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.