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.

A belt, today, in hisec (feeling sleepy already?)

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.

Pee Vee EVE

I'm typing this post from a much warmer location than normal. Right now I am on vacation with my family, but as they sleep (and I take a break from Hearthstone) my mind turns to EVE. Before I left the UK there was an ongoing topic thread regarding the state of PvE in EVE. At first I paid little heed to the topic expecting the usual "this is a PvP game so PvE-ers are in the wrong place" hyperbole. When I saw my good friend, splatus, over at A journey through the mind had written a post on the topic I decided there was no point to even weigh in on the subject as he'd almost certainly be wrong¹ so I put it to the back of my mind. Then that very same splatus showed me an actual response from CCP Seagull to an open question from TurAmarth ElRandir and I started thinking again. So, here I am with beer, peace and quiet. Let's see where my mind runs with this...

The more vocal EVE players, and also CCP, are decidedly proud that EVE is a PvP game first and foremost. Sure there is crafting and PvE, and yeah the market is probably the most developed in any computer game around just now, but PvP is the most important aspect of the game and it should stay that way. One of the often bandied about problems with EVE is that the logged in player numbers are stagnant. This has been the case for as long as I can remember. From time to time we see Jester posting stats on this and the graphs mostly tell the same story of periodic growth and decline of player numbers as controlled by the season or expansion release. The average of this statistic is essentially a flat line going back several years. The question which most commonly follows is "How come games like World of Warcraft manager to have millions of subscribers when we have only half a million?".

Let's just think about that for a bit. Why does a PvE rich game like WoW manage to attract several million paying customers but a game where PvE is considered a disease which must be eradicated struggles to get past half a million? Hmm, boss, I dunno... In case you missed it, that was sarcasm. I came to EVE from WoW. In fact I played both at the same time. The first twice I came to EVE (2005 and 2007) I didn't last past my trial mainly due to the dire state of PvE in the game. I came from PvE and I wanted to PvE. It wasn't until 2009 when I was largely bored of WoW when I finally dug a niche out in EVE and enjoyed it. I was still just missioning but I was fairly happy. CCP got me as a customer due to my persistence and boredom with their competition. Now I'm not a businessman but from what I know about salesmen it is meant to be their persistence which wins the sale to a reluctant customer. I was far from reluctant but it still took three bites of the cherry before I was able to stick around.

From December 2009 until July 2011 I almost exclusively ran level 3 and level 4 combat missions. I had very little interaction with anyone other than market sales and my interaction with corporations mostly showed me that joining them was a bad idea as I suddenly became vulnerable to wardecs which meant I couldn't play for a week or more. At this point you should jump in and say "wait Orea, this is exactly the game and your corp should have fought in the wardec". Even to this day I would say to you that there is little to no point fighting a hisec wardec. The people who engage in them do so in far safer conditions than most hisec miners expose themselves to. Even so, back then I didn't know that so well and tried to get my fellow corp-mates to join me in a fleet to attack the opposite party yet nobody would. At least one corp I was in totally folded due to a wardec issued for no reason other than lolz.

The entire nature of EVE is such that casual players are driven away. People who come from other online games are driven away almost instantly by the dire state of missions. People who don't necessarily want to interact with others are ridiculed out of the game for not knowing that (e.g.) Jita Burns is on². People who quietly mine in hisec making bugger all ISK for their time suddenly find themselves without a ship as "mining is bad m'kay". Even those who do join a corp discover their monthly payment to CCP doesn't really guarantee they can play as hisec wardecs generally render that unfeasible.

So what, if anything, should be done about this? Well the "if anything" part is easy to answer. By CCP's own numbers they let 90% of people escape their clutches. Around half of that are people who try the PvE content then realise it is shite and leave. The 10% of us who stick around say "good riddance" but we are wrong. Like me, those 40% may be taking a longer time than some to find their feet and encounter a decent corp to join with. They may still believe that nullsec is a terrifying cacophony of lawlessness and not the carebear haven it truly is.They may even think that all of lowsec is like Rancer with gatecamps behind every jump they make. Who are we to judge them "bad at EVE" for this? They just have to learn. But how do they learn if they don't stick around?

Without adversely changing the nature of EVE there is only one focus CCP have. The quality of PvE content must, must, must be greatly improved. I don't know how many missions there are out there but there can't be that many given how often you have to rescue that damn Damsel from the pleasure hub. This number needs greatly increased. There also needs to be a number of corp-specific missions created. Things you only ever see when doing something for the Caldari Navy, and not just a change to the faction of people you are shooting at. More importantly than this, there should be a massive increase in the Epic Arcs. The way to engage people in the game is to give them a longer storyline to follow. I remember being deeply disappointed when I finished the Sisters of EVE epic arc to discover the other arcs required me to have awesome standings with the relevant empires. At some point along the way I decided these arcs would take me to lowsec at which point I never ever paid them any attention again.

So here is my challenge to CCP and to CCP Seagull in particular who says they "want EVE to have more things to do for small scale groups and solo pilots": Make 20 new Epic arcs in New Eden by the time you release Kronos. They don't have to be called 'Epic Arcs' if that would jar with the existing missions, just make a long storyline which threads through 30-50 missions and actually engages the player. Make these challenging. Encourage players into random lowsec locations in cheap ships to make a rendezvous or a drop-off. Put simply: Engage the casual player to stick around and, like me, become less casual and more addicted engaged.

^{1 Splatus and I so infrequenly agree it has become something of an in-joke.
2 I am also guilty of doing this.}

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?

More Mobile Structures

Some of the new mobile structures have a theme of rewarding active players and punishing the inactive ones. One example of this would be the mobile depot which can still be scooped when reinforced and then reanchored somewhere else if you wish. Another is the syphon units which steal various reaction materials from a POS if the owner of the POS doesn't notice it's there.

I had an excellent idea for a couple of extra mobile structures I would hate to see in existence. The fact I would hate to see them means they must have some merit. The structures are the "POS Fuel Syphon" and the "POS Fuel Accelerator". Without going into actual numbers, these modules would act thus:

POS Fuel Syphon - This anchorable would behave in a similar manner to the other syphon structures. Every hour this structure takes a number of fuel blocks from the POS it is anchored near and stores them for anyone passing by to take. An additional percent of blocks is wasted during this process. The number of blocks would be related to the tower size meaning a small POS would only lose a quarter of the blocks per hour that a large POS loses.

POS Fuel Accelerator - This module causes the POS it is anchored near to burn its fuel at an accelerated rate. This anchorable has a similar effect to the syphon in that it makes the POS run out of fuel faster. This anchorable is a pure 'dick structure' as the person laying it down gains no material benefit from the module. I would make this module a one-time structure which cannot be scooped back up. I would also make the effect stronger than the syphon as its intention is purely to make the POS run out of fuel rather than some sneaky slight-of-hand theft.

Both of these modules punish people who have POSs but don't spend enough time at them. Defending against either of these modules would be trivial for the active player or corp who live in their POS or system containing it. People who put a POS on a moon then visit it once a month to fuel it up could get an early surprise in the form of low fuel alerts sooner than expected.

While writing this it also occurred that a similar module for accelerated fuel burn could be used to speed up strontium timers. For anyone looking to defend their POS this shouldn't be a problem as they could take care of the structure as it appeared. For undefended timers it would allow an offensive force to remove a tower more rapidly. So, what do you think? If everyone hates this idea equally it must be a good idea, right?

Communications

The communications available in EVE are a total disaster. This is a problem you realise when you spend long enough playing the game socially. Initially you see the expected channels - local and corp - which every MMO I've played has an equivalent to. You also have the EVEmail system, a feature of many if not all MMOs. As time goes by you add in a few more chat channels, and before long you have several windows of blinking tabs which you generally ignore except when there's nothing to do. Right now I have 15 open chat channels of which I check maybe half when also doing stuff.

So far so good and you're wondering why this is a disaster. This is so bad because all these communications are poorly supported out of the game, if at all. Of course we have EVE Gate for checking emails, calendars and contacts. Excuse me if I don't get excited about that. If you've ever tried to use mail in EVE gate from your phone you'll know exactly what my complaint there is. You get a tiny little broken textarea to type into which displays exactly one word. Sending anything useful from there is traumatic to say the least. If I have to be at a proper computer to use EVE Gate why don't I just log in to the actual client? But if I'm logged into the client why would I want to be sending mails? What makes EVE Gate worse is you can't do basic things like create links to websites, characters, corps or items. Have you ever tried to change tags on mails or work through old pages of emails? The constant page refreshing drives me nuts, especially when said refreshing takes you from page 8 back to page 1!! The calendar at least works, although editing events can be torturous as the edit modal appears half-hidden in landscape mode and moves of the side of the screen when holding the phone in portrait mode.

All the wonderful real-time chat channels are even less accessible. There is no known way to interact in real time with corpmates when not actually in-game. I totally understand why this would not be desirable in many other games as the aim is to have people online and playing as much as possible to generate content through conflict. I would say the opposite actually happens in EVE. I often get distracted from doing anything other than chatting as scanning while holding several conversations is not any fun. Additionally, my experience with the jabber server I provide for my alliance is that the result is usually to draw people online from other games when site running starts or potential targets appear in-system.

The Answer

Obviously I have a solution to the above problems otherwise I wouldn't be writing this. Let's take each item one-by-one:

Calendar

Since 2003 there has been an internet protocol for accessing remote scheduling information. CalDAV supports multiple clients accessing and updating the same calendar concurrently. It is also possible to configure a lot of calendaring software to access and update this information, all without ever having to log into the game. This makes it possible for 'content creators' to schedule ops from locations where it is not possible to log into the game or EVEgate (and by that I mean from work).

Email

This is a biggie for me. I don't want to log into the game to handle email. As a corp CEO and alliance leader I have plenty of mails I could be handling without logging into the game. Wouldn't that be some much easier from a proper email client sending and receiving in-game mail over IMAP and SMTP? Also, with most phones supporting email these days it becomes a more responsive way to get a hold of someone quickly.

Chat

As mentioned above, I provide a jabber server for my alliance to chat out of the game. There are plenty of different servers available for the open protocol of XMPP. There are also plenty of clients out there for all OSs. If we had live access to all the chat channels all of the time I predict many more fights which escalated quickly resulting in mass destruction of more ships. Exactly what CCP, and the rest of us, want. Another effect of this could also be to reduce the number of people who are online just for the purposes of social interaction. How many of the 30000 people are only on to chat? How many more would be in chat, ready to jump online at a moments notice of some excitement they would otherwise have missed?

Summary

My summary to all the above would be to go take a look at how Google handle their massive infrastructure. All the above is similar or identical to how Google provide their services to a much larger user-base than CCP have to support. Making communication easier for all the people playing EVE can do nothing to harm the game. Further more, as all these protocols are well defined and code already exists to support them, the development cost to CCP should be tolerable. Many, if not all, the major alliances provide out of game communications in the form of forums, TeamSpeak, jabber and some even have their own calendars. When this becomes so wide-spread it should be a clear message to CCP that the equivalent services they provide in-game are lacking and need replaced.

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.

Podded by Concord

I figured it would be fun to go down a controversial route today. Looking forward to your comments of rage.

Concord should be punishing people who commit crimes in hisec by podding them and issuing a fine.

No, this is not an anti-goon rant against Hulkageddon type activities, or the recent trend to gank freighters en route between Amarr and Jita. While that is not my chosen thing to do I am happy with there being people out there who do that. I'm even happy that those people are able to do it. Let's face it, the main difference between hisec and lowsec is only a perceived feeling of safety. So far in 2012 there has been almost the same number of ships killed in hisec as in lowsec, nullsec and wormhole space combined. That's not particularly safe, is it? Yet people feel safe autopiloting around willy-nilly in untanked haulers and Orcas. Something they would never do in 0.4 but are happy to do in 0.5.

If I don't have a problem with the crime why, then, do I have an issue with the current punishment? On TV there is a vast number of Police car chase programs. While the sequence of events that leads up to each chase will vary, the general recipe is the same: police detect criminal in a vehicle; police try to stop criminal; criminal flees; police chase; criminal crashes.

In my mind the above sequence of events isn't too dissimilar to EVE. In New Eden what we find is: Crime happens which Concord instantly know about; Concord arrive at the scene of the crime; Concord blow up criminal. It's at this point things fall down. Once Concord blows up your ship you are free to go. Sure, players can take pot-shots at your pod but the police are happy for you to do whatever you want. Unless you get another ship too soon, that is.

Consider a scenario where the police are chasing a murderer and in order to stop the criminal they ram his car off the road. The car gets written off due to the resulting damage. Imagine the public outrage if the police then let they guy go provided he doesn't get into another car too soon. Said fellow waits out this period of time, gets a new car and goes off to kill someone else. Make sense?

Here's what I think should happen. Once Concord blow up the criminal they should try to catch his pod and explode that too. This is the equivalent to the police not only stopping a criminal but arresting him as well. Finally, that criminal should be fined in the station for criminal activities. From a gankers point of view all this does is increase the 'operating costs' for their illegal activities. Now, as well as replacing ships they need to replace clones and pay fines.

It is worth making life a little more fun for these hisec pirates though. They should have the ability to warp their pod free from the exploding ship if they are quick enough. The understanding here being that ship destruction is a guaranteed punishment but it may be possible to escape with your pod and without being fined. Simply docking or jumping out of system isn't a route to safety, however. Stations will be aware you are a criminal and won't let you dock. Gates will let you leave but if the next system is also hisec then Concord will start chasing you there too. In fact, the only way to avoid being podded and fined is to get to lowsec or nullsec (or jump through a wormhole).

What gains does this give us in game? Well, carebears get the satisfaction of a more robust penalty against the 'bad guys'. Hisec griefing becomes slightly less interesting due to higher costs. The 'professionals' will still do it as they can work the costs into making sure they only gank the best targets. Finally these criminals can choose the excitement of a 'car chase' across the skies seeking safe haven. Seems like a genius idea to me. What say you?

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.

This is my home, there are many like it but this one is mine.

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?

Unified Inventory

I was going to write a post defending the new unified inventory system. I have been thoroughly beaten in that plan however. Who else but Jester has written a very good post about it. We also have a slightly negative but well written post from Seismic Stan highlighting the over-entitled attitude of some of the more active forum posters. I think between both of them they covered everything I was going to say.

For the record I am pretty much in favour of the new system. Yes, it took a little to get used to but this is just because it is different, not because it sucks. Living in wormhole space my biggest concern was the complications in my corp members dealing with several CHAs all appearing as "Corporate Hanger Array" in the sidebar. Today, CCP fixed that my making CHAs nameable. They even dealt with my minor issue of all the POS guns being listed by collapsing them under another level of hierarchy. The only improvement I can think of now is to only display containers within range in the sidebar - I'm rarely within 2500m of the POS guns so why show them at all?

Now, to all the cry babies in the EVE-O forums who've been threatening to quit over the new inventory system. Here's a little tip, either say it and go or don't and don't. A threat like that only works once and that was Incarna. You've had your wildcard now give up with the extreme threats as they have no weight anymore. All repeating this threat does is further dilute it to the point of being comical. Actually, it already is comical. Each time I read it in the forums I have a little chuckle to myself. I suspect CCP forum masters also giggle somewhat.

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?

Atmospheric Flight

So, being stuck out in hisec I decided to refresh my atmospheric flight skills. Handily I had been shopping in Jita and the best Temperate planet I know for atmospheric flight has to be New Caldari Prime which, funnily enough, is in the New Caldari system right next door to Jita.

Small Blue Marble

It was relatively trivial to hire myself a small aircraft for my little challenge. I registered a little surprise at a capsuleer booking such low-tech transportation, but I guess that's only to be expected. I also assume I was grossly overcharged but the extra cost probably means more to the owner of the aircraft than me so that is also not a problem.

Once on board the airplane I had to undertake a series of manual checks. I mean, I'm not in a pod so if this baby goes down it's probably going to hurt... or worse. Everything seemed to check out fine which is what I would expect when paying good money to hire something All that was left was for me to taxi to the runway and take this ship, sorry, plane up into the air.

I really enjoy the extra mental challenge required by having to balance real forces against each other. In my Tengu I pretty much point and click where I want to go (mentally, of course). In the aeroplane I have much more to consider: speed, altitude, attitude, am I upside down?! There actually feels like some skill is involved in just flying this thing. I would dread to think of the extra workload required to do all that whilst also getting involved in combat. Now that would be some challenge, eh?

Clearly I survived my little jolly otherwise I wouldn't be regaling you with this tale, but I'll leave you with the following set of pictures to ponder just how I managed it. Now, who want's to try this in a Rifter?

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.

Invention

I just realised it's Friday. There should be a screenshot from around New Eden here but clearly there isn't. To be honest, I've not spent much time undocked this week to facilitate the taking of interesting images from around New Eden. So, what have I been doing? Well, in one word, invention.

And what a time sink invention can be. I like to batch up my invention runs to give me a month of runway. I have about 160 BPCs to turn into about 60 T2 ammo BPCs and do five at a time. With a 40 minute wait between invention runs this basically means I sit at a POS running these with not enough time to go do something else productive, but too much time to feel like I'm being involved in the process. As a result the days just fly by.

Also, I tend to zone out and not pay attention to external interactions indicated on my pod interface. Each time I stir to set another round of invention on the go I find unanswered convos blinking at me. Often the convo initiator has given up on me ever replying. Saying 'hi' seems pointless after 20+ minutes of inactivity.

It would be nice to set a queue of invention tasks up - simply drop all the required materials in the right place and set it running - hint hint. Then Dhal could sit back and relax and Orea could get on with the serious business of stealing liberating Sleeper technology.

BB33: Needs More Cut Scenes

This month's Blog Banter is pretty much posed by CCP and asks:

"We invite you to pour your heart (or guts) out and tell us what you think is good or bad with the current new player experience and what you think could be done about the problems."

Now, it has been some time since I managed to work my way though the new player tutorials. To be honest I'm not sure I ever worked my way through them all. I did try about a year ago to go all the way through them with a new character but very quickly wearied to the way they jar with the experience of playing the game. They upset the flow of starting a new character by appearing as a somewhat unimportant pop-up box somewhere on your screen. The relevance of the window appearing is not always obvious. Personally, It almost screams "close this window" at me.

The most enjoyable new player experience should teach you a large part of what you need to know without you ever realising you are learning anything. I still (vaguely) remember playing "Final Fantasy VII". As I recall. this starts off with you at a train station and no idea how to control anything or any attacks to encumber you, yet you are expected to get going. I can't even remember if they actually tell you how to move but those controls are at least obvious enough to get you moving. Gradually attacks and other concepts are introduced to you as you acquire skills. The speed this is handed to you is fairly rapid but lets you get to grips with the game play without being overwhelmed. Most importantly the learning process is never more important than the story.

A similar vein of progression is generally found in car racing games where the track layouts become increasingly technical at a reasonable rate of unlocking, letting you get to grips with the physics of whichever game you are playing. Once you have unlocked all the tracks you are generally still unlocking ever increasingly powerful cars, but as you are lapping now familiar tracks you are not overwhelmed. An example of how well this works is when you take a turn on a friends game who has unlocked all the tracks and powerful cars and you jump right into a 600 horsepower beast and drive like a complete tool who's never seen a corner before.

So here's what I think - proper educational cut scenes and lots of them. Start a new character with the new 'Awakening' video. When she asks "what are you waiting for pilot?" this should open a prompt where you choose which tutorial you want to go to next. While it may be wise to go through all tutorials there is no way it should be required. A prompt at this point lets a new player focus on their choice of game play style. This can also be used to give the new player an idea of the potential play styles available to them.

Which ever training option is chosen should then lead on to a new cut scene explaining some concept, then a chance to try what you've learned, then more cut scenes until the topic has been covered. The actor could walk you through a mock-up  of whichever controls are relevant using a screen they have available in their classroom. This would also be the perfect time to give out tips ("dirty pirates are dirty" or "hisec canflippers are impotent mummy's boys"). Basically, the more information that is relayed as if you are actually being taught it in practical situations by someone with expert knowledge the more immersive the experience will be.

It should always be possible to walk away and come back at a later date to partake in some further education. The best way to control this is have the tutorials tied to starter stations. To access them you need to talk to the right agent in the right station. If you do try to engage the tutorials from anywhere else this should simple set your autopilot to the correct system and instruct you to get moving. Hell, if the character is less than a month or two old why not just teleport them and their ship to the correct place?

Let's make the Federal Navy Academy and all the other starter corps actually behave like their name suggests and properly teach something for once.

Wormhole Stabilisers

So the CSM think wormhole stabilisers should be added to the game to make invading wormhole systems easier? Rather than follow my instinct to jump up and down and complain about this being a terrible idea I decided to think how this should actually work. This thinking lead to a discussion with my friend splatus over at A journey through the mind. The resulting thoughts were something like this.


Stabilising Effect
To create a stabilising effect there should be a requirement for a presence at both the entry and exit points of the wormhole. The idea being to create awareness from anyone watching d-scan that a stabilisation effort was in operation. This creates a flash point for conflict if so desired.

Achieving the effect would involve anchoring and bringing online a destroyable structure on one side of the wormhole. The time required to bring this online should not be particularly long, say three minutes. This structure then enables the other side of the wormhole to be targeted by one or more of a new high-slot ship module. It is this module which provides the actual stabilisation effect.

The stabilisation effect would be something similar to the vamp modules used to drain cap from ships. In this instance it would be draining 'mass input' from the wormhole at a set rate. Applying additional stabilisation modules to a single wormhole would increase the rate mass input was drained from the wormhole but should be subject to similar diminishing returns as stacking modules in a ship. Basically this creates an increase in the maximum mass which can travel through a wormhole, but beyond the initial mass limits there will be a time-based 'repair' effect which needs to be taken into account. Should there be a point where the total mass traversed through the hole minus the 'repair' effect is greater than the initial maximum mass supported by the wormhole then the wormhole will close.

The time a wormhole can stay open should not be increase. Possibly the stabilisation effect should have a side-effect of reducing wormhole lifetime. It should never be possible to hold a wormhole open indefinitely. Finally, when a wormhole eventually closes, the anchorable structure will be destroyed unless already removed.


Destabilising Effect
If we are to have a ship module and anchorable which can increase the stability of a wormhole then there should also be a sister module which has the opposite effect. Currently a wormhole corp will collapse a wormhole by running calculations on a spreadsheet while jumping plate-fit battleships or Orcas through. Having a module to simplify this task would be a massive improvement in the game experience while not particularly changing the actual dynamic involved.

As with the stabiliser effect, the destabiliser should be a two part process. Part one is anchoring and bringing online the structure on one side of the wormhole. This could even be the same anchorable used in the stabilising effect to keep outside parties guessing if the wormhole is being closed or held open. Part two is running one or more of another new high-slot ship module. This time the effect is to inject mass to the wormhole. Think shield transfer this time. Again there should be a stacking penalty to prevent instant closing of a wormhole.

The maths for this modules is easier than for stabilising. You add mass using this module and also by pushing ships through the wormhole if you want. Eventually the wormhole will close, destroying the anchorable if it is still in place.

Summary
Two new ship modules and a new anchorable to give capsuleer a little more control over wormhole life. The first may make invasion easier but slightly more visible to the observant occupier of a wormhole; the second will make life easier for wormhole residents but at a slightly increased risk of being noticed while closing an unwanted wormhole connection.

Thoughts?