Ships of Many Colours

This appeared in a dev blog today. It would appear we are getting ever closer to properly customisable paint jobs on our internet spaceships.

You really want to click this to make it bigger

People sometimes sound surprised when I mention I don't play EVE fully zoomed out. I like my pretty spaceships and play at a zoom level where I can appreciate them. I'm looking forward to CCP releasing another render like the above including my favourite looking ship - the Caldari Navy Megathron...

Long Skills

One of the things that happened during CCP's 'tiericide' of ship skills was the creation of racial destroyer and racial battlecruiser skills. Possibly somewhat foolishly someone at CCP uttered the immortal words "If you can fly it today then you can fly it tomorrow". I suspect that little sentence triggered the biggest stampede towards a single set of skills since EVE launched and people realised learning skills (remember them) were the first thing everyone should train. As a result there is a whole generation of EVE players who can fly every single tech 1 battlecruiser and below.

Shouldn't be long now??

The effect this had on me was, of course, to train the appropriate skills on the main character I have on each account. The secondary effect this had on me was to set me on a sub-capital class ship completionist frenzy with Orea. Fast-forward a little bit and I can fly every single subcap ship with the exception of some T2 haulers and all T2 battleships. This is changing. On EFT I have a planned queue to finish off these ships. There's only 18 skills in it but 186 days of training. This paints some picture as to why I'm not burning through the complete set of subcaps.

About a week ago I finally bit the bullet to put in a battleship V skill. Today this caught my eye in EFT - 27% done but over three weeks to go! Holy cow, I've got another three of these to do. I know for a fact I'll not be putting another BS V skill in once this one is done. I guess the sensible thing to do would be to get some T2 large guns to match my leet Gallente BS skills. Large Hybrid Turrent V is only 18 days away...

...only?!?!?!

The Ships Of New Eden

Almost all the ships in EVE Online are works of art. Often we taken them for granted by either being too focussed on little red + symbols on the screen and/or by being zoomed out so far that all we see are little white boxes everywhere. If you recognise yourself from this description you would do well to take a look at this video made by EVE Outtakes. It's not short, coming in at barely under an hour, but it does make you stop and appreciate these ships for all their beauty.

Enjoy.

Told you it was good.

Bad Combat - Requiem

I couldn't really just leave the failed attempt at combat to my loss of a corp-mate's ship. Whether it was the late hour or the alcohol imbibed, I decided that I would take a run out to hisec to replace the lost Nemesis. En route I decided it would be even more amusing to build a perfect replacement to his ship but store it in the ship hanger under my own ID. Ho! ho! What could possible go wrong.

The two jumps through wormhole systems were now quiet and caused me no troubles in my pod. Even the lowsec system of Tama, which provided the entry point to empire space, was quiet. That just left me with five jumps to Jita and a world of shopping hell.

Being the late and somewhat incapacitated hour, it took longer that it ought to have to buy the components to replace the ship. During that time I speculated on how useful it would be to have the ability to drag a killmail into the market interface and generate a list of items to buy. Hint hint!

Eventually, with a new ship built and a few more beers sunk in the notorious den of Jita I set to space in my new Nemesis. Another five quiet jumps took me back to Tama and I jumped back into the C2b. Our C4a was next on my list and I arrived there to find the system quiet just as a corpmate had reported 10 minutes prior. Landing on the K162 wormhole home I had the annoying surprise of empty space. Bugger!

Even in my reduced state I had enough clear head to get out of W-space rapidly, given I had no probes. So back to Tama, then Jita I went. I started to muse the possibility of utilising our other route via nullsec. The entry point was C9N-CC which sounded familiar for some reason. I set off on the first of the 50 jumps musing the familiarity of the system while another corpmate confirmed the route viability.

I was informed that the route no longer existed at almost the same time I realised why C9N-CC was familiar. That system holds the wreck of the first titan ship to die in New Eden - Steve. I had been there before. Oh well, guess I wasn't going to visit Steve again just now as there was no point. With a heavy heart I set the autopilot for the sleazy bars of Jita 4-4, had another few alcoholic drinks and went to sleep.

I Only Fly Gallente...

...or at least I used to. As a Gallente pilot I naturally understand that Gallente designed ships are the most beautiful and well designed ships available in New Eden. The problem seems to be that style over function is sub-optimal logic when choosing a particular ship for flying around dangerous areas of unknown space.

These days I am more often found flying in Caldari designed ships. My justification to allow my morals to slip was that in times of danger you should use the best tools available to you. Living in wormhole space means my time is largely dangerous.

It was a gradual change to Caldari ships. The initial catalyst came in the class 2 wormhole system we used to occupy. I had an double-rep armour Myrmidon set up to fight against Sleepers. I could run sites with one other person but found that if they needed to warp out for some reason I would struggle to tank the damage. I was aware others could solo these sites in their Drake so I took a look at some fits. At the same time another Gallente pilot with weaker morals than me went and bought a Drake and we worked on the fitting for it together. The other pilot reported such a world of difference between the two ships that it became hard for me to ignore the potential gains to be had by switching. Even if the ship I was switching to looks like a piece or armour blasted off a supercap ship.

Self-propelled armour plating from a capital ship?

I slipped further when I was asking for recommendations for a ship to use in combat against other capsuleers. I was told in no uncertain terms that I should go for a Drake at battlecruiser sizes. Around this time I found myself in Empire space so just went out and bought one without thinking. I was still running sites in my Myrm, but everyone else was in Drakes and I had relaxed my guard enough for it to become a no-brainer.

On our move to the new class 4 wormhole system I completed the transformation. I added a new Drake for running sites and did not bring my Myrm with me. The Myrm is stashed with all my other Gallente ships gathering dust in a hanger somewhere in Sinq Laison. I do have access to an Iteron in our class 4 so I can relax in comfort. No matter how much better the Drake is for actually earning ISK, style is always something we Gallente require to truly relax.

Visions Of New Eden - IV

Orca Pilots do it slowly

Align times greater than 20 seconds upset me. Align times more than double that deeply disturb me. Thus I do not fly an Orca. If I did, I imagine I would need lots of pretty nebulae to stare at during the glacial align times.