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 :)

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.