Fear ye not. New beginnings are coming. And Z3R0's not dead, it's merely resting.
Showing posts with label corp. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corp. Show all posts
17 April 2018
3 January 2016
Starting YC 118 in Style
Last night we had one such night. Everything started fairly slowly with me logging on alone. I found our home system was swiss-cheese with K162s and set about scanning everything down. Our C3 static was quiet and had a few teasing Frostline sites. I had been getting bored of those but a few nights ago I got a Vindicator BPC and a 650 Mil ISK officer module of some description (now for sale in Jita). Picking up a billion ISK in a few minutes did wonders for piquing my interest again. Just as I started running the Frostline sites another corpie logged on. Now I had someone on comms to chat with the game was much more fun. We cleared up the Frostline sites without any exciting drops and moved on to exploring the rest of our chains.
Ponder started scouting out the C2 K162 whilst I went to our other static to see what delights that held. I found lots of gas and very little else. Ponder found potental targets flying a Stratios and an Epithal. We decided Ponder's find was much more interesting so I shipped into something invisible and headed to the C2. Sitting just inside our hole home I awaited Ponder's intel as to which POCO the Epithal would invariably warp to. Sadly when he did warp it was in line with two different planets so I had to take a guess and go to the more likely Barren planet. I chose badly and nobody ever landed. We still had eyes on the Stratios so we stuck around for a while longer. He showed no signs of moving and we gave up hunting in favour of ninja-sucking some lucrative C5 gas.
By now we had ex-corpmate Epigene on comms chatting and then a wild Studley entered from the north to join us stealing gas from the C5. The details of 'stealing gas' is fairly simple. From warping in to a gas site you have 15-20 minutes before the sleepers spawn. In that time you get as many pilots as possible to suck as much gas a possible as quickly as possible. At this point we had five pilots in Ventures in the gas site plus a sixth providing boosts to speed up the rate of gas extraction. As is the common case in w-space this was three people with two characters each. By the end of the first gas site we had earned around 50 million ISK each and had a brief intermission in sucking to scout another corpmate back home from hisec.
Back in the C5 we were almost at the end of our time for the second gas site when our boosting Gnosis was pointed and tackled orbiting the hole home. We cut our sucking short and headed back to reship into something more combat capable than a mining frigate. Thankfully the Gnosis got away but we lost sight of the offending Stratios. A little scanning later and we found a new K162 leading into our home. Of course we went in to investigate and in addition to the Stratios I saw a Prophecy on d-scan. With the ships we had we felt confident that was a fight we could take. We left an uncloaked Proteus on our side of the hole and kept our other couple of ships out of sight. Our opponents moved their Prophecy up to just inside their hole and their Stratios engaged our Proteus. At this point the rest of us decloaked and warped in to fight. This was our first mistake as the Stratios immediately jumped through and both it and the Prophecy ran away. Bugger! Really we should have gotten him to jump through before decloaking the rest of our fleet so we could have something tackled on the other side and unable to run.
A little bit of baiting from us and sniping from them followed but it was clear they wouldn't engage us in a brawl. I decided we should try and provoke some action with combat hole rollers. At this point we realised the second mistake we made of hanging around for too long. Unfortunately the baiting would appear to have given them time to get friends in who landed on their hole at the same time as Studley and I started rolling it. We had their Astarte into half armour when their logi landed. They also had jams from a Falcon, neuts from a Curse plus a load more DPS from a Hurricane, Vigilant and Deimos. It was clear we were toast and even after that I seem to recall they had more ships landing after I got my pod off the field. Good fights were exchanged in local and we decided to call it a night as it was nearly 1 am locally for most of us.
As far as the night went we had scanning, shooting red crosses, gas sucking, being hunted, doing the hunting ourselves, and finally getting whelped by a superior force. It's pretty hard to get a wider range of activities crammed into a single evening in New Eden. Your blinkered mono-activity corps might be better at the single thing they do in this game we love but I like to think in my corp we get to play a lot more of the game than they do and have a lot more fun in doing so. Welcome to YC 118.
18 January 2015
Another New Year
For many, the start of the year is a time of reflection, renewal and change. Some mock the arbitrary nature of this but, as humans, it is good to re-evaluate your activities and decisions from time to time. However, as humans, we are all inherently lazy so require something to prompt this behaviour. Putting a new calendar up on the wall is a pretty good prompt to start the changes you might be thinking of.
On the last day of 2014 my wife and I decided to buy a new house in a new area currently at the start of a massive redevelopment of a small town. I've never fancied buying a newly built house as I much prefer old houses with history and character. In this case I surprised myself greatly when we went to view the various show houses on the 2nd of January. One day later, after a second viewing, we were committed to buying. What's not to like: I get a garage and there are talks of converting the attic into a man-cave for my guitars, books and Scalextric; the kids get a good sized room each and we get a guest room; my wife gets the kitchen of her dreams (apparently that's a thing). The downside is getting from where we are today to being moved into our new house is going to be a very busy five month journey which will inevitably eat into what EVE time I currently clutch on to.
Thankfully, almost pre-cognitively, I had already started putting plans in place to reduce my personally-perceived workload in EVE. Last year increasingly I was feeling it was my fault when nobody had been on to scan our constellation or when someone complained that there wasn't anything going on fleet-wise. In truth it is my fault but the 'fix' as I saw it was for me to spend even more time trying to do these things. Time wasn't something I had in copious quantities (see above) so I was just getting frustrated and annoyed at the fact others weren't taking on the responsibilities of scanning, etc. Over the holidays I put out a call for help in the form of job adverts. Dedicated scanners and people to run fleets. The reward was getting their share of the corp fuel bill paid as well as a bit of kick-back from PvE tax when we run sites.
After a slow start I've filled all the slots and have been able to relax as I've mentally passed some of the responsibility over to the people who've volunteered for the roles. A bit of responsibility placed on others rarely hurts anyone and a healthy dose of delegation should definitely help me. Thankfully, and as expected, the people who tend to be on most took on the roles. This pleases me because the most active people should be the ones rewarded for their efforts.
Of course, my mind has shifted on to what is next for my corp. And to be honest I don't know. Last year I pushed for us to move our PvE vs. PvP balance more towards the PvP side of the equation. This has been somewhat successful and we fly a more combat-ready fleet whenever we are out and about. We've also went on a lot more lowsec roams than we used to and met with limited success. We've had fun, which is important, but there is still some way to go to. However, I feel we've definitely reached a hard limit and I'm not sure how to progress further. To become even more PvP-oriented I need more people who are confident at and able to FC. Unfortunately people who want to FC PvP don't seem to want to join a relatively quiet wormhole corp which does PvP and PvE in equal measure. If you're focused enough to have the skills to FC well the chances are you like playing in a target-rich environment where pewpew is the primary activity.
Anyone have any ideas how to bridge that gap and move my corp closer to an effective but not exclusive PvP force?
On the last day of 2014 my wife and I decided to buy a new house in a new area currently at the start of a massive redevelopment of a small town. I've never fancied buying a newly built house as I much prefer old houses with history and character. In this case I surprised myself greatly when we went to view the various show houses on the 2nd of January. One day later, after a second viewing, we were committed to buying. What's not to like: I get a garage and there are talks of converting the attic into a man-cave for my guitars, books and Scalextric; the kids get a good sized room each and we get a guest room; my wife gets the kitchen of her dreams (apparently that's a thing). The downside is getting from where we are today to being moved into our new house is going to be a very busy five month journey which will inevitably eat into what EVE time I currently clutch on to.
Thankfully, almost pre-cognitively, I had already started putting plans in place to reduce my personally-perceived workload in EVE. Last year increasingly I was feeling it was my fault when nobody had been on to scan our constellation or when someone complained that there wasn't anything going on fleet-wise. In truth it is my fault but the 'fix' as I saw it was for me to spend even more time trying to do these things. Time wasn't something I had in copious quantities (see above) so I was just getting frustrated and annoyed at the fact others weren't taking on the responsibilities of scanning, etc. Over the holidays I put out a call for help in the form of job adverts. Dedicated scanners and people to run fleets. The reward was getting their share of the corp fuel bill paid as well as a bit of kick-back from PvE tax when we run sites.
After a slow start I've filled all the slots and have been able to relax as I've mentally passed some of the responsibility over to the people who've volunteered for the roles. A bit of responsibility placed on others rarely hurts anyone and a healthy dose of delegation should definitely help me. Thankfully, and as expected, the people who tend to be on most took on the roles. This pleases me because the most active people should be the ones rewarded for their efforts.
Of course, my mind has shifted on to what is next for my corp. And to be honest I don't know. Last year I pushed for us to move our PvE vs. PvP balance more towards the PvP side of the equation. This has been somewhat successful and we fly a more combat-ready fleet whenever we are out and about. We've also went on a lot more lowsec roams than we used to and met with limited success. We've had fun, which is important, but there is still some way to go to. However, I feel we've definitely reached a hard limit and I'm not sure how to progress further. To become even more PvP-oriented I need more people who are confident at and able to FC. Unfortunately people who want to FC PvP don't seem to want to join a relatively quiet wormhole corp which does PvP and PvE in equal measure. If you're focused enough to have the skills to FC well the chances are you like playing in a target-rich environment where pewpew is the primary activity.
Anyone have any ideas how to bridge that gap and move my corp closer to an effective but not exclusive PvP force?
23 March 2014
Hole Closing: The Long Way
It was EU op night and I was barely running on time. I'd just convinced my kids to go to sleep when jabber started pinging me about getting my arse online. We had a class 5 connection in addition to our class 3 static. Neither were interesting so needed rolled before we could get on with making ISK. Finally getting Teamspeak fired up and both clients logged in I was ready to roll, literally.
For once we had multiple Orca pilots so we could make short work of collapsing these unwanted connections. In an effort to spice things up a little (hole rolling is boring) I decided we would collapse both at the same time. Orca jumps in and out of the C5, warps to the C3 and jumps in and out of that before POSing up to wait out the polarisation timer. Things were going great and the C5 hole went critical exactly when I expected. I jumped Oreamnos back home in his Loki and then issued the command for the Orca to follow. Sadly this was not to be and I received an error that the wormhole no longer existed. "Ah crap guys, I rolled myself out" I announced on comms.
This C5 had a static C4. We were their old static so finding the new one is trivial. Well, would be if I could remember what I needed to offline to bring my probe launcher online. Ah, I remember now. I offline the EM resist and online the probe launcher only to find for some reason I had combat scanner probes. Just what I need - I'm in an unbonused ship with my weaker scanning character using combat probes to find wormhole sigs. On the plus side nobody expects the combat scanning Orca.
Scanning down the new C4 static I warped immediately to 0 and jumped through. Bob smiles on me as this C4 has a static C3. K-space was close. I had six sigs to go through and found only one additional wormhole to the C5 I just left. That must be the static C3 so again I warped to 0. Bob is less happy this time and dropped me out of warp at 8km. Slow Orca is slow and I crawled to the wormhole before jumping through and finding myself 900 metres from the exit hole, thus preventing me cloaking. Jeez, this is just unfair. I warped off, made a safe, launched probes and warped back to the safe. I'm in a C3 with a lowsec static. Ten sigs made scanning a bit tougher but I find six wormholes total. Here's hoping one is hisec.
Warping to each at range I find C3, C3, Lowsec. Then I see probes on d-scan. Only cores so they won't find my Orca, but what are the chances they'll warp to the next wormhole and catch me there? Probably slim but the thought was in my mind as I warped to the next signature. I landed 100 km away just to be safe and found a highsec exit. Bingo! I bounced back to my safe then on to the exit at 0. This time I landed close enough to jump out without any messing around and I found myself in Brapelille, 17 jumps from the k-space entrance to our static.
I had 17 jumps to cover in an Orca. As a nice bonus the home connection had been taken to mass critical. Oh yeah, did I mention the wardec we're currently under? So, 17 jumps is a walk in the park right? I feel more nervous than I did while scanning my route out of W-space. Death in w-space comes much like the dentist's needle - you know little about it until it stabs you in the face. In K-space the existence of local makes the inevitable happen in slow motion as death first appears as a little red flag in local long before becoming a little red flag in the overview. I jumped system after system, carefully scanned local for war targets on each jump with the hope that I can dock up before they found me. Each jump took me closer to home yet the nervousness increased as the jump count decreased.
- "I'm three jumps out guys"
For once we had multiple Orca pilots so we could make short work of collapsing these unwanted connections. In an effort to spice things up a little (hole rolling is boring) I decided we would collapse both at the same time. Orca jumps in and out of the C5, warps to the C3 and jumps in and out of that before POSing up to wait out the polarisation timer. Things were going great and the C5 hole went critical exactly when I expected. I jumped Oreamnos back home in his Loki and then issued the command for the Orca to follow. Sadly this was not to be and I received an error that the wormhole no longer existed. "Ah crap guys, I rolled myself out" I announced on comms.
This C5 had a static C4. We were their old static so finding the new one is trivial. Well, would be if I could remember what I needed to offline to bring my probe launcher online. Ah, I remember now. I offline the EM resist and online the probe launcher only to find for some reason I had combat scanner probes. Just what I need - I'm in an unbonused ship with my weaker scanning character using combat probes to find wormhole sigs. On the plus side nobody expects the combat scanning Orca.
Scanning down the new C4 static I warped immediately to 0 and jumped through. Bob smiles on me as this C4 has a static C3. K-space was close. I had six sigs to go through and found only one additional wormhole to the C5 I just left. That must be the static C3 so again I warped to 0. Bob is less happy this time and dropped me out of warp at 8km. Slow Orca is slow and I crawled to the wormhole before jumping through and finding myself 900 metres from the exit hole, thus preventing me cloaking. Jeez, this is just unfair. I warped off, made a safe, launched probes and warped back to the safe. I'm in a C3 with a lowsec static. Ten sigs made scanning a bit tougher but I find six wormholes total. Here's hoping one is hisec.
 |
| Escape route and return path |
I had 17 jumps to cover in an Orca. As a nice bonus the home connection had been taken to mass critical. Oh yeah, did I mention the wardec we're currently under? So, 17 jumps is a walk in the park right? I feel more nervous than I did while scanning my route out of W-space. Death in w-space comes much like the dentist's needle - you know little about it until it stabs you in the face. In K-space the existence of local makes the inevitable happen in slow motion as death first appears as a little red flag in local long before becoming a little red flag in the overview. I jumped system after system, carefully scanned local for war targets on each jump with the hope that I can dock up before they found me. Each jump took me closer to home yet the nervousness increased as the jump count decreased.
 |
| Enjoy the ride; take the long way home |
- "Quick, close the static", some wit quips.
- "Two jumps"
- "Close the hole"
- "It wasn't funny first time, Sajo", I retort.
I jumped into Engosi, and warped to the wormhole entrance of our static. We'd reduced our static so much that we couldn't even risk a scout jumping in to guide me to safety. It would be hysterical if I lost my Orca now given what the evening had thrown at me. I jumped into the 'safety' of "Unknown Space". Checking d-scan I see nothing, which made me feel safe. Engaging warp to the entrance to my home system I warned the guys on comms I was on the final hop home. Sighs of relief were emitted by my as I jumped home with my prop mod active to make sure I closed the hole behind me. "So, about these sites. Shall we run them?".
17 October 2013
Quietly Scanning
I logged in to find nobody else online in my corp. Even alliance chat was silent when I waved hello. As CEO there's always plenty administrivia to take care of, but I decided to hell with that. Recently I was asked about getting EVE W-Space working by one of the guys in another hole in the alliance. After messing around I got it working fairly quickly and we've rapidly adopted it as the mapping tool of choice. Although I've scanned in groups using the new tool, tonight I decided to give our new mapping tool a proper workout alone. I would be able to learn its idiosyncrasies and just maybe find a bug or two to report and/or fix.
Starting with a clean slate in our home system I rapidly scanned down gas, gas, gas (yawn), wormhole. Our lone static unsurprisingly spat me out into a C3 which had six sigs to sift through. Someone in the alliance had already been here in the past as EVE W-Space showed me where the online POS should be. The intel was right and I stopped by to make a POS perch. I also mapped where the other, offline POSs are before launching probes. It didn't take long to identify the sigs as two Relic sites (boring) and three more wormholes in addition to the route back home. The wormholes filled all three K-space flavours - highsec, lowsec and nullsec. I jumped through the EOL hisec one first just to get the location, I repeated this for the lowsec and nullsec. All very boring and not a ship in sight to maybe shoot at.
With still nobody online I was considering giving up and calling it a night, but I really wanted to make a pretty map of our constellation. With the highsec EOL I decided to go scan the nullsec and see where it lead to. Ah, only one signature and it's where I just came from. Lowsec was marginally more exciting with two more wormholes to visit - a C1 and a C3. Neither hole had any life in it so I decided to give up and go home.
I achieved my goal for the evening of getting to give EVE W-Space a decent workout. It's a really nice tool drawing pretty maps and making it very easy to share intel without expecting people to become ASCII art experts in the bulletin board. There are some quirks which need ironed out which is not unexpected for a code base as relatively new as this. One example is jumping into a new system isn't always detected and you have to fill in all the information manually. If the auto-detection works you get a window with most of the useful information pre-populated. It's a minor thing and when I work out a pattern to the behaviour I'll see if I can fix it. If you live in w-space and don't already have a nice tool to map your chains out you could do worse than setting up EVE W-Space for your corp.
Starting with a clean slate in our home system I rapidly scanned down gas, gas, gas (yawn), wormhole. Our lone static unsurprisingly spat me out into a C3 which had six sigs to sift through. Someone in the alliance had already been here in the past as EVE W-Space showed me where the online POS should be. The intel was right and I stopped by to make a POS perch. I also mapped where the other, offline POSs are before launching probes. It didn't take long to identify the sigs as two Relic sites (boring) and three more wormholes in addition to the route back home. The wormholes filled all three K-space flavours - highsec, lowsec and nullsec. I jumped through the EOL hisec one first just to get the location, I repeated this for the lowsec and nullsec. All very boring and not a ship in sight to maybe shoot at.
With still nobody online I was considering giving up and calling it a night, but I really wanted to make a pretty map of our constellation. With the highsec EOL I decided to go scan the nullsec and see where it lead to. Ah, only one signature and it's where I just came from. Lowsec was marginally more exciting with two more wormholes to visit - a C1 and a C3. Neither hole had any life in it so I decided to give up and go home.
 |
| (post timed to make sure this intel is outdated) |
18 August 2013
Been Busy
I mentioned recently that post-Fanfest was a really busy time for me in EVE but I never went back to say why. Now would probably be a good time to cover that. For some time the activity levels in Zero have been lower than I would like. Despite our best efforts at recruitment it was proving difficult to get new people into the corp and those we did recruit were largely failing to stick around. Living in W-space with Zero does require a healthy dose of self-sufficiency which many people seem to underestimate regardless of how that point is pressed home. For anyone living in W-space you have to go out and make things happen; nothing comes to those who float in a POS, except maybe eviction. Our home hole was a class 4 wormhole with a static class 4. This meant we always had a minimum of three jumps to K-space, and often more. This remoteness grew harder to live with as activity levels declined. Somewhat ironically it was the remoteness that was causing the drop in activity as potential recruits were put off by being cut off from K-space so. I don't know, kids these days want it all too easy.
Some time before Fanfest we had a corp meeting to discuss the situation and decided on a stay or move vote. The move would be to merge with another of the alliance corps in their C4 with a static C3. If we voted to stay then all was good. If we voted to move then we would move after Fanfest. The result was not as decisive as I had hoped and as I watched the results roll in I changed my mind several times. In the end, not counting my vote, the result was a 50:50 split. That left the decision down to me. I decided to go with my initial instinct which was to move. Where we were going was easy. How we were leaving was less easy. The very reason we were moving was the problem. We had been in our home system for about 18 months and the scale of the problem measured as 325 ships and 12 million m3 of 'stuff'. This all had to be safely moved to hisec via routes we scanned ourselves. Level four distribution missions can kiss my arse.
One of my directors turned in a project plan for the move out. He set the timing at three months to do the move out. I thought that would kill the corp dead and said we do it in six weeks. A little bit of bargaining fixed the plan at eight weeks and then we got started. People were expected to move their own stuff out and mostly this happened. One Rorqual pilot spent a night catching up on all the ore compression we hadn't done and that made a massive dent in the volume of stuff to move out. Another couple of pilots who were planning to leave the corp soon put in heroic efforts to move as many ships out as possible. There may have been self-destruct sequences set, but largely all the ships made it out intact. With all this happening it was great to see the first tower come down exactly on schedule
The second tower came down a week ahead of schedule and I had to think about the dreaded process of selling the hole. Best case, worst case and abandonment prices were worked out and just when I was about to advertise the hole for sale a random conversation on jabber essentially sold the hole without trying. Unbeknown to me, one of the alliance corps was going to be upgrading from their C3 to a C4 fairly soon. Being able to buy from another alliance member got them to ramp their plans up. Oh wow, how easy was this. In the end it was two weeks ahead of schedule when I handed over the keys to the new owner of our hole. The final score was all ships and junk made it out alive with no known losses to stupidity. Much better than last time we moved holes. We have had a few months to settle in our new home and having a guaranteed route to K-space each day is heavenly. Maybe I'm getting old but I just like the simplicity. Maybe those 'kids' have the right idea after all.
Some time before Fanfest we had a corp meeting to discuss the situation and decided on a stay or move vote. The move would be to merge with another of the alliance corps in their C4 with a static C3. If we voted to stay then all was good. If we voted to move then we would move after Fanfest. The result was not as decisive as I had hoped and as I watched the results roll in I changed my mind several times. In the end, not counting my vote, the result was a 50:50 split. That left the decision down to me. I decided to go with my initial instinct which was to move. Where we were going was easy. How we were leaving was less easy. The very reason we were moving was the problem. We had been in our home system for about 18 months and the scale of the problem measured as 325 ships and 12 million m3 of 'stuff'. This all had to be safely moved to hisec via routes we scanned ourselves. Level four distribution missions can kiss my arse.
One of my directors turned in a project plan for the move out. He set the timing at three months to do the move out. I thought that would kill the corp dead and said we do it in six weeks. A little bit of bargaining fixed the plan at eight weeks and then we got started. People were expected to move their own stuff out and mostly this happened. One Rorqual pilot spent a night catching up on all the ore compression we hadn't done and that made a massive dent in the volume of stuff to move out. Another couple of pilots who were planning to leave the corp soon put in heroic efforts to move as many ships out as possible. There may have been self-destruct sequences set, but largely all the ships made it out intact. With all this happening it was great to see the first tower come down exactly on schedule
The second tower came down a week ahead of schedule and I had to think about the dreaded process of selling the hole. Best case, worst case and abandonment prices were worked out and just when I was about to advertise the hole for sale a random conversation on jabber essentially sold the hole without trying. Unbeknown to me, one of the alliance corps was going to be upgrading from their C3 to a C4 fairly soon. Being able to buy from another alliance member got them to ramp their plans up. Oh wow, how easy was this. In the end it was two weeks ahead of schedule when I handed over the keys to the new owner of our hole. The final score was all ships and junk made it out alive with no known losses to stupidity. Much better than last time we moved holes. We have had a few months to settle in our new home and having a guaranteed route to K-space each day is heavenly. Maybe I'm getting old but I just like the simplicity. Maybe those 'kids' have the right idea after all.
3 April 2013
Sleepers and a lock out
It was Friday night and our home system had been filling up with anomalies all week, thirteen anomalies to be exact. It was decided that we would have a hole cleaning session and maybe make some ISK. We've been living in our C4 for long enough now that shooting sleepers is just a pretty light show backdrop to a random conversion over some drinks. That said, even burning through thirteen anomalies and a radar site does take an awful lot of time, drinking and conversation.
All told it took a few hours to clear out and loot everything with nary a tense moment as I was neither watching a wormhole nor acting as FC. I could just sit back and shoot what was indicated as the next target. There were a couple of pilot substitutions as the night wore on given the length of the Op but by 4 am it was declared mission success and the corp loot hanger was a lot fatter.
By this time someone had been off exploring in our new static which we had deliberately kept closed during the site sweeping activities. For whatever reason it was declared a terrible neighbour and the call came to close the hole and look for something better. I volunteered myself to jump into an Armageddon to speed things up just before heading to bed. First pass through the hole and back went fine. Second pass I forgot to turn on my MWD and this was going to be my undoing as upon the completion of our second pass the wormhole went critical where we would normally expect it to collapse.
At this point the method to finish the job is well documented and involved an Interdictor and its bubble. However, as noted above, there had been alcohol consumed and I decided that turning off all the plates on my geddon would drop my mass enough to allow a return trip. How wrong was I? After I jumped the wormhole lasted just long enough for me to think it was all good, and then it collapsed dashing my hopes on rocky shores. At least we had scanned from C4a to C4b so I headed that way hoping nobody was watching. I got into C4b with no problems and, deciding that scanning in a geddon at 5am whilst intoxicated was a bad idea, went to bed.
Waking somewhat sleepily the next morning I resumed the hunt for K-space. It turned out that the owners of C4b were either on vacation or liked having lots of signatures to scan. In a moment of sheer luck I found their static C3 connection quite easily and took a break for lunch to hopefully throw anyone off the scent who had seen my probes. Post lunch, and with a scream of "banzai!!" I warped to the C3 hole and landed around six clicks from it. Stupid deadspace signature variances. Battleships move increasingly slowly the more you will them to speed up. Still, I jumped through safely and found the other side clear. Even better, this C3 wormhole had a static lowsec - sure a hisec would have been sweet but I was really expecting 'Bob' to be cruel and deal me a nullsec static.
Of course, the other thing this C3 had was twenty signatures to plough through. Rolling up my metaphorical sleeves I got to work. Twenty signatures in an Armageddon is never going to be fun though, and it wasn't. Eventually I found there was only the one other wormhole to my entry point and that took me to Naga in Aridia. Damn you Bob. Still, at least it had a station where I could dock up and go about my day. I was happy to leave my escape from Aridia to another time.
 |
| I don't think the Sleepers like me here |
By this time someone had been off exploring in our new static which we had deliberately kept closed during the site sweeping activities. For whatever reason it was declared a terrible neighbour and the call came to close the hole and look for something better. I volunteered myself to jump into an Armageddon to speed things up just before heading to bed. First pass through the hole and back went fine. Second pass I forgot to turn on my MWD and this was going to be my undoing as upon the completion of our second pass the wormhole went critical where we would normally expect it to collapse.
At this point the method to finish the job is well documented and involved an Interdictor and its bubble. However, as noted above, there had been alcohol consumed and I decided that turning off all the plates on my geddon would drop my mass enough to allow a return trip. How wrong was I? After I jumped the wormhole lasted just long enough for me to think it was all good, and then it collapsed dashing my hopes on rocky shores. At least we had scanned from C4a to C4b so I headed that way hoping nobody was watching. I got into C4b with no problems and, deciding that scanning in a geddon at 5am whilst intoxicated was a bad idea, went to bed.
 |
| I wish we could occupy these lovely structures |
Of course, the other thing this C3 had was twenty signatures to plough through. Rolling up my metaphorical sleeves I got to work. Twenty signatures in an Armageddon is never going to be fun though, and it wasn't. Eventually I found there was only the one other wormhole to my entry point and that took me to Naga in Aridia. Damn you Bob. Still, at least it had a station where I could dock up and go about my day. I was happy to leave my escape from Aridia to another time.
30 November 2012
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.
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.
22 October 2012
Too Many Sites
It had been quite a while since I last did any major site running in our wormhole. Others had also been lazy at cleaning our sigs and as a result we had nine sites available. Whilst I like keeping a couple of sites around, having nine is a bit ridiculous. Another corp mate also decided this and put out a call for everyone to get online and we would clear our the nasty sigs in record time.
Unfortunately the organiser had to pull out of hosting this sig-busting event (something about very good painkillers) so I stepped in to ensure a fun night would be had. I logged in to find our nine sites had become ten. I also found almost nobody else had logged in. Maybe the notice was too short, maybe they all have so much ISK they don't need to murder sleepers. Whatever the reason we were only running with three people. Guess it would be only one site at a time then.
As much as I dislike FCing site running I took the lead whilst keeping my alt on wormhole guard and combat probe duty to ensure our safety. I also had wine, which helped. We ploughed through the first site and were moving onto a second when another corp mate logged on to find themselves directed at the nearest Noctis. Great, at least we don't have to pause to salvage.
After getting through six sites with the Noctis pilot swapping between salvaging and shooting one of our number had to call it a night (again, more top-notch painkillers). Now we were three but I was on a mission to kill each and every sleeper infesting our home. The seventh and eighth sites were fine but I would be lying if I said I enjoyed running the final two. It was a relief to see them die and get salvaged.
I headed off for a sleep at 3am knowing I would only get five hours sleep at best. My wallet was padded by over 300 Million ISK but I really didn't care. Ten sites is at least four too many.
Unfortunately the organiser had to pull out of hosting this sig-busting event (something about very good painkillers) so I stepped in to ensure a fun night would be had. I logged in to find our nine sites had become ten. I also found almost nobody else had logged in. Maybe the notice was too short, maybe they all have so much ISK they don't need to murder sleepers. Whatever the reason we were only running with three people. Guess it would be only one site at a time then.
As much as I dislike FCing site running I took the lead whilst keeping my alt on wormhole guard and combat probe duty to ensure our safety. I also had wine, which helped. We ploughed through the first site and were moving onto a second when another corp mate logged on to find themselves directed at the nearest Noctis. Great, at least we don't have to pause to salvage.
After getting through six sites with the Noctis pilot swapping between salvaging and shooting one of our number had to call it a night (again, more top-notch painkillers). Now we were three but I was on a mission to kill each and every sleeper infesting our home. The seventh and eighth sites were fine but I would be lying if I said I enjoyed running the final two. It was a relief to see them die and get salvaged.
I headed off for a sleep at 3am knowing I would only get five hours sleep at best. My wallet was padded by over 300 Million ISK but I really didn't care. Ten sites is at least four too many.
17 October 2012
Consequences
A friend reminded me today that your actions in EVE can have consequences. This is one of the main principles of the game, but it's sometimes possible to forget this. It was two entries side-by-side on our killboard which highlighted this for me today.
The kills above occurred from the bottom up and neither exchange cost any real ISK. What happened was my corp mate was lazily autopilotting through hisec in his pod. Randomly, in Hatakani, capsuleer Villq decided to pop mimori's pod with a Thrasher. A quick look at Villq on eve-kill suggests he's set himself a goal this week of killing pods as a change from the haulers that he normally targets.
So, mimori died a painless and cheap death to Villq's Thrasher. Not being happy at this turn of events, mimori returned to Hatakani in a Cynabal to exercise his kill rights. It took three hours before Villq undocked again. I don't know if Villq knew mimori was there or not, but he very quickly found out.
I think Villq's 'business model' may be about to go out of fashion real soon. This was just a little taste for him of what happens when someone decided to exercise their kill rights. This should change with Retribution as people are more likely to sell their rights and others will definitely buy them for hisec lolz.
The kills above occurred from the bottom up and neither exchange cost any real ISK. What happened was my corp mate was lazily autopilotting through hisec in his pod. Randomly, in Hatakani, capsuleer Villq decided to pop mimori's pod with a Thrasher. A quick look at Villq on eve-kill suggests he's set himself a goal this week of killing pods as a change from the haulers that he normally targets.
So, mimori died a painless and cheap death to Villq's Thrasher. Not being happy at this turn of events, mimori returned to Hatakani in a Cynabal to exercise his kill rights. It took three hours before Villq undocked again. I don't know if Villq knew mimori was there or not, but he very quickly found out.
I think Villq's 'business model' may be about to go out of fashion real soon. This was just a little taste for him of what happens when someone decided to exercise their kill rights. This should change with Retribution as people are more likely to sell their rights and others will definitely buy them for hisec lolz.
11 October 2012
A Weekend Deployment
I was all set for a relaxing weekend. I had prepared a couple of cruisers for the 40th RvB Ganked roam on the Saturday and I had no other fixed plans. For anyone who hasn't been on a Ganked roam, you should go on one. Just remember that you will not be taking your ship or clone back in one piece. Something has gone very, very wrong if you don't wake up in a new clone with a message from the insurers of your former ship. But I digress.
We had been aware for a while of a visitor in the class 2 wormhole system which houses our academy. He had been seen on d-scan and had been chatting in local. I'm not sure if he actually tried to blow anyone up. If he did try he definitely didn't succeed. At some point he decided to blow up a couple of warp bubbles my corp had left there when we handed the wormhole over the Corp that now runs the academy. Being a little bored I decided to have some fun. I sent the visitor a bill for 30 Million ISK and requested a written apology for the inconvenience.
Sadly his response was neither imaginative nor particularly polite. My reply pointed that out to him and I was delighted to receive a response he attributed to a corp mate:
Now that was more like what I was hoping for. For his part I tried to sent the 0.01 ISK balance between what I requested and what he wanted for his ship. Sadly the EVE client will allow 0.10 ISK as the minimum so I chose 1.01 and a suitable reply. I also figured I might as well ask why he was hanging around the academy. If it was for easy kills he was going to be a bit disappointed as those guys are pretty savage against single targets. His reply was slightly unexpected as he told me his alliance was invading the C2. Ooo, change of weekend plans then.
After our success at forming a local defence against nothing it was good to now be testing how successful we were as an alliance at deploying from our local wormholes and meeting up in the academy. At least with a static lowsec wormhole it would be easy to get to the destination, but with the other corps living in class four systems there was going to be luck at play for good routes to K-space.
Plans and fleet compositions were drawn up by people with more knowledge than me. Money was deposited in a kitty in case anyone was short of ISK to buy what was asked of them. Come Thursday I scanned a very nice route out of our home system. Very nice apart from the 32 jumps to Jita. I then went shopping and bought the ships I was planning to take. I do like wilful shopping sprees that aren't just the result of a ship loss.
Come Friday I had the ships hauled up to a staging point near the appropriate lowsec system and flew my gaggle of ships into the C2. It was a bit like going home. That system is where I started my wormhole career over a year ago. It gave me a fuzzy feeling inside to go back. I even still had my 'safe' bookmarks. During this time we became aware that our visitor and one of his alts had left the C2. Watchlist triggered d-scans also meant we suspected the other alts had also left as we didn't see any ships appear when he logged off. Had our visitor gone? Sadly we received confirmation of this when we announced some other corp activity meant there would be no action for us. Not being particularly trusting we decided to maintain watch anyway just in case.
At some point after several beers and boredom I decided to wander off in a bomber to Tama with a slightly inebriated Emergent Patroller. This had the expected result of us losing both our ships to pirates. I'm fairly certain that would probably have happened if the beers hadn't been flowing given the expectation of tonight had been to lose ships or die trying. It just wasn't meant to be in the pirate bolt-hole of Tama.
For all the weekend didn't provide in combat activities, it did give us good practice at a defensive deployment to another wormhole system in our alliance. I found the planning and execution of this good fun as well. Rather than just logging in to hope there were people or sleepers to shoot we had a proper mission to execute. Great stuff.
Now if only CCP could find some way to make NPC missions involved and meaningful like that.
We had been aware for a while of a visitor in the class 2 wormhole system which houses our academy. He had been seen on d-scan and had been chatting in local. I'm not sure if he actually tried to blow anyone up. If he did try he definitely didn't succeed. At some point he decided to blow up a couple of warp bubbles my corp had left there when we handed the wormhole over the Corp that now runs the academy. Being a little bored I decided to have some fun. I sent the visitor a bill for 30 Million ISK and requested a written apology for the inconvenience.
Sadly his response was neither imaginative nor particularly polite. My reply pointed that out to him and I was delighted to receive a response he attributed to a corp mate:
In my travels through wormhole system J######, I found my ship battered and encumbered by multiple warp disruption bubbles belonging to your corporation. During that time, my travel was detrimentally effected. I lost valuable time (which is ISK). During my harrowing navigation, my ship suffered multiple scratches and dents, both when I ran into your warp disruption bubbles as well as when I was hit by pieces of debris when I disposed of them. I expect compensation for my time and damages to the tune of 30,000,000.01 ISK. Please remit payment ASAP to avoid further loss of your corporation assets and additional monetary damages of time and maintenance. Furthermore, I expect a written public apology on the EVE Gate forums for your negligence and oversight. Please also refrain from leaving your shit all over space for people to have to work around.
Now that was more like what I was hoping for. For his part I tried to sent the 0.01 ISK balance between what I requested and what he wanted for his ship. Sadly the EVE client will allow 0.10 ISK as the minimum so I chose 1.01 and a suitable reply. I also figured I might as well ask why he was hanging around the academy. If it was for easy kills he was going to be a bit disappointed as those guys are pretty savage against single targets. His reply was slightly unexpected as he told me his alliance was invading the C2. Ooo, change of weekend plans then.
After our success at forming a local defence against nothing it was good to now be testing how successful we were as an alliance at deploying from our local wormholes and meeting up in the academy. At least with a static lowsec wormhole it would be easy to get to the destination, but with the other corps living in class four systems there was going to be luck at play for good routes to K-space.
Plans and fleet compositions were drawn up by people with more knowledge than me. Money was deposited in a kitty in case anyone was short of ISK to buy what was asked of them. Come Thursday I scanned a very nice route out of our home system. Very nice apart from the 32 jumps to Jita. I then went shopping and bought the ships I was planning to take. I do like wilful shopping sprees that aren't just the result of a ship loss.
Come Friday I had the ships hauled up to a staging point near the appropriate lowsec system and flew my gaggle of ships into the C2. It was a bit like going home. That system is where I started my wormhole career over a year ago. It gave me a fuzzy feeling inside to go back. I even still had my 'safe' bookmarks. During this time we became aware that our visitor and one of his alts had left the C2. Watchlist triggered d-scans also meant we suspected the other alts had also left as we didn't see any ships appear when he logged off. Had our visitor gone? Sadly we received confirmation of this when we announced some other corp activity meant there would be no action for us. Not being particularly trusting we decided to maintain watch anyway just in case.
At some point after several beers and boredom I decided to wander off in a bomber to Tama with a slightly inebriated Emergent Patroller. This had the expected result of us losing both our ships to pirates. I'm fairly certain that would probably have happened if the beers hadn't been flowing given the expectation of tonight had been to lose ships or die trying. It just wasn't meant to be in the pirate bolt-hole of Tama.
For all the weekend didn't provide in combat activities, it did give us good practice at a defensive deployment to another wormhole system in our alliance. I found the planning and execution of this good fun as well. Rather than just logging in to hope there were people or sleepers to shoot we had a proper mission to execute. Great stuff.
Now if only CCP could find some way to make NPC missions involved and meaningful like that.
27 September 2012
Invasion, maybe? (part 2)
I finished the last entry with us having demolished an unexpected visitor with an unexpected POS. We were at a loss to understand the motives and we were now under wardec for some bizarre reason. I had just caught a Loki from a merc corp in my catch bubble. Was this the end? Would Zero Return Mining Inc. be looking for a new home soon?
While I was contemplating our survival chance if we attacked the Loki who was now eating my catch bubble, a corpmate jumped into C4a to gather intel. He reported fifteen ships, from Strategic cruisers to Logistics and HICs, all sitting waiting on the other side of the hole. It may have been my imagination, but his voice was a little higher pitched than usual. We decided not to engage. This was properly looking like an invasion except for one thing. There was a clue that the mercenary corp was not here to invade and displace us - their appearance was through our C4a static wormhole which led to a dead end. If they had been rolling holes to find us our visitors would have arrived via a K162.
The second clue was their announcement that we should convo them if we wanted to save our POCO. That's a threat to draw out a fight, nothing more and nothing less. Given they were going to ask for ISK and we were going to refuse there was no point in following those instructions. Frustrated, they sent a single Tengu off to plink away at one of our POCOs. I figured he'd be there a while before getting through 1% of the POCO defences. A mere eight minutes later our erstwhile invaders got bored and left. Their parting message in local informed us of their disappointment in us. Sorry guys, we saw your force and decided discretion was the better part of valour.
The rest of the evening was quiet. Our number of connections slowly decreased and I took a peek into the home system of our invasion force. Fifteen large towers?! Glad I don't have any part in their fuel logistics. But, what about our wardec and optimistic invader of the previous night? Was there more to come?
The following morning I was up early and ready for action. Chatting with come corpmates there was a sudden exclamation from the wife who had been roused from sleep a few nights earlier to help bash our invader. She'd just noticed her husbands EVEMon running with an unfamiliar character in it; a character who had a familiar name; a character who may have been anchoring a POS in our home system...
My mail to the alliance explains it best:
So there we have it. Our very own little live event complete with the unexpected garnish of wandering mercenaries. To be fair, almost everyone in the alliance thought the whole episode was both funny and brilliant. It changed up the pace of our life for a while and sharpened us up a little. None of that is bad.
Postface: I would like to thank people who read my previous post and mailed me offering support in the event we did need to defend our home system. While we're not bad at mounting a defence if we need to, it's really nice to know there are people who are willing to assist us. Especially as we often are targets to each other. You know who you are, thanks.
While I was contemplating our survival chance if we attacked the Loki who was now eating my catch bubble, a corpmate jumped into C4a to gather intel. He reported fifteen ships, from Strategic cruisers to Logistics and HICs, all sitting waiting on the other side of the hole. It may have been my imagination, but his voice was a little higher pitched than usual. We decided not to engage. This was properly looking like an invasion except for one thing. There was a clue that the mercenary corp was not here to invade and displace us - their appearance was through our C4a static wormhole which led to a dead end. If they had been rolling holes to find us our visitors would have arrived via a K162.
The second clue was their announcement that we should convo them if we wanted to save our POCO. That's a threat to draw out a fight, nothing more and nothing less. Given they were going to ask for ISK and we were going to refuse there was no point in following those instructions. Frustrated, they sent a single Tengu off to plink away at one of our POCOs. I figured he'd be there a while before getting through 1% of the POCO defences. A mere eight minutes later our erstwhile invaders got bored and left. Their parting message in local informed us of their disappointment in us. Sorry guys, we saw your force and decided discretion was the better part of valour.
The rest of the evening was quiet. Our number of connections slowly decreased and I took a peek into the home system of our invasion force. Fifteen large towers?! Glad I don't have any part in their fuel logistics. But, what about our wardec and optimistic invader of the previous night? Was there more to come?
The following morning I was up early and ready for action. Chatting with come corpmates there was a sudden exclamation from the wife who had been roused from sleep a few nights earlier to help bash our invader. She'd just noticed her husbands EVEMon running with an unfamiliar character in it; a character who had a familiar name; a character who may have been anchoring a POS in our home system...
My mail to the alliance explains it best:
War update
From: Oreamnos Amric
To: Illusion of Solitude [IOS]
Hey folks,
As you may have seen the wardec against IoS has been dropped. There is a funny story behind all this and there was never any danger (more than we normally have in W-space) behind Shirley's invasion and the subsequent wardec.
It turns out one of Zero's members was a little bored and a little drunk. He decided to take an alt into our Shirley and plonk a tower down while at the same time assisting on the capture and killing of said alt, followed by the bashing of said POS, waking his wife to help and composing threatening mails to himself.
All in all the response mounted by Zero to a perceived threat was excellent. While the antagonist's actions may have been known to one member of the response (himself), all the other people who got on to help had no idea and I commend them all for the reaction and eviction of our 'invader'.
Said member of Zero is apparently a little sheepish of his actions and says 'sorry'.
Back now we go to wormhole life as normal.
Orea
So there we have it. Our very own little live event complete with the unexpected garnish of wandering mercenaries. To be fair, almost everyone in the alliance thought the whole episode was both funny and brilliant. It changed up the pace of our life for a while and sharpened us up a little. None of that is bad.
Postface: I would like to thank people who read my previous post and mailed me offering support in the event we did need to defend our home system. While we're not bad at mounting a defence if we need to, it's really nice to know there are people who are willing to assist us. Especially as we often are targets to each other. You know who you are, thanks.
6 September 2012
Pushing My Luck Too Far
After being away on holiday for a week I decided to make as much of a full day of EVE as I could today. I logged on before downtime to get a fix on the current sigs in my home system. Amazingly there were four grav sites kicking around. I was later told that these sites just wouldn't die and had been with us for too long now. The fifth sig was also bookmarked making my life nice and easy. I logged off and had lunch.
Logging back in a little while later found a corpie off into C4a scanning a route to hisec. I pottered around with other corp administrivia while she took care of scanning. Flashing from the 'Local' channel eventually caught my eye and it was a message from someone cheerily announcing they closed our static. I checked whether my corpie was home or not. She wasn't and now had no route home. Right, time for me to ignore the admin stuff and get to work to find a route while she did the same.
A quick check revealed a sixth sig had cheekily appeared in our home system while I was doing paperwork. Checking C4a I found it had a static C3 somewhere. It also had pilots in a Curse and Tengu. I watched for a little while to see if they would turn into easy targets. They didn't and as I had a job to do I quickly got bored waiting and headed off to inspect our K162.
The K162 lead me to a class 3 wormhole with a static hisec. Music to my ears. I quickly scanned it all out while also watching a Badger do nothing interesting, then a pod do nothing interesting, then an Orca... You get the picture. The static hisec turned out nice and close to both Jita and Amarr. My corpie got herself back home safely while I exported some sleeper loot acquired by the corp over my holidays.
With such an easy route I then started to export all the corp PI purchasing I possible could. After eight return trips I then decided I should probably fly in some POS fuel. My first run went great but on the second run I landed on and jumped through the hole from hisec at exactly the same time as a Proteus did. I wasn't overly bothered by this as I could just jump back to hisec. I waited out the session timer, reapproached the wormhole and clicked the jump button. Strangely I didn't jump back to the safety of hisec. Instead I received a warning on my screen about being polarized. My brain processed this message as if jumping would make me polarized rather than the actual message that I was already polarized. It took three attempts before I recognised the wording of the error to actually say "You're screwed".
Bugger.
After getting my pod to safety I convoed my executioner to thank them for reminding me of the dangers of polarization. I had a nice chat with them talking about their life in a C6 and the relative ISK increase in payouts (about 50% greater per pilot). Eventually I bade them farewell and logged off. My intel informed me that the killer logged off about five minutes after me so I waited around an hour then flew back in with a perfect copy of the deceased Iteron V. Given it wasn't mine I figured I should probably replace it.
Lesson learned: Watch your polarization timers and don't work too fast.
Logging back in a little while later found a corpie off into C4a scanning a route to hisec. I pottered around with other corp administrivia while she took care of scanning. Flashing from the 'Local' channel eventually caught my eye and it was a message from someone cheerily announcing they closed our static. I checked whether my corpie was home or not. She wasn't and now had no route home. Right, time for me to ignore the admin stuff and get to work to find a route while she did the same.
A quick check revealed a sixth sig had cheekily appeared in our home system while I was doing paperwork. Checking C4a I found it had a static C3 somewhere. It also had pilots in a Curse and Tengu. I watched for a little while to see if they would turn into easy targets. They didn't and as I had a job to do I quickly got bored waiting and headed off to inspect our K162.
The K162 lead me to a class 3 wormhole with a static hisec. Music to my ears. I quickly scanned it all out while also watching a Badger do nothing interesting, then a pod do nothing interesting, then an Orca... You get the picture. The static hisec turned out nice and close to both Jita and Amarr. My corpie got herself back home safely while I exported some sleeper loot acquired by the corp over my holidays.
With such an easy route I then started to export all the corp PI purchasing I possible could. After eight return trips I then decided I should probably fly in some POS fuel. My first run went great but on the second run I landed on and jumped through the hole from hisec at exactly the same time as a Proteus did. I wasn't overly bothered by this as I could just jump back to hisec. I waited out the session timer, reapproached the wormhole and clicked the jump button. Strangely I didn't jump back to the safety of hisec. Instead I received a warning on my screen about being polarized. My brain processed this message as if jumping would make me polarized rather than the actual message that I was already polarized. It took three attempts before I recognised the wording of the error to actually say "You're screwed".
Bugger.
After getting my pod to safety I convoed my executioner to thank them for reminding me of the dangers of polarization. I had a nice chat with them talking about their life in a C6 and the relative ISK increase in payouts (about 50% greater per pilot). Eventually I bade them farewell and logged off. My intel informed me that the killer logged off about five minutes after me so I waited around an hour then flew back in with a perfect copy of the deceased Iteron V. Given it wasn't mine I figured I should probably replace it.
Lesson learned: Watch your polarization timers and don't work too fast.
27 August 2012
Sweet Home Alabama
Welcome to the 39th Blog Banter. After a some heavy topics in the last few editions, this time we'll be taking a more relaxed trip through the thoughts of the blogosphere. The origins of this month's concept come from a suggestion from EON Magazine editor Richie "Zapatero" Shoemaker.
"Some say a man's home is his castle. For others it is wherever they lay their hat. The concept is just as nebulous in the New Eden sandbox.
In EVE Online, what does the concept of "home" mean to you?"
In both real life and EVE I have a somewhat fluid idea of what I call home. Fluid in that I don't consider anything wrong with travelling home to visit my parents and then back home to my own house. Nuts, eh? Well it makes sense to me and that's what counts. I think I'm conditioned to think this because my parents live where I grew up. That is the area which is more familiar to me. I know where everything is and all the shortcuts, even if I don't really know any of the people now.
How this translates to EVE is I have more than one home even if I only truly live in one place. In EVE my wormhole is my home. In fact, it is more than my home, it is my full neighbourhood. Many of my in-game friends are there, certainly all the ones I regularly spend time with. I have to work to live in my wormhole - we all do. Towers were built by us, fuel is hauled in, loot and ore is exported back out. This is where I live and call home.
As suggested above, I have more than one home. Auvergne V - Moon 5 was the office of my previous corp before I joined Z3R0 Return Mining and is still where I store all my ships which aren't in the wormhole with me. This is my old stomping ground; the place where I grew up; the place where I spent my time running level 4 missions. Of course, being Gallente also adds to my sense of belonging on the rare occasions I am there. Interestingly I never formed any bond when that previous corp moved to Solitude and I went with them. Maybe I didn't spend long enough time there and never properly integrated with the locals. Certainly when I was there I would nip home to Auvergne from time to time. I guess I only viewed that like some kind of deployment.
The wormhole I currently live in wasn't the first one with my current corp. We used to be in a class 2 system which now belongs to our alliance mates - Broken Wheel Mercantile and Trading. I recently went to visit them in my old home and lob some torpedoes at them as a live fire training exercise. I was surprised to find I still had my old safe spot bookmarks where I used to log off every night. In spite of this I still didn't feel like I was somewhere I would call home, even though I expected it to feel that way.
So what does this mean? I only have two places I call home - the place I grew up is statically defined and won't change and I will always go back to Auvergne to go home. The other home is where I spend most of my current time and is ephemeral in nature. Today home is my class 4 wormhole, next year it could be a class 5.
Champions of the Domicile
- Home and Hearth by Parisma Calles @ Small Ships FTW
- I'm like the Gypsy Band by Drackarn @ Sand, Cider and Spaceships
- Somewhere I belong by Sugar Kyle @ Low Sec Lifestyle
- Home in the Stars by Lukas Rox @ Torchwood Archives
- Home is Where My Hole is... by TurAmarth ElRandir @ A Carbon Based Life
- A Sort of Homecoming by Rhavas @ Interstellar Privateer
- Home Is Where the Heart Is by Anshu Zephyran @ Structure Damage
- A Place to Hang your Hat by Rixx Javix @ EVEOGANDA
- A Question of Location by Druur Monakh @ Hazardous Goods
24 August 2012
Fishing with the Sleepers
I think the discussion about reworking POSs is all good and well, but what about in wormhole space? In the sparsely populated areas I call home CCP have a great opportunity to do something truly different. While it is accepted that we can take a POS structure through some wormholes and assemble it to call home, how about further differentiation these unknown regions of space further buy creating a second choice?
This idea of mine has cropped up a few times in various random discussion on comms but this is the first time I've tried to actually write it down. I was prompted to scribble this down having seen the very basic gameplay demo for Incarna toons exploring Sleeper structures. Forgive me if I wander in my thoughts.
In wormhole space we should be able to capture, occupy and live in some Sleeper structures.
How does that strike you as a genious idea?
Fleshing this out now. How would this work initially? Well, CCP would define a subset of Sleeper structures that would be inhabitable by Capsuleers. Maybe some new artwork to create additional structures would be in order to create something suitable. But I would be quite happy with owning something like this structure.
Obviously we wouldn't want this to be an easily attainable structure to acquire so there should be a new, hard to scan down signature type 'Sleeper Domicile' could be a good name. The spawn rate of such signature should be kept really low. The idea being that players shouldn't be able to move into a wormhole expecting such structures to appear within any particule time frame. The slow spawn randomness would also make it harder for a corp to hire someone in advance to do the hard combat. The very nature of this site would push it to be the hardest type to run requiring a large investment in player combat to clear the site before they could think about taking control. Actually, by control, what if this meant something similar to the incursion or faction warfare mechanic? Sleeper control is reduced by running numerous sites and only once sleeper control is removed does the 'Domicile' become vulnerable.
Clearing the 'Domicile' site isn't the end of this though. In order to gain access we need three areas to be hacked within a limited time frame. This time frame should be too small to allow a single player to hack all three alone but large enough to take into account the random chance of hacking success. Once control has been passed to the player they own it but cannot use it. There is still a risk of despawn.
To make the ownership permanent there would be a final step similar to assembling a customs office where a set number of PI products need deposited in the structure to make it inhabitable for Capsuleers. I have no idea what a suitable level of item volume should be here. It needs to be something feasible to achieve given the mass limits and potential poor routes to haul stuff into a wormhole system. Maybe tuning the requirements to what can be made through PI in each wormhole would work. A wormhole with the ability to make all top tier PI outputs would have a requirement spread across all their possible outputs; a wormhole with only one or two top tier products would require a higher number of each of the two outputs plus some lower tier items. Probably an upgrade process could be in order here so 'stabilising' a structure to not despawn is readily achievable but actually being able to dock all your ships requires time and coordinated effort.
There also needs to be some form of fuel requirement. There is a temptation to say this should fully consist of things found in wormhole space, but that would take away from some of the current challange of living in wormholes. I'm also not sure what facilities should be available in the structure - should it just hanger space and "Captain's Quarters"? Should it be shared storage as in POSs or more like the privacy afforded in empire-based stations? What about manufacturing, research, invention facilities? I think this should really be kept in traditional POSs with the exception of T3 reverse engineering and construction. This would be the perfect time to allow us wormholers to actually follow the T3 production process from start to end in completeness in the wormhole. The missing piece being able to assemble the subsystems in W-space. What about forcing this to only be possible in W-space?! Well, the reverse engineering and subsystem/hull manufacture anyway. It's a bit much to expect a capsuleer to buy the parts in Jita then haul them to W-space before flying their new ship.
Of course, these structures should definitely be destroyable by hostile players. They should be tougher than large POSs but I'm not sure what the defences would consist of. If there are people docked in a structure when it explodes they should find themselves back in Empire space in a new clone. If they had any possessions in the structure they get destroyed. Simple. While this is harsh, it gives a real goal to fight for if you are invaded. Reinforced timers give you a chance to be organised and also for invaders to get bored and leave.
So, what do you think?
This idea of mine has cropped up a few times in various random discussion on comms but this is the first time I've tried to actually write it down. I was prompted to scribble this down having seen the very basic gameplay demo for Incarna toons exploring Sleeper structures. Forgive me if I wander in my thoughts.
In wormhole space we should be able to capture, occupy and live in some Sleeper structures.
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| This is my home, there are many like it but this one is mine. |
Fleshing this out now. How would this work initially? Well, CCP would define a subset of Sleeper structures that would be inhabitable by Capsuleers. Maybe some new artwork to create additional structures would be in order to create something suitable. But I would be quite happy with owning something like this structure.
Obviously we wouldn't want this to be an easily attainable structure to acquire so there should be a new, hard to scan down signature type 'Sleeper Domicile' could be a good name. The spawn rate of such signature should be kept really low. The idea being that players shouldn't be able to move into a wormhole expecting such structures to appear within any particule time frame. The slow spawn randomness would also make it harder for a corp to hire someone in advance to do the hard combat. The very nature of this site would push it to be the hardest type to run requiring a large investment in player combat to clear the site before they could think about taking control. Actually, by control, what if this meant something similar to the incursion or faction warfare mechanic? Sleeper control is reduced by running numerous sites and only once sleeper control is removed does the 'Domicile' become vulnerable.
Clearing the 'Domicile' site isn't the end of this though. In order to gain access we need three areas to be hacked within a limited time frame. This time frame should be too small to allow a single player to hack all three alone but large enough to take into account the random chance of hacking success. Once control has been passed to the player they own it but cannot use it. There is still a risk of despawn.
To make the ownership permanent there would be a final step similar to assembling a customs office where a set number of PI products need deposited in the structure to make it inhabitable for Capsuleers. I have no idea what a suitable level of item volume should be here. It needs to be something feasible to achieve given the mass limits and potential poor routes to haul stuff into a wormhole system. Maybe tuning the requirements to what can be made through PI in each wormhole would work. A wormhole with the ability to make all top tier PI outputs would have a requirement spread across all their possible outputs; a wormhole with only one or two top tier products would require a higher number of each of the two outputs plus some lower tier items. Probably an upgrade process could be in order here so 'stabilising' a structure to not despawn is readily achievable but actually being able to dock all your ships requires time and coordinated effort.
There also needs to be some form of fuel requirement. There is a temptation to say this should fully consist of things found in wormhole space, but that would take away from some of the current challange of living in wormholes. I'm also not sure what facilities should be available in the structure - should it just hanger space and "Captain's Quarters"? Should it be shared storage as in POSs or more like the privacy afforded in empire-based stations? What about manufacturing, research, invention facilities? I think this should really be kept in traditional POSs with the exception of T3 reverse engineering and construction. This would be the perfect time to allow us wormholers to actually follow the T3 production process from start to end in completeness in the wormhole. The missing piece being able to assemble the subsystems in W-space. What about forcing this to only be possible in W-space?! Well, the reverse engineering and subsystem/hull manufacture anyway. It's a bit much to expect a capsuleer to buy the parts in Jita then haul them to W-space before flying their new ship.
Of course, these structures should definitely be destroyable by hostile players. They should be tougher than large POSs but I'm not sure what the defences would consist of. If there are people docked in a structure when it explodes they should find themselves back in Empire space in a new clone. If they had any possessions in the structure they get destroyed. Simple. While this is harsh, it gives a real goal to fight for if you are invaded. Reinforced timers give you a chance to be organised and also for invaders to get bored and leave.
So, what do you think?
30 July 2012
Loot buying
One of the features of my corp is that we buy any and all loot, gas and ore acquired through the running of sites in wormhole space. Of course, we take a cut for the hassle of shipping it out and selling it but folks are welcome to move things out themselves if they so choose. The main advantage for us running this scheme is this helps ensure a fair distribution of proceeds from wormhole activities to all that took part. Giving the corp 'pocket money' is an added bonus which only really benefits the corp members anyway.
We've always used a google docs spreadsheet for splitting the loot proceeds. In the old C2 it was filled out by the person responsible for payouts; in the current C4 it was the responsibility of the person who did the salvaging. There was always the danger of accidents in deleting the formulae which did all the calculations, and that did happen a couple of times, but the spreadsheet worked well. At least, it worked well for the submitter of loot.
Payday comes every two weeks and that basically meant I would spend a good hour or two tabulating all the payouts per person per op so the spreadsheet could add it all up. Talk about RSI? I think that was possibly the only task I've encountered due to EVE that was more laborious and repetitive than setting up five planets of PI. And with the PI you don't redo it twice a month. So I took it on myself to create a web-based form with a database back-end to do all the heavy lifting. This would save me loads of time and wear out less mice in the long run.
After a couple of false starts because I got tied up on the auth side of things I eventually got going. My go-to language of choice is PERL as I've been writing in that for far too many years. It didn't take too long to design a decent database and create the submission form off the back of it. Of course, if people are submitting loot then they'll want some form of receipt showing what they put in and what it's worth. Again, not particularly hard. Then I added in the admin side of stuff, listing the submissions, confirming them, listing payout values. Crap, did I just spend 25 hours doing all this?
So once it was fully functional I had to make it pretty. It's a fact that HTML without style is, well, style-less. These days the entire world+dog is using Bootstrap, from Twitter. Given the clean look it produces I wasn't about to go against the grain. Bang goes another 25 hours while working out how to convince PERL to make nice webpages (unheard of, I know) and then doing so.
Testing is important so I unleashed a copy of the new site onto my corpies. Most people were happy during the testing except for one slight problem - the in-game browser doesn't support basic auth. Yes, I'd copped out of writing a proper auth system and was replying on something not supported. Oops. Time to learn about cookies I guess...
Cookies were implemented in a day around other my real life stuff and I had a very shiny website that worked in-game. So I put it live and it seemed to work. Within a day I had four feature requests - a reference ID, adding notes, viewing past submissions, viewing everyones totals (i.e. a leaderboard). The reference ID was easy as it was already in place. The others are all done now except for the leaderboard. I just wonder how long it will be before I save the time doing payouts that I just spent creating this masterpiece.
The whole admin side is still pretty ugly as only I'll see that. There are also a few things I need to drop to the database to do, such as correcting item counts in submissions or adding missing members to a submission. It also assumes everyone gets an equal share as that's how we do it in Z3R0. All these things can be fixed though, when they need to be.
We've always used a google docs spreadsheet for splitting the loot proceeds. In the old C2 it was filled out by the person responsible for payouts; in the current C4 it was the responsibility of the person who did the salvaging. There was always the danger of accidents in deleting the formulae which did all the calculations, and that did happen a couple of times, but the spreadsheet worked well. At least, it worked well for the submitter of loot.
Payday comes every two weeks and that basically meant I would spend a good hour or two tabulating all the payouts per person per op so the spreadsheet could add it all up. Talk about RSI? I think that was possibly the only task I've encountered due to EVE that was more laborious and repetitive than setting up five planets of PI. And with the PI you don't redo it twice a month. So I took it on myself to create a web-based form with a database back-end to do all the heavy lifting. This would save me loads of time and wear out less mice in the long run.
 |
| Leave all melted nano-ribbons here please. |
So once it was fully functional I had to make it pretty. It's a fact that HTML without style is, well, style-less. These days the entire world+dog is using Bootstrap, from Twitter. Given the clean look it produces I wasn't about to go against the grain. Bang goes another 25 hours while working out how to convince PERL to make nice webpages (unheard of, I know) and then doing so.
Testing is important so I unleashed a copy of the new site onto my corpies. Most people were happy during the testing except for one slight problem - the in-game browser doesn't support basic auth. Yes, I'd copped out of writing a proper auth system and was replying on something not supported. Oops. Time to learn about cookies I guess...
Cookies were implemented in a day around other my real life stuff and I had a very shiny website that worked in-game. So I put it live and it seemed to work. Within a day I had four feature requests - a reference ID, adding notes, viewing past submissions, viewing everyones totals (i.e. a leaderboard). The reference ID was easy as it was already in place. The others are all done now except for the leaderboard. I just wonder how long it will be before I save the time doing payouts that I just spent creating this masterpiece.
The whole admin side is still pretty ugly as only I'll see that. There are also a few things I need to drop to the database to do, such as correcting item counts in submissions or adding missing members to a submission. It also assumes everyone gets an equal share as that's how we do it in Z3R0. All these things can be fixed though, when they need to be.
26 July 2012
Crazy Times
I've been neglecting my blog this week due to EVE exploding in my face. My corp mate Emergent Patroller gives a decent record of what just happened. This is good because it means I don't have to. Luckily for EP, she managed to avoid most of the drama as it happened and it probably gives a better balanced view. For the record, I think I'm more in the confused camp over it all.
Back to normal next week? I really hope so.
Back to normal next week? I really hope so.
11 July 2012
A Year In Wormholes
Today marks the first anniversary of my journey into wormhole space so I thought I'd try and do a little recap of that time. I find it most amusing to think that just over a year ago I was in a fairly unsocial corp living in Solitude running L4 missions and thinking I was making loads of ISK. At one time there had been a small group of us who chatted in the corp channel, and even a couple of lowsec roams, but not what you'd expect for a corp boasting 300+ members. Also, we kept being on the receiving end of wardecs and there weren't enough members willing to go out and fight. I was also not so inclined to go fight, but was starting to get to a point where I was fed up either not playing or dying to a war target gate camp after foolishly running missions thinking I would be okay.
I had started getting more interested in the community aspect of EVE. I was listening to a couple of podcasts including Jadecougar's Lost In EVE podcast. This meant when Splatus, one of the few people in corp I actually spoke to, mentioned to me he was considering leaving and trying out wormhole life I decided to accompany him. There were a couple of wormhole corps we considered. I can't remember who the first corp we chatted with were but they sounded a bit too militaristic for us. There was talk of timelimits on running Sleeper sites and ridicule should you fall outside those times. We decided that wasn't for us. Next up was Jadecougar's Z3R0 Return Mining Inc. and they sounded much friendlier so we submitted APIs and agreed to the interview. The interview was probably more intense than many job interviews I've been to. I'm sure it lasted at least an hour and then Splatus and I were in.
Moving in day was fun. I had been on a shopping spree fitting an omni-tank Myrm so I didn't have to fly Caldari. I had been practising my scanning with a lovely helios. I also took in a Covetor and a 'ghetto-Noctis' Catalyst salvager. I then went nuts and filled a bunch of GSCs with random ammo and modules to haul in my Itty. With some trepidation and what I perceived to be outstanding levels of organisation on the part of Z3R0 I managed to safely get most of my shopping into our POS. I was heading out to get the last ship when there were reports of some combat ships on our route. I jumping into my Nemesis and managed to help kill a Typhoon thus allowing Splatus to move in and me to fetch my last ship. My first taste of wormhole combat.
I quickly settled into a life of running my PI setup efficiently and making a stupid amount of ISK. I had the option of dropping out to lowsec through our static to go run missions when the wormhole was quiet but I did that fairly infrequently. I very quickly realised I needed a second account with a cloaky alt to make it easier to run Sleeper sites with only a couple of people on. Life was good, then came the management 'crisis' which resulted in an opportunistic corp theft.
At that time, Z3R0 existed in two wormholes - a C2 and a C4. When Jadecougar decided to take leave from New Eden, potentially permanently, there was an assumption by the person who ran the C2 that he would become CEO. This didn't happen so he quit one night leaving us helpless. There were two ways the corp could have went at that point: sink or swim. A small number of people chose to flee the corp (at least one taking other people's 'canes with them) but for the most part people stayed. The new CEO appointed some directors then wasn't heard of again, but quite quickly we were happy with that.
There was a little concern when Jade came back from hiatus and announced Z3R0 was moving to the C4. How would we cope with no direct access to K-space? How would we survive in the significantly more dangerous space that a C4 presented? Jade was adamant that the dangers of C4 space had been greatly exaggerated to us during our time in the C2 and moving would be simple. So we found some nice guys to buy the C2 from us and we moved. Funny thing we learned was that C4 space isn't actually any more dangerous than C2 space. As long as you run proper intel you have exactly the same chance of a wandering capsuleer popping you back to hisec in either class of space.
Moving wormholes is a logistical nightmare. It's amazing the volume of stuff you acquire in there. We lost several Orcas due to people being silly on the move out, including one containing a Tengu - oops! The move into the C4 went more smoothly and it was at that time I finally abandoned my principles and started flying Caldari. I moved into the C4 as the proud owner of a scanning Tengu and an omni-tank Drake. Subsequently I replaced the Drake with another Tengu due to the peer pressure of greater range.
In the last six months since moving we've been forced into greater displays of teamwork. Scanning is much more important now than in the C2 as we are always at least two jumps to K-space and usually more. The big change for me is I am now the CEO of Z3R0 Return Mining Inc. as Jade has left to chase a dream of nullsec. Z3R0 probably has more active members now that it ever had and we are still recruiting. Not only that, we also helped create a wormhole academy with Splatus taking the lead there. The aim of our corp has always been primarily to enjoy the game in good company and that is what we continue to do. While the corp buys PI and Sleeper loot and takes a cut from the proceeds, the proceeds of this are used to keep us out here and ease the life of everyone. Not a tactic for the corp to become space-rich but, hey, it's not like we have any shareholders to answer to.
Here's to another year of Z3R0 and Wormholes.
I had started getting more interested in the community aspect of EVE. I was listening to a couple of podcasts including Jadecougar's Lost In EVE podcast. This meant when Splatus, one of the few people in corp I actually spoke to, mentioned to me he was considering leaving and trying out wormhole life I decided to accompany him. There were a couple of wormhole corps we considered. I can't remember who the first corp we chatted with were but they sounded a bit too militaristic for us. There was talk of timelimits on running Sleeper sites and ridicule should you fall outside those times. We decided that wasn't for us. Next up was Jadecougar's Z3R0 Return Mining Inc. and they sounded much friendlier so we submitted APIs and agreed to the interview. The interview was probably more intense than many job interviews I've been to. I'm sure it lasted at least an hour and then Splatus and I were in.
Moving in day was fun. I had been on a shopping spree fitting an omni-tank Myrm so I didn't have to fly Caldari. I had been practising my scanning with a lovely helios. I also took in a Covetor and a 'ghetto-Noctis' Catalyst salvager. I then went nuts and filled a bunch of GSCs with random ammo and modules to haul in my Itty. With some trepidation and what I perceived to be outstanding levels of organisation on the part of Z3R0 I managed to safely get most of my shopping into our POS. I was heading out to get the last ship when there were reports of some combat ships on our route. I jumping into my Nemesis and managed to help kill a Typhoon thus allowing Splatus to move in and me to fetch my last ship. My first taste of wormhole combat.
I quickly settled into a life of running my PI setup efficiently and making a stupid amount of ISK. I had the option of dropping out to lowsec through our static to go run missions when the wormhole was quiet but I did that fairly infrequently. I very quickly realised I needed a second account with a cloaky alt to make it easier to run Sleeper sites with only a couple of people on. Life was good, then came the management 'crisis' which resulted in an opportunistic corp theft.
At that time, Z3R0 existed in two wormholes - a C2 and a C4. When Jadecougar decided to take leave from New Eden, potentially permanently, there was an assumption by the person who ran the C2 that he would become CEO. This didn't happen so he quit one night leaving us helpless. There were two ways the corp could have went at that point: sink or swim. A small number of people chose to flee the corp (at least one taking other people's 'canes with them) but for the most part people stayed. The new CEO appointed some directors then wasn't heard of again, but quite quickly we were happy with that.
There was a little concern when Jade came back from hiatus and announced Z3R0 was moving to the C4. How would we cope with no direct access to K-space? How would we survive in the significantly more dangerous space that a C4 presented? Jade was adamant that the dangers of C4 space had been greatly exaggerated to us during our time in the C2 and moving would be simple. So we found some nice guys to buy the C2 from us and we moved. Funny thing we learned was that C4 space isn't actually any more dangerous than C2 space. As long as you run proper intel you have exactly the same chance of a wandering capsuleer popping you back to hisec in either class of space.
Moving wormholes is a logistical nightmare. It's amazing the volume of stuff you acquire in there. We lost several Orcas due to people being silly on the move out, including one containing a Tengu - oops! The move into the C4 went more smoothly and it was at that time I finally abandoned my principles and started flying Caldari. I moved into the C4 as the proud owner of a scanning Tengu and an omni-tank Drake. Subsequently I replaced the Drake with another Tengu due to the peer pressure of greater range.
In the last six months since moving we've been forced into greater displays of teamwork. Scanning is much more important now than in the C2 as we are always at least two jumps to K-space and usually more. The big change for me is I am now the CEO of Z3R0 Return Mining Inc. as Jade has left to chase a dream of nullsec. Z3R0 probably has more active members now that it ever had and we are still recruiting. Not only that, we also helped create a wormhole academy with Splatus taking the lead there. The aim of our corp has always been primarily to enjoy the game in good company and that is what we continue to do. While the corp buys PI and Sleeper loot and takes a cut from the proceeds, the proceeds of this are used to keep us out here and ease the life of everyone. Not a tactic for the corp to become space-rich but, hey, it's not like we have any shareholders to answer to.
Here's to another year of Z3R0 and Wormholes.
16 May 2012
Stealing POSs
It's an accepted defence mechanism in wormhole space to anchor POSs at all the moons in your home system. Obviously this is a more appealing defence in systems with a small number of moons, but even in systems with 20 moons it's still a viable defence. At the risk of stating the obvious, the defence aspect is that anyone wanting to obtain a foothold in your wormhole system would first have to blow up an offline POS before they could anchor their own.
This is a sucky situation to have in EVE and is a result of the game mechanics not providing a mechanism by which to unanchor POSs belonging to others. This is a topic that comes up from time to time in my corp and my answer is always the same: It should be possible to using hacking modules to force an offline POS into an unanchored state. This could be either with the Codebreaker I and II modules or with a brand new module and/or skill.
Personally I would go with a requirement of a Codebreaker II and a new skill of Advanced Hacking to trigger the offlining process. There should be some alert provided to the POS owners in order to allow them to arrange a defensive fleet. There should also be a longer timescale for the unanchoring following a successful hack attack compared to the owner unanchoring the tower. Maybe a base unanchoring time of 10 hours with a bonus of 1 hour reduction per skill level in Advanced Hacking.
Such an attack should be viable in all securities of space. It would be comparable to stealing from a jetcan or looting someone else's wreck with the applicable shootable state persistent for the entire time of the unanchoring process. Cancelling the unanchoring should not be possible by any party.
The resulting situation would allow people to make ISK salvaging abandoned POSs without requiring wardecs in hisec. This would also free up many moons which are currently 'reserved' by people who may not even play any more. The defensive aspect becomes less appealing in wormholes but not entirely gone, just more risky. I can't see any downside to this plan. Can you?
This is a sucky situation to have in EVE and is a result of the game mechanics not providing a mechanism by which to unanchor POSs belonging to others. This is a topic that comes up from time to time in my corp and my answer is always the same: It should be possible to using hacking modules to force an offline POS into an unanchored state. This could be either with the Codebreaker I and II modules or with a brand new module and/or skill.
Personally I would go with a requirement of a Codebreaker II and a new skill of Advanced Hacking to trigger the offlining process. There should be some alert provided to the POS owners in order to allow them to arrange a defensive fleet. There should also be a longer timescale for the unanchoring following a successful hack attack compared to the owner unanchoring the tower. Maybe a base unanchoring time of 10 hours with a bonus of 1 hour reduction per skill level in Advanced Hacking.
Such an attack should be viable in all securities of space. It would be comparable to stealing from a jetcan or looting someone else's wreck with the applicable shootable state persistent for the entire time of the unanchoring process. Cancelling the unanchoring should not be possible by any party.
The resulting situation would allow people to make ISK salvaging abandoned POSs without requiring wardecs in hisec. This would also free up many moons which are currently 'reserved' by people who may not even play any more. The defensive aspect becomes less appealing in wormholes but not entirely gone, just more risky. I can't see any downside to this plan. Can you?
9 May 2012
Still Recruiting
It's been a couple of months since I last posted that my corp was recruiting. We've taken in a decent number of people in that time but the summertime slowdown has started already. Someone tells me this is normal around now due to exams but it's the first time I've experienced it as CEO. There is something very frustrating about logging into find almost but not quite enough people to go raid our neighbouring wormhole for sleeper sites.
Fairly recently we had an ace scanner pilot return to active service. He'd been with us in the old C2 wormhole days. From memory, he was the Security team leader - the team I was placed in when I first joined Z3R0. Each day he's on he's doing a fantastic job scanning down our constellation and bookmarking the sigs for all the sites around us. This makes the reduced numbers all the more frustrating.
So, if you're interested in wormhole life and would like to come help us plunder the riches of our neighbours. Maybe you would even like to mildly terrorise people who find themselves briefly living next door to us. Join the "Z3R0 Return Mining Recruitment" in-game channel and come hang out with us. All we insist on is that you can fly a ship capable of warping cloaked and (to quote the Recruitment Director) "aren't an asshat". If you don't think you're ready for life in a C4 then still come and talk to us. We have plans...
Oh, and the forum link might be useful too.
Fairly recently we had an ace scanner pilot return to active service. He'd been with us in the old C2 wormhole days. From memory, he was the Security team leader - the team I was placed in when I first joined Z3R0. Each day he's on he's doing a fantastic job scanning down our constellation and bookmarking the sigs for all the sites around us. This makes the reduced numbers all the more frustrating.
So, if you're interested in wormhole life and would like to come help us plunder the riches of our neighbours. Maybe you would even like to mildly terrorise people who find themselves briefly living next door to us. Join the "Z3R0 Return Mining Recruitment" in-game channel and come hang out with us. All we insist on is that you can fly a ship capable of warping cloaked and (to quote the Recruitment Director) "aren't an asshat". If you don't think you're ready for life in a C4 then still come and talk to us. We have plans...
Oh, and the forum link might be useful too.
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