Aww Yiss!

Undocked to do some industry on Sunday to find a couple of friends 40km off station killing a JF that made the mistake of passing through. I dock up and ask, for it is polite to do so, if I might whore on the mail.

 

A minute or so later I receive the ok to do so. I nearly undocked the Rorqual and used drones but instead I used a Corax and managed to contribute a total of 3% of the total damage. I even used my industry ships to help salvage and get the loot to station without the cloaky camper in system interfering.

 

It was a nice Anshar kill and big thanks to Acki for letting me whore on his hard work. He even let me have the single ORE Cargohold Expander that dropped (I didn't ask for a split, it was his hard work but he insisted).

 

It's been a LONG TIME since that character had a kill on his Killboard, according to zKillboard it was November 2013 when I last whored on a killmail :)

 

Still I'm stuck in Null Sec for a week or more thanks to a laughable war dec from Marmite (Marmite are NOT laughable but the people who paid for it are). Oh well, I guess netural out of corp alts will do my hauling whilst I sit in fast locking ships waiting for cloaky campers to be stupid... possibly.

Fake Wallet API

There are numerous scams people use in EVE Online and one variant uses a fake website, setup to appear genuine and convince people that they really are giving out ISK for free.

 

There have been various sites setup to help with this as well as numerous people attempting to use the same site and fake wallet details. Some are successful but then there are those that just throw things together and hope for the best. My recent favourite was one that was a reasonably new character, a couple of months old, but was using wallet history that was older than the character. Oh how I laughed at that one.

 

Still, this hasn't been frowned upon by CCP. This type of scam has managed to stay under the radar and within the rules.... until now.

 

Overnight CCP Falcon has released a announcement that, in the interest of reducing support tickets/GM overload, says that scams that rely on fabricated wallet details are no longer allowed.

 

Awww yiss!

 

Another scam bites the dust.

Caught Out

Browsing the list of recent threads on the EVE Online Forums this morning one caught my eye in Sell Orders:

 

 

Ouch.

 

This has come about as overnight (my time) CCP have finished their investigation into possible collusion between teams in Alliance Tournament XIII and determined that there was collusion between the teams of Warlords of the Deep and The Camel Empire to fix the result of a match.

 

The outcome of this has been:

• both teams have been kicked/ejected from ATXIII
• prizes they would have won have been seized
• Warlords Captain has been permanently banned from all future CCP Tournaments and the Camel captain has received a 1 year ban
• All teams move up 2 ladder ranks which results in Pandemic Legion being the new ATXIII winners

It is the latter that has resulted the post on the forums, PL members are having a field day and rightly so.

Cheating is Cheating is Cheating

Honestly the two teams have been very lucky to have only had two people banned. If it was I in charge of this I'd have permanently banned ALL members of both teams and prevented them from ever participating in any tournament again.

 

The punishments are handed out and only the captains have received these but it makes you wonder, if teams are so professional how much did each member know. Surely they were complicit and should be punished as such. 

 

Still CCP investigated, determined guilt and have punished. It's over.

Would You Like Salt With That

Obviously not content to remain quiet the Warlords of the Deep Captain, Kadesh Priestess, has posted to Failheap Challenge outlining further information as well as raking mud and applying salt to wounds. There isn't much in the way of details, but it certainly is an interesting read.

Just be careful on that site, ego's are large and mouths spew forth much crap ;)

 

Really Though, Who Cares

 

I don't. It was just something to write about, I'm sure there are those that really enjoy this event but to most players I bet they don't even know about it.

 

I've never watched the Alliance Tournament and to be honest I don't get interested in watching the EVE Online 1% fight it out for more "ego boosting" and bragging rights. Things seem to be at the point where the teams are equal and its only who can "meta-game" the others the best will win.

 

The Amarr Championship is scheduled to happen very soon and I'm sure people will watch it but I won't be and I'll only mention it if something like this happens.

It's WHO not WHAT you know that matters it seems

Yesterday I posted about the coming T2 Capital modules that were hinted at by ISD Rontea in their image on Twitter. I was by far not the first to have posted about this as people I showed the image to on social media had either already seen it that day or had beaten me to the punch and posted about it themselves.

However I logged in this evening and got a message from a friend where he said that that image was old news and it was good that ISD Rontea had released it as it now made it "semi-official". I queried him on his wording and he said that image had been doing the rounds of Goon specific forums/image sharing for more than a week.

Seems that it's not WHAT you know but WHO you know that gets you the heads up. 

Ice Ice Mining

Evesterdam seems to have been a great success, especially in the consumption of alcoholic beverages it seems but there is game information coming out... in drips and drabs.

 

One thing that was in a presentation was this:

 

 

It appear the Prospect is getting a cousin with a role to specifically mine ice.  No pictures or statistics but in the Reddit thread on this CCP Terminus said the following:

 

So in addition to the ship we could very well be seeing new ice mining modules.

I'll be honest and say I wasn't expecting a new mining frigate let alone modules. This is a great news for "ninja" miners and those in wormholes/null sec.

Woo!

Bigger Guns

ISD Rontea has posted to Twitter a lovely image to make all capital pilots squirm with glee:

Long wanted T2 variants of capital weapon systems.

 

With any luck it means that there will be T2 variants of other capital modules but for the moment these are very welcome. Capital ships haven't had much love over the past 12 months and T2 modules for them has been requested or wanted since before I started playing so it's not a huge surprise.

 

It's very welcome regardless, no details of statistics for the weapons but already I can see a 500m3 reduction in Volume over T1 variants. Makes sense, T2 would incorporate new changes to materials and compression or something like that.

 

Still, Bigger Guns are a nice hint that Capitals are getting the rebalance they need. Only a month until EVE Vegas and we find out the whole story.

Timing...

I've been working on a post for the last few days about the lack of communication from the Executive Producer for EVE Online CCP Seagull. 

And of course, as I'm getting feedback from friends on the post and finishing it off what happens. CCP Seagull posts a dev-blog about the past, present and future of EVE Online.

So I'm going to postpone the article for a few days to better digest and alter my article based on what CCP Seagull has said as well as feedback I've received on the draft I have.

Timing is everything... she hasn't posted to the forums since May 2014 and chooses today (or yesterday depending on your timezone) to break that run.

Lost and Found

When my PC died in July I was able to get back up and running very quickly thanks to maintaining my data on a server rather than the PC. One thing that wasn't stored remotely was the data for jEVEAssets that I'd been using for nearly two years to track assets over all my characters.

 

It wasn't a major loss as until this week I haven't had the need to locate assets out of game (either due to being offline or not able to find something via the in-game asset system) but the last couple of days I have found myself wishing I had reinstalled it.

 

One Not Four

 

I was doing high sec to null sec courier contracts for friends the past two nights, nothing major but with Bagodan being a ganking hotspot, I no longer autopilot and have exit cyno's online the whole trip now, I tend to remain watching the overview window and using zKillboard and the in-game map to see possible issues ahead.

 

One stop last night was to collect a contract but it was in one of my former base stations and I haven't visited it for several months. On docking I accepted the contract and then went to move it into my cargo bay.

 

Except I stopped, instead of one item (the courier contract) I had four items and a total value of around six billion ISK.

Wait. What is this.

 

Looking at the three assets I wasn't expecting it appears that, at some point, previously I've docked and unloaded a full JF of materials from my towers and then promptly forgotten about them. It's possible I intended to further "value add" by making something from the materials but I've obviously forgotten about them until today.

 

So I contracted the items to my trading alt and then used a freight service to move them for sale in a market hub.

 

Six billion ISK is not to be sneezed at, it's not a huge amount to a trader but that's actually come at a good time as I'm trying to get start-up funds for a new venture and this will be a nice float for that.

 

Hold Up, You Missed More

 

As a result of finding these I went through the assets of my characters and found more "unaccounted" assets spread around New Eden. Some notable finds included:

• one character with full set (one of each race) of unfit Command/Fleet Ships with fittings
• one character having 21 fighters/fighter bombers yet this character could not fly capitals
• over 200 blueprint copies in a station in a system I don't ever remember visiting before
• two Providence freighters that I did not know I owned

When I get home tonight I will be installing jEVEAssets and spending some time running though the results of all assets on all my characters and I'm sure that I'll have to send a pilot out to collect all that I find.

 

I am thank that I haven't had any regional buy orders for minerals for a few weeks otherwise I'd be really screwed with picking up all that in Market Deliveries.

Blog Roll Update

Just a minor update to the blogs I read.

I've removed a couple of now defunct blogs and I've added a new one.

http://absenceofsubstance.blogspot.co.nz/

I've been reading this for a couple of weeks now and I realised that when I open it daily (it is a well written/thoughtful blog) from memory it is time to be added to my daily reading list.

CSMX Summit - Day One

It is the end of summer (for the Northern Hemisphere at least) and that means CSM Summit time. A few "chosen" CSM members get rewarded for their hard work with a trip to Iceland to meet with CCP face-to-face for discussions on the state of EVE and changes that may, or may not, be being worked on by the developers now.

 

CCP Leeloo has posted to the forums the list of sessions that will be going on and that we should be seeing feedback from (in the form of minutes). From my point of view the list of topics is varied and there are several I will certainly be hoping will contain lots of interesting information on.

 

First Day

 

The first day minutes have been released and contain quite a bit of good discussion but is unfortunately bereft of detail regarding some of things I was actually interested in. I could go and add a constructive comment or two but it is the EVE Online forums and I'd rather head up to the Northern Territory and go swimming in a crocodile infested creek, would certainly be a lot less painful and a quicker death than having to read the forums.

 

3rd Party/CREST

 

A good discussion it seemed and it was nice to see CCP agreeing to investigate enhancements or the opening up extraction of data from game to via CREST and/or the API.

I was particularly happy to see, in writing, the confirmation that CCP want to remove the IGB. It's been said over the years I've been playing but this is the first time I've seen it written and confirmed by a developer.

 

As FoxFour said, Fuck Goons :)

 

Capitals / Supercaptials

 

I was hoping for more than a picture of a kitten in the discussion on Capitals and Supercaptials, Two ship classes that are nearly worthless to the majority of players since the changes in Aegis to Sov.

 

Power Projection (WH/Low Sec)

 

This wasn't as detailed as I hoped but there was some positives from the minutes. New types of K-K or one-way wormholes are interesting in concept and could be useful from a strategic point of view.

No detailed information on Citadels, I was hoping we'd get some more information or background on how CCP sees them working in wormholes but alas.

 

Skins/Monetisation

 

I know a game needs to make money but I'm sick of hearing about SKINS and seeing new ones released when base gameplay still isn't fully functional or has issues. I don't care what my ship looks like at the moment nor am I interested in Alliance/Corporation specific SKINS.

 

Yawn....

 

Overall

 

C-

 

A nice first day and the CSM members present are on the ball but the lack of details on two of the major discussion points really pulls the grade down.

 

I look forward to reading the other minutes as they are released... especially the QA one on Wednesday considering the rather major issues we had with the launcher/logging in a couple of weeks ago.

Faster than a speeding bullet...

Whilst waiting for the launcher to update my game I was reading the r/EVE sub-Reddit when I spotted this:

Oh dear, I use multiple clients so I'd better have a look and see if this could be a "thing".

So I login my main, no problem. I fire up a second client, no problems so far, it appears and I enter my login details. Then this appears:

Damn. That isn't good.

Reading further comments in the Reddit thread there was much mirth, laughing, finger pointing (they want us to only have one character), serious fraud possibility [tinfoilhat] the power of 2 promotion would be negated and thus they could be liable to fraud [/tinfoilhat].

Amongst the trolls there was a good fellow though and he pointed out a temporary fix:

It did indeed work but ....

as this was all going on CCP have released a new patch that fixes the issue, which it does, no word from CCP on this issue (that I can see) and the Reddit thread is CCP Falcon empty at this time (it is nearly lunch after all :)).

Tin Foil Hat

This should be a major embarrassment to CCP. Testing has missed something as such basic functionality as multiple clients before it was released. Unless of course this was done on purpose to gauge response from the community or for some other nefarious reason?

Who knows.

Weekend Round Up

It has been a quiet weekend overall, RL was oddly enough too well except the niggling headache I had over my left eye for most of Sunday. But that went away after a mid-day nap and some panadol so I can't really bitch too much about that.

 

*Tumbleweed*

 

I intended to do some nice wormhole activities this weekend but I received a request from a friend for help on Thursday night in watching a null sec POS. He had eyes for EU/US times but needed help with AU and he thought of me.

 

He offered me a couple of hundred million ISK but friends in need get my 100% discount rate and I was quite happy to do it as it was passive and would not interfere with my other activities.

 

The POS was in a null sec system in Wicked Creek, it had been erected by a small corporation of which I could find no details, pilots had losses (all cyno ships) but no kills and all pilots in the corporation were less than 12 months old.

I was told it was an alt corp used to move Supercapital and Titans for sale. I did not see any during my time online being moved but during US time two Avatar's were moved through the POS that was promptly taken down.

I have recorded names and details in Notes and will remember them in the future but it was quiet for me and I was able to help out a friend. Of course the character I had to use for the monitoring meant that I was unable to participate in a blingy Kronos kill that my wormhole brethren got.

Still, I logged in and did things I guess...
 

Mass Production

Staggered over Sunday I had a total of three Bowheads and seven Orcas come out of the cooker. It's been a pain in the arse moving them all to either trade hubs or systems for sale.

As I can't make any more ships at the moment I've added a load more capital components to the production lines in order to get my mineral stores trimmed back somewhat. At least I finally can start to uses the minerals I've collected over the years and the large stack of blueprint copies I have in my home system.
 

The sale of these ships will be reinvested back into production materials. I've gotten a lot of T2 blueprint copies that I need to use, they're cluttering up my overviews and they should turn a nice profit once complete.

Tower Shenanigans

I appear to have either miscalculated the fuel needed for my towers or someone is siphoning off my fuel blocks.

I don't know which and the list of people who could be doing this is extremely small in the corp I'm in but I've had two warnings over the past fortnight that towers are low on resources. Since I've managed to get my monitoring application running again I've been able to keep an eye on the fuel situation but I've noticed lower than expected fuel in the towers.

I trust the other people who have access to POS roles so I must have made a mistake but it's bugging me that fuel has run out quicker than I was expecting.

Warships!

I have been having fun with World of Warships.

So far I've kept to the US Navy only and I'm now Tier VIII in Destroyer and Cruiser with Tier VII in Battleship & Carrier. I've stopped playing the carriers and battleships at the moment, I'm low skilled in both and need to get some XP to unlock the upgraded hull/skills before I can jump back into them.

I used all my "free XP" unlocking the Tier VIII Benson destroyer and it's 8.5km ranged torpedos and as a result I'm having a lot of fun killing ships who expect only a 4.5km or 5.5km torpedo spread.

I had a few awesome games over the weekend in my New Orleans cruiser and I'm 90% of the way towards the Tier 9 Baltimore which I'm looking forward to as it's AA ability is nearly 20% better than what I have now!

Still at safe distance...

It's been three weeks since I advertised a 250m ISK bounty on Cloaky Bastard.

 

Still it remains unclaimed.

Reading his blog he's had a close encounter but no-one has come forward to claim the bounty or at least try to claim it.

 

I believe this is why Prolapse was unable to provide Viking Funerals for the two Archons last weekend and his ire is why I almost lost a Jump Freighter in high sec.

 

Bob is unhappy at the level of bounty.

 

So I'm increasing it to 500m ISK (same restrictions apply as in my original post for claiming), for a kill mail AND a corpse of Zosius or one of this Domi alts (read his blog for details of his "fleet").

 

Bob demands sacrifice. Corpses for the Bob God.

Travel Advisory : Bagodan

Are you taking a Freighter or Transport ship through Bagodan?

 

No, well move along nothing to read here... but if you are be very wary as it has, for a 0.7 system, become very hot for ganking in the past few days. I've seen a friend lose a freighter and I nearly lost a jump freighter last night myself.

 

What Happened/Happening?

 

This is just guessing by me but the recent hostilities (read: invasion) of Providence by Imperium could be partly to blame. I have followed the news about this but I had not seen the implications for traders and industrialists who pass close to providence on their travels.

 

 

 

Esescama is a nexus for people who plan to enter Providence via KBP7-G but we also have Dihra and Choonka (that I know people use) but it is Esescama that is the primary staging system for visitors.

 

Bagodan being under siege could be part of the operation to catch logistics for the defenders but also, as it may be for I no longer trade in Providence, over loaded or plain profitable freighters that have to travel this system to get to Amarr and/or Jita.

 

How is it going

 

Profitably I would say and they aren't just attacking large targets like Freighters but even smaller ships are being preyed upon.

 

As they are profiting they are staying put. I was surprised to see this kill, Royaldo is a former CEO and to see him lose this was cringe worthy. How he got caught I do not know but I think it could be as simple as auto piloting through at the wrong time.

 

You nearly got caught

 

I did, I was passing through heading to Amarr and then my home system with two jump freighters full of materials that I use in my manufacturing.

 

I didn't pay attention tot he yellow dot on the heron that was following my characters until two jumps before Bagodan. I never saw any scanning take place, I certainly wasn't yellow-boxed so it was all done passively.

 

I jumped into Bagodan and it was when I saw three Machariel's on grid, all with yellow dots, that I realised it was not a good place to be. Fortunately my other character was just arriving on gate to jump in so I aborted that and turned him around for the nearest system with a station.

 

Alas the other was in a bad situation, so I logged out.

 

What did you do?

 

Yes, I logged out. Worst case was I'd get shot and lose the freighter, almost as bad was I'd be shot but have a 15 minute timer allowing them to scan me down and kill me.

 

But I had a plan.

 

In order to enact it I needed to do so quickly AND make them think I was a newbie who just logged out and they'd have 15 minutes to leisurely scan me down and kill me.

 

I need to check the distance (in light years) between my jump freighter pilot and two cyno pilots I have for just such eventualities. Actually, they are there in case I get caught in Uedama or Niarja not Bagodan but I digress.

 

Distance is too much for one but the other is just in range so I login the character in (local is conveniently empty), and undock and light my cyno.

 

I log back in to the jump freighter pilot and see he has a kill right, he was shot and had an active timer. I enter warp and appear back on grid where I logged out. I can see local has increased in numbers, many with orange or red standings to my corporation/alliance.

 

I see a couple of ships appear as I'm exiting warp but I didn't take notice of them, I was leaving and leaving quickly.

 

I enter jump and am safe. I dock and then quit the for the night.

Trying to die for Bob in glorious battle

Operation Midway was set to be underway around 0100 EVE Time and we were expecting a good fight that, we hoped, end with the destruction of two Archon's that were located in Bex's wormhole.

It is said (even this is paraphrased) that "No plan survives contact with the enemy." Well this was no different but not in the way you'd expect.

Operational Details

Bex wanted to have a viking funeral (he likes big explosions) for two Archons he had had in his posession since taking over his current C3 wormhole. Feelers were put out (I believe) and Maythorn agreed to come and provide the firepower. 

T1 battleships, battlecruiers and faction T1/T2 cruiers were the agreed upon ships to take part (in addition to the two carriers). The carriers dictated this would be armour fits and our Dear Leader made sure to add the following :

No guardians, please, we don't want this to be gay. Clean clones, gents, in case mistakes. 

Simple enough, even for me to understand, and comms was quite fun although somewhat restrained, no doubt due to people wearing "game faces". That's not to say we didn't have worthwhile discussions on Citadels, the new Sov mechanics and, of course, boobies.  

Visiting the Store

Bex suggested that I bring a neut fit Armageddon to the fight as he would do likewise and we'd be able double team to help bring down capacitor hungry vessels. Sounded like a good idea but, of course, there was one minor hiccup...

My Prolapse character has Amarr Cruiser III only, no battle-cruiser or battleship skills for any Amarrian vessels. Bugger. Checking skills and injecting them I'd only have Amarr Battleship I in time for the battle so I had to call upon another out of alliance alt, who has Amarr Battleship V. I was also asked if I could bring a booster with Information Warfare Link skills, as there was the possibility we might be facing a large ECM force and any extra help we could get might just even the playing field.

So off to Jita I went and purchased a Nighthawk (it's really a Drake with different colours) and the following Armageddon (which as Bex says on his blog was an "experimental" but he never said that to me!) fit:

[Armageddon, New Setup 1]

Damage Control II

1600mm Steel Plates II

1600mm Steel Plates II

Corelum C-Type Energized Explosive Membrane

Corelum C-Type Energized Kinetic Membrane

Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

Corpii A-Type Thermic Plating

Large Micro Jump Drive

100MN Afterburner II

ECCM - Radar II

ECCM - Radar II

Large Remote Capacitor Transmitter II

Large Remote Capacitor Transmitter II

Heavy Unstable Power Fluctuator I

Heavy Unstable Power Fluctuator I

Heavy Unstable Power Fluctuator I

Heavy Unstable Power Fluctuator I

Heavy Unstable Power Fluctuator I

Large Trimark Armor Pump I

Large Trimark Armor Pump I

Large Trimark Armor Pump I

I made sure I had nanite paste, an MTU and a couple of depots in the cargo hold. I had four NOS ready, in case we needed them and I could refit "on-the-fly".

I moved my ships into the wormhole the night before, turned out to be quite simple as we had an entrance a few jumps from Jita and then I logged off until Sunday morning (AU Time) and battle commenced.

For Bob!

Bex has covered the fight nicely on his blog (have a read of his other articles too, he actually is a good writer (but I never said that)).

 

We were fielding the two remote repair/cap regeneration Archons with a reasonable sized sub-cap force of a Scorpion, two neuting Armageddon's and a good mix of DPS battleships and BC/CL. A nice mobile force that we hoped would be a match for what Maythorn would bring.

 

Unfortunately, through no fault of the Maythorn leadership nor their FC they bought a much smaller force that would not have been able to break the tank of one of the carriers even if we weren't defending it. You can provide content it and tell people where to go and when to participate but alas, you can't make them login.

 

Props to Maythorn regardless, they turned up. Saw they were outnumbered but fought anyway. It wasn't pretty and there were a couple of accidently poddings (we were there for fun, not to execute) due to smart bombs. But on the whole I think it was fun, I had fun and those in Prolapse I spoke to voiced the same thoughts.

 

But the carriers, they live

 

For now they do. But that just gives Bex (and Prolaspe) more reason to do this again in the near future and that is the plan.

 

After all, what better way for a capsuleer to honour Bob but with a sacrifice in pod goo AND ships. I can't think of one.

Entertainment

I'm currently sitting in a wormhole, with three characters, getting ready for Operation Midway.

Operation Midway is an operation this weekend to see the glorious death of Bex's Archons that reside in his wormhole. We have quite a nice fleet assembled and it should be fun, of course being pre-arranged it could all fail badly and Maythorn could bring a very strong T3 fleet or faction battleship/mauraders.

It's gonna be gud. So they say.

Laughter, the best Fleet Advert

We've had two funny things happen this morning so far with Operation Midway, first a comment was made as we were assembling that "wouldn't it be funny if a random came into the wormhole as we're assembling to run sites/mine gas".

Would you believe, a character did arrive and try to setup to mine gas. We watched him, scanned him down but could not get tackle in place in time and he left system. Obviously spooked by our efforts.

And now we've found out that as Maythorn are passing through high sec to join us they had a member lose their ship in Jita to a duel. 

I don't know the full details but it was relayed that the pilot was travelling through Jita when they received a duel request that they accepted.

Oh dear. Not an auspicious start for Maythorn but it has provided some amusement for us.

Idling

My usual partner in "industrial crime" in EVE is off on holiday somewhere warm for a three weeks so I'm taking a little break myself. I'm still logging in and managing what I have to in my towers and interacting with a few people but until he returns I've decided to see if there is something else to play or do.

 

Profit and Loss

 

Things have gone well recently, profits are up somewhat although metamaterial prices are down enough that I'm considering hording until the market is bounced up again (as it appears to be every 5 to 7 months). Carbide armour plates are selling well as are the left over materials I have for producing them.

 

I've also been producing capital components from my mineral stores for no other reason than I have minerals and I need to use what I have rather than keep buying them. I have a nice low sec system a couple of jumps away where I can make carriers and dreadnoughts should I wish but for now I'm making Orca's and Bowheads for sale.

 

Five Orcas and three bowheads to be precise went into the oven on Sunday afternoon. All are due in just over 10 days and then I'll move them to wherever I can get the best price for them. I'm considering Hek/Rens based on data my trading alt gathered over the past few days but Amarr is selling very well and quite a bit above Jita price for the Bowhead.

 

But 10 days is a long time in EVE so we'll have to wait til they're nearly done.

 

I haven't had any losses, I've spent ISK on new blueprints and researched them as well as buying materials but outgoings are just the regular tower inputs, fuel and taxes.

 

Hello Sailor

 

I've been looking around for something else to play and I got into World of Warships, I've only played the US ship line so far but I'm far enough up it that I'm enjoying myself a lot. Even blog-friend Bex is playing and we occasionally Division up and have a romp or fail spectacularly.

 

He's recently become a convert of the US Destroyer line after playing the IJN ones. I've only played the US ones and the game play I use is one of stealth and cover whereas the torpedo range of the IJN destroyers means you can easily kill stuff unseen. Not so US destroyers where you are lucky to have a torpedo range that doesn't get you spotted.

 

I'm currently doing reasonably well with the rest of the ships. I've got a Tier VI carrier (Independence), VII destroyer (Mahan), VI battleship (New Mexico, although I unlocked the VII Colorado last night) and the Tier VIII cruiser (New Orleans).

 

Team play is the only frustrating thing I find with the game. It's extremely rare to find anyone who plays as a team, as a carrier or battleship pilot it really pisses me off to see AA Cruisers rushing off to cap flags or lead attacks as enemy bombers bypass them and come straight for the undefended ships.

 

Communication in chat is pointless as most players in my area, Asia, either have little knowledge of other languages (I speak English or bad English, but most chat is full of South East Asian languages like Chinese, Korean or Thai) or just don't use chat.

 

I wish there was more benefits or rewards for team play to encourage supporting your fellow players but alas there isn't at this time.

 

What's that bright thing in the sky?

 

Turns out it's the sun and I've also been doing stuff outside. Tidying up the house, garden and generally trying to spend more time with my son (who turned 3 last week). It's been fun and watching him learn to ride a bike, chase chickens and have fun in the garden is great.

Light blue touch paper and retire to safe distance...

Safe in this case may actually be a different Galaxy or Universe...

 

I read many EVE Online blogs, not as many as I used to but I've pruned those that I do to a list that has people I like to read. Some are friends, others are more arms length or I'm just too scared to say hello to.

 

Cloaky Bastard is one of those that I enjoy reading and his stories of kills and how he goes about them show a mind that is very dangerous. I was reading today and he commented on how "life between ganks":

 

                   Well, it's been pretty slow.

                                              - Cloaky Bastard

 

Slow eh, let's see if we can liven things up.  Seeing as Zosius is a kindred wormhole dweller I'm sure Bob will smile upon what I'm about to offer...

 

Challenge

 

The new (wormhole) home I'll be moving into this weekend is in need of consecration to Bob. My fellow Alliance members will no doubt be doing their own consecration but I feel I need to get into the spirit of things and a special corpse needs to be placed upon the Altar of Bob.

 

 

Between the 4th August 2015 and midnight GMT on the 31st August 2015 whomever can deliver me the frozen corpse, along with the associated kill mail of both ship and pod, between those dates will receive a bounty of 250m ISK from me.

 

I may even add extra ISK should the kill mail be particularly shiny or awesome :)

 

Small Print

 

This is all for fun, to bring some content to such a fine pilot and I'll get a wonderful donation to Bob. Sure he may have a Dominix fleet supporting him but that just provides more targets...

 

Zosius is of course unable to claim his own bounty in any way, shape or form. I'd really like him to be hunted as he hunts others but a kill is a kill.

 

What are you waiting for, hunt the man down...

 

 

Moving In

The WH Alliance has a new home, the tower and POCOs from the Russians have been removed (or are in the process of being finished off as I type this).

 

Our Dear Leader has been having much fun setting up the POSes we'll be using, fiddling with roles and creating new art in space using star base modules. He's very good at pictures, he's no Picasso but that's fine with me as Picasso's pictures give me headaches to look at.

 

I haven't been able to help much this weekend, aside from RL things I've had to take care of I've had three characters moving assets around high sec as it was the end of my financial year and I needed to move what I could sell to Jita and Amarr.

 

I, Slightly, Dislike Freighters

 

I hate their lack of manoeuvrability and speed but I love their ability to move large amounts of material. I've moved nearly twelve million cubic metres of stuff since Friday night, fortunately most of it was no more than six jumps in length but there were a lot of trips not to mention the 100 jump one I had to do on one character.

 

It has been worth it, I've listed nearly fifteen billion ISK worth of items for sale with another six or so being ready for listing in a week. Of course this tied in nicely with my need to buy more raw materials and pay my alliance taxes for the towers I run.

So what was a great profit will only yield a billion or two after I've paid my dues.

 

It comes in slowly but leaves too quickly... the race for ISK.

 

Adding Value

 

A few weeks ago my null-sec CEO made me aware of the possibility of improving income on the carbides/sylramic fibres I was producing by combining them into Armour plates. I had previously not thought of doing this because it would add extra costs to production and, at the time, the difference between raw/processed was less than 7% increase in profit

 

He made a good case to have another look at the setup and see if it was more profitable. So I did and it appears that it is indeed more profitable, averaging 20% over the four armour plate types. I produce the sylramics myself and purchase (from an alliance friend) Fernite Carbides and thanks to my CEO moving into reactions I also now have a good source of Titanium Carbides.

 

So I've now started using sylramics and the two carbide types to produce Armour plates and it's been very good. It is a pain to have to wait nearly a week extra to get my armour plates but with two sets of BPO's I've got a nice production line going. Researching the BPO's (I've had for years it seems) has increased efficiency in materials and time to produce a product that sells well in Jita and Amarr.

 

What raw materials I don't use I either stockpile, for later use, or sell directly on the market so I'm not really losing any ISK, especially with volatility the market currently sees.

 

Profits are up, generally, which is excellent and if I had shareholders they'd be very happy I'd imagine and thanks to my CEO I'm already looking for the next processed material to get my teeth into to increase my profits but to make use of the BPO's I've got.

Fun Times Ahead

After the delights of POS Bashing today I've had to return to the somewhat more mundane task of collecting ships that have been spread about New Eden.

I have put this off for too long and now that my WH character has moved all his assets to high sec I need to move them to their new home but before I can do that I need to collect them from their various locations.

Two characters have just left my home system and have this to look forward to:

I'm going to need caffeine, lots and lots of caffeine and something to do whilst I fly these ships.

Thank Bob for multiple monitors...

Unkindness, Assemble!

A democratic alliance decision was made, to move out of our C4 (with C4/C2 statics) and find a new home in order to improve our ISK making and PvP opportunities. 

The operation time provide and we knew that we had a target system with faction towers to grind through but this all changed at the last possible moment when a new system, that matched our requirements, was found.

Sometimes Bob is kind to his followers....

Acquiring Target

A new target system, with C2/C3 statics, was found and was not as fortified and to make the change even better the entrance to that system was just three jumps away from the one we were going to use for the original target.

The operational detailed remained the same, a POS was setup for us to use and defenses anchored. The fleet came in through a linked WH from high sec in the alliance TrashCat doctrine (basically Raven's equipped with Cruise Missiles to allow us to hit targets at range, get enough together and they really can apply good dps to a target) with a supporting fleet of logistics and "point defense" ships.

by the time I returned from work the operation had already begun so I made the short trip to the new entry system and joined my brethren in good order. Warped to the assigned anchor and then opened fire on the tower.

Here are a few screenshots (the better ones) I took of the operation (I should say I run the game in a window and on a reasonably low resolution but its playable if not exactly super looking).

An Unkindness

Black Hole (Matthew McConaughey not included)

Pretty Contrails

It took a while, as you might expect, but the time passed with laughter, conversation and general tomfoolery. 

Bex was again reminded NOT to put POS passwords in local and to verify that he bought the right ammo size for his ship (he was not happy to, again, be reminded of the past but it made everyone laugh).

Stront was in the tower and we have to wait 36 hours before we can finish the tower off.

What about the Occupants

During the operation we saw no sign of the tower owners (Russians apparently), no ships appeared in the POS and we were not attacked at all during the POS siege. Not even a mention from anybody on comms that someone had logged in that was on a watch list.

Bex has made mention of his dealings with Russians previously and it was a little sad to hear that they logged in after downtime and started to self-destruct ships. Obviously to deny us any profit but we're not in this for profit, it's going to be our new home, and we've watched a Rorqual, Archon and numerous small ships explode since the tower was reinforced.

No Carrier for you!

When I logged in this afternoon I heard that they had made an evac of some kind and a few smaller ships had made it out via a high sec WH.

Moving In

Over the next few days we'll be moving in fully, more towers will be erected, our Lord Marshall Doctor will get pissed off at POS roles not working as he wanted (but maybe not, he's a lot smarter Lord Marshall Doctor than I). 

We still have to kill the enemy tower on Sunday but that should not take as long as taking the shields down and no doubt more fun will be had.

That's not to say he's not a bit of fun already with the staging POS...

Art in New Eden is so advanced

Juvenile and cheeky but brilliant. Perhaps a whole new career in EVE Online Art for him to consider... :)

Mini-Milestone

A little over Five Years I've managed to last.

In that time I've NEVER flown a missile ship larger than a Battle Cruiser (a Drake, pre-nerf) but tonight I shall be getting into a Raven fitted with Cruise Missiles in order to pummel a POS. I'm looking forward to it and the group I'll be flying with will no doubt make the time pass with jokes, humour and wit.

Of course if Bex is there none of that will happen :)

I shall post a write up of the POS Bash over the weekend with the usual details of why but hopefully it shall pass without incident and I shall put my new Battleship to good use.

OPEN FIRE, ALL WEAPONS!

The (two) billion ISK whale

His Story

 

When I started playing it was the Arbitrator that I wanted to fly, I loved the look of the ship and the drone bay on the ship appealed to me, after all I could picture drones flying in/out of there.

 

Next it was the Orca, I can remember buying an Orca for 800m ISK in 2010 but having to leave it for two weeks because I had no characters who could fly it. The ship was a beautiful sight and really helped me when I started my mining empire and continues to serve me now as a short trip bulk hauler or a general support vessel.

 

 

Then in 2012 I was in need of a capital sized support vessel for my mining operations (now in Providence). There was only one choice and that was the Rorqual, instead of buying off the market I actually mined and produced ship myself in a low sec location and once finished I fit her and jumped to her new null sec home.

 

The Rorqual

 

The Rorqual was unique, at the time, in that she could compress ore and ice (using the Industrial Core) to make it smaller and thus easier to transport AND she transformed into a structure like ship. Fit out with Cargo rigs and cargo expanders you could fit 137,000m3 into the cargo hold, 50,000m3 into the Fleet Hanger and a truly massive 250,000m3 into the Ore/Ice hold.

 

 

The Rorqual could also fit the Clone Vat bay, a Titan is the only other ship that can fit this, and it allows pilots to create a clone in the Rorqual that can then be "jumped to" at any time, but only once. the clone would be removed from the Rorqual and put in space but you could not redock with the Rorqual and then use it again later.

 

The idea is solid, imagine being able to clone jump to a Rorqual, participate in a large scale mining operation and then clone jump back. No need to have clones near to the Rorqual, you just jump to it and then grab a ship from the massive Ship Maintenance Hanger and start mining.

 

Alas it never worked like this, the Rorqual was unfortunately relegated to being a off grid booster and Ore/Ice compression service. Rarely did they leave the safety of a POS and rarely were they fit to survive in space, let alone under attack. I do remember, during the invasion of KBP7-G by PL in ~2011 that a Rorqual was used by PL to setup a staging tower, supported by their sub-capital fleet.

 

Aside from that I've never seen a Rorqual outside of a POS that hasn't been picking up Ore/Ice or is moving back/forth to station. There have been "Battle Rorqual" fits and I recall there is a player who excels at using one, but it's very rare to see a Rorqual outside of a POS.

 

The Future

 

Since the introduction of the shorter development cycles for releases the Rorqual has found itself in limbo. Ore/Ice Compression has been made available to all via Station Services so you no longer need to do this, and consume Heavy Water, in the Rorqual. Clone Vat usage has been viable but the recent change to Jump Clones nerfs this as well now.

 

The Rorqual really is a ship without purpose, sure it can still be used for mining and the bonus you get for activating the Industrial Core when boosting is worth using the ship but having this as the ONLY benefit really puts a question to the viability to the Rorqual.

 

CCP did say, many months ago, in a post that the Rorqual was going to be "fixed" but they could not do anything until other changes in game and the "back-end" were complete. I can't remember where I read that, but I'm pretty sure it was on the official forums by CCP Fozzie... but I could be wrong about that but I know what the message said just not where I read it or who posted it.

 

Citadels are coming, other changes are happening but still word on the fate of the Rorqual is non-existent.

 

Come of CCP, please give us an update on the fate of the Rorqual.

What good are standings now?

It's not a bug, it's a feature.

That used to be the muttering when a mistake in a program was used to make life better for the users and instead of being removed it was fought for and remained, often with additional work to make it "production quality".

Well it seems CCP have had this happen, I'm sure it's happened before and will again but they've admitted it was an error and feedback from users has influenced their decision to let it remain "as-is" rather than what they planned, which to change it back to the way it worked.

Ths is a great change, I'm very happy they have decided to leave it alone. Having had new alts have to grind or travel to null in order to use a Rorqual to create a fresh clone is a pain in the arse but no longer do I have to do this.

Estel Arador Corp Services (and other jump clone services) have long provided this service for free and have been the saviour of many a pilot. I agree wholeheartedly with Mike Azariah in the Reddit post that a statue or some kind of "official recognition" for the services that were provided is needed by CCP.

It does beg the question now though, aside from lowering Tax and increasing Refining/Reprocessing amounts what purpose do Standings have?

Feel the Burn

Niarja and Uedama, two 0.5 systems that see a large proportion of high value high sec losses. Gankers are very active here and they are systems I try to avoid, if at all possible.

Apparently the FC for MiniLove (Goonswarm ganking "arm") is stepping down so to "see him off" there has been an increase in ganking occurring.

Niarja

Uedama

It's being very profitable according to the killboard details for the past weekend. 

I wasn't aware this was happening and was told last night by a friend in the 'swarm. This meant I paid attention as I was travelling through high sec instead of using the autopilot and doing something else. So glad I did as last night I was scanned by SIX different ships in four different systems on my approach to Niarja.

I made it safely to station but I sent an alt through Niarja to see what was there and II'm so glad I did. Local spiked and a gank occurred when I would have been passing through, flashy red was Local.

Quote of the Day

I was lowering my IQ earlier today reading the Eve Online forums
                                                                       - EVE Hermit

I don't know any EVE Online player that does not admit that the EVE Online forums are a "hive of scum and villainy". There are far too many trollers, people who don't know how to search or those that just don't know when to shut up.

I do visit the forums but I rarely actually read any topics, a browse through the subjects is usually enough to make me shake my head and close the window. That said I do read the Features & Ideas sub-forum as it, occasionally, has well thought out and good ideas.

A better place to visit would be the r/Eve Reddit page, this usually has good links to funny images, good discussions and information for new players. 

A Death In The Family

The One That Was

She had been part of the family since 2010, I'd built her from scratch. Every component I'd chosen after extensive research and I was confident that I'd have a fast PC for at least 3 years. She had a corsair 80GB SSD that had cost me more than the graphics card, the graphics card was the latest top line AMD card (5970). 

The case was a first for me (and my supplier) instead of having the cables at the rear the motherboard was rotated 90 degrees so the cables came out the top. On the underside were three large fans that helped keep it cool.

The PC was designed to run multiple EVE clients at once and thanks to three monitors I could run ten clients easily without any noticeable lag, not to mention just about any game at high resolution. 

The End

I went to bed the Friday night not knowing the next day she would not wake up. Nothing untoward or indicative of what was to come had happened during the day or evening before.

Attempting to power up the next morning resulted in her appearing to start, the power light was on but no signal was transmitted to the monitors and I could not hear the normal start up noises of the non-SSD hard drives.

Investigation showed that there was an issue with both the graphics card and motherboard. A friend thought that the motherboard PCI-Express slot was most probably the cause of the death and that I would have to salvage what I could.

The One That Will Be

I needed a new PC, data was mostly backed up and the only stuff I needed to get off the hard drives I had could be extracted via a USB dock. Buying a new PC was not something I wanted to do, being unemployed meant I was being careful with money but luck reared its head and a nice tax refund this year gave me a decent budget and selling the bits that still worked raised that further.

Here is the new PC.

A Core i7-4790 @ 3.6Ghz, 32GB RAM and a Nvidia GTX 960 form the basis of this small beast. A 240GB SSD provides the home for Windows 10 with a 3Tb Seagate drive for data. She's small, fast and pretty.

The Cosrsair case is not what I would normally have gone for but I don't need a 20kg monster case any more, the smaller case fits nicely under my desk and is easy to access if I need to get instead to add/remove components in the future.

Data has already been transferred over, Windows 10 is very usable and the return of the Start Menu welcome. EVE runs very fast and even other games I play (World of Warships/Payday 2) are blisteringly fast.

I paid more than I wanted to but if I can get another 5 years out of this PC then it will have been worth every cent.

I guess I have no excuse for not posting blog posts now, time to edit those drafts I have had waiting for work for too long....

Seamless, Simple and Intuitive - Choose only two

Due to the issues following the deployment of FozzieSov on the 14th July all active accounts received a "gift" of 50,000 skill points. Excelent, I like free stuff and skill points are much wanted. The process should be simple, I've done it before so I just have to remember how. 

Simple? This is CCP and it isn't.

It took me about five minutes to realise that you don't do it in the skill queue but in the Character Information screen on the skill tab. You expand the skills, right click the skill you want to apply the points to and then enter the amount to apply (this is because you may want to spread it about over a few skills).

Just one small problem, you need to do a few extra steps if you're already training skills and more again if you happen to have the skill you want to apply the points to in your queue.

Ok, I'll pause my training queue whilst I apply the skill points to the skill I'm currently training.

BUZZZZZZZZ. No can't do that, I need to remove the skill from the queue, apply the changes and pause, again, the queue then apply the points.

I'm sure it was the way to do it when implemented in the "olden days" but the whole process is no longer intuitive and really needs changing. We should be able to apply skill points without having to pause the queue OR having to remove queued skills then adding them again.

Still, I've got 50,000 skill points that will give me about 20 hours off the currently training skill my characters are doing. That's reason to celebrate, just ignore the UI issues applying them :)