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!