It's just a jump to the left!

I have copied all the posts in this blog to the Yosagi Yojimbo blog to simplify the process.  For your viewing pleasure please have a look there as it has all this content, and more!

-Yos

I am disappoint

We’ve been trying to recruit for the corp, however the corp name is Yojimbo Heavy Industries which was appropriate a long time ago but we have now changed to more of a PVP/PVE corp, so the name has to go.

Recruiting has been hard, it would seem that whatever we say or post the potentials cannot get past the corp name so we are trying to get it changed.

Turns out this cannot be done, you have to create a new corp, move everybody and everything to the new corp and then move forward.  So the new corp has put an application into the alliance and we are waiting for the acceptance so we can start the moving process.

The new corp name is Walking Ghost Phase, wikipedia it if you don’t know what it means.  Essentially it’s a name that doesn’t pigeon hole us, so we’ll see how it goes.

Both Sanjuro and I are in the top ten killers list for the whole alliance, that’s quite an achievement for our little corp considering the size of the alliance which is now at approx 250 members.

So last night the alliance was forming up for two operations, both using cloaked T2 ships like stealth bombers, I can fly those ships so was hoping to come along but wanted to bring some of the corp mates also, but I was waiting for them to login.  Finally one did but only to say he was updating the skill training and then logging for the night.  Ahh well missed the alliance ops and also no corp for the night….what to do?

My jump clone timer had expired so I could jump again, I’ll go rescue one of my distant and almost forgotten about jump clones. I have two of them about 40+ jumps away, picked one and jumped into the body, about 10 nuets in local, probably not friendly, immediate undock and leave the system for home.

The journey was uneventful, saw some people in most systems and a couple of bubbles in the second to last and the last zero sec system before the transition to low sec.  One I could avoid by warping away to a planet and warping back at a different angle.  The second I couldn’t avoid so slow boated from the bubble to the gate with my trigger finger hovering over the warp away as one nuet was in system, but nothing happened.

Entered low sec, then high sec and home.

With luck the second jump clone rescue will be as good.

Alliances

Alliances are useful.

Alliances are annoying.

Blues can be handy.

Blues can be frustrating.

So I joined the corporation to the Alliance.  The aim is to expand the horizons of the corporation members and gain some more opportunities for the corporation.  Also the Alliance will then gain the help of our labour which should help it move forward.

What we also joined were “blues”, those who have good or excellent standings with the Alliance and therefore are friendly, or at least are supposed to be.

One of the corpies has now been involved in two friendly fire “blue on blue” incidents in the past three days, the first one he escaped in hull and the most recent his ship was destroyed.  Granted the second one was just a junk frigate meant as a cheap transport but that is not the point.

Alliance and “blue” members should have their overviews configured correctly to stop this waste and confusion.

As an example my overview, at least the one setup for PVP, does not show people in my fleet, corporation or alliance members.

The potential problem this could bring is twofold. You may not know which “blue” is targetting and/or shooting at you unless you look at them directly on your screen and two if you wish to respond to their attack with your own.

This has not been a problem as yet.  I must say I only use this in large fleets as small ones do not seem to present these sorts of issues.

I suspect the issue is also with a bugged overview from time to time, a double tap on the TAB key can help reset it but thinking of that in the heat of battle is unlikely. Just shoot what appears to be the reds right?

So to save drama with blues, setup your overview, and CCP, fix that bug.

Battlefield Bad Company 2 vs DUST514

So lately I’ve been playing the latest franchise from EA, Bad Company 2.  Long ago I played BF 1942 and then the mods of which the best was Desert Combat (as opposed to Dessert Combat which happens when the cart arrives after the main course).

So the combat is quick and sharp, short and nasty little fire fights and normally the death and short wait to respawn either back at base or next to a comrade wearing a natty little red beret that would be right at place on a Paris catwalk.

I digress.

Given the appropriate change to an Eve Online type environment this is what DUST514 should be like, the video I saw a while ago now seemed to confirm it may end up being something like that but some more information if required.

So in the meantime I’ll help win our battles and look skywards as when the night falls the starships will appear.

They will live for a score of years

I was listening to Leo Laporte and Paul Thurrott in episode 170 of Windows Weekly in the Twit Network.

In a previous rant/post of mine I mentioned the imminent death of the xbox360 and PS3 gaming platforms, which as it turns out is incorrect.

So in that TWiT episode they said both platforms will have another five years of official life left, for a total life of ten years.

So this post is to correct that error of mine, however, I still firmly think DUST514 will sink without trace which will be a shame for a variety of reasons.

The mission wall

Yes I finally hit the mission wall, again.  We were doing AE or something and we discovered that none of us were paying any attention to the mission at hand.  I was reading on another computer about the Dakota wars in North America during the late nineteenth century.  Another member was playing Bejewelled and the third was playing with his new Samsung smart phone.

None of us were actually using the bulk of our attention to mission.

After we discovered this together and we all admitted to it we all agreed the missions, while required for ISK making, were killing us and the love for the game.

So last night we went low sec roaming, eventually.

For a corp that is supposed to go low sec roaming often we found that none of us actually had ships fitted for the task. So with us all fitting out ships and waiting for a member to come back from afk one hour went by before we could move out, annoying but should be better next time.

So eventually we all arrive in our high sec jumping off point for the entry to low sec, I send the scout in, who is learning, and get intel of a Drake sitting on the gate and about eight more people in local.  I ask the scout to see if the locals are in the same corp as the Drake, so I am then given all sorts of information except what I asked for.  So after asking for the corp information a couple more times, the scout at this stage has warped away from the gate at my request, we jump in anyway.

Fail scout.

The Drake is no longer there but a heap of my old corp mates from Sto-vo-kor are the ones in local.  Knowing how these guys work that Drake was a bait trap and it was good we didn’t try and shoot him up.

So they are camping one of the two other gates in the system, we chat in local once they discover I am in local but we are also trying to find out where they are as we might be chatting but that could also be the precursor to an attack.

It all seems good, the threat of attack seems to diminish, but we are running out of time as DT is approaching, we say our goodbyes and leave system.

Heading a few more jumps into low sec and it would seem one of their scouts is following us, or maybe just going to the same place, as our destination system is soon crawling with Russians bent on mayhem and destruction, too many for us which means the night is going to be a wash.

At least we were not missioning though.

Twenty minutes to go and we make our way out, leaving low sec with no issues, and then the private chat windows chat appearing.  The end result is unknown at the moment but we could be going blue with the alliance they are in, or perhaps even joining the alliance.

So while our roam was a bust it may have been a very successful night after all.

Stealth Bombers!

So on the blog A Merry Life and a Short One I read an article about stealth bombers which is well worth a read, so here is the link:

Stealth Bombers

 

There we go, another post done, this is easy!

PLEX, Botting and You!

So this week we get the news that some numbnut has undocked in a small ship from Jita 4-4 with approx 70+ PLEX is his hold, a local has scanned him, destroyed the ship and all the PLEX was destroyed.  The approx total value was $1300, US dollars I assume but cbf checking into that some more.

That is quite a large amount of money for the average gamer to be playing around with, so with suspicions of more behind it I did some snooping around.

Botting seems to be rampant in Eve at the moment.  From the various comments on the forums and also chatting with some people I know they have said it appears to be on the rise. 

Botting is the control of your in game character by a third party program with the intention of levelling that character up or making in game money, which can then be exchanged for out of game money, Real Life (RL) money using a variety of methods.

So one of the botting programs, it would seem, looks for the name of the character being mentioned in local chat and then if the name is seen the program either shuts off leaving that person floating in space or it disconnects the game.  I suspect a variety of options are available to the botting player and the most popular one chosen is the former.

So a small game has developed where you mention the name of the people in local channel in suspected botting systems and then see how many either disappear or shut down their ships for a period of time.  I can see this making a very short progression to a drinking game with much success.

So where does the ISK go?  At the moment the ISK generated is still in game currency and can be used for the many things available in game, but if the botting is being used for RL money generation then that fake money has to somehow become real.

One of the ways could be the selling of ships to another character at heavily discounted prices.  So it could go like this.  Person A wants a fleet of cheap ships, so they pay Person B, the botter, some RL money via Paypal to provide those ships.  Then Person B sells the ships in game to Person A via contracts or even direct in station trade at a discounted rate, but probably not too low to attract attention from CCP.  Person B obtained the ships from selling the minerals, mission loot and ISK from missions (they can and are all being botted) and then made them available to Person A.

I’m sure other examples exist.

Every once in a while CCP bans a swathe of accounts and, so they say, the botting stops for a while, it would appear this needs to happen more often than it has as the market is being artificially manipulated by these outside forces.

Deploy The Ban Hammer.

Waste or Waste

To state the obvious, waste is waste.  Waste here or waste there, it’s all still waste.  So with this in mind I was thinking about World of Darkness (WoD), DUST514 and Duke Nukem Forever (DNF).
One of the problems with DNF, apart for that acronym also spelling out Did Not Finish in sports land, are the changes that had to be made to the game as time passed and technology changed.  From memory the game was torn down and reborn at least two times and eventually, as we all know, the weight of its past caused it to implode.
According to CCP DUST514 is almost ready, I would like to see the game released, some calls have been made to put the game on hold, fix bugs with Eve Online and then get back to DUST514.
This will not work as the lesson of DNF shows us, DUST514 would become old, the graphics engine outdated and we are approaching the end of life for the XBOX360 and PS3.
However it should not be rushed either.  CCP are in the unenviable position of juggling three games, one an established hit, if such a term can be used for the niche crowd it has attracted.   WoD which may find appeal with the Twilight crowd and DUST514 which could go either way.
So the waste issue is this, do we waste the development that has already been made on DUST514 and others or just get them done, as they tie in with each other anyway, and move on?
The problem with DUST514, as mentioned previously, is the current and probably future glut of FPS games on gaming consoles (Wii not included as a gaming console as it’s in a different league).  Why should the ADHD, sugar addicted, twitchy FPS gamer look at DUST514?  Surely those people are not suited to the much more sedate, planned, lifestyle of Eve Online so not much crossover will happen there.
Sharing technology is what it’s all about people!  Incarna (Walking in stations) for Eve Online, DUST514 and World of Darkness are all going to share the same graphics engine.
I have a plan.  WoD can be set on the surface of a planet in Eve Online and Eve pilots can access this planet in all its black nail polish glory, so I can stab one of those fuckers with my spoon!
Gives them something to be emo about.

Old Friends

So as you can read from here http://yosagiyojimbo.blogspot.com/2010/07/safety-of-being-out-of-range.html I have left Sto-vo-kor after about nine months.  Essentially some of the old guard left, then some others and all that was left was myself, a couple of old members and a bunch of new ones.

For some reason the dynamic had changed and I decided to head back too YHI, just in time for a nasty little high security war which you can also read about at the above link.

Getting away from the war though I was sitting in Olo and one of the old Stov members who left first did the total “Oh my god it’s Yosagi” thing, so we chatted for a while.

Then I was invited/dragged into a public chat channel which as it turned out is a refuge for old Stov members, like some sort of halfway house or retirement home.  It was awesome, I had a massive grin.

So chatted with them for a while and one by one they discovered I had also left Stov, turns out I was regarded as one of the old guard. Nobody was more surprised than me.

So anyway a rough plan is formed for the future which is subject to change, so not really worth passing more information on at the moment.

You’ll have to figure out how the header image applies to this post, I just liked it.

Avoid!

 

I have to learn to avoid the forums.  The heavy cloud of depression that descends on me after reading what is 95% garbage is extraordinary!

Especially at the moment after the news that CCP will not be devoting any real resources for about 18 months to fix current issues.  Rather they would prefer to continue developing DUST514 and their FOTM MMO, World of Darkness.

In addition we have now found, long suspected by me however, that the CSM has ZERO power, CCP has already pre-determined the future two years of development and the CSM can make no changes to that.  So this CSM and the next are a total waste of time, all they can do is make noise on the forums, their own blogs and elsewhere until CCP get sick of them and remove them as individuals, as happened recently, or kill the CSM as a whole.

Do it CCP, do it now.  While you’re at it also kill the General Discussion section of the forums and police the forums with this mythical “Ban Hammer” I heard about a very long time ago.  The filth will just move to a non-CCP forum and continue bitching, but that is fine.  The facade of perfection will have been re-created, the virgin will be a virgin again!

Of some interest though is the fact that DUST514 is almost done.  So DUST514 will be entering a console market that is already saturated by FPS games from franchises and companies much bigger than EVE Online and CCP.  Another issue on the horizon is the fact the current consoles that DUST514 is aimed at, the XBOX360 and PS3 are entering their evening time with replacements expected in the next 2-3 years. So what does this mean?  Well potentially the new consoles will not be backwards compatible, it has happened before.  Also the popular peak of a console game is short, all that development time for a peak of a few months, is that time well spent?

Finally we arrive at World of Darkness (WoD), by some quirk of fate it may, I say may, arrive in time for the most recent surge of vampire popularity, namely the Twilight travesty they call a film franchise, so maybe the local crowd of dyed black hair and full length coats will be able to drag themselves from watching the god awful movies for the umpteenth time, reading the even more god awful books time and time again to try WoD.  How many variations on the name of Edward and Jacob do you think will exist before someone ends it all with a strategically placed candle and the application of a four pound hammer?

Seriously CCP SORT YOUR FUCKING GAME AND COMPANY OUT!

Council of Stellar Management

The Council of Stellar Management (CSM) is a body of players that are voted for by the players and represent all players with direct meetings with CCP and also correspondence to try and improve the game for us all.

The CSM has no power, they cannot force any decision upon CCP and mostly is a creation by CCP to try and calm the rabid hordes in the forums with the weak claim the CSM is helping you all so just shut up for a while, or something like that.

For disclosure reasons I must say I am not a member of the CSM, most likely never will be and believe it to be a total and complete waste of time.

So CCP have control of the situation in every respect, the CSM is their lackey, their lapdog to do their bidding when and where they see fit?  Well perhaps not.

We have news, ironically delivered by CCP via the News of Eve Service that a CSM member has been "removed", but then goes on to say that it was the only possible solution to protect the integrity of the CSM but as the matter is confidential they will not discuss it further.

So let the forum explosion happen....NOW!

The irony behind the delivery of this message was this, if CCP hadn't delivered the message the person had been removed then I, and probably many others wouldn't have known about it and then start questioning what had happened.  So now we have a situation where the only person speaking about it is the removed one and CCP are staying silent, although I suspect not forever.

So what happened?  Is it because of the description of the meeting or something else?  Does it involve a television thrown from the third story window, some hookers, the tight curve of an upper thigh and some blow?  What if it was caused by the soiling of some hallway etc etc etc.
We don't know, at the time of this writing, so we speculate, and don't think the pit of stinking monkeys that seems to inhabit the chat forums these days are not going to go totally bat shit insane about it.  Though to be fair few of them probably care about the issue but it's another lever to move the trolling crank.

Don't forget that more forums exist for chatting about Eve than the official one, the Scrapyard Challenge one comes to mind, their are probably others.

What could be saving this from becoming a huge issue is the general feeling of apathy towards the CSM, only a few thousand active accounts bothered to vote, out of, supposedly, three hundred thousand accounts.  Surely that confirms the CSM is an inert lump of clay, never to have a scroll of words inserted into its head?

Even more downtime!

So I lived through the infamous downtime incident of June 2010, well actually I slept through some of it and worked through most of the rest so I'm probably overplaying it somewhat, but dramatic stuff sells right?

Then about 12 hours after the servers came back they went down again, well at least that is what it looked like from here.  After a bit of snooping around I found the packets were being lost somewhere in London, then google searched my ISP and Eve Online and found some others were complaining about the same thing.

Ahh ha!  So found the culprit, put in a service request with my ISP and at around 6pm that evening I was able to login to Eve again, since this was a Saturday I'd lost most of the day, oh well.

So PI, you may have read my previous post/s about it, to be honest my interest has plummeted quite a bit in the last week or two, not really sure why.

I suspect one of the reasons is the current juggle of my main account and also an alt which is training and spending time with some newbies to try and bring them into the main characters corporation.  So the conclusion of all that is neither account is receiving enough love and I do not really have the time for the PI click fest.

Today they gave us a new ship for PI, the Primae, which is dedicated to PI work and reminds me of a small Orca in function and some people say it looks like Serenity from the TV series Firefly, though I struggle to see the similarity myself.

Nice looking ship, thanks CCP, bloody useless in anything else and the need had been filled from day one by low level haulers like the Iteron I and others, nice looking ship though, maybe I should cover it in plastic?

Finally we received a 100,000 skill point lump sum to be spent on whatever training you wish, as long as it was given to the correct character, I had a 50% success there.  On the one hand it is wonderful that CCP have decided to pay us for the long downtime we recently suffered but on the other hand it will only open a can of worms with people bitching and complaining about the amount of skill points, being paid to the wrong character etc etc.  Of course in the future if we have another unscheduled downtime, or even a long downtime the forums will alight with a depth of morons never before seen screaming for a skill point payment and howling in indignation when it is not paid.

Personally I would have told them it's my way or the highway, but maybe CCP have seen the demos for the upcoming Warhammer 40k MMO?

Twenty four hours now with no Eve Online.
A siege mentality has set in.
I have started hoarding food, boarding up the windows and laying fields of fire from at least my window to the side fence.
That dog is looking pretty shifty.
"I've got your number!  I've got all your numbers!!", I yell.
Muttering to myself about all this sunlight, those teenagers, why don't noodles taste the same these days?
Do we really need 57 channels? Is their really nothing on?
Start up Eve again, server status is unknown, again, shut down the game.
Sit here for a minute.
Start up Eve again, server status is still unknown...again, shut down the game.
Check out the web site, it is down.
Have a look at the OMG LABS mirror, it apologises that all posts are older than three hours it seems to say with hunched shoulders, I shut it down.
What to do?
I have other games don't I?
Hmmmmm......
It seems not, that is a bugger.
Could I get another game?  What if while getting said game Eve came back and I didn't notice?  Would it actually be back online if I didn't notice, even though it was?
Which reminds me I must name a ship Schrodinger.

Shitting Bricks

I was sitting on the couch watching The World Cup and wondering how I could somehow insert a Vuvuzela into one of my blog posts.

So Chile is playing Honduras, with the constant drone of that damned African horn in the background.

Reaching for the iPhone, little did I know of the horror that lay in wait, down in the digital depths of the device.

Check the mail and other things, fire up the Capsuleer app, check the mains, the alts, look at the blog roll.

The usual stuff, have a look at the ones I follow, can't read every post on the list.

Notice that CrazyKinux has a new post.  E3 stuff and a list of new blogs that are being added to the blogroll.

[scrolls down]

Holy Crap! That's me!!

Right at the very bottom is Yosagi Yojimbo!

Yes the in character blog has made the list, I think I swore in disbelief for about fifteen minutes!

So this blog links to that one and it also links here, so some traffic should come this way.

But I can't help thinking I should have called it Aaron A Aardvarks Adventures.

Lol.

Now we need some Llamas!

The Tyrannis expansion seems like a non-event.  The roll out of the expansion has been slow with more parts released recently, Eve Gate and Planetary Interaction (PI).

Eve Gate I'm not sure about at the moment, perhaps its usefulness will grow over time, at the moment I'd say its use is limited.

PI has been available, at least the training has been, since the expansion.  So when the Command Centers were finally released to the capsule pilots a few weeks afterwards their was a sense of excitement.  On the day of "The Great Land Rush" it seemed that every man and his dog was flying around in haulers servicing their budding PI installations.

Personally I cannot really see the need for PI, the system we had was fine, even though those items were supplied by NPC's.

Hold on a minute while I check my PI installation.

So where was I?  Ahh yes PI being a waste of time.  The ability to create your own POS materials and other things using the local planets is moderately handy I guess.

Wait a sec, if I adjust my extractors closer to the production modules I can cut down on link distance and thus can create more structures. Fiddle, fiddle, fiddle, that got it.

Yes so as I was saying....hmmmm I can create both items on the same planet and then use an advanced production facility to manufacture them into something else which also reduces their m3 and the customs charges.

Talk amongst yourselves for a while I want to optimise my third PI installation.

Customers are waiting!

Crazy Ivans and Eve is not a PVP game.

Taking a sort of break from the corporation to help out the new and returned, so doing the odd mission.  Every once in a while my ship, currently a Hyperion, while travelling in a straight line does a spin.  The ship keeps moving forward, the transverse of the target doesn't seem to change but the ship does a full three hundred and sixty degree spin.

I think my navigator quite likes The Hunt for Red October.

So Eve as a PVP game?

Quite plainly it is not a PVP game, at least in total.  People have the choice of PVP.  You can live in high security space and be mostly immune to the whims of the PVP crowd, war declarations can be dodged very easily by corporation hopping or just using an alternate character until it goes away.  Obviously corporation hopping is not an action that is recommended and apparently CCP can bring some sort of action against you for doing it but I would say, using a figure pulled from thin air, more than ninety percent of people who do it are never taken to task over it.

So you can choose your PVP, thus Eve is not a PVP game, it is optional PVP with a mostly PVE population according to the figures from CCP and the infrequently heard from Dr. K.

However, and this is where the high security folks should take notice, the PVP game, in low and zero security space, is where the game is!  High security space and PVE content is just the precursor to the tense thrills that can be bought experiencing PVP.

A simple barometer for me is the object identified by Aristotle in the fourth century B.C. as the most important organ in the body, the heart.  The only time it has started beating faster, and I mean really thumping, you know like how hard you pounded your first partners before you became all old and jaded, is during the thrill of real combat.

I'm not talking about PVE missions like Guristas Extravaganza and the like where you follow a procession of pre-determined actions to complete the mission, loot and salvage and wonder what happened to the last hour while yawning and wondering about bed and if tomorrow will be any better.  NO!  This is the excitement of not knowing what intelligent or bone headed decision your enemy is going to make, or how many, what they are flying, and if this ship will survive the night.  My first combat was in a low sec zone, I was salvaging a mission and an Arazu warped in, guy by the name of Shozo (I still have him on my contacts list) warp disrupted/jammed my Catalyst and then destroyed it, my pod escaped.  I could hardly function!  My heart was smashing some new space in my chest cavity and it was almost like a great weight had descended upon me with the sudden realisation of the might that existed in this new virtual world.

Eve is not a PVP game, but if you don't experience and embrace it you are missing the point and the game.

What could go wrong?

The war targets are in Abagawa, docked at the moment.

This exercise is to give the members some combat experience, two of them have some and the other guy has little to none.

So we form up, Battleship, Battlecruiser, ECM ship and tackle Frigate.  The two targets should be in either Battleships or Battlecruisers.  My alt sitting outside their station has a good view of their undocking bay.

As our fleet approaches their system one of them undocks in a Battleship, an Abaddon.  So I warp my Battleship to their station and engage him, I call for the rest of the fleet to enter the system and warp to me, the second enemy Battleship then undocks.

All DPS is on the first Battleship whose shields go at an acceptable rate, then we start hitting the armour, a bit slower than I would like but okay.

However the bad news starts piling up, I hear over voice chat that we've lost our ECM ship, most likely to drone agro, though I later find out it had been shot at also.  The armour on my Battleship is going down, in hindsight we probably should have switched targets to the other Battleship, but it undocked second and I was fixated on the first one, potentially a mistake.

So my Battleship dies, I call for everybody to get out, my pod warps away, at this moment I think we have failed utterly.  The tackle Frigate gets away but the Battlecruiser is caught and destroyed.

The vultures descend on the wrecks.

I have an alt on the field, via this alt I start to take stock of the situation, trying to salvage something from the disaster, but somethings wrong.  Too many wrecks are on the field, taking a minute I realise we actually did kill one of their Battleships.

Yes!! This wasn't a total waste of time after all!

We make our way back to the home system, dock up, but the counterattack is not long in coming.

While we are trying to put the best spin on the battle we could, the war targets turn up in our home system, via the alt now sitting outside our home station I can see they have a Battleship, a Tempest and also a Proteus, a tech 3 Cruiser.

We discuss the situation, one of our guys undocks and they stare at each other for a short while, then they engage him.  So the decision is made to primary the Proteus as that is the smaller ship and should go down fast.  (hindsight laugh)

The pilot of the Tech 3 Cruiser, upon reflection, was very confident in the situation, this should have been a warning.

So anyway we start hitting the Proteus, its shield goes away fairly quickly, then we start hitting the armour...well I think so, it's not moving very much.

After a bit I check to see if my guns are still working, they appear to be, but it's all going wrong.

So the end result is the enemy Battleship docks up as we had changed targets from the Proteus, he was getting hit pretty hard but just disengaged and docked up.  We lost another ECM ship, our tackle Frigate, his pod.  Our Battlecruiser and my Battleship (a backup) survived the engagement, for a while the Proteus and I just stared at each other outside the station, after a bit I also docked up.

The previous night I had destroyed an enemy Battlecruiser for no loss, we were feeling pretty good about ourselves.  Now we had destroyed a Battleship worth about 200 million but we lost a Battleship worth about the same, also a Battlecruiser, two ECM ships, one Frigate and a Pod.

However the worst knowledge is the Proteus is now on the field, we cannot kill it and they know it.

Time to think.

Welcome to Eve!

In a fleet with the new folks, using the alt corp, waiting for a wardec to go live to try and blood the returning and the new.  Sitting outside a worm hole, one of the guys, who has more experience but had a break for about 10 months decides to enter, followed by the rank newbie with only less than one month under his belt.

We tried telling him about the things you should remember about a worm hole, but couldn't cover all areas as you would expect.

Didn't really expect him to fly away from the worm hole exit while in the worm hole but it seems okay, then they use the ships directional scanner and find POS structures.

Probably populated then.

Then I hear over voice chat, "Hey here's somebody, I wonder what he wants?"

Closely followed by, "He's attacking, I'm going to die!"

So he learned lessons about worm holes, zero security space, what happens when you talk with strangers, how well a Rifter with a month old pilot goes against a Prophecy and finally the mechanics of warp jamming, podding and waking up in your clone station.

Today was a very educational day for a new character.

Welcome to Eve!

Forgetting the old stuff.

For the last couple of weeks I've been helping a couple of old eve players who quit about a year ago and also a couple of newbies.

So I've been showing them the game or reminding them of what to do as the case may be and I've been surprised at how much of the basic stuff I've forgotten, basic skills, fittings etc.

Part of the reason this blog exists, certainly I'm happy to have the regular followers, hello to all three of you (/me laughs) is to remind me of the game, some of the things I've done and how to do them, like invention, manufacturing, probing etc.  In addition I've been able to just link various articles rather than explain a whole concept I can just link and sit back.

It's good to pass on some knowledge.

Participation of the "fairer" sex

Recently CrazyKinux as part of the blog pack, of which I am not a part of, asked the numerous bloggers to come up with ideas on how to increase the participation percentage of females in Eve Online.

While it's clear they are a mystery wrapped in an enigma surrounded by barbed wire, machine guns, guard dogs....ahem anyway.

Customisation is the key.  Having observed many of these people over the years, often with permission, I've found that customisation seems to be the key.  For instance in The Sims (tm) I have seen just as much time spent on the dressing screen as in the game, whereas all I do is make hot blonds and then move them in with each other.  Taking the pool ladder away after sending them in for a swim was another favourite.

Not that I have ever played The Sims (tm) (r) (c) (wtf)

Getting back on track. Walking In Stations, or Incarna, or whatever it is called by the time you read this will be a major part of the taking back of the female gaming mind, the customisation I have seen seems to be a massive improvement on the aforementioned digital doll house game.  In addition the possibilities of interaction while moving around the stations can also help greatly, assuming everybody doesn't get assaulted by a relentless barrage of "Are you female?" and "Want to cyber?".

Another customisation option, and I believe this is not on the table at the moment, is ship appearance customisation.  What I would like to see is colour (yes colour has a u) changes to all ships, perhaps not the entire ship colour, though an entire fleet themed in Hello Kitty hot pink would be awesome.

As long as it's not my fleet.

The changes could be more subtle, perhaps a change of a highlight colour or two, which I can choose from a palette of colours.  The addition of the corporation and/or alliance logo would be another nice change and would help promote the clan feeling of your fellow pod pilots.

How much of an effect would this have on lag? I don't know.  I'm sure somebody will say it's not possible due to lag but I'm not interested in that, I give CCP a direction and they have to find out how to get there.

Finally the soon to arrive Planetary Interaction has some potential in this area, this will of course grow and mature as it reaches a merging with Dust 514 in the yet to be determined future.

What I'm wondering is the percentage of female gamers in console FPS games who, upon playing Dust 514 look up at the sky and wonder who flies those spaceships, and can I?

Combat made small

Today elements of Sto-vo-kor in cooperation with The New Era fought and destroyed an enemy Mammoth in the S-U8A4 system at approximately 02:54.

Total damage taken by the Mammoth was 1508 with two Drakes and an Eris being employed in the mighty victory over a dastardly enemy pilot.

An un-named source said the Mammoth went down quicker than a Gallente exotic dancer at a Bucks Party.

Spoils from this magnificent victory included a destroyed ISK amount of approximately 26 Million ISK with a potential bounty of 11.6 Million ISK.

Cykasm, top damage and also final blow dealer was suitably happy with the destruction and ended the interview humming a happy tune.

Yosagi Yojimbo  -  Not entirely accurate combat correspondent.

Your Bio is depressing Yosagi

So it was said during an alliance chat that I was participating in.  For some reason my bio was checked out and judged to be depressing.

Here it is for your viewing pleasure:


You are not special.
Odds are you will never achieve anything remarkable.
Your existance has been forgotten by most that have met you.
The Universe does not care if you live or die, pass or fail, win or lose.
When heat death is final and nothing remains in the entire Universe, not even a mote or a single atom, humanity will be a forgotten blip towards the fuzzy beginning of it all.


Then whatever is left can ask itself, "How the HELL can a ship collide with a lighthouse?!?"


The intention was to build towards the punchline, of sorts, at the end about the irony of a ship hitting the very thing that is trying to help it.

I have a theory that the depression builds while reading it, people don't get to the end and then comment to me in alliance chat or go watch Donni Darko (as disclosure I quite like that movie).

/me shrugs

Fail FC's and you.

Be aware of who the good Fleet Controllers are, the bad and the ones that just seem to have some sort of tendency to get you killed.

As an example, I'm sitting in a system with half a dozen other alliance members, the call goes out that we have a Domi on gate and under attack, I type in chat that I'm on my way and hit warp.

Arrive at the gate to find both the hunter and the hunted have jumped through into the next system, after a moment or two hesitation I also jump through.

To find a system with a metric fuck ton of reds and nuets, not on the gate thankfully. The two blue guys are still trying to take this Domi down when a trickle of nuets start arriving at the gate, ejecting drones and joining the action.

At this stage I'm still sitting cloaked up after jumping in and sizing up the situation, which looked extra ordinarily bad!

So the only option is to abandon the potential fight and move towards the gate at high speed, no worries on that score and I leave the impending turkey shoot and re-enter my "home" system.

Now the FC enters the picture trying to organise the rather uninterested alliance members to form up, though not forming an actual fleet, enter the system with the previously mentioned "metric fuck ton" of bad guys and somehow attack them, and win.

Now I don't know what is going on in the FC's mind but at a guess I'd say it's about control and glory.  Control over the people in his fleet, though a fleet was not made, and the glory, however slim of winning this fight and others in the future.  In the abstract I realise the new FC has to learn the trade but not with an obviously (well to me anyway) unwinnable fight and not with my ship aka time.

Zero Sec

I have just realised that I am living in zero sec.  Well...mostly as I rarely go back to high sec, certainly not to run missions but to pickup gear and ships for transport down to the zero sec zone.
It's funny how when a realisation hits you, and then the double realisation of the realisation....ahh this could go on for a while.

Suffice to say the game is changing for me once again.

The expansion is a month away, some details were released today about planetary mining.  If any of you still remember the old game M.U.L.E. I can see myself becoming happily lost in the market, planetary manufacturing and the details this could all bring.

I'm looking forward to seeing how well it is implemented.

Losing situational awareness.

In this blog post "Zero Sec Happened" I describe what happened in game while I was trying to escape zero sec in a Battleship.  However outside the game something else was happening, my world contracted for a short while in a dramatic way.

When I was set upon by the dastardly Frigates and others my concentration bubble was only me and the computer screen, I lost all awareness of the people around me, the sounds, the smells.  I remember nothing except the battle.

Later that evening I subsequently received some grief from the GF as I had apparently totally ignored her goodbye as she left for work while I was zoned into the game and zoned out of everything else.

When the battle was over I imagine it was like emerging from the ocean depths to sit on the stern of the dive boat and once again experience the world, from horizon to horizon.

Every once in a while I'm reminded the Internet can really be another genuine world, albeit optional.

Thousand Yard Stare

Look into my eyes.

The world is burning.

RUN.

Goonies!

So during my break (Ha!) I was thinking about the recent dismemberment of Goonswarm by the head honcho, I tried to find a link but cba'd spending much time on it.  So here is the TL:DR version:  Head guy realised leadership was becoming too much like work, came back from honeymoon after giving it to the new missus to find a financial crisis linked to the new sov system and not enough head people with their hands on the cash.  So he goes "Fuck This!!!", takes the cash, ships, assets etc and boots nearly all of the corps from the Goonswarm alliance and views the chaos from atop his mountain of ISK.  I don't know what the final total will be, hundreds of billions maybe trillions, /me shrugs.

The point I was trying to make before my attempt at being flippant was this, Goonies came into the game to "Stick it to the man", but then they became "The Man", now they may/should go back to being the rabble rousers we know and love/loath.

Having a clear enemy is good for the soul.

Annoyed

So pissed off with Eve at the moment.  I was riding the crest of the pvp wave for a while but now it has left me behind.  Stuck in skill training and missioning hell, endlessly grinding rep for R&D agents for a game I'm not sure I care about any more.

External factors may also be causing this malaise.

Time for a break.