHAT YOU CAN'T AFFORD TO LOSE!
Post all kill mails! Any kill mails not API verified on eve-kill.net or kill mails added 48 hours after my pod loss mail will not be considered in the prize decision.
All prizes will be contracted at Jita 4-4.

Tips:
Just because you’re in a frigate or destroyer does not mean other players will not shoot you. Keep this in mind! Bring help/friends/mommy's hand bag or whatever you think will help you win the prizes. Just keep the penalty rules in mind and also the fact that any ships not a frigate or destroyer are automatic point multipliers.
Just because your main character can't make the event because they are busy sucking on a POS appendage hoping for a few drops of Technetium, does not mean you can't bring a starter character in a frigate to the event on the same account. Bring it!
DO NOT FLY WHAT YOU CAN'T AFFORD TO LOSE!
Join channel: FOATR to chat and discuss the event

---

With every kill mail there is always a story to be told. Some more glorious than others, some over a small disagreement or a major battle for territory. There is always a story to be told. So for the next story...
The question you have to ask yourself is; will you be reading about it, or will you be writing it?

Official Sponsors: EVE University, Red vs. Blue, Noir. Mercenary Group, The 0rphanage, eve-radio.com, Rooks and Kings

I'll be doing my best to make it, hope you will too!

Contest - Redesign The Eagle

2011-12-13T14:43:00.000-05:00

Rixx Javix over at Eveoganda bemused the doom of the Zealot and Vagabond at the hands of the new Oracle and Tornado and when he ended the post asking about other ships, in the comments I said this:

Naga: about third(!) of the price of a Rokh, with same range bonus, and 25% damage increase over the battleship. Sure, it can't tank like the Rokh but its more agile and cheaper and does not require BS 5.

Not to mention the Eagle (which was dead already) will never see the light of day now.

And then on twitter Rixx responded:

good point about the poor sodden Eagle. Amazing how bad is it that it doesn't even get remembered? So sad

Yes, the Eagle even with the improvements to Hybrid weapons still is lackluster and now with the Naga available its even more undesirable. Sure, it can tank better but with Battlecruisers V a Naga can snipe out to 194 km with 400 DPS while at HAC IV an Eagle only gets around 156km optimal and 180 DPS. At approximately twice the price.

[EveNews24 Editor: For those who do not like the comparison between the Eagle and the Naga, I have reworded the comparison. At lvl 5 skills, the Eagle can hit at 146+15km range while the Naga can hit at 194+30km range with 33% more damage without any gunnery modifying modules or implants and the Naga can fit 8 guns while the Eagle is stuck with 5 guns for twice the price. ]

Sure, there are advantages to being smaller and having superior tracking but overall the Eagle is not what you would call a desirable ship. On top of all that game mechanics, the Moa is one of the most reviled ship hulls in the game.

So here is your chance to be game designer AND art lead on the Eagle makeover.

Redesign the Eagle Contest!

Somebody Save Me!!!!

The goal is to produce a description of how you would change the Eagle (and/or all of the Heavy Assault Cruiser class) to make it viable in the new Crucible age AS WELL AS one or more images of a hull redesign for the Moa/Eagle/Gila/Onyx ships very much like how the Scoprion and Maller have been completely redone..

The submission deadline is Feb 1, 2012 and I will be judging the entries.

~~1st Place Entry - 1 x PLEX~~
~~2nd Place Entry - 1 x HAC of your choice~~
~~3rd Place Entry - 1 x Battlecruiser of your choice~~
EDIT: I've partnered with EveNews24 and they kindly added to the pot so that the prizes are now:

1st Place Entry - 1 x Pirate Battleship (list)
2nd Place Entry - 1 x Pirate Cruiser (list)
3rd Place Entry - 1 x Pirate Frigate (list)

For the mechanics change, it doesn't have to be drastic or super detailed in order to be a good entry. The same goes for the hull redesign; a simple pencil sketch will suffice as much as a professional graphic artist entry as long as I feel the design is cool and evokes the Caldari esthetic.

Get cracking!

The Art of the Duel

2011-12-13T10:16:00.001-05:00

So yesterday I pontificated on the challenges facing the roaming solo PvPer, mostly talking about low sec as the challenges in null sec are different but no less daunting.

Today we will talk about dueling in Eve.

There are three broad categories of duels. There is the spontaneous duel, the improvised duel, and the arranged duel.

In the spontaneous duel, you and your opponent are both out hunting and happen upon each other. There may be some positioning and warping to celestials but essentially the gist is that you both want the fight and go at it with no interference from other pilots on either side and no refitting to specific ships for the fight. There may be some communication in local or private chat along the lines of goading or arranging to meet at a particular spot.

While these fights can be satisfying, they are fraught with risk. Your opponent could be in a fleet with an alt providing significant performance boosts through gang links, or in a fleet with other pilots ready to jump in as soon as you are tackled. Or your opponent could have seen you roaming and put together a specific fit to defeat you.

The improvised duel is a way to mitigate some of the risk. Usually these types develop when someone asks in local for a 1v1 of a particular ship type like frigate or cruiser. If you agree, a chat is started up and a fleet so that both sides can see that the other does not have a booster alt or gang waiting in the wings. There may be additional requests like "only to the pod" or "no ECM" and a hope that suggest agreed to requests are honoured. You meet at a safe spot and go at it.

Like a spontaneous duel there is a threat that your opponent has buddies waiting in the wings with a bookmark to the location or that if he saw your ship earlier he built a setup just to defeat you, but since there is an agreement in place there is more honour in respecting the terms and not cheating. Its no guarantee but in Eve memories can be long and grudges fierce, and honouring 1v1s is considered the basic mark of a good low sec citizen.

Another form of improvised dueling is when a pilot sits on an undock of a trade hub with some ammo in a jet can and waits for a dancing partner to it so he can fire upon them. This is not so much a duel as a trap since even if you are ready for a fight, he may have friends ready to undock if you fire or logistics ships ready to go out of your range. I'd advise you to not take the bait and don't feed the trolls.

Finally we have the Arranged Duel, a hallmark of the blogging/podcasting community that was really brought to the fore by Nashh Kadavr's work with the Celebrity Death Matches of yesteryear. Essentially you and another pilot agree ahead of time to have a duel with terms and conditions set out in explicit detail as to what is allowed and not allowed. For example, tech 1 frigates (no faction), tech II gear and ammo (faction charges allowed), no ECM, warp to bookmark at preferred range, to the pod. A time and place are set and the participants arrive and get ready with some banter and clarifications if necessary.

The big difference in arranged duels is that both pilots have time to plan ship fits to an obsessive degree, piling on killboards to see what their opponent has used before, seeing if any intel on skills or certificates can be found, and in some cases checking out previous duels. Since the terms are set out very clearly, and warping out is an admission of defeat where the goal is bragging rights more so than a kill mail, ship fits can be customized in a manner that normal PvP ships would never be found in. For example, fits without points or fits with Amarr drones (don't laugh, I used them to help defeat Nashh once). Arranged duels can happen anywhere, high sec, low sec, null sec, even in wormholes. For high sec or low sec, players can exchange one unit of ammo in a jet can to become red flashy to each other to avoid a security penalty. Also, arranged duels can be more than just 1v1, they can be 2v2 (see video below) or even more as long as all participants are considered trustworthy.

Having done all three, I can assure you that arranged duels can be awesome as players are more willing to risk bigger ships if they are assured of a fair fight. While a Rifter duel can be fun, a loss is nothing to write home to mother about. But putting a battleship or tech II vessel on the line is a whole different matter.

If you want to dip your toe into the water, don't be afraid to drop me a line. But watch this first :)

Nashh Kadavr's CDM # 16 - 2 v 2

Plight of the Solo PvPer

2011-12-12T10:14:00.003-05:00

While solo PvP in Eve is not dead, it is certainly one of the most difficult modes on play in Eve that I have encountered.

Null sec warfare certainly has its trials and tribulations, but for the average pilot there is not much more than fitting your ship to required specs and following orders of the FCs properly. It may be more costly in terms of ISK for lost ships and implants but there is a certain amount of freedom in being able to lame some or all of the blame at the feet of others; others, incidentally, that do the work of finding the enemy and evaluating engagement opportunities for you.

Not so in solo PvP. The job of finding the targets to engage falls solely on the pilot. And since he is a fleet of one there are a lot of hazards out there that a fleet of you and 50 friends can safely ignore. Thus we run into the plight of the solo PvP pilot: which ship to use?

Battleships give the most DPS and tank combination, allowing certain latitude in engaging on gates and stations while ignoring the sentry guns, or even taking on numerous smaller foes. However, they are slow to align and warp making them easy targets for hostile ships to tackle and wear down, plus they can run on the pricey side when they do get destroyed.

So we downgrade to a cheaper battlecruiser which has decent DPS and tank, a little more agile, smaller caliber weapons for threatening even destroyers and frigates in the right circumstances. Still can get caught on gates by larger fleets but not so expensive to lose. But you are still big and unable to enter some faction warfare sites and a lot of viable targets cruiser-sized and smaller will simply refuse to fight you.

Well, what about a cruiser then? Your number of viable targets has dropped considerably now, and any fleet bigger than 3 frigates will give you serious trouble. Really, it seems like a solo cruiser has none of the advantages of a bigger ship but all of the disadvantages of a smaller ship unless you go Tech II or III and really raise the price tag.

Destroyers? Very situational, and the lack of mid slots means that tackling target frigates is problematic. Better used in wolf packs.

So we're down to frigates. Small and agile, they are hard to catch at gates. Even Tech II versions are affordable. You can enter all Faction Warfare sites (EDIT: well, not Tech II frigs sadly, but faction frigs can for a more expensive option). And good pilots can in the right circumstances threaten destroyers and some cruisers. But your viable target pool has shrunk very small now and any well coordinated fleet of enemy tech I frigs is a tough battle usually ending in your demise. At least the cost of a loss is not too devastating.

* * * * *
So what's the answer to this conundrum? My response is to keep a couple ships of every type handy, roam in a frigate and if a target presents itself that requires MOAR POWER then I dock and re-ship. Once the opportunity is over, back to the frigate.

Tomorrow we'll talk about the Art of the Duel.

Fiction Friday: Series 4 - Part 13

2011-12-09T15:34:00.001-05:00

Previously:
Prologue Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12

* * * * *

"Here, have a drink."

I took the offered glass and tilted my head back to let the alcohol burn down my throat. Some Amarrian brandy of some sort. I was too furious to take note of th name of it. I barely even tasted it. And it did not quench my anger.

"...they are not stopping..."

Nhi'Khuna took the empty glass and filled it half way again before handing it back to me and returning to her desk. I resisted the urge to gulp the second portion as I wanted a clear head to plot my revenge. It had taken all my will power to resist the drugs back in my room, anything to try and erase the image of my crew's life boats from being destroyed one by one as I sat there helpless.

"... there is something wrong..."

"I can't believe she did that, Nhi. They had nothing to do with her brother." I clenched my fist. "They were only human."

Nhi`Khuna sighed and spread her hands in a helpless shrug. "I don't know what to tell you, Kirith. I've never seen anyone do that before. I'm so sorry."

"I don't need your sorry. I need to start thinking of a way to get back at her for this! For my crew!"

"Let's not be rash, Kir. This is a pair of station scum lowlife like Rusack we're talking about here. She is rich and connected; you want to start a war with a null sec alliance? They will hound you out of space." She looked down at her desktop. "You don't realize how small space is until they start chasing you out of it."

"... they are not stopping..."

"RASH!? She fucking killed hundreds of people who don't get to wake up in a clone vat, Nhi'Khuna! And no one will do anything about it? BULLSHIT!" I stood up and started angrily pacing. "I'm going to do something about it."

"Oh god," she exclaimed, "don't be stupid. Crew die by the thousands every day. They know that signing up for a capsuleer ship is a risky venture that pays well, live or die. The pensions and insurance cover all the risk and more." She pointed a finger at me. "You think rescue craft from the nearest Sister's outpost arrive promptly out in the depths of dark null sec? They face the dangers of starvation and isolation every day."

"I am in high sec," I retorted, "my crew was not signing up for null sec risk."

She snorted. "Don't be naive. You and I both know that low sec is one jump away and just as dangerous as anywhere else in space. Your crew accepted the risks when they were onboard when you undocked. Don't go soft on them and me just because you got caught."

"... sensors indicate we are being locked..."

I sat back down in the chair, shoulders slumping. I got caught. It was my fault they died. Caught. In high sec. No CONCORD to save the day. Something clicked in my head. I lifted my head and looked Nhi'Khuna in the eyes.

"... sir, it was an honour service with y-"

"How much did she pay you to intercept the notification about the war dec?"

The flicker of an eyelid told me all that I needed to know.

"You bitch!" I growled.

"Kirith..." Nhi'Khuna began.

"Don't you fucking 'Kirith' me!" I screamed as I bolted up. She calmed laid a pistol on the desk top, her hand not coming off it. It was a big desk and she had nerves of steel. I would never get it from her in time.

"Listen," she pleaded, "I haven't been home in years. She cleared my name with the Empire. All I thought it cost was your ship and a pod. If I knew what she planned..."

I turned in disgust and started walking to the door.

"Kirith, we'll think of something! Come back!"

The doors slid open and I stormed out.

Eve Online Hold'Em

2011-12-08T08:38:00.001-05:00

I'm now an advertiser for Eve Online Hold'Em Poker as you can see by the new banner in the side bar right underneath E-ON magazine. If you are looking for a way to play around with your ISK and perhaps make more of it, give it a try.

Enhanced Targeting HUD

2011-12-07T15:18:00.001-05:00

Seeing my PvP videos of my fights with Stan, a couple people asked about how I got the enhanced green multiline text to show on my currently selected item. Here is an example:

From BMTHOKK 2

Well, the answer is that a while back there was a pilot who put together an Overview Creator that allowed you to setup your overview through a friendly interface and export an XML file you could then import into Eve. Part of this website's functionality was the ability to customize your selection text into very fancy outputs like the one you see above.

Alas, that website has gone down (was balss-industries.com) and I've emailed the creator to find out if it can be brought back to life. No word yet.

But if you feel adventurous, you can hand craft it. Here's how:

1) In game, right click on your Overview tab and choose to export overview. This creates an XML file in your "My Documents\Eve\overview" folder (or corresponding folder on your machine).

2) Using a nice XML editor program, (or notepad but that is hardcore) you can change the file in the section called "shiplabels" to show something like this:

Note that the xml is actually cleaned up by my xml editor from this in the plain text version of the XML:

Note that the last one is Distance with a type of "None" because the client automatically puts the distance at the end of the ship labels I believe.

In theory you could get creative and have multiple colours, font sizes and effects, or other information important to you. If you decide to try this out, please export your current overview and save it safely somewhere as a backup.

Note: as far as I know, this is not considered an exploit by CCP according to the Overview Creator website that advertised on the forums while it was in operation.

FOLLOW UP:
I made a petition to CCP and here is the response:

Hello Kirith,

While we do not currently consider this to be a violation of the EULA, please note that we do reserve the right to change this decision at a point in the future should we find it necessary. If you have any other questions or problems, please let me know.

Best regards,
GM
EVE Online Customer Support Team

Seismic Beatdown Videos

2011-12-06T21:14:00.001-05:00

I finally got the three videos of me humiliating Seismic Stan annotated and uploaded to Youtube.

Here is the first duel:

And Stan's version here.

The second duel:

And the third duel:

Sunday Night's Alright For Fighting

2011-12-05T08:33:00.001-05:00

RECAP: Grudge Match and then Putting Moose beaver To The Sword

So Seismic Stan and I met on the field of battle in the quiet low sec system of Aliette and prepared for our best of five matches duel, starting at lowly frigates and then going to destroyers, cruisers, and if required, battlecruisers and battleships.

Preparation

Since both of us are long in the tooth in terms of skillpoints (and he's a wily old bastard), I knew that trying to counter a specific ship in each class was useless so I went with whatever I felt I could make work.

For frigates, I settled on a dependable low sec roaming Rifter. I considered going for something more exotic or with a bigger tank, but I figured the familiarity of the abilities of the Rifter was key. Pretty much standard 150mm autocannons, a Nos, and active armour tank.

Next, there was no doubt I would take a Catalyst as its my favourite destroyer, the question was merely if I should go with a blaster fit or rail fit. I opted for railguns as I planned to try and stay out of his range and flick him to death, hoping he opted for a shorter ranged Thrasher or Coercer, or a paper thinned hull Cormorant.

I spent the most time working on a cruiser ship. First I thought "gank Thorax" but realized that was better for catching unsuspecting targets unawares and not ideal for a prepared opponent. Then I spent some time planning out a blaster Moa that could tank like a pro and deal decent damage, but I was worried I would be outranged and outran by a well piloted Rupture. So I finally decided to get out of my comfort zone and go EWAR. We agreed no ECM, but that left a lot of other nasty options open like neutralizers and tracking disruptors. I've been eager to try out an Arbitrator for a while so put one together with two medium neuts, one medium nos, and one small nos in the highs, two tracking disruptors in the mids, and a buffer armour tank. All damage would come from medium drones of which I packed 15 (no frigs to worry about). It was a risk; if he brought a missile ship or a drone ship or a sniping ship, I could be in trouble.

On to battlecruisers and this was a no brainer: Gank Talos. I fully expected to die but I hoped the shock of getting hit by battleship weapons would make him panic and mess up. So eight big honking Neutron Blaster Cannons IIs, tackle, a semblance of an armour buffer tank, and a one way ticket to explodey-ville!

If we got to battleships, I wanted to fly cautiously. I wanted something with the best combination of gank, tank, and range. There is no question that Pulse lasers are the answer to two of those questions and the Abaddon provides the bulk of the third. Enter Mega Pulse Laser IIs, 1600mm plates and trimark armour pumps, and enough mid slots to pin down a charging bull (or Megathron). I would try and engage at ~50 km range and let powerful Scorch Crystals do their work. Failing that, Imperial Navy Multifriequency would have to suffice.

The Duel Part 1 - Merlin vs Rifter

Stan ran into a problem setting up. He forgot an important power grid implant and thus his frigate fit was not going to work! I offered to disable a mod to equal terms but he declined, graciously offering to slog it out with whatever he could pull together in station. A true trooper, almost Canadian in his perseverance!

We met at the duel safe spot (apologies to Vsmit who was in system to see duels but we went with security over publicity due to Stan's terror of low sec) and I saw it was a Merlin. I've said before a properly fitted and flown Merlin can be fearsome so I knew I was in for a fight. We barreled into each other at short range and began the dance of death.

I was quickly in armour and out of capacitor, but since warping off was conceding defeat I turned off scram mods and concentrated on pulsing the armour repper whenever I could and keeping that nosferatu running. Slowly but surely I nibbled at his shields and eventually I broke them. It was over soon after that.

Lord Moose Beaver 1, Baron Crumpet Tea 0

The Duel Part 2 - Catalyst vs Catalyst

For the second duel I warped in and found Stan landing over 100 km away in a Catalyst. And he fired up a micro warp drive meaning two things: 1) we're both fitting long range fits and trying to maintain range and 2) my afterburner fit is sorely going to be outpaced in that department.

In hindsight, I should have never won this duel. Stan had also fitted a remote sensor dampener which combined with the range fit and MWD should have meant he could fight outside of my targeting range of 41 km and prevent me from ever hitting him. I'll need to review the fraps I made of the event but I never once had problems targeting him when he pulled within 41 km so I wonder if he fit the wrong script and was uselessly messing with my scan resolution instead, or just didn't get the mod activated soon enough when in range.

Regardless, the fact of the matter is that his big signature from the MWD meant I hit him pretty hard when he came into range and as he tried to pull back I finished him off.

Lord Moose Beaver 2, Baron Crumpet Tea 0

The Duel Part 3 - Moa vs Arbitrator

I was really surprised to see yet another Caldari ship as I fully expected a dependable and solid Rupture cruiser here. I was really happy when he landed right on top of me as it meant that my tracking disruptors would be most effective in close. We engaged and the battle was on.

Again, this fight was weird. I think he stayed stationary for most of the fight allowing me to orbit at ease. It seemed he was firing upon my drones a lot of the fight too and since I had him tracking disrupted and lots of spare drones, that didn't worry me. I killed his drones right away to make sure my tank was not threatened and sat happily at ~50% armour.

Then something happened as his shield tank broke. I don't know if he opted to start moving differently (which is what the fraps suggested) or if he turned all weapons on me instead of my drones. It became a race into structure but I think my drones managed to save me and kill him while I still had 28% structure left.

Lord Moose Beaver 3, Baron Crumpet Tea 0

Conclusions

I can't help but feel that rust on Stan's part saved me in at least two of those matches. The Catalyst matchup was completely in his favour on paper, and the last one would have required some pretty fancy flying to avoid death had he been doing all throughout the match what he did at the end to start hitting me.

That being said, there is no substitution for victory and close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. My Canadian Honour has been assuaged this time, Stan. Don't make me come after you again!

GRUDGE MATCH

2011-11-30T07:52:00.001-05:00

Seismic Stan of the infamous and horrible Freebooted blog has had the audacity - the SHEER audacity! - to disparage me time and time again! And I hate audacity!

The absolute last straw came on twitter when he made fun of my Canadian accent (taking the best parts of British and American for a century, yo!) on twitter:

Cheeky Bastard!

Outrageous! After I took a couple days to cool down, I challenged this coarse ruffian to a duel!

OH SNAP!

Terrified by my notable PvP prowress but backed into a corner by his twisted sense of honour, he was forced to acknowledge my wrath.

Hard to drink tea when your hands are shaking!

This Sunday, you will see what happens when you poke the Canadian Moose!

Wait! That's the wrong file!

Tank Tuesday - Big Momma

2011-11-29T15:11:00.001-05:00


Tiger!

Last week I got access to the Tier 7 Heavy Tank, the infamous PzKpfw VI Tiger. Unfortunately I lacked the free experience to immediately get the better turret and the long 88mm gun, so I barreled around in a handful of matches with the short 88 and had a surprising amount of fun. In no time I was able to upgrade to the long 88 and I've been very pleased ever since.

Essentially, the Tiger operates a lot like the VK3601H, and indeed their armour values are almost identical. However, what was good armour for the Tier 6 medium is terrible for the Tier 7 heavy and as such, the Tiger requires a more cautious and long range play style. To counteract this low armour, it has a phenomenal amount of hitpoints compared to the VK3601 (850 to 1350) which provides a bit of opportunity to take a hit or three and still keep fighting.

The long 88 is nice too. It finally upgrades my armour penetration to something that can penetrate Tier 6 medium armour with consistency, something the short 88 has a lot of trouble with.

The end result has been 18 wins over 28 matches, a really good win percentage. I still have trouble with tier 8 and 9 tanks but I'm learning my strengths and weaknesses and so far its fun.

However, I feel I'm peaking in World of Tanks. Although I'm looking forward to the two new maps and graphical updates in the next patch, I really feel my enthusiasm for the game is going down. The "newness" of the game has worn off and the upper tiers really feel the same as the lower tiers. In essence, being a tier 4 tank fighting against tier 6 tanks requires the same tactics as a tier 7 versus tier 9. Maybe some newness will return when I get a really brawling tank (Hello King Tiger!) but for now, I feel like I'm in the same tank as I was the last two tiers.

Ah well, time will tell.

Speedy Little Daemon

2011-11-28T08:07:00.001-05:00

My success last week with getting some fights continued into this week much to my pleasant surprise.

I logged in and found Acute Dragonis and Adex III messing around a couple jumps away in a Vengeance and Caldari Navy Hookbill respectively. I debated around what ship to grab in my head and finally settled on giving the Dramiel another flight before Crucible came and dialed it back.

I got to Bosboger and while the other two were getting settled from a previous engagement, I checked out the active faction warfare sites in the system and found a Rifter trying to run one. It was no match. he convoed me afterwards and asked what he could have done better, and I told him basically that your average Rifter was ill-prepared to take on a Dramiel and his best bet is to be spamming the warp button before the Dram is even out of warp.

We moved on after my GCC counted down (not making the same mistake as last week) and ended up in Vard where some tempting targets were to be found. A Thorax and Sentinel were on scan and we warped around trying to find them. At a belt me and Adex spotted the Sentinel and I moved in to tackle him. I got my scrambler on him but BAMM! My cap was drained! I struggled to keep activating the scram and ordered my drones on him as I figured I was tracking disrupted.

Then the Thorax showed up. Uh oh, Adex is reporting on comms that he's still too far out. Am I doomed!? I mean, a Thorax with scram and web and drones could ruin me with the Sentinel draining my cap. But no, the Thorax, realizing his buddy in the Sentinel is doomed and concerned he can't take on two of us, warps off and I finish off the Sentinel with nary a scratch. The electronic warship pilot is careless (or furious) and I catch and dispatch his pod too. Sorry to my fleet mates for not holding the pod for you guys to get on the mail, I was shaking from adrenaline and never thought about it.

Extremely pleased with the night now, we continue to scour Vard for targets and play cat and mouse with a Merlin and Caracal, almost catching the cruiser a couple of times. We realize we are overstaying our welcome but we got greedy and when a Stabber Fleet Issue landed on the complex gate we were guarding, we went all in to try and kill it. That's when the rest of the Minmatar Militia Fleet came in. I got my pod out and we exchanged good fights with them, finding out we almost got that faction Stabber. I wish I had remembered to overheat my guns.

Oh well, I may have lost the ISK war tonight but I had fun and got some fights. All in all, what more can you ask for?

* * * * *
Images linked from Evelopedia.

Fiction Friday - Interlude - Darth Skorpius Fiction

2011-11-25T15:50:00.001-05:00

This piece of fiction is written for Darth Skorpius' 'Write My Bio' contest as presented by The Phoenix Diaries.

* * * * *

He sauntered into the dilapidated establishment and over to the bar. The barkeep had kept the surface of the bar clean (if you could call it that) with a cloth that once was white but patrons avoided touching anywhere but the top surface out of habit.

“Beer,” Darth Skorpius commanded. The barkeep grabbed a glass and went to fill it from the tap but Skorpius warned with “Uh uh,” and the barkeep scowled but moved over to a smaller obscured tap and filled the glass with undiluted lager. He turned put the filled glass on the counter and Skorpius dropped a credit chit in exchange.

Grabbing the beer, he moved away from the bar to a table far from the unused dance floor. The lights were only partially working in this part of the bar so it was gloomy and the people sitting around there were half-seen shadows hulking over their drinks, and in one case, sleeping a drink (or five) off.

He sat down alone at a table and took the scene in. It was midday on the station, so only a handful of unemployed sad-sacks were around. Some mournful music meant for dancing bleated out of a decade-old player on the other side of the bar and he was grateful it could not muster the volume to bother him. He sat back and waited.

About ten minutes later a man walked in, obviously Amarrian by his shaved pate and black and grey robes that marked him as a noble from the Khanid region. Darth Skorpius raised a hand and the skinny man bobbed his head and rushed over as fast as a noble deemed proper. He offered a hand to shake as he sat down but Skorpius took a sip of his drink instead.

“Er, yes, good to meet you,” he stammered as he sat down. “Do you prefer ‘Darth’ or ‘Skorpius’?”

“I’d prefer it if we didn’t use names in here,” Skorpius answered coolly. “Do you have it?”

“Oh, the datacore? Yes, yes, right here,” the Amarrian said as he opened a pouch at his side and took out a silver rectangular box. The other man snaked his hand out and grabbed it, hissing, “Not so obvious!”

“Oh! Sorry, so sorry, you see, I never have done this type of thing before, I am really a good person, if I wasn’t desperate for money I would never dream of doing this...”

“Fine fine, just shut up,” Skorpius said to stem the panicked blabbering.

“Sorry, I’m just so nervous!” The Amarrian wrung his hands, but then a gleam entered his eyes and the flustered nobleman act dropped for a second. “Do you have my money?” he asked in an unfamiliar voice.

“Yeah, right here-”

“THERE HE IS! GET HIM!” A woman in a security uniform and a drawn pistol stood in the door of the Establishment pointing at Darth Skorpius’ table, and two huge burly Civire weilding shock staves barreled towards them. Skorpius and the Amarrian bolted out of their chairs at the same time and as Skorpius bolted to the rear of the bar toward the kitchen and the service door the Amarrian grabbed him. Despite being skin and bones the man’s grip was fierce and filled with desperation. “I NEED THAT MONEY!” he yelled.

Skorpius straight armed him with all his might backwards and the nobleman tripped over his own knocked over chair right into the closest of the two guards. Skorpius ran and grabbed a large mug from a startled patron’s table as he passed, whipping it with perfect aim at the other large guard as he rounded a table, striking him in the head. That gave Skorpius enough space to get around the end of the bar and make it to the door well ahead of the bigger and slower man. As he passed through the door a shot rang out and splintered plastic from the bullet hitting the wall showered his jacket but he was otherwise unharmed.

As he ran through the kitchen he could hear the Amarrian begin to wail.

EON Sale Annoucement

2011-11-25T08:12:00.001-05:00

Our friends at EON have a Massive 50% off Blowout Sale to celebrate Thanksgiving & Black Friday

They've cut the price of EVERYTHING!

So you can buy an EON subscription at HALF PRICE, an EVE Survival Pack at HALF PRICE or a full Poster Bundle at HALF PRICE. You can even buy the complete collection of every copy of EON ever produced for HALF PRICE (they were already at half price for the bundle deal, so that makes
them all a gargantuan 75% off if you buy the Complete Collection).

Yep, that's right - everything from EON is half price. They've never done a deal this good before...

You must apply Coupon Code EONBF50 at checkout to get the discount. Oh, and the deal won't last long apparently, so you'd best be quick if you want to bag a bargain.

Click here to go straight to the store.

Screendump Thursday

2011-11-24T08:45:00.001-05:00

As usual, click for full resolution image.

Capital Power!

Kirith's favourite watering hole.

Close up of autocannons on the dorsal of a Dramiel.

Half an hour after BMTHOKK2, the wreck field.

Pure Sexy.

SPAI!

Naga on SiSi prior to textures and skins.

Korannon's new Rhea.

Very close!

Victory! ... and a trail of smoke.

Close up after victory just before I warped to station with GCC. I'll miss you Snarky#5!

Proteus Is A Go

2011-11-23T08:53:00.001-05:00

I haven't blathered about skills in a while, so let's go down that path today.

A while back I got a hankering for a good solid blaster fit Proteus, which sucked because I only had Caldari strategic cruisers trained up. So I bit the proverbially bullet and trained up the Gallente strategic cruisers skills. That took a few weeks to train from scratch and just finished on the weekend. Since then I've been cleaning up some level four skills like Capital Ships and Marauders that I meant to finish but never got around to.

However, I'm a bit stuck on what to train next. I already have all of the race's tech II cruisers and tech II large weapons trained for the new battlecruisers, and there are no other new shinies I need training for in Crucible. Well, that's not true. I'm sure some of the new T2 mods will require me finishing off some level Vs so I might have to investigate that. For now, I'm going to slot in some Gunnery level V skills to increase my performance there.

Korannon is in the process of finishing off jump freighter training and still needs a couple levels in jump calibration and jump fuel conservation to make use of the ship cheaper.

And my Wyvern alt, Selia, is still slogging through Fighters V to get that Fighter Bomber skill, especially now since all the Wyvern will be able to use is fighters and fighter-bombers.

Crisis of Faith

2011-11-22T10:16:00.001-05:00

Prior to logging in last night, I was seriously beginning to doubt I was going to make it as a low sec PvPer.

The biggest hurdle was my lack of time in-game to adequately practice and find opportunities, combined with a time of the week when the corp was quiet. Adding to my handicaps was the lack of even the militia to fall back on now since we left it two weeks ago. With no real kill since a duel on Oct 17th and a number of dispiriting losses, I was really starting to re-evaluate my profession choice.

Don't get me wrong, I knew what I was getting into with the Kadavr Black Guard and the corp has held up its end of the recruitment agreement. When I fly with the other guys I know I'm flying with the best that know all the ins and out of low sec PvP. But when I'm alone, I flounder. Trouble finding fights and winning them.

Was I destined to go back and be a small cog in a null sec alliance? Or go into exploration and admit my failure of solo PvP?

I logged in last night and spent 30 minutes moving the Wyvern from Placid to closer to home with an eye towards cleaning out the drone bay for the upcoming expansion next week. Once that was done, I was determined on giving this low sec deal ONE MORE TRY.

My weapon of choice was a Rifter. Last week I tried roaming in a Thorax but got caught by an enemy fleet camping both sides of a gate with fast lockers, and despite crashing the gate twice, I could not escape. A Rifter would give me more freedom to evade while perhaps luring other small time roamers into fights. Because more than anything, I want good fights.

Quickly one system over in Siseide I found an Incursus floating around. I waited at the Auga gate to see if I could determine where he was headed when he landed on my gate! I was red-flashy and he was not, so I approached and locked to see if he would fire first and allow me to engage.

He jumped instead, so I followed. On the other side I watched him warp off... to the sun! I quickly followed and landed near him but he sped off with his MWD and my afterburner could not cut the range.

He posted in local that he would not fight an afterburner Rifter as he knew he would die. I understood and told him, "np, you gotta pick your fights". I moved on.

In Amamake, I buzzed by the belt and checked out a wreck, but nothing on scan. I was about to move on when I see in local, "t1 frig 1v1?" and I respond "sure". I'm always up for a duel. The pilot, Finkov, and I fleet up and he moved to a safe spot. He says he's in a Merlin and I think to myself, "Uh oh". Yeah, Rifters are great Tech 1 frigs and very powerful and versatile, but the other tier III tech 1 frigs of the other races have some power in them that a veteran can make use of. I knew I was either in for a cake-walk (Heretic Army pilot? Not likely) or a tough slugfest. The latter was the case.

I warped in and we got to it. I was managing my cap between the repper and the web, overheating on and off, trying to keep alive while his shields and my armour were stripped away. Then I ran out of cap and could not get that last cycle from the repper in time as I exploded. Finkov confirmed he was probably one or two salvos from death as well, and he complimented my on my fit and told me I would try out for Heretic Army.

We parted ways and I went back to Dal and picked up another Rifter and went back to Amamake. At the top belt I was gauging my chances against a Caldari Navy Hookbill that was 400 km away when a Rifter warped in between us. I did some rough eyeballing of angles and warped off to try and warp back on top of the new target, hoping the Hookbill would not interfere in time, when the Rifter pilot, alconetus, convos me and asked for a 1v1. Well, hell yes!

We fleet up and I meet him in his safe. Here we go again. Once more into the tight orbit dance of death. Fortunately for me he's an autocannon fit as well and I don't need to worry about him fighting at range. I again turn to managing my repper and overheating mods to try and and survive. His armour seems to be going down so slowly! Gah, I'm fighting at 5% armour, overheat the repper MOAR! Dammit, structure damage.... smoke.... I'm going down!

My weapons deactivate and for a second I thought I was dead and my client was just taking a moment to smugly draw my pod on the screen. But then I realize my opponent is in his pod beside the wreck and I have somehow won with 20% structure left and mods damage from overheating to the point of almost breaking. His fit shows a different philosophy of a 400mm buffer tank and no repper to manage, but that simply gave me more capacitor to steal from him to keep mine going.

I was very happy to get a good fight and kill this time, along with the good fight against Finkov, that all my moping has been forgotten and low sec shines for me again. I'm in such a good mood that I take a bunch of pictures of the burning Rifter I am flying, chat in the channels about my win, and warp to station to dock and repair...

... Where the station guns shoot me to death.

Right, GCC counter. I guess I need more practice at this low sec thing. Whatever, I got more Rifters where those two came from. ツ

* * * * *
Images linked from Evelopedia.

Swamped

2011-11-18T15:41:00.001-05:00

Sorry, no fiction friday this week or real post today. Swamped at work with interesting stuff to do.

However, extremely pleased that Torps have been dropped from Naga. Crucible excitement is a go!

Winter Is Here, Now What About Summer?

2011-11-16T13:51:00.001-05:00

On November 29th (two weeks earlier than I predicted but still on a Tuesday... expansions are always on a Tuesday...) Crucible will be delivered and a new age of graphical and functional improvements will be available to the pilots of New Eden. New ships, new customs offices, new nebulae, new engine trails... and add to that the modifications to super capitals, hybrids, Gallente and Caldari ships... it definitely has been a dream come true for many pilots.

But, as has been pointed out in other place, Crucible is all about making existing for former players happy to shore up the eroding subscriber base and expertise bleed. Its not going to attract new customers very much by itself (although a happy playerbase is a a good draw in of itself).

So its time to start thinking about the Summer expansion. Release planning as they call it in SCRUM circles. What are the stories/epic stories going to be? Here are my suggestions as a stakeholder in the decision process.

1) Establishments

CCP has invested a lot of time and effort into Incarna and I think its important to acknowledge that the concept is valid in that avatars in sci-fi environments will attract certain types of players, and that the avatars and captain's quarters that they have created look amazing (overheating graphics card notwithstanding). CCP may have failed in the roll out and communication and priority setting, but that is in the past and we need to keep this moving forward.

A first basic step would be a story to allow players to visit each other quarters, or perhaps even multiple visitors. It would be cool if there was some sort of minigame they could play on the screen together in the quarters, just hanging out on the couch. Even this limited gameplay would be a huge step from avatars just chillin' alone in the quarters.

The next step is actually leaving quarters and meeting in establishments, but I don't know how feasible that is with CCP current development of incarna assets and we don't want the whole expansion to be about incarna as that is what lead to the summer of rage in the first place. But if two teams over the release can get a basic establishment that allowed up to 6 players to chill in a bar and perhaps play poker, I would call that a huge win. Heck, even playing pong with a mate in my quarters is a win here, CCP. Aim low and surpass expectations (because doing the opposite has not worked out, you know what I mean?).

2) Expand the NeX store

I like vanity items, and I'm disappointed in the NeX store in two regards: not enough selection and prices too high. The latter can be forgiven if CCP is trying to create a luxury market to keep items moderately rare, but the former needs to be addressed at least by four fold.
- more clothes
- more tattoos
- more implants

And not only incarna avatar stuff. Where are my special paint job BPCs for my ships? Where are my customized furniture options for the quarters?

I think its important that forward momentum on the items in the NeX store continue as long as the items in no way give a PvP advantage.

3) New Ships

They don't necessarily have to be brand new hulls like the pocket battleships, but nothing excites the playerbase more or has the potential to change up the optimals in PvP more than new ships. I suggest (as per my ideas post) Tech II versions of the tier II battlecruisers, but even tech II versions of the new tier III battlecruisers (Heavy Stealth Bombers!) or tech II versions of the tier III battleships (Flagships!) would be awesome and interesting. Or perhaps Tech II carriers...?

4) Dominion Redux

Ultimately, the Dominion expansion was not a shining success. Sov warfare went from POS bashing to structure bashing, and the improvements through IHUBs remain lackluster at best. Population per system overall may have actually decreased since the anomaly nerf.

While player owned customs offices goes a good way to providing more terrain for player modification in the null sec battle theatre, there needs to be more. Perhaps more player structures in the scale of the customs offices that perform industrial / logistical roles; for example, a player owned storage hanger that acts like a hanger array at a POS, and a player owned ship maintenance array for making in space modifications and storing a couple ships. Risk versus reward where reward is convenience and the risk is it getting blown up.

In addition, I think its time to make sovereignty of a system and its outpost (if any) dependent on actually living there and not on the number of structures your alliance has anchored. Making reinforcement timers for structures smaller, with fewer hitpoints, would encourage hostile alliances to send smaller fleets while at the same time encouraging alliances to rally to defence of those systems since they can be lost more easily. Also, make IHUBs and their installed improvements capture-able like outposts.

5) Open Up Jove Space

Its time to break that pinata and open it up to a land rush. Story: Jove are gone, leaving behind their empty station husks and a few broken relics. Sansha and/or Sleepers can be the rats of the regions, the Jove technology pretty much lost, many stations gone. Lots of storyline applications here, as well as justifications for some of the other major features.

* * * * *
Those are my suggestions, leave in the comments your ideas for major features for the summer expansion.

Tank Tuesday: Bright Spot

2011-11-15T13:27:00.001-05:00

Jagdpz IV

So late last week I finally saved up enough credits to dump my StuG III tank destroyer (which I had become bored with due to how fragile and low-punching-power compared to the VK3601 it seemed) and purchased the next tier up tank destroyer, the Jagdpanzer IV.

At first I was vastly disappointed. The stock model could not fit two out of three of my modifications (cammo netting and vents) and I couldn't even upgrade to the long 75mm gun which the StuG mounted. I needed to grind 4000 experience in a tier VI tank practically helpless against tier VI mediums. I was not impressed. However, the matchmaker realized I was gimped and placed me in matches against a lot of tier IV and V tanks and soon I was upgrading the suspension and getting back to the StuG firepower. A few matches later and I mounted the PaK version of the short 88mm with the same beloved damage and penetration as the one on my VK3601 but with 25% faster firing time. Yeeha.

VK3601(H)

I have to say I appreciated the thicker armour and more hitpoints over the StuG now as well as the bigger bang, but the VK is still my preferred tank.

Speaking of ol' reliable, I have all the equipment unlocked for the beast including the bigger engine, so now I'm grinding the experience and credits for the next tank in the line, the infamous PzKpfw VI Tiger.

Tiger

It will be my first heavy tank, but despite being a heavy its armour is not much better than the VK3601. It does, however, have a lot more hitpoints and can get the fearsome long 88, a weapon with 203 penetration compared to 132 for the short 88, and slightly better accuracy (but slightly slower rate of fire). I can't wait!

Blog Banter: Crucible

2011-11-14T08:28:00.001-05:00

"With the Winter expansion possibly being named 'Crucible', it certainly is a melting pot of refinements and tweaks aimed at making the EVE experience smoother and more wholesome. If the developers suddenly found themselves some spare resources and approached you for an additional feature to include before release, what single concept would you pitch them and how would you implement it?

For bonus points, the one thing lacking from this 'patchwork' of iterations is a cohesive storyline to package 'The Crucible' together. How could this expansion be marketed to potential new customers?"

* * * * *

First off, I want to make one distinction to Seismic Stan's blog banter intro above.

cru·ci·ble/ˈkro͞osəbəl/

Noun:

A ceramic or metal container in which metals or other substances may be melted or subjected to very high temperatures.
A place or occasion of severe test or trial: "the crucible of combat".

There is no doubt in my mind that the second definition is the more appropriate. This expansion is CCP's test and we, the players, are the testers asking the crucial question: can CCP deliver content to make our heads spin? The indications so far are favourable but the exam is not until December.

Anyway, on with the question. My dream question. Given the power to pitch a feature to devs what would I pick? I have SO MANY ideas! To pick one is hard, especially without any idea how many story points my ideas are worth and how many points the team can take on (can you tell I work in a SCRUM workplace?). So I'm going to cheat and propose three ideas, yes THREE! Take that Stan! One for what I consider a small feature, one for medium feature, and one for a big feature.

Small Feature: Transporting Assembled Ships

Right now if I have a rigged battleship there are three ways to transport it. One, get in and fly it there. Two, put in a capital ship maintenance array and have it jump it there. Or three, courier it to a freighter pilot who then carries it in a freighter to the destination.

The third is the one I like to focus on here. Right now, in order to move a battleship in this method you need two characters, one to do the moving and one to setup the courier contract as you cannot setup the contract yourself. This is asinine. I should be able to wrap a ship for transport myself without requiring the overhead of a second character and contract.

Simply add an option to "Prepare for Transport" an assembled ship (or really anything!) and it will get contained in a package that can be loaded into a freighter, no contract or second char required. Same rules as preparing a courier contract but with less hassle.

Medium Feature : Improvements to Directional Scanner

Anyone who has ever done any PvP knows how to use the directional scanner, but have you ever stopped and thought that it was weird that it had effectively no graphical component to it? You aim using your camera drones and then read off a chart of hits. Then you wiggle back and forth to see what falls on or off the chart as you rescan... but is that hit on the right side or left? How big is a 30 degree cone, does that include the sun? What is 250,000,000 km in AU? What is 4.7 AU in km?

Quite simply, the directional scanner is a piece of shit. Compared to the awesomeness that is the probing functionality, then I consider it an ugly piece of shit.

So here is my proposal: at the very least, allow the user to click a check box to show the current directional scan area on the screen so people can stop guessing. Change the range box from a text box of kilometers to a slider control that changes from km to AU just like the overview does as ranges change.

Then, on the solar system map, show the scan area much like a scan probe. When I'm scanning 90 degrees to 10 au, show that cone on the map so I can quickly assess what celestials are in it. Allow me to click and drag the cone around or even change its range or shape. This would make it feel more like a scifi tool and less like a WWII era submarine sonar.

Large Feature: Deep Space Exploration Ships

My last idea is to add to the inventory of ships. A lot of people do exploration in all parts of space for fun and profit, yet the serious explorers often do it with two ships or two characters: one for the expert probing ship with a cloak, and a second combat ship to come in and do the fighting against the NPCs. Sometimes there can even be a third ship for the hacking, salvaging, or archeology.

So I propose we take the tier II battlecruisers (Drake, Myrmidon, Hurricane, Harbinger) and create tech II versions. They would have stats similar to Command Ships but their bonuses would be:

100% damage to weapons (but only four hardpoints, i.e. like a Marauder class ship)
-99% reduction to CPU usage of Scan Probe Launchers
10% increase to scan probe strength per level of Deep Space Exploration Ship skill
10% increase to range of Analyzer, Code Breaker, and Salvager modules per level of Deep Space Exploration Ship Skill
+ Corresponding damage bonus as per their tech I variant

For slot layout, each of them should have seven high slots: four for weapons, one for scan probe launcher, one for salvager, and one for Improved Cloaking Device (because nobody wants to scan in dangerous space with a cloak on). They should have enough mid slot to fit a code breaker and analyzer module (along with a shield tank for the Drake variant and possibly Hurricane variant).

To keep these ships from being PvP gods, you can always gimp their sensor strength like you did to Marauders.

Note: you could argue that a pretty good all-in-one exploration ship can be made out of a strategic cruiser, but you can't get all the functionality I am envisioning without really gimping offensive or defensive capabilities.

Time For the Crystal Ball

2011-11-11T10:38:00.001-05:00

The Crucible expansion has a lot of content in it. There are small changes and large changes, and both kinds can have small impacts or large impacts. Accurately determining the fallout of all of these at once is nearly impossible, but some guesses can be made by people with a long view of the game and the desire to increase blog post counts.

Instead of talking about how each change will impact the game separately, I will try and look at how each area of the game will be impacted at least in one regard, if not a couple.

High Sec

With the proposed changes that no insurance will be paid out for death by CONCORD and that autopilot will actually dock you in your destination station, one can see that suicide ganking is the direct target of these initiatives. On the other hand, a large majority of ganks occurred by people who didn't really depend on the insurance money to be profitable and the ganks typically took place against traveling targets near the trade hubs and routes. While this might mean that suiciders are more selective and make greater use of ship scanners, I doubt we will see a large drop in the number of suicide ganks. In fact, the introduction of the new pocket battleship battlecruisers may mean an increase in ganks as the perpetrators can use cheaper hulls with battleship weapon alpha strikes.

Also, I predict an increase in suicide ganking of autopiloting pods due to the inclusion of implants on kill mails in order for some to try and increase kill board efficiency.

Low Sec

The player owned customs offices could introduce some intriguing game play in low sec. Currently a number of players harvest resources of low sec planets on the sly, slipping in with blockade runners to pick up there goods and moving them to other planets or to be used elsewhere. With the public offices gone players will be forced to either abandon their networks or try to deploy their own offices... that can be attacked and destroyed. Most will be unwilling to accept that risk (realizing that they would be unable to protect their assets) so I expect low sec planetary interaction to shrink and stagnate in the short term. Longer term we might see alliances step in with the wherewithal to setup and defend the more rare low sec planets with private customs offices (or perhaps public with fees to generate income).

The new battlecruisers will not have a huge impact in the fighting seen in low sec since a lot of low sec fighting involves smaller hull sizes where the battleship caliber weapons will not be needed. The changes to hybrid weapons and hybrid ships, however, could have a large impact. Expect the Dramiel to fall out of favour as ships like the Daredevil come to the fore, as well as Gallente blaster ships in general.

Also, with destroyers getting a buff (rate of fire penalty gone, more hit points, lower sig, more cap) you will definitely see more destroyers in all fields of battle, but especially low sec areas where hostile frigates can be found more often, especially in area of faction warfare.

Null Sec

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the new year will see a lot of alliances lose their space and warfare to burn across all areas of low sec. Alliances that once were able to leverage large super capital fleets to force their enemies to step down will find that their super carriers are vulnerable to fleets of the new pocket battleships (i.e. fighter bombers cannot hit them while they do battleship damage for a cheap price) while titan doomsdays will not clear away the enemy logi and leadership vessels. In addition, the new aggression rules upon logging out means that that risk of using your multi-tens-of-billions ships is a lot higher. As an upshot of this, along with the improvements to Dreadnoughts and addition of tech II capital mods, expect to see a lot more Dreadnought and Carrier fleets as the backbone of sov warfare.

But wait! There's more...

Alliances in null sec will make a concentrated effort to erect custom offices in their territory to keep the POS fuel products rolling in as POS fuel prices increase due to small operation and ninja PI industrialists close up shop in low sec and null sec. These structures will be favourite targets to attack for smaller hostile fleets as they will lack any automated protection and they might stir the locals to form a defense fleet, thus getting a "gud fite". Even if that fails, there is a chance for a fight when the reinforcement timer comes out. So expect a lot more action around customs offices in null sec.

But WAIT! THERE IS STILL MORE!

Perhaps the biggest change of Crucible to impact null sec will be time dilation which promises more even footing in the lag battlespace for both sides of a fight. This in turn will encourage more people to come out for big fights as they feel they stand a chance of actually doing and seeing something, even at a snail's pace. Therefore I think we'll see the first 4000 pilot battle in a single system in early 2012.

Wormhole Space

The new battlecruisers will play a fairly big part in Crucible's impact on wormhole space. Since they sport battleship firepower on a battlecruiser hull, it will offer more options for attacking enemy structures through smaller wormholes or wormholes with mass restrictions. Adding into that equation the fact that customs offices will be owned most likely by the wormhole system inhabitants, it gives another vector to attack neighbours. Therefore I predict more structure shooting and corporate evictions in class 1 and 2 wormholes.

Also, wormholers will be deliriously happy over corporate bookmarks.

* * * * *

That is my main predictions for life in New Eden post-Crucible. If you have your own crystal ball readings, please post them in the comments!

Tracking versus Transversal, Signature Resolution versus Signature Radius

2011-11-09T16:21:00.001-05:00

In my post last week commenter Suleiman Shouaa pointed out that I was pretty much ignoring the relationship between signature size and ability to hit:

So you're saying that a Megathron cannot track another Battleship MWDing at 15km? Wow, that's a pretty impressive amount of misinformation coming out of a single sentence....

Yes, mea culpa. I did completely ignore that MWD increases the size of the target's signature and this not only makes it easier to target quickly, it also helps negate the advantages that moving fast transversally has against tracking.

My error lies in that I think of the two separately but the formula to determine hits has them combined in the equation. From Evelopedia:

The way I was thinking is that the tracking versus transversal part merely determines if your guns can move fast enough to aim at the target; then assuming you can aim at the target, then the resolution versus radius to determine the dispersion of the shot versus the size of the target area profile.

But its not a two part process, its a one step calculation and turning on a MWD may increase transversal speed but it also increases the radius. So the question is, how much effect does the two changes have?

(Side Note: I use "transversal" velocity but the correct value to use in the calculations is "Angular" velocity which measures apparent movement of something in radians per second.)

So let's go back to our Megathron versus Maelstrom example, using current blaster values. Let's also assume that we are using Caldari Navy ammo in Neutron Blaster Cannon IIs, and that the Maelstrom is at optimal so the second part of the equation is zero. The stock Maelstrom (skills all level V) moves at a top speed of 118 m/s and a sig radius of 460 meters; with the MWD on it moves at 835 m/s and a radius of 2760 meters. The blaster on the Megathron has a tracking of 0.07442 radians/sec and a signature resolution of 400 meters.

So what's the angular velocity of the Maelstrom? Well, assuming the ship remains at optimal range, the a single radian is 4500 meters (i.e. optimal range of the blaster) and thus the angular velocity is 0.02622 rad/second at normal top speed and ~~0.6133 rad/second at MWD speed~~. EDIT See below.

So chance to hit Maelstrom without MWD on = 0.5 ^ (( (0.02622/0.07442) x (400/460) )^2 )
= 0.5 ^ ( (0.3523 x 0.8696) ^ 2)
= 0.5 ^ (0.3064 ^ 2)
= 0.5 ^ 0.0939
= 0.9370

~~And chance to hit once that Maelstrom punches the MWD button?~~
~~0.5 ^ ( ((0.6133/0.07442) x (400/2760)) ^ 2)~~
~~= 0.5 ^ ( (8.2411 x 0.1449) ^2)~~
~~= 0.5 ^ (1.1941^2)~~
~~= 0.5 ^ 1.4259~~
~~= 0.4529~~

So at optimal range, the chance to hit of the Megatron towards the Maelstrom with MWD on is halved. But Suleiman's complaint was that I was implying that at 15 km the Megathron could not hit the Maelstrom (and to be fair, that is what I intended to imply) so let's see what the math says.

EDIT:
As Luccul pointed out below, I got the angular velocity wrong with MWD on. Looks like I used the sig radius as the velocity, sigh. The actual angular velocity is 0.1856 to give us:

And chance to hit once that Maelstrom punches the MWD button?
0.5 ^ ( ((0.1856/0.07442) x (400/2760)) ^ 2)
= 0.5 ^ ( (2.4940x 0.1449) ^2)
= 0.5 ^ (0.3614^2)
= 0.5 ^0.1306
= 0.9135

So, as everyone keeps pointing out to me, the 500% increase in speed is cancelled out by the 500% increase in signature. Gah.
:END EDIT

At 15000 meters the angular velocity of the Maelstrom is 0.00787 r/s normally and 0.05567 r/s with MWD. We need to take the second part of the equation into play now so fall off range is 13000 meters.

No MWD at 15km:
0.5 ^ ((( (0.00787 / 0.07442) x (400/460) ) ^2 + ((15000 - 4500) / 13000 )^2)
= 0.5 ^ ( (0.1058 x 0.8696 )^2 + ( 0.8077)^2 )
= 0.5 ^ ( 0.00846 + 0.6524 )
= 0.6325

And MWD at 15 km:
0.5 ^ ((( ( 0.05567 / 0.07442) x (400/2760 ) ) ^2 + ((15000 - 4500) / 13000 )^2)
= 0.5 ^ ( (0.7481 x 0.1449 )^2 + ( 0.8077)^2 )
= 0.5 ^ ( 0.01175 + 0.6524 )
= 0.6311

So assuming my math is correct (and I'm running out of time to check my calculations so someone please comment if I'm wrong), the extra velocity at 15 km is negated by the ballooning size of the signature. In close ranges (i.e. optimal), the MWD speed makes a significant difference.

Now the question is, how much does that 20% extra tracking actually help blasters?

A big thanks to Suleiman Shouaa for pointing out my glaring mistake.

Tank Tuesday: Bringer of Death

2011-11-08T09:49:00.000-05:00

VK3601(H)

There have been a few times in the past two months of playing where I would almost earn the "Top Gun" achievement in a match, only to come up short with only 5 kills:

Top Gun - Destroy more enemy vehicles than any other player in your team during the battle (at least 6).
If two or more players have destroyed equal amount vehicles, the achievement is granted to the player who has earned more XP for the battle, including additional XP provided to Premium account users. If the amount of XP is equal as well, the achievement is not granted.

Erlenburg

Finally late last week I was in a match on the Erlenburg map and it did not promise to be anything spectactular. I was a tier 6 tank with a couple tier 8 and 7 heavies and a few tier 6 and 5 mediums with a couple artillery per side.

As the match started I was in the southwest corner and led the advance up the west road to the northwest part of the map. A Type 59 tier 8 medium and a couple other tanks were close behind. Then as I turned around the corner of the hill an enemy StuG III tank destroyer faced me. We exchanged blows as I pulled back and spotted a PzIV medium supporting him. I took some damage but firepower from me and the friendlies approaching behind killed the two eager enemy tank, with me getting both killing blows.

I let the big Type 59 lead from here, and as I came around the hill to the middle of the north I spotted it trading fire with a couple tanks near the river. I contributed fire and once more got both killing blows. I advanced over the north bridge while the Type 59 ally moved south to deal with the enemy heavy tanks dueling with our heavies in the centre over the objectives. I spotted one artillery (one shot!) and then the next as I come into the northeast (one shot again!). The enemy was clearly beaten with only a couple tanks left, and I moved south onto the east ridge to try and take some high explosive long shots at the last remaining enemy heavies. Target, aim... fire! And the last few percent ticked off.

Top Gun

Victory for our side and, finally, top gun for me with 7 kills.

Fiction Friday - Series 4 : Part 12

2011-11-04T10:28:00.003-04:00

"Captain, you may begin your attack run on the salvation rafts."

I woke up in a world of blue goo. I fought the panic of being unable to breath and waited for what seemed like forever for the decanting process to begin. With a clunk and a swoosh I slipped onto the basin beneath the clone vat and coughed up a lungful of the nutrient bath.

"Sir? This is Odonnelson. I'm getting reports from other life boats... there is something wrong..."

Two burly techs come over and help me to get to the showers. My new muscles are not responding right yet and the lights are still too bright for my unadjusted eyes. They roughly deposit me in a seat and turn on a warm shower that helps bring my body temperature up as well as clean me off. Eventually my body stops shivering.

"...seven craft destroyed... I've ordered the rest to make their way to the wreck, maybe the fighters will miss them in the debris... too far away though... I fear they won't make it...no CONCORD channel access in these things..."

I leave the stall and find myself in a small change room with a cloning facility disposable overall, nothing fancy. I put it on and sit down on the seat. A commode is also here, built into the wall. I throw up into it.

"...they are not stopping... sensors indicate we are being locked... sir, it has been an honour serving with y-"

My head is pounding even more than usual. Somehow I find the strength to stand up and leave the change room. The facility doctor gives me a 30 second check up before signing me out and letting me leave.

"If you know what's best for you, Mr Kodachi, you will accept this punishment I have placed upon you and let it end here."

As I make my way back to my quarters on the station, my agony slowly turns to ice cold rage.

Victory!!

2011-11-03T10:02:00.001-04:00

I wrote a short piece of fiction for the Star Fleet Comms podcast contest called "Inspired by the Images of Eve". That piece was called "The Rifter" and I'm very happy to report that it was the winner of the contest after judging by Max Torps, Noise, and Penelope Starr.

There were 87 entries including mine and the quality and variety were both very high, so I'm tickled pink at being selected for first place.

I remember trying to write my piece. I looked at the image and was more struck by the structure on the asteroid in the background rather than the ship itself. I'm often drawn to the NPC structures and wondering about who built them, why, who lives there, what do they do, how do they die... etc. So my story popped fully formed in my mind about how this small colony finds a delerict Rifter and decide to try and refurbish it for a colony intra-system transport ship.

However, I quickly realized that I was going to use too many work for world-building and describing why such a change would mean a vast improvement in their quality of life (e.g. not being beholden to transport businesses that charge high rates to bring supplies and take their ore). So I switched the outline to simply salvaging it as everyone understands that concept without much explanation.

Then as I started outlining the story I realized I could not be a verbose in describing scenes and explaining back story as I usually do for my Fiction Friday stories, so I started trimming and condensing, using very specific scenes and events and dialogue to set the scene. It was very hard.

After I finished the first draft I was still 500 words over. Out came the axe again, cutting scenes that involved describing how the salvage sales would improve the life of the miners, and a scene that dealt with the aftermath of the capsuleer's attack on the colony, and finally cutting out a scene where Jorge and his son bond over planning the dismantling of the ship. And I was still 20 words over! One more sentence sacrificed to the altar of word count constraints.

In the end, I felt what I was left with was the bare minimum in terms of telling the story on the points I wanted. But I almost re-wrote it anyways.

The problem was little Tess. I debated if it was too heavy handed to have her as a character. I used her in the beginning to establish that the colony had at least one full family, that the adults were good human beings with close bonds, etc. And then in the end I used her to underscore the inhumanity of the capsuleer. But I worried that it was too obvious, too inhumane, and that the readers would rebel against the end of the story. I ended up going with it, and it looks like it worked since I won, but I think it was a close thing to balance. I like to try and avoid black and white morality stories but sometimes they can work.

Anyway, thanks to the Starfleet Comms crew for the contest and picking my entry and the winner. It is a great honour and really made my week.

Thoughts On Hybrid Changes II - Blaster Battleships

2011-11-02T21:04:00.000-04:00

One thing that was brought up in response to my post yesterday about the sniper HACs is that ships should not all be equal in every role for every faction, and in that regard I agree. The goal should not be parity but be competitiveness. The problem currently as it stands is that rail ships are never a realistic option in sniping configurations due to the problems of high fitting reqs, anemic damage, low alpha, etc and if these are addressed in a reasonable fashion than maybe Gallente/Caldarthei the hybitrd ships can be considered in some roles where their advantages can be useful.

Anyway, on to battleships.

There are four tech I battleships with bonuses for hybrid weapons but the Dominix has never been considered a solely hybrid platform due to its drone capabilities, so we're going to ignore it today. Instead we'll concentrate on the tier 2 Megathron and tier 3 Hyperion and Rokh battleships.u

Current State

First we are going to assume a standard role and similar setup of best tech II blasters (Neutron Blaster Cannon IIs) and three tech II damage mods. We will not discount drones in our analysis but they will not be included in the DPS numbers. We will not compare tanking in this exercise as our purpose is more to measure the effects of the proposed changes. For comparision purposes, the Amarr will put forth a similar pulse Abaddon and the Minmatar will present an autocannon Maelstrom .the

Ship with faction ammo	Range	Falloff	DPS	Alpha	Tracking (radians/sec)	Tracking (m/s at optimal)	Tracking (m/s at optimal+falloff)	Tracking (m/s at 10 km)
Megathron	4.5	13	935	4054	0.07442	335	1,302	744
Hyperion	4.5	13	1322	4633	0.05412	244	947	541
Rokh	6.8	13	1013	3707	0.05412	368	1,072	541
Abaddon	15	10	916	3971	0.04219	633	1,055	422
Maelstrom	3	24	878	2854	0.054	162	1,458	540

Ship with Tech II ammo	Range	Falloff	DPS	Alpha	Tracking (radians/sec)	Tracking (m/s at optimal)	Tracking (m/s at optimal+falloff)	Tracking (m/s at 20 km)
Megathron	11	16	745	3231	0.05582	614	1,507	1,116
Hyperion	11	cy by	1105	3693	0.04059	446	1,096	812
Rokh	17	16	840	2954	0.04059	690	1,339	812
Abaddon	45	10	730	3165	0.03164	1,424	1,740	633
Maelstrom	6	36	700	2275	0.0405	243	1,701	810

So, what do those numbers mean? Well, the tracking is the big thing with blasters and the reason why is this: at optimal range with highest damage ammo a battleship sized target with just an afterburner or a MWD with one regular web will move too fast in transversal speed for your weapons to hit it. At optimal plus falloff you have better tracking transversal but fighting in falloff means your hits are missing 50% of the time anyways.

The Abaddon with its big optimal range with Imperial Multifrequency means its lower tracking number is not as much as a problem unless the enemy closes range, while the Maelstrom's big falloff range alleviates some pain (not to mention its ability to switch damage types and not use capacitor).

When we looks at Tech II ranged ammo, the situation is slightly better due to the boost in optimal range, but you still need a web or two to bring target's speed down in order to be able to track them. For an example, a Maelstrom with a Tech II MWD moves 835 meters/sec so that at 20 km the Rokh and Hyperion will have trouble tracking it (as well as fighting in falloff).

So what do the numbers look like with a 20% boost to tracking? Well, assuming my math is correct we get the following numbers:

Ship with faction ammo	Range	Falloff	DPS	Alpha	Tracking (radians/sec)	Tracking (m/s at optimal)	Tracking (m/s at optimal+falloff)	Tracking (m/s at 10 km)
Megathron	4.5	13	935	4054	0.089304	402	1,563	893
Hyperion	4.5	13	1322	4633	0.064944	292	1,137	649
Rokh	6.8	13	1013	3707	0.064944	442	1,286	649
Abaddon	15	10	916	3971	0.04219	633	1,055	422
Maelstrom	3	24	878	2854	0.054	162	1,458	540

Ship with Tech II ammo	Range	Falloff	DPS	Alpha	Tracking (radians/sec)	Tracking (m/s at optimal)	Tracking (m/s at optimal+falloff)	Tracking (m/s at 20 km)
Megathron	11	16	745	3231	0.066984	737	1,809	1,340
Hyperion	11	16	1105	3693	0.048708	536	1,315	974
Rokh	17	16	840	2954	0.048708	828	1,607	974
Abaddon	45	10	730	3165	0.03164	1,424	1,740	633
Maelstrom	6	36	700	2275	0.0405	243	1,701	810

What the impact looks to be is that the blaster battleships, especially the Megathron, will have a better chance at tracking other battleships, but will probably still need webs on target bring its transversal speed down to the large blaster cannons ability to track.So now the question is how much impact the agility and base speed improvement will have on the three vessels and if that will allow the short ranged blaster ships to get in range more easily.

Thoughts On Hybrid Changes

2011-11-01T13:04:00.002-04:00

So we have the official first word on the Hybrid weapon and ship changes coming in December. I'll try and give the short version here.

- Less CPU usage (varies on weapon size)
- less powergrid usuage (12%)
- less capacitor use (30%)
- blasters get trackingboost (20%)
- railguns get damage boost (10%)
- many Gallente (and some Caldari hybrid boats) get speed and agility boosts

So what does it mean?

The reaction has ranged from people saying its too much to other saying its not enough, and everything in between. That's usually a good sign, but with such broad sweeping changes it is very hard to evaluate without some hard numbers that comes from actually flying the ships and getting into fights.

But we can make some general conclusions from the available information and proposed changes.

Let's look at the Eagle, a ship I have a fondness for despite never actually using one in forever due to the suckiness that hybrid weapons have presented. One of the biggest problems with the ship was lack of powergrid to fit the best railguns. With my skills the Eagle has 1093.75 MW available and fitting five 250mm Railguin IIs take 1062 MW (212 MW each). That leaves a paltry ~30 MW to fit a propulsion mod, tank, and anything else on the ship. In comparison a Muninn with five 720mm Howitser Artillery II weapons still has over 200 MW to play with.

If we apply the 12% power grid savings to our Eagle we find that this gives us around 160 MW on the Eagle to play with after the weapons are installed, enough to open up some options while still making a pilot consider the smaller 200mm Railgun IIs.

But what about the damage? Well, assuming both ships are trying to snipe out to 90 km and we've given each ships three tech II damage mods and one Tracking Computer II with the optimal range script. The Muninn, using tech II Tremor ammo has an optimal of 87 km with 27 km falloff and an estimate DPS of 211 using the latest version of Eve Fitting Tool. The Eagle doesn't need tech II ammo to reach that far so it uses Caldari Navy Lead ammo to get 87 km with 19 km falloff and a current estimated DPS of 189. The 10% damage boost for railguns gives us about 208 DPS, quite inline with the Muninn so that number at least seems accurate.

For comparison purposes, similar setups on a Zealot give 254 DPS and on a Diemos give 225 DPS (including boost and using Spike ammo), however the latter requires two tracking computers to get to 84 km optimal range.

Of course, these are just EFT numbers and a lot of other factors such as alpha, cap use, ship speed, ship tank, etc come into play. But at least the initial changes are steps in the right direction.

Personally I think that until on grid probing and warping are nerfed the range bonuses of the Eagle and similar Caldari ships are going to be a disadvantage, but I'll take whatever boosts I can get for my old favourites. IN a future post I'll take a look at what the blaster changes do for the big blaster battleships, the Megathron, Rokh, and Hyperion.

Improvements In Small Steps

2011-10-31T09:59:00.000-04:00

I went out last night in my new Imperial Navy Slicer, equipped to tackle at range and fight from a distance. The fit was borrowed from Lord's Servant and I liked the feel of the little ship as it came around and explored Dal, Siseide, and Egghelende.

I noticed some chatter in Siseide where one river Zateki was apparently just winning a 1v1 versus another pilot. I poked around and finally found him in a Tech I Amarr Arbitrator at the acceleration gate for a Minmatar Stronghold. I primed my MWD and settled into an orbit at 20 kilometers and turned on the Scorch. He launched drones but they were only tech I and I quickly melted them.

However, he also had tracking disruptors and my shots were no where near close enough to hit him at all. I tried diving into 14 kilometers but still no luck. I should have disengaged and came back in something tougher at this point, but hungry for a kill I took a chance that the younger player would be vulnerable in close.

I was horribly wrong. Neuted, pointed, I had neither the capacitor nor tank to make a break for it. Soon I was dead and my pod fleeing the scene of the crime.

I went back to Dal, picked up a Hurricane, and flew back quickly but he warped as soon as he saw the bigger fish. We traded some friendly banter in local and I went back Dal to get something more sneaky in hopes I could catch him unawares. I sat in my Arazu and took a cruise of the system but no Arbitrator was found on scan. I went into Egghelende looking for trouble and saw a cyno on gate. I teamed up with Acute Dragonis to quickly pop the cyno ship before the gate guns could get me (althought Dragonis' Kestrel was not so lucky).

After that river Zateki was in system and was at the Planet I. I snuck up and tried to catch him but he warped before my lock resolved. Ah well. Later on I observed him fighting a Rupture and I tried to land and provide a surprise attack on them both but Zateki got away from the Rupture before I came out of warp and the Rupture ran from me immediately after.

No, no good kills but one loss and one killmail is better than last week.

(All images linked from Evelopedia)

Fiction Friday: Series 4 - Part 11

2011-10-28T14:06:00.001-04:00

Previously:
Prologue Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10

* * * * *

"It was expensive," Blodel admitted, "but it was worth every credit and favour exchanged."

"Really?" I asked with biting incredulity. "Just to kill my battleship? You know I won't let you take my pod, and I'll replace this ship in days if not sooner."

I felt tingles in my sides as the first salvos from the fighters began to eat away in earnest at my shields. I gave the signal to Odonnelson on the bridge to begin evacuation procedures.

On the comm display the avatar of Blodel shrugged. "Us capsuleers have to get creative to resolve our conflicts, don't you think? We are, after all, immortal beings of nearly unlimited power. How do we really hurt each other in a way that matters?" She shook her head sadly. "I mean besides lowering ourselves to the levels of thugs and mercenaries and killing each other in leaky hotel rooms."

"Creative? It seems what you have in ISK you lack in creativity," I scoffed.

She smirked and replied with a curt, "We'll see."

I checked on the evacuation of my ship. Most life boats were off, carrying 6-10 crew each. Only two life boats in engineering and one for the bridge crew remained in their berths. I muted the channel to Blodel and brought up the bridge. "Odonnelson, what's the hold up?"

"Sir, the chief engineer is rigging the shield systems to overheat, that should give you a couple more minutes."

My shields were already below 40%. "Tell him not to bother, this thing is going to shatter once the shields are gone. Get off of it, now!"

"Yes sir!"

Moments later as the shields finally collapsed and the first shots ripped through the port side of my ship, the two engineering life boats ejected followed by the larger bridge emergency craft that held all 12 of the bridge staff. My ship was empty.

I started to feel real pain as the damage increased so I mentally disconnected my pod from most external and onboard sensors. It felt weird to still be aboard and have no sensations other than a couple basic ones as my ship slowly disintegrated around me, so I turned my attention back to Blodel.

"What now, you Amarrian bitch? Gonna come back next month and waste a billion ISK again to kill another battleship? Oh, maybe destroy my Drake this time! That'll sting..." I teased.

"No, I don't think that will be necessary." The smile she had chilled my heart. What was I missing?

Suddenly a lance of energy pierced the containment walls of my power generators and a chain reaction ripped through the super structure. My pod escape mechanism kicked in and ejected me at hundreds of meters per second from the Rokh battleship. As its stabilizing jets activated my vision cleared just in time to watch the hull break into a million pieces in all directions. Damn, I still miss that ship. You never forget your first battleship.

Distracted by my loss I didn't activate the pod's emergency warp drive in time and I felt myself wrapping in the waves of disruption sub-particles. I sighed and activated my self destruct sequence. No point in giving them hope in taking me alive.

"You win this time, Blodel."

"No, we're not quite done yet, Kodachi." She turned to face another channel. "Captain, you may begin your attack on the salvation rafts."

Will Winter Save The Eagle?

2011-10-27T13:54:00.000-04:00

The poor Caldari Eagle, the HAC that not only looks ugly as sin, but sucks donkey balls as well. (You revamp the Scorpion which wasn't half bad but don't touch the Moa? Curse you CCP!)

The rumoured early proposed changes for hybrid weapons are:

Significantly reduced cap usage
Increased damage modifier (rails)
Increased tracking (blasters)
Reduced cpu
Reduced powergrid on medium and large turrets, as well as some smalls

Also, Caldari hybrid ships have an apparent agility buff to make them more mobile.

First, prior to these changes what is the big knock against the Eagle? Essentially, when compared to equivalent HACs like the Zealot and Muninn, its only advantage is that it can reach incredible sniping ranges that the other two cannot reach but combat in Eve rarely extends to those ranges making it not as useful. In addition, when it fights at ranges the other ships can compete at the Eagle tends to not has as much DPS or it has to gimp tank in order to use Tracking Computers to up the ammo potency to simply match the DPS of the other two. And on top of all that, its a slow Caldari boat so even a Beagle (i.e. Blaster equipped Eagle) was problematic. Not to mention requiring a fitting mod to get the best guns in either case.

So do these changes save the endangered Eagle? The answer is a resounding "maybe".

The increase in damage modifer is very interesting as even a 10% increase is potentially enough to put it on par in terms of firepower with the Muninn at the latter's extreme range. The increased tracking and agility improvement will definitely help the Beagle but will it make it competitive with the Gallente Deimos or Vagabond? Its hard to say. A reduction in CPU and powergrid usage will be welcome in any case for not just the Eagle but all of the Caldari and Gallente hybrid boats.

Here are the setups I was using for my casual ponderings. I tried to get long range (~85 km) plus decent resistance tank.

Current Eagle

Muninn

Zealot

Suggestions for better fits are welcome, but please note I did not put a whole lot of time into them. :)

Information Overload

2011-10-26T15:02:00.002-04:00

If you read this blog, it is 99% probable that you read other blogs and are thus already aware of the "leaked" info (which I suspect is simply a deliberate part of the Counter-offensive) in which the initial stats for the pocket battleships, the list and initial stats for the new Tech II modules, and a bunch of ship stat changes.

Egads.

I'm not going to spend time analyzing the details when there are so many other bloggers with time on their hands already doing a great job with the speculation. I'll wait until I see more solid info in the form of an actual Sisi build or dev blog. For example, I highly doubt that the new Caldari Naga is going to be both a Hybrid and Missile boat with 8 hardpoints of each and bonuses to both. I suspect it is merely testing stats to see what works better and which way they want to go.

Regardless, consider this list for a moment:
- Gallente and Caldari ship tweaks
- Hybrid weapon changes
- new battlecruisers
- tech II mods for warfare links, MAPC, etc
- capital changes
- custom office changes
- and more...

There is not one area in Eve combat that will not be impacted in one way or another.

High Sec - new gank battlecruisers will be awesome for suicide ganks unless insurance is nerfed into non-existence (which I support BTW)
Low Sec - new mods and ships and stats means complete rejiggering of ship fits and tactics
Null Sec - New cap mods and stats means an overhaul to capital/subcapital warfare, not to mention the effect the "battleship damage/battlecruiser signature" ships in massed fleets will have
Wormhole space - Smaller mass new ships will bring more firepower to POS attacks and new customs offices will provide more targets and opportunities for ganking (i.e. I know these guys harvest something here because they put up a customs office)

This is, quite simply, shaping up to be the biggest change to Eve flying in space mechanics since the Speed and Missile rebalancing of a couple years back.

Brace yourself, its gonna get wild.

* * * * *
P.S. Sorry for no podcast yet, between my regular responsibilities at work and home and additional effort for my martial art training this fall, I've lacked the time / energy to get it done. Hopefully rectify that tonight or tomorrow night.

Tank Tuesday - Tier VI

2011-10-25T11:40:00.002-04:00

VK 3601 (H)

So I finally grinded (ground?) up the experience for my Tier VI medium tank, the VK 3601 (H). And my first impression is "OMG, you're kidding me! THIS THING IS AWESOME!"

It plays very much like the Panzer IV right now. I immediately upgraded the turret with free experience and mounted the familiar 75mm L70 on it, the same gun as on the Panzer IV and StuG III so I know what its capable of. The tank moves like the PzIV but has better armour overall and nearly double(!) the hit points.

Stat	Panzer IV	VK 3601
Health	460	850
Hull Armour (mm)	80/60/20	100/60/80
Turret Armour (mm)	120/60/60	110/80/80
Turret Traverse (d/s)	24	30

What this means that shots to the sides and rear that would cripple the Pz IV have far less effect on the VK 3601 and I can take a world abuse more before dying. No more bang bang dead matches that often occurred in the smaller medium.

I'm still working on the better tracks and two upgrades to engines, and the next tier gun: the 88mm L56 aka the short 88. It has slightly less penetration than my old favourite 75mm (132 mm to 138mm with AP ammo) but a lot more damage (220 compared to 135). Against targets in the same tier or lower (or on side/rear armour of higher tier targets) it should give me a boost in performance.

Pocket Battleships

2011-10-24T13:00:00.000-04:00

In the aftermath of World War I Germany had limitations imposed on them by the Treaty of Versailles about how big of war ships they could produce as part of the effort to keep Germany from being a world power again (hint: didn't work out). In an effort to get around this limitation they produces smaller and lighter than normal battleships that still had impressive weaponry. These were nicknamed "Pocket Battleships" by the British.

Last week there was a dev blog published with more details on the Minmatar Tornado and the three other ships (one for each race) coming with it:

We couldn‘t just give the Minmatar a new ship and leave the other factions out (NPC military escalation doesn’t work like that), so, in the spririt of mutually assured destruction, each of the factions have sent their best engineers and scientists to the drafting boards and will also be rolling out a new tier 3 battlecruiser.

„But isn‘t the Tornado a battleship?“
According to the original concept it was, yes. But when reviewing the armadas of existing ships we came to the conclusion that it would make much more sense to add another tier of battlecruisers instead of a fourth battleship tier, and that the accessibility of bc skills would mean more of these ships might be in the hands of younger, brasher pilots. That means more pew pew pew overall.

What sets these new battlecruisers apart from their lower tier cousins?
The most unique thing about them is that they will be able to fit battleship-sized weapons. Yes, you heard correctly... battlecruisers with oversized guns.
They will be capable of similar damage output as a battleship but obviously all that damage comes at a price.They won‘t be able to tank like a battleship, but what they lack in the tanking department the right pilot should be able to somewhat make up for with speed and distance management. Those looking to start minmaxing fleets of TÖTALHELLDEATH will have to wait a bit for the stats.

The first thought that came to my mind is "pocket battleships". And while part of me squealed in glee a part of me, a very Bitter Old Vet part of me, had some serious questions.

1) Take a look in that dev blog at the second image. The original submitted concept art and the CCP artist rendition indicate 8 turret hardpoints, that's on one side and let's assume there is 8 more on the other side. That makes 8 guns, battleship sized guns. Will they have enough bonus to fit the largest battleship weapons, or just the smallest (e.g. Neutron blaster cannons versus Electron blaster cannons)? If they can fit the biggest weapons, is there some balance concern about a ship with the order of magnitude DPS of the tier 3 battleships and the signature and mobility of battlecruisers?

2) Tier 1 battlecruisers are already obsoleted for the most part by the tier 2 BCs. Won't this simply negate their usefulness more?

3) Do we really need more DPS?

4) Will this not make many unused battleships even more unused?

Now until we see some numbers this is all just unease. The fact remains that battleships tank better than battlecruisers and there is no indication that these ships will be super tanked like the Drake. And battleship weapons do have serious tracking concerns that gives these new ships a distinct disadvantage in same class conflict.

But I really wish CCP had used a titch more imagination. For example, they could have been tech 1 heavy exploration ships: the scanning bonuses of the Tech 1 astrometrics frigs, the marauder bonus of 100% to weapon damage, but only four cruiser sized weapon hardpoints (so they hit like 8). Utility slots for scan probe launcher, salvager, etc.

Regardless, we'll see what CCP has in mind once we see the actual stats.

Not My Best Day

2011-10-24T10:02:00.001-04:00

Last night I logged in and found myself alone in corp (probably had something to do with this...) and I pondered what to do. Cruise in a rifter, hunt in my new experimental ship? Logistics? Then I noticed something very rare, a fleet up in fleet finder. A militia fleet, 7 pilots strong, one jump away. I decided to dive in and joined the fleet and got on their comms. They said they needed an inty so I grabbed my little Malediction and joined up with them on the Osogger gate in Amamake.

The fleet was all from a corp recently joining the militia and the composition seemed reasonable with a few battlecruisers (2 x Hurricanes, Harbinger), a Rifter, and a Griffin. And now me in my fast Malediction for quick tackle.

There was a Caldari Navy Hookbill buzzing around the fleet and my job was to try and catch it, but he stayed away. Then the FC asked one of the battlecruisers to scout out the belts.

A tingling went up in the back of my skull... but I ignored it.

Well, the battlecruiser in the top belt found a Rifter and Dramiel messing around and after some garbled comms and confusion, the order was given to warp in on our pilot, the primary was the Rifter. "OK", I thought, revving up the engines as I entered warp, "tackle time."

I landed and immediately burned at the Rifter and put the 28.8 km point on ready. Grabbed him, called point on comms, settled into orbit with rockets and web and waited for the fleet to reduce him to pieces.

Um... Ok, shields taking a beating... Rifter just entering armour... what's going on?

I look and the fleet is 90km away or more.

WTF?

The FC says on comms, "Someone should go help him."

*FURIOUS RAGE*

I hit structure as I burn away and enter warp, Rifter still alive (and probably laughing his head off). While I'm in station getting repaired the Hookbill warps in on our fleet again and I hear on comms, no word of a lie, this:

FC to our Rifter pilot: "You got tackle on that thing?"

Rifter Pilot: "Yeah, I got a web."

FC: "No point?"

Rifter: "No... should I get one?"

Needless to say the Hookbill danced away from them once more.

I rejoined the fleet at the belt. The Hookbill, emboldened by our fail so far, warped in again and was 50km from us. I asked the FC if he wanted me to try and make a tackle. At this point warning bells and sirens were going off in my head but I figured we should at least be able to kill this single frig and his Rifter wingman. The FC said "go for it" so I lit the MWD, flew at the hookbill, and slapped the point on him. Griffin is gonna ECM his ass, right? A battlecruiser will melt his face, right? I'M NOT ALONE OUT HERE, RIGHT!?!?!?!

WRONG.

I got my pod out and went back to Dal. I picked up another inty, a Caldari Raptor this time. While I was reshipping I hear that the fleet tried to warp back to gate but one of them got tackled and was being beat up by the Hookbill, Rifter, and a Dramiel. I warped to the Amamake gate and the FC tells the fleet to warp back to the belt to help the caught pilot.

At this point I should have cut my losses and left fleet but I felt some responsibility to help. I jumped the gate and warped to the belt.

And no one else did.

Well, the hostiles probably had a good laugh while they tackled me and slaughtered me, I was so incoherent with rage and amazement that they got the pod too.

* * * * *

At this point I knew I was in a fleet not experienced enough for the sharks around Amamake, so I took my leave and decided to decompress with a solo roam in one of my Rifters. I set course for Evati and took off, casually scanning for targets.

I jumped into Egmar and saw a neutral Buzzard and Huginn sitting there. I hesitated and foolishly decided to approach the Buzzard instead of burning back to gate. I totally forgot that I'm a big red flashy and they could engage me without repercussions. I blame the high blood pressure from that terribad fleet experience I just had.

Well, the Huginn tackled me and I decided to late to burn to gate. I was easily dispatched (but got my pod out) and I docked up and decided to go play tanks as I was obviously not meant to succeed tonight.

Sigh.

Insanity, Thy Name Is Ripard Teg

2011-10-20T14:13:00.001-04:00

Google Reader has this nice functionality where for a blog you subscribe to you can see how many other Google Reader users have subscribed to it, and how many posts per week that feed has.

My average is 6.8 posts per week.

Rixx Javix, a prolific blogger, posts 10.7 times per week.

Ripard "Robot From The Future" Teg posts 15.6 times per week and boasts about how that number is going to go up.

Seriously.

The worst part is that most of his posts are high quality shit. I get about one good post a week, how the hell can he do 10-12? I want to know his method so I can sabotage it and prevent him from becoming the new blogfather. It took me years to knock off Crazy Kinux. I can't do it again.

Goddammit.

CCP Countinues the Counteroffensive

2011-10-19T08:34:00.001-04:00

First there was this image "leaked" on twitter and facebook:

Tornado Warning

That, folks, is the winning entry from CCP's "Design a Spaceship" contest last year, you can find the excellent submission here. Go, read, I'll wait. Back? Ok, now the story was that the winning submission would be added to the game but there has been nothing since then. (Remember when some deluded people thought that the Christmas gift would be this ship? Heh.) Now, as part of the counter offensive to win back Eve players' love, its finally coming to light, hopefully as part of a suite of four new ships, one for each faction.

But wait! There's more!

I posted briefly about the Player Owned Custom Offices dev blog yesterday which everyone agrees came out of the blue and has been generally well received as an exciting and potentially game changing expansion. Yes, EXPANSION. A huge step forward for planetary interaction gameplay itself, and game dynamics in general. (Plus it removes that immersion breaking detail of CONCORD custom offices on every planet in all of wormhole space.)

Whether or not you think that overall this change is going to be good, at least it is change and iteration on existing content. More of this please.

I doubt there are very many more surprises waiting for us, but that's okay because its time for CCP to start detailing the other items in their winter expansion list such as how they plan to address hybrid weapons, assault ships, faction warfare, etc. The shock part of the campaign should be over; now its time for the awe.

But most interesting to note here is the change that CCP's counteroffensive has managed to accomplish. Although, as Mittens pointed out during his CSM campaign, bloggers and podcasters make up a very small fraction of the eve playerbase, they are representative of the mood and opinions of that group. A month ago all the talk was about how Eve was languishing and CCP was in trouble; now the focus has shifted back to the game and its development and the mood of the bloggers/podcasters has noticeably improved. A striking example was the last two Fly Reckless episodes, the first recorded at the beginning of Sept and so depressing that I was cutting myself half way through, and the second recorded after the Hilmar mea culpa and full of much more enthusiasm and interest.

The real question now is if CCP can continue to keep it up and deliver this winter AND next spring/summer. We're watching, Hilmar.


With Electronic Eyes...

Quick Notes About Player Owned Custom Offices

2011-10-18T09:52:00.001-04:00

1) Trying to get post out before Ripard Teg.

2) Ninja PI production in wormholes / shallow null sec / low sec will be a lot harder if not impossible (i.e. where you don't own the infrastructure).

3) As such, expect rise in PI product costs which in turn will impact running control towers.

4) This is totally an effort to make farms and fields for alliances to build and hostile alliances to use small gangs to attack. Also, further development opportunities in low sec and wormholes.

5) Think about it: entities will be able to effectively cut off significant access to planets by building the customs office and denying access to everyone else. Yeah, you can still launch packets into orbit but the volume of that launching mechanic is tiny compared to customs offices. EGADS!

6) Prepare for a new set of conflicts erupting in low sec and null sec over access to particular planets such as plasma and lava planets.

7) Boost to faction warfare by making the BPCs available from their loyalty point store at half price compared to CONCORD store?

Overall, I'm pleased.

Tank Tuesday: Pew Pew Pew

2011-10-18T09:09:00.001-04:00

Missed Tank Tuesday last week because of Turkey. Yum.

Anyways, its been two weeks. Where were we then?

The troubles with the medium tank Panzer IV have abated to the point where I don't feel useless playing it but I still have some of trouble getting good performance out of it. Part of the issue is I still don't have the best gun for it yet (that slow experience issue) so while I can shoot fast and accurately as a stay-back-and-snipe tank, my damage and penetration is bad. However, I'm close to unlocking the best sniping gun and then we'll see if things get better.

Well, I did unlock the big 75mm L70 gun and let me tell you, what a difference. Add in some experience from practice and I definitely feel like I've got my feet under me. But does the record show any improvement?

Changes over two weeks

My StuG fell a titch to 50.75% winning percentage (from 51.3), my Pz38nA also fell a bit to 55.56% (from 56.4), but my Pz IV climbed to 47.17% (from 36.3) over two weeks. The winning percentage for the two week period is 58.8 which I'm very happy with when you factor in all the random factors for teammates, match making, and map preferences.

My Pz IV really feels like a more mobile tank destroyer as my main gun has great accuracy and decent punching power (it is, coincidentally, the same gun the StuG mounts) so I tend to use it as such, hanging back and shooting from a distance and only advancing when an enemy flank is broken or one of our flanks needs reinforcements.

I like it so much that I'm eyeing up the next tier VI medium tanks, a choice between the VK3001(P) and the VB3601(H). The 3001 is a lighter tank than the 3601, and the latter leads to a lot more choices including higher tier medium tanks and the fearsome King Tiger.

Jagdpanther

Jagdpanzer IV

In other news, I've unlocked the tier IV tank destroyer Jagdpanzer and I've been saving up the credits to buy it (missing premium now), but I find my enthusiasm for getting it tempered by the fact that its best gun has less penetration than the gun my StuG mounts (but more damage) and that even the wiki says "... it is widely considered the worst tier 6 TD." Being a higher tier than the StuG means more battles with higher tiered foes and already the StuG has trouble with big Tier VII and VIII heavies. I'm thinking of pouring my energy into the medium tanks that at have the same guns at these tiers and at least more mobility. On the other hand, the other side of the Jagdpanzer is the Jagdpanther which has the big guns you would expect a tank destroyer to sport.

Decisions, decisions.

Rifters At Dawn

2011-10-17T10:43:00.000-04:00

Last night I logged in and divided my time between looking for fights and getting some logistics done. Earlier in the week I had snuck an Orca into low sec in Pelille to pick up a couple more ships (including Hurricane #5) and a ton of modules and ammo I had left behind. Last night I got the Orca into low sec near my base in Dal and now I can move them over to base using a sneaky blockade runner.

While I was waiting for my alt, I was cruising around in my Vagabond looking for trouble. In Egghelende I was waved in local by religiosa, a member of the Yarr Collective alliance and someone who I dueled in the recent past (lost a Hurricane to his Drake, ECM drones were very on target). He asked for another 1v1 and I declined as I didn't want my poor Vaga to end up like my Hurricane. He then offered to go in Rifters to avoid any drones and I had just purchased but not set up a Rifter a little while ago, so I said yes, if you give me a couple minutes to go get it.

Then a member of his alliance piped up, "You can have my pre-fit Rifter." Hell, sounds good. I docked up, got traded the frigate, and undocked and went to a safe spot to wait for my foe. He arrived at 50 km from me, we approached each other and got into the death spiral of mutual close orbits as autocannons ripped off shields and hunks of armour.

Seeing my opponent was not trying to keep range, I focused on cap and overheating management, trying to keep my small armour repairer running while getting some extra DPS out of the guns and an extra HP boost out of the repper. Finally, just as my cap finally exhausted and my armour level hit 10%, he exploded.

I docked back up, repaired the damage, traded the ship back to religiosa's mate, and flew off with a small smile on my face.

Image Courtesy of Evelopedia.

Fiction Friday - Series 4 : Part 10

2011-10-14T16:24:00.001-04:00

Previously:
Prologue Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

* * * * *

"Warping..."

Kla's voice caused a wave of relief. Reinforcements on the way. I pinged the directional scanner and saw the Hurricane and Luccul's Drake appear, followed moments later by their icons appearing on the overview as the warp bubble dispersed and they slowed to sub-light speeds. They were only 10 kilometers behind me and their ships started to turn to approach and lock the hostile Pilgrim.

Then something else appeared on the overview. My skin crawled as I read the words "cynosaural field".

"But that's not possible!" Kla'strit shouted in disbelief. "We're in high sec!"

Next my nerves connected to the sub space field detectors picked up the massive quantum energy flux as space-time ripped apart and a massive form punched its way from light years distant. As sensor recalibrated and camera drones came back on line, I found myself in the shadow of an Amarrian Archon carrier, gold hull gleaming menacingly in the red sun of Teonusude.

"Holy shit, that's huge!" whispered Luccul in awe of the capital ship. It was a magnificent sight. In the State navy I had flown escort for carriers and dreadnoughts in exercises and the occasional operation, and in space with no clues as to perspective and scale it was easy to not realize just how large they were when you were flying 30-50 kilometers from them. But this carrier was right on top of us and I could see the occasional new armour panel or scratches from space debris on its hull that seemed to go on forever.

"Ok, we can do this!" Kla'strit exclaimed as he tried to adjust to the new situation. "Luccul, follow my lead. We'll target any drones or fighters it launches and just try and keep it busy until the Minmatar show up. They have to show up. This is their space. That's an Amarr ship. They will show up." While he was talking I looked up the pilot of the ship and realized the motive of what was going on. Chrystina Elira Blodel, my uninvited guest from this morning. I also realized this was not some random poorly planned assault.

"Kla, Luccul, get out of here."

"Kirith, we can hold them off and keep you alive until the Republic ships get here."

"No Kla, you can't," I responded. "Its that woman I told you about before we came out here. She's after me and she's probably got it all planned out. Bribes, favours, sabotage, it doesn't matter. Help won't arrive in time."

"We can kill the Pilgrim! I'll get Seven and Min out here, get Nhi'Khuna to get to her ship..."

My ship informed me I was being targeted. "Listen to me! That carrier has remote reps to keep that Pilgrim alive, and probably a heavy neut or two. And definitely many waves of drones. Heavy, mediums, lights... we will get worn down no matter how well you knock them off. Get out of here now!"

Seconds passed. I hoped he had not allowed himself or Luccul to get warp disrupted while arguing with me. Then he said in a despondent voice, "Activated wing warp," and the two allied ships warped off leaving me alone with my pursuer.

My neocom beeped as a open comms request came from the carrier. At the same time a wave of ten fighters departed from the hull of the Archon and began their attack run on me. I accepted the request and asked, "How did you manage to get the cyno jammer offline?"

Supercarrier Nerf: Overall, Not Enough

2011-10-13T12:55:00.002-04:00

In the dev blog Capital Ship Balancing CCP Tallest outlines his proposed changes for capital ships in the upcoming winter expansion:

In conclusion, here is a full list of the changes we're making.

Supercarriers
Drone bay can only hold fighters and fighter bombers.
Reduce Shield, Armor and Hull hitpoints on all Supercarriers by 20%.
Reduce drone capacity.
Aeon, Revenant and Wyvern: 125000 (25 total Fighters + Fighter Bombers)
Hel and Nyx: 150000 (30 total Fighters + Fighter Bombers)
Remote ECM Burst: Does not affect ships that are immune to electronic warfare (Supercarriers, Titans, Triaged Carriers and Sieged Dreads)
Fighters

Increase signature resolution to 400
Dreadnoughts
Remove drone bay from all dreadnoughts.
Siege Module I: Boost damage bonus from 625% to 700% to compensate for loss of drones.
Siege Module I: Duration time reduced to 5 minutes. Fuel cost -50%.
Moros: Remove drone bonus.
Moros: New bonus: 5% bonus to Capital Hybrid Turret rate of fire per level.
Titans
Remove drone bay from all titans.
Reduce Shield, Armor and Hull hitpoints by 20%.
Superweapon: Cannot shoot sub-capital ships.
Logoff timer

After a player logs out, there is a check for player aggression every 15 minutes. If you have been aggressed, the timer extends for 15 minutes; if you have not been aggressed, you disappear as before. Note: this is only for player aggression and will not change what happens when you log off during fights against NPCs.

These changes, especially in respect to the super capitals are a good start... but not enough.

For supercarriers, the 20% cut to all hitpoints is a good start but the issue with Slave implants helping armour ships is not addressed. And they will still have tens of millions of effective hit points meaning that the only way to kill the supercap fleet you have tackled is to bring in your own supercap fleet.

Allow me to reiterate: the only effective way to wipe out a supercap fleet is STILL another supercap fleet. While the effectiveness of that supercap fleet has been reduced vis a vis subcaps, and while the danger to that fleet is increased vis a vis the removal of 15 minute logoffski, and while individual supercaps caught by subcaps are more vulnerable due to hit point decrease, they are still for all intents and purposes invulnerable to subcaps when facing them with similar order of magnitude numbers. That is to say, 30 supercarriers are not at much risk from 150 subcaps even with the changes; they can be held in place until the 30 hostile supercarriers arrive, but otherwise they are still relatively safe.

So, what would I do?

Well, the boosts to dreadnoughts are interesting but I still think they are not enough as the firepower of 30 supercarriers will decimate any dreadnought fleet in short order. And you don't want to nerf super carriers into obsolescence again by reducing their hitpoints too much (although disabling slave implants effects on capital ships is called for). Ultimately I still think a new sub capital ship with an anti-super-capital weapon is the most balanced solution, introducing a rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock dynamic to the equation.

All that being said, these changes outlined above are a good first step to evening the playing field for null sec alliances (but is it too late?... ).

(Not Your) New Captain's Quarters

2011-10-12T22:08:00.001-04:00

So the remaining captain's quarters are finally out on singularity server and the reviews in terms of asethetics have been mostly positive. However a few people have expressed consternation on twitter (and maybe even a blog post, I can't recall) that the type of quarters you get when docking is tied to the station type you docked in (i.e. Amarr station == Amarr quarters) instead of your character type (i.e. Minmatar character <> Minmatar quarters).

Some people have argued it would be nice if you could choose so that it was always the one you liked, a first baby step to personalization.

Well, stop being silly. They are not your character's quarters.

Only 300 ISK per night for non-capsuleers

They are special "Captain's Quarters Suites" every station added to the capsuleer docking levels to accomodate the Mark IV capsule's ability to allow for self-decanting at minimal facilities, such as the balconies we see. The suites are provided as a convenience to capsuleers in the hope they will lounge while their ships and cargoes are taken care of and perhaps spend a few spare ISK on the latest Gallentean holo, a special meal from a restaurant, or perhaps even visit the promenade to partake in some gambling or other services.

That is why the type is not picked by you or customizable. Every time you leave the suite is cleaned and set back to standard setup for the next capsuleer. Hell, you don't even get the same one every time you dock at the same station.

Huge Back Yard!

Eventually CCP will give us our true quarters, apartments for rent on stations whose look and feel we can customize to your liking (save up your Aurum folks!). For now you are stuck with the generic suites.

EON #25 Is Out

2011-10-11T14:48:00.001-04:00

Issue #025 - Published 7th October 2011

SHATTERED HORIZONS
Dominion was the last time the foundations of null-sec were reformed and, while intentions were good, two years on things haven't turned out quite as hoped. Now CCP is preparing to set things right again, only this time with long-term vision that could impact not just 0.0 space, but every part of EVE Online. Massively.com <http://Massively.com/> 's Brendan Drain explores the potential for EVE's long-term future and sees reason to be quietly optimistic.

EVE'S GREATEST SCAMS - PART 1
If you weren't tempted into EVE by the boasts of an impending expansion, it may have been due to the exploits of the players - those that have stolen and scammed their way to become New Eden's most notorious characters. From Nightfreeze to Cally and from Remedial to Istvaan Shogaatsu, we look at the 10 biggest thefts and most notorious scams that dominated EVE's early years.

NOBLE INTENTIONS
The Noble Exchange has probably been the most contentious addition to EVE since the game first went live, providing a means for characters to dress themselves up in specialist virtual clothing at a premium non-game-breaking price. We fired off a load of questions to CCP to see how business has been going and ask what's in store for the next iteration of NeX as a new expansion nears.

UNDERSTANDING INCURSIONS
Six months on since they were introduced to New Eden, we evaluate and explore EVE's most recent gameplay addition, with a guide to joining and emerging victorious against the Sansha hordes. Also in our expanded 15-page Knowledge Base Guide section we dig behind the back story to bring you the definitive history of CONCORD.

PLUS
In Crowd with CCP Zulu & CCP Tallest
0utbreak, Vuk Lau and Colossus Technologies profiled
The latest CSM and 0.0 Report
The CrazyKinux Story
All you need to know about hiring mercenaries
Alliance Tournament Testflight
The Rise & Fall of ATLAS
Apocalypse under the spotlight
Who's top of the BattleClinic Rankings?

Fiction Friday - Series 4 : Part 9

2011-10-07T13:34:00.000-04:00

Previously:
Prologue Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8

* * * * *

I hurriedly rechecked the displays and warp cord readouts and confirmed that my on board computer was telling the truth. I was warp scrambled. More indicators turned red as the recon ship activated energy neutralizer beams on my engineering core and drones flew out of its underbelly to start attacking my defenses.

I furiously activated on board comms to my XO. "Odonnelson! Contact the CONCORD office of this shitty little system and find out what is taking them so long!"

"I already have, sir," she replied, completely unruffled by my emotion or the attack. "They have stated that everything in system is under operational norms."

"We're being attacked by a hostile capsuleer and we're not at war with them. How is that normal?"

"They seem to think we are at war with them, sir."

"Tell them to recheck their database!"

"Yes sir, I have. They say it will be a few minutes..."

I swore again. "We may not have a few minutes. Check info that pilot's corp and cross reference with capsuleers reported on the local registry, we need to find out if he's got friends incoming." I disconnected without waiting for a reply, I knew I could count on my crew.

I opened the channel to Kla'strit and Luccul. "I'm warp scrammed, being neuted, and attacked by drones."

"He got kill rights or something on you?" Kla'strit inquired.

"Negative, Kla. I'm clean."

"Then why the hell is he not getting CONCORDed?"

"CONCORD office is saying we're at war with them."

"What the hell?!" He went silent for a minute, I watched my shield and energy levels slowly descend. I decided to launch my drones to try and kill his but he quickly responded with his own and I knew that was a battle I could not win with his larger drone bay.

"Ok, something weird is going on here," Kla'strit finally said. "Our corp interface is not responding. I can't tell if we are really at war or not. I've got no notifications in my inbox but I can't confirm it..."

I cut into his musings. "Its going to be a moot point if I blow up."

"Right! I'll dock up and get my Hurricane, hold tight." My shields were at 45%. "Ok, but hurry," I replied.

My bridge comm beeped and I connected back to my XO. "CONCORD is not coming, no other members of ... " - she paused as she looked at his comm - " ... Excelsior Rex Limited in local."

I felt my tight muscles loosen a bit. A single pilgrim might have been able to take me alone down eventually, but not with a Drake and Hurricane backing me up. We were going to get out of this it looked like.

A chime sounded as shields hit 35%.

"Come on, Kla. I'm dying here."

Fear the Ocular Implant OF DOOM!

2011-10-06T13:30:00.003-04:00

MUHAHAHAHAHA!

Blog Banter 29 - Immersion

2011-10-06T09:01:00.001-04:00

"EVE Online is renowned for its depth. Its backstory, gameplay and social aspects are all qualities that draw players in. What does immersion in EVE Online mean to you?"

There are two types of immersion.

The first type is the typical environment immersion where you lose yourself in the character and environment they are in, whether it is playing a video game or watching a movie. For a role playing game, immersion equates to living in the world as your character, thinking and reacting as they would in the given scenarios. This can as simple as in your imagination in a standard pen and paper RPG or as elaborate as dressing up and acting out the adventure in LARPing activities.

But Eve is different. The vast majority do not roleplay and do not become invested in their character's feelings and responses to the in game environment, yet Eve is often described as one of the most immersive games out there.

Why?

Because, as I've stated before, Eve is not a game. Its a simulation.

This fact has the two-fold effect of reducing the need (hell, even the ability) to role play while simultaneously increasing the immersion. Why? Because the simulation is so complex, so encompassing, and so "real" that is is easier to get pulled in to a very large degree.

In a normal game, an immersion breaking event is a needless ad during your dungeon adventure to buy more gold with your credit card. In Eve, immersion breaking event is when your significant other calls down the stairs to get off the ****ing computer and come spend time with your family.

Quite simply, Eve is Real.
* * * * *
Get more info on this blog banter at Freebooted.

Selling PvP Alt

2011-10-05T15:35:00.004-04:00

Due to many reasons, I'm selling my minmatar pvp alt with his 58 mil skillpoints, Kla'strit.

You can see the auction here.

- 58,045,957 points
- -4.07 sec status
- no kill rights
- was not used in scamming or corp theft
- neural remap available
- positive wallet balance
- amarr shuttle is the only asset.
- high Minmatar Republic Fleet standings, able to run level 4 missions (possibly level 5, I can’t recall)

Highlight skills:
Minmatar Battleship V
Minmatar Cruiser V
Command Ships V
HAC V
Tech 2 Large, Medium Projectiles
High level leadership skills
Covert Ops V and Cyno V for covert cynos

Preparing for CCP's Counteroffensive - Followup

2011-10-05T14:01:00.001-04:00

From today's CCP Zulu's (I miss "Zulupark"!) dev blog on the winter expansion:

EVE Online´s Winter 2011 expansion will be themed around improvements to warfare and PVP. We will be talking more specifically about each of the features and items in the coming weeks but, for now, here‘s an overview of what functionality, systems and gameplay we‘re going to improve and add to.

Hybrid weapons balancing
Factional warfare
Assault ships
Capital ship balancing
New T2 modules
Starbase logistics management
New EWAR-Drones
T2 Rigs manufacturing
Ship spinning
New font
More captains quarters
Time dilation

I've bolded the things I were not aware of and were not mention in Jester's post. While not one big feauter, I think those 7 new things (of which I assume at least 4 will make it in the expansion) count as a point for me being right. :)

Couple this with Himlar's apologetic dev blog released at the same time and I feel a certain degree of optimism for the future. Now if only I didn't such at solo low sec PvP...

Preparing for the CCP Counteroffensive

2011-10-05T08:05:00.001-04:00

I've been mulling this post for a couple weeks and today I'm going to get it out because I think a big dev blog from CCP is coming today, according to rumours on twitter.

Jester over at Jester's Trek (aka Ripard Teg) posted a discussion over the future of Establishments and how he feels they are not coming out this winter.

The winter expansion is not going to include Establishments. Whatever idea CCP had for this feature isn't even close to ready. They tried, and failed, to put something together that EVE's players couldn't break in 30 seconds flat. When the Establishments team tests four or five toons walking around together in one room, their test machines catch fire. It isn't ready, it isn't going to be ready, and CCP is in panic mode.

That's why we haven't seen so much as concept art for what the Establishments will look like this year. That's why they're suddenly so open to a 180 degree change in direction.

The winter expansion will include the three remaining racial CQs, whatever mini-features we've been seeing that CCP can scrape together in time for late December (new cynos, time dilation, super cap nerfs, ship spinning, logi warp speed, new font, Dram nerf, a few other rebalances hastily thrown together), and that's... pretty much it. This expansion won't even get a name, other than an Incarna version number.

I don't necessarily agree with all his points in his post, but overall I agree that the third paragraph I quoted encompasses the majority of the winter expansion's features, and I don't think Establishments are going to be included either.

Where Jester and I differ in opinion in a significant manner is that I think there will be one (or maybe two depending on resource allocation) more major feature in this expansion and I think it will get a new name because CCP wants to move past the Summer of Incarna Rage.

The reason I think there will be at least one more major feature is that there is about 2-3 sprints of development left between now and a mid December release. A focused multi-team effort could produce something in that time with enough motivation and overtime. They know they don't need something the scale of wormholes or tech III ships, but even something as simple as producing the contest winning ships from last winter would be considered a huge win (and that's sad in a way).

CCP knows they need to turn around the malaise in the community that is impacting the long term players who hold Eve together. New fonts, cyno effects, time dilation, and ship balancing are not the answer; they are merely things CCP should have been doing all along.

So prepare for the counteroffensive. We've seen their opening shots this past couple week in the dev blogs, maybe today we see the major push of their campaign.

Tank Tuesday: The Grind

2011-10-04T08:36:00.000-04:00

StuG III

Well, its been two weeks since my last World of Tanks update and things are going well, albeit slowly. I'm still chugging along without a premium account so I'm getting half the experience and credits that such an upgrade would provide. Up until tier V that did not seem a problem, but getting to tier VI has been a long slog and I just unlocked the tier IV tank destroyer last night but opted not to buy it as I want to train my crew in my StuG III more and it can be done faster in an Elite vehicle (i.e. all upgrade paths unlocked for it).

Pz IV

The troubles with the medium tank Panzer IV have abated to the point where I don't feel useless playing it but I still have some of trouble getting good performance out of it. Part of the issue is I still don't have the best gun for it yet (that slow experience issue) so while I can shoot fast and accurately as a stay-back-and-snipe tank, my damage and penetration is bad. However, I'm close to unlocking the best sniping gun and then we'll see if things get better.

Pz 38nA

I'm still having an absolute blast jumping into my light tank, the tier IV Panzer 38nA. Some of my best matches lately are coming from this tank, even when I'm the lowest tier by four or five levels. My strategy is to hold back at the start until I see where the enemy deployment is concentrated, and then blow by them in a hole in their lines to attack the rear areas, sometimes moving laterally on the map to confuse potential attackers. Then I move in and light up their artillery and try to take them out.

Taking a look at my stats in terms of wins/losses, you can see that I have a 51.3% winning percentage in my main tank, the StuG, which matches close to what I got in the Hetzer and Marder. My light tank shennanigans have got my up to 56.4% in that tank, but my Panzer IV frustrations keep me low at 36.3%. Ouch. Considering there is a lot of external factors to consider (random teams on random maps) you can figure that my percentage in the Pz IV are indicative of not helping my team very much so far. Hopefully a bigger gun will help.

Consolidating

2011-10-03T14:52:00.001-04:00

When I moved into Kadavr Black Guard, I took one carrier load of ships and went to work. I didn't want to waste a lot of time making a lot of trips when I could be PvPing.

Well, over the past weeks I used down time to move a bunch more ships into the area. First I got some Minmatar ships from my alt Kla'strit since he was not using them and put them into a couple freighter packages from Placid to metropolis. Included in it was a Hurricane, Sleipnir, Vagabond, a couple Claw interceptors, a Wolf assault frigate, and a Cheetah covert ops.

Next, I jump cloned to my spare Chimera carrier chilling in Teshkat after m3 corp's last pull out of Providence and found a slew of ships from that venture including an Ishtar, Dramiel, Crow, and a Manticore.

This helps to bring my stable of available ships up nicely and only one more load of ships from Pelille which I will get this week, including doomed Hurricane #5 of the Hurricane project.

Let's review what happened to the other 4:

#1 - Died to NPC police after I mistakenly jumped into high sec.
#2 - Died to enemy gang after I engaged bait Hurricane at a gate.
#3 - Killed Hookbill one week, but next week died to enemy fleet after engaging a Firetail that attacked first.
#4 - Lost in arranged 1v1 versus Drake.

Hopefully #5 has better luck! And I have a bonus Hurricane to go too.

Press Release - Guild Launch Goes to Space

2011-09-28T17:14:00.003-04:00

I've been asked to help do some promotion and write some material for a site called Guild Launch that is expanding its Eve Online services such as corporate forums, website hosting, and more. Here is a press release with a contest. Check it out.

For Immediate Release
September, 28 2011

Guild Launch Goes to Space

Guild Launch Announces Eve Online Platform Support with series of Promotions

Richmond, VA — September 28th 2011 — Guild Launch
http://www.GuildLaunch.com/ is running a series of Eve Online promotions to kick off the
release of their Eve Online hosting functionality. Promotional prize packages include a trip to
Reykjavik for Eve Fanfest, a trip to Atlanta, GA to meet the Eve content team, a brand new
gaming computer and multiple years of Guild Launch’s top tier of service. The Guild Launch
Eve Online platform will include API integration, rosters, Eve image display as well as Killboard
functionality.
“Eve Online is one of our favorite games here at Guild Launch and we want to release
our Eve functionality with a splash. Giving away a trip to Eve Fanfest is a very special prize and
the opportunity to meet the Eve content team is very unique” says Stephen Johnston, company
founder.
The promotions are open to players of any game and are designed to work with 3rd party
hosting of all types via embeddable widgets. The promotions that are active, as of today, are the
Eve Online Top Site contest which is a vote based contest and a Correspondent contest which is
looking for a writer to cover Eve Online topics, and be compensated as a freelancer, for Guild
Launch and Beckett Massive Online Gamer magazine. These contests will run until December
and are live on the Guild Launch community site at http://www.TheGuildLife.com/.

Guild Launch is the leading provider of services to gamers in guilds, kinships and clans
playing over 250 online games. Guild Launch’s easy to use and customizable, Guild
Management System supports a finely tailored set of features focused on the needs of MMO,
FPS and online gamers of all types. Features include social networking, DKP, Forums, Calendar
Planning, Roster Imports, Newsletters and a high degree of customization and security
unmatched in the industry.

#########

For more information, press only:
Mike Bilter, 804-497-3428, mike.bilter@guildlaunch.com

For more information on Guild Launch:
http://www.GuildLaunch.com/

Vacation Next Week

2011-09-24T07:40:00.001-04:00

I will be on vacation next week so blogging will be slow. I do expect to record a podcast episode though so keep aneyeout for me in the Ninveah in game channel.

Fiction Friday - Series 4: Part 8

2011-09-23T14:39:00.001-04:00

Previously:
Prologue Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

* * * * *

The first small targets exploded in a flash, the particles of lead accelerated to near light speeds ripping through their inadequate armour in a flash. Some other targets were tougher, with shields and plates that could divert and absorb the energies, but only for a few moments before they too were debris.

Luccul in his Drake arrived and began working on the cruisers, taking them by surprise with attacks to their flanks. He launched drones and had them attack some destroyers making for Kla'strit's Maelstrom which in turn was accelerating to top speed to close with the nearest Cartel battleships to engage with his 800mm autocannons.

I set about adding to my target list as approaching frigates were destroyed. Soon I was firing at destroyers as the last two enemy interceptors got under my railguns and I launched my drones to deal with them.

The enemy fleet was being decimated but their poor electronics and command structure was slow in seeing it. They probably didn't even realize yet that the escort ships had been neutralized and the cruisers were about gone. The Maelstrom chewed through two old and broken down Machariel hulls before they enemy started taking a withdrawing stance. Luccul was trading salvos with another so I changed my ammunition to antimatter as I approached and opened fire in his support. The target's port side disappeared in a flurry of explosions.

The remaining 3 enemy battleships and a single battered battlecruiser entered warp moments later. The battle was won.

"Good work, team," Kla'strit broadcast. "I'll let the salvagers know they can clear up the pocket, and I'll see if my agent has any more work for us."

"Roger," I replied. "We'll wait here until the salvage ships get here."

The big Maelstrom aligned to the station and accelerated to warp speed while Luccul approach several wrecks to see if anything survived intact. I simply sat in place and reviewed my comms for messages, composing a reply.

"Hello, who's that?" Luccul asked.

I stop concentrating on the message I was writing and focused on my overview again. A ship, a pod pilot ship to be exact, was 30 kilometers off of the Drake's bow and 45 kilometers from me. It was a Pilgrim, an advanced Amarr cruiser with some impressive electronic warfare capabilities. "I don't know, Luc. But he can't do anything here in high sec unless we act stupid. He's probably looking at the salvage. Leave him be."

The pilgrim was not advancing on any of the Cartel ship wrecks, however, and instead was making its way steadily towards us. I checked the pilot information, one Forsa Jolummin of the Amarr Imperial Academy. I tried to open comms with the newcomer but it was not accepted. "This is odd, Luccul. Make your way towards me and make sure your drones are under control. Don't target him either, I don't want any mistakes."

The battlecruiser came around and starting moving towards me. Seconds later the Recon cruiser activated its afterburners and started closing faster.

"What the hell is going on?" I wondered out loud. "Luccul, you don't have a GCC or kill rights or anything, do you?"

"I swear to god, man, I've done nothing."

"Then what is this bozo trying to prove?"

"He's locking me," Luccul reported, his voice climbing a bit higher as adrenaline upticked in his body. At the same time, the yellow indicator started flashing on my screen. "Same here. Screw this, let's go and pick up the other guys and come back in force." Luccul agreed and we brought our vessels around together. The Drake, being a smaller and more agile ship, sped up and entered warp first. My Rokh battleship reached just over half speed when my ship's AI reported the most dreaded words a pod pilot can ever hear...

"You cannot warp because you are warp scrambled," it purred at me as the icon for the Pilgrim went red.

"WHAT?!"

More Space: The Debate

2011-09-22T12:56:00.000-04:00


I think my opponent is not just wrong, he's also an ass.

Yesterday in my "7 Ideas to make a lot of blog traffic and comments" post the 7th item on the list generated the most comments (both here and on twitter):

7. More Space - Either new systems accessed by wormholes, or opening up the Jove space, or adding new regions, anything to change up the status quo.

I struggled with whether or not to add this one and the feedback was almost universally condeming the idea:

#7 I would prefer they fixed low-sec before adding more space.
...
We don't need more space at the moment.
...
I like these, other than the new space. Fix the space they have.
There is so much area of low sec and areas of Null that are vast stretches of nothing.
The risk/reward for low sec is simply not there.
The risk/reward for Null is only there in some areas.
...
A lot of those ideas address symptoms. More space, for instance, won't help until CCP rebalances existing space
...you think we need more space? I fly around and every system is empty. Scratch #7

There were a couple voices that agreed with me, albeit conditionally:

#7 would go a long way towards helping imho, but the space would need to be huge to allow "real" expansion to it instead of immediate annexation by the current large power blocks.
...
7. More Space - additional space would be nice, but i think you'd run into the same exact issues presently in nullsec, there would have to be something radically different about the new space like whs to make it actually work.

Basically, more than any other item on the list it drew the most attention so I'm going to talk about it here right now. Brace yourselves.

I can see where the people are coming from that say, essentially, "we need to make better use of the space we already have since there is a lot of empty systems". Fundamentally from the point of view of most efficiency I can agree with that.

However, from an aesthetic point of view, I must disagree.

Ah peace and quiet!

Space is large.

But if there is 3-5 pilots in the local of each system for a stretch of five systems, it feels crowded and depleted in terms of resources.

So space feels small.

I like when I am going through null sec and low sec and I see nary a soul for five jumps. It makes the interaction all that more interesting and exciting instead of mundane. I want there to be civilization (high sec) and outposts of civilization surrounded by sparsely populated wilderness that can be explored and investigated. I don't want my space to be cheek to jowl urbanized sprawl.

Anyone seen my car keys?

(Even wormhole space is losing its lustre of unknown and unexplored. So much of it has been colonized and is claimed that its rare to find a wormhole that no one lives in.)

Part of the overall problem with regular space is that local condenses a system to a single view. It doesn't matter how big an actual system is and how many sites and belts it has to exploit, a pilot gets a view of all other pilots at a glance. Its like trying to hide from a person in a city where all they have to do to narrow you down is step into each quarter of the city to get a hit on your presence.

If local were less useful as an intel / location tool, i.e. operated on constellation level instead of system level, it might be that space would regain some of its vastness and emptiness.

Of course, the other option is to add more space to hide in. More wormhole systems would be cool, or another class of wormhole accessible systems that are internally connected by weird ancient gates and can have sov and outposts built, essentially a null sec starting from scratch without the easy facilities of high sec nearby.

As for fears that any new space would be quickly annexed by existing power blocs, I answer that we face that issue with any new feature introduced that is worth exploiting. We guard against this as best as we can and try things anyways.

EDIT:
Another point I wanted to make but forgot until re-reading is that prior to the Sanctum nerf null sec space was considered equally good for the most part all over the regions. Part of the reason for nerfing the sanctums that CCP gave was that they wanted to create less homogenous space, having some desirable space and less desirable space. This of course has the impact of the populations that can be supported in these systems. In other words, don't expect CCP to make all space universally useful as they feel that makes for a boring stale game; they like variety and thus empty systems are a result of this philosophy.

It may be that adding more space is a more palatable course of action to the developers over making all space more "useful".
/EDIT

* * * * *

In the end, I suggested more space to simply change the equations of the current status and to mix things up. Done right, like wormhole space was, it can add a large portion of new game play to the universe.

Seven Things CCP Can Do To Revitalize Eve

2011-09-21T08:22:00.000-04:00

I started composing this post before the dev blogs about the return of ship spinning / cyno effect / gun icons and new font were released and I have heard rumours that another dev blog is in the offing that will be even bigger in terms of Flying in Space content, but I'm going to propose seven changes / additions that CCP could do over the next few months to revitalize the game.

1. Super Cap Balancing - OK, that was an easy one we know is coming, but let's get it and done right.

2. New Ships - Remember those two ship design contests and the awesome entries selected near the top. Tornado anyone? Get them in game.Tier III tech 1 battlecruiser that is more damage and less tank than the tier II battlecruisers would be enough to throw the current fleet design theories for a loop, or even make them equally powerful in terms of damage and tank as the tier IIs but on the secondary weapon system for that race (Gallente drones, Caladari rails, Amarr heavy assault missiles, Minmatar... drones/missiles/guns combo a la Typhoon).

Alternatively, make them tech II ships that are deep space exploration vessels with only 4 weapon hardpoints but have marauder bonus and bonuses to probing/hacking/etc.

3. Fix Blasters - give them enough tracking / signature resolution to be able to hit same size targets at optimal when target either has no propulsion mod or it has one but friendly webs are in play. This will help to put Gallente vessels (and some Caldari ones) back into rotation.

4. Update Incursions - Everyone agrees that the Incursions were done well for PvE content but have been mastered by the people who run them on a consistent basis. Add some more randomness to them to spice things up and keep fleets on their toes.

5. More Live Events - They may not mean much in the grand scale of things, but no one ever says "I went to a live event and was bored". They breathe life and excitement into the mundane.

6. Update Faction Warfare - make having control of an enemy system in FW worth something, like the ownership of faction warfare stations switch allegiance AND enemy factions can't dock at each others stations AND the sentry guns start to participate at that station. It may not be much, but it might be enough to make taking a system deep in hostile space for a staging area worth it.

7. More Space - Either new systems accessed by wormholes, or opening up the Jove space, or adding new regions, anything to change up the status quo.

Tank Tuesday - Medium Tanks, What The Hell?

2011-09-20T12:12:00.004-04:00

I've decided that Tuesday's blog post every week is for World of Tanks.

I reached elite status on my tier IV light tank Panzer 38 nA very quickly which meant the tier V medium tank Panzer IV was available to me. With the grid up the tank destroyer line proceeding slowly I decided to splurge my credits on the new tank and try out mediums for the first time.

Sniping with Tank Destroyers I get.

Long range bombing with artillery I get.

Running and gunning scouting in a light tank I get.

Medium tanks? I don't get.

I mean, I get the theory: slower and heavier than light tanks, faster and lighter than heavy tanks, they kill smaller stuff and try and be eyes and flank the heavy stuff, blah blah blah. But I was just getting smashed in my first forays in the Panzer IV. Utterly useless.

I did some forum searches and and soul searching (more of the former than the latter) and determined my difficulties stemmed from several areas:

1) Stock Tank Syndrome - the base weapon of Panzer IV and the first upgrade weapon are both tier III, one with poor penetration and the other with poor damage. No wonder the tier IV light tanks were laughing at me. I've upgraded to a mid level gun that is actually powerful enough to give light tanks concern and there are more upgrades available later on that give the tank good bang for its firepower buck.

2) Actually not a brawler - I was treating the tank like a Soviet or American medium which are typically brawlers up on the front lines, but the Pz IV is more of a sniping medium tank meant to hang back a little more and provide distance support. (Again, the upgraded weapons will help). This is good because I like sniping and am fairly competent at it with my StuG tank destroyer.

3) Not used to having turret weapon - I spend so much time in the tank destroyer where I have to find a solid spot to aim my tank and then aim the gun, I quickly forget how to fire and dash in the medium tank: stop, aim, shoot, drive again.

Last night I tried a few matches and started to feel a little more competent, but its going to be a while before I feel comfortable.

Right or Wrong, FC is God

2011-09-19T10:55:00.001-04:00

I have a rule.

If I join a fleet, I've signed a contract to follow the FC's instructions until I leave that fleet. Its a two way contract: he can rest assured I will do what he instructs to the best of my ability, and I know he is trying his best to keep us alive and get us some kills. Mistakes will happen since nobody is perfect, and I'm not saying I'll be a mindless automaton, but if the FC gives a command I'll not counter it without a really good reason.

* * * * *

Last night I logged and and started getting familiar with the local area around Amamake in Heimatar region. I took trusty (and rusty!) Hurricane #3 out and looked for trouble.

In Egghelende I warped into a belt and saw a juicy Enyo sitting ~120 kilometers away. I quickly warped to a celestial behind him and back to the belt at 100 km but he was gone. However, a quick scan showed an Enyo and Vengeance near a faction warfare beacon so I warped in...

... just in time to see the Vengeance finish off the Enyo about 50 km from me and then warp off. Well, shit. I looked around for the Vengeance some more but he left and I fumed.

At this time corp mate Acute Dragonis ( "A cute dragon is what?" I was tempted to ask) logged in and he offered to show me some sites and get more safe spots. So we went for a cruise, he in his Wolf assault ship and me still in the Hurricane (note to self: need more ship types).

We started heading up to Evati area and along the way ran into a neutral Firetail frigate at a gate. He started reporting my presence in local chat instead of his intel channel (insert snickering noise here) and I jumped through. On the other side, a second Firetail showed up.

"I'm going to approach and see if he'll engage," I said cockily.

"I wouldn't do that, he's got friends in local," my fleet commander warned.

By then it was too late and as I tried to warp off I was locked and scrammed by the Firetail. I engaged back as the second Firetail and a Thorax and Enyo arrived. A militia friendly Nemesis decloaked and threw some torps at the firetail I had engaged and we got him down to half armour...

"De-aggress and try and jump through the gate," my FC said.

My instincts told me to go all in on the Firetail and try and take him down with me. I wasn't going to survive long enough to jump, I thought. But years of ingrained instruction took over and I shut off my gear and sat on the gate spanning jump.

I didn't make it.

I managed to get the pod out and Acute Dragonis did not lose his Wolf. Not sure what became of the Nemesis pilot that tried to help us, but hat's off to you sir for engaging.

We exchanged good fights in local and I went back to Dal for Hurricane #4. By the time I got back we moved on towards Evati some more but ran into another powerful gang and had to hold up. It was getting late so I docked and parted ways.

Its not the stellar start to life in Minmatar space I was hoping for, but anything is better than losing a ship to NPCs.

Fiction Friday - Series 4: Part 7

2011-09-16T14:04:00.004-04:00

Previously:
Prologue Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

* * * * *

"OK, by the book gentlemen," Kla'strit instructed. "Kirith and I will warp in first, catch their attention, and give the signal for you to come in, Luccul."

"Roger," the Drake pilot responded.

"Let's go."

I reached out with my mind to send the signal to the massive acceleration gate to lock on to my ship's structure and propel us at faster than light speeds in a small real space inversion, just like my own warp core does in normal flight. Acceleration gates are commonly used for navigation into areas of "deadspace" where the underlying subspace structure is disturbed or in flux and makes warping through it slightly dangerous. The danger areas can be mapped and navigated around but that is time consuming and still fraught with hazards, but an acceleration gate can generate a more solid short term inversion that plows through the fluctuations like a bullet through a New Caldari windstorm.

It was only about 20,000 kilometers until the warp inversion dissipated and we decelerated back to sub-light speeds. Immediately my overview lit up like a Gallentean whorehouse: Angel Cartel frigates, destroyers, cruisers, battlecruisers, and battleships in almost every direction.

"This is not 'sneaking into Teon', Kla. This is a full on invasion."

"Yes, I'll have to have a little chat with my agent on mission details," he replied.

I brought the ship around and aligned towards the only open area of space. (Since the danger of deadspace is mostly with deceleration from light speeds to sub-light speeds, warping out of deadspace is usually not a problem.) As the ship came about I started instructing the targeting computers to get fixes on the nearest frigates and destroyers. Like all pirate factions, their line troops typically had poor quality ships and equipment and usually only a few frigates would be given the necessary electronic warfare modules like disruptors and stasis webs that would be a cause for concern. I prepped the five Caldari State Supplies Vespa-II Elite Class drones in the drone bay for launch; my big guns were unable to track fast enough when the small ships got within 25 kilometers of me and started orbiting but my drones were more than a match for the ramshackle small ships of the pirates and renegades.

And anything moving in a straight line towards me? Dead, I don't care how small your signature is.

"Looks like groups 1 and 3 are targeting me," the pilot of the Maelstrom reported. "I got the rest," I responded. Kla'strit then sent a message to Luccul to come on into the deadspace. "Go for the cruisers and battlecruisers with your heavy missiles, drones on frigs," he instructed.

I made sure my targets were only the ships lighting me up, and but a trace process on the Maelstrom's and Drake's stats so I knew if my wingmates were in trouble. It wasn't likely though, the hulls sported some of the strongest shield defence systems in the cluster outside of capital ships, and the enemy ships were in many cases leaking radiation and missing armour plating.

The nearest frigate threat was 55 klicks and closing fast, with three more right behind him. I assigned two pairs of turrets to each target and opened fire.

Moving Light

2011-09-15T14:40:00.001-04:00

Heh heh heh...

Image courtesy of Eve-Outtakes.

I packed up the Chimera for the trip to Minmatar space. My selection of ships is small as I can always purchase more once out there. A couple Hurricanes, an Astarte, a Raptor for running around, a Harpy, and something else, I just can't remember what it is.

Two jumps from now I should be ready to go for Sunday night. Someone tell the Amarr to travel solo that night, I need to practice my one on one.

New Meme: Your First Ever Lossmail!

2011-09-14T14:36:00.001-04:00

Can you track down your first PvP loss on some killboard somewhere?

This is mine:

2006.10.06 10:17:00

Victim: Kirith Kodachi
Corp: Interstellar Privateers of Res Comunis
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Merlin
System: MHC-R3
Security: 0.0
Damage Taken: 0

Involved parties:

Name: Redrig Bayer (laid the final blow)
Security: -1.6
Corp: Art of War
Alliance: Cult of War
Faction: NONE
Ship: Lachesis
Weapon: Valkyrie II
Damage Done: 0

Destroyed items:

Iron Charge S, Qty: 120
Thorn Rocket, Qty: 30
Small Shield Booster I
Light Ion Blaster I
Monopropellant I Hydrazine Boosters
Warp Core Stabilizer I
Tungsten Charge S, Qty: 686 (Cargo)
Iridium Charge S, Qty: 200 (Cargo)
Thorium Charge S, Qty: 100 (Cargo)
Uranium Charge S, Qty: 100 (Cargo)
Thorn Rocket, Qty: 248 (Cargo)
Phalanx Rocket, Qty: 1120 (Cargo)
Drugdealer Passcard to Storage Area (Cargo)

And as a bonus, here is the blog post I wrote about it:

This morning I headed out in my Merlin frigate Death Threat III and started heading back to the old headquarters where I was going to switch to a shuttle. Along the way I went one jump out of my way to pick up a shield recharger I purchased and then went back on the trail. Unfortunately, the insta bookmark to the next gate was setup to come from the first gate and not the second one I was at from my sidetrip. Sure enough, I warped in 18 klicks out from the gate and a gate camper was there locking on to me. Having never been in PvP I felt foolhardy and decided to try and make a run for the gate. I'm fast, right? And small? He shouldn't be able to hit me, right?

Wrong. Only 3000 meters from the gate I was dead and soon after mercifully podded to save my clone the embarassment of warping back to base without a ship. Sigh.

So come people, whip 'em out!

P.S. man, remember insta-bookmarks you needed for getting around anywhere in good time? Can I get a hell yes for warp to zero?

That Happened Sooner Than Expected

2011-09-14T10:35:00.002-04:00

BAM! I got you!

Tanks is surprisingly popular in our house lately. The first thing I hear when I get home from work is "I wanna play toynks!!!!!" from Twin B, aka Sean. Twin A, Luke, follows up with a "Yeah, tanks!"

It all started a few weeks ago when the boys saw me playing tanks and sat on my lap for a session. The excitement of looking out for bad guys while daddy drove around the map was so much fun that the technophile, Sean, had to give it a try himself.

Well, I wasn't about to let a 3.5 year old in a random battle with 29 strangers. For one thing, he would just get killed really fast and for another, he might start shooting friendlies and get blacklisted. But there is a Team Training mode in which he could drive around the map without outside interference.

Except for one thing. Team training needs at minimum two tanks.

So Sean got his own World Of Tanks account (hooray for free-to-play) and WoT got installed on the old computer (which has an upgraded decent video card so can handle it for the most part). Then I could log in both machines and have Sean roll around on his own.

Well Luke (and yes, I do say to him occasionally "Luke, I am your father") was not about to let Sean have all the fun so he started using my computer and account to drive around too. There is a lot of help from me to get them unstuck so I try to stay on open maps like Malinovka and Prokhorovka but the boys have their own opinions and Sean likes the city of Himmelsdorf (aka "Himmeldorfy!") and Luke like Sand River because it has lots of buildings to crash through.

And all was well... until they discovered the joy of PvP.

Apparently driving around exploring the map and occasionally passing each other was not enough. Sean wanted to shoot the bad guy. And as soon as Lukas realized what was going on, well he was on that mouse and trying to bracket Sean right away.

So we get to the crux of the issue: Lukas is on my account driving around in a tier IV fully upgraded light tank (Pz 38 nA for the win!) and Sean is in a rookie tier I tank. Sean might be able to aim and hit better, as he is the more technically adept of the twins, but Lukas one shots the little T1 Cunningham every time. My wife looks at me and says, "Get Sean a better tank!"

*Groan* I have to grind up a second account?

So last night found me running around Himmelsdorf and Malinovka in Sean's tank desperately trying to earn experience and credits to at least get the Tier II light tank, the M2. I finally succeeded in my quest around 11 pm and had to take it for a test drive to see if he would like it. Boy, is it fast! He should have no trouble zipping around the maps now.

But now he needs a bigger gun to compete with Luke...

Hurricane #3 - Still Alive!

2011-09-13T08:46:00.000-04:00

Last weekend I went out in Placid one more time before packing up some ships to go to Minmatar space. I wasted no time on lower Placid and instead went North.

At this point I was in the Kadavr Black Guard so I was in the Mimatar militia making a lot of juicy war targets floating around from the Caldari militia. This made things a little easier as I could engage these war targets on gates and stations without sentry gun interference.

In Moclinamaud I detected a Hookbill in space but not at a belt. But he was at a Faction Warfare military beacon. I warped in through the acceleration gate and saw him 80 km away dueling with Gallente NPCs. As I moseyed over towards him he warped off and I followed him towards a station where he opted to dock.

I decided to camp his acceleration gate for a bit to see if he would come back and within a minute he did. I started locking... and he locked me back! WHAT? I watched local to see if it would spike with a fleet of his friends as his scram activated and rockets smashed into my shields. Nothing yet, so I turned on him with drones, autocannons, and disruptor.

He switched fire to my drones and I lost one in short order before calling the rest back. He had a super tight orbit so my guns were missing, but his damage on my shields was minimal. I had no web to slow him down, so I opted for a two prong approach: I set my ship to move in a straight line so he would start to corkscrew orbit behind me, lowering transversal... and more importantly I turned those two medium energy neutralizers on him.

In seconds his scram dropped and I pulsed to put a bit more range so my autocannons could hit harder, and his speed dropped as his afterburner ran out of juice. Seconds later, he popped.

I did an embarrassing little happy dance for my first solo kill in the Hurricane and dropped off scavenged loot in station before carrying on.

Unfortunately, the Caldari were out in full force and I had to evade a couple small gangs a couple times at gates, one in particular was well setup but I was on my toes and a couple gate crashes later had them all on one side and me warping off on the other.

Nevertheless, I was pleased to end the night with one kill and no losses and look forward to more when I move over to Minmatar space this week.