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.

Paranoia saves

The recent DDOS attacks on EVE should come as no surprise, given recent events around NC/EVEnews24 and others. Also given the global climate of attacks by LULZ....

So what can you do?
1. Update all your Microsoft patches
2. Install Secunia PSI, patch and update everything else that Secunia highlights
3. Make sure you anti-virus is up to date and valid
4. For the paranoid (or more security able) install a free firewall (such... as those that come with an Anti-Virus product or Comodo)
5. Be paranoid about emails and links you are sent (hovering over them shows you the actual link, if it does not look legit then it isnt)

Its ok, I use apple/linux so I am safe. Hahahahaha, your the first sucker I will visit then. Research has shown that because that fallacy exists the users of Apple are more gullible and better targets than other users (LOL) because they think they are safer.
http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/20/apple_malware_attacks/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/17/apple_sql_attack/
Secunia recently reported that from 2005 to 2010, Apple has had more security vulnerabilities than Microsoft except for a single year (2006).
Its now that OS's other than MS are getting market penetration of significance that hackers (read organised crime) and now starting to exploit those OS's.

So its simple, Patch and make sure your AV (preferably with a firewall) is up-to-date.
I would also recommend for the paranoid to change your EVE account passwords. This should be done periodically anyway so now is a good time when a security alert has been raised.

An ugly thought

Hypothetically: Imagine CCP hires an economist (yes, I know they really do have one)and said to them look at the impact of RMT and tell us what it is doing to the game. So the economist needs some numbers to work with. CCP runs a query against its logs, give me all the players who are on for over say 20 hours a day and never leave system. Ok, it’s not 100% but it’s only theoretical. It maps them against systems and hey presto lots of pretty lights showing where the bots are working. Pick a few from each area, check more detailed logs to get what kind of activity (mining or ratting) and work out how much on average the bots are making across the board. Not an unreasonable way or demanding task to run.

Ok, now the economist has some numbers that are a reasonable reflection of what’s happening. Then look at changes over time and compare it to the impact of what is going on in game. Look at sovereignty loss, and namely ships build numbers and losses. Building a super cap requires a lot of minerals, sovereignty, and ISK spent. This can drive the economy to perform certain acts, where to be based, what resources you need. Then look at the crunch, big ships cost big money ($1000USD + for a super carrier), and does RMT actually support or inhibit super caps and caps?

What if the answer was it supports so much other in game events that the financial impact is to actually drive the EVE in game economy more than if it didn’t exist? What if CCP doesn’t do much about bots because it’s not in their interest to do so? It’s a sand box right, and as long as the profit margins increase it’s a winner.

They want smaller PVP in null sec, which means breaking up the big alliances. Bust them for RMT? Seems they are all doing it. There’s the null sec remap in a flash if you want it. Bit harsh? How about Jove incursions: have killer Jove fleets warp in to where confirmed bots are running, blow them away, and the POS they use. Any fleet that turns up to protect them also gets wacked. It would work, but is it in CCP’s best interest to actually stop the bots and RMT or does it help drive the economy?

Oh well, all a great conspiracy theory, would be interesting to know the truth. Would love to be able to run some queries against CCP’s servers and see what drops out. Otherwise it’s all just dark thoughts late at night (yeah, couldn’t sleep, brain went off on strange tangents).

Defining a bitter vet

Playing for years and realising its all a big stitch up.

Thank f*#k it’s only a game or one could become quite embittered by it.  It does get to me, but I just kind of shrug, get over it and go back to the game. What’s wrong, fundamentally, is Real Money trading (RMT). Like all things it is never one factor that pushes things over a threshold. No one thing is particularly significant, until threshold is reached then everything seems to boil over. So what else is flawed to add up to threshold?

Null sec is the ultimate end aim, but is it?

1.       Null sec industry is not broken, it’s completely useless. You mine minerals only because its the only way to get the high end ones, then you ship them out to empire (unless you have specific cap builds that need them in null sec). Mining only works in fleet so you can kill enough rocks and tank the rats. Then when you have the minerals you are really only interested in building caps, especially given the limited number of build and R&D slots available. It means that you have to have an empire base (or low sec) to contemplate building in null sec. Then let’s not even consider how building ships to melt them down is the most efficient way of moving minerals. http://letrangeeve.blogspot.com/2011/06/some-reflection-on-00-life-and-kills.html

2.       Ratting sucks? See http://jestertrek.blogspot.com/2011/04/equal-pay-for-equal-risk.html  basically the return on time versus risk means you are better off mission running! You can get the lottery in some ways when you hit a hauler spawn (load of minerals) or a nice drop from a rat, but it’s not as efficient (read safe) as Empire, so not as cost effective. The only way to rat is to scan down dungeons and do them, so that’s another ship (cov ops) with associated skills, call it Null Sec elitism requirement, for not a lot. Add the recent nerf to ratting plexes and this is now a big bulls eye. By that check maps such as DotLan and see where rats are being wacked, where the very low sec areas are for the rats and you now have a rich environment to go hunt ratters for PVP. So yeah, bulls eye has been painted on those areas.

3.       Small fleets are dead fleets. You head off on a small roam, it snow balls a bit, you shoot at a few things, stir up a hornets’ nest and get hunted down by a large red fleet. When you get on roams as well it can be hard to find kills http://www.ninveah.com/2011/06/collapsing-waveform.html

4.       No movement without carriers. Jump freighters suck, only repackaged ships and containers. So moving junk is painful. Change them so they can carry rigged ships and full containers and they start actually becoming freighters, rather than a big fat pain in the arse (rich target). It seems carriers are great for moving things which I thought would be a freighters role. Without a carrier in Null sec you’re screwed. See  http://letrangeeve.blogspot.com/2011/06/some-reflection-on-00-life-and-kills.html for another opinion along the same lines.

5.       Getting your arse kicked without a fight. The enemy roles out a big cap fleet, your side can’t face it, so they roll over sovereignty without you being able to stop them. So you need a carrier to move stuff, don’t have one? Well you can side by the fireside as it all burns down. Everyone is busy moving their stuff out, so without a carrier you are at the mercy of others. It has cost me a lot more than a few times.  My worst kill mail that haunts my table (which sucks) was when my corp turned traitor and I bailed, stuck in nowhere moving my stuff and got caught by a red fleet in blue space. Most of my losses have come from trying to flee collapsing regions, like Geminate, through heavily camped areas. So now with a flick of sovereignty, with no fight, and no losses I wave good bye to 2 DIC’s, 2 HIC’s, 1 AHAC, 1 SB, 1 Electronic attack frigate, 1 Ashimmu and 1 logistics. That hurts.

6.       Null sec war is pointless. I roll out my fleet, you roll out a bigger one, we rally and roll out more, and then so do the reds, so we pack up and go home. Oh wait, no, let’s fight. First on grid wins. Time dilation my arse. Grids loaded, holding, enemy warps in, lag hits, one side wipes the other for 100% kills and no losses. Yeah, hell, that was fun. Blob fleets and lag, game over. It cuts both ways I guess, a Geddon I was flying get red boxed by the whole enemy fleet and sailed on through the middle of the enemy fleet without a scratch in Y8R when we were hot dropped. Yeah, that makes sense, proves the point that he who is first on grid wins. http://www.ninveah.com/2011/06/fall-of-nc-from-casual-grunts-view.html

So there’s the things that stack up but are ok, until the final kicking. Which is:

RMT
It seems all major null sec coalitions are involved in RMT. Evidence posted on EVEnews24 about Russian based RMT got them DDOS’d. Here is the evidence on NC and the goons:
http://www.evenews24.com/2011/06/10/jabber-logs-purportedly-throws-proof-of-northern-coalition-leadership-allegations/
What is CCP doing about this? Notes from XXX  show they are planning something. But is the actions with tech moons (non-existent one day, then added, one rumour had it to make NC a target). Is this all due to high level politics? Did the NC not pay off the right people to keep it’s RMT going? IT Alliance went south over RMT (link), why not the NC? Why not the DRF next?

So what is CCP going to do about this? RMT is the crunch, this is what puts it over the threshold, this is what is killing Null Sec.

And this is just kind of funny. Where’d the ‘Reds’ get there super cap fleet? They bought it off the NC. Everyone so interested in profits they sold themselves down the river. Reads a little like the end of the Vietnam War with South Vietnam trying to make as much money as possible until the house of cards collapsed and everyone looked around going how did that happen?

And for the sidelines, Bitter vet view on dust – let’s ignore it. What if you threw a war and nobody came? I actually really like the idea, and would love to play it. But I am not buying a PS3 to do it. I was looking at buying a console to play with my little boy, and a PS3 was on the cards. But Sony has so blown it, just bad timing for CCP.  I agree with CCP’s business model to chose Sony, seems limits from Xbox stopped them developing for that platform, so CCP went with what they had, fair call. That aside I like the blurb, seems like a cool game and has an extra factor that a lot of other games don’t offer. But there are a lot of FPS games out there, so why should people part with their cold hard cash to play it. A serious question, really, what if CCP threw a war and no one paid?

Bitterness aside, I like scanning down dungeons, ratting, roaming around in null sec, going on roams and being parts of big fleets, chatting on TS with corpies, watching sovereignty flip. It’s all good. At the end of the day it’s a just a game and I still love it. It doesn’t cost much for a lot of fun and meeting some cool people. And I want to play Dust514.

The NC is dead, long live the king?

Sounds like the longest lived coalition/alliance has passed away today. Hats off to the Russian super cap fleet for the unstoppable steam roller. Like all things in EVE this is just the way things go.
Wonder if CCP sorting out bots will result in the fall of the DRF? are they next?

Feel the love

Interesting times, Incarna and Carbon are coming:

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=916

There has been a huge debate in Failheap challenge about the new vanity items and the payment system (Aurum). Suffice to say I think it is wise that CCP keeps the payment streams separate so they can be tracked better.  Micro transactions are the right path and the way things are moving these days. A steady revenue stream that costs little to an end user is the best way to make money once you reach a threshold number of users.

Computer games make more money than Hollywood, and its non-gamers who spend more than gamers! Farmville on face book is worth 100 million a year:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/4873553/Virtual-real-estate-selling-for-millions

In Singapore they charge 30 cents to pay by electronic transaction. In the taxi’s they do 180,000 transactions a day, or $54,000 a day, or $378,000 a week, or $19,656,000 a year!!! All for 30 cents. OK, so CCP won’t be making this, but it is a worthwhile revenue stream to open up to players and for CCP’s coffers. So from a business sense it makes sense for CCP, but players have rightly raised issues around ‘buying your way ahead’ in EVE (do they know about ISK farmers and do they buy stuff from them?).

For all the negativity spewing forth from Failheap I think it does reflect a large number of big egos and I suspect for many of those egos vanity items will sell well.... Kirith Kodachi’s post is also well worth reading and has some interesting points:

http://www.ninveah.com/2011/05/fury-it-warms-me.html

Also Seleene has reappeared, \0/ :

http://seleene4csm.blogspot.com/2011/05/csm-6-may-summit-reflections.html

Very interesting read, and seems very positive which is excellent news. Seems CSM and CCP are on the same wavelength and the CSM is fairly united (avoiding in game politics) and some great things are coming about as a result. No, it won’t happen fast, but it will happen. This is excellent news. The only down side was wouldn’t it be nice to know more rather than anything interesting is all closed shop under the NDA.... As always just wish we were better informed as this does sound very positive. Suspect, like always so far, we will find out a few days before the next patch in the dev notes. This is not such a great way to go about communicating changes, in fact it sucks. However I take a lot of soclae in the fact that it is at least going in the right direction.

I like the way you move (part 1)

Learning how to move around in EVE can save your ship and pod. Even after 2 years of playing there can still be lessons to learn, most of them the hard way. So here is a brief guide on how to move, comments welcome!

Step one, don’t panic. Where ever you go, whenever you do it you have 30 seconds where you can orientate yourself. You can even force this 30 second window which comes in very handy for station games.

Empire:

You’re a target. Don’t think you are not, that those ships on the gate are just AFK. You’ve just been passive locked and scanned, and that Gurista’s module in the hold of your frigate is worth taking a risk to pop you. Ganking is a profession, people are good at it, don’t doubt they know what they are doing. Sure you will meet some noob’s starting out who are trying it on, but professional gankers make a living off this.

So only auto-pilot (AP) if you have nothing to lose. I use a fast frigate with a warp core stabiliser II (WCS) to auto-pilot around. It’s quick, hard to hit and a few fittings can be the difference between life and death. I have only had my AP Condor shot at once (I also fit an AB as a MWD can be disrupted), and CONCORD killed the Brutix for me. You are never safe, ever. So fly like you have a purpose. You are not on a Sunday stroll; you are going from A to B. So fly to the gate, jump, hit the next one, don’t tool about. If you need a biological break then dock up, or warp somewhere.

Where to warp to?

• Never ever warp to an asteroid belt
• Never warp to zero

Rats hang out at belts, so do greifers and gankers, ninja salvagers and others. Of course there will be harmless miners, who in their hulks have PVP’d and killed the odd wolf, yeah, don’t laugh, I’ve seen it. Rare rats can web and scram you, not so good if you are in a hurry to run away.

Asteroid belts are also where people tend to warp to, so don’t, for that simple fact that others do. People hunting for you will use the directional scanner to check the belts first.

Planets and moons are a good choice to warp to, as long as you don’t run into an unfriendly POS, which is unlikely in Empire. The local star is also not a bad choice.

The advantage moons give is that when you warp off a quick scroll around will show which way you went. This makes warping to a singular object like the sun obvious, now you are left relying on that you didn’t warp to zero so hopefully they hunter won’t drop right on top of you. So a moon, which can be one of many around a planet is a very good choice.

Book marks

While sailing along in warp bang in a book mark (open up people and places, then add a book mark as you fly along). When you hit your warp in point warp off to the next point. Then warp to your book mark and add another when you are on the way. Why? This way the second book mark won’t be on a ‘path’ between objects making it much harder to find and next to impossible to scan down without probes.

Station games

When you undock hit CTRL+SPACE and you will have 30 seconds to do nothing. Look around and you can see who is outside and what is going on. Now you can click dock and insta-dock. This works on most BUT NOT ALL stations. Some stations spit you out outside of the docking range, learn which stations undock you close by. (If you hit CTRL+F you can see the timer counting on the upper left hand side of your EVE window so you know exactly how long you have). If you do anything other than sit still after stopping outside of station you are fair game.

Once undocked you can warp to some insta-warp points. Fly anywhere from 100km or more from the station (the more the better) in a straight line form the station undock point. Then add a book mark. Then when you undock, you can stop, look around, choose to insta-dock or insta-warp to a point aligned directly ahead from the station.

Low Sec

Auto pilot is death; expect to die if you use it. There is one minor window where you can use AP, that’s when leaving low sec turn AP on so you insta-jump on reaching the gate.

Don’t panic if someone targets you, or starts, warp off while you can. When you jump in and see a nasty hostile waiting for you, DONT PANIC. You have 30 seconds to work out where you are in relation to the hostile, the gate, and an escape route. Take the shortest if you are fast or the most direct with the alignment of your ship for the fastest warp off.

A cunning hostile will scram you before webbing you, as webbing you will improve your align time and let you escape faster! How? by lowering the speed you need to achieve to hit warp, which is 75% of your top speed without modules activated. Pulsing (activating and deactivating a module) will help your speed reach the 75% threshold faster. In this situation if you get warp disrupted a MWD won’t work so an AB is a good module for evading trouble in low sec.

Null Sec

Ah, now you are the pro, in null sec, now you know how to move you’ll be right. LOL, welcome to a quick podding. Bubbles of various types, such as anchored or put up by HIC’s and DIC’s will soon stop the quick get away. As always, don’t panic. Orientate yourself, who is where, where are you, what are you aligned to? What’s the shortest path out of the bubbles? Will you make it or should you dash to the gate? Only experience will really teach you that, but a cool head will prevail most of the time.

So if you are moving in null sec fit the ship for the purpose. WCS and cloaks are a must. Anything less is death, even in blue space in null sec, when you hit a roving red gang. So watch the intel channels closely and book marks are a must.

Even ratting is not very safe. You are in a belt, so a definite site to be checked by roving reds. So as soon as you warp into a belt or plex ALIGN TO STATION (or POS). This way you uncloak from warp and can engage the rats and insta-warp as soon as a red enters system. A ratting ship is not a PVP ship. If you are slow on doing this then 5 light ECM drones can be a life saver (and if you have a spare slot a large nuet is good for scaring off vaga’s)

More on null sec movement another post.

6 months in a leaky boat

Fleets, great fun but a sod to manage. An FC (Fleet Commander) has their work cut out and is very reliant on people behaving correctly in fleet. So much so that they rely on a few key people and most people in fleet switch off and just trundle along in the mob. I think it’s why small gangs are so much more fun, you know what’s going on. You know who is doing what in fleet and you can stay in touch with the action and the nuances so much better.

As an FC you are often asking questions of fleet ‘X up’ in the fleet channel if you can do ‘blah’. So one of my visions is to give fleets some love. After all they are supposed to be a key part of the PVP EVE experience.

So here’s a rough model:

You can assign roles, so everyone knows who to follow. Maybe everyone could also be on the watch list in each panel, so you don’t need calls to go out for reps’ you simply pay attention. Drag and drop roles, being able to simply move fleet roles would be a blessing. Add another dozen icons that some windows could have could also be interesting. If for example you have the wing commander position you get more icons allowing you to drag tackle, bubble, web, nosf/neut, logistics, DPS, etcetera, icons onto various people in fleet so you know who fills what roles and what you may be missing or have in fleet. This updates to the FC’s window, so they can shift people around and manage fleets easily.
Also when actvities happen of note a highlight can flash around the pilots box, such as they are being shot, typing in fleet, speaking in fleet chat (in game comms). So instead of having to learn peoples voices you know who is what, where and what might be going on with them.

Then allow wing warping as well, so you can send your scout/bomber/bait wing commander off with all his squad would be nice. Delegated control of some aspects would also mean less work for the FC and more relevance for wing commanders in managing fleets. The ships people are in are also coloured by race to help identify who might be who and possible roles, for quick ID.

A radical option could be fleet formations, which a wing commander can learn various tactical operations and fleets warp into set formations. You could have a dozen formation types and maybe some skill bonuses and now you fleet can be mapped out better. Tackle up front, logistics lurking at the back, AHACs surrounding your fleet core, Alpha artillery forming a back line, stealth bombers on the flank – all from a formation warp in.

That’s part of my vision for EVE, more tactical command, reduced work load on FC’s, more clarity in operations, battlefield tactics (formations). All this means better PVP, a core aim of CCP I would hope.

Because I have been quiet here's another bit....

Amarr BC & BS recognition ships chart

My parents are over to visit their grandson for his 3rd birthday, so but quieter on EVE than one would hope but only to be expected....

Caldari capital and industrial recog chart

We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.  ~Robert Wilensky, 1996

Cruisers to follow soon, completeing the Caldari range, others in progress (some have been done, just not posted yet, one a day is cool)

Caldari large ships

Another recognition chart....

Comments/feedback welcome...

How to get you to come back to this blog....

Most blogs are peoples ramblings and personal opinions, fair enough. You can get those on the forums, too much so. The gems on peoples blogs are what you can get, or take away, its what people really want. Things like guides, or tricks they can learn. So how to make myself a useful idiot? ship recognition cahrts and some guides....

So here is my start, I am working in MS Visio on a number of one page A4 size templates for ship recognition charts. I source the information from EVEMon (CSV export, tidy it up and then add the data to Visio). Then I save the Visio page as a 600 DPI JPEG. (600 is overkill, 200 is normal, 240 DPI for a book, 300 is 'high quality', so 600 is overkill, but its so the small font appears when printing. If people want it in say 300 DPI let me know). The image is 1.6MB, so not to onerous.

There is too be 4 per race:

1. Frigate,
2. Cruiser,
3. Large ships (BS & BC)
4. Capital & others (capital and industrial)

There is also one 'extra' which is to be ORE and misc ships (like CCP gifts).
Here's the first, Caldari Frigates:

Show industry and low sec some love

Ok, everyone is pretty much saying this. My point with this post is to show some of my vision for EVE. The key is there are some great forums out there, we just need to collate everyone’s responses and put them in some kind of order to present to CCP. This is where I think CCP wants the CSM to act and be a front for the wants and desires of players.

I think low sec needs some love, Mynxee (CSM5) started a ‘making low sec matter’ web site, which has been shifted to here:

http://criminallowsec.ideascale.com/

I suggested (a long time back) the letter of marquee for pirates. It is my belief we don’t need to do anything radical in EVE for game play, just look into history and you will find a solution. For pirates look at real life pirates and the letter of marquee. So a Caldari letter of Marque lets you privateer (not pirate) in low sec in the Caldari state, anyone without high Caldari standings is then fair game. Zap a Caldari in Caldari low sec with a Caldari letter of Marquee you are now a pirate and will be shot by all sides. No French, Spanish or Portuguese man-o-wars in Britain’s harbours in the Caribbean thank you very much. Pirates like black beard were people who went rogue and attacked all ships, not just those they had a letter of marquee from a ruling power for.

Ideas people have like the drug rings, pirate factions, pirate missions and stations are great. Now we just need to get CCP to hear them out.

So while we’re at giving low sec some love how about Industry. I think looking at things in isolation leads to some of the issues we have. I think JF’s need some love, think not? Then why does everyone use a carrier to shift things instead of a JF? I thought a carrier was for delivery fighter plane death into enemy fleets as a capital warship, not a mover’s courier van.

Don’t worry about the planes, its only moving them.

Some others have suggested an industrial capital ship, sounds very cool to me. Imagine one that can fly around and do production, scooping rocks and churning out ships, running command modules while it churns out ammo for an ongoing operation. Another could have giant geodesic domes which run chemical operations, or do some PI tasks on ship. Now that would be cool.

Add to that an improvement in industry. Keep all the minerals, have people build components, those are assembled to make T1 ships and/or T2/3 components which are again assembled in higher tech industrial installations to make T2/3 products. Where’s the assembly lines? This would also hopefully put an end to let’s build 5 BS and move them, melt them and use them for a super cap build as it’s smaller than moving the minerals. That’s just totally illogical. What production facilities available in null sec are also farcical.

So for industry, more components, more assembly options, more materials used in more ways. A capital industrial and some love for low sec with pirate factions, drug manufacturing, privateering and other ideas from the ideas for low sec and now my vision of EVE is starting. Add some fleet improvements, planetary improvements and now we’re talking, more on that in future posts.

So please go and have a look at the ideas web site show above and give it your support to help make EVE the game you want it to be.