A Year In Wormholes

Today marks the first anniversary of my journey into wormhole space so I thought I'd try and do a little recap of that time. I find it most amusing to think that just over a year ago I was in a fairly unsocial corp living in Solitude running L4 missions and thinking I was making loads of ISK. At one time there had been a small group of us who chatted in the corp channel, and even a couple of lowsec roams, but not what you'd expect for a corp boasting 300+ members. Also, we kept being on the receiving end of wardecs and there weren't enough members willing to go out and fight. I was also not so inclined to go fight, but was starting to get to a point where I was fed up either not playing or dying to a war target gate camp after foolishly running missions thinking I would be okay.

I had started getting more interested in the community aspect of EVE. I was listening to a couple of podcasts including Jadecougar's Lost In EVE podcast. This meant when Splatus, one of the few people in corp I actually spoke to, mentioned to me he was considering leaving and trying out wormhole life I decided to accompany him. There were a couple of wormhole corps we considered. I can't remember who the first corp we chatted with were but they sounded a bit too militaristic for us. There was talk of timelimits on running Sleeper sites and ridicule should you fall outside those times. We decided that wasn't for us. Next up was Jadecougar's Z3R0 Return Mining Inc. and they sounded much friendlier so we submitted APIs and agreed to the interview. The interview was probably more intense than many job interviews I've been to. I'm sure it lasted at least an hour and then Splatus and I were in.

Moving in day was fun. I had been on a shopping spree fitting an omni-tank Myrm so I didn't have to fly Caldari. I had been practising my scanning with a lovely helios. I also took in a Covetor and a 'ghetto-Noctis' Catalyst salvager. I then went nuts and filled a bunch of GSCs with random ammo and modules to haul in my Itty. With some trepidation and what I perceived to be outstanding levels of organisation on the part of Z3R0 I managed to safely get most of my shopping into our POS. I was heading out to get the last ship when there were reports of some combat ships on our route. I jumping into my Nemesis and managed to help kill a Typhoon thus allowing Splatus to move in and me to fetch my last ship. My first taste of wormhole combat.

I quickly settled into a life of running my PI setup efficiently and making a stupid amount of ISK. I had the option of dropping out to lowsec through our static to go run missions when the wormhole was quiet but I did that fairly infrequently. I very quickly realised I needed a second account with a cloaky alt to make it easier to run Sleeper sites with only a couple of people on. Life was good, then came the management 'crisis' which resulted in an opportunistic corp theft.

At that time, Z3R0 existed in two wormholes - a C2 and a C4. When Jadecougar decided to take leave from New Eden, potentially permanently, there was an assumption by the person who ran the C2 that he would become CEO. This didn't happen so he quit one night leaving us helpless. There were two ways the corp could have went at that point: sink or swim. A small number of people chose to flee the corp (at least one taking other people's 'canes with them) but for the most part people stayed. The new CEO appointed some directors then wasn't heard of again, but quite quickly we were happy with that.

There was a little concern when Jade came back from hiatus and announced Z3R0 was moving to the C4. How would we cope with no direct access to K-space? How would we survive in the significantly more dangerous space that a C4 presented? Jade was adamant that the dangers of C4 space had been greatly exaggerated to us during our time in the C2 and moving would be simple. So we found some nice guys to buy the C2 from us and we moved. Funny thing we learned was that C4 space isn't actually any more dangerous than C2 space.  As long as you run proper intel you have exactly the same chance of a wandering capsuleer popping you back to hisec in either class of space.

Moving wormholes is a logistical nightmare. It's amazing the volume of stuff you acquire in there. We lost several Orcas due to people being silly on the move out, including one containing a Tengu - oops! The move into the C4 went more smoothly and it was at that time I finally abandoned my principles and started flying Caldari. I moved into the C4 as the proud owner of a scanning Tengu and an omni-tank Drake. Subsequently I replaced the Drake with another Tengu due to the peer pressure of greater range.

In the last six months since moving we've been forced into greater displays of teamwork. Scanning is much more important now than in the C2 as we are always at least two jumps to K-space and usually more. The big change for me is I am now the CEO of Z3R0 Return Mining Inc. as Jade has left to chase a dream of nullsec. Z3R0 probably has more active members now that it ever had and we are still recruiting. Not only that, we also helped create a wormhole academy with Splatus taking the lead there. The aim of our corp has always been primarily to enjoy the game in good company and that is what we continue to do. While the corp buys PI and Sleeper loot and takes a cut from the proceeds, the proceeds of this are used to keep us out here and ease the life of everyone. Not a tactic for the corp to become space-rich but, hey, it's not like we have any shareholders to answer to.

Here's to another year of Z3R0 and Wormholes.

Fitting Ships

As anyone who knows me can tell you I am about as far away from being an EFT-warrior as is possible. I don't know if there is an official term for it, but I am a 100% fitting leach. Given access to a new ship I am more likely to wander around Battleclinic or FHC looking at the suggestions for ships there than actually fire up EFT to see what I can design for myself.

With the Thukk You, Frill Me! protest coming up I have been training Geo with the appropriate skills to fit and fly a Stabber. My first instinct was to disappear onto the web to find a suitable fit to guide his training and I came up with something on FHC. I plugged this into EFT and then EVEMon and, lo and behold, I had a skill plan.

Today I decided I wasn't satisfied with this approach and that it's maybe about time I learned how to fit my own damn ships. Given I can't for the life me remember the Stabber fit I found on FHC I decided that would be a good place to start. Firing up EFT and importing Geo's skills was the easy part. Loading up a new fit for the Stabber was also easy. From there I was presented with a blank canvas with the words "fit it to its bonuses".

Stabber: 5% bonus to Medium Projectile Turret firing speed per level and 5% bonux to max. velocity per level.

"Well, at least that's the guns picked for me" I think fitting four 425mm Medium 'Scout' Autocannon I's. This leaves me two high slots to either fit missile launchers or some utility modules which I'll come back to later when I know what powergrid and CPU I have left. So, shield or armour tanked? This being a Minmatar ship I have an equal number of mid and low slots so there is no obvious hint

which way to go first. As I'll be in a fleet I might as well try a shield fit first with some damage mods in the lows. In my mids I put a Large Shield Extender, a scram and a web. In the lows I put two Gyrostabilizers and a Shield Power Relay. Still having plenty of PG, CPU and Cap available I revisit the remaining high slots and stick in more damage dealing in the form of a couple of Assault Launchers. At this point I realise my resists are pretty terrible so I stick in two EM and one thermal shield rigs.

I'm not over the moon with this fitting. Although I'm not used to actually working out my own fittings so have no idea if my feelings are justified. My thought are that the resists and EHP are too low. So, let's try an armour version. After ripping out the Large Shield Extender, the rigs and the lows I add a 400mm plate, an armour repairer and an explosive resist mod. To give me back some speed I put a 10MN afterburner in my now spare mid slot. My resists are again a bit poor so I put a kinetic and thermic rig in and then add a trimark pump to give me a bit more buffer.

This looks more like I've read to expect a PvP fit ship to look like. I'm almost maxed out on powergrid and I am not cap stable. What about the rest of the stats? First off I notice I've lost about 1000 EHP and 70 DPS. Not a great start. I have gone up about 10% in my resists though which should help with the armour rep but I have no idea how to judge the effectiveness of this.

To my unskilled eyes I get the general impression my shield fit is the better of the pair, but how does this compare with what I found on FHC? The first thing I noticed from the two fits on FHC is they are both shield fit, which is what I figured was best. The second thing I notice is I totally forgot that Damage Control modules exist. While tempted to go back and rework the above fits to include a DCII I decided to go through with this little experiment.

I noticed that both FHC fits have about 25% more EFT than I do, but almost all of that is from the forgotten DCII so I don't feel too bad. Other than that, my resists are better, my DPS is better, but I'm going a hell of a lot slower and my falloff is shorter. This probably is a major oversight on my part as I need to be up close and personal for such short range guns. I suspect if I took my fit out to battle I'd never get a change to actually hit anything. Going back to my original fit, I swap a Gyrostab for a DCII and swap the web for a MWD. As a result of fitting the MWD I also have to go down a size in missile launchers.

After these changes I find myself with an extra 1800 EHP compared with the FHC fit with almost 40 more DPS. I go a little slower but still pushing 2000 m/s which isn't too shabby. I have no idea how this would do in a fight though.

This has been an interesting little experiment but I'm not sure I could spend a vast amount of my time EFT warrioring. Does anyone care to comment on my though process throughout this? I realise my mistake in missing out the DCII was pretty silly and one I know I shouldn't have made. Getting speed to fight at my range is probably an experience thing and one that will only be rectified by flying in fights. So I guess that's what I'll just have to do.

Should I fly this on the 15th?

BB 37: EVE is full of Idiots

Blog Banter 37 reads:

"EVE Online sits on the frontier of social gaming, providing an entertainment environment like no other. The vibrant society of interacting and conflicting communities, both within the EVE client and without, is the driving force behind EVE's success. However, the anonymity of internet culture combined with a competitive gaming environment encourages in-game behaviour to spread beyond the confines of the sandbox. Where is the line?"

The internet is full of idiots who are all wrong. EVE is a game played on the internet and, therefore, everyone who plays EVE is an idiot who is wrong. What the hell am I talking about? I'm talking about differences in opinion and how everyone is wrong to at least one other person. If everyone in the world agreed with each other we would be in a pretty dull place, particularly when talking about politics (hmm, if we all agreed would be need politicians? Maybe there is an upside, but I digress).

In 'Real Life' we are subject to social checks and balances which do not exist on the internet or in EVE. This means where we would simply nod and smile in a face to face discussion or maybe have a polite debate, on the internet there is a tendency to call each other a whole range of insults invariable leading to 'Nazi' and some then start to threaten others with violence.

In EVE it is widely recognised that the game spreads beyond the restrictive confines of the client itself. There are blogs and forums to read; a whole host of Twitter users to chat with; I can also chat with many members of my alliance in Jabber or TeamSpeak. Generally speaking, I do try and maintain a semblance of a boundary in my life with EVE. That boundary means I and only me should be the instigator of any interaction with EVE and EVE shouldn't be able to intrude on my life unbidden. Sure there are a (vanishingly) small number of people who know my email address but they also know that is for urgent things only and generally not for idle EVE stuff. EVE has a mail client and that is where I expect EVE mail to be. If someone starts to pollute my inbox with EVE stuff I don't want to see then I am perfectly happy to tell them to stop and I expect them to honour that request.

Now, if I upset an idiot in New Eden they are perfectly within their rights to bombard me with EVEmails and convos threatening the safety of my character in-game. Maybe some smack sent to my character's Twitter account will follow talking about in-game punishment coming my way. Comments on this blog may be starting to push that boundry a bit but are possibly still okay as long as it refers to in-game actions. I would hope to not upset someone to that level but, as I imply at the top, to some other people I am also an idiot. In the end I can always choose to block them from contacting me or stop logging in to that character. If the idiot works out who all my characters are I can always roll new ones. And if it all becomes too much then I can stop playing EVE.

What I do consider unacceptable is if I upset someone in game and I start receiving any communication threatening my personal safety, especially in a way that indicated they knew details of how to actually reach my physically. I would also consider any intrusion into my personal email as over the line (sending to it or breaking into it). Should servers I run come under attack just because I run them then that is unacceptable as would be any communication with my facebook account or personal twitter account. Basically, any part of my life I do not expect EVE to feature.

There are grey areas of course. Is it acceptable for one powerbloc to ddos another's TeamSpeak server during a war? Personally, I would say no. That is an illegal activity taking place in the Real World where a different set of laws apply. As a direct result of that activity, some real person is really getting hurt be it with downed servers or bandwidth charges or simply have an account somewhere suspended.

Sadly there is a minority of people who think it is acceptable to ddos servers, threaten  personal safety, hound people by any and all known contact methods. These people are truly scum and are probably sub-minimum intelligence to play our glorious game. These people should be removed from (life?) the game and CCP can and does make this possible. The important thing is for idiots such as ourselves to realise the vast majority of idiotic things other idiots say or threaten to do has no basis in reality and should rarely be taken at face value.

So there is a line, and that line is already defined by the letter and spirit of the laws we embrace in the countries we live in.

Watch the Space

Last weekend I had Alliance Tournament X streaming on my PC. The battles are quite convenient little chunks of time lasting no more than ten minutes. This meant I could take care of non-EVE stuff while diverting my attention every now and again to the raging battles on my screen. However, I'm not going to write about those fights as I am far from qualified to do so.

What did catch my attention was the intermission feed, live from space in a couple of locations around New Eden. I caught feeds from the popular market hubs of Jita 4-4 and Amarr 8 (Oris). Both of these feeds filled up rapidly with pilots showing off their blingiest ships or giving us laser shows and exploding ships. In a genius move by CCP they then set up a feed from the Osoggur gate in Amamake. What better way to create some good viewing than setting up a focus point in lowsec. Everyone wants their five minutes of fame and I'm sure the resident pirates gave them that and more. I certainly saw a few ships go pop.

As far as I know, this 'feature' provided during the intermissions was inspired by the actions taken by a player during the recent 'Burn Jita' campaign. During that event someone had a pilot undocked and was broadcasting the expected carnage live from the Jita 4-4 undock. Unfortunately most of the action occurred at the gates of the system, but the idea was there. And what a good idea I think it was and is.

So, what do I think CCP should be doing with this? Well the answer is pretty obvious. For some time people have been complaining about not being able to see the outside of a station when they are docked up. People also complain about 'station games' where people undock to take a look outside and then redock as soon as their session timer allow it. Add to that the complaints about there being nothing of any value on the Captains Quarters TV screen and you get a perfect recipe for success: Showing the outside of stations from the inside.

Now, with us EVE players being the devious people we are, the first challenge will be handling the inevitable parking of ships in front of the camera to obscure the view. The obvious way to handle this would be to reposition the camera to another location with a nice smooth fade effect, like a director switching camera angles at a concert. In fact, a cycling of the camera view every few minutes or so would possibly be a good idea anyway to generally make it harder to block the view even temporarily. I would suggest these positions be decided at random rather than set a finite number of positions, to further increase the difficulty of screwing with the system. I wouldn't want to make things too easy on people watching this for a safe undock. There would be no desire to display information such as standings or pilot names, etc. This really should be a single feed provided to everyone who wants to engage Captains Quarters and simply peer outside.

Setting this up on all stations in EVE is probably a real stretch from a technical point of view. A limited roll out to the most popular stations would be sufficient to prove the idea works. Following on from that CCP could roll out to at least one station per solar system, maybe even charging higher taxes for the services on these 'safer' stations.

However this is handled it would be really cool to have the Captains Quarters TV actually do something useful and may even prompt me to switch to CQ from time to time (on the odd occasion I'm actually in known space). What do you think?

Thukk You, Frill Me! July 15th Protest March

As highlighted by Rixx Javix over at Evoganda, there has been an unfortunate fate visited on the Vagabond. The terrible fate in this case is the loss of its distinguishing neck frill. The net result of losing the frill for this ship is to take something special away from its Minmatar identity. What is a Minmatar ship without some form of paper-thin wingy bits? Sure, rust is essential but wingy bits are almost as important.

More concerning is the apparent disregard for personal ownership and privacy by the ship's manufacturer, Thukker Mix. Not satisfied with simply redesigning new Vagabonds, Thukker Mix actively infiltrated numerous hangers around New Eden and retrospectively applied these unwanted changes to privately owned and beloved capsuleer Vagabonds.

Now to be honest I can't remember ever actually seeing a Vagabond in space. I'm sure I must have but I'm not the most observant pilot. However, should a Vagabond be bearing down on me in space it would be much more terrifying with its cobra-like appearance. I would try to flee from it, screaming in fear, rather than spending a few moments trying to work out whether or not I'm being engaged by a battle Iteron.

To fix this injustice, Seismic Stan over at Freebooted has organised a protest march for Sunday, July 15th. The intention is to meet up in the, becoming traditional, location of the Jita memorial before heading in the general direction of the Thukker Mix HQ of M-MD3B. Additionally, Khalia at My Loot, Your Tears is organsing a suicide-gank raffle in nearby Jatate prior to the main event. This means you'll need at least two Stabber or Vagabonds to fully enjoy the day.

Protest Itinerary - Sunday, July 15th 2012

18:00 - Jatate - Suicide Raffle
19:00 - Jita Memorial - Meet up and general comedy
19:29 - Jita Memorial - Outlaw fly-by.
19:30 - Jita Memorial - Departure
20:00 - Rendez-vous with remaining outlaws in low-sec
21:00 - M-MD3B - Protest arrives at Thukker Mix Head Office (hopefully)
21:30 - Surviving Protesters will head to Delve via Curse and Catch.

After some modification to his skillqueue, Geo will be there in a reasonably fit Stabber, will you?

Lost In Hisec

In partnership with one of the other wormhole corps in my alliance we have something of a wormhole academy on the go. As part of the fun of this academy we are organising regular trips from their C2 wormhole system to our C4 wormhole system.

The first such trip was not so successful as we didn't achieve a critical mass of people. The plan had been for a minimum of five people to come from the C2 so they could function as a coherent unit. Unfortunately, as is often the case in W-space, the route in wasn't as fortuitous as it could have been. Actually, there was no route in for the duration of the time frame people were online to enter. Of course, wormholes being a cruel mistress, the moment everyone coming to visit gave up and went home we acquired a route. Two people came.

During their stay those two guys had a blast. Made lots of ISK shooting sleepers and one of them has even applied to move up from the academy corp to my corp. This pretty much was the point of the operation so it could be deemed a success. An important lesson learned was POS mechanics suck for entertaining alliance guests. More about that some other time.

So having learned various lessons from last time, the new away trip for the C2 guys was much more thoroughly planned. Primarily, an Orca has been assigned to serve as a mobile CHA/SMA for our alliance buddies. So last night was time to escort them in.

The route was less than ideal with four wormholes to jump through, three of which were end of life. Intel indicated we should have about two hours remaining on the shortest wormhole so we decided to take a calculated risk. Running the most secure operation we've ever done we had eyes on both sides of every wormhole. There was no chance anyone would get the drop on us, and if they did we all would drop on their head and have a good fight.

Slow Orca was slow and seemed it would never ever get to our entry system. In the meantime we were keeping good eyes watching all the wormholes. Intel was so good that there was almost no delay between the static wormhole from our home system collapsing and it being announced on comms. Blast! Either that was an hour early or someone didn't keep good notes. C'est la vie.

Thus the away mission for the C2 guys came to an abrupt halt. About six of our guys, including me, had no way home. There was only one thing to do - we all headed to our office station and partied the night away.

EVE's Timezone

I would love to think writing this post would settle the confusion once and for all, but I'm sure it won't.

The timezone used inside EVE is the same timezone as used by Iceland itself. That timezone is 'Greenwich Mean Time' (GMT). Unlike many countries around the world, Iceland itself does not have a timezone change in summer. This means that for five month of the year Iceland, the UK and EVE are on the same time and for seven months through summer the UK is an hour ahead. During those seven months Iceland and EVE still run on GMT and the UK is on British Summer Time (BST).

Throughout my entire time playing EVE I am regularly stunned at how the above information is completely misunderstood by people who should know better. Usually it is on the forums during a period of extended maintenance. CCP will often have a message saying the servers will be back at 15:00 GMT and almost like clockwork someone will post at 15:00 BST (14:00 GMT) asking where the servers are.

It is usually at that point someone starts an argument about EVE running on Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and how during the summer GMT moves forward an hour. The confusion here stems from the incorrect belief that a given timezone can have its time adjusted by an hour. This misconception is caused by people physically having to change the time on their clocks and watches twice per year. What is happening here is not the time in GMT being moved forwards or backwards an hour; what is happening is the country they live in has switched its timezone. In the UK we move from GMT to BST and back. In east coast USA they move from EST (GMT-5) to EDT (GMT-4) and back.

The only difference between UTC and GMT is that UTC has a very strict scientific definition which covers leap-seconds. This means that it is possible for UTC and GMT to differ, but this difference is measured in fractions of a second, not an hour.

So, I hope this clears up and confusion although I'm sure it won't.