Goodbye Annoying Hangers

I read about the impending demise of corporate hangers in ship ages ago, so I was somewhat surprised to see a devblog only just appearing now. CCP tell us they are making this change to remove more unnecessary complexity from the system, which is something I fully support. As an added bonus, as I sometimes move stuff around in an Orca, I really like this change.

I never understood the reasons behind splitting up the Orca into so many different compartments when the Orca pilot is able to do what he wants with the contents of any of them. For me it has only ever meant I look through several tabs before finding what I'm actually looking for. Whenever I've dealt with accessing other peoples' Orcas they generally tell me what I'm looking for is 'probably in tab X but just rake around'.

For the few cases where access restrictions are required CCP have put more cargo containers sizes into New Eden. An Orca corporate hanger space is 40,000 m³ and CCP have conveniently added 10,000 m³ and 5,000 m³ containers. If you do want to restrict access simply put in three of the 10k m³ containers and one 5k m³ container to hold everything in. Doing it this way leaves 5k m³ of space where you can move stuff you want people to access. Simples.

Now, dear CCP, there are a handful of other places the breakdown into corporate hanger tabs needs removed. Whilst these corp tabs are essential in many POS modules, there are others where they are not needed. Eliminate these from mobile laboratories and their ilk and suddenly it becomes possible for alliance members to use labs for copying or invention. Eliminate them from other POS modules and suddenly reverse engineering and even manufacturing could be opened up.

If it was possible to remove the corp hangers from the Orca it could just be as doable to remove them from a handful more places.

Always Recruitment

Recruitment seems to be a pretty constant task and one that I don't particularly feel comfortable doing. I have a general 'fear' of the unknown in that I like to have a rough idea of how a conversation will go. Obviously this is an unlikely event when chatting to a total stranger so I just have to swallow my apprehensions and get on with it. Know what, it really isn't that bad.

Most conversations are just about getting a feel for the person you are chatting with, finding out if they've been in wormhole space before or have seen enough action that wormholes shouldn't be too daunting for them. Most of that comes down to personality - are they going to log off when the wormhole is quiet or are they going to go do some scanning and find something to do (kill sleepers or kill capsuleers, either is fine). There is a whole other side I keep in my head while this conversation is ongoing. One of my directors wrote a fine post on what should be paid attention to and how a conversation should be managed. This adds to my tricky feelings when handling such chats as I sometimes feel like I am being devious or deceitful.

Assuming all the chatting goes well there is also the API check to go through. I am much more at home doing that. It's pretty straight forward to make sure people have basic skills to survive in wormhole space: can they cloak? Can they scan? Can they remote rep? Do they have a decent tank to survive? Even beyond those points, where things of interest become a bit fuzzy it is still enjoyable to research backgrounds and prior associates.

At the end of the day, though, it all comes back to the person and actual interaction with them. This is the most important aspect really for any corp like ours. I want people who are fun to hang around with, not people who are solely driven to earn ISK or people who complain there is nothing to do but never actually try and find something to do.

Not sure where I was going with this blog post, just a bit of a brain dump I guess. Bottom line is, our recruitment is open and we've had a small number of people join us already. You should come join us too, at the very least you get a chance to make me feel uncomfortable in our public recruitment channel for a bit.

Much ado about nothing

There's been so much traffic in the EVE blogosphere recently about the death of the EVE blogosphere that I've been struggling to keep up. Sure there have been the disappearance of a handful of high profile bloggers but I wouldn't say there's a greater rate of attrition than normal. The only difference is the high profile guys announced their departure.

Old Man:     I think I'll go for a walk....
Man:      You're not fooling anyone, you know--
      (to Cart-master) Look, isn't there something you can do...?

Given the number of new posts I see in my google reader feed I'm quite happy with the volume of blog posts appearing daily. I rarely wander to either EN24 or themittani.com unless someone points me there for some reason.

My EVE feed stats from Google Reader - 21 Nov 2012

It's kinda hard to make any sensible comment from a single month of data like I have in the above grab. I'll post this here and try and revisit this topic in a month.

New Eden Open

Just in case any one is planning on watching the New Eden Open tournament, I've put a page up at the top with a live stream to it. The Tournament program starts at 18:00 UTC with the first match at 18:12 UTC.

I've listed the matches below the feed and will try and keep the winners updated with super, hi-tech application of a green colour. No promises though.

Elite: Dangerous

Sorry, nothing about EVE in this post. Do read on though, if you love EVE this should interest you.

I awoke this morning to the news that David Braben has posted a project on Kickstarter. He's looking for £1.25 Million to release a new game in the Elite series - Elite: Dangerous. For anyone who grew up playing the original Elite or Frontier: Elite II this is massive news.

Highlights of the benefit list include:

• Get your name on an NPC for £40
• Get into the Alpha test for £200
• Have a station named after you for £500
• A planet named after you for £750
• £3000 gets your name on a star system

There are a bunch of other benefits you can choose as well, but even if you can only spare a fiver you should go show your support for the next instalment of this ground breaking series. As soon as I calmed down a little and read through those benefit options I stuck a few quid in the pot. Just don't tell my wife.

Nashh Kadavr's Leaving Party

Nashh Kadavr of the many coloured Kadavr corporations decided to call it quits in New Eden and hang up his pod. To ensure no easy return from retirement Nashh decided to go out with a bang, inviting everyone to come shoot his Thanatos and even providing frigates to help if you wanted. I've been reading Nashh's blog for a while now so it would have been remiss of me to not help send off a fellow blogger in style. I also couldn't turn down the offer of shooting at a carrier.

I should have joined a fleet

Typically, I almost forgot about the whole thing and at 20:00 I only just remembered to move some ships. I figured I would need more than one ship, so moved five of my pre-fitter rifters across  to Assiettes. I remembered to change my medi-clone location and even insured the ships. Just after 21:00 I jumped into Goinard half expecting to die on the gate. To my surprise the gate was empty so I made some safe spots and started jumping around while watching local to see what was what.

After a while Nashh announced in local that we should get to the customs office at planet three, so I did and landed in mayhem. There were already Archons on the field repping Nashh. Oh well, I was only here for the fun so I burned the 20 km at Nashh, locked him up and started shooting long before I could actually hit. Much to my surprise I was within optimal range, orbitting Nashh, and taking teeny tiny pieces of armour off him before my first death. Time Dilation was around 10% at this point so I easily got my pod out and went back for another ship - TiDi meaning I could both grab a beer from the fridge and drink it during the warp out.

Strike Two

On warping back to the scene of the fight I finally remembered to start taking screenshots for this post. I got in range again and started shooting at Nashh. I didn't last long. Also, Nashh didn't seem to be taking much, if any, damage from the fight. Again I got my pod out, reshipped and came back. This time the field seemed to have split up, I started to approach Nashh but decided something odd was up and warped off to assess from local chatter.

Scary d-scan analysis looks scary

Local yielded nothing useful so I warped back to the fight. Trying to be clever I warped to 20 km thinking that would place me nearer the fight. I was wrong. As I burned toward the battle a former corp mate locked me up and put a disrupter on me. Not sure if he knows my alt but I'll be asking him later. It was taking forever to get to Nashh and I was taking incoming fire. To try and whore on another killmail I locked a nearby Ashimuu and started firing. That guaranteed a rapid death for ship number three with ship number four following suit rapidly afterward.

One, two, many, lots

For my last ship I had a slightly different tactic. I warped to 100 from the POCO in the hope their would be a wreck I could use to warp into the heart of the battle. This worked in so much as I was away from the snipers picking off ships burning between the POCO and the fight, but I was still 40 km away and had to burn back.

Rifter: Engage many cap ships

I've never seen a sight like the above screenshot. Something seemed inherently wrong with me burning a frigate into that mess of cap ships. But burn I did, just in time to see Nashh's Thanatos explode right in front of me. Where's the pod? There it is. Lock it!!! I managed to gain lock and squeeze off a few rounds in its direction before it exploded too. Yay, I got on both killmails. At this point I warped out figuring there was no point dying to the caps on field. I then remembered that I wasn't taking this ship home, warped to the top belt and died to a Thrasher.

Goodbye Nashh and congratulations on hosting such a memorable departure.

Nashh Kadavr - Farewell Party 2012
(he's in there somewhere)

Where I've Been

Mabrick over at Mabrick's Mumblings posted a snapshot of his visited systems as recorded by the EVE server. At the end he invited others to post their maps so I decided to take up that invitation.

Orea's Wanderings

You can see from this I spent the vast majority of my time hanging around in Gallente space. This betrays my first two year of EVE as a carebear missioneer. I can see a single route south into nullsec but I can't for the life of me remember what that was for. Other than that, the occasional dot shows where I've jumped out from a wormhole.

Dhal's Travels

It's really easy to see Dhal hasn't moved around much in New Eden. For a toon born in 2005 this map gives and idea of how long it took between my first trying EVE and actually subscribing to the game. Only notable thing I pick from this map is my time spent around Solitude.

Geo's Journey

Geo has only been around for this year but already his spread of travel covers a lot more of the right side of the map. Now he can fly a reasonable stealth bomber I should take him for a wander around the far right of the map and light some systems up there also.

There we go, my main characters' travels up in lights as suggested by Mabrick. So, dear reader, how about yours?