Happy 10th Birthday EVE. No better way to celebrate than hanging out in Jita and enjoying 18% TiDi.
Also, CCP Gargant is my new favourite person.
[00:17:19] CCP Gargant > lag is a feature now
......
[00:30:46] CCP Gargant > MY FIREWORKS WILL BLOT OUT THE SUN
- Sam.
Sunday, May 5, 2013
Fighting monotany
Every once in a while, boredom hits. You can only have the same fights against the same people so many times before you need a change. To shake things up, we war-decced an alliance more than ten times our size and started camping their high-sec home.
High-sec is such a different place to fight. There's no bubbles, plenty of stations to hide from pursurers in, and neutral scouts are everywhere. A lot of the wardec was spent in and near stations. We played station games because we got a laugh out of it, they played station games because it kept us hooked long enough for them to form a blob. If we docked up, it was either to find out where that sole red in local was hiding, or to wait out the blob.
The lack of bubbles helped the other side a lot more than it helped us. We eventually started using remote sensor boosted interceptors, but even that wasn't enough, since almost all of the people we tried to catch had warp stabilizers fitted. The percentage of people on Teamspeak who vocalized a desire for a bubble at least once? 100%. We missed a lot of frigates that simply aligned and warped off before we could get more than a couple points on them.
That said, industrials and mining ships made for great targets. I happened to get incredibly lucky one night, and caught a bunch of them in a row. The first was a Hoarder that I chased through a few gates until he warped to a POCO at zero. Being the nice guy I am, I held him there for five minutes while a couple corpies swung by to get in on the killmail. He managed to warp his pod off, but went straight for the station. Thanks to the docking delay that occurs when your ship pops, I caught up to him and popped the pod before his timer was up.
Industrial number two was a Noctis that blithely undocked from the station I was sitting on. He jumped a couple gates before running into the small camp on the other side that I'd called for when it became obvious where he was heading. He had a full cargo hold too: salvage, loot, random odds and ends. He must have been completely asleep at the helm to miss me chasing him into a bottleneck. The third industrial was actually rather sad. A Bestower warped to the gate I was sitting on, and I followed him through. When he decloaked, I was three thousand metres away. Lock, scram, shoot.
For a scout, I brought down a throw-away character who I'd trained to sit in a Venture and use Mining Laser 1s. Nothing like a little bit of camouflage to help stalk other miners. Even with their warp strength bonus, war target Ventures are an easy kill when you set up a warp-in at zero for a squad of frigates. Procurers, even with their impressive tanks, melt quickly when the same frigate ball lands on them at point-blank range. On the other hand, there were some miners who were impossible to catch napping. The moment a red showed up in system, they were in warp to a station. Some of us tried log-in traps to catch only particularily slippery Retriever, but the pilot had the good sense to never go back to the same belt.
The only time our war target ever gave us trouble was when we tried to upship to battlecruiser size or larger. Such was the price we paid for warring with someone so much larger than us. The largest fleet we managed all war was twelve, and it took fifteen minutes for things to end rather poorly. In the EVE variant of rock/paper/scissors, eight Vexors and four tackle frigates don't beat a thirty-some battlecruiser gang.
Since anything cruiser size or larger attracted a blob, I spent the wardec flying Rifters and Slashers. With my scout to provide warp-ins, I spent a lot of my time as the point man, both figuratively and literally. Add a number of cruiser and battlecruiser kills to my solo hunting, and April turned out to be my most violent month yet. Twenty-one kills more than doubled my total, and I managed it while only losing four Rifters and one Slasher.
Sadly, this means I'm no longer close to the worst PVPer in my corp. Now when I lose something expensive, people are actually going to make fun of me for it. *Sigh* Such is the price of success.
Yeah right. Like they didn't already do that.
- Sam
High-sec is such a different place to fight. There's no bubbles, plenty of stations to hide from pursurers in, and neutral scouts are everywhere. A lot of the wardec was spent in and near stations. We played station games because we got a laugh out of it, they played station games because it kept us hooked long enough for them to form a blob. If we docked up, it was either to find out where that sole red in local was hiding, or to wait out the blob.
The lack of bubbles helped the other side a lot more than it helped us. We eventually started using remote sensor boosted interceptors, but even that wasn't enough, since almost all of the people we tried to catch had warp stabilizers fitted. The percentage of people on Teamspeak who vocalized a desire for a bubble at least once? 100%. We missed a lot of frigates that simply aligned and warped off before we could get more than a couple points on them.
That said, industrials and mining ships made for great targets. I happened to get incredibly lucky one night, and caught a bunch of them in a row. The first was a Hoarder that I chased through a few gates until he warped to a POCO at zero. Being the nice guy I am, I held him there for five minutes while a couple corpies swung by to get in on the killmail. He managed to warp his pod off, but went straight for the station. Thanks to the docking delay that occurs when your ship pops, I caught up to him and popped the pod before his timer was up.
Industrial number two was a Noctis that blithely undocked from the station I was sitting on. He jumped a couple gates before running into the small camp on the other side that I'd called for when it became obvious where he was heading. He had a full cargo hold too: salvage, loot, random odds and ends. He must have been completely asleep at the helm to miss me chasing him into a bottleneck. The third industrial was actually rather sad. A Bestower warped to the gate I was sitting on, and I followed him through. When he decloaked, I was three thousand metres away. Lock, scram, shoot.
For a scout, I brought down a throw-away character who I'd trained to sit in a Venture and use Mining Laser 1s. Nothing like a little bit of camouflage to help stalk other miners. Even with their warp strength bonus, war target Ventures are an easy kill when you set up a warp-in at zero for a squad of frigates. Procurers, even with their impressive tanks, melt quickly when the same frigate ball lands on them at point-blank range. On the other hand, there were some miners who were impossible to catch napping. The moment a red showed up in system, they were in warp to a station. Some of us tried log-in traps to catch only particularily slippery Retriever, but the pilot had the good sense to never go back to the same belt.
The only time our war target ever gave us trouble was when we tried to upship to battlecruiser size or larger. Such was the price we paid for warring with someone so much larger than us. The largest fleet we managed all war was twelve, and it took fifteen minutes for things to end rather poorly. In the EVE variant of rock/paper/scissors, eight Vexors and four tackle frigates don't beat a thirty-some battlecruiser gang.
Since anything cruiser size or larger attracted a blob, I spent the wardec flying Rifters and Slashers. With my scout to provide warp-ins, I spent a lot of my time as the point man, both figuratively and literally. Add a number of cruiser and battlecruiser kills to my solo hunting, and April turned out to be my most violent month yet. Twenty-one kills more than doubled my total, and I managed it while only losing four Rifters and one Slasher.
Sadly, this means I'm no longer close to the worst PVPer in my corp. Now when I lose something expensive, people are actually going to make fun of me for it. *Sigh* Such is the price of success.
Yeah right. Like they didn't already do that.
- Sam
Saturday, May 4, 2013
Shinies
I bought a Fanfest stream, but didn't get to use it all that often for various reasons. That said, I did hear and see a few of the big things. A week later, here's the six things that stuck with me the most.
- Tags4sec
According to the available literature, the pirate ships bearing the special tags are going to spawn about as often as hauler rats spawn. Being a null-bear, I'd done a fair bit of ratting in belts, and I've seen exactly ZERO hauler spawns. Since January, the only hauler spawn I've come across is a hauler wreck an alliance mate advertised when he needed some help scooping the loot. I sure hope they spawn more frequently in low-sec, or the tags could be collector's items instead of a viable means of increasing security status. That said, best of luck to all those who mine in low-sec. At least you'll be less lonely.
- New gate travel effects
CCP Soundwave hates loading bars. I hate unnecessary flash that slows down my client. If the new gate-travel visual effects work just as smoothly under 60% TiDi and don't cause any extra slow-down, then I'm A-OK with the flash. If a 100-pilot fleet jumping a gate under 60% TiDi causes lag spikes and a 20% increase in TiDi, then no thank you. It's undeniably cool, but at what cost?
- Ice changes
To sum up: Belts will no longer be static, the ice will be in new scannable sites. Once depleted, the site will respawn in 4 hours. The total amount of ice in high-sec will be reduced, placing increased importance on the null-sec ice for maintaining fuel supplies. Cycle times for ice mining laser will be cut by 50%.
Personally, I could care less. However, I've been informed that I might very soon expect to be given a Retriever and told to go mine ice in our null territory. Hurray?
- VR dogfighting
Of all the things recorded at Fanfest, this video may have caused the most nerd-boners. A) It's a virtual-reality dogfighting game using EVE ships, and B) an attractive woman (maybe the only one at Fanfest) got almost as much screen-time as the people who made the game/tech demo.
Aside from the desperate attempt to look cool, the video does show off a great bit of concept work. Add a few more maps, and some more fighters, and you could have something that would really showcase the abilites of the Oculus Rift. With the attention it's been getting, the OR might be the first VR device to actually succeed in doing more than sounding like a cool idea, and getting in on it early could turn out to be a great thing for CCP, especially since they love their....
- Merchandising
That's right, CCP loves the idea of brand expansion. The EVE store is back, we're getting more books, and there's talk of a TV show.
Mel Brooks said it best. It's where the real money's at, after all.
- Colonization
I saw a fair few complaints leading up to Fanfest. The blog-o-sphere wanted Jesus features. Enough iteration was enough, CCP had been iterating since Incarna flopped. Well, I'm pretty sure the 'future vision' section of the EVE keynote counts as CCP delivering a massive backhand slap and telling all the whiners to shut their cakeholes.
Colonization was delivered as a future idea, but it seemed like CCP already has a few ideas of where to go with it. Player-constructed stargates, for example. We got to see a picture of Caldari industrials shooting orange beams at a half-constructed stargate. CCP Seagull also mentioned capsuleers taking over what the empires used to own. NPC null and parts of lowsec becoming sov nullsec?
The ships we saw leaving Earth in the EVE Origins trailer made an appearance in demo of the new archaeology demo, how about some more leftovers from the initial wave of colonization in New Eden? Could we drop a new gate in a system on the edge of the known territories, and find a forgotten colony that was destroyed during the dark times?
Me like.
- Sam.
- Tags4sec
According to the available literature, the pirate ships bearing the special tags are going to spawn about as often as hauler rats spawn. Being a null-bear, I'd done a fair bit of ratting in belts, and I've seen exactly ZERO hauler spawns. Since January, the only hauler spawn I've come across is a hauler wreck an alliance mate advertised when he needed some help scooping the loot. I sure hope they spawn more frequently in low-sec, or the tags could be collector's items instead of a viable means of increasing security status. That said, best of luck to all those who mine in low-sec. At least you'll be less lonely.
- New gate travel effects
CCP Soundwave hates loading bars. I hate unnecessary flash that slows down my client. If the new gate-travel visual effects work just as smoothly under 60% TiDi and don't cause any extra slow-down, then I'm A-OK with the flash. If a 100-pilot fleet jumping a gate under 60% TiDi causes lag spikes and a 20% increase in TiDi, then no thank you. It's undeniably cool, but at what cost?
- Ice changes
To sum up: Belts will no longer be static, the ice will be in new scannable sites. Once depleted, the site will respawn in 4 hours. The total amount of ice in high-sec will be reduced, placing increased importance on the null-sec ice for maintaining fuel supplies. Cycle times for ice mining laser will be cut by 50%.
Personally, I could care less. However, I've been informed that I might very soon expect to be given a Retriever and told to go mine ice in our null territory. Hurray?
- VR dogfighting
Of all the things recorded at Fanfest, this video may have caused the most nerd-boners. A) It's a virtual-reality dogfighting game using EVE ships, and B) an attractive woman (maybe the only one at Fanfest) got almost as much screen-time as the people who made the game/tech demo.
Aside from the desperate attempt to look cool, the video does show off a great bit of concept work. Add a few more maps, and some more fighters, and you could have something that would really showcase the abilites of the Oculus Rift. With the attention it's been getting, the OR might be the first VR device to actually succeed in doing more than sounding like a cool idea, and getting in on it early could turn out to be a great thing for CCP, especially since they love their....
- Merchandising
That's right, CCP loves the idea of brand expansion. The EVE store is back, we're getting more books, and there's talk of a TV show.
Mel Brooks said it best. It's where the real money's at, after all.
- Colonization
I saw a fair few complaints leading up to Fanfest. The blog-o-sphere wanted Jesus features. Enough iteration was enough, CCP had been iterating since Incarna flopped. Well, I'm pretty sure the 'future vision' section of the EVE keynote counts as CCP delivering a massive backhand slap and telling all the whiners to shut their cakeholes.
Colonization was delivered as a future idea, but it seemed like CCP already has a few ideas of where to go with it. Player-constructed stargates, for example. We got to see a picture of Caldari industrials shooting orange beams at a half-constructed stargate. CCP Seagull also mentioned capsuleers taking over what the empires used to own. NPC null and parts of lowsec becoming sov nullsec?
The ships we saw leaving Earth in the EVE Origins trailer made an appearance in demo of the new archaeology demo, how about some more leftovers from the initial wave of colonization in New Eden? Could we drop a new gate in a system on the edge of the known territories, and find a forgotten colony that was destroyed during the dark times?
Me like.
- Sam.
The big winners
They held an election, and almost nobody came.
That doesn't really matter much to me though. Fewer people voted for CSM8 than voted for CSM7, but I could care less. Of the top five people I really wanted to see on CSM, I got five for five, so I can't complain. As expected, the wormhole candidates picked up a couple of seats, well-recognized names nabbed a few, and null-sec candidates filled up the rest.
Link to results for reference: https://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/csm8-election-results/
Of the people I had on my voting list, here's the ones that made it:
1. Mangala Solaris
2. Kesper North
3. Mike Azariah
4. progodlegend
5. Ali Aras
....
7. Ripard Teg
8. Malcanis
....
14. Sala Cameron
... And the people I didn't vote for who made it:
Chitsa Jason
James Arget
Korvin
mynnna
Sort Dragon
Trebor Daehdoow
Not like any of those names are surprising. Chitsa and James were the top two wormhole candidates, and holers proved last year that they could get out the vote. Sort Dragon and mynnna were shoo-ins, and it seems that Korvin got the Russian vote. Trebor, well, I imagine any high-sec player motivated enough to vote stuck him either number one or two on their voting list.
I'm sure an all-star lineup like CSM8 will have plenty of bright ideas, but we'll have to wait and see how well things go, won't we?
- Sam.
That doesn't really matter much to me though. Fewer people voted for CSM8 than voted for CSM7, but I could care less. Of the top five people I really wanted to see on CSM, I got five for five, so I can't complain. As expected, the wormhole candidates picked up a couple of seats, well-recognized names nabbed a few, and null-sec candidates filled up the rest.
Link to results for reference: https://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/csm8-election-results/
Of the people I had on my voting list, here's the ones that made it:
1. Mangala Solaris
2. Kesper North
3. Mike Azariah
4. progodlegend
5. Ali Aras
....
7. Ripard Teg
8. Malcanis
....
14. Sala Cameron
... And the people I didn't vote for who made it:
Chitsa Jason
James Arget
Korvin
mynnna
Sort Dragon
Trebor Daehdoow
Not like any of those names are surprising. Chitsa and James were the top two wormhole candidates, and holers proved last year that they could get out the vote. Sort Dragon and mynnna were shoo-ins, and it seems that Korvin got the Russian vote. Trebor, well, I imagine any high-sec player motivated enough to vote stuck him either number one or two on their voting list.
I'm sure an all-star lineup like CSM8 will have plenty of bright ideas, but we'll have to wait and see how well things go, won't we?
- Sam.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Making a meaningful impact
http://freebooted.blogspot.ca/2013/04/blog-banter-46-main-event.html
".....With the return of Live Events such as the Battle for Caldari Prime, clearly the prime fiction of EVE is back in favour as part of this new thematic approach to expansions. However, EVE's story is very much a tale of two playstyles, with an entirely player-driven narrative unfolding daily in parallel to the reinvigorated backstory. Often, they do not mix well. How can these two disparate elements be united or at least comfortably co-exist in a single sandbox universe?"
I'm not really sure how to answer that question, the way it's phrased. See, I'm of the opinion that things are mixing well. The ongoing story of EVE (as written by CCP) and the player-driven gameplay interact without too much fuss. That is to say, they don't interact, and that's not a bad thing. I don't want CCP's story to change my gameplay, I'd rather see CCP letting my gameplay change the story.
As it stands right now, players aren't inconvenienced or forced to give up doing what they love to do by storyline events. While I like the fact that CCP has decided to move the storyline forward, I don't want to log on some day and find out that thanks to storyline progress, the Jove have invaded Jita and made it completely impassable to all traffic. That's certainly an extreme example, but it's the kind of thing that would illustrate story changing gameplay, as opposed to gameplay changing story. If CCP continues with storyline-advancing live events like many people have asked for, the events and the results of the events need to either compliment or side-step current gameplay, not detract from it.
The 'Battle for Caldari Prime' event which happened recently is a fine example of doing story advancement in a way that neither helps or hurts player. It was accessible to players who wanted to participate, and it wasn't a barrier to the gameplay of anyone who didn't want to. On the positive side: Adequate notice was given so that people could prepare, only Luminaire and the systems connected to it were affected, and it had a definitive result which advanced EVE's lore. The biggest complaints? The limited number of EVE players who were able to get into the system to start (stupid DUST bunnies), and the fact that player actions had no bearing on the final outcome. Would it have been amazing to see the outcome of the event and consequently the storyline of EVE be decided by player actions? Absolutely.
That's the one thing I would love to see more than any other going forward. Live events that are actually interactive, and making player actions part of the game lore. When RvB had a massive brawl in Poinen, they managed to crash CONCORD. How cool would it be to have that become an official part of the EVE story? A massive capsuleer fight led to CONCORD being forced to leave gaps in their coverage to respond. That's a pretty memorable event, certainly something that worthy of being noted in the history of EVE. How about the battle of Asakai? That was possibly the best player-driven event we've seen to date. There's tons of video and written battle reports, could CCP compile them into one historical record and make it part of the official story? The best events in EVE have been/are being/will be written by players, and it would be amazing to see the lore reflect that.
We've already seen CCP do this to a small degree. Next time you happen to be in Jita, take a look at the monument just off the 4-4 station. One of the fun things people did in Jita during the fallout after Incarna was shooting the monument (Rainbow lasers are pretty and you know it). In recognition of the event, CCP replaced the in-game model with a destroyed monument and commemorated its destruction in the new description you see whenever you 'show info' on it. Since Burn Jita 2.0 is scheduled for this weekend, CCP will have a chance to react to another player-driven event. Hopefully we'll see it included in EVE's official history.
If I could ask for one lore-related thing from CCP, I'd ask them to let player stories have an meaningful impact on EVE's history. They're already doing such an excellent job of creating stories, so give them the chance to make the stories official.
- Sam.
Edit 18/04/13: It was quite correctly pointed out to me that I had confused Monocle-Gate with Burn Jita. My bad.
What really caught my attention today though, was the 'True Stories' video that CCP released. The video opens with the words "History is made by those who write it." Perhaps it's a linguistics thing, but that's a statement I really disagree with. It goes against the point I tried to make about it being better for CCP to record player events as history instead of writing history and then giving the players a chance to watch it happen.
I'm a fan of the True Stories project, no matter how biased some of the stories will inevitably be, and I'd like to see that style of historical record become part of the game itself, not simply an out-of-game writing contest. The lore surrounding the major empires only affects part of the player base, but it makes up the vast majority of the official history of EVE. Where's the history and lore of wormholes and player-owned null-sec?
".....With the return of Live Events such as the Battle for Caldari Prime, clearly the prime fiction of EVE is back in favour as part of this new thematic approach to expansions. However, EVE's story is very much a tale of two playstyles, with an entirely player-driven narrative unfolding daily in parallel to the reinvigorated backstory. Often, they do not mix well. How can these two disparate elements be united or at least comfortably co-exist in a single sandbox universe?"
I'm not really sure how to answer that question, the way it's phrased. See, I'm of the opinion that things are mixing well. The ongoing story of EVE (as written by CCP) and the player-driven gameplay interact without too much fuss. That is to say, they don't interact, and that's not a bad thing. I don't want CCP's story to change my gameplay, I'd rather see CCP letting my gameplay change the story.
As it stands right now, players aren't inconvenienced or forced to give up doing what they love to do by storyline events. While I like the fact that CCP has decided to move the storyline forward, I don't want to log on some day and find out that thanks to storyline progress, the Jove have invaded Jita and made it completely impassable to all traffic. That's certainly an extreme example, but it's the kind of thing that would illustrate story changing gameplay, as opposed to gameplay changing story. If CCP continues with storyline-advancing live events like many people have asked for, the events and the results of the events need to either compliment or side-step current gameplay, not detract from it.
The 'Battle for Caldari Prime' event which happened recently is a fine example of doing story advancement in a way that neither helps or hurts player. It was accessible to players who wanted to participate, and it wasn't a barrier to the gameplay of anyone who didn't want to. On the positive side: Adequate notice was given so that people could prepare, only Luminaire and the systems connected to it were affected, and it had a definitive result which advanced EVE's lore. The biggest complaints? The limited number of EVE players who were able to get into the system to start (stupid DUST bunnies), and the fact that player actions had no bearing on the final outcome. Would it have been amazing to see the outcome of the event and consequently the storyline of EVE be decided by player actions? Absolutely.
That's the one thing I would love to see more than any other going forward. Live events that are actually interactive, and making player actions part of the game lore. When RvB had a massive brawl in Poinen, they managed to crash CONCORD. How cool would it be to have that become an official part of the EVE story? A massive capsuleer fight led to CONCORD being forced to leave gaps in their coverage to respond. That's a pretty memorable event, certainly something that worthy of being noted in the history of EVE. How about the battle of Asakai? That was possibly the best player-driven event we've seen to date. There's tons of video and written battle reports, could CCP compile them into one historical record and make it part of the official story? The best events in EVE have been/are being/will be written by players, and it would be amazing to see the lore reflect that.
We've already seen CCP do this to a small degree. Next time you happen to be in Jita, take a look at the monument just off the 4-4 station. One of the fun things people did in Jita during the fallout after Incarna was shooting the monument (Rainbow lasers are pretty and you know it). In recognition of the event, CCP replaced the in-game model with a destroyed monument and commemorated its destruction in the new description you see whenever you 'show info' on it. Since Burn Jita 2.0 is scheduled for this weekend, CCP will have a chance to react to another player-driven event. Hopefully we'll see it included in EVE's official history.
If I could ask for one lore-related thing from CCP, I'd ask them to let player stories have an meaningful impact on EVE's history. They're already doing such an excellent job of creating stories, so give them the chance to make the stories official.
- Sam.
Edit 18/04/13: It was quite correctly pointed out to me that I had confused Monocle-Gate with Burn Jita. My bad.
What really caught my attention today though, was the 'True Stories' video that CCP released. The video opens with the words "History is made by those who write it." Perhaps it's a linguistics thing, but that's a statement I really disagree with. It goes against the point I tried to make about it being better for CCP to record player events as history instead of writing history and then giving the players a chance to watch it happen.
I'm a fan of the True Stories project, no matter how biased some of the stories will inevitably be, and I'd like to see that style of historical record become part of the game itself, not simply an out-of-game writing contest. The lore surrounding the major empires only affects part of the player base, but it makes up the vast majority of the official history of EVE. Where's the history and lore of wormholes and player-owned null-sec?
Finding time to fight
I was just sitting down to write my BB46 post yesterday, when an orange-tagged visitor showed up in local. I put a cloak on my tackle Rifter and went scouting. As more people decided to poke around, our visitor decided to pull out of the system, revealing himself to be a Loki as he moved off the gate he'd just jumped through. He was joined a few minutes later by some alliance mates in the same system.
We managed to nab an Arazu who tried to leave our home system through the same gate shortly after. He had a covert ops cloak, but we threw five or six frigates at the last spot he'd been. He was decloaked and popped rather quickly, but not before he had time to light a cyno. We all piled back onto the gate, and left our bait Drake behind to sucker the incoming bombers into aggressing while we got out.
Sadly, our Drake pilot had forgotten to fit an MWD in the mad rush to get the bait onto the field, so by the time he got back to the gate, a full half of their fleet had gotten through the gate and were waiting for him to come through. I sat cloaked twenty kilometres off the stargate and watched our poor Drake get torn apart by fifteen or so stealth bombers.
They tried camping us into the outpost in our system, but we started reshipping down. Our mix of ships quickly became a fleet of frigates. Undocking one or two frigates at a time, we eventually tried to bait them into going after a Jaguar. When they didn't bite, we pulled back and camped them into the pocket while we waited for the mining fleet we had up a couple jumps away for reship. Up came another ten pilots in Thoraxes, ready to camp them in. We moved our frigates back down into the pocket to try to push the bombers toward the cruisers.
We'd gotten a pretty solid idea of their fleet comp by this time, and they seemed to be missing one of the most important parts of a Black Ops fleet. We had a Loki, Pilgrim, and twenty odd bombers camping one of our outposts, but we couldn't find their black ops battleship anywhere. Finally, one of our probers got a hit on a Sin when he changed which system he was hiding in.
We charged back towards the bombers in an attempt to cut them off from their ride, and got between the two fleets in time to nab a Manticore and pod when they tried to scout their route to the Sin. With a large portion of our fleet now piling into the same system as the bombers, they decided to log off. Everyone who had a scanning ship available swapped up immediately, but the best scan strength anyone got before the log-offs completed was 80%.
I was a good night for my kill-board, as I was one of the few people able to lock and the shoot the Azaru before it simply melted, and I managed to nab the 80 mil pod of the Manticore pilot. My bright idea of the night was remembering to dock and off-load the Drake loot and my cloaking device before heading out to join the camp. Gave me the room to scoop the Manticore loot, and that pod would would have had a much better chance of getting out if my scan res was still getting -50% from the cloak.
I love :gudfights: when they come directly to you, and considering the number of times we've been seeing these guys, they're happy to keep giving them to us.
- Sam.
We managed to nab an Arazu who tried to leave our home system through the same gate shortly after. He had a covert ops cloak, but we threw five or six frigates at the last spot he'd been. He was decloaked and popped rather quickly, but not before he had time to light a cyno. We all piled back onto the gate, and left our bait Drake behind to sucker the incoming bombers into aggressing while we got out.
Sadly, our Drake pilot had forgotten to fit an MWD in the mad rush to get the bait onto the field, so by the time he got back to the gate, a full half of their fleet had gotten through the gate and were waiting for him to come through. I sat cloaked twenty kilometres off the stargate and watched our poor Drake get torn apart by fifteen or so stealth bombers.
They tried camping us into the outpost in our system, but we started reshipping down. Our mix of ships quickly became a fleet of frigates. Undocking one or two frigates at a time, we eventually tried to bait them into going after a Jaguar. When they didn't bite, we pulled back and camped them into the pocket while we waited for the mining fleet we had up a couple jumps away for reship. Up came another ten pilots in Thoraxes, ready to camp them in. We moved our frigates back down into the pocket to try to push the bombers toward the cruisers.
We'd gotten a pretty solid idea of their fleet comp by this time, and they seemed to be missing one of the most important parts of a Black Ops fleet. We had a Loki, Pilgrim, and twenty odd bombers camping one of our outposts, but we couldn't find their black ops battleship anywhere. Finally, one of our probers got a hit on a Sin when he changed which system he was hiding in.
We charged back towards the bombers in an attempt to cut them off from their ride, and got between the two fleets in time to nab a Manticore and pod when they tried to scout their route to the Sin. With a large portion of our fleet now piling into the same system as the bombers, they decided to log off. Everyone who had a scanning ship available swapped up immediately, but the best scan strength anyone got before the log-offs completed was 80%.
I was a good night for my kill-board, as I was one of the few people able to lock and the shoot the Azaru before it simply melted, and I managed to nab the 80 mil pod of the Manticore pilot. My bright idea of the night was remembering to dock and off-load the Drake loot and my cloaking device before heading out to join the camp. Gave me the room to scoop the Manticore loot, and that pod would would have had a much better chance of getting out if my scan res was still getting -50% from the cloak.
I love :gudfights: when they come directly to you, and considering the number of times we've been seeing these guys, they're happy to keep giving them to us.
- Sam.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Power to the people
Did my voting tonight so I wouldn't forget before the polls close. There was supposedly an alliance list of who the coalition wanted us to vote for, but asking for it a couple times didn't produce anything. I had no interest in voting a completely null-sec ballot anyways, as some of the people put up by the coalitions came across as complete idiots either in print or during their Crossing Zebras interview.
So, here's the list.
1. Mangala Solaris
2. Kesper North
3. Mike Azariah
4. progodlegend
5. Ali Aras
6. Unforgiven Storm
7. Ripard Teg
8. Malcanis
9. Roc Wieler
10. Psychotic Monk
11. Travis Musgrat
12. riverini
13. Artctura
14. Sala Cameron
I'd say it's the top five that I truly hope to see on CSM8. Mangala and RvB are nothing but pure fun. They are one of the best things going in EVE, and I truly hope someone of that calibre makes it onto the CSM. Kesper is my second choice mainly because of how well his CZ interview went. He undoubtably felt fairly comfortable talking to someone who is a member of his alliance, but he proved himself an able communicator. Mike's on the list because he's the one person I can say I've actually conversed with out of all the candidates, and he's simply a smart guy. Pro's in number 4 because he's my favourite null-sec candidate who isn't in CFC, and Ali Aras is in number 5 because out of all the candidates on the ballot, she's the closest thing to a representative for my current EVE playstyle and character age.
Of course, the campaign process revealed some people I'd never ever vote for, even if they put a gun to my head. People like Trebor and James Arget, who have egos the size of Titans. Someone like Psychobitch, who only got through the primaries by spamming Jita local. Or, heaven forbid that he be elected, Kaleb Rysode, who said "y'know" 292 times during his thirty minute interview on Crossing Zebras (That's just under 10 times a minute, or once every 6 seconds). Yes, I counted. What are the odds CCP ever invites him to take part in a summit? I can already visualize Dolan beating him with a folding chair.
All the same, best of luck to all candidates. I'll be watching the HD stream to see mynnna accept his crown.
- Sam.
So, here's the list.
1. Mangala Solaris
2. Kesper North
3. Mike Azariah
4. progodlegend
5. Ali Aras
6. Unforgiven Storm
7. Ripard Teg
8. Malcanis
9. Roc Wieler
10. Psychotic Monk
11. Travis Musgrat
12. riverini
13. Artctura
14. Sala Cameron
I'd say it's the top five that I truly hope to see on CSM8. Mangala and RvB are nothing but pure fun. They are one of the best things going in EVE, and I truly hope someone of that calibre makes it onto the CSM. Kesper is my second choice mainly because of how well his CZ interview went. He undoubtably felt fairly comfortable talking to someone who is a member of his alliance, but he proved himself an able communicator. Mike's on the list because he's the one person I can say I've actually conversed with out of all the candidates, and he's simply a smart guy. Pro's in number 4 because he's my favourite null-sec candidate who isn't in CFC, and Ali Aras is in number 5 because out of all the candidates on the ballot, she's the closest thing to a representative for my current EVE playstyle and character age.
Of course, the campaign process revealed some people I'd never ever vote for, even if they put a gun to my head. People like Trebor and James Arget, who have egos the size of Titans. Someone like Psychobitch, who only got through the primaries by spamming Jita local. Or, heaven forbid that he be elected, Kaleb Rysode, who said "y'know" 292 times during his thirty minute interview on Crossing Zebras (That's just under 10 times a minute, or once every 6 seconds). Yes, I counted. What are the odds CCP ever invites him to take part in a summit? I can already visualize Dolan beating him with a folding chair.
All the same, best of luck to all candidates. I'll be watching the HD stream to see mynnna accept his crown.
- Sam.
Hot-drop o'clock
Or so the joke about PL's method of time-keeping goes.
Being the small alliance that we are, we never really expected to have Pandemic Legion show up in our little bit of space, but apparently they're very bored these days. It must have been a slow night for them, as they dropped a bunch of carriers and supercarriers on our two dreads and three carriers. I showed up about 2 minutes after our dreads died, and got to watch three Aeons, three Nyxes, and one cyno Thanatos sit around waiting for the cyno to drop.
To make a long story short, one of the corps in our alliance had admitted a member without performing the usual stringent background checks. The second our dreads entered siege, a neutral logged on in the system our caps were in, and warped his Purifier to zero on our caps before lighting a cyno. The support fleet killed him within seconds of the cyno going up, but it was apparently enough time for PL to act.
According to the reports of the pilots who were around for the fight, the first PL capitals started landing on grid ten to fifteen seconds after the cyno was down, and it was pretty much a GTFO manouver from that point on. Our carriers managed to get out, and the support subcaps quickly followed. Total loss, two dreads.
On the more hilarious side of things, one of our alliance members decided to whore on the kill-mails of our own dreadnaughts. Since our cyno pilot had been in a Burst, we actually finished the night with a green killboard:
Us - 2 dreads and a Purifier
Them - 2 dreads and a Burst
The rest of the story is pretty predicable: Booted spy, chastized recruiter, dread pilots fitting up another dread. From the convo our killmail whore got, PL thought his manouver was pretty smart/funny, and we all had to agree. Sadly, PL popped the dread wrecks before leaving, but I did get to scoop the loot from the Purifier wreck. The loot fairy was very kind.
- Sam.
Being the small alliance that we are, we never really expected to have Pandemic Legion show up in our little bit of space, but apparently they're very bored these days. It must have been a slow night for them, as they dropped a bunch of carriers and supercarriers on our two dreads and three carriers. I showed up about 2 minutes after our dreads died, and got to watch three Aeons, three Nyxes, and one cyno Thanatos sit around waiting for the cyno to drop.
To make a long story short, one of the corps in our alliance had admitted a member without performing the usual stringent background checks. The second our dreads entered siege, a neutral logged on in the system our caps were in, and warped his Purifier to zero on our caps before lighting a cyno. The support fleet killed him within seconds of the cyno going up, but it was apparently enough time for PL to act.
According to the reports of the pilots who were around for the fight, the first PL capitals started landing on grid ten to fifteen seconds after the cyno was down, and it was pretty much a GTFO manouver from that point on. Our carriers managed to get out, and the support subcaps quickly followed. Total loss, two dreads.
On the more hilarious side of things, one of our alliance members decided to whore on the kill-mails of our own dreadnaughts. Since our cyno pilot had been in a Burst, we actually finished the night with a green killboard:
Us - 2 dreads and a Purifier
Them - 2 dreads and a Burst
The rest of the story is pretty predicable: Booted spy, chastized recruiter, dread pilots fitting up another dread. From the convo our killmail whore got, PL thought his manouver was pretty smart/funny, and we all had to agree. Sadly, PL popped the dread wrecks before leaving, but I did get to scoop the loot from the Purifier wreck. The loot fairy was very kind.
- Sam.
Saturday, April 6, 2013
The bad touch
Much has been made about the recent bumping campaign against miners. James315 and his New Order have gained some measure of internet fame for their actions. Since the official ruling from CCP was that bumping is not an exploit nor griefing, I suppose it was inevitable that we see proposals from players about how CCP should change the game to protect the miners. I've heard some hilariously bad ideas, but I found I felt was worth a blog post.
Mabrick, author of "Mabrick's Mumblings," recently made two posts about the possibility of bringing collision damage into the mix. You can find the posts in question here and here. To sum them up, Mabrick would like see collision damage implemented in such a way that ships take damage to their shields/armor/hull/mods depending on speed and mass calculations.
For the situation Mabrick chose to describe (Catalyst bumping Hulk), it starts off as a decent idea. The calculations of such an impact using real-world physics certainly make thing look bad for the Catalyst. Might the destroyer pilot put a dent in the exhumer? Certainly, but his Catalyst is likely to end up pancaked on the exterior of the Hulk in exchange.
The problem is with the narrowness of scope that Mabrick's proposal looks at. Let's up the class of ship ramming into the exhumer. Now we have a battleship doing more than 1000m/s. Let's make it a Typhoon for argument's sake. Loaded up with shield extenders, armor plates, and reinforced bulkheads to make sure it can handle the simultaneous shield/armor/hull damage Mabrick would like to see inflicted. The Typhoon's not going to need weapons, so all of its powergrid can go to loading up on armor plates. That's a lot of fast-moving hitpoints and mass.
I'm not going to bore anyone with math or facts, but I'm sure you get the idea. Some system in New Eden now has one less exhumer, and one slightly scratched battleship. That battleship's not in any danger though. He's got buddies. His buddies brought remote reps. It doesn't even have to be dedicated logistics ships either. That Typhoon has 8 empty high slots. Plenty of space to fit fun stuff like shield, armor, hull, and cap transfers. No PG after all those plates? Rep drones will work too, albiet slower. Two guys in Typhoons can clear out icebelts in no time at all. There's no more docking up to grab another Catalyst after every gank, all you have to do is point your battleship at the next target.
What about situations not involving mining ships? I run incursions from time to time for ISK. Like most fleets of any size, they have an anchor, one ship which other pilots orbit or keep at range so that they can concentrate on more important things, like who to shoot or who to rep. There's ALWAYS one guy in a Machariel who forgets to keep his anchor at range, and winds up slamming into the anchor while MWDing at top speed. The hull of most 'pro' incursion ships costs more than one billion, and with deadspace and faction fittings the norm, the cost of such a collision could easily reach multiple billions. That's a lot of tears.
How well would the massive null-sec fleets work without anchors? If you think there's not enough fights in null-sec now, wait until people start losing ships to the inevitable pinball effect in large fleets. SRPs will get kicked in the teeth, until fleets simply stop happening because of the senseless waste of money they cause. Dreadnaught pinball is amusing to watch now, but add in collision damage? Ooooooooh.* Much like the people who forget to keep their anchor at range, what about people who mistakenly hit approach and ram a titan or jump bridge? What about POS shields? Your ship might not exactly be usable after that.
Ever dropped out of warp a little too close to a stargate/station/acceleration gate/asteroid? You didn't want that ship anyways, right? Station undocks could become ship graveyards. A fair few people who had a similar idea commented on Mabrick's posts wondering what the Jita undock would look like. Freighters take up a lot of space, and I've bounced off more than a few of them while undocking from 4-4. Add in the guided missles that gank-tank battleships have become, and Burn Jita becomes a much more devastating Bump Jita.
Another aspect of the proposal is module damage. If you're implementing collision damage, why not make the bit and pieces on the outside of a ship feel the pain too? It's a fair point. Nanite Repair Paste prices might climb a bit, which for could good for Mabrick (he's been known to post about manufacturing NRP from time to time), but pilots who can't be bothered with the stuff can just dock and repair their mods without much ganking time lost.
So where's CONCORD to protect the innocents? Well, Mabrick doesn't think that bumping should cause you to be Concordokkened. Reading his reply to a comment asking about it, it sounds like Mabrick actually supports the idea of using collision damage as a weapon against miners. So where does that leave our Typhoon pilot? He's got a positive sec status. No more negative ten pilots having to drag the space police away between each attempted kill, and no flying between systems in pods. There's no more 'one ship = one gank attempt' for a griefing pilot. If he plans well, he might never need to buy a second ship for his activities.
Frankly, having CONCORD respond to any ship on ship contact would be disastrous for high-sec. Did you just tap my Abbadon with your freighter as you were undocking? Ram my Rifter with your freighter while auto-piloting to a gate? Even if bumping someone only earned you a flag, your freighter's dead as soon as my buddies see you start flashing. The best part? The freighter pilot is the one taking a security status hit. CONCORD would be the ultimate weapon in the ganker's arsenal.
Would collision damage make EVE more realistic? Yeah, sure. We have submarines in space instead of anything resembling Newtonian physics, but things slamming into each other usually causes some kind of damage. I can't disagree with Mabrick about that. My only counter-point is that for all the "EVE IS REAL" promos we've heard, we're playing a game, a game that is already hard and complex enough. Forcing the people who survive the undocking collision damage to constantly steer their ship manually is just cruel and unnecessary punishment. Pilots won't be able to warp to zero on anything on the off chance you smack into it, and that'd just be a pain in the behind.
I don't know whether Mabrick meant the proposal to benefit or harm miners, or if he just likes the idea of smacking ships together and watching them go boom. I'm a fan of watching ships (preferably not mine) go boom, but collision damage seems to be a game mechanic that would cause a whole lot of hassle for absolutely no benefit beyond realism. Given the fact that EVE is science fiction, I (and I imagine many other players) are happy to have CCP handwave the lack of collision damage as "emergency manouvering boosters" and "collision prevention sensors."
It's detrimental to people in fleets, it's detrimental to anyone who undocks from a trade hub, and it's detrimental to the miners who are complaining about being bumped under the current system. The people who benefit from collision damage? Gankers and griefers.
BRB, buying a Typhoon.
- Sam.
Also, I'm taking this chance to promote Mabrick's blog to the 5 or so of you who read mine. I learned 90% of what I know about industry (which, I admit, isn't a ton) from reading his blog. While I mostly disagreed with his views on collision damage, he's always worth reading. Once I figure out the Blogspot control panel, I'll start adding similar blogs to the side-bar.
* Your new (old) meta is spider-tanking Drakes. Enjoy.
Mabrick, author of "Mabrick's Mumblings," recently made two posts about the possibility of bringing collision damage into the mix. You can find the posts in question here and here. To sum them up, Mabrick would like see collision damage implemented in such a way that ships take damage to their shields/armor/hull/mods depending on speed and mass calculations.
For the situation Mabrick chose to describe (Catalyst bumping Hulk), it starts off as a decent idea. The calculations of such an impact using real-world physics certainly make thing look bad for the Catalyst. Might the destroyer pilot put a dent in the exhumer? Certainly, but his Catalyst is likely to end up pancaked on the exterior of the Hulk in exchange.
The problem is with the narrowness of scope that Mabrick's proposal looks at. Let's up the class of ship ramming into the exhumer. Now we have a battleship doing more than 1000m/s. Let's make it a Typhoon for argument's sake. Loaded up with shield extenders, armor plates, and reinforced bulkheads to make sure it can handle the simultaneous shield/armor/hull damage Mabrick would like to see inflicted. The Typhoon's not going to need weapons, so all of its powergrid can go to loading up on armor plates. That's a lot of fast-moving hitpoints and mass.
I'm not going to bore anyone with math or facts, but I'm sure you get the idea. Some system in New Eden now has one less exhumer, and one slightly scratched battleship. That battleship's not in any danger though. He's got buddies. His buddies brought remote reps. It doesn't even have to be dedicated logistics ships either. That Typhoon has 8 empty high slots. Plenty of space to fit fun stuff like shield, armor, hull, and cap transfers. No PG after all those plates? Rep drones will work too, albiet slower. Two guys in Typhoons can clear out icebelts in no time at all. There's no more docking up to grab another Catalyst after every gank, all you have to do is point your battleship at the next target.
What about situations not involving mining ships? I run incursions from time to time for ISK. Like most fleets of any size, they have an anchor, one ship which other pilots orbit or keep at range so that they can concentrate on more important things, like who to shoot or who to rep. There's ALWAYS one guy in a Machariel who forgets to keep his anchor at range, and winds up slamming into the anchor while MWDing at top speed. The hull of most 'pro' incursion ships costs more than one billion, and with deadspace and faction fittings the norm, the cost of such a collision could easily reach multiple billions. That's a lot of tears.
How well would the massive null-sec fleets work without anchors? If you think there's not enough fights in null-sec now, wait until people start losing ships to the inevitable pinball effect in large fleets. SRPs will get kicked in the teeth, until fleets simply stop happening because of the senseless waste of money they cause. Dreadnaught pinball is amusing to watch now, but add in collision damage? Ooooooooh.* Much like the people who forget to keep their anchor at range, what about people who mistakenly hit approach and ram a titan or jump bridge? What about POS shields? Your ship might not exactly be usable after that.
Ever dropped out of warp a little too close to a stargate/station/acceleration gate/asteroid? You didn't want that ship anyways, right? Station undocks could become ship graveyards. A fair few people who had a similar idea commented on Mabrick's posts wondering what the Jita undock would look like. Freighters take up a lot of space, and I've bounced off more than a few of them while undocking from 4-4. Add in the guided missles that gank-tank battleships have become, and Burn Jita becomes a much more devastating Bump Jita.
Another aspect of the proposal is module damage. If you're implementing collision damage, why not make the bit and pieces on the outside of a ship feel the pain too? It's a fair point. Nanite Repair Paste prices might climb a bit, which for could good for Mabrick (he's been known to post about manufacturing NRP from time to time), but pilots who can't be bothered with the stuff can just dock and repair their mods without much ganking time lost.
So where's CONCORD to protect the innocents? Well, Mabrick doesn't think that bumping should cause you to be Concordokkened. Reading his reply to a comment asking about it, it sounds like Mabrick actually supports the idea of using collision damage as a weapon against miners. So where does that leave our Typhoon pilot? He's got a positive sec status. No more negative ten pilots having to drag the space police away between each attempted kill, and no flying between systems in pods. There's no more 'one ship = one gank attempt' for a griefing pilot. If he plans well, he might never need to buy a second ship for his activities.
Frankly, having CONCORD respond to any ship on ship contact would be disastrous for high-sec. Did you just tap my Abbadon with your freighter as you were undocking? Ram my Rifter with your freighter while auto-piloting to a gate? Even if bumping someone only earned you a flag, your freighter's dead as soon as my buddies see you start flashing. The best part? The freighter pilot is the one taking a security status hit. CONCORD would be the ultimate weapon in the ganker's arsenal.
Would collision damage make EVE more realistic? Yeah, sure. We have submarines in space instead of anything resembling Newtonian physics, but things slamming into each other usually causes some kind of damage. I can't disagree with Mabrick about that. My only counter-point is that for all the "EVE IS REAL" promos we've heard, we're playing a game, a game that is already hard and complex enough. Forcing the people who survive the undocking collision damage to constantly steer their ship manually is just cruel and unnecessary punishment. Pilots won't be able to warp to zero on anything on the off chance you smack into it, and that'd just be a pain in the behind.
I don't know whether Mabrick meant the proposal to benefit or harm miners, or if he just likes the idea of smacking ships together and watching them go boom. I'm a fan of watching ships (preferably not mine) go boom, but collision damage seems to be a game mechanic that would cause a whole lot of hassle for absolutely no benefit beyond realism. Given the fact that EVE is science fiction, I (and I imagine many other players) are happy to have CCP handwave the lack of collision damage as "emergency manouvering boosters" and "collision prevention sensors."
It's detrimental to people in fleets, it's detrimental to anyone who undocks from a trade hub, and it's detrimental to the miners who are complaining about being bumped under the current system. The people who benefit from collision damage? Gankers and griefers.
BRB, buying a Typhoon.
- Sam.
Also, I'm taking this chance to promote Mabrick's blog to the 5 or so of you who read mine. I learned 90% of what I know about industry (which, I admit, isn't a ton) from reading his blog. While I mostly disagreed with his views on collision damage, he's always worth reading. Once I figure out the Blogspot control panel, I'll start adding similar blogs to the side-bar.
* Your new (old) meta is spider-tanking Drakes. Enjoy.
Saturday, March 30, 2013
We bravely ran away....
From a fleet that outnumbered us four to one.
In my alliance, Friday night is Drunk Roam night. The sloshed bros gather, bringing whatever we have in our hangars that we're not particularily attached to. We're lucky if we can get more than a couple tackle, and the odds of people wanting to fly logistics is rather low. It usually takes ten minutes just to talk/cajole/force pilots into support ships.
There's only a few rules for Drunk Roam:
1. When you screw up, you take a drink.
2. When the FC doesn't find us stuff to shoot, we shoot the FC.
3. When we run out of booze, the roam is over.
As usual, I was the only person to show up with a logistics ship, so various others were poked and prodded until we had two more. Finding tackle was even harder, so much so that we set out with only one light tackler. Being Drunk Roam, we left half of our fleet behind, and had to wait for them catch up. Catch up they did, only for us to discover that the FC had wandered away from his computer some time ago. This of course led to the second rule being enacted.
Once the FC had reshipped, we started wandering around, looking for more stuff to shoot. It was beginning to look like we might have to enact the second rule again, when a Tornado let himself get caught 50km off a gate by our scout. The Tornado must not have hit our scout with anything, because I had nothing to rep once I finally landed. We missed his pod, but managed to follow it for another 5 jumps before he finally got away.
We came across a few ships with cloaks fitted. A Tengu and a Loki both slipped past us before we could lock them up. Finally, a Sabre jumped into us. Without a cov-ops cloak, he was easy enough to decloak, so we popped both his ship and his pod. Continuing in the direction the Sabre had come from, our scout found a system with 40-odd people in local. Figuring we might find a decent fight for our 32-man fleet, we rushed in to fight them, only to have local spike to 150.
Our departure from that system was swift, and we started running home. Our scout managed to catch some info on what was chasing us: Battlecruisers (mostly Oracles), up to ten Guardians, a wing of stealth bombers, plus the usual hodgepodge of support. They were catching up with their tackle, so a large portion of our fleet docked up in an NPC system. Our docked-up pilots trolled the other fleet in local chat, naturally, and one of our guys got the bright idea to post something that got him a three day ban less than 5 minutes later. None of us had ever heard of someone being banned that fast, so we naturally responded by calling the other fleet a bunch of pansies who couldn't win at EVE without GMs or blobbing. How many people have to file a petition to get that speedy a response?
The ten or so of us who didn't dock got away without too much trouble, as the other fleet stopped to have a cry about the meanies who were trolling them. We straggled our way home, which cost us our only enemy fire loss of the night, a Tornado pilot who started burning straight home without waiting for the rest of us. He got caught in a drag bubble 290 kilometres behind a gate, where he was quickly burnt down by a waiting Cynabal. An Ares pilot from our fleet landed too late to help the dying Tornado, but nearly suffered the same fate by getting ahead of the fleet as well.
I was the third person to land on grid, and I arrived in time to save the Ares with 34% structure left (I'm still waiting for a high-five). Tackled by the Ares, and unable to break my reps, the Cynabal pilot tried to slow-boat towards me in the hopes of catching my Scythe. Unable to get anywhere near me, and seeing more of our fleet starting to pop up in local, he reversed course and got away from our Ares. By the time some DPS had landed in the bubble, the Cynabal was already in warp to a safe.
Those of us left went traipsing home, only to find that a fleet member had gone AFK at some point and was still four jumps from home, with reds filling the systems between. Since I was one of the few people still on comms post-roam, I got called to scout part of his path home. Fortunately, one Talos is not enough to alpha a Scythe. I had to sit and wait for him to shoot so that he would be unable to follow me through a gate. Even though I was imbibing Drunk Roam, it turned out to be an uncommonly effective bright idea, as it gave me time to get through the gate, safe up, and start D-scanning before he could come through.
Finally, everyone who was still in space got docked up, either at home or in NPC space, and we called it a night. Overall, fleet members violated the first rule at least thirty times, and the second rule once. We were too busy running away to drink heavily over the last third of the roam, so we avoided the third rule. All in all, a successful night. A Tornado, Sabre, and the FC's Drake killed, for the cost of a Tornado and the FC's Drake. Killboard green, thirty people with protesting livers, and a bunch of yellow-bellied blobbers trolled. What more could you want?
- Sam.
Update 30/03/13:
Found out later that someone's buddy in the other fleet had sent over a message explaining what happened on their end. Apparently the stealth bombers were a friendly Black Ops/Stealth Bomber fleet that 'just happened to be in the system' and 'weren't interested in fighting' us at that time. That would mean their fleet of 70 was composed of approximately 50 battlecruisers, 10 tech 2 logistics, and 10 more ships of the tackle/support variety. Our hodgepodge fleet of 30 got called cowards on their comms for running away from a curb-stomp. Guess we're just not as space-rich as them. As for the guy who got banned, well, it was a rather disgusting picture, and there 'might have been' a GM's alt/friend/drinking buddy/neighbor's third cousin twice removed in their fleet.
In my alliance, Friday night is Drunk Roam night. The sloshed bros gather, bringing whatever we have in our hangars that we're not particularily attached to. We're lucky if we can get more than a couple tackle, and the odds of people wanting to fly logistics is rather low. It usually takes ten minutes just to talk/cajole/force pilots into support ships.
There's only a few rules for Drunk Roam:
1. When you screw up, you take a drink.
2. When the FC doesn't find us stuff to shoot, we shoot the FC.
3. When we run out of booze, the roam is over.
As usual, I was the only person to show up with a logistics ship, so various others were poked and prodded until we had two more. Finding tackle was even harder, so much so that we set out with only one light tackler. Being Drunk Roam, we left half of our fleet behind, and had to wait for them catch up. Catch up they did, only for us to discover that the FC had wandered away from his computer some time ago. This of course led to the second rule being enacted.
Once the FC had reshipped, we started wandering around, looking for more stuff to shoot. It was beginning to look like we might have to enact the second rule again, when a Tornado let himself get caught 50km off a gate by our scout. The Tornado must not have hit our scout with anything, because I had nothing to rep once I finally landed. We missed his pod, but managed to follow it for another 5 jumps before he finally got away.
We came across a few ships with cloaks fitted. A Tengu and a Loki both slipped past us before we could lock them up. Finally, a Sabre jumped into us. Without a cov-ops cloak, he was easy enough to decloak, so we popped both his ship and his pod. Continuing in the direction the Sabre had come from, our scout found a system with 40-odd people in local. Figuring we might find a decent fight for our 32-man fleet, we rushed in to fight them, only to have local spike to 150.
Our departure from that system was swift, and we started running home. Our scout managed to catch some info on what was chasing us: Battlecruisers (mostly Oracles), up to ten Guardians, a wing of stealth bombers, plus the usual hodgepodge of support. They were catching up with their tackle, so a large portion of our fleet docked up in an NPC system. Our docked-up pilots trolled the other fleet in local chat, naturally, and one of our guys got the bright idea to post something that got him a three day ban less than 5 minutes later. None of us had ever heard of someone being banned that fast, so we naturally responded by calling the other fleet a bunch of pansies who couldn't win at EVE without GMs or blobbing. How many people have to file a petition to get that speedy a response?
The ten or so of us who didn't dock got away without too much trouble, as the other fleet stopped to have a cry about the meanies who were trolling them. We straggled our way home, which cost us our only enemy fire loss of the night, a Tornado pilot who started burning straight home without waiting for the rest of us. He got caught in a drag bubble 290 kilometres behind a gate, where he was quickly burnt down by a waiting Cynabal. An Ares pilot from our fleet landed too late to help the dying Tornado, but nearly suffered the same fate by getting ahead of the fleet as well.
I was the third person to land on grid, and I arrived in time to save the Ares with 34% structure left (I'm still waiting for a high-five). Tackled by the Ares, and unable to break my reps, the Cynabal pilot tried to slow-boat towards me in the hopes of catching my Scythe. Unable to get anywhere near me, and seeing more of our fleet starting to pop up in local, he reversed course and got away from our Ares. By the time some DPS had landed in the bubble, the Cynabal was already in warp to a safe.
Those of us left went traipsing home, only to find that a fleet member had gone AFK at some point and was still four jumps from home, with reds filling the systems between. Since I was one of the few people still on comms post-roam, I got called to scout part of his path home. Fortunately, one Talos is not enough to alpha a Scythe. I had to sit and wait for him to shoot so that he would be unable to follow me through a gate. Even though I was imbibing Drunk Roam, it turned out to be an uncommonly effective bright idea, as it gave me time to get through the gate, safe up, and start D-scanning before he could come through.
Finally, everyone who was still in space got docked up, either at home or in NPC space, and we called it a night. Overall, fleet members violated the first rule at least thirty times, and the second rule once. We were too busy running away to drink heavily over the last third of the roam, so we avoided the third rule. All in all, a successful night. A Tornado, Sabre, and the FC's Drake killed, for the cost of a Tornado and the FC's Drake. Killboard green, thirty people with protesting livers, and a bunch of yellow-bellied blobbers trolled. What more could you want?
- Sam.
Update 30/03/13:
Found out later that someone's buddy in the other fleet had sent over a message explaining what happened on their end. Apparently the stealth bombers were a friendly Black Ops/Stealth Bomber fleet that 'just happened to be in the system' and 'weren't interested in fighting' us at that time. That would mean their fleet of 70 was composed of approximately 50 battlecruisers, 10 tech 2 logistics, and 10 more ships of the tackle/support variety. Our hodgepodge fleet of 30 got called cowards on their comms for running away from a curb-stomp. Guess we're just not as space-rich as them. As for the guy who got banned, well, it was a rather disgusting picture, and there 'might have been' a GM's alt/friend/drinking buddy/neighbor's third cousin twice removed in their fleet.
Monday, March 25, 2013
No live event for you!
Who: CCP.
What: 'Live Event' with pre-determined outcome and system cap of 1000.
Where: Luminare solar system.
When: Last Friday, well before I was able to log in.
Why: Highsec FFA, DUST and EVE lore advancement.
While I appreciate the effort to move the story of the EVE universe forward, I wonder what the point in advertising this as a 'live event' was. Essentially, CCP turned off CONCORD in Luminare for a few hours. I seem to recall RvB turning off CONCORD across a much wider area not all that long ago. Sure, RvB did it by accident (and by blowing up a lot of ships), but it was still open to a greater number of EVE players.
Of the twenty or so alliance members that tried to go, only two reported being able to get in. One of them died and got podded early on, and couldn't get back in. From what the others reported, the gates were completely covered with people trying to get in. The only explanation I've seen for the system cap is the simultaneous DUST matches running in Luminare.
I can't say with any certainty how the game servers are set up, but would it not have been possible to seperate the two games so that time dilation wouldn't affect the DUST players? I realize that it would prevent DUSTies from calling in orbital bombardment from EVE players, but that could easily be worked around too. I can't find any stats for it, but I'd love to know how many orbital bombardments actually happened during the event.
These are all common complaints that CCP hears, I imagine. There's a few more too: The fact that most of the USTZ was prevented from attending because of when it was scheduled, the fact that players had zero effect whatsoever on the outcome of the fight, and the fact that the titan's death was rather anti-climactic and lacked any kind of interesting visuals.
I'm not sure what the DUST bunnies got out of the event, but it doesn't seem to have been worth the effort it no doubt took to set up on the EVE side of things.
- Sam.
What: 'Live Event' with pre-determined outcome and system cap of 1000.
Where: Luminare solar system.
When: Last Friday, well before I was able to log in.
Why: Highsec FFA, DUST and EVE lore advancement.
While I appreciate the effort to move the story of the EVE universe forward, I wonder what the point in advertising this as a 'live event' was. Essentially, CCP turned off CONCORD in Luminare for a few hours. I seem to recall RvB turning off CONCORD across a much wider area not all that long ago. Sure, RvB did it by accident (and by blowing up a lot of ships), but it was still open to a greater number of EVE players.
Of the twenty or so alliance members that tried to go, only two reported being able to get in. One of them died and got podded early on, and couldn't get back in. From what the others reported, the gates were completely covered with people trying to get in. The only explanation I've seen for the system cap is the simultaneous DUST matches running in Luminare.
I can't say with any certainty how the game servers are set up, but would it not have been possible to seperate the two games so that time dilation wouldn't affect the DUST players? I realize that it would prevent DUSTies from calling in orbital bombardment from EVE players, but that could easily be worked around too. I can't find any stats for it, but I'd love to know how many orbital bombardments actually happened during the event.
These are all common complaints that CCP hears, I imagine. There's a few more too: The fact that most of the USTZ was prevented from attending because of when it was scheduled, the fact that players had zero effect whatsoever on the outcome of the fight, and the fact that the titan's death was rather anti-climactic and lacked any kind of interesting visuals.
I'm not sure what the DUST bunnies got out of the event, but it doesn't seem to have been worth the effort it no doubt took to set up on the EVE side of things.
- Sam.
Friday, March 8, 2013
Don't forget your drones.
I had the chance to do some sightseeing with thirty or so of my closest friends last night. We bounced up, down, and all around looking for a fight. Our mighty frigate ball blobbed some poor fellow who had gotten his Hurricane stuck in a bubble. With a Cynabal and Vagabond-heavy gang being the only people we could find to fight, the decision was made to turn homeward and see what could be found on the other side.
- Sam.
Fake Edit: On a separate note, I'm rather pleased at how effective my artillery/MWD/sensor booster/dual point Stabber Fleet Issue was. It's an odd fit, but it worked perfectly for the situations I ended up facing. Another successful bright idea. I must be getting better at this whole internet spaceships thing. Kill-board efficiency of 99% for March, too. Wait, WHAT?
We'd gotten nearly halfway home when we found what seemed to be a much better fight. The new gang still had frigate-killers, but in lesser numbers than we might have faced before. Needless to say, most of our fleet end up going home with less ship than they'd had when they left. I myself played the part of hero-tackler before I was rapidly de-shipped. Thanks to my early death, I missed out on most of the spectacle but got my pod home safe and sound.
While we killed more than we lost in terms of ISK (barely), most of the fleet packed it in for the night, having had their fun and excitement. Those of us remaining chose to re-ship to something heavier in order to keep our firepower close to what we'd had before. Since I'd yet to fly something in null that wasn't a T1 or T2 logistics cruiser, my hangar was rather devoid of anything with weapons. Given my extremely low number of Gunnery skill points, my selection was rather limited.
Being incapable of fitting any T2 guns, the only weapons I could find to put on my new Stabber Fleet Issue was of the artillery flavor. Meta 3. Needless to say, I was not impressed by the available selection, but I suppose that's what I get for shopping at Null-Sec and Co. instead of Jita-Mart. Thankfully, I found the rest of what I was looking for at prices that weren't completely ridiculous.
Off we went again, moving in the other direction from where we'd initially gone. Our scout eventually caught up to a gang that had gone into a bit of a dead-end. There was a secondary exit point, but it would have taken them many more jumps to get home. We hoped, since they had numerical superiority, that they would choose to come at us instead of going around. We raced to get to the choke point, getting there just in time for our scout to tell us that they were moving out of the pocket.
Their first attempt to break out went rather poorly, and set the trend for the rest of their evening. While the majority of our fleet waited on the other side of the gate, we had a few smaller ships jump in as bait. When the enemy fleet agressed upon arrival, the rest of our fleet moved in and immediately began to tackle anything that hadn't yet fled the grid. Thanks to my sensor booster and scan resolution script, I was able to help one of our bait ships out by taking over the tackle on the biggest thing left on the field, an Omen. He melted quickly enough, and we began to scoop loot as fast as we could.
If it took a lot longer than usual to clear a field that only had three wrecks, it was due to the astounding number of drones the opposing gang had left behind. Querying our scout provided an answer. The majority of the opposing gang had been flying the new Gallente destroyer: the Algos. Since anyone who's read a ship-balancing devblog in the last 6 months has the Destroyers skill trained to 5, it can be a nasty opponent either solo or in gangs.
I can only assume that their FC panicked somewhat when he saw local begin to spike, because the majority of their fleet had already warped off by the time I loaded grid. If they had stuck around to fight, it could have gone poorly for my side, given the sheer number of drones that would have been on us while we raced to chase down each and every Algos.
Once we'd finished scooping all the drones, we pulled back to other side of the gate and waited for them to try again. A large portion of their DPS had vanished into our cargo holds, so we prepared for them to try to simply jump the gate and get away before we could lock them. That worked for a good many of their fleet. We only had a couple frigates with us, so we were forced to settle for only killing three as they made a break for home. Too slow to keep up with them, we too turned for home once again.
We came across a small gang that had bubbled one of the gates we'd passed through earlier. They were a good distance off, having seen the size of our fleet, but they made the mistake of trying to poach a straggler. The gutsy frigate pilot that had tackled the Omen earlier repeated his feat, and managed to snag the opposing gang's Scimitar when it drifted too close. He managed to stay alive long enough for our fleet to get back through the gate and burn the 70km to take over the tackle. In fact, he managed to live long enough for our two T1 logis to lock him up and apply reps. Most of their gang ran, but the Vagabond that had failed to kill our hero Dramiel stuck around just long enough to see the Scimi melt.
Why the name of the post? Well, it's something I heard from the FC all night. Since we were in a small gang, we had to maximize our firepower. That meant we launched drones any time we were holding a gate for more than a few seconds. Having drones assigned to a fast-locking frigate could have given us a vital head start in a DPS race. It applies to the Algos fleet we fought, too. If they'd stayed and fought, they had a good chance of winning. Even after losing a couple ships trying to get away, they still had a good chance if they hadn't left their drones behind.
I can only assume that their FC panicked somewhat when he saw local begin to spike, because the majority of their fleet had already warped off by the time I loaded grid. If they had stuck around to fight, it could have gone poorly for my side, given the sheer number of drones that would have been on us while we raced to chase down each and every Algos.
Once we'd finished scooping all the drones, we pulled back to other side of the gate and waited for them to try again. A large portion of their DPS had vanished into our cargo holds, so we prepared for them to try to simply jump the gate and get away before we could lock them. That worked for a good many of their fleet. We only had a couple frigates with us, so we were forced to settle for only killing three as they made a break for home. Too slow to keep up with them, we too turned for home once again.
We came across a small gang that had bubbled one of the gates we'd passed through earlier. They were a good distance off, having seen the size of our fleet, but they made the mistake of trying to poach a straggler. The gutsy frigate pilot that had tackled the Omen earlier repeated his feat, and managed to snag the opposing gang's Scimitar when it drifted too close. He managed to stay alive long enough for our fleet to get back through the gate and burn the 70km to take over the tackle. In fact, he managed to live long enough for our two T1 logis to lock him up and apply reps. Most of their gang ran, but the Vagabond that had failed to kill our hero Dramiel stuck around just long enough to see the Scimi melt.
Why the name of the post? Well, it's something I heard from the FC all night. Since we were in a small gang, we had to maximize our firepower. That meant we launched drones any time we were holding a gate for more than a few seconds. Having drones assigned to a fast-locking frigate could have given us a vital head start in a DPS race. It applies to the Algos fleet we fought, too. If they'd stayed and fought, they had a good chance of winning. Even after losing a couple ships trying to get away, they still had a good chance if they hadn't left their drones behind.
- Sam.
Fake Edit: On a separate note, I'm rather pleased at how effective my artillery/MWD/sensor booster/dual point Stabber Fleet Issue was. It's an odd fit, but it worked perfectly for the situations I ended up facing. Another successful bright idea. I must be getting better at this whole internet spaceships thing. Kill-board efficiency of 99% for March, too. Wait, WHAT?
Monday, March 4, 2013
Safety in cynos
It's something I've noticed several times since I moved to null-security. Cynosural fields (AKA cynos) make for the fastest, easiest and safest travel in EVE Online. My corp has several capital pilots, all of whom have alts capable of lighting a cyno in a far-off destination. They undock, jump, and dock up at their destination. In total, they're in danger for a matter of seconds if they do it right.
With the Local chat channel giving you a real-time list of who's in the same system as you, the only real danger to my corp-mates would be an awoxer. If there's a neutral or worse in the system you want to jump to, just don't light the cyno. I've lit a couple cynos for corp-mates, and I've got a flawless record. Maybe I've got an over-inflated sense of how easy it is, but the overall difficulty level seems rather low.
I'm aware that there's more than a few things that can go wrong. So-called "kickout stations" have caused near-misses for alliance members in the past, but that's a situation caused by lack of planning and knowledge. While I'm not a capital pilot personally, the general opinion seems to be that losing a jump-capable ship while moving via a cyno is a rather dumb manoeuvre.
As I mentioned in my last post, I had the chance to see capitals tear through structures a while ago. What struck me the most were two things: The sheer fire-power offered by massed capitals, and the ease of movement they enjoyed. In real-space, they move about a millimetre a minute, but light up a cyno and they're the fastest things in space. Moving on to the next target could take the sub-caps three jumps and ten minutes, but the cyno goes up on the new target and the capitals travel there instantaneously.
In high-sec, the biggest ships are the freighters. Sit in Jita and you can watch them come and go constantly. They travel point to point in high-sec with all the grace and speed of a glacier. What would null-sec be like if capital ships had to travel like that too? I've read/heard/watched a lot of EVE-related media that suggest the big null-sec alliances are only possible because they all have their blue buddies sitting on their borders, and no-one shoots anyone ever.
I'd like to posit an alternative explanation for the large territories controlled by the blocs. In an EVE Online without near-instantaneous travel like cynosural fields and titan bridges, what alliance is capable of mounting a focused defense against attack anywhere in their territory at any time? The only way to defend everything is then to spread your defenses thinly to cover all possible points of entry for an enemy. Want to take your capitals on campaign against an enemy to your south? Good luck getting them back to defend against an attack from your northern neighbour in time to fight the attackers off.
What if CCP really wanted to shrink the size of the null-sec powerhouses? They'd force players to move their big guns the same way as the rest of their ships. That's an impossible suggestion though, as they'd never be able to do it without making the Incarna backlash look like a child's tantrum. Bright idea it may be, but it's not going to ever happen.
On the bright side, new players like myself get to continue to covet ships that move faster, carry more, tank more damage, and shoot bigger guns than anything else in the game. And to think, it all comes down to something as simple as cynos.
Now I only need 120 more days of training before I can sit in an Archon. So close!
- Sam.
Edit: If someone with experience as a capital pilot wanted to weigh in on the gameplay effects of removing cynos from a purely mechanical standpoint, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Before you immediately say "rage-quit," I'm already assuming that to be the general reponse. I'm far more interested in the planning and new strategies that would be required to cope with the change to game mechanics.
With the Local chat channel giving you a real-time list of who's in the same system as you, the only real danger to my corp-mates would be an awoxer. If there's a neutral or worse in the system you want to jump to, just don't light the cyno. I've lit a couple cynos for corp-mates, and I've got a flawless record. Maybe I've got an over-inflated sense of how easy it is, but the overall difficulty level seems rather low.
I'm aware that there's more than a few things that can go wrong. So-called "kickout stations" have caused near-misses for alliance members in the past, but that's a situation caused by lack of planning and knowledge. While I'm not a capital pilot personally, the general opinion seems to be that losing a jump-capable ship while moving via a cyno is a rather dumb manoeuvre.
As I mentioned in my last post, I had the chance to see capitals tear through structures a while ago. What struck me the most were two things: The sheer fire-power offered by massed capitals, and the ease of movement they enjoyed. In real-space, they move about a millimetre a minute, but light up a cyno and they're the fastest things in space. Moving on to the next target could take the sub-caps three jumps and ten minutes, but the cyno goes up on the new target and the capitals travel there instantaneously.
In high-sec, the biggest ships are the freighters. Sit in Jita and you can watch them come and go constantly. They travel point to point in high-sec with all the grace and speed of a glacier. What would null-sec be like if capital ships had to travel like that too? I've read/heard/watched a lot of EVE-related media that suggest the big null-sec alliances are only possible because they all have their blue buddies sitting on their borders, and no-one shoots anyone ever.
I'd like to posit an alternative explanation for the large territories controlled by the blocs. In an EVE Online without near-instantaneous travel like cynosural fields and titan bridges, what alliance is capable of mounting a focused defense against attack anywhere in their territory at any time? The only way to defend everything is then to spread your defenses thinly to cover all possible points of entry for an enemy. Want to take your capitals on campaign against an enemy to your south? Good luck getting them back to defend against an attack from your northern neighbour in time to fight the attackers off.
What if CCP really wanted to shrink the size of the null-sec powerhouses? They'd force players to move their big guns the same way as the rest of their ships. That's an impossible suggestion though, as they'd never be able to do it without making the Incarna backlash look like a child's tantrum. Bright idea it may be, but it's not going to ever happen.
On the bright side, new players like myself get to continue to covet ships that move faster, carry more, tank more damage, and shoot bigger guns than anything else in the game. And to think, it all comes down to something as simple as cynos.
Now I only need 120 more days of training before I can sit in an Archon. So close!
- Sam.
Edit: If someone with experience as a capital pilot wanted to weigh in on the gameplay effects of removing cynos from a purely mechanical standpoint, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Before you immediately say "rage-quit," I'm already assuming that to be the general reponse. I'm far more interested in the planning and new strategies that would be required to cope with the change to game mechanics.
Friday, March 1, 2013
Uneven numbers makes for short fights
I recently had the opportunity to be on the other side of a gate-camp for the first time.
We were on the tail end of an alliance fleet, with our night coming to an end. With the caps preparing to jump home, the sub-caps held up on a gate in system until everyone who needed to cyno out was gone. We didn't have a scout on the other side, but there had been no hint of resistance all night. We didn't expect anyone to start fighting back after we'd already completed our objectives for the evening.
That's probably why we were surprised when the gate started flashing with incoming ships. Full credit to our FC though, the reaction time was fantastic. We had primaries called and dead before more than half of their fleet started shooting. The opposing fleet had started decloaking piecemeal, and got picked off one after the other. Even if the fleet numbers had been near even, the lack of co-ordination in the other fleet would have led to a similar result, I imagine.
However, the numbers weren't exactly even. By the time the shooting stopped, we'd killed about sixteen combat vessels (mostly Harbingers and Hurricanes with some T1 cruisers and frigates), and four logistics (Scythes and one Scimitar). Compared to our fleet of thirty T3 battlecruisers with tacklers and logistics, it was a lopsided fight.
I was flying a logistics ship like I usually do in fleets, and it turned out to be a fairly easy job. We lost one Talos, but that was a case of someone being asleep at their keyboard. The pilot failed to broadcast, and by the time we figured out who was being shot, he was floating in a pod. The second person to get primaried was on the ball, and between us, the three logis in our fleet had no trouble keeping him alive. It certainly didn't hurt that second person primaried was a corp-mate I had stuck on at the bottom of my watchlist.
I had the bright idea to stick my light drones on some of last targets called, and managed to wind up on a few kill-mails. With the extra kill-mails going on my record, eve-kill.net reports that I managed to finish February with five kills and four losses, for a staggering efficiency of 76%. For someone who had only managed to get one kill in the previous six months of trying, you can imagine what kind of turnaround month this was.
That said, I have to feel sorry for the people in the opposing gang who went through the same process I've often found myself following. Jump through stargate, lose ship and pod, wake up in new clone. I don't know if it's unusual for twenty-man fleets to roam with no scouts, but they clearly weren't ready to jump into forty ships. I can see now why people don't like getting blobbed. It can't be much fun to die before you can even get off a second volley.
Apparently the axiom "you keep what you kill" goes for null-sec too. I've never seen a battlefield picked clean that fast in any game I've ever played before. I managed to scoop 70k worth of drones, and considered myself lucky until another corpmate admitted he'd been right next to two of the enemy wrecks and had snagged 6.8 mil of ammo and mods.
At least I'd managed to avoid repping any of the opposition in my haste to lock up possible killmails. That could have been hard to explain.
- Sam.
We were on the tail end of an alliance fleet, with our night coming to an end. With the caps preparing to jump home, the sub-caps held up on a gate in system until everyone who needed to cyno out was gone. We didn't have a scout on the other side, but there had been no hint of resistance all night. We didn't expect anyone to start fighting back after we'd already completed our objectives for the evening.
That's probably why we were surprised when the gate started flashing with incoming ships. Full credit to our FC though, the reaction time was fantastic. We had primaries called and dead before more than half of their fleet started shooting. The opposing fleet had started decloaking piecemeal, and got picked off one after the other. Even if the fleet numbers had been near even, the lack of co-ordination in the other fleet would have led to a similar result, I imagine.
However, the numbers weren't exactly even. By the time the shooting stopped, we'd killed about sixteen combat vessels (mostly Harbingers and Hurricanes with some T1 cruisers and frigates), and four logistics (Scythes and one Scimitar). Compared to our fleet of thirty T3 battlecruisers with tacklers and logistics, it was a lopsided fight.
I was flying a logistics ship like I usually do in fleets, and it turned out to be a fairly easy job. We lost one Talos, but that was a case of someone being asleep at their keyboard. The pilot failed to broadcast, and by the time we figured out who was being shot, he was floating in a pod. The second person to get primaried was on the ball, and between us, the three logis in our fleet had no trouble keeping him alive. It certainly didn't hurt that second person primaried was a corp-mate I had stuck on at the bottom of my watchlist.
I had the bright idea to stick my light drones on some of last targets called, and managed to wind up on a few kill-mails. With the extra kill-mails going on my record, eve-kill.net reports that I managed to finish February with five kills and four losses, for a staggering efficiency of 76%. For someone who had only managed to get one kill in the previous six months of trying, you can imagine what kind of turnaround month this was.
That said, I have to feel sorry for the people in the opposing gang who went through the same process I've often found myself following. Jump through stargate, lose ship and pod, wake up in new clone. I don't know if it's unusual for twenty-man fleets to roam with no scouts, but they clearly weren't ready to jump into forty ships. I can see now why people don't like getting blobbed. It can't be much fun to die before you can even get off a second volley.
Apparently the axiom "you keep what you kill" goes for null-sec too. I've never seen a battlefield picked clean that fast in any game I've ever played before. I managed to scoop 70k worth of drones, and considered myself lucky until another corpmate admitted he'd been right next to two of the enemy wrecks and had snagged 6.8 mil of ammo and mods.
At least I'd managed to avoid repping any of the opposition in my haste to lock up possible killmails. That could have been hard to explain.
- Sam.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Ratting on gates
Is a very bad idea when you're in null-sec.
I logged in to EVE on a Wednesday to find that my corp was becoming a member of a null-sec renting alliance. By Friday, the first cynos were being lit, and our band of newly-minted null-bears was straggling out to null, member by member. Some people slipped through without seeing another ship, while I managed to lose those 3 Atrons trying to get in.
As the people who live in null-sec can tell you, NPC ships spawn all over the damn place. You've got your sites/anomalies/complexes/belts/etc. where you can shoot NPCs 23/7. The one place you don't want to shoot NPCs in on the stargates.
Guess who tried their hand at ratting on a null-sec gate?
In the hustle and bustle of setting up our new null-sec home, no one had bothered to get the channel address for our new overlord's intel channel. If you were paying attention to local, and not ratting on the gate, this wouldn't be a problem. Any time you see a neutral spike in local, you warp to a POS and wait it out. It's not complicated.
At least, it shouldn't be. If you're in the bright idea business like I am, you noticed a two frigate/two battleship NPC spawn on the gate you just jumped your Badger through. Being completely unaware of the dangers involved in ratting on a gate, you figured you might as well come back in an artillery Hurricane and pop some rats for easy ISK.
That's when a roaming gang of neutrals jump into the system, drop three interceptors on your battlecruiser, and make a mess of your ship.
I got my pod out, so I didn't compound my loss by losing my implants. It was only when I was safely docked up that I realized I had never set my medical clone to the null-sec station we were living in. If I'd been podded, I'd have needed to fly all the way back down from the high-sec system we used to base out of. I'm lucky I hadn't needed to repackage my Hurricane to get it moved to null, or else I would probably have forgotten to insure it as well.
I've since recovered somewhat from my loss. My killboard efficiency is back over 50%, thanks to an alliance roam where I had the bright idea to KM whore on a 200 million ISK ship with my light drones. My kill to loss ratio is still a shameful 1:5, but at least I'm not losing ships I can't afford to replace.
Maybe I should start flying Tech 2 ships, losing a few of those should tank my stats again.
- Sam.
I logged in to EVE on a Wednesday to find that my corp was becoming a member of a null-sec renting alliance. By Friday, the first cynos were being lit, and our band of newly-minted null-bears was straggling out to null, member by member. Some people slipped through without seeing another ship, while I managed to lose those 3 Atrons trying to get in.
As the people who live in null-sec can tell you, NPC ships spawn all over the damn place. You've got your sites/anomalies/complexes/belts/etc. where you can shoot NPCs 23/7. The one place you don't want to shoot NPCs in on the stargates.
Guess who tried their hand at ratting on a null-sec gate?
In the hustle and bustle of setting up our new null-sec home, no one had bothered to get the channel address for our new overlord's intel channel. If you were paying attention to local, and not ratting on the gate, this wouldn't be a problem. Any time you see a neutral spike in local, you warp to a POS and wait it out. It's not complicated.
At least, it shouldn't be. If you're in the bright idea business like I am, you noticed a two frigate/two battleship NPC spawn on the gate you just jumped your Badger through. Being completely unaware of the dangers involved in ratting on a gate, you figured you might as well come back in an artillery Hurricane and pop some rats for easy ISK.
That's when a roaming gang of neutrals jump into the system, drop three interceptors on your battlecruiser, and make a mess of your ship.
I got my pod out, so I didn't compound my loss by losing my implants. It was only when I was safely docked up that I realized I had never set my medical clone to the null-sec station we were living in. If I'd been podded, I'd have needed to fly all the way back down from the high-sec system we used to base out of. I'm lucky I hadn't needed to repackage my Hurricane to get it moved to null, or else I would probably have forgotten to insure it as well.
I've since recovered somewhat from my loss. My killboard efficiency is back over 50%, thanks to an alliance roam where I had the bright idea to KM whore on a 200 million ISK ship with my light drones. My kill to loss ratio is still a shameful 1:5, but at least I'm not losing ships I can't afford to replace.
Maybe I should start flying Tech 2 ships, losing a few of those should tank my stats again.
- Sam.
Friday, February 22, 2013
The best time to start blogging
http://nosygamer.blogspot.ca/2013/02/the-silly-season-best-time-to-start.html
The time to start blogging is now, apparently. I'll admit I got a chuckle out of the post, even if I personally didn't start blogging because of the CSM elections. I had the bright idea to start blogging because I finally had something worth blogging about. I'm sure no one really wanted to read about someone sitting in an asteroid belt hitting F1 and F2 every three minutes. As a counter-point to my AFK mining, it's much more interesting to read about the exploits of the New Order at www.minerbumping.com as they try to save High-Security space.
I can't really argue against the points made. This is the first CSM election I've been around for, and there's an obvious increase in community activity for the campaign. I've managed to keep up to date on what's being written, but I'm still way behind on my podcast listening. I'd like to blame it on all the fleets I've been in, but it's more the fact that I'm simply overwhelmed by the volume that's being produced.
Do I have an opinion on who I would like to see on the CSM? Of course. I might publish it at some later date, but politics is not why I started blogging, and won't be my primary focus. I'm not terribly mad at anyone in particular despite my misfortunes, and I've no interest in any negative publicity while I'm just getting my blog off of the ground. Shoving my under-informed nose into the political arena would likely lead to calamity.
The only thing I would add to NosyGamer's post is that I don't really see there being a bad time to get involved in the community. If you've got something you think is worth sharing, do so. The worst thing that's going to happen is you'll get called names on the internet. Heck, I'm not even the newest member of the blog scene, that honour goes to Da Dom at http://mysticmonologue.blogspot.com.au/ so far as I've seen. I had the bright idea to start reading his blog on my second screen while keeping half an eye on the fleet I was in.
Whoops.
At least I was only two jumps behind the fleet by the time I caught on.
- Sam.
The time to start blogging is now, apparently. I'll admit I got a chuckle out of the post, even if I personally didn't start blogging because of the CSM elections. I had the bright idea to start blogging because I finally had something worth blogging about. I'm sure no one really wanted to read about someone sitting in an asteroid belt hitting F1 and F2 every three minutes. As a counter-point to my AFK mining, it's much more interesting to read about the exploits of the New Order at www.minerbumping.com as they try to save High-Security space.
I can't really argue against the points made. This is the first CSM election I've been around for, and there's an obvious increase in community activity for the campaign. I've managed to keep up to date on what's being written, but I'm still way behind on my podcast listening. I'd like to blame it on all the fleets I've been in, but it's more the fact that I'm simply overwhelmed by the volume that's being produced.
Do I have an opinion on who I would like to see on the CSM? Of course. I might publish it at some later date, but politics is not why I started blogging, and won't be my primary focus. I'm not terribly mad at anyone in particular despite my misfortunes, and I've no interest in any negative publicity while I'm just getting my blog off of the ground. Shoving my under-informed nose into the political arena would likely lead to calamity.
The only thing I would add to NosyGamer's post is that I don't really see there being a bad time to get involved in the community. If you've got something you think is worth sharing, do so. The worst thing that's going to happen is you'll get called names on the internet. Heck, I'm not even the newest member of the blog scene, that honour goes to Da Dom at http://mysticmonologue.blogspot.com.au/ so far as I've seen. I had the bright idea to start reading his blog on my second screen while keeping half an eye on the fleet I was in.
Whoops.
At least I was only two jumps behind the fleet by the time I caught on.
- Sam.
Propaganda? What propaganda?
http://freebooted.blogspot.ca/2013/02/blog-banter-45-propaganda.html
"In a socially-driven game environment such as EVE Online's, everyone has an agenda. CCP promotes its products and has an army of volunteers to do the same; corporations and alliances deliver entertaining recruitment drives, CSM election candidates solicit for voter favour, bloggers and podcasters opine to their audiences.
In this intricate web of communication, influence and control, what part does propaganda play in your game?"
-----
We don't need no stinkin' propaganda.
Let me clarify.
We don't need no stinkin' obvious propaganda.
Hands up, everyone who watched television today. Did you see a commercial for something? A car, a soft drink, a kid's toy? Congratulations, you're one of the billions of people who were exposed to propaganda today.
Propganda is about manipulating emotions. I'll carry on using television commercials as an example since it's a well-known medium. All the cheerful, smiling people in that Coca-Cola commercial? They're selling you on the idea that drinking Coke will make you happy. New car being sold? Grins all around. Has anyone ever seen diaper commercial with a grumpy baby?
How about the ADT Home Security commercial with the scared mother and child hiding in a bedroom? There's a lightning storm outside! There's a gloved hand breaking through the glass in their door! The advertisement trys to bring out feelings of fear, trys to scare people into buying a home security system. The friendly ADT man shows up to install a security system, and now the sun is shining, and everyone is smiling. Gloved hand breaks a pane of glass, and is met by a shrieking alarm. The home security system has saved the day. Everyone is happy and safe, and the implication is that you can feel the same with a ADT security system of your own.
Let's not even get into the axiom that "sex sells."
Propaganda in advertising has become so pervasive that we've become inured to its manipulations. It takes a truly stunning effort in this day and age to create a deliberate piece of propaganda that stands out. That's why I don't believe that direct propaganda works as a method from self-promotion or demonizing the "enemy." It's simply less effective than it ever has been before.
So where does that leave propaganda in EVE?
There's plenty of propaganda around EVE. We don't appear to have any shortage of talented people from the works I've come across. We have writers, musicians, and artists in abundance. I have to admit, I can't listen to "Let it Be" without singing Suas' "Little Bees" instead. I read EN24 and TheMittani for my EVE news and I get opinion pieces in the process. The problem with those sources of propaganda is that it's expected and commonplace. Wherever you get your news, you know that there's going to be a bias in how it's reported, intentionally or not.
What well-known group in EVE doesn't have pro- or anti- propaganda attached to it? I'm of the opinion that it would be stranger to see an alliance without some form of propaganda department. Whether it's an official part of the chain of command, or two guys with Photoshop, there's always somebody making pro-alliance works. There's plenty of people who are happy to make and spread propaganda to put your alliance down. I'm willing to bet that I'm not the only person to have heard that "GOONS are evil," or "IRC are awful," or even "SOLAR's so weak that they needed FAzor to come save them."
When BB45 asked "what part does propaganda play in your game?" my immediate response fell somewhere between "What part of my game isn't propaganda?" and "Does anyone care about propaganda anymore?" There is nothing in my EVE Online that hasn't been touched by propaganda at some point. I'm a member of a sov-holding null-sec alliance. It's omnipresent, but more isn't always better.
I've gotten used to it. I know, logically, that the "enemy" can't be as bad as my alliance mates claim, or we wouldn't even have to fight them in the first place. They would have long since crumbled under their own incompetence. We can't be the all-powerful, all-knowing alliance that the propaganda claims we are, or else we'd never be attacked. Since propaganda has become so common, the creators have resorted to quantity over quality. That doesn't mean the propaganda is bad, per se. It just means that it's everywhere, and the former standards that seperated well-made from poorly-made have blurred under the deluge.
I get my propaganda on Teamspeak, I get it in fleet chat. I get it when I listen to EVE music, I get it when I read blogs or the news. I get it when my corp-mates make fun of some corp that docked up for a week when we war-decced them. I have no doubt that my propensity for exploding has become propaganda fodder in some other corp or alliance.
I have to wonder, then, if propaganda plays that much of a role in my game. I'm constantly subjected to it, but am I really affected by it? Does hearing so much of it make it more effective? Does beating your head against a brick wall make you smarter? Unlikely, but I've gotten a few bright ideas out of doing just that.
To sum up my roundabout and rambling thoughts, I'd have to say that propaganda just is. It's become so common that we propagandize unconsciously. It's also gotten to the point where many people have learned to filter it out as a matter of habit. I hear it, but I don't listen. I see it, but I don't read it. Propagandize as you will, just don't expect it to do much for me.
- Sam.
"In a socially-driven game environment such as EVE Online's, everyone has an agenda. CCP promotes its products and has an army of volunteers to do the same; corporations and alliances deliver entertaining recruitment drives, CSM election candidates solicit for voter favour, bloggers and podcasters opine to their audiences.
In this intricate web of communication, influence and control, what part does propaganda play in your game?"
-----
We don't need no stinkin' propaganda.
Let me clarify.
We don't need no stinkin' obvious propaganda.
Hands up, everyone who watched television today. Did you see a commercial for something? A car, a soft drink, a kid's toy? Congratulations, you're one of the billions of people who were exposed to propaganda today.
Propganda is about manipulating emotions. I'll carry on using television commercials as an example since it's a well-known medium. All the cheerful, smiling people in that Coca-Cola commercial? They're selling you on the idea that drinking Coke will make you happy. New car being sold? Grins all around. Has anyone ever seen diaper commercial with a grumpy baby?
How about the ADT Home Security commercial with the scared mother and child hiding in a bedroom? There's a lightning storm outside! There's a gloved hand breaking through the glass in their door! The advertisement trys to bring out feelings of fear, trys to scare people into buying a home security system. The friendly ADT man shows up to install a security system, and now the sun is shining, and everyone is smiling. Gloved hand breaks a pane of glass, and is met by a shrieking alarm. The home security system has saved the day. Everyone is happy and safe, and the implication is that you can feel the same with a ADT security system of your own.
Let's not even get into the axiom that "sex sells."
Propaganda in advertising has become so pervasive that we've become inured to its manipulations. It takes a truly stunning effort in this day and age to create a deliberate piece of propaganda that stands out. That's why I don't believe that direct propaganda works as a method from self-promotion or demonizing the "enemy." It's simply less effective than it ever has been before.
So where does that leave propaganda in EVE?
There's plenty of propaganda around EVE. We don't appear to have any shortage of talented people from the works I've come across. We have writers, musicians, and artists in abundance. I have to admit, I can't listen to "Let it Be" without singing Suas' "Little Bees" instead. I read EN24 and TheMittani for my EVE news and I get opinion pieces in the process. The problem with those sources of propaganda is that it's expected and commonplace. Wherever you get your news, you know that there's going to be a bias in how it's reported, intentionally or not.
What well-known group in EVE doesn't have pro- or anti- propaganda attached to it? I'm of the opinion that it would be stranger to see an alliance without some form of propaganda department. Whether it's an official part of the chain of command, or two guys with Photoshop, there's always somebody making pro-alliance works. There's plenty of people who are happy to make and spread propaganda to put your alliance down. I'm willing to bet that I'm not the only person to have heard that "GOONS are evil," or "IRC are awful," or even "SOLAR's so weak that they needed FAzor to come save them."
When BB45 asked "what part does propaganda play in your game?" my immediate response fell somewhere between "What part of my game isn't propaganda?" and "Does anyone care about propaganda anymore?" There is nothing in my EVE Online that hasn't been touched by propaganda at some point. I'm a member of a sov-holding null-sec alliance. It's omnipresent, but more isn't always better.
I've gotten used to it. I know, logically, that the "enemy" can't be as bad as my alliance mates claim, or we wouldn't even have to fight them in the first place. They would have long since crumbled under their own incompetence. We can't be the all-powerful, all-knowing alliance that the propaganda claims we are, or else we'd never be attacked. Since propaganda has become so common, the creators have resorted to quantity over quality. That doesn't mean the propaganda is bad, per se. It just means that it's everywhere, and the former standards that seperated well-made from poorly-made have blurred under the deluge.
I get my propaganda on Teamspeak, I get it in fleet chat. I get it when I listen to EVE music, I get it when I read blogs or the news. I get it when my corp-mates make fun of some corp that docked up for a week when we war-decced them. I have no doubt that my propensity for exploding has become propaganda fodder in some other corp or alliance.
I have to wonder, then, if propaganda plays that much of a role in my game. I'm constantly subjected to it, but am I really affected by it? Does hearing so much of it make it more effective? Does beating your head against a brick wall make you smarter? Unlikely, but I've gotten a few bright ideas out of doing just that.
To sum up my roundabout and rambling thoughts, I'd have to say that propaganda just is. It's become so common that we propagandize unconsciously. It's also gotten to the point where many people have learned to filter it out as a matter of habit. I hear it, but I don't listen. I see it, but I don't read it. Propagandize as you will, just don't expect it to do much for me.
- Sam.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Curbing aggressive tendencies
Gate-camps are a special kind of hell for me.
There's nothing quite like the sight of a Sabre and some Tornados waiting for you to de-cloak. You stop thinking about saving your ship, and starting thinking about how to save your pod. My survival rate against camps with a Sabre was, until yesterday, a flat zero. I must be learning, as I'm now 1 for whatever (probably ~7) when stuck in a 'dictor bubble.
I've learned the hard way that aggressing on the camper(s) won't much help unless A) You're obviously able to kill them or B) You brought enough gum ECM for everyone. I can manage neither. Having forsaken many other skills for the ability to fly logistics ships, I've got neither firepower nor ECM to rely on.
The very first gate-camp I ever ran into was a pair who managed to do surprisingly little DPS. My reaction was probably that of many other new players. It started with "FIRE ALL ZE GUNS" and ended with "What do you mean I can't jump through the gate?" I still had 20 seconds left on my aggression timer when I finally went pop.
Since then, I've never aggressed on a camp. I know I don't have any chance of killing them before they get me, so I point my ship at the gate and spam Jump. A PVE-fit Scimitar did what none of my other ships have done: Got back to the gate and got away safely.
Scimis are tough ships to begin with, T2 resists and 5 mid slots give you the option to set up some fierce shields. Minimum resist in the 80s and a small sig radius means it takes a lot less than full damage, and you can skip adding large amounts of buffer. Being PVE fit meant an afterburner instead of a micro warp drive, so there was no ballooning sig radius, and the warp scrambler on me didn't prevent me from getting up to my top speed.
I couldn't warp away of course, not with the Sabre pilot trying to stick his ship in the exact same piece of space as mine, but I got moving toward to the gate before the other Sabre pilot could try to bump me away. From there, it was just a bit of button mashing, and I was safely back on the other side of the gate.
It certainly wasn't pilot skill that saved my ship, but a combination of factors that worked out just right. I had an afterburner, they had warp scramblers. I was near top speed before the second Sabre woke up and tried to bump me away. I was fit with a high-resist omni tank, they had seconds to try and break it.
Still, that's 130 million that's not making my killboard look even worse. This whole 'not aggressing' thing seems to be one of my first bright ideas to actually pay off. Time for a new one don't you think? I've got decent drone skills... Maybe an armor tanked Vexor with point/web/web? I'd like to try that against a Sabre some time. Given how often I see them, I'll be able to test it sooner or later.
- Sam.
Scimis are tough ships to begin with, T2 resists and 5 mid slots give you the option to set up some fierce shields. Minimum resist in the 80s and a small sig radius means it takes a lot less than full damage, and you can skip adding large amounts of buffer. Being PVE fit meant an afterburner instead of a micro warp drive, so there was no ballooning sig radius, and the warp scrambler on me didn't prevent me from getting up to my top speed.
I couldn't warp away of course, not with the Sabre pilot trying to stick his ship in the exact same piece of space as mine, but I got moving toward to the gate before the other Sabre pilot could try to bump me away. From there, it was just a bit of button mashing, and I was safely back on the other side of the gate.
It certainly wasn't pilot skill that saved my ship, but a combination of factors that worked out just right. I had an afterburner, they had warp scramblers. I was near top speed before the second Sabre woke up and tried to bump me away. I was fit with a high-resist omni tank, they had seconds to try and break it.
Still, that's 130 million that's not making my killboard look even worse. This whole 'not aggressing' thing seems to be one of my first bright ideas to actually pay off. Time for a new one don't you think? I've got decent drone skills... Maybe an armor tanked Vexor with point/web/web? I'd like to try that against a Sabre some time. Given how often I see them, I'll be able to test it sooner or later.
- Sam.
Thursday, February 14, 2013
When renters attack!
http://jestertrek.blogspot.ca/2013/02/rent-to-own.html
I wrote this reply a few days ago, but decided to sit on it for a while to make sure I wasn't having a knee-jerk reaction. I wasn't. Here's the post in the original form with no edits.
-----
Let me start by saying that I like Jester's Trek. I've been reading it for longer than I've been playing EVE, and I've never had any major problems with what has been written in the past.
That changed today, when I read "Rent to own," Ripard Teg's opinion piece on null-sec renters. I strongly disagreed with most of the points made, and as my corp was until very recently part of a renter alliance, I thought myself qualified to offer an opinion on the subject.
I'm not going to bloat this post with the original points that Mr. Teg made, but you can find them at the link at the top of the post.
1. We were never required to join any fleets of the alliance we were renting from. If we wanted to join a defense fleet or a roam, it was possible, but never mandatory, and somewhat difficult to do. Our alliance of 160 might have contributed a couple members once a week. Not really much of an increase to fleet size.
2. See 1. Small, small numbers of renters show up.
3. See 1. Renters never show up in large enough numbers to change the course of a fight or 'impact morale' by dying in droves.
4. See 1. Small numbers, etc. The only increase in grinding I can honestly say my alliance could have caused was the POSes we added to our rental system when we moved in.
5. If my corp wasn't part of a renting alliance, we'd either be in high-sec or folded into a big sov-holding alliance. Either way, we're either not shooting anything, or we're flying in blobs.
6. Hogwash, sir. We relished a chance to fight small gangs, because it allowed us to do PVP without having to go through the hassle of getting onto someone else's comms, getting to their staging system, etc. 10 neuts show up in our system, and we're all docking up our mining/ratting ships to refit for combat.
7. What null-sec organization doesn't turtle up when faced with an un-winnable fight? I'd argue that not wasting time and ISK fighting a group of people who outnumber you 5 to 1 and have cap support on the batphone is just common sense.
8. Fair enough. This is why we're renters after all, and not independent sov-holders. We're not LEET PVP by any means. Most of us are in null to do industry related things, fighting is just a fun side-line to spice up our time.
9. Care-bears.... in nullsec. Null-bears? While I agree that renters will leave their systems if they're faced with an un-winnable war, the protection of those systems is what they're paying for. Loyalty has nothing to do with it. You don't earn loyalty by making people pay you for the priviledge of living in your space. I don't feel loyalty to the person who owns my apartment because I give him hundreds of dollars a month to live in his building.
10. Is literally a repeat of half of 9.
11. People who want to FC big fleets aren't in renter alliances. We don't have big fleets. We can't raise the numbers. Full of null-bears, remember? Also, people from renter alliances aren't generally invited to FC their overlord's fleets, so no big fights for renter FCs.
12. I'll refer back to point 5 for this. Our leaders aren't going to gain experience in holding sov, no matter how you try to look at it. We can rent and not learn about holding sov, go back to high-sec and not learn about holding sov, or fold into a bigger alliance and be nobodies who never learn about holding sov. By the metric presented here, the only people 'qualified' to be sov-holding alliance leaders are people who have +2000 buddies backing them up.
For someone who espouses the small-gang null-sec lifestyle, I'd have thought Ripard would be more forgiving (accepting? understanding?) of the people who try to make it in null any way they can. Elitism is the word that comes to mind when trying to decribe the overall tone of the post, and it doesn't sit well with me.
Ripard is no fan of the blob, and I can understand that. I'm no fan of the blob either. That's why I'm in a corp that likes small-gang PVP and industry. The problem is that his post feels like an attack on small-gang nullsec PVP, something Mr. Teg is supposedly a fan of.
I'm certain a CSM candidate doesn't mean to alienate a portion of the people who might support his campaign, but this post felt like a direct condemnation of the playstyle I've been part of for the last few months. Ripard's alliance hates sov. By their own admission, they have no interest in contesting for sov, and the distaste for structure grinding Mr. Teg expressed during Rote's campaign against neighbouring null-bears leads me to the conclusion he's got no interest the mechanics of sov-holding himself.
There's lots of pseudo-intellectual advice I could offer, but I'll stick to something simple:
- CSM candidates who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
-----
In the 9 months I've been reading Jester's Trek, "Rent to own" is the by far the most inaccurate post* I've seen. I'll even stretch and call it the worst piece of writing I've seen from Ripard Teg. It certainly convinced me that Mr. Teg might not be a good advocate for small alliances in player-sov null-sec. I don't presume to understand the motivations behind writing what he did it, but whatever they were, he must have had one heck of a bright idea.
- Sam.
* Not including the "No, I will not run for CSM8 no matter how much you beg me" posts. Ripard Teg for CSM8? Maybe.
I wrote this reply a few days ago, but decided to sit on it for a while to make sure I wasn't having a knee-jerk reaction. I wasn't. Here's the post in the original form with no edits.
-----
Let me start by saying that I like Jester's Trek. I've been reading it for longer than I've been playing EVE, and I've never had any major problems with what has been written in the past.
That changed today, when I read "Rent to own," Ripard Teg's opinion piece on null-sec renters. I strongly disagreed with most of the points made, and as my corp was until very recently part of a renter alliance, I thought myself qualified to offer an opinion on the subject.
I'm not going to bloat this post with the original points that Mr. Teg made, but you can find them at the link at the top of the post.
1. We were never required to join any fleets of the alliance we were renting from. If we wanted to join a defense fleet or a roam, it was possible, but never mandatory, and somewhat difficult to do. Our alliance of 160 might have contributed a couple members once a week. Not really much of an increase to fleet size.
2. See 1. Small, small numbers of renters show up.
3. See 1. Renters never show up in large enough numbers to change the course of a fight or 'impact morale' by dying in droves.
4. See 1. Small numbers, etc. The only increase in grinding I can honestly say my alliance could have caused was the POSes we added to our rental system when we moved in.
5. If my corp wasn't part of a renting alliance, we'd either be in high-sec or folded into a big sov-holding alliance. Either way, we're either not shooting anything, or we're flying in blobs.
6. Hogwash, sir. We relished a chance to fight small gangs, because it allowed us to do PVP without having to go through the hassle of getting onto someone else's comms, getting to their staging system, etc. 10 neuts show up in our system, and we're all docking up our mining/ratting ships to refit for combat.
7. What null-sec organization doesn't turtle up when faced with an un-winnable fight? I'd argue that not wasting time and ISK fighting a group of people who outnumber you 5 to 1 and have cap support on the batphone is just common sense.
8. Fair enough. This is why we're renters after all, and not independent sov-holders. We're not LEET PVP by any means. Most of us are in null to do industry related things, fighting is just a fun side-line to spice up our time.
9. Care-bears.... in nullsec. Null-bears? While I agree that renters will leave their systems if they're faced with an un-winnable war, the protection of those systems is what they're paying for. Loyalty has nothing to do with it. You don't earn loyalty by making people pay you for the priviledge of living in your space. I don't feel loyalty to the person who owns my apartment because I give him hundreds of dollars a month to live in his building.
10. Is literally a repeat of half of 9.
11. People who want to FC big fleets aren't in renter alliances. We don't have big fleets. We can't raise the numbers. Full of null-bears, remember? Also, people from renter alliances aren't generally invited to FC their overlord's fleets, so no big fights for renter FCs.
12. I'll refer back to point 5 for this. Our leaders aren't going to gain experience in holding sov, no matter how you try to look at it. We can rent and not learn about holding sov, go back to high-sec and not learn about holding sov, or fold into a bigger alliance and be nobodies who never learn about holding sov. By the metric presented here, the only people 'qualified' to be sov-holding alliance leaders are people who have +2000 buddies backing them up.
For someone who espouses the small-gang null-sec lifestyle, I'd have thought Ripard would be more forgiving (accepting? understanding?) of the people who try to make it in null any way they can. Elitism is the word that comes to mind when trying to decribe the overall tone of the post, and it doesn't sit well with me.
Ripard is no fan of the blob, and I can understand that. I'm no fan of the blob either. That's why I'm in a corp that likes small-gang PVP and industry. The problem is that his post feels like an attack on small-gang nullsec PVP, something Mr. Teg is supposedly a fan of.
I'm certain a CSM candidate doesn't mean to alienate a portion of the people who might support his campaign, but this post felt like a direct condemnation of the playstyle I've been part of for the last few months. Ripard's alliance hates sov. By their own admission, they have no interest in contesting for sov, and the distaste for structure grinding Mr. Teg expressed during Rote's campaign against neighbouring null-bears leads me to the conclusion he's got no interest the mechanics of sov-holding himself.
There's lots of pseudo-intellectual advice I could offer, but I'll stick to something simple:
- CSM candidates who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
-----
In the 9 months I've been reading Jester's Trek, "Rent to own" is the by far the most inaccurate post* I've seen. I'll even stretch and call it the worst piece of writing I've seen from Ripard Teg. It certainly convinced me that Mr. Teg might not be a good advocate for small alliances in player-sov null-sec. I don't presume to understand the motivations behind writing what he did it, but whatever they were, he must have had one heck of a bright idea.
- Sam.
* Not including the "No, I will not run for CSM8 no matter how much you beg me" posts. Ripard Teg for CSM8? Maybe.
Christmas Shopping
I realize that we're well into February by now, but I'm working through a back-log of my bright ideas. Without further ado....
Christmas: A season of eggnog, visiting relatives, and CCP gifts. In my case, paying ridiculously inflated prices for the special edition items and ships.
Hoping to score the gift items on the market for low prices as un-suspecting newbies dumped them off for a quick buck, I pounced on whatever was offered on the market for seemingly reasonable prices. Here's a sample of the items I over-paid for, and what they're worth just over a month later:
A Handful of Tiny Stars: 22 million / 4.3 million
Donut Holder: 1.7 million / 140 thousand
Postcard from Poitot: 5.8 million / 750 thousand
Replica Gallente Cruiser: 2.8 million / 280 thousand
Scotty the Docking Manager's Clone: 4.6 million / 500 thousand
The Mini Monolith: 21 million / 1.5 million
Unit of Lag: 6.7 million / 1.3 million
Amazingly, I'm set to turn a profit on my 'Little Helper, Male' stockpile. That is, if anyone was actually buying the darn things. The '*Sneaks in a classic*' is being used in a margin trading scam in Jita as I write this, so the price is astronomically high, and I don't think it'd be accurate or honest to claim I predicted it.
For the ships, I spent around 21 or 22 million per Christmas frigate. The new prices?
Inner Zone Shipping Imicus: 5.5 mil
Sarum Magnate: 6.5 mil
Sukuuvestaa Heron: 8.5 mil
Vherokior Probe: 9 mil
As far as the NEO cards go, well, the price of each one is essentially half of what it was when they were released. The only one worth more than it was around Christmas is the 'Tengu Terror' card, which seems to have increased by maybe a million. Of course, that minor victory is completely wiped out by the debacle that was 'The HUNS.' Yeah, I spent 67 million on one of them. Today, you can get one for 300 thousand. Somebody made a bundle by running up the price and then bailing.
This is what happens when I have 700 million ISK and a bright idea.
- Sam.
Christmas: A season of eggnog, visiting relatives, and CCP gifts. In my case, paying ridiculously inflated prices for the special edition items and ships.
Hoping to score the gift items on the market for low prices as un-suspecting newbies dumped them off for a quick buck, I pounced on whatever was offered on the market for seemingly reasonable prices. Here's a sample of the items I over-paid for, and what they're worth just over a month later:
A Handful of Tiny Stars: 22 million / 4.3 million
Donut Holder: 1.7 million / 140 thousand
Postcard from Poitot: 5.8 million / 750 thousand
Replica Gallente Cruiser: 2.8 million / 280 thousand
Scotty the Docking Manager's Clone: 4.6 million / 500 thousand
The Mini Monolith: 21 million / 1.5 million
Unit of Lag: 6.7 million / 1.3 million
Amazingly, I'm set to turn a profit on my 'Little Helper, Male' stockpile. That is, if anyone was actually buying the darn things. The '*Sneaks in a classic*' is being used in a margin trading scam in Jita as I write this, so the price is astronomically high, and I don't think it'd be accurate or honest to claim I predicted it.
For the ships, I spent around 21 or 22 million per Christmas frigate. The new prices?
Inner Zone Shipping Imicus: 5.5 mil
Sarum Magnate: 6.5 mil
Sukuuvestaa Heron: 8.5 mil
Vherokior Probe: 9 mil
As far as the NEO cards go, well, the price of each one is essentially half of what it was when they were released. The only one worth more than it was around Christmas is the 'Tengu Terror' card, which seems to have increased by maybe a million. Of course, that minor victory is completely wiped out by the debacle that was 'The HUNS.' Yeah, I spent 67 million on one of them. Today, you can get one for 300 thousand. Somebody made a bundle by running up the price and then bailing.
This is what happens when I have 700 million ISK and a bright idea.
- Sam.
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Fly cheap, explode often.
There's something to be said for sheer determination, or at least I hope there is.
One of my favourite fleet roles to fill is initial tackle, a job that nets me a lot of deaths. That said, I'd die less if I was able to follow instructions properly. Once I jump out of the last high-sec gate, I get a little point-happy. I've put more Condors and Atrons into an early grave by doing that than any other ship. That's the beauty of those things: lots of flying (and dying) for very little ISK.
As everyone knows, initial tackle is not the place to be if you want to get kills. I've been on plenty of kill-mails, but I always seem to end up as a capsule, with my weapon of choice being my point. It got to the point where I got asked why I bothered to bring a ship if my capsule's going to be doing all of the fighting. I got tired of the jokes after a few fleets, and I had myself a bright idea: I was going to fly a scram and web fit Rifter and tackle in that. I fit my beautiful new babies with love and care, then joined up with the next corp fleet all excited to finally get a kill.
Once again, I had a little trouble following orders on what to tackle. The Fleet Stabber I found was a web/autocannon combo that murdered my precious brand-new Rifter. He also murdered the five other tacklers that followed me out. I reshipped and caught back up to my buddies, only to find that we were sitting around looking for something easier to fight. Well, I managed to find us a Hurricane that warped to a safe 150km from the gate we were holding on. I tackled the heck out of that Hurricane, until the Warrior IIs he had put out wrecked my day.
Determined to finally get some kills, I tried some solo roaming with my remaining Rifters. By now, I'm sure you have an idea of how that turned out. For some reason, I insisted on charging at things that would have no trouble killing me. Say, a Thrasher. Or another Fleet Stabber. I even displayed my brilliance by attempting to solo a Sleipneir. Yeah, I'm just that confident in my own abilities.
After my last Rifter died to a gate-camp during my corp's weekly meander through the low-sec systems around our home base, I went back to flying cheap full time. I somehow managed to get my first and only kill in one of them. For some reason, a Retribution pilot decided he'd risk his Assault Frigate on a low-sec gate by taking a pot-shot at me. Having died tackling for my fleet earlier, I was heading back out to the fight in another Condor that might have cost a million at the most.
Why he used an AF to shoot a cheap tackler on a gate was confusing enough, but the fact that he was stationary when he started shooting confused me even more. Must have been one heck of a bright idea. Needless to say, gate guns aren't known for missing stationary targets all that often. According to the kill-mail, I managed to do about 5% of total damage, but since it was just myself and the gate guns shooting, I managed to land the final blow. Thanks to this kind soul, my ISK killed to ISK lost ratio was positive for quite some time, right up to when I lost myself a battlecruiser. That story deserves a blog post of its own, though.
Oh, almost forgot to mention my favorite part. My victorious Condor caught back up to my fleet just in time for the FC to whelp all of our frigate/destroyers instead of flying the 23 jumps home. I guess our corporation killboard didn't already have enough of my ships on it. Talk about a bright idea.
- Sam.
One of my favourite fleet roles to fill is initial tackle, a job that nets me a lot of deaths. That said, I'd die less if I was able to follow instructions properly. Once I jump out of the last high-sec gate, I get a little point-happy. I've put more Condors and Atrons into an early grave by doing that than any other ship. That's the beauty of those things: lots of flying (and dying) for very little ISK.
As everyone knows, initial tackle is not the place to be if you want to get kills. I've been on plenty of kill-mails, but I always seem to end up as a capsule, with my weapon of choice being my point. It got to the point where I got asked why I bothered to bring a ship if my capsule's going to be doing all of the fighting. I got tired of the jokes after a few fleets, and I had myself a bright idea: I was going to fly a scram and web fit Rifter and tackle in that. I fit my beautiful new babies with love and care, then joined up with the next corp fleet all excited to finally get a kill.
Once again, I had a little trouble following orders on what to tackle. The Fleet Stabber I found was a web/autocannon combo that murdered my precious brand-new Rifter. He also murdered the five other tacklers that followed me out. I reshipped and caught back up to my buddies, only to find that we were sitting around looking for something easier to fight. Well, I managed to find us a Hurricane that warped to a safe 150km from the gate we were holding on. I tackled the heck out of that Hurricane, until the Warrior IIs he had put out wrecked my day.
Determined to finally get some kills, I tried some solo roaming with my remaining Rifters. By now, I'm sure you have an idea of how that turned out. For some reason, I insisted on charging at things that would have no trouble killing me. Say, a Thrasher. Or another Fleet Stabber. I even displayed my brilliance by attempting to solo a Sleipneir. Yeah, I'm just that confident in my own abilities.
After my last Rifter died to a gate-camp during my corp's weekly meander through the low-sec systems around our home base, I went back to flying cheap full time. I somehow managed to get my first and only kill in one of them. For some reason, a Retribution pilot decided he'd risk his Assault Frigate on a low-sec gate by taking a pot-shot at me. Having died tackling for my fleet earlier, I was heading back out to the fight in another Condor that might have cost a million at the most.
Why he used an AF to shoot a cheap tackler on a gate was confusing enough, but the fact that he was stationary when he started shooting confused me even more. Must have been one heck of a bright idea. Needless to say, gate guns aren't known for missing stationary targets all that often. According to the kill-mail, I managed to do about 5% of total damage, but since it was just myself and the gate guns shooting, I managed to land the final blow. Thanks to this kind soul, my ISK killed to ISK lost ratio was positive for quite some time, right up to when I lost myself a battlecruiser. That story deserves a blog post of its own, though.
Oh, almost forgot to mention my favorite part. My victorious Condor caught back up to my fleet just in time for the FC to whelp all of our frigate/destroyers instead of flying the 23 jumps home. I guess our corporation killboard didn't already have enough of my ships on it. Talk about a bright idea.
- Sam.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
How I lose a ship in a few easy steps.
Step 2: Undock.
That's the most complicated step. The rest of it is pretty simple. I started off my journey as a capsuleer by dying in a career agent mission. This is what happens when you alt-tab out of EVE to do other stuff, then never alt-tab back in. The enemies in rookie missions might be easy, but they'll still kill you if you give them long enough. Apparently I need to train my RL Multitasking skill.
Step 3: Alt-tab out of EVE.
Warping into a mission then alt-tabbing out to do something else has cost me three frigates, one destroyer, two battlecruisers, and one Noctis. I'm fairly certain I've barely broken even on mission running, and if it wasn't for some more experienced buddies dragging me through level 4 security missions with them, I'm not sure I'd have ever gotten the standings for a jump clone.
Step 3, option A: Turn on auto-pilot, then alt-tab out of EVE.
I've since learned to stop alt-tabbing out during important things. That doesn't mean I've given it up, no, I still do it way too much. The convenience offered by the combination of alt-tab and autopilot is dangerous. Surprisingly, I've yet to lose a ship to it. I've since had a couple bright ideas that minimize the risk of my alt-tab habit: I fly cheap ships, and I never carrying more than 20 million worth of cargo.
That doesn't mean people don't still take potshots at me. I recently left a nano-fit Stabber to make a run of about 25 high-sec jumps. Coming back to find your ship with 40% armor left is a bit of a surprise, I must say. Apparently I'd survived a gank attempt by some genius who figured he'd have time to pop a thin-skinned cruiser before it could auto-pilot the 15km to the stargate. Since I was completely ignoring my PC at the time, I have no idea how he didn't manage to kill my untanked cruiser. Do people really run valuable stuff in auto-piloting Stabbers, or did that genius just think I was an easy kill?
Step 3, option B: Turn on auto-pilot, ignore the fact that your chosen route takes you three jumps into low-sec, then alt-tab out.
I actually managed to avoid doing this personally, but I had a former corp-mate pull it off. No, honest, I'm not quite that dense. Having just been loaned 20 mil to buy a mining barge, this fellow managed to discover a wonderful deal on a Retriever, 3 mil under the market price. To make things even better, there was a skill book for it at the same station, again under market price. Boy, was he all excited to tell us about it. To be fair, we never thought to ask him where the barge was, so off he went to grab it so he could join us in melting rocks for the corp's shipbuilders. He somehow got to the station alive, but then he turned around to come back in the exact same manner.
You've probably guessed where this is going, so I'll spare you the long story. There was Drama (note the capital D), an angry petition, face-palming, and one less corp member before the day was over. His little trip certainly seemed like a bright idea at the time, but he forgot about the first step to losing a ship.
That's right, the most dangerous step is.....
Step 1: Have a bright idea.
- Sam.
That's the most complicated step. The rest of it is pretty simple. I started off my journey as a capsuleer by dying in a career agent mission. This is what happens when you alt-tab out of EVE to do other stuff, then never alt-tab back in. The enemies in rookie missions might be easy, but they'll still kill you if you give them long enough. Apparently I need to train my RL Multitasking skill.
Step 3: Alt-tab out of EVE.
Warping into a mission then alt-tabbing out to do something else has cost me three frigates, one destroyer, two battlecruisers, and one Noctis. I'm fairly certain I've barely broken even on mission running, and if it wasn't for some more experienced buddies dragging me through level 4 security missions with them, I'm not sure I'd have ever gotten the standings for a jump clone.
Step 3, option A: Turn on auto-pilot, then alt-tab out of EVE.
I've since learned to stop alt-tabbing out during important things. That doesn't mean I've given it up, no, I still do it way too much. The convenience offered by the combination of alt-tab and autopilot is dangerous. Surprisingly, I've yet to lose a ship to it. I've since had a couple bright ideas that minimize the risk of my alt-tab habit: I fly cheap ships, and I never carrying more than 20 million worth of cargo.
That doesn't mean people don't still take potshots at me. I recently left a nano-fit Stabber to make a run of about 25 high-sec jumps. Coming back to find your ship with 40% armor left is a bit of a surprise, I must say. Apparently I'd survived a gank attempt by some genius who figured he'd have time to pop a thin-skinned cruiser before it could auto-pilot the 15km to the stargate. Since I was completely ignoring my PC at the time, I have no idea how he didn't manage to kill my untanked cruiser. Do people really run valuable stuff in auto-piloting Stabbers, or did that genius just think I was an easy kill?
Step 3, option B: Turn on auto-pilot, ignore the fact that your chosen route takes you three jumps into low-sec, then alt-tab out.
I actually managed to avoid doing this personally, but I had a former corp-mate pull it off. No, honest, I'm not quite that dense. Having just been loaned 20 mil to buy a mining barge, this fellow managed to discover a wonderful deal on a Retriever, 3 mil under the market price. To make things even better, there was a skill book for it at the same station, again under market price. Boy, was he all excited to tell us about it. To be fair, we never thought to ask him where the barge was, so off he went to grab it so he could join us in melting rocks for the corp's shipbuilders. He somehow got to the station alive, but then he turned around to come back in the exact same manner.
You've probably guessed where this is going, so I'll spare you the long story. There was Drama (note the capital D), an angry petition, face-palming, and one less corp member before the day was over. His little trip certainly seemed like a bright idea at the time, but he forgot about the first step to losing a ship.
That's right, the most dangerous step is.....
Step 1: Have a bright idea.
- Sam.
A Brand New Me, And Other Bright Ideas.
In the beginning, etc.
I ended up playing EVE for the first time the way I imagine many others did. A friend of mine talked me into trying this awesome new game he'd discovered. It had "spaceships and lasers and warp speed and alliances and space stations and explosions and lots of cool stuff to do and...," at which point he had to stop to take a breath, and I managed to get a word in edgewise. Simply for the sake of making him stop talking about it every time we saw each other, I agreed to give it a try.
I created a character with a singularly awful name, and we did everything that good little EVE neophytes do: missioning, mining, wandering into low-sec and dying instantly, and getting CONCORDed when we decided to shoot someone for the heck of it. The game was fun for a week or so, but we simply never had the time to make it a long-term stay. He went back to being a 'leet' WoW player, and I went back to a brain-crushing Real Life schedule.
EVE wasn't something I'd considered trying again until I found my login info from my original character about 10 months ago. Yes, the character's name was awful. He's since been biomassed, so we'll never speak of it again. I had just gotten bored with my most recent gaming addiction, so I figured I'd give EVE another try.
As you can see, I'm still here... and I'm enjoying it more than ever. I may have lost 50-odd ships while only managing one kill, but EVE is digital crack. The sheer depth of the player-driven politics, the freedom to do anything the mechanics allow, and sheer number of people on one server is something truly unique, and I can't get enough.
A big part of my decision to stick with EVE was the strength of the out-of-game community. Tons of player maintained info, blogs and podcasts in such numbers that I can't keep up with them all, live streaming of gameplay by knowledgable players, active news sites, an online radio station, and so much more.
Given some recent events that have drastically changed my EVE play style, I wanted to take some time and make my own contribution to EVE's community. I'm already unable to keep up with all the EVE blogging, so I certainly don't expect much of a following, unless EVE is in desperate need of a blog written by someone who is blatantly awful at PvP. If anything, I'm bound to be an object lesson in how NOT to fly your ships. I sometimes wonder if I enjoy the explosions a little too much, especially when it's my ship going boom.
Since my only real specialty in EVE is blowing up, you can expect me to write about things like the events that led to me buying, fitting, and losing three cloaky Atrons in the space of a couple hours, and other bright ideas (hence the name) of that sort. Here's a suggestion: If there were 7 bubbles anchored on a null-sec gate 15 minutes ago, they're probably still there. The cans anchored in the bubble you landed in the first time will probably still be there too. That game mechanic where you decloak upon getting within 2000 metres of another object will still be in effect. See? Now that's some excellent advice right there. You can have that helpful bit of wisdom for free. As for the cost to me, well, at least Atrons are cheap, right?
- Sam.
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