Enjoy.
Told you it was good.
26 March 2013
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.
Enjoy.
Told you it was good.
17 March 2013
Death Race
I actually managed to take part in Rixx Javix and The Tuskers' Death Race today. I wasn't 100% certain I was going to be able to, but thanks to a forgiving wife I managed to make it happen. I even managed to record my whole event.
Over the last few days I set up a ship based on a Stabber hull I had lying around. I fitted an 100MN Afterburner expecting to have to burn out of bubbles in nullsec mid-race. I also fitted a large Ancillary Shield Booster expecting to take some damage en route. Sadly, neither of these fittings were particularly useful. To them I added a trio of Warp Core stabs, some shield resists and buffer and some pretty pointless guns. Yesterday I spent some time pouring over a map working out that the first ten systems were covered by only one route through lowsec. The only thing to do was to make tactical bookmarks on each gate so I could approach the inevitable smartbomb gate camps from an unexpected angle. This turned out to be a superfluous activity.
Come race day I was all set up in system. People were x-ing up in local from at least 15:00 even though the rules clearly stated 16:00 was the earliest time to join a race fleet. I hung around for a while and joined fleet around 16:30 - didn't want to be too early nor too late to this party. Thirty minutes later, and with my wife delivering food to my pod, I was ready to race.
I suffered a little confusion to begin with when the first destination was announced. EVE being EVE meant people were announcing in fleet that the notified destination wasn't real and that the fleet we were in was fake. I had planned on giving people a minute or so head start to avoid the initial gate camps somewhat so I used this time to figure out if my fleet was genuine. A Tusker was the Fleet Commander and was the one announcing the destination so I took it as read that this was genuine and set off. This led to another point of confusion. My autopilot showed a route via hisec. We were told the route would be through lowsec. Would taking the hisec route be cheating? I decided not to find out, adjusted the AP to stick to lowsec and headed off.
It turned out my first ten systems were spot on and I safely traversed them using the tactical bookmarks set up the night before. In retrospect this was probably not required as most of the gates were empty. I quickly fell behind. Being behind became a theme of the evening. When I was many jumps from each waypoint the interim games would be announced to allow stragglers to catch up. As I approached each waypoint the next destination was announced. This was my third point of confusion - should I continue to the current waypoint or switch routes to the new one? From what I read from Rixx there were going to be people taking screenshots to ensure everyone fully completed the course. To me this meant I should continue to the checkpoint before resetting my autopilot. I'm fairly sure this was not sensible as I continued to drop behind during the next two checkpoints. Sometimes I would have TiDi chasing me, sometimes there would even be ships on grid with me. In general I pretty much felt like I was roaming lowsec alone. Not really the Death Race I expected. A bit boring really.
The final system, Y9G-KS, was announced as being a paltry single jump into nullsec. I had expected a passage of nullsec somewhere in the middle, hence my AB fit, so this was a little disappointing. Nevermind, I was sort of having fun taking part in the community event, even if it wasn't that exciting. Laying in my course I found there were over 20 jumps between me and the goal... and I still had to visit P1@0 in New Eden. *sigh*
Again I subjected myself to a boring set of jumps which can be abbreviated as... suddenly I arrived in Y9G-KS. Oh look, bubbles on the gate. Almost like someone was expecting us or I'm crazily late to the party. I suspect the latter. I decided to burn directly upwards before heading away from the gate to get my bearings. Sadly, just as I get to the edge of the bubble Rote Kappele decided my Stabber had lived too long and made it die. Oh well, I'm in a pod and have had time to reconfigure my overview to show the finish line - a GSC. Not expecting a hope in hell of slowboating over to the finish line I started. On comms with some corpmates I counted down... 30... 25... 20... 10... 5... I'm here. Holy shit, I finished the course. To be honest that was more unexpected than making it through the first system.
Kudos to The Tuskers for running the event. I would have liked it to be more eventful but my opinion is from only one single point of view. Whether this race was a success will require many others to put their views across. Regardless, I think this was great and maybe one day my alliance can assist The Tuskers in running a future death race.
Over the last few days I set up a ship based on a Stabber hull I had lying around. I fitted an 100MN Afterburner expecting to have to burn out of bubbles in nullsec mid-race. I also fitted a large Ancillary Shield Booster expecting to take some damage en route. Sadly, neither of these fittings were particularly useful. To them I added a trio of Warp Core stabs, some shield resists and buffer and some pretty pointless guns. Yesterday I spent some time pouring over a map working out that the first ten systems were covered by only one route through lowsec. The only thing to do was to make tactical bookmarks on each gate so I could approach the inevitable smartbomb gate camps from an unexpected angle. This turned out to be a superfluous activity.
Come race day I was all set up in system. People were x-ing up in local from at least 15:00 even though the rules clearly stated 16:00 was the earliest time to join a race fleet. I hung around for a while and joined fleet around 16:30 - didn't want to be too early nor too late to this party. Thirty minutes later, and with my wife delivering food to my pod, I was ready to race.
I suffered a little confusion to begin with when the first destination was announced. EVE being EVE meant people were announcing in fleet that the notified destination wasn't real and that the fleet we were in was fake. I had planned on giving people a minute or so head start to avoid the initial gate camps somewhat so I used this time to figure out if my fleet was genuine. A Tusker was the Fleet Commander and was the one announcing the destination so I took it as read that this was genuine and set off. This led to another point of confusion. My autopilot showed a route via hisec. We were told the route would be through lowsec. Would taking the hisec route be cheating? I decided not to find out, adjusted the AP to stick to lowsec and headed off.
It turned out my first ten systems were spot on and I safely traversed them using the tactical bookmarks set up the night before. In retrospect this was probably not required as most of the gates were empty. I quickly fell behind. Being behind became a theme of the evening. When I was many jumps from each waypoint the interim games would be announced to allow stragglers to catch up. As I approached each waypoint the next destination was announced. This was my third point of confusion - should I continue to the current waypoint or switch routes to the new one? From what I read from Rixx there were going to be people taking screenshots to ensure everyone fully completed the course. To me this meant I should continue to the checkpoint before resetting my autopilot. I'm fairly sure this was not sensible as I continued to drop behind during the next two checkpoints. Sometimes I would have TiDi chasing me, sometimes there would even be ships on grid with me. In general I pretty much felt like I was roaming lowsec alone. Not really the Death Race I expected. A bit boring really.
The final system, Y9G-KS, was announced as being a paltry single jump into nullsec. I had expected a passage of nullsec somewhere in the middle, hence my AB fit, so this was a little disappointing. Nevermind, I was sort of having fun taking part in the community event, even if it wasn't that exciting. Laying in my course I found there were over 20 jumps between me and the goal... and I still had to visit P1@0 in New Eden. *sigh*
Again I subjected myself to a boring set of jumps which can be abbreviated as... suddenly I arrived in Y9G-KS. Oh look, bubbles on the gate. Almost like someone was expecting us or I'm crazily late to the party. I suspect the latter. I decided to burn directly upwards before heading away from the gate to get my bearings. Sadly, just as I get to the edge of the bubble Rote Kappele decided my Stabber had lived too long and made it die. Oh well, I'm in a pod and have had time to reconfigure my overview to show the finish line - a GSC. Not expecting a hope in hell of slowboating over to the finish line I started. On comms with some corpmates I counted down... 30... 25... 20... 10... 5... I'm here. Holy shit, I finished the course. To be honest that was more unexpected than making it through the first system.
Kudos to The Tuskers for running the event. I would have liked it to be more eventful but my opinion is from only one single point of view. Whether this race was a success will require many others to put their views across. Regardless, I think this was great and maybe one day my alliance can assist The Tuskers in running a future death race.
13 March 2013
Death Race: YC115
I'm sure you don't need me to tell you about it, but just in case you've somehow missed the news here is something you should take part in. The Tuskers are hosting a Death Race this weekend. The basic premise is simple: pilots get in ships; pilots race from point a to point b to point c; first pilot there wins. With a death race there is of course a twist. This being EVE there will be people trying to kill the participants. This being EVE there will be participants trying to kill the participants. All in all it should be a whole barrel of fun.
The prize list currently looks like:
1st Place - 600m ISK, a Machariel and a 50 day TimeCard
2nd Place - 400m ISK and a 50 day TC
3rd Place - 300m ISK and a 50 day TC
4th Place - 100m ISK
5th Place - 75m ISK
In addition there are more prizes for 'interesting' methods of crossing the route. The full prize list can be seen on Rixx Javix's blog.
I have no idea if I will actually be able to take part but I'm going to be fitting a ship up for Geo to fly. Come 17:00 on Saturday if I can swing an hour of EVE time I'll be there. Where will you be?
The prize list currently looks like:
1st Place - 600m ISK, a Machariel and a 50 day TimeCard
2nd Place - 400m ISK and a 50 day TC
3rd Place - 300m ISK and a 50 day TC
4th Place - 100m ISK
5th Place - 75m ISK
In addition there are more prizes for 'interesting' methods of crossing the route. The full prize list can be seen on Rixx Javix's blog.
I have no idea if I will actually be able to take part but I'm going to be fitting a ship up for Geo to fly. Come 17:00 on Saturday if I can swing an hour of EVE time I'll be there. Where will you be?
7 March 2013
Nothing to see here
I've been missing for a couple of weeks. I've not had anything exciting to write about. Sad really. I had a week away in the USA to give a best man speech at my friends wedding. It's surprising how tired I felt for a week coming back partly due to the five hour time difference. So tired that I actually stayed up to run the eleven accrued anomalies in my home wormhole. Fast forward several hours and several beers and I was rather drunk and babbling nonsense but we had eleven less anoms and up many hundreds of millions of ISK.
Other than that I've been fully in market mode. We had hoarded rather a lot of PI in our wormhole and a fortuitous connection to another wormhole in the alliance gave me the opportunity to move a few hundred million cubic metres of stuff to our alliance mate's C3. The plan was for me to use my alt who lives with them to move it out their semi-frequent hisec connections. Thankfully the CEO of that corp moved it all out while I was giving my bad speech leaving me the simple task of hauling it all to Jita and selling it.
What a lot of junk we had and now it's almost all sold. I never want to update a sell order again. I honestly don't know how people can be pure marketeers. I'm just not cut out for that. CCP should maybe think about forgetting about ISK fractions below 1000 ISK. Bloody 0.01 ISKers.
I've also had to catch up on my T2 BPC invention. One thing I'd love to know is why CCP insist on showing menu options that don't apply. Examples would be research options on BPCs or Invention on T2 BPCs. Given the client must know these are BPCs given it shows a different icon to BPOs or T1 BPCs why can't it also show a smaller menu. I know the UI is dated and slowly catching up, but those options should never have been displayed from day one.
This has been a bit of a stream of conciousness to prove I am still alive and I am still playing EVE. I'll leave you with a nice panoramic screenshot to enjoy. Hopefully I'll return next time with a more contiguous story to tell.
Other than that I've been fully in market mode. We had hoarded rather a lot of PI in our wormhole and a fortuitous connection to another wormhole in the alliance gave me the opportunity to move a few hundred million cubic metres of stuff to our alliance mate's C3. The plan was for me to use my alt who lives with them to move it out their semi-frequent hisec connections. Thankfully the CEO of that corp moved it all out while I was giving my bad speech leaving me the simple task of hauling it all to Jita and selling it.
What a lot of junk we had and now it's almost all sold. I never want to update a sell order again. I honestly don't know how people can be pure marketeers. I'm just not cut out for that. CCP should maybe think about forgetting about ISK fractions below 1000 ISK. Bloody 0.01 ISKers.
I've also had to catch up on my T2 BPC invention. One thing I'd love to know is why CCP insist on showing menu options that don't apply. Examples would be research options on BPCs or Invention on T2 BPCs. Given the client must know these are BPCs given it shows a different icon to BPOs or T1 BPCs why can't it also show a smaller menu. I know the UI is dated and slowly catching up, but those options should never have been displayed from day one.
This has been a bit of a stream of conciousness to prove I am still alive and I am still playing EVE. I'll leave you with a nice panoramic screenshot to enjoy. Hopefully I'll return next time with a more contiguous story to tell.
16 February 2013
Neglect and Dying
I've been neglecting my blog for the last two weeks. The odd thing is I've had things to write about but I've not had the time to do the writing. By way of apology here's the conclusion on Geo's circuitous nullsec journey.
To quickly recap, I had noticed from my visited systems map that not one of my toons had been to the east side of New Eden and this needed rectified. In my last post about this I had gone about a seventh of the way around the map. It is from there I resume the tale.
Continuing south with Geo I encountered very little activity in any of the edge systems. Solar Fleet owned a large chunk of the next section of space I went through and other than the occasional comment about me in 'local' I saw nobody, not even any fleets passing through. There are some rather big jumps as you head south so it felt like real progress was being made. I was still making a tactical gate bookmark and safe spot for every system so this meant progress was slow. Generally I would only do five or so jumps at a time before doing something different. I continued down through Insmother before arriving victorious in FMH-OV in Detorid.
That was it. I was about a third of the way around the map and I had cleared Solar Fleet's space. Now it was time to head, um, further around?! I had made it this far and found the edge of New Eden largely empty. How hard could it be? The new plan looked like this:
The route shown above is 181 jumps. I was only 47 jumps around so if I wanted to finish in a timely manner I would need to speed up. This meant no longer making tacticals at every gate unless I actually needed one. The next few systems flew by under this new process. I should have been doing that from the start but lack of nullsec experience seemed to have made me over cautious. Things were going great until I encountered something hitherto unseen on my journey, people actually living in the systems they held sovereignty over.
I had been making good use of the 'pilots in space' map statistic during my travels. Rarely did I see even one pilot in space. Down in Feythabolis the alliance Unclaimed. seemed to have at least 6 pilots in space in all the border systems they owned. This held up no matter what time I checked. What's more they seemed to be actively hunting me whenever I logged in. Once again my progress crawled to a halt. I sat watching each out gate for some time observing all the comings and goings which prevented my progress. I was around this time I decided to pare back my cyclic ambition. Going half circle now would be sufficient and I would resume the other half at a later date. The new destination was C-PEWN which looked like the exact opposite system from where I started in OE-4HB.
Back in overly-cautious mode it took me a few days to get the last few jumps towards my new destination. It was already thinking about scanning myself a nice wormhole to hisec and going on a Bombers Bar roam. Finally I was one jump away. As usual for Unclaimed.'s space the next system showed six pilots in space. It was my last jump so I went for it. Loading grid on the other side showed a lone Sabre. Oh crap, bubbles. It was down to me escaping the bubble under the cover of cloak. I held the session cloak as long as I dared then made a break for it. Heading directly away from the Sabre I gained covops cloak then switched direction. Holy hell can that Sabre move! He decloaked me with ease and the result was inevitable. A pod express trip to hisec was requested and granted. Well at least I wouldn't have to scan my way home.
On the plus side, I completed the revised 50% circuit of New Eden. This was way more than originally intended so I'm happy. Now for something new to do.
To quickly recap, I had noticed from my visited systems map that not one of my toons had been to the east side of New Eden and this needed rectified. In my last post about this I had gone about a seventh of the way around the map. It is from there I resume the tale.
Continuing south with Geo I encountered very little activity in any of the edge systems. Solar Fleet owned a large chunk of the next section of space I went through and other than the occasional comment about me in 'local' I saw nobody, not even any fleets passing through. There are some rather big jumps as you head south so it felt like real progress was being made. I was still making a tactical gate bookmark and safe spot for every system so this meant progress was slow. Generally I would only do five or so jumps at a time before doing something different. I continued down through Insmother before arriving victorious in FMH-OV in Detorid.
 |
| Courtesy of evemaps.dotlan.net |
That was it. I was about a third of the way around the map and I had cleared Solar Fleet's space. Now it was time to head, um, further around?! I had made it this far and found the edge of New Eden largely empty. How hard could it be? The new plan looked like this:
 |
| Courtesy of evemaps.dotlan.net |
I had been making good use of the 'pilots in space' map statistic during my travels. Rarely did I see even one pilot in space. Down in Feythabolis the alliance Unclaimed. seemed to have at least 6 pilots in space in all the border systems they owned. This held up no matter what time I checked. What's more they seemed to be actively hunting me whenever I logged in. Once again my progress crawled to a halt. I sat watching each out gate for some time observing all the comings and goings which prevented my progress. I was around this time I decided to pare back my cyclic ambition. Going half circle now would be sufficient and I would resume the other half at a later date. The new destination was C-PEWN which looked like the exact opposite system from where I started in OE-4HB.
Back in overly-cautious mode it took me a few days to get the last few jumps towards my new destination. It was already thinking about scanning myself a nice wormhole to hisec and going on a Bombers Bar roam. Finally I was one jump away. As usual for Unclaimed.'s space the next system showed six pilots in space. It was my last jump so I went for it. Loading grid on the other side showed a lone Sabre. Oh crap, bubbles. It was down to me escaping the bubble under the cover of cloak. I held the session cloak as long as I dared then made a break for it. Heading directly away from the Sabre I gained covops cloak then switched direction. Holy hell can that Sabre move! He decloaked me with ease and the result was inevitable. A pod express trip to hisec was requested and granted. Well at least I wouldn't have to scan my way home.
On the plus side, I completed the revised 50% circuit of New Eden. This was way more than originally intended so I'm happy. Now for something new to do.
5 February 2013
Alliance Logo Competition
 |
| Default Alliance Logo |
I would like to open up a competition for people to design a logo for my alliance. The competition is open to anyone inside or outside of my alliance. The prizes are:
- One (1) PLEX provided by Z3R0 Return Mining.
- One (1) T3 cruiser and set of subsystems for that cruiser provided by Broken Wheel Mercantile and Trading.
If more than one person worked on the logo it is up to the submitter to handle divvying up the prize. The important instructions from CCP on how the logo should be submitted can be found here. I will do my best to make sure any submissions pass the basic requirements or let the submitter know so they can rectify the problem.
Guidance on how the logo should look
I am not a fan of logos where letters or words are the main or sole feature. I also don't like logos which are square for no reason other than that is the defined shape of the canvas. That's not to say you shouldn't submit logos like that at all. Just be aware that I may need convincing.
Examples I like:
Examples I don't like:
For inspiration, Poetic Stanziel made a page of alliance logos you can browse.
Submission Process
The competition will run until the 28th of February 2013 and I will try and announce the winner as soon as possible after that. Final decision on the winning logo is solely mine although it is both possible and likely that I will look to others in my alliance to get their opinions. In the event of no logo being submitted to CCP there will be no winner. Submissions must be made by email to orea@dagoaty.net with the subject of "Alliance Logo". Make sure to include your in-game character name (otherwise someone else will get your PLEX should you win). By submitting the logo to me you are granting me all required rights for subsequent submission to CCP.
Good Luck.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)