Here Riggy Riggy...

No doubt everyones been up to date with the buzz from the recent Dev Blog on prospective changes for Apocrypha 1.5, specifically of which, the new plans for multi-sized rigs (which by the way, seems to have been in discussion for months, since it seemed to go very quiet after it was planned for when Quantum Rise hit and it wasn't included then)

If you havent seen the info, feel free to point your noses at the Dev Blog in question.

Now the one thing that springs to mind for me is trying to figure out which rigs will become useless in the future. I mean take gravity capacitor rigs for instance. They're fit to a whole lot of covops and recon ships to assist with probing, but as the current ones would class as the 'large' version, and theres no battleship sized scanner craft, that basically makes every gravity capacitor blueprint out there all but obsolete, as the large sized rig wont have any sales (at least unless theres something I've missed)

Now as well as that, I'm needing to find out for certain if the rigs can be refined/reprocessed back to salvage... its something that I've never tried. If they can, it shouldnt be a problem, but if they can't, expect the current gravity capacitor rigs to freefall in price close to patch day.

On top of that, the dev blog goes into thing such as looking at the downsides to rigs, and possibly putting negatives to some rigs (im presuming capacitor based ones here) or revaluating the current downsides to see if they're fair and balanced. Heres hoping that there may also be a bit of a revamp of the bonuses that some rigs give, as in some cases, the tech 2 rigs are worse than the tech 1 versions due to the calibration costs that apply to them.

Still, plenty to think about and plan... and hopefully we should have apocrypha 1.5 before the end of August (heres to keeping my fingers crossed)

Anticipation is the killer

Maybe this post is going to be some psychoanalysts dream, but is there anyone else out there who finds that once a goal is achieved in a game such as an MMO for instance, then that game loses a lot of its thrill ?

A good example is hitting the 8.0 standings to use jump clones with a corp - you spend weeks and weeks with a goal, focused on getting it, and once you do finally reach it, you get this gigantic anticlimactic 'meh' feeling as if theres nothing decent to do with your time now, and struggle to adjust to the 'nothing new to do' mentality.

I find it happens a lot with single player games, you go through to get the best gun, or whatever, and then all enthusiasm for a game drops off the map for me... I've got dozens of games out there that I just stopped playing, in fact I've only actually successfully completed about 5-10 games in my entire life from a catalogue of hundreds.

I know this sounds a bit strange with the whole 'goal related achievements mentality' thing but I usually find that theres something new came along that I want to try after I hit the 'wall' in one game and monotony has set in, so I very rarely see the end of it.

I suppose thats why I quite like MMOs too - theres no real goal to it other than constant improvement, so even if I do get a short term feeling of depression that I've achieved a goal, theres always other players/friends to spur me on and give me other suggestions for things to turn my hand to. In conjunction to there being no real 'end' of the game until the servers are switched off, its a good excuse to pop in and out as the interest waxes and wanes.

Blog Banter 9: What could you do without ?

Its blog banter time again, and following on from last months 'what would you like to add to Eve' this month we have:

"Last month Ga'len asked us which game mechanic we would most like to see added to EVE. This month Keith "WebMandrill" Nielson proposes to reverse the question and ask what may be a controversial question: Which game mechanic would you most like to see removed completelyfrom EVE and why? I can see this getting quite heated so lets keep it civil eh?"

This one's always going to have lots of controversy associated with it - some people may really like one mechanic, whilst other people despise it and think its the worst thing ever... suppose it should raise a few discussion points at the very least.

Getting down to business though, the subject I want to discuss is one that has been said many a time before (yeah, sorry, I've wimped out of the real controversial subjects), and thats one about suicide ganking in High Sec space.

I can almost see the entire pirate population of Eve collectively screaming 'go back to Jita ya carebear' but still... hear me out.

Firstly, theres nothing wrong with highsec ganking, as long as theres some downside for the ganker - the person getting ganked loses everything, and the ganker, with enough insurance, doesnt lose anything other than sec status, which in many cases, they arent bothered about losing anyway.

Lets look at 2 particular cases, both of which are high profie. The first is highsec ganking of mining vessels (Hulks/Mackinaws in particular) and secondly with the ganking of traders travelling in High security space.

Hulk ganking is becoming big news, as it seems that everyone and their granny wants a high sec Hulk killmail these days (at least if the vocal mob on the forums are to be believed) and to be honest, I can see the reason why - theres no real loss for the ganker.

With 1 gank fit battleship, or 3 cruisers, you can have a guaranteed Hulk kill (unless said ganker is completely inept) as the simple fact is that the Hulks are not able to withstand any sort of level of concentrated fire. If you get decent luck with loot/modules you can pull a few million from the Hulk, and admittedly (though its their own fault) a fair few Hulk pilots still go all out for massive faction type boosters as thats whats reccomended in Halada's guide, even though they are nowhere near needed in highsec mining, and one of those can pay for dozens of future kills.

Add in the cost of insurance (and an accomplice to grab whatever modules survive the death of the ganker ship), and the ganker runs off with little to no loss, or perhaps even a fairly sizeable gain depending on what the Hulks had fitted, and the Hulk pilot is left massively out of pocket due to the fact that insurance wont cover the cost of their ship.

Ultimately, there needs to be something changed for this, the common argument is that there should be no insurance for criminal activities, which I wholeheartedly agree with - although of course, the cost is somewhat negligable even if the insurance payout was removed - instead there must be a way to make the hulks survivable enough to protect them long enough to survive a single ship/small group of smaller ships until Concord intervenes, but as a downside it should offer considerable reduction to mining output - then you can decide if you want survivable, or maximum output.

The obvious answer is a module which reduces the mining yeild by a certain percentage, but increases CPU and powergrid output large enough to fit a decent sized tank on the ship so it can survive for more than 2-3 salvoes that it takes Concord to respond even in 0.5 systems.

Coupling that with a reduced (or even completely negated) insurance payout would bring a lot more tactics into play from the ganker contingent, rather than being completely guaranteed an almost zero risk kill they would have to scan out the ship, see if its worth targetting, then bring out the big guns. There are ways and means to do this without making it blatantly obvious what you intend to do (passive targeters come to mind) or more obvious ways such as looking for a reduced number of lasers that fire from the ship which obviously should have 3 firing at once.

The second viewpoint is one of highsec ganking on haulers. I'm going to play Devils Advocate here and say that theres nothing really worth worrying about here. Theres the obvious issue with smartbombing battleships going to pop a shuttle fairly quickly if you're trying to move large value low size items, but thats a risk that can easily be negated by using a larger transport if youre worried. The same goes for haulers - if youre autopiloting without manually warping to 0 on each gate (theres one that im expecting a lot of the pirates to ask to be removed, since a lot of them lament the day warp to 15 was removed) you almost deserve to die if youre carrying an expensive cargo in a paper-thin hull.

If insurance was reduced/negated for this class of gankers, I cant see it being a major issue, as this type of activity is done in order to try and get a big payout from the cargo that is carried rather than to try and senselessly destroy the target (of course, some people may well also kill them just to cause them not to get the cargo they are carrying too, and not worry if its destroyed or not in the process)

So there we go... in summary, I would want the removal of insurance payout for ganking 'helpless' targets in highsec. Not necessarily because I see it as an unfair tactic, but simply because theres no way to prevent it (in the line of hulk ganking at least.) As well as that however, there needs to be something that the Hulk pilot can do to allow for ways to protect themselves, with obvious downsides that they shouldnt be 'survivable and able to munch through asteroids at the rate of space locusts.'


On to the other participants:

1. Diary of a Space Jockey, Blog Banter: BE GONE!
2. EVE Newb, (EVE) Remove You
3. Miner With Fangs, Blog Banter - It's the Scotch
4. The Eden Explorer, Blog Banter: The Map! The Map!
5. The Wandering Druid of Tranquility, "Beacons, beacons, beacons, beacons, beacons, mushroom, MUSHROOM!!!"
6. Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah, Kill the Rats
7. Mercspector @ EVE, Scotty
8. EVE's Weekend Warrior, EVE Blog Banter #9
9. Miner with Fangs, Blog Banter - It's the Scotch
10. A Merry Life and a Short One, Eve Blog Banter #9: Why Won't You Die?
11. Into the unknown with gun and camera, Blog Banter – The Hokey Cokey
12. The Flightless Geek, EVE Blog Banter #9: Remove a Game Mechanic
13. Sweet Little Bad Girl, Blog Banter 9: Who is Nibbling at My House?
14. One Man and His Spaceship, Blog Banter 9: What could you do without?
15. Life in Low Sec, EVE Blog Banter #9: Stop Tarnishing My Halo
16. Cle Demaari: Citizen, Blog Banter #9: Training for all my men!
17. A Mule in EVE, He who giveth, also taketh away?
18. Dense Veldspar, Blog Banter 9
19. Morphisat’s Blog, Blog Banter #9 – Randomness Be Gone !
20. Facepalm's Blog, EVE Blog Banter #9: What a new pilot could do without
21. Memoires of New Eden, You're Fired
22. Kyle Langdon's Journeys in EVE, EVE Blog Banter #9 Titans? What's a Titan?
23. Achernar, The gates! The gates are down!
24. Speed Fairy, EVE Blog Banter #9: Down with Downtime!
25. I am Keith Neilson, EVE Blog Banter #9-F**K Da Police
26. Ripe Lacunae, The UI… Where do I begin… (Eve Blog Banter #9)
27. Clown Punchers, EvE Blogs: What game mechanic would you get rid of?

Link to the guides

Just a nice quick post - I've made a link in the appropriate area to the right hand side of the blog which links to the Eve Files storage area where I keep my guides. Should hopefully make it easier to find for anyone who wants to reference one of the guides than wading through the earlier posts of the blog.

Construction Skills (Tech 2 manufacture)

As many of you may well know, when youre coming to make Tech 2 ships, theres some additional skills you need to worry about, which I class as construction skills, specifically, Frigate Construction, Cruiser Construction, Battleship Construction and Indusitrial Construction.

As well as that, theres also Capital Construction, which deals with capital ships, and the capital industrial ships (Rorqual and Orca) - but thats already been addressed in my Capital ships guide.

However, I could never find out exactly which skill level is needed for which hull type. So I went ahead and made a list.

I've included the list in the blog primarily for an aide-memoire for myself, but also you never know, someone else may have a use for it.

So here it is:

Frigate Construction
Level 1:
None
Level 2:
Interceptor
Level 3:
Covert Ops Ship
Level 4:
Stealth Bomber
Electronic Attack Frigate
Level 5:
Assault Frigate
Interdictor

Cruiser Construction
Level 1:
Logistics
Level 2:
None
Level 3:
None
Level 4:
Heavy Assault Cruiser
Recon Cruisers (both Force and Combat types)
Level 5:
Heavy Interdictor
Command Ship

Batteship Construction
Level 1:
None
Level 2:
None
Level 3:
None
Level 4:
Marauders
Black Ops
Level 5:
None

Industrial Construction:
Level 1:
Blockade Runner
Level 2:
None
Level 3:
Deep Space Transport
Level 4:
None
Level 5:
None


Hopefully I can tidy this up in the near future by putting it all in a much easier to read table... but until then, you can have it in its nice and raw format.

If theres any (non capital ship) that I've missed, please let me know.

(Ive added Black Ops now at level 4 Battleship Construction)

I could get by with a little help from my friends

OK cheezy song title puns aside (im definately running out of songs in my repertoire, need to check the Ipod again) we've been recovering our losses from the recent war with the Accursed.

Last night we had a dedicated mission/salvaging group going on, blitzing mission after mission, and then bringing in the clean up crew afterwards to strip the wrecks bare.

First point - tech 2 salvagers are damned fine it seems - it takes longer to lock the wrecks than it does to melt them down to circuit boards.

However, we have a few routes for recovery of cash:

1) Straightforward mission running, salvaging, looting - this is fairly direct, and nothing new to the majority. We have a few decently trained market players in the alliance, and selling on of the meta 3-4 loot should net a nice bonus to the coffers.

2) Mining of those missions that are worth it. With lots of mission runners available, were usually at no shortage of available people to draw missions. With that in mind, we sometimes leave one or two of the good 'mining missions' open for the hulk-wielders to come in after and strip the roids bare. One or two really good missions are left open for the week long duration as they provide lots and lots of ore. Even with a few peoples mission-pulling potential screwed over because of these week long open missions, it should be easy enough to keep the mission running crew in active missions with everyone who can access the level 4 agents doing so.

3) Manufacturing - we make stuff from the salvage and materials, to sell on behalf of the alliance, this thereby increases the 'value' in these same minerals/salvage.

4) Market trading. Those self same market players use alliance funds to buy low and sell high to generate some nice additional cash.

5) Purchase of LP's - because of all the mission running, some people will be getting a lot of LPs they dont really know what to do with. Its planned to either buy the LPs off them (well... they donate the LPs, the alliance contributes with the direct costs from the LP store) to either sell the items on, or to stockpile things like commonly used implants and such so that there can be replacements provided for those that die in battle.


Now... aside from all of these, can anyone think of some other suitable ways that an alliance/group of pilots can do between them to generate money? We dont want to ask for direct contributions/donations, as this should be self sustaining within the alliance, as long as people are wiling to give the time to help.

And another one bites the dust...

Our war with the Accursed seems to be just about over now, all bar the shouting (we got the notice that the war has been invalidated today, so its finished tomorrow) and to be perfectly honest, we got well and truly spanked.

It's nothing that we didnt expect to be honest, we're a fledgeling alliance with a large focus on industrial operations, and whilst there are a couple of very active PVPers included in the mix, there were only a few available when the enemy were logged in (timezone issues) so in the end, the enemy lost 3 ships, and we lost 60 (final figures depending on what happens today.)

It's been a good learning experience, and we've got a few good plans to get people learning via 'throwaway' ships on the test server, but one thing it has tought us is that we need to learn to be adaptable. Our opponents were all very old characters, and seasoned PVP veterans, and to be perfectly honest, when we had a ship setup, they had tools at hand to run away, dock up, change ships, and counter it.

One personal thing I need to learn from the 2 fights I was in (yeah thats all I could participate in because the bulk of them happened at 3-5am my time) is that its sometimes best to run away rather than fighting to the death - since that was the opponents tactics many of the time.

Of course, it doesnt say much for us that we were concentrating fire on one target and they still managed to down our tackler (usually me) and get away before a fleet of 8 or so ships could take them down.

Still... lessons learned and all that. We come back better prepared and a bit stronger for next time.

Tech 3 changes afoot

Firstly, I've been paying a bit more attention to the Tech 3 market over the past few days, seeing where everythings settled out a bit - and it seems that from a very basic 'buy everything from the market' viewpoint, the material costs for a Tengu run to around 770 million based on Rens / Heimatar prices - add onto that the costs for running a pos to create reactions, and doing the build (buying the blueprints from the markets, so negating the cost of the reverse engineering) youre looking at somewhere in the region of 800-850 million isk.

Not too bad profit wise if you have the skills to make them, although I see them for 1.5 - 2 billion for sale on contracts, im not sure if these are actually selling or not.

However (theres always a but...) it seems that theres market changes in planning in the undisclosed future

Specifically from the recent devblog:

Advances in Reverse Engineering

Reverse engineering gets most of our love in this patch. What was clear is that we have plentiful material supply besides a few exceptions and the available blueprints and materials for reverse engineering were lacking.

Intact and malfunctioning relics will now reflect the greater ease with which the ancient technology can be melded with the current technology within experimental laboratories using these relics. The number of runs each blueprint will have has been greatly increased on these two making them much more valuable to acquire.

In addition the useful data gathered during reverse engineering which can lead to datacores or hybrid tech decryptors has been increased so any outcome will be more fruitful especially in meeting the overall costs of reverse engineering.

Availability of Datacores and Decryptors

The datacores needed for reverse engineering have been generally increased in potential supply. The numbers you will get from wormhole sites and the numbers of those sites has been increased which will lead to a much greater supply of datacores and should lower the reverse engineering costs significantly.

Fullerite Volumes

Some of the fullerites have had their volume reduced which will lead to a much faster mining rate and less transportation costs for some of the gases. Easing a little the effort it takes to get the gases back to known space and the marketplace.

Sleeper Salvage Changes

There has been a set of changes to the amounts of each type possible from a sleeper wreck. The rate at which some types are dropped has been changed which will lead to easing of some bottlenecks and some parts which were being salvaged too frequently.

Change to Fulleroferrocene Power Conduits material requirements

The Carbon-86 Epoxy Resin material requirement has been switched to Scandium Metallofullerene for the power conduits. This is one of the more significant changes which will ease the pressure on carbon-86 a lot and the burgeoning costs of acquiring the gases for making carbon-86.

It seems that the market is already beginning to stagnate a bit whilst people hold their breaths to find out just when this patch will hit, so watch those prices over the next few weeks, if you can play the markets just nicely, you can possibly make a killing.

New war again

Sorry for not posting much at the moment, got a bit of writers block - well actually, I've been putting the finishing touches on a couple of articles for EON, but I really dont like writing mundane, boring 'well today I went to Rens, I bought a gun, oh... and a loaf of bread' type posts.

We were wardecced yesterday by a pirate group based out of Decon who have recently been specialising in highsec Hulk ganks. Nothing spectacularly new there, but I think when we started camping them on the gate to stop them coming in, they got a bit upset and wardecced us.

All well and above board many will say... however it's annoying for me as they seem to be on an american timezone, and once again, it seems that we will be involved in another war where I might only see about an hour of action every day before sleep claims me... and in that hour we may only have a glimpse of enemy ships for a minute of that time when they pop over to us and try to bait us to fall into their traps.

Oh well, I guess its one of the hardships one must bear in corporate life (not the threat of getting killed when out doing my own thing... but the total boredom waiting for your war target to log in.)

Where have you visited

OK, definately late on the ball for this one, but theres been a eve bloggers meme going around, where you display where you've visited in New Eden, thanks to the handy-dandy function which has been recently added (well... past few years I think, i'm unsure) to the galactic map.

Mine is as shown below:

First thing that comes to mind, is that I've hardly been the most explorative person out there... from looking at this, it seems that I've probably visited less than 5% of the systems available.

The second thing that jumps out at me is that theres so many non-connected spaces, with small 3-4 system runs in the middle of nowhere. Now perhaps these small pockets are actually connected (theres some very, very long interconnection pipes not shown on here) may be the case, but it just looks a little strange.

Might need a bit of a nosey around and fill the map with a bit more red over the coming weeks, just to give me something to do.

Blog Banter 8 - Something new to ponder about

Blog banter time is upon us once again.

This month's topic comes to us from Ga'len at The Wandering Druid of Tranquility. He asks: "What new game mechanic or mechanics would you like to see created and brought into the EVE Online universe and how would this be incorporated into the current game universe? Be specific and give details, this is not meant to be a 'nerf this, boost my game play' post like we see on the EVE forums."

The new mechanic I would like to see: Weapon tinkering.

Basically, a lot like rigging, it would be a way to use salvaged loot to alter the characteristics of weapons and modules. Maybe improving stats such as boosting shield resistances for an invul field, altering the damage type of ammo etc.

Now the first downside I can see with this is that it would probably create a massive load on the database with each module having potentially 3-5 varients with different stats on depending on how tinkering would work.

As for how it would work in game mechanics, it is of course an obvious extension to the rigging system that ships use. I can see experienced combat pilots sitting there, soldering iron in hand altering a circuit board here, adding a power flow route there, all to improve the effects of their modules.

The thing I quite like about weapon tinkering is that it wouldnt be a 'permanent' change to your ship like rigging - rigging is awkward in a way, in that if you need to repackage the ship, you lose the modifications and so on - if it was applied to modules, it would be possible to simply unfit the module, and give a bit more flexibility in moving around, and perhaps changing your guns out to use on different ships rather than being forced to use that one, and that one only.

Of course I cannot really imagine any downsides to this system on a user level, except perhaps the cost, so there may need to be some balancing issues to see about.


List of Participants:

1. CrazyKinux's Musing, EVE Blog Banter #8: Care for a little game of SecWars?
2. The Wandering Druid of Tranquility, Wow, that new thing is so shiny!!!
3. I am Keith Nielson, EVE Blog Banter #8 - Return of the Top Gun
4. Once More from the Beginning, 8th EVE Blog Banter May 2009 Edition
5. A merry life and a short one, EVE Blog Banter #8: In the Year of Our Awesome
6. Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah, Planets
7. Helicity Boson, Bantering the blog
8. Achernar, Unique adventures
9. Ecliptic Rift, OOC: EVE Blog Banter 8: Standings and secondary factions
10. The New Edener, EVE Blog Banter #8
11. Journey to New Eden, Eve Blog Banter #8: What new mechanic should be added to Eve?
12. One Man And His Spaceship, Blog Banter 8 - Something new to ponder about
13. Life, The Universe and Everything, Blog banter 8: mentorship
14. EVE Guru, EBB 8: Yarr! Prepare to be boarded!
15. The Ralpha Dogs, Greed Is Good, Greed Works
16. Rifter Drifter, Blog Banter 8: Strategic Gunnery
17. A Mule in EVE, Expanding EVE
18. Letrange's EvE Blog, 8th Blog Banter
19. Roc's Ramblings, Blog Banter #8
20. The Nude Nerd, Blog Banter #8
21. Scop's Log, Blog Banter #8: "We're caught in a tractor beam! It's pulling us in!"
22. Speed Fairy, EVE Blog Banter #8: Charisma Tanking
23. Industrialist with Teeth, EVE Blog Banter #8: It’s Like Tetris for OCD People
24. Diary of a Pod Pilot, EVE blog banter #8: Killing in the name of
25. Talk Unfraid, Physical Communications
26. Sceadugenca, EVE Blog Banter #8: Fighter-Class Ships and Sqadrons
27. Kyle Langdon's Journeys in EVE, 8th Blog Banter
28. Into the Unknown, Eve Blog Banter #8: Player Bases
29. EVE's Weekend Warrior, EVE Blog Banter #8
30. Life in Low Sec, Blog Banter #8: The Exasperation Factor
31. Symptom of a Greater Cure, EVE Blog Banter: #8 - Tug Me Away
32. EVE Journey, OOC - EVE Blog Banter #8: Marine Leader : “We have secured the ship, Sir!”
33. Thoughts from an Accidental Minmatar Revolutionary, All Hands on Deck! We are at War!
34. Ripe Lacunae, Into the Great Unknown (Eve Blog Banter 8)
35. Mdhi Lihu's EVE Online Blog, 009 - Blog Banter #8
36. Break Vol, EVE Blog Banter #8
37. Inanity and Doom, EVE Blog Banter #8 - If I Ran The Universe
38. Once More from the Beginning, EVE Blog Banter #8: Devil's in the details
39. The Flightless Geek, EVE Blog Banter #8

Assault ship a go-go

I've been still training Karox's ship skills even though im not quite sure how much more I will concentrate on his combat skills (see an earlier post on the subject) - but in the meantime, I've just finished training advanced weapon upgrades to level 4, which has allowed me to create a couple of interesting fits which were very powergrid-tight.

Firstly, a long range (60km or more) sniper harpy. This will complement my short ranged blaster harpy I have had in my posession for quite a while.

Secondly, and maybe more importantly, I have trained up Gallente Frigates 5, and found myself finally able to get into the Taranis ive been holding onto for ages, as well as the Ishkur assault frigate, both of which are recognised as damned fine PVP ships (though the low powergrid on the Ishkur forced me to wait until I had AWU4 before I could fit it out)

Im looking forward to hopefully finding some time over the weekend to test them with fleetmates in lowsec, but i'll have to hope this 'jump bug' where your display gets messed up and sticks in an endless loop gets eradicated sooner rather than later... its dangerous jumping into an unknown lowsec system and not knowing if youre going to be alive after logging back in when your overview screws up.

Now i need to decide if I want to work on skills for gunnery and ship skills to take me up into cruiser sized and larger hulls, or do I just stick with Frigates as I had planned for a while (and still currently plan as per the retirement post from before)

Considering retirement

OK... OK before you all jump and scream about me leaving Eve (or you maybe couldn't care less, I dunno) - I'm not.

What I am considering is removing Karox from active combat duty, and passing the buck to my alt, whos skills are now approaching somewhat useful levels in order to go out and PVP with.

Karox's skill training list to improve his industrial side is massively long, and if I start looking at decent PVP skills as well, the skill list of stuff I would like stretches into several years.

Lomara, my newer character has trained lots and lots of the background skills for PVP (gunnery / missiles / navigation / thermodynamics type skills) and is fairly well progressed in Minmatar frigates.

I originally planned on having Karox specialised in Caldari and Gallente ships, whilst Lomara trains up in Minmatar and Amarr ships, but instead, since the 'utility skills' transfer over equally well, I've come up with a year long plan to get Lomara skilled up in each weapon system (basically, adding hybrids to her current skill plan) and all races cruisers up to HAC's and Recons, and Tech 1 battlecruisers and battleships.

Still undecided if I want to progress Lomara into Command ships, but that is still planned for Karox, where he can hopefully get into his ship to provide fleet bonuses - I have no interest in training leadership skills on Lomara, at least not in the near future.

Karox of course will still retain some combat viability with the ships/skills he has (Caldari and Gallente up to HACs and Recons) and I'll be looking to improve his gunnery/missile skills somewhat between industry type stuff, but the majority of my combat will be done on Lomara, where she wont have many 'wasted' skillpoints pushing her clone costs up into the next bracket for the odd chance that she does die.

Moving into trading

In the spirit of the last blog banter, I've been looking at things that I haven't done much of in my time, and one thing that hit me was that I've never really spent time playing the trading game.

I'll admit, I've been tempted by the talk of people making billions in weeks through playing the markets, especially as margins are getting tight on production, and it's no longer making enough by itself to fund my ahem... excessive lifestyle.

I promptly took a bit of time off training up Karox to work on my super secret market playing alt (who I created prior to Apocrypha so he had a lot of trade skills already), stuck him in a fairly active market hub along with all of my Tech 2 parts made to date, about 100 million in starting collateral and decided that after that point, he would be completely on his own and not get any funding from outside again, to see if he could be self sustainable in buying/selling things at his base.

Firstly, after a few days I found it a bit pointless in selling my Tech 2 parts in the market hub. If profits were slim back in my quiet area I use, they were almost non existant in the busy hub - people always undercutting each other all the time - I gave that up for a bad idea and instead kept the plan that I'd had all along that Karox would sell his own products in the lower volume, higher profit area - especially as it was possible in the market to sell all of the 10 modules from the blueprint run in minutes if you caught it right as being the lowest value seller, but make maybe 10% of the profit I would have selling a bit slower - and also needing to keep up with demand was going to be difficult.

Instead I used the tried and tested 'resell mission loot' plan where I used the market alt's much greater number of available orders to place speculative buy orders under market value from mission runners, and resell them at full market rate, with around a 10-25% (or higher in some rare cases) markup.

First, let me say that I'm somewhat unimpressed with market trading... I'm probably not doing it optimally but in 3 weeks of trying it, I've only managed to make 150 million in profit. I mean OK, its essentially money for nothing, as I need to just log in for 30 mins a day to play around with market orders, but its still taking ages to fill my market orders, so im just selling 2-3 modules per day of the 100 or more I've placed buy orders for, which is making some ten to hundred thousand ISK profit per sell order I've got up depending how quick the parts resell for.

Now of course, im wondering how to expand on this. I really need to research the optimum drop tables for NPCs from missions in my target region so I know what to buy (anyone know if theres anything out there, or is it just lots of legwork and notepads?) or possibly move out of the module business, and into something more high ticket, such as implant trading.

More info and updates as I get more into playing market games.

Anyone know what happened to the mixed size rigs?

I've been looking into rigs as a new profit making venture, and if im honest, looking to cut down the cost of actually fitting them to my ships by making them myself using bits off the market.

Now unfortunately, theres a) very little profit in rigs and b) that makes them damned expensive still.

Whats the point of fitting a couple of 15 million isk rigs to a 20 million isk ship? It would be nice if there were frigate specific, cruiser specific and battleship specific rigs to complement each ship hull size. Im sure there was something else said about that around about the time that Quantum Rise was due to be released, along with the massively overhyped 'industrial change' patch, when all we got was an Orca and a speed rebalance.

Anyway, call me well and truly miffed at yet another 'decent CCP idea' that seems to have just been swept under the carpet.


In other news, my wallet is quite a bit lighter now sent in the direction of a Mr John Rourke for thanks in producing Clear Skies 2... im busy downloading it now.

Blog Banter 7 - Expanding My Horizons

Its time for Blog Banter once again. This months question is put forward by Crazykinux himself, and asks: "What 3 things haven't you done in EVE and why? Would you be willing to try one day? Why so? Why not?"


So there we go... in a system with seemingly infinite possibilities such as the principally player-driven world of Eve, there must be hundreds, if not thousands of things that people havent done, because quite simply, theres so much more than can be created.

I love the idea of the online poker systems that Mynxee has written about in the past for instance, and ways of making money that dont revolve around mindlessly plinking away at NPC's for hours on end.

But im not going to write about that thing specifically, or indeed about some of the many other things I've yet to do. My 3 points for this post are as follows:


1) Being a pirate.

I've mentioned it before on here, but I dont have the ruthless streak to jump out randomly at an innocent and want to ruin their day. That doesnt of course mean that I dont like a good fight, but on the other hand, I am always on the back foot, because the people I do fight against (specifically, player pirates) are usually seasoned PVPers themselves, which makes my relative inexperience in combat show.

I love the idea of defending an area of space (see later for more on that) against all and sundry, but dont like the idea of mindless killing for the sake of there being a target in front of you.

Add to the fact that the 'gang vs gang' (i.e. blob warfare) mentality means that its really hard to go out and just have a bit of fun without being utterly outnumbered a lot of the time, makes getting out and actually having a chance to survive much more likely with lots of planning to get into groups - and quite frankly the majority of the time people are available to settle in for an hour or two is usually a bit too late in the day for me most of the time, which also adds to the problems.

So to directly answer the question - no, I dont want to actually do this in the future.

2) Train and fly 'proper' capital ships.

I have a freighter on the account, but I dont class this as a proper capital ship, since is fairly easy to get into. I mean the all of the rank 10-14 type really, really long running skills that old pilots look into doing just because they need something to train.

On my main (Karox) account, I am playing as a jack of all trades, and as a consequence of that, I still have many years of training possibilities in front of me. I honestly dont think that there will be any time I could consider doing capital ships with him.

I have an alt account that is more combat focused, and does the majority of my PVPing. That character may well be trained into capital ships, but again, with several years of non-capital training ahead, I'm unsure if its ever anything I would want to look into.

3) Being part of a corporation that lives in 0.0 space.

This has always been an aim of mine, and it was something I was looking into a lot last year when I was a bit bored and lookign for something new.

Since then, I have returned to my old corporation, we have joined a fledgeling alliance, with grand plans, and it gives us something to work towards to have an aim to live in 0.0.

Now the reality of the situation is that we currently dont have the logistics in place (see potentially capital ships, carriers etc) to maintain a life in 0.0 as it stands, because quite simply, theres times you need to get back to the Highsec markets to buy the stuff to live with, and going through 0.0 entryway gate camps is something I dont want to have to worry about time and time again, so we need jump capable ships which can deposit us to a suitable lowsec entry point, shuttle stuff back and forward, then jump back directly into 0.0.

Out of all of these 3 points, I think this is the most likely I will achieve, simply because its not a personal goal, but one of a group of people, and with a few people working together, its possible to achieve, even if its just basing out of NPC space for the start until we get our feet under the door, and can contest for sovereignty space.

On the plus side, now that we can use blockade runners to run cargo into a system using covert cyno's and Black Ops battleships, thats one more logistics route we can cover, but unfortunately only one or two pilots in the corp can use blackops ships at the moment.

List of participants:

CrazyKinux's Musing, EVE Blog Banter #7: Eh, nobody told me you could do this in EVE!
One Man and His Spaceship, Blog Banter 7 - Expanding My Horizon

I am Keith Neilson, EVE Blog Banter #7 - What do you want to do today?

Rifter Drifter, Blog Banter 7: Trinity

Roc's Ramblings, Blog Banter #7 - The me I am not

Morphisat's Blog, Eve Blog banter #7 - Treading waters unknown

Sweet Little Bad Girl, Blog Banter 7 - Roads Not Followed

A Mule in EvE, DD, defend against a gank & POS gunning

Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah, Choices

The Wandering Druid of Tranquility, "One, Two, Three...three things....hahahahaha"

The Ralpha Dogs, Road Not Taken... Or Not
Melindhra's Universe, EVE Blog Banter #7 - Where no one has gone before
Life in Low Sec, Blog Banter #7: Possibilities
EVE Guru, EVE Blog Banter 7
• Diary of a Pod Pilot, [OOC] EVE Blog Banter #7: Stones left unturned
• Flashfresh - The Pirate, EVE Blog Banter #7: This isn't me...
• Nefchast’s Gaming Blog, CrazyKinux’s EVE Blog Banter #7
• A Merry Life and a Short One, EVE Blog Banter #7: Syphilis Doesn't Count
• Rip Lacunae, Past & Future (Eve Blog Banter 7)

My Love/Hate relationship with Invention

OK for a kick off, i'm not going to join in with the whining masses saying 'inventions broke, it never works' because well... I know it does. Sometimes though, I always think that Lady Luck really, really doesn't like me.

Over the past week or two I've updated all my Science skills so I have level 3 in every Invention based skill (except for ships, but im not inventing them yet, so no rush) and I have invested in several new blueprints, which have been researched a bit (for future use) and copied ready for invention for when the skills finished training.

Now I know that level 3 in each skill isnt the best starting point, but by the 'unapproved' calculations that are known about gives me around about a 47% chance which im happy enough as a start point.

Anyway... so far I have worked on 3 new items in my invention arsenal: Energised Adaptive Nano Membranes, Nuclear S (for Barrage S ammo) and 200mm Autocannon's

To date the results are as follows:

EANM2's - 3 out of 10
Barrage S - 3 out of 10
200mm AC2's - 2 out of 10

Of course, in conjunction with that, I have managed a 4 out of 5 research on the last of my Invulnerability field 2's, and a 3 out of 5 result on Gas Cloud Harvester 2's - unfortunately the market is getting pretty tight with the cost of materials for Invulnerability fields, and theres not much sales volume on the Gas Cloud Harvesters to make them a reliable sales point.

Anyway... as I say, I know invention works, and sometimes you can get some spectacular numbers of successes... but why do they always come on things I dont particularly want them on ?

Warning about the Mybrutes site from a few days back

It seems that it has picked up a whole heap of viruses and things, theres warnings all over.

If you go to the site, make sure your virus scanners are up to date.

It seems that there has been reports of the Swift.C virus being detected, which is a virus that works from Adobe Flash Player, which the site uses (as well as many others, so check any sites with flash content you go to) but supposedly the newest version of flash player has patched the vulnerability, so make sure you get flash player 10.

New Patch, New Toys

Seems that everyone in the blogging eve universe is having their say about the new changes with the coming patch tomorrow.

ECM ship changes are the main focus, with some quite significant changes to the Falcon and the Rook to get them out of massive ranges (Falcon) or the Hangar (Rook)

Suffice to say that I don't really have much experience with the 'overpowered' falcon since I've only managed to train Recon ships up to level 2 so far, so I'd never done much with my Falcon other than a cursory test flight around highsec - so in short, I dont really have much to say, and I'll see just what happens when it happens, and I get to train another level or 2 on Recon ships.

The stealth bomber role change is looking a bit more interesting though. Firstly, the bomber is going to lose its ability to use cruise missiles acting as a long range sniper ship... this is good in a way, as the main problem with 150km cruise missiles were that they took about 30 seconds to hit your opponent, meaning that anyone with half a brain could leave before they had any hint of damage.

In its place, is the ability to fit Siege launchers and Torpedoes, with the role bonus being changed to no longer use 'big missiles to hit small targets' but rather 'bigger missiles to hit big targets.'

Unfortunately there are 2 problems with this new role:

1) I dont have torpedoes trained up. OK, not a problem with the system per se, but still annoying.

2) Its still going to take about 10 stealth bombers working in harmony to have enough damage to take out a battleship in one salvo - they still wont have the ability to withstand incoming fire for the second and third salvo to fire, and with the fact they will need to be quite close to the target due to the short range of the torpedoes, its putting them much closer to the action, and therefore at risk of being locked by an opponent.

Other issues are that the Bombs are going to be made easier to produce (20 per run rather than the current 3) - although im not sure if that will also have a corresponding increase in material costs to determine the expected value of the new bombs and it seems that these will also not be limited to 1 per ship now, as they are just being classed as a standard launcher hardpoint weapon.

Of course, bombs suffer in that they can only be used in 0.0 space, but for those that know their niche then they will have life a bit easier in getting them I guess.

Above all though, I'm looking forward to having another ship to fit a covert ops cloak to, mainly because as a Tech 2 cloak producer, anything that creates additional demand can only be good for sales. For my own use, it would be nice to have something other than the Buzzard to muck around all stealthy and cloak-like for a bit of a change of pace.

... Now all I need to do is try and find some time to train up Torpedoes.

Brutes - Not Eve related (Kinda)

Whats better after a long day of capsuleering than going planetside and whacking friends with big sticks and swords?

Ok... maybe a nice hot bath and a good meal, but well lets leave that one go at the moment.

Mybrutes is a little web browser program that lets you have random arena battles with anyone who wishes to challenge you, and you wish to challenge them. Its been a bit of a hit in the local corp forums as everyone's been making a character... and now you can freely bash on Karox until your heart is content by simply clicking on the link and making your character (or of course, if you already have a character, im up for the challenge)

http://karox-lominax.mybrute.com

Hope to see your face smeared across my big stick soon.

Brief Update

Since it seems it's been a while since I wrote anything, I'll.. well.. write something - just incase people think i've fell off the face of the planet or something.

I'm now about a day and a half away from getting barge 5 finished, and from that, one of my first goals, getting into my Hulk that I made during my initial forays into Tech 2 manufacturing, is on the cards.

From that, I then Intend to spend about 26 days (according to Evemon anyway) getting to the point where I can invent anything for Tech 2 with a reasonable efficiency (everying at level 3, with some stuff at level 4) as well as train up the subsystem tech skills, metallurgy and reverse engineering for Tech 3. That will then let me get back to training up some combat skills in the meantime. I'll also get up to cruiser manufacturing 4 to allow me sit on the brink of Tech 3 manufacturing, and do some Tech 2 cruisers and frigates.

I still dont really have much interest in training up Jury Rigging 5 and getting to level 5 on the ship engineering skills to allow me to do the final assembly on Tech 3 ships just yet, but I'll consider that after I work on my combat skills again, perhaps finally getting my Nighthawk ive been lusting after for what seems like months.

Corp wise, we've joined a new alliance this week, should be fun getting to know the new alliance mates over the coming days/weeks, and then see exactly what alliance life can offer us.

Anyway... nothing spectacular happening at the moment I'm afraid... im making stuff, selling stuff, and wondering where to spend my hard earned cash... I've invested heavily in a new batch of tech 2 advanced materials and new blueprints for my expanding focus on tech 2 and invention, so im quietly hoping there isnt a massive price crash over the next month or two whilst I get everything in place.

Hopefully with the alliance there, and all the new stuff that could bring, I might have plenty to write about in the future... and theres always the guides - I'm busy looking at the old ones to update them ready for Apocrypha, so keep your eyes peeled.

EON Errata (aka: oops, there was a misprint)

I've just recieved the latest copy of EON through the post today (Issue 15) with my (hopefully) long awaited Tech 2 article inside.

And it seems I wasnt very good at proof reading it - theres a pretty major misprint on the table dealing with Alchemy (page 77) - the table supposedly lists R16 and R32 moon minerals for use in the Alchemy process, but it doesnt, in fact it lists the Gas type minerals twice.

The correct list of R16 and R32 minerals can be found in the simple reaction table (page 75) if you're desperate to look them up.

Whilst I'm on and in an apologetic mood, I also noticed that I got my sums wrong in my Tech 1 guide from issue 14, incorrectly stating that the waste factor was halved with every level of ME research done on a blueprint - this again is wrong.

In fact the correct calculation is 'Base Waste Level'/1+ ME value. Therefore at ME1 the waste is halved, at ME2 its cut to a third, ME3 its cut to a quater and so on.

Hope it's not spoiled anyones enjoyment of 2 otherwise cracking issues of the magazine.

Guide Part 11 - Exploration and Wormholes

It seems now that everyone is off doing the wormhole thing (and many have been there and gotten bored) its time to produce a new exploration guide in light of the original one that I linked to now becoming obsolete.

I hope everyone finds it useful - as always, if you find some issues or feel you can expand it, feel free to drop me an email.

http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Karox/Part_11_-_Exploration__WH.pdf

Enjoy

Rambling Thoughts On the Brink of April

Another month passes, and ultimately, another month passes in the life of Karox, intrepid explorer, manufacturing mogul and general annoyance to Angels everywhere.

Firstly, yay me, I finally broke 20 million skill points a few days back. If only I'd not taken that year long break a while ago I'd have done that a long, long time ago, but never mind, live and learn, how was I to know I'd be back.

Secondly, it seems that the last Blog Banter post was my hundredth on the blog. Woohoo for milestones.

I'm still stalled on my training for Command ships. However, im finally going a bit more focused on Exhumers, and I'm now 10 days from finishing Mining Barge 5 (already having done Astrogeology 5) and from then I'll get Exhumers skill to finally use that Hulk that's been sitting in my Hangar for months (which I've been secretly wanting to fly a while since it was my first hand-made Tech 2 ship)

Been using the skill queue to good effect as well, training up a few prerequisites for the Tech 3 subsystem tech skills (mainly science skills, and the other racial starship engineering skills) but since I've only done levels 1-2 of these via the skill queue, theres still lots of training ahead of me - Metallurgy was raised to 3 so far, but still need to get that to 4 before I can even train the Reverse Engineering skill.

I need to start deciding how to spend my time though from now for the next few months - do I refine my skills in one area, or (the more likely choice) just dot around from thing to thing and never really become specialised at anything (and therefore take forever and a day to get there) - Tech 3 manufacture isn't on the cards yet material wise or skill wise, so I dont know why im worried too much about getting those, suppose its a 'its new and I want to do it' mentality without thinking through the realistic options.

I'm hoping to spend more time on my combat side, even though I now have an alt (well.. have had one for a fair few months now, its sitting at just a little over 10 million skill points) specialised in Minmatar ships with limited charisma (yay pre-patch Achura) for combat use, but thats far from finished at the moment. I dunno if I should keep Karox as a support/industrialist character, but I'm still focusing on Caldari/Gallente with Karox and Minmatar and (eventually) Amarr with the alt (I know, I know... old racial enemies ship types on each character, it just worked out that way when I created Karox wanting to fly Gallente ships but heard that Caldari made good mission runners to get income when I first started)

I've still yet to get lost in a wormhole (I've had a bit of a tentative look around one or two of them, but nothing substantial). Tell you the truth, I'm a bit scared of it. Not in a 'yah boo sissy' way but rather the fact that I'm needing to access my science and industry stuff on a daily basis or thereabouts, and I dont get much time to log in daily (I can pop on for an hour or so every morning, and limited longer periods after work) so need to be able to access everything in a very quick time - having to find a way out of a wormhole and then back from wherever I end up at would just be a massive inconvenience for me. Add to the fact that I don't have a clue as to what ship to bring on the wormhole expedition either - I've got a Drake set up that should be ok to solo low level stuff with, but it cant really exploit the better things found in wormholes (archaeology sites, gas clouds etc) and only has 1 salvager, so thats going to be very slow going if and when I do kill stuff.

I'm definately considering going to Fanfest this year, but it seems the Early date has caused a bit of a ruckus and some people who were intending to go now can't because of the earlier than expected date, and i'm a bit worried that I'll get there and will end up not knowing anyone (hell... 50k plus people out in space at any one time, and probably 4-5 times that in total active accounts means a lot of people that could end up there, and I only know about 10-20 of them outside of corpmates)

Anyway, I think thats enough rambling for now, got a lot on my mind, including moving a fair few combat vessels to a lowsec base to start getting out and about again, I've been cooped up in the science and industry service station for way too long it seems.

Blog Banter 6 - Times, they are a changing

This month's topic comes to us from Quintrala of Speed Fairy . She suggests to "write a short fiction story about the dissolution of the BoB alliance. It could be from BoB's point of view, the Goons', by neutrals in 0.0, civilians in Empire, NPCs or even rats. Write about before, during or after the coup; give us stories of market, war, people or love. In-character or roleplay. We want to know what happened, from those fictional characters that, in your mind, were part of it."


Karox sat with his head in his hands, staring blankly at the console, the breaking news on the Galnet screen flashing up stories:

'Breaking news, Band of Brothers Alliance has been dissolved' it flashed again and again, minor updates to the main body of news as the information trickled down from reporters who clone jumped to nearby systems in order to get in on the information soon.

All Karox could think about were the knock on effects, the massive spike in Tech 2 raw material costs, already vultures were buying up all of the stocks of things like Ferrogel as far as the eye could see, relisting it all at 2, 3... 10 times its value a few days earlier.

Massive strife out in the badlands of 0.0 space wasnt anything new of course, alliances fought for territory all the time, but since the Band of Brothers alliance were well known for holding several key resource producing moons in their 'backyard systems' this was going to really screw up the process for getting the stuff out to the empire systems where they could be used for production.

Whilst the complexities of the incident were slowly gathering truth (or rumour, whos to know when politics are involved) the market speculators were going hell for leather to get their cut.

The Tech 2 market, already rocked a little earlier due to the 'accounting blunder' which saw a way to get a massively increased output on the reactors, was going to suffer in the short term... and until supplies were restored, prices would skyrocket as people relist what meager amounts they have at unrealistic prices to get their share of the panic buying frenzy.

Of course, the real reason Karox was holding his head in his hands was that after buying a Freighter a little earlier, he had used up pretty much all his liquid assets, and therefore couldn't take part in the mass market hysteria and make a killing like so many others would most probably achieve.

• Participants:
• Speed Fairy, The Hand of BoB
• CrazyKinux's Musing, No where to go...
• A Mule in EVE, Rolling to the Warzone
• The Ralpha Dogs, Two Tales of Glory and Honor
• One Man and his Spaceship, Times they are changing
• OZ's House of the Evil Dead, Every betrayal contains a perfect moment, a coin stamped heads or tails with salvation on the other side
• The Wandering Druid of Tranquility, Who the Hell are They?....
  
• I am Keith Nielson, He Gave Up the Stars

Need some help with Tech 3 production processes

I'm busying putting together my first draft for my future EON article on Tech 3 manufacturing, problem is that there has been some slight (and some significant) changes from the Test server compared to what there is on the live server.

The question I have is quite simple: When reverse engineering, are the decryptors (the racial ones that you need to put in every job to determine the type of BPC you get) consumed? What about the RAM Hybrid Tech ? Is it 100% consumed with each job, or partially consumed as all RAM units are classically?

A second question is what are the outcomes? So far I've seen a 3 run BPC produced as reported on the forums as well as all of the blueprints on the contracts system. Are the blueprints always 3 run, or do you get 1 run, 10 run, 20 run or more blueprints with good successes (as I know that the end output is vairable with reverse engineering)

Whilst the chances are that theres many people not done an actual reverse engineering job (me included, which is why im asking) im hoping that the greater Eve population could spot this blog and may be able to offer some insight.

I've still got a few months until I need to submit it, so I hope that I can get something a bit more tried and tested by then, but if I can get something semi concrete in advance, it will help with writing.


Oh and by the way, look out for my Tech 2 manufacturing article in the next issue of EON due in April.

First look at Tech 3 costs

I've created a spreadsheet to include a way to enter the costs that the market generates. Its not perfect (only includes the materials, not the costs of handling them and moving them along the production chain) but if anyone wants to use it as a starting block feel free.

Under the cost cells in the spreadsheet, you can enter your own values in the green coloured cells, but the grey ones are calculated from a previous sheet. This of course makes it the 'best case' where everything is generated from the ground up, if at any point along the chain, the parts are bought from the market rather than generated from raw materials, just alter the appropriate cell, it should filter through automatically.

They're entered now with current Jita prices of all the tech 3 parts, everything is still way too pricey at the moment as could be expected, but once prices calm down a bit it should be a good guide to make sure you arent getting ripped off.

http://dl.eve-files.com/media/0903/Tech_3_Parts_Sheet.zip


Also, Tareen Kashaar on the Eve forums has developed a new flowchart for the production of Tech 3 parts, which is much more comprehensive (and clears some of the errors that were there) from the originally Dev published one. This can be seen from the following link:

http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Luggage/t3prod_flowchart.gif

Note that the 'known space' buyable parts (the reactions and the component BPOs) are available galaxy wide from Core Complexion Inc and Chemal Tech stations.

Premium Lite and the EeePC

I was a bit worried about my EeePC after the Apocrypha update, its hardly the most powerful machine out there, and whilst it ran Classic mode Eve acceptably (I would never have tried to fly in space and 'do stuff'), I was worried that the upgrade to Premium (or more specifically, Premium Lite) would be simply too much for the little guy.

I must say I was mildly shocked - after turning down all the settings to low, it managed to run, and I can still do station based activities with it, which was ultimately all that I wanted to do with it anyway. Go one for the little guy.

It chugs along at a rediculously low framerate (prob about 2-3 FPS if the jerkiness is anything to go by) but hopefully that wont cause me too many problems with clicking the wrong button and making 1000 of an item when I mean to make 100 and other such comedy moments.

All in all, I'm a bit of a chuffed little bunny at that revelation.

Apocrypha: Day One Fallout

Unfortunately I had to go out yesterday evening, so didn't have much time to explore exactly what Apocrypha had to offer, but here are a few of the highlights and lowlights (is that even a word? I've only ever heard it used in management speak) of the patch as I see it:

1) The patching process itself was quite straightforward and the servers appeared to be up according to schedule - and they didnt seem to drop out at all. I did cheat a bit and download the manual patches during the day at work though so I've no idea how the autopatcher was going to work, since I didnt want to wait 4-6 hours to download 1.5 gb of data at home, since I had to go out, and I loathe to leave the PC on when im out of the house (I always worry that the things going to explode and burn the house down)

2) The probes - This was a bit of an annoyance. Firstly, I bought a whole load of Quest probes before the patch that were nice and cheap with a view that 'at least they will probably normalise the material requirements for the probes and put them at about the mid level of where the old ones sat' but upon looking at the new core probes that were in my hangar, they had about the same refining output as the old quest probes did. Thats good I suppose for those who want to make them from new, they will be nice and cheap, but it means that all my old probes, multispecs and all, which were quite expensive (14k-21k rather than the 3k of quest probes) have lost a LOT of value. This one was my fault I suppose since I couldnt be bothered to sit through loads of patching for the test server, so didnt bother with it to any great deal.

For some reason also, pretty much all of my 'combat probes' were missing - there was only 1000 in my hangar when there should have been about 4000 (taking into a mind that the old recon probes should have converted to combat probes) - these things were pretty expensive to manufacture since they needed some Strontium to make, which was quite an annoyance to see them all disappear. Add in the massive material loss with my 17k core probes (1000 of each of the 16 types of old probe and 1000 multispecs) that was a bit of a bad side.

3) Tech 3 manufacture - I was mildly suprised to find that all of the material requirements for the strategic cruiser hulls for each race was identical, and also that each race and type of subsystem share a material table, that should make the spreadsheets for these much easier to manage. Again, blame that one on not being able to log into the test server.

4) Attribute remapping - I decided to go for a nice balanced approach, and dropped my charisma down to the minimum and the rest with a slight focus on perception and willpower. Pretty much every thread on the first page of the 'skills' forum on the Eve Online forums is asking about the best way to set your stats, and loads of Achuras asking why they cant 'get rid of their 11 points of charisma since the minimum is 5' (its because they arent taking into account that the learning based skills cant be reduced, and when you tell them they need to actually raise charisma to meet the minimum 5, they go off in a huff.) Had a bit of a chuckle at that one.

5) Wormholes - A few corpmates went into a wormhole from lowsec yesterday and managed to get minced in seconds from a sleeper BS, seems that theres still a lot to learn about those lot.

6) Training queue - Works like a charm. Managed to train all the level 1 and 2 subsystem skills, gas harvesting to level 2, and then pop right back over to Astrogeology which I had set before downtime. Seems nice and straightforward to use, so im looking forward to not having to stop a skill with 2-3 hours to go when it would finish when im at work/going to bed in the future.

All in all, looking good so far.

Halada's at it again...

The other day, Halada, the author of quite possibly the most accepted undisputed mining guide for the Eve community is planning to release the third version of his guide, expanding into all facets of production, from mining to tech 1, tech 2, tech 3 and capital ship manufacturing, POSes, Outposts and Managing the markets.

He has said that it will be relased on March 10th, in line with Apocrypha going live, but he does state that the stuff directly related to the Apocrypha expansion will follow 30 days later, so that's giving him a bit of a barrier just incase anything changes from how its currently portrayed on the test server.

The announcement was posted on the Eve Online forums so if youre interested in keeping up with the countdown, and can suggest a suitable name, feel free to put in your thoughts.

As for me, I feel like I've had my nose put out of joint a little, since if he pulls this off, theres not much point in doing a dedicated Tech 3 production guide, since I dont think its worth my time trying to improve on something that, if its anything like his mining guide, covers pretty much everything in good depth. I'll enjoy reading it though and it's promised to be big, around 160 pages from last count or so he says.