Not dead yet

back in NZ, haven't looked at this in a long time, why? never got any feedback or comments, still, am playing EVE, mainly FW with an alt, but never quit (yet)....

Simply PI

So the show goes on, nothing shocking there really. As for the politics, e-peen and flame wars, who cares, back to EVE right? Well, minus the old guard....

So back to in game topics, how to do Planetary Interaction.

I have played with PI since its first mouse click obsessive implementation, and while it’s improved it still a pain in the butt to set up. This guide is to get you started in PI, making POS fuel and some simple installations.

So where to start? Pick what you want to do, is it POS fuel? Is it a commodity on the market that sells for a good price? Is it based on a corp policy towards nanite materials?

For sizeable projects it is really only feasible with a co-ordinated effort, corp based and lead by someone who knows what they are doing. So on this basis I am just going to consider and individual making POS fuel or something similar with small scale projects.

Step one get the skills:

·         Remote Sensing (rank 1, prereg = science I, 0.25 Million ISK)

·         Planetology (rank 3, prereq = science IV, remote sensing III, 1 Million ISK)

·         Advanced planetology (rank 5, prereq = Planetology IV, 7.5 Million ISK)

·         Command Centre Upgrades (rank 4, rereq = nil, 0.5 Million ISK)

·         Interplanetary consolidation (rank 4, rereq = nil, 0.5 Million ISK)

I would recommend all to level 4. Advanced Planetology is the most expensive and could be considered optional for a beginner, but if you want to do this seriously then it will pay off. So setup cost for the skills is 2.25 million ISK, or 9.75 Million ISK.

There are more costs which follow, which are detailed below.

Now you need to PLAN. What are you wanting to achieve? There are 8 types of planet:

1.      Storm

2.      Plasma

3.      Lava

4.      Gas

5.      Ice

6.      Temperate

7.      Barren

8.      Oceanic

Each planet has resources available that can be converted into products, referred to by the level of processing. So just pulling noble gas out of a gas planet you can get oxygen, referred to as a P1 material. There are 4 levels, each planet can make up to a P3 level material before it has to be shipped to another planet and combined to make a P4 material. P4 materials are mainly focused around POS manufacturing. So for an individual/beginner I would consider 3 options:

1.      Lots of P1 materials for resale, simple and effective returns

2.      Make your own POS fuel, fiddly but saves POS running costs and can resell well

3.      Make P3 materials for resale (one per planet), market dependant returns, easy

For options 1 and 3 choose the material you will be generating and buy the appropriate planetary command centre. More on option 2 below.

Then go and buy a standard industrial ship if you don’t have one handy already (Badger I or II, Iteron I-V, Hoarder, Mammoth, Wreathe, Bestower, Sigil) and collect up the PI Command Centres ready for deployment.

So what planets produce what P1 materials and what can be combined to make P2/P3/P4 materials can be found here:
PDF file by Korai
And:
EVE University

There was also an excellent resource here: http://fazenda.w-space.org/
But its currently offline, will see what I can find out about it and get it up again if I can.
The EVE University site has lots of nice details, great to rummage through, and the PDF diagrams by Korai are an excellent summary.

For those of you who want to make P3 materials for a single planet I put these 2 pictures together for my own reference:

(Early on when PI was just introduced I made P3 items in high sec, later I made POS fuel in null sec after I had learnt how to do it in empire).

Where is the stuff?
I use Dotlan maps to find which type of planet is around. I normally scribble it out over a piece of paper to try and find where the planets of interest are and to set it up with as few jumps as possible. I did grab this dump of planets as well to make it easy, it’s a CSV file, so will try and find a way to get this posted as a link.

How to:
So now you have a plan of what you want to make, where you are going to make it, an industrial and the relevant PI Command Centres (CC). So you warp out to the planet (you have to be near it to install the CC) and enter the planet mode:

·         Scan the planet for the resources you are interested in (the white bar indicates the overall resource available, go figure low sec is better than empire and null sec better again, in theory)

·         Adjust the rainbow coloured scanning bar to isolate hotspots where you will get the highest return (advanced planetology makes this more accurate)

·         Select the build tab and place your command centre. It will automatically be taken from your hold and placed where you select. You can only place ONE CC per planet.

·         Upgrade your CC to maximum, then next to this place a launch pad. Note, you often can’t do certain activities unless you SUBMIT your current changes. When you do this is makes a little burbling noise and flogs some ISK. This ISK is the cost of building the facilities.

·         Got it wrong but hit submit? Right click and disable the structure, it will confirm you wish to so this. If you remove a CC it will remove everything

·         Then place the relevant facility (basic or advanced) for the resources to be harvested and a launch pad (the launch pad saves costs versus launching a container and is easier to manage and serves as a storage area as well, so no need to worry about a storage facility).

·         For P1 you will need a basic industry facility, for P2 and above you will need an advanced facility.

·         So the mucky part: submit your factories, create routes (right click, create route, then select destination), then select a factory schematic (click on the facility, choose the product you want to be made), submit, then place a processor (it’s a must to have the relevant scan window as the background), add your extractor heads, launch the program (to extract the resources), ROUTE your mined resources. Submit...

·         Now check all your products are being extracted and routed correctly and end up at the launch pad.

·         For P3 setups for routing start at the top and work down, so set you schematic for the advanced facility, then your basic, then route the products (basic to advanced to launch pad), then submit.

So it should look like:

Collecting stuffs:

When setting up the extractor heads for the processor you have some options. You can place a number of extractor head units based on the CPU available. Don’t use it all for one processor! You can slide a bar along which sets how long the processor will run for before you have to come back and reapply the program running it. The crunch is the longer the time the slower the resource return. It’s just a case of how often you want to be coming back to collect the harvest resources. So shorter is better, but more inconvenient to manage. A fudge factor comes in here as well. Some of the extraction heads impinge on other extractor heads, and a little red percentage sign comes up showing you the reduce resource extraction based on overlapping extractors. So try to spread them around for minimal impact. Now, check the numbers for fudge factor number 2. If you have say a Plasma planet extracting base metals and noble metals for making mechanical parts they resources extracted will be at different amounts. It may be a rich deposit of base metals and a poor deposit of noble metals. So for arguments sake the rich resource with 5 extractor heads gives you 500 resources, and the poor deposit only gives you 250 for 5 extractor heads. So you need 10 drilling heads for the poor resource and only 5 for the rich resource. Yep, time to reach for the calculator and see how the resources balance to make sure you have the right number of dill heads.

So now you have product, fly to the customs station, open planet view, open the launch pad, export your goods, pay the ISK automatically for the export duties, then collect them from the customs can in orbit. Take your new treasure home, hoard it, sell it, feed that POS...

Now with the captain’s quarters you can click on the planet icon on the RHS an go into planet view, from in station, nice....

That POS fuel:

You need a number of planets to make POS fuels (you still need the ice products to be sourced separately):

·         Gas/Ice/storm to make P1 oxygen

·         Storm/gas to make P2 coolant

·         Plasma to make P2 enriched Uranium

·         Plasma/Barren to make P2 mechanical parts

·         Lava/Plasma to make P2 consumer electronics (required for P3)

·         Mechanical parts + consumer electronics to make P3 robotics

As you need mechanical parts both for the POS fuel and to make robotics try to get 2 planets making mechanical parts and one making consumer electronics.

But hey, that’s 6 planets! Yes, you need Interplanetary Consolidation (IC) to V for have the full suite. So a storm planet can make both coolant and oxygen fairly easily on the one planet if you are prepared to mess around and juggle them. Otherwise time for the 18 odd days to reach IC V....

To make the P2/P3 materials you will need an advanced industry facility. Place it between your basic industry facility and the launch pad and connect up the links. Then pick the schematic for the right materials and route them as required.

Trying to source different resources for P2/P3 materials can mean you end up with some very long routes (note the basic then advanced industry facilities). Like so:

Cool, got it now how about the fancy stuff?

You can also make:

·         Nanite repair paste

·         POS star base structures

·         Outpost components

·         T2 components (non-moon sourced)

·         Sovereignty structures

So just like above, get out your PDF, plan what you want, source it with your Dotlan maps (scribble on a bit of paper), then go and configure it up....
Best done in conjunction with others really.

Notes:
Plan, plan, plan. Then it will be much easier and rewarding. Just reset the harvesters at a time frame that suits you and sell the goodies (or use them). It’s fairly easy to make good ISK and the investment pays off in under a month (if not faster).
Keith Neilson did some excellent posts (under the original system, so the extractor heads are a little different, but still well worth a read if you want to get serious), here they are:
part 1
part 2
part 3
part 4
epilogue

The Old Guard

So much news, so many posts, makes me wonder why I should say anything as so many others are saying so much. Still, a blog without posts is a dead blog.

So the latest news with the financial statement for CCP and the money they have borrowed. Seems fairly normal for business, bet big and hope your horse comes in. The big horse bet is Dust514. I suspect Dust514 will get off to a good start. The crunch is does it have the legs, and given CCP’s performance with EVE so far I would say so, does it have the market’s attention, i.e. do gamers want to play it (seems so) and will the cash cow be milked in time for the investors? (probably not)

http://jestertrek.blogspot.com/2011/06/realities-of-eve.html

The loan is interesting, in that what will happen when the chickens come home to roost? Will the investor be prepared to wait? What will they ask for? (a 10% share in the company based on future profit projections?), will CCP simply borrow from Peter to pay Paul? All very interesting, suffice to say I think things will stumble on anyway after the dead line. When the coffers run dry is when things close the doors, so we’re not there yet.

Letrange is now quitting, sigh, liked his blog. All Jester (Ripard Teg) seems too write about mainly now is Global Agenda. Helicity Bosun, KIA via CCP. Sigh. All a damn shame. We’re losing the old guard one player at a time, very sad times. Guess it’s all part of it, the turn over and there has to be a trigger event to stop people playing after a number of years. Given the loyalty shown by most players though it’s a bad sign of the times given the ructions from CCP and the forums on fire.

So when am I quitting? Thought about unsubscribing my accounts, solidarity and all, but reality is there is no point. I have a mate who has done some silly things and is now housed courtesy of the Government. I am running his 2 accounts, bit bizarre to unsubscribe my two and keep his running. I am managing his POS and skills, tidying things up for him while he’s taking some time out.

Also I will be there until the lights turns off, it’s just who I am. If there is an idiot holding the flag atop the hill alone that would be me, stupid and loyal to the end. Loyalty just works for me as a person. I have the utmost respect for the French Old Guard after Waterloo (1815), they refused to surrender and were cut down by close range canister (grapeshot), but the stood, the never gave up and they died proud. Someone has to be there at the end. Seems to be what I do, so I’m here until EVE goes down.

Also heard of an old bloke, over 70, in an old folks home in Florida who was playing EVE. He loved it, met people from all over the world, could play when he liked and no one judged him other than by who he was in game. It kept his brain alive as well. Could be me one day, beats fading away.....

Captains Quarters

Think the best article I have seen is by Roc Wieler, an entertaining read with some great ideas:

http://rocwieler.com/2011/06/28/incarna-1-01/

If CCP had put out a lot of fun items like Roc has suggested at reasonable prices I think they would have sold like hot cakes. I almost got some plex just for Aurum, but thought I’d wait to see what I could get, glad I did.

Would have loved an Amarr snipers laser rifle, a Caldari rail gun, some politically incorrect posters and an alien skull. Not to be. Imagine if you could get stupid things, like bowler hats, pith helmets, simple monocles, canes and top hats. Imagine a corp specifying that attire for meetings and corp members! Imagine a group in hunting jackets and pith helmets all in a group at the bar, the macho ones in camo headbands and the vixen squad in latex (now EVE is distracting me from EVE LOL). It would be cheap fun, and a lot of it would be enjoyed. I was keen to part with some coin over silly items.

Instead I got the myopic CCP view with an $80 monocle that doesn’t even shoot frikkin’ laser beams. Can’t even strap the laser monocle to a corgy and tie fire crackers to its tail and let it lose in station.

I hope in time we get some junk like Roc details, I’d buy it. How about something useful like dotlan maps on the Tele? Still, you have to start somewhere and I guess this is what we’ve got.

Anarchy

There is no secret of the rage that is out there, forums are on fire, CCP is pouring petrol on the blaze and bitter vets are getting perma-banned (like Helcity Bosun http://www.machine9.net/blog/?p=609 ) and people are unsubscribing their accounts. The CSM has responded well and issues the same statement through both Saleene and Trebor. No news there, it’s all over the EVE channels.
http://seleenes-sandbox.blogspot.com/2011/06/black-friday.html
http://treborofthecsm.blogspot.com/2011/06/black-friday.html

So, WTF is going on? Let’s try and filter a little bit. I have held off on any comments for two reasons, I have been busy with the NC failscade trying to get my stuff out of Dodge, and it pays to wait a little when sh*t storms hit to see what filters out. My job involves filtering the anger and coming up with what people are saying and trying to find a way forward.  I am not professing to be smart, just not stupid and I use common sense (which isn’t common right?). In fact I would say my management style comes from the movie saving Private Ryan to a certain extent (based on the little speech as to the worthiness of the mission). Basically problems stop with me and solutions begin.

I think EVE has just had its first heart attack. It’s had arrhythmias, palpitations’ and other warning sign, but its cardiac arrest time now. Like all things it a culmination of events. It’s Aurum and the cost of vanity items, it’s CQ and is lack of depth, resource hog monkey face avatars, its null sec nerfs (anomalies and JB’s, as well as poor industry options, RMT, unbalanced super caps) and the perceived CCP disconnect from its audience and CCP’s hidden agendas.  The crunch is, is this a fatal heart attack? Or is it a severe warning, and who is the warning to, CCP or the EVE gaming community?

I was watching a documentary on the cold war last night (couldn’t do much in null sec without a cyno) and noted from Winston Churchill’s speech about the Iron Curtain going up over Europe. It your statements aren’t bold, they just noise. So my bold statement:

This is the first heart attack before the imminent death of the patient. EVE, the game we know is dying and changing into something current players may not recognise in the near future.
So let’s look at some theories, which if tested long enough become facts (Richard Dawkins and ‘the Greatest Show on Earth). Theory: CCP is moving EVE in a different direction from the existing game model.

Fact:  The money trail shows what CCP is interested. It is roughly 40% Dust514, 40% Walking in Stations and Aurum vanity/luxury items, 20% EVE game development

Fact: The backlog of current game issues is so long that it will not be addressed in the next few years with the current resources assigned.

Fact: MT are a normal way of generating large revenue volumes which exist in other gaming platform models, such as FPS and Virtual games. In fact games make more money than Hollywood and non-dedicated gamers make more money than serious gamers (so the $100 million per year for Farmville alone on FB is played by non-dedicated gamers and a bigger market source of revenue)

Fact: CSM is the voice of the players; it does not have to be listened to nor is it privy to major game direction/strategy or significant financial events related to the existing EVE game.

Fact: CCP GM’s have publically stated, and taken action against outspoken players (both with and without good cause), to indicate that the general EVE gaming communities opinion is not valued.

Fact: one current area of CCP’s success is the retention of new players (who won’t know any different of how it used to be compared to the bitter old vets).

The CSM is nothing more than a reflection of the community, a voice that is heard but does not have to be taken on board by CCP. The disconnect can be seen in the current attempts by the CSM to work with and communicate with CCP, and the way they were uninvolved in the pricing of vanity items. In fact you could say they were kept in the dark, and this was a deliberate CCP management decision.

I wonder if my note about the Sims dying and trying to pick up on this market for VR in space as a new market demographic. Smart, but a fail. CQ is not working. It is a resource hog for ugly monkeys (where did my cool avatar go) with real life prices for pixel vanity items. This may work in the dying Sims model, but not in EVE currently. Note, currently, this is where I expect to see a major change.

Clear skies clearly showed what a group of awesome amateurs could do on their own time and resources. Compare the results to CQ with it years in development and you can see why it’s such a fail (Clear skies has multiple races, ships and stations for environments, we get one limited one for EVE after how many years?). But the fail may be for existing players, not for new ones. The new potential players know no different, and CCP is trying to attract a new demographic with a new model. VR in stations is not to appeal to the existing player base, but a new one. It is to be expanded and be allocated resources regardless of what the existing community think. It’s a business decision and model that CCP is pursuing.

Dust 514 is also a major commitment of resources from CCP that once again does not support the existing player base, and is in fact intended to deliberately appeal to a different market demographic.

So CCP has put major resources into walking in stations and Dust514, neither of which are for the existing player base, but to attract a new market demographic. Existing issues have been around for a long time and we have all been asking for them to be addressed for years, and still no resources. Hmm, this indicates that it’s not important to CCP. That a new market will pay MT without thinking for Dust and CQ, as they know no different and it’s a model they are already familiar with.

It’s like CCP has said the game as it exists is great, but the big money is in MT and vanity items, and that’s not our current game demographic. They have sunk significant resources into this perceived new market and left the existing to stagger along as ‘it still works so it’s ok’. Then when the community complains (via forums, etc) CCP has slammed old vets (Helcity), ignored CSM and kept them in the dark and issued official postings that basically say ‘shut up you whiners we’re doing this anyway’. Hmm, doesn’t sound to me like they give a damn about the existing community other than as a platform on which to shift the business model for the entire business.

What we have feared is also supported by the leaked newsletter. I totally agree with what Jester has to say (this is well worth a read): http://jestertrek.blogspot.com/2011/06/pebble.html . Taking it one step further, if you worked at a company and were asked to contribute to an internal publication, would you say the corporate rally cry or something controversial (severely limiting your career lifespan in the organisation). While it may be un-official it is the ‘allowed’ opinions internally. You try saying something against the culture of a company and see how long you enjoy the remnants of your job.

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=932 

I think CCP believes the current gaming community as very demanding for a low revenue model. A better revenue model is what they are pursing and see this as growing pains and do not care about those they lose along the way. They think they are right, have a plan, and are awesome. They have patted themselves on the back and believe their own propaganda. But, you can’t dump the current gamer demographic without actually having the next one in place. This is one execution to soon, and it could well be the death of EVE.

CCP doesn’t care as it no longer wishes to support the current gaming community. It doesn’t care if we all leave, it’s chasing new markets, and we are last century’s business model. If you emo-rage quit they will say, told you so, they were high maintenance and low financial rewards.

The crunch now is whether like a heart attack victim will the patient, CCP, listen to the advice (player base/CSM) and take action to improve its health, or will it say no, we’re right, your wrong and carry on until the next massive heart attack and its inevitable death? I am sure CCP is hoping the sims and FPS will save its business in time, uh-oh....

The emperors new clothes

Saleenes blog says it all:
http://seleenes-sandbox.blogspot.com/2011/06/megatransactions-incarna-10.html

Think it can be best summarised:
I can buy some expensive CCP pixels or some real sexy underwear for my real life Mrs for the same price, hmm, guess mistress EVE will take a distant second place.

For sh*ts n giggles

EVE is a pretty serious game and it would be nice to see some more light hearted things. Here's some random ideas:

• I can rig a ship but not a still, when can I make my own in game alcohol and sell it rather than it be seeded. I mean, who has cornered the hooch market?
• Luxury liners (Gallente?), they get mentioned, why can’t I fit one out and fly high paying patrons around?
• Luxury yachts – wanna make one and sell them.....
• Offshore gambling (outside the 200km water limits and into international waters) are big business, I want a casino ship to go with my brewery....
• Oh, but the vices of alcohol and gambling? Better add a whore house – exotic dancers sorry or an Amarr Chapel ship for the penitent.
• So that’s one odd ship for each race, expect for the Caldari smuggler, which has a small compartment that you can’t scan for drug smuggling, etcetera.
• And I want a Ferrari now I’m a squillionaire

As for gold plated chromed colts with ivory handles guess we might get that with Aurum in Captains Quarters when they add personal items for Incarna/walking in stations expansions.

On a slightly more serious note – how would stealth bomber hunters work? Bit like u-boats and sub-hunters of WW2 I would have thought. A special sonar fitting to ping them out? Or a special probe? Or maybe a cool effect which leaves like a glittering snail trail (think Star Trek did this) that you track to a point which you can then try and uncloak.... would be thinking it would be a T2 Destroyer with 2 fitting options – sonar or snail trail.

Oh well, just some random less serious thoughts.