29 June 2012

Lost In Hisec

In partnership with one of the other wormhole corps in my alliance we have something of a wormhole academy on the go. As part of the fun of this academy we are organising regular trips from their C2 wormhole system to our C4 wormhole system.

The first such trip was not so successful as we didn't achieve a critical mass of people. The plan had been for a minimum of five people to come from the C2 so they could function as a coherent unit. Unfortunately, as is often the case in W-space, the route in wasn't as fortuitous as it could have been. Actually, there was no route in for the duration of the time frame people were online to enter. Of course, wormholes being a cruel mistress, the moment everyone coming to visit gave up and went home we acquired a route. Two people came.

During their stay those two guys had a blast. Made lots of ISK shooting sleepers and one of them has even applied to move up from the academy corp to my corp. This pretty much was the point of the operation so it could be deemed a success. An important lesson learned was POS mechanics suck for entertaining alliance guests. More about that some other time.

So having learned various lessons from last time, the new away trip for the C2 guys was much more thoroughly planned. Primarily, an Orca has been assigned to serve as a mobile CHA/SMA for our alliance buddies. So last night was time to escort them in.

The route was less than ideal with four wormholes to jump through, three of which were end of life. Intel indicated we should have about two hours remaining on the shortest wormhole so we decided to take a calculated risk. Running the most secure operation we've ever done we had eyes on both sides of every wormhole. There was no chance anyone would get the drop on us, and if they did we all would drop on their head and have a good fight.

Slow Orca was slow and seemed it would never ever get to our entry system. In the meantime we were keeping good eyes watching all the wormholes. Intel was so good that there was almost no delay between the static wormhole from our home system collapsing and it being announced on comms. Blast! Either that was an hour early or someone didn't keep good notes. C'est la vie.

Thus the away mission for the C2 guys came to an abrupt halt. About six of our guys, including me, had no way home. There was only one thing to do - we all headed to our office station and partied the night away.


25 June 2012

EVE's Timezone

I would love to think writing this post would settle the confusion once and for all, but I'm sure it won't.

The timezone used inside EVE is the same timezone as used by Iceland itself. That timezone is 'Greenwich Mean Time' (GMT). Unlike many countries around the world, Iceland itself does not have a timezone change in summer. This means that for five month of the year Iceland, the UK and EVE are on the same time and for seven months through summer the UK is an hour ahead. During those seven months Iceland and EVE still run on GMT and the UK is on British Summer Time (BST).

Throughout my entire time playing EVE I am regularly stunned at how the above information is completely misunderstood by people who should know better. Usually it is on the forums during a period of extended maintenance. CCP will often have a message saying the servers will be back at 15:00 GMT and almost like clockwork someone will post at 15:00 BST (14:00 GMT) asking where the servers are.

It is usually at that point someone starts an argument about EVE running on Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and how during the summer GMT moves forward an hour. The confusion here stems from the incorrect belief that a given timezone can have its time adjusted by an hour. This misconception is caused by people physically having to change the time on their clocks and watches twice per year. What is happening here is not the time in GMT being moved forwards or backwards an hour; what is happening is the country they live in has switched its timezone. In the UK we move from GMT to BST and back. In east coast USA they move from EST (GMT-5) to EDT (GMT-4) and back.

The only difference between UTC and GMT is that UTC has a very strict scientific definition which covers leap-seconds. This means that it is possible for UTC and GMT to differ, but this difference is measured in fractions of a second, not an hour.

So, I hope this clears up and confusion although I'm sure it won't.