To quote my corpmate who took this screenshot in J130037: "Yeah, fuck that hole".
Showing posts with label screenshot. Show all posts
Showing posts with label screenshot. Show all posts
26 September 2016
21 March 2016
29 February 2016
Brief Break
I took a brief break from EVE this past 10 days. I had been reading about an epic adventure going on in Elite: Dangerous, the Distant Worlds expedition. The people involved in that project are flying with approximately 1000 pilots to the opposite side of the galaxy. Their route will take them some 80 thousand light years before they reach the destination. When I learned of this epic quest I thought I would try and catch up with them and then join their main fleet.
This turned out to be a pretty optimistic and foolish idea. I don't play E: D enough to have much money in the bank. I fitted out my ship with the best jump drive I could. This got me only 15 LY per jump. If I'd known how far away the overall journey was at that point I'd have given up there and then. Over the course of the past 10 days I spent way too many hours each day jumping five systems at a time then scooping fuel at a sun before continuing on. I made it to checkpoint 1 fairly quick and felt smug. I would catch them up in no time. Getting to checkpoint 2 probably took 16 hours of continuous play. It was at this point I realised quite the scale of the journey. I had travelled one eleventh of the way to the centre of the galaxy. Getting to the other side was double that!
I soldiered on through the past week jumping system to system whenever I had some spare time. I was slowly closing the gap on the main fleet but I was starting to think I would be lucky to meet with them before they reached the end of their outwards journey. I don't even want to think how many hours I spent jumping away from the main bubble of inhabited systems. The journey stopped being fun and became a proper chore. In my head I still wanted to catch a group of people I was over a month behind.
It was a nice day yesterday. I was doing some maintenance on my motorbike while pressing on with my mission in Elite. I would do my 5 jumps then go do some more work outside while refuelling at a sun. It was going well until a neighbour visited. Then another. So we sat outside and chatted. After about an hour I suddenly remembered about my ship refuelling at the sun. I came in just in time to see it overheating through solar exposure and my life support failing. Ah, bollocks! I was 11,000 LY from any chance of repairs. No way I could cover more than 1000th of that distance in the five minutes of oxygen I had.
It had taken me a week of not-insignificant time to get so far away from the start. It took less than an hour of distraction to send me all the way back to the beginning. I felt a lot more punished by that than anything EVE has ever dished out to me. Elite: Dangerous picks up a lot of criticism for a lack of content being built in. In the true nature of a sandboxy game the lack of content is largely created by a lack of imagination. I salute the organisers of the Distant Worlds expedition. They are better people than I for the journey they organised. Maybe I can scrape together more credits, buy a proper exploration ship, and join them on their next epic adventure.
This turned out to be a pretty optimistic and foolish idea. I don't play E: D enough to have much money in the bank. I fitted out my ship with the best jump drive I could. This got me only 15 LY per jump. If I'd known how far away the overall journey was at that point I'd have given up there and then. Over the course of the past 10 days I spent way too many hours each day jumping five systems at a time then scooping fuel at a sun before continuing on. I made it to checkpoint 1 fairly quick and felt smug. I would catch them up in no time. Getting to checkpoint 2 probably took 16 hours of continuous play. It was at this point I realised quite the scale of the journey. I had travelled one eleventh of the way to the centre of the galaxy. Getting to the other side was double that!
I soldiered on through the past week jumping system to system whenever I had some spare time. I was slowly closing the gap on the main fleet but I was starting to think I would be lucky to meet with them before they reached the end of their outwards journey. I don't even want to think how many hours I spent jumping away from the main bubble of inhabited systems. The journey stopped being fun and became a proper chore. In my head I still wanted to catch a group of people I was over a month behind.
It was a nice day yesterday. I was doing some maintenance on my motorbike while pressing on with my mission in Elite. I would do my 5 jumps then go do some more work outside while refuelling at a sun. It was going well until a neighbour visited. Then another. So we sat outside and chatted. After about an hour I suddenly remembered about my ship refuelling at the sun. I came in just in time to see it overheating through solar exposure and my life support failing. Ah, bollocks! I was 11,000 LY from any chance of repairs. No way I could cover more than 1000th of that distance in the five minutes of oxygen I had.
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| Boom!! |
It had taken me a week of not-insignificant time to get so far away from the start. It took less than an hour of distraction to send me all the way back to the beginning. I felt a lot more punished by that than anything EVE has ever dished out to me. Elite: Dangerous picks up a lot of criticism for a lack of content being built in. In the true nature of a sandboxy game the lack of content is largely created by a lack of imagination. I salute the organisers of the Distant Worlds expedition. They are better people than I for the journey they organised. Maybe I can scrape together more credits, buy a proper exploration ship, and join them on their next epic adventure.
8 February 2016
24 December 2015
2 November 2015
A pod with a view
Look at these poor, oblivious fools endlessly orbiting shattered lumps of rock.
There could be anyone watching them perform mass destruction on these harmless shards of stone.
Yet on and on they go, until the bellies of their ships are full to bursting.
26 January 2015
Epicentre
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| Shattered Wormhole Epicentre |
31 October 2014
16 October 2014
Pretty Lights
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| Welcome to the light show |
12 October 2014
Bob giveth
Since Hyperion came out there has been so much more scanning to do in wormhole space. Sadly this additional scanning doesn't seem to come with additional combat to make it worthwhile. Either we find nobody, someone hiding in their POS force field, or a force who simply dunk us into the ground. The latter of those options is still more fun than either of the others but I'd rather be the one doing the killing.
On Tuesday evening I was sitting in front of the computer eating dinner when my corpmate, Rhianna, sent a message out on Jabber - "Orca outside POS forcefield in 5a1". A screenshot followed showing the ship sitting just outside the forcefield - a fairly safe position for something with a likely high EHP. A quick discussion and we decided to set up a bombing run to at least wake up the Orca pilot if not actually kill him. Bomb perches were set up as I logged in Orea and another toon. Once I was shipped into a pair of Manticores I jumped through to get into position.
I was barely clear of the wormhole when a pair of Armageddons landed on the connection back home. They jumped through and back, obviously looking to roll the wormhole. We decided trying to kill a 'geddon on the wormhole was a much more exciting prospect than just a wakeup call to the Orca pilot. I manoeuvred my two bombers into position whilst Rhianna got back to the POS to watch what happened there. What happened was the two pilots logged off. Boo. Clearly I didn't cloak fast enough as they landed on the wormhole and they got scared off. With that it was time to log off myself and go help my wife with the kids lest I risk non-consensual 'pvp' IRL!
Several hours later we decided to go help out our logged-off Russian neighbours by clearing their expensive gas site. Since we gained our new C5 static we've discovered a couple of the gas sites are actually worth running. In fact the ISK earned is comparable to running C4 combat anomalies yet the risk after clearing the initial sleepers is only a handful of Ventures. We get to about 85% of the gas cleared when the locals start logging back on. Their POS is off d-scan from us but a Revelation somewhere isn't. Not unduly concerned about the Rev (we're in Ventures after all) we continue to suck gas whilst a scout gets eyes on the POS and then probes down the Rev.
"Second Rev at POS plus the Orca is back. Other Rev is running sites!" is exclaimed across comms. Really? This guy is running sites and knows we are here. Another voice pipes up "hole home is critical". Ah bollocks, that's why he's unconcerned. We can't kill either Rev, or the Archon which just appeared from nowhere, but we can finish the plan to wake the Orca pilot from his boosting trance. As we leave to drop the gas off and reship their scout, glupishkin, does the unthinkable and breaks silence in local to say "bye bye". His thoughts must have changed as three of us head back in Manticores for some mischief. As we warp to the earlier bombing perch made for surprising the Orca all the cap pilots warp back to their POS.
"The Orca pilot has logged off". I'm aligned towards the Orca and closing distance as this message comes over comms. I start counting in my head ready to launch the bombs at the last moment I know I can still hit the Orca before his emergency warp kicks in. Our three Manticores loose their bombs and warp off. Only one of us gets a PvP timer. I'm feeling disappointed at this when Rhianna says "won't he have a timer too?". Oh hell yes! And he logged off already so doesn't know! We have 15 minutes to scan down his Orca which is no longer under the safety of the POS guns. Now we can really kill it.
It feels like forever while the Orca is scanned down, but scanned down it is. We all warp to it and the earlier unthinkable but now inevitable explosion happens. The pod immediately warps off under emergency warp mechanics but a quick scan locates that too. We loot what we can, shoot the rest, then head home deeply satisfied with Bob's gift of Orca and pod.
On Tuesday evening I was sitting in front of the computer eating dinner when my corpmate, Rhianna, sent a message out on Jabber - "Orca outside POS forcefield in 5a1". A screenshot followed showing the ship sitting just outside the forcefield - a fairly safe position for something with a likely high EHP. A quick discussion and we decided to set up a bombing run to at least wake up the Orca pilot if not actually kill him. Bomb perches were set up as I logged in Orea and another toon. Once I was shipped into a pair of Manticores I jumped through to get into position.
I was barely clear of the wormhole when a pair of Armageddons landed on the connection back home. They jumped through and back, obviously looking to roll the wormhole. We decided trying to kill a 'geddon on the wormhole was a much more exciting prospect than just a wakeup call to the Orca pilot. I manoeuvred my two bombers into position whilst Rhianna got back to the POS to watch what happened there. What happened was the two pilots logged off. Boo. Clearly I didn't cloak fast enough as they landed on the wormhole and they got scared off. With that it was time to log off myself and go help my wife with the kids lest I risk non-consensual 'pvp' IRL!
Several hours later we decided to go help out our logged-off Russian neighbours by clearing their expensive gas site. Since we gained our new C5 static we've discovered a couple of the gas sites are actually worth running. In fact the ISK earned is comparable to running C4 combat anomalies yet the risk after clearing the initial sleepers is only a handful of Ventures. We get to about 85% of the gas cleared when the locals start logging back on. Their POS is off d-scan from us but a Revelation somewhere isn't. Not unduly concerned about the Rev (we're in Ventures after all) we continue to suck gas whilst a scout gets eyes on the POS and then probes down the Rev.
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| Someone call the Red Cross? |
"Second Rev at POS plus the Orca is back. Other Rev is running sites!" is exclaimed across comms. Really? This guy is running sites and knows we are here. Another voice pipes up "hole home is critical". Ah bollocks, that's why he's unconcerned. We can't kill either Rev, or the Archon which just appeared from nowhere, but we can finish the plan to wake the Orca pilot from his boosting trance. As we leave to drop the gas off and reship their scout, glupishkin, does the unthinkable and breaks silence in local to say "bye bye". His thoughts must have changed as three of us head back in Manticores for some mischief. As we warp to the earlier bombing perch made for surprising the Orca all the cap pilots warp back to their POS.
"The Orca pilot has logged off". I'm aligned towards the Orca and closing distance as this message comes over comms. I start counting in my head ready to launch the bombs at the last moment I know I can still hit the Orca before his emergency warp kicks in. Our three Manticores loose their bombs and warp off. Only one of us gets a PvP timer. I'm feeling disappointed at this when Rhianna says "won't he have a timer too?". Oh hell yes! And he logged off already so doesn't know! We have 15 minutes to scan down his Orca which is no longer under the safety of the POS guns. Now we can really kill it.
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| Image courtesy of The Wormhole Diaries |
It feels like forever while the Orca is scanned down, but scanned down it is. We all warp to it and the earlier unthinkable but now inevitable explosion happens. The pod immediately warps off under emergency warp mechanics but a quick scan locates that too. We loot what we can, shoot the rest, then head home deeply satisfied with Bob's gift of Orca and pod.
3 September 2014
Well Connected II
To highlight the incontinent nature of wormhole spawn I give you this screenshot from our intel tool
With more connections than Jita I really wouldn't want to be the poor corp stuck in there.
15 July 2014
Let's End Asteroid Belts
There are some systems in New Eden which have a ridiculous number of asteroid belts. The top ten most populous have between 38 and 50 belts each. This is an absurd amount of belts in any one of those systems. Taking just the 50 from the top system and spreading those around the rest would be an improvement but still too many in my opinion. I also don't get the logic of making them all so small. Back in the dark days when I played EVE solo I would happily spend a Saturday or Sunday mining my way through an entire asteroid belt or two whilst doing other stuff around the house. I would do this with a single Hulk which offloaded to an Orca every now and then. Where is the idea that one ship could possibly mine a failed attempt at planet formation anywhere close to logical?
It's time for CCP to end this madness. Static asteroid belts need to go and what replaces them needs to grow. In wormholes the only mining offered to us is in ore anomalies. These used to be signatures which required scanning but for some dumb reason that was changed to allow anyone to instantly warp to them. Now only insane (or insanely bored) pilots mine in w-space. I am aware that these anomalies also spawn in k-space but my proposal is that should be the only source of asteroid to mine. Return ore sites to be signatures once more and force the miners to go scanning for them. In hisec, as enticement to keep searching for new sites, add in occasional higher-end ores to beef up the ISK/hr metric that some people find so important. In lowsec increase that ratio and just maybe the added security of requiring probes to find the sites will get more people mining there too (but probably not). And make the belts five to ten times bigger than they currently are. Get some sense of ridiculously huge scale planted in there.
Finally, miners still complain about how boring it is to mine. Why not liven this up by adding in a variation of the hacking mini game? Each pilot would have to 'unlock' the asteroid before they can start mining from it. Unlocking would take the form of analysing the rock looking for the most precious seam of ore to extract. Successfully analyse the rock and your mining would yield a better form of the ore. You would extract Fiery Kernite instead of plain old Kernite.
Of course there are downsides to this plan. People who don't actually want to mine but feel they have to do it to make ISK will complain that they have to pay attention to the game in order to make ISK. My opinion here is that of course you should be paying attention to the game when you're earning ISK. ISK shouldn't be something which just flows into your wallet. In any case you're paying attention for gankers anyway, aren't you? Plus we just made it a little safer for you to mine away from these gankers whilst giving you a (real world) skill-based way (how fast can you click?) to increase your potential earnings. If that isn't enough, go do something else and one of two things will happen - the cost of minerals will increase until it is worth your time to go mining again or other people who're still happy with the ISK/hr ratio will keep mining.
It's time to shake up the mining industry. CCP let's get it done.
It's time for CCP to end this madness. Static asteroid belts need to go and what replaces them needs to grow. In wormholes the only mining offered to us is in ore anomalies. These used to be signatures which required scanning but for some dumb reason that was changed to allow anyone to instantly warp to them. Now only insane (or insanely bored) pilots mine in w-space. I am aware that these anomalies also spawn in k-space but my proposal is that should be the only source of asteroid to mine. Return ore sites to be signatures once more and force the miners to go scanning for them. In hisec, as enticement to keep searching for new sites, add in occasional higher-end ores to beef up the ISK/hr metric that some people find so important. In lowsec increase that ratio and just maybe the added security of requiring probes to find the sites will get more people mining there too (but probably not). And make the belts five to ten times bigger than they currently are. Get some sense of ridiculously huge scale planted in there.
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| A belt, today, in hisec (feeling sleepy already?) |
Of course there are downsides to this plan. People who don't actually want to mine but feel they have to do it to make ISK will complain that they have to pay attention to the game in order to make ISK. My opinion here is that of course you should be paying attention to the game when you're earning ISK. ISK shouldn't be something which just flows into your wallet. In any case you're paying attention for gankers anyway, aren't you? Plus we just made it a little safer for you to mine away from these gankers whilst giving you a (real world) skill-based way (how fast can you click?) to increase your potential earnings. If that isn't enough, go do something else and one of two things will happen - the cost of minerals will increase until it is worth your time to go mining again or other people who're still happy with the ISK/hr ratio will keep mining.
It's time to shake up the mining industry. CCP let's get it done.
23 April 2014
Fleet Finder Update
One of the popular tactics for tracking potential targets in wormholes is the in-game watchlist. This lets you know when someone logs on or off. With the absence of local this can be invaluable if you want to know if someone just logged off in your home system, a pilot you are waiting to jump on has decided better of coming back past you, or if a hostile logs in when you are running sites in someone else's hole.
The problem doing this comes if you are running a fleet. As the fleet boss, each time you add or remove a contact a popup appears asking if you want to enter a new advert for your fleet. The answer is almost always 'Yes'. Adding or removing a single contact isn't so bad. I can cope with clicking the yes button once. Last night I added around 8 different pilots as they were using our home system as a route to K-space. Each time we saw a new pilot I had to add him, set standings, then click that damn 'yes' button again. It got old very quickly.
Can you see my solution in this screenshot? It's a very minor change in the bottom left of the the dialogue window. Please, please, please CCP, will you let me tell the client I always want to re-advertise my fleet. The number of times I click 'Yes' outweighs the number of time I click 'No' probably 20/1. The few times I click 'No' don't matter as I'm generally shutting the fleet down anyway. Thus, I would love this tick-box to appear. You can do this for the summer expansion, right?
The problem doing this comes if you are running a fleet. As the fleet boss, each time you add or remove a contact a popup appears asking if you want to enter a new advert for your fleet. The answer is almost always 'Yes'. Adding or removing a single contact isn't so bad. I can cope with clicking the yes button once. Last night I added around 8 different pilots as they were using our home system as a route to K-space. Each time we saw a new pilot I had to add him, set standings, then click that damn 'yes' button again. It got old very quickly.
Can you see my solution in this screenshot? It's a very minor change in the bottom left of the the dialogue window. Please, please, please CCP, will you let me tell the client I always want to re-advertise my fleet. The number of times I click 'Yes' outweighs the number of time I click 'No' probably 20/1. The few times I click 'No' don't matter as I'm generally shutting the fleet down anyway. Thus, I would love this tick-box to appear. You can do this for the summer expansion, right?
20 April 2014
A Kill For Breakfast
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| The background to this post |
I can't just scan down the wormhole without jumping through to take a look at our new neighbour. Class 3 wormholes always have a static in K-space and this one leads to nullsec. Not my idea of an ideal hole to live in and many people must feel the same as C3 holes with a static null are often empty. With this in mind it doesn't surprise me that there are no online POSs showing on d-scan. With three planets over 14 AU away I warp to each of those in turn to make sure nobody lives here. On the final planet I discover an online POS, but more importantly I see drones, two Dominix and an Armageddon, and (the final tell-tale sign) wrecks on d-scan. Someone is running sites. Almost on cue one of the anoms disappears from my scanner interface to confirm this.
I warp to a safe spot within d-scan range of the remaining two anoms bookmarking both while in warp so I can be sure to find their locations later. I work out which site the ships are now in then sit watching d-scan while the sleeper wreck count creeps up. I count 11 wrecks then warp in to get a bookmark on their Mobile Tractor Unit. I'm slightly surprised to find the battleships still in site with two more sleepers to shoot. Maybe I miscounted, but anyway I bookmark the MTU and beat a hasty retreat before I get decloaked by one of the Sleepers who are worryingly close. I get myself to a nice distance where I can warp down onto the MTU while watching the battleships run the final site on d-scan.
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| Surprises in EVE are rarely pleasant |
I scoop the loot, shoot the wreck, then retreat to my safe spot. Triumphantly I link my killmail in the Alliance channel only to receive a mouthful of sarcastic abuse for ruining the game for the poor innocent site runners. I then link a second killmail for the MTU in the other site and a corpmate pipes up that he's online and would I like a Noctis to come salvage the two dozen wrecks? Well, this sounds like a really dumb idea but given the chance to rub salt into the killmail wounds we do it anyway. Not a hint of any of the residents is seen until we warp back to the hole home with all our ill-gotten gains. There on our wormhole home is a Prorator who appears to have just launched a large warp bubble. He cloaks up and we decide to leave him be. Too late, mate, and thanks for the loot. Funnest 100 million ISK I made for a while.
13 April 2014
Drunk Roam
Friday night led to a happy coincidence. A decent number of EU pilots all appeared online at the same time, each with a clear case of being a little drunk. Our constellation was well scanned and nothing interesting was presenting itself anywhere. Nobody appeared online in any of the plethora of holes that had been scanned. Our static had very few sites to run but even if it had nobody particularly wanted to shoot red crosses. Someone, possibly me, asked how lowsec looked. The reply came that it was dead with not a soul in local. Just then another EU pilot logged in, one who knew how to hunt in lowsec. He was appraised of the situation, thought for a moment, and then said "right, it's a crap lowsec but let's go see what we can find".
With everyone in a mix of Brutix, Vexors and the obligatory Drake we were ready to go. Then one pilot arrived in a Mammoth. "Well, that answers the question as to who will be bait". As we made the two short jumps to lowsec our FC read out the rules: "Every time we jump a gate, take a drink. Every time you dock, take a drink Everytime you...". We quickly got the picture and everyone started adding rules. I added a rule of "everytime you add a rule you take a drink". By the time we stopped adding rules I think the only thing you didn't take a drink for was breathing.
Our quiet lowsec was indeed quiet so we headed off in some direction to see what our Mammoth could fish up. It only took two or three jumps before Rhianna in the Mammoth announced ships on a gate. Two of them warped off leaving only a Vigilant there when the Mammoth shed its session change cloak. The Vigilant pilot couldn't pass up the chance of an easy kill on the industrial ship and was probably a little surprised when he was tackled by it. The rest of us quickly jumped through, gained extra tackle, webs, and started shooting. The Vigilant went down rather fast under gate guns, three battlecruisers and my Vexor. It would have died a little faster if I'd remembered about my drones.
Unfortunately the FC didn't get on the kill due to some problem with docking at a station resulting in the people outside the station killing him. Unsurprisingly, we also lost the Mammoth. The two pilots reshipped but the rest of the evening was fairly quiet. We tried to get some locals to engage us at various places in one system. Rather than come fight they undocked an Archon for a bit then put it away again. Really? Obviously they were too scared of losing their ships to come fight us. Well oiled and satisfied with our single kill we went home.
With everyone in a mix of Brutix, Vexors and the obligatory Drake we were ready to go. Then one pilot arrived in a Mammoth. "Well, that answers the question as to who will be bait". As we made the two short jumps to lowsec our FC read out the rules: "Every time we jump a gate, take a drink. Every time you dock, take a drink Everytime you...". We quickly got the picture and everyone started adding rules. I added a rule of "everytime you add a rule you take a drink". By the time we stopped adding rules I think the only thing you didn't take a drink for was breathing.
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| Waiting for a fight |
Our quiet lowsec was indeed quiet so we headed off in some direction to see what our Mammoth could fish up. It only took two or three jumps before Rhianna in the Mammoth announced ships on a gate. Two of them warped off leaving only a Vigilant there when the Mammoth shed its session change cloak. The Vigilant pilot couldn't pass up the chance of an easy kill on the industrial ship and was probably a little surprised when he was tackled by it. The rest of us quickly jumped through, gained extra tackle, webs, and started shooting. The Vigilant went down rather fast under gate guns, three battlecruisers and my Vexor. It would have died a little faster if I'd remembered about my drones.
Unfortunately the FC didn't get on the kill due to some problem with docking at a station resulting in the people outside the station killing him. Unsurprisingly, we also lost the Mammoth. The two pilots reshipped but the rest of the evening was fairly quiet. We tried to get some locals to engage us at various places in one system. Rather than come fight they undocked an Archon for a bit then put it away again. Really? Obviously they were too scared of losing their ships to come fight us. Well oiled and satisfied with our single kill we went home.
25 December 2013
1 December 2013
Alliance (and friends) December Roam
Our industrial division kindly donated 50 Drakes to the alliance with the insistence that they be whelped on some foolishness. I added a handful of Ospreys I had lying around and we had ourselves a theme roam. For reasons unknown to me CVA have us set as "Kill On Sight" making destination number one obvious - Providence. I took a bunch of screenshots over the course of the roam but one of our Interceptor pilots was filming the whole thing and spliced together the Providence incursion while I slept.
With various people having to head off we went back to hisec for refreshments before discussing where we would go next. Nobody had any bright ideas so instead we started looking for hotspots of activity in the in-game universe map. While that was being trawled we set off in the general direction of Barleguet, home of Brave Newbies Inc. They seem to be a fun bunch always up for a fight so if we were going to dispose of all these surviving Drakes somewhere it would be a certainty that they would help do just that. En route to Barleguet our scouts discovered a hive of activity in Aulbres. It appeared to be a massive frigate fight was happening so all we could do was fly right in and give them something bigger to shoot at. And shoot us they did.
All in all it was a really fun night. The only problem we had of the evening was the form-up time of just after midnight. This confused a whole load of people who took "Just after Midnight on Sunday" to mean "Sunday night". This meant people were going to be 24 hours late. Oh well, next time we know better. Thanks to the scouts, logi and of course the FC for making this a fun night. I love it when my alliance gets together and does stuff. This is what makes us more than just a gaggle of corps who happen to fly under the same banner without actually knowing each other.
With various people having to head off we went back to hisec for refreshments before discussing where we would go next. Nobody had any bright ideas so instead we started looking for hotspots of activity in the in-game universe map. While that was being trawled we set off in the general direction of Barleguet, home of Brave Newbies Inc. They seem to be a fun bunch always up for a fight so if we were going to dispose of all these surviving Drakes somewhere it would be a certainty that they would help do just that. En route to Barleguet our scouts discovered a hive of activity in Aulbres. It appeared to be a massive frigate fight was happening so all we could do was fly right in and give them something bigger to shoot at. And shoot us they did.
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| Primary is, um, shoot things... |
26 November 2013
Reinforcements
I can't remember if I posted it on this blog (and I'm too lazy to check), but one of the things I most expected to happen post-Rubicon was an excess of reinforced depots outside the major trade hubs. Given I spend most of my game time in various flavours of "Unknown Space" it has taken a week before I eventually found myself in any trade hubs. The sight that awaited me in Amarr was exactly as I suspected, if maybe a little less concentrated than expected.
Later on I had the misfortune to find myself in Jita where a similar picture was painted. I am confused though. I was 100% certain these depots would be anchored outside the trade hubs and 100% certain they would mostly be reinforced. I was right on both counts but I don't know why this is the case. What was the motivation behind launching these depots? Did the people who put them out there seriously think they wouldn't be shot at? Do they really want 3000m3 of extra storage so close to a station? What about the people who bothered to shoot them? Anyone taking a pot-shot would have been flagged as a suspect resulting in the rest of the ships outside the station shooting at them. What's the point?
Somewhere deep in my head I must understand why this happened because I knew it would be this way. I just can't unlock the rationale. So, dear reader, please enlighten me to this madness.
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| A different kind of Red Ring Of Death |
Somewhere deep in my head I must understand why this happened because I knew it would be this way. I just can't unlock the rationale. So, dear reader, please enlighten me to this madness.
19 November 2013
More Posterity
On the eve of EVE crossing the Rubicon I took more screenshots to record for posterity. As many of you know, the old certification system is going away to be replaced by ship mastery. For a lot of people this will be considered a good thing as many of the certificates are a bit outdated now. For me, as useful as I hope the new mastery system will be, I will be a little sad at them passing into history. Certificates didn't exist when I first played EVE in 2005. A lot of the problems I had back then was from overload at the vast array of skills I could train. I had no idea what would be a good idea and what wasn't. In the end I didn't make it past the two week trial back then. The same story happened in 2007 when I gave EVE a second chance. By 2009 the certificate system existed and what a major difference it made to me.
I trained many skills since then, some following the certificates and others ignore them completely. There are two categories of certificates I got to elite level which I am rather proud of - Elite Core skills and Elite Defence.
I have no idea how my skills will shape up under the new mastery ratings so let the record show I once was Elite at something.
I trained many skills since then, some following the certificates and others ignore them completely. There are two categories of certificates I got to elite level which I am rather proud of - Elite Core skills and Elite Defence.
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| Elite Core Skills | Elite Defence Skills |
8 November 2013
My Little Caravan
One of the new personal structures coming with Rubicon is the Mobile Depot. This little structure will allow a limited amount of storage along with a personal fitting service so you can swap out ship modules while in space. The recently announced in-space changes to T3 subsystems will also be possible making this little structure potentially awesome. My friend splatus has already written about the three depots, along with their attributes, so I won't cover any of that in detail. I have been interested since these were announced to see how they would pan out for use in w-space. The main questions in my head were: does it appear on d-scan, can it be probed down, and how easily can it be shot. It was time to go to Singularity and find out.
Deploying the depot is simplicity itself. For the full wormhole experience I started cloaked and aligned to a celestial. In one fluid movement I decloaked, dragged the depot from my cargo into space, then warped off. No hanging around messing with right-click menus or anything. Once I landed I immediately about-turned to see if the depot had anchored properly to find it had.
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| No Dougal the depot is small... the Loki is far away. |
The next thing was to answer my two questions about d-scan and probing. Warping off again I first launched Sisters core scanner probes and tried to find the signature. As expected I found nothing so swapped for Sisters combat probes. This time I got a weak signature but it was easy enough to whittle down the probe ranges before finally getting a 100% lock at the 1 AU probe range. Testing d-scan initially showed nothing on any of my presets. Digging a little revealed a new checkbox in the overview settings. Once I ticked that option the depot clearly appeared on d-scan.
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| Little bubbles of ping | New box to tick |
At this point I was happy with how easy these things will be to find in space so the last remaining question was how easy are they to kill. From the screenshot I took it apparently took seven volleys from my cloaky loki to put the depot into reinforced mode. Something designed with damage in mind would be much quicker but, to be honest, seven volleys isn't exactly an ice age. Once reinforced a bright red reticule appears which is only visible when you are on-grid with the depot. I initially mis-read the countdown as 48 minutes but it's actually 48 hours before the structure leaves reinforced mode. While it was reinforced I was able to add and remove items from the storage space. I didn't think to try the refit option although I have read that will not work during the reinforced timer.
Given the ease by which I scanned this down I went to look for the meta versions of the basic depot. Unfortunately these were not seeded in the market on singularity. Discussions with some corp mates suggested scanning these meta objects will range from somewhat harder for the meta 2 'Wetu' depot to almost impossible for the meta 3 'Yurt' depot due to it's 1:1 sig to sensor strength ratio. If the meta items get seeded I'll give it a go, otherwise I look forward to trying to scan them down in space and hopefully shooting them 'just because I can'.
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| 48 Hours!! Is Nick Nolte in there? |
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