Ernest Shackleton would be proud

I've previously covered my use of the T2 Prospect mining frigate to run Level 4 gas mining missions in null sec. It's an excellent ship, fit as I have it its difficult to probe down and admirably does the job its designed to in the minimum amount of time.

In the December 2015 release, Frostline, a new T2 variant mining frigate called the Endurance was released.

Endurance

The Endurance is the latest variant of the Venture mining frigate from ORE. It has the same basic hull as the Venture and Prospect but a great blue-ish grey three tone colouring. Fitting wise the ship is designed to use the new Mining Lasers that were also released in Frostline and are designed to allow "ninja mining in WH or contested Null Sec space".

It's a great looking ship and I've taken a few images with a maximum resolution client so you can bask in the beauty.

A beauty of a ship I think you'll agree.

I've used every mining vessel in the game, including an Armageddon battleship when I was but a noobie, and they all have different uses but living in Null Sec I've found that the Hulk and Mackinaw are kings for mineral and ice mining in fleets but the slow align time and GTFO location that my ice belts are appearing in are making me look at the Endurance.

Fitting

My needs are reasonably basic:

• tank enough to survive the initial barrage of any belt rats 
• a fast align time; to allow me to escape at the first sign of trouble.
• one (or more if possible) mining lasers; to allow me to collect what minerals/ice I'm after
• low cost; so I can keep several on hand for when I do need a replacement and it won't hurt the wallet when I do

I'd like to say I came up with the following fit but I didn't, I appropriated it from ZGG friend Bex removing the probe launcher as I did not need that as I'll be in systems where I'll have dedicated scanner support.

[Endurance, Meth Addict]

Ice Harvester Upgrade II

Ice Harvester Upgrade II

Ice Harvester Upgrade II

Medium Shield Extender II

1MN Afterburner II

Survey Scanner II

Adaptive Invulnerability Field II

Ice Mining Laser II

Improved Cloaking Device II

[Empty High slot]

Small Processor Overclocking Unit I

Small Core Defense Field Extender I

All up the hull and fittings cost just over 30m ISK and combined with a dedicated mining fleet booster the cycle time per laser is between 30 seconds (with Expedition Frigates V) and 40 seconds.

PROFIT?

The ice will then be used to produce fuel for towers and sold, at discount, to friends and allies for their own use.

So far I've only had two at any one time running, this is the fault of my training queue and this is being rectified as you read this. By the end of the second week of 2016 I shall have four pilots mining ice for me.

This is a great ship, it's meeting a set of requirements I had and means that the slower and bulkier Mackinaw and Hulks I'd normally use aren't being put in unnecessary danger. Sure I'd like the frigates to have more than 1 turret hard point but what I have works and using Fleet mechanics I can squad warp in, mine until rats or a visitor appears then squad warp out leaving my tactical support to deal with rats or unwelcome visitors.

For 30m ISK I cannot recommend this ship and fit for ice mining in all regions of space be they high sec, low sec, null sec or even wormhole space (remember the probe launcher if you go there).

Citadels - First View

Both Trinket's Friend and Bex have posted in their, respective, blogs about the coming of Citadels and how large they will be based on the following image:

I've been involved in the manufacture of two stations so far in EVE Online:

• one, was periphery, when I was in Providence and I provided some materials for that but did not participate in he actual setup or assembly.
• the second was as a favour to a friend in a (renting) null sec alliance who needed a lot of PI and minerals but did not want it to be known they were buying them (I also helped move about 11m m3 from high sec to null sec via my JF's)

I'm not sure which station I helped with for the second one, alas my friend left the game just after the jump changes, and I never found out what the station was.

Show Me The Money

Both TF and Bex talk about the cost, after all if you want one you've got to have the bank roll for it because if it's anything like a station or other structure it will need minerals, PI products and perhaps a few other things to make.

The image above shows the purported size of a medium citadel compared to an Avatar titan. very impressive in terms of size but we still don't know how CCP are going to deal with the logistical needs or costs to assemble one.

TF has, logically, inferred that a POCO could be considered a "medium sized" structure and setting up one of these costs around 100m ISK. A POCO needs four PI types and a gantry to assemble and these come out at around that cost.

Now it's ridiculous to imagine that this would be the cost of a citadel, it's too little for this structure, a more reasonable cost base would be in the low billions. Personally I think between 1.5 and 3 billion is what it may cost. I see either a large amount of minerals or perhaps a new "framework" object (like the POCO gantry) that you create, move into place then fill with extra materials (in the same way you construct stations) then after a period of time your station is complete.

Between 1.5 and 3 billion ISK for a medium structure seems reasonable to me.

Time-wise, it will take at least a couple of weeks to make one. Unless you're a major null sec alliance who hordes and has large stockpiles of materials, in which case you'll be able to assemble as soon as you can move it.

Speculation

Details on citadels are still vapour, we don't know anything about:

• handling loot/destroyed structures
• how defence weapons will be controlled/configured to work
• system indexes and influence of any structure on them
• vulnerability windows/protection
• whether structures will function/be deployable in wormhole space and, if so, how that will exert influence on WH system
• ship docking/mooring
• taxes/fees/(any) fuel use requirements

and a host of other questions I and others will have. We are starting to see information forthcoming but so far its just from the art department. Hopefully a devblog or further "leaks" will come soon and allow players to start understanding this major new game mechanic.

Silent Runnings

Be Very Quiet

Mrs CEO and I celebrated the birth of our second child (a boy) in late October and this is the primary reason I've been quiet. It's very hard to write new posts, edit ones for publication and even play EVE during a newborns first few weeks.

We've had a few problems, nothing major and certainly nothing that needs a kickstarter or a "sob post" about. Babies have issues, like all things identify what you can control/change and do it. So we did, turns out he might have diary allergies like my side of the family has suffered from.

We did have a very stressful lead up to Christmas as the Monday before he and his older brother were admitted to hospital with an acute viral infection. What we have no idea, the doctors have no idea but they didn't leave hospital until the 24th and then it was into the car for the trip to "the in-laws" and the family Christmas.

We shall sum up that social gathering as "thank fuck its over". With luck I won't see that side of the family for AT LEAST the next three to six months 

Mistress EVE

I have kept up with EVE, using some of my wealth to PLEX accounts instead of paying for them, and have maintained my tower setup and even branched out into more T2 production thanks to new contacts and people I've met.

EVE really is a two edged blade at times. Some days I hate having to do my tower maintenance and the other nit-picking things but then other days I love to dive in and see what my buy/sell order speculation has netted me.

Null Sec Life

Life in Null Sec plods on. I say plod but lots of exciting things have been happening. 

• Operation Frostline sites have appeared and my ratting ship easily handles them (not as quickly as a Smart Bomb Rokh but still I like an element of manual control). I have gotten so many Quafe Zero but I'm yet to see the fabled "PLEX drop"
• Endurance, its a lovely ship and I've invested in a dozen of them for use in Null Sec to mine the local minerals and ice belts (when safe). 30 second cycles on Ice Mining Laser II's is turning a profit within an hour on each ship.
• Logistics are still a pain but I'm not that far into null sec that its too much work. I just wish I could have a few extra ly range on my JF. Still a trip at least once a week to bring in and take out what I'm making. It's profitable but....
• I've found a few local sources and have been in negotiation to buy from/sell to them. Christmas has interuptted this but I'm sure early 2016 I'll be able to source a few raw materials locally and for a better price than Jita Sell.

Possible Expansion

My alliance is doing great work with their own towers in low sec, they're getting fights but also generating passive ISK for very little work. I get materials I need and its win-win all around. 

Seems though the expansion is continuing as they're gotten close to a group in and around Molden Heath and we're starting to see some possibilities opening up there for getting more towers and materials.

World of Warships

Avast Yee Land and Space Lovers.... yeah no won't do that again. 

I'm still finding WoWS a good distraction when EVE is either quiet or I need some time to just relax. Bex plays too and we've had some good games recently enough that we're both going up the Tiers nicely in Russian Destroyers.

I've downloaded FRAPS again (I bought it years ago) and I'm starting to record a few games to video that I'll probably upload to YouTube because they're either great games or contain moments of genius or luck.

The Future

I'm starting to write more and I'm aiming to draft a post at least every day and post a finished one at least four times a week. I would love to do a Ripard Teg and do daily but I don't think I quite have the content or intelligence to pull that off :)

Stop, Revive and Survive

The post title comes from a Road Safety campaign from one of the Australian states and seems rather apt (to me) with the announced changes from CCP with regard to Jump Drives and Capital Ships.

Long Term Plan

Announced overnight by CCP Greyscale in a devblog are details of the three phases of changes that are coming to null sec over a-yet-to-be-given time scale:

• Phase 1 - Long-Distance Travel
• Phase 2 - Medium-Term Changes
• Phase 3 - Dynamic Warfare and Granular Territory Control

Very little information is given for Phases 2 and 3 but we have a lot of detail for Phase 1 as this is being planned for the next Expansion, called Phoebe, in November 2014.

Changes, Soon

It is made clear form the devblog that the changes are not "a silver bullet" that will fix all issues in null sec in one go but instead will form part of a greater number of changes, over time, that will represent a significant improvement to "specific areas of concern" within EVE Online.

The major change coming will be changes to how capital ships can move:

• they will now be able to use gates in null and low sec
• their jump distance changed to a maximum of 5ly per jump

but by far the biggest change are the new timers:

• Jump Activation - counter that shows how long you have to wait until you can jump again
• Jump Fatigue - counter of accumulated jump fatigue that is used to calculate the Jump Activation timer when you do jump

New Timers for Jump activation and Jump fatigue

An example is given in the devblog of how this will work in practice but basically the further you jump the longer it will take you because the length of wait between jumps will increase due to Jump Fatigue. 

Read the devblog, it clearly lays out the functionality and how it will work much better than if I reproduced it here.

Jump Freighters/Capital Industrial Ships

The Jump changes potentially could have a massive impact on goods movement within null sec and CCP appear to have foreseen this and have given Jump Freighters and Capital Industrial Ships (i.e. Rorqual) a role bonus that will reduce these timers by 90%.

From my perspective this is great, it means that when I have my "logi day" I won't have to worry too much about jump timers slowing my jumps down. I did have to check the jump range of JF's but they already are at 5ly so there won't be much change for me.

Fuel costs already went up, now I may have a couple of minutes between jumps when I use midpoints but aside from that these changes won't impact me very much I believe. 

How Will This Change Things

This certainly will have an impact on force projection but it will not change the ability of the current Null Sec power blocs to retain their power. They will need to adapt and change but the ability for them to deploy will not be greatly diminished and we will certainly see capital armadas moving via gates, with sub-capital support, to continue to strike fear into any smaller groups looking to get a foothold anywhere in Null.

We could see the end of large empires spanning entire quarters of null sec but entire regions would still be defensible and with the changes to jump mechanics it will make more sense for power blocs to maximise the use of the systems they have and relinquish control over areas they cannot actively defend or would be more trouble than they are actually worth.

Null Sec Power Blocs

These changes could stimulate Null Sec industry, forcing characters to use the space they have rather than claiming it and not making use of it. New null sec trading hubs could be created and catered to by local industry rather than importing everything from High Sec. 

A lot of space is currently unused because it is not very resource rich or profitable, Phases 2 and 3 should address this and perhaps we'll see rebalancing of system sec and upgrades that mean space is finally worth owning.

My own hope is that there will be smaller entities, be they Corporations or Alliances, that can will finally be able to gain themselves a small foothold in one or two systems in areas that the current Power Blocs cannot easily assault or want to retain because they cannot profit from them.

Actually I love that this brings risk back into null sec, no longer can wrecking ball fleets or massed capitals move around with impunity and at high speed.

More To Come

I see there is some "hurt feelings" in some quarters, so much so that they has been a leak of a post/message that CSM Member/Providence Head FC corebloodbrothers on internal forums.

People certainly get passionate about changes, especially if they feel it will have a negative impact and after having lived in Providence myself I can recall the insular and "me" behaviour a lot of people had. 

Changes can only be good, in the long term. Short term it means everyone will need to look at what they're doing and finding new ways of existing or adapting to the changes.

Reaction

"I was astonished by CCP’s latest DEV blog"
                                                                - EVE Hermit
"Dis gon b gud"
                     - Neville Smit

"I actually rather like this"
                                   - Stabs

Three quotes from three people who don't jump to conclusions or mince their words. These quotes come from their respective blogs based on their feelings on the devblog.

Wilhelm Arcturus also has an excellent write up, he even tries to explain to his non-EVE readers what this change could be compared to in other games. The other three seems positive about the changes but Wilhelm is, from my reading, on the fence about the changes possibly even thinking that they don't go far enough.

I believe they are a good start, I still feel that a mass restriction on cynosural fields is another way of limiting force projection, but what we're seeing (subject to feedback and change) is an excellent start and certainly seems to open the way for splintering of null sec space away from the current Power Blocs.

I'm sure over the next couple of days we'll see more comment come out, there will be the nay-sayers and the EVE Online Forums will be full of people saying the changes are too much and they will be quitting because of them. 

These changes are the start of something good and perhaps its time for a culling of the old guard to allow new players a chance to get into the game without the bitter vets of old.