That title might be a bit bewildering for anyone who has never played with table top miniatures before, but basically 28mm is the size for the Games Workshop brand of plastic/pewter miniatures that I used to use years and years ago, before I came to Eve.
Years and years have passed, and I've been asked to get involved with it all again by a friend... so of course, I've started a new blog to track what I'm doing in there as well - technology eh, ain't it great.
You can go see more at:
One Man and His Paintbrush
Wednesday, 30 December 2009
Monday, 19 October 2009
I haven't dropped off the face of the earth
I've just been reminded by a corpmate of mine that I haven't posted here for ages. Just to let everyone know - I havent dissappeared, just on another of my frequent Haituses (if thats spelled correctly) from Eve whilst i'm playing Aion.
Unfortunately I started craving some first person fantasy action a while back, and I vowed to never go back to WoW ever again, so with Champions Online and Aion on the cards, I started playing both of whem whilst planning to get on with a large skill training plan in Eve which I had been putting off and putting off because I couldn't stand seeing 25+ days skills train whilst I actively play the game.
I have a strong desire to see progress being made when i'm actively playing my characters, which is why I often get a lot of gratification in new games for a few weeks, i'm sure that with Aion, when I get the character to maximum level, the desire to play will wane for a bit, and Eve will once again beckon. With that I'll also have a few things I had been planning:
1) Karox will be able to make all tech 3 ships, and should be pretty good at inventing tech 2 ships for all races.
2) Lomara should be able to pilot all tech 2/3 frigates and cruisers, as well as field tech 2 guns for all of them as well.
The larger plan is to move Lomara on to battleships of course, and then possibly to carriers or other capital ships, but once I have access to all the tech 2/3 ships it'll give me 'try new toys' craving a bit of a boost in Eve.
Unfortunately I started craving some first person fantasy action a while back, and I vowed to never go back to WoW ever again, so with Champions Online and Aion on the cards, I started playing both of whem whilst planning to get on with a large skill training plan in Eve which I had been putting off and putting off because I couldn't stand seeing 25+ days skills train whilst I actively play the game.
I have a strong desire to see progress being made when i'm actively playing my characters, which is why I often get a lot of gratification in new games for a few weeks, i'm sure that with Aion, when I get the character to maximum level, the desire to play will wane for a bit, and Eve will once again beckon. With that I'll also have a few things I had been planning:
1) Karox will be able to make all tech 3 ships, and should be pretty good at inventing tech 2 ships for all races.
2) Lomara should be able to pilot all tech 2/3 frigates and cruisers, as well as field tech 2 guns for all of them as well.
The larger plan is to move Lomara on to battleships of course, and then possibly to carriers or other capital ships, but once I have access to all the tech 2/3 ships it'll give me 'try new toys' craving a bit of a boost in Eve.
Monday, 31 August 2009
Blog Banter 11 - The many heads of the Hydra
It's time for the blog banter again... now I know I didn't take part in last months - to be honest, it was a bit too deep and philosophical for me, plus I had a really bad time with a possible redundancy situation at work (which has now been resolved and I'm keeping my job for the forseeable future) so my mind wasn't really on the game at the time. Should be back to strength for this one though.
This month's banter comes to us from Joe Brusati a long time reader of CrazyKinux's Musing, who asks the following: CCP states that T3 Strategic Cruisers are just the start for the T3 line-up. In future Eve expansions what would you like to see as the next T3 ship type. Please be specific on details about what role this ship would play, cost of manufacturing, and the different modules that would be available for it, and of course you must give your T3 ship a name!
So I guess tech 3 cruisers are a bit of a speciality of mine at the moment, what with my 'still to finish' series on them and the tech 3 building article in the recent EON magazine.
I was racking my brain thinking of something that was new and unique in the universe of eve, and thought 'why has there never been any passenger ships available to transport a few players' ?
Whilst I dont think that a passenger ship would be worthy of the expense and hassle of making a tech 3 ship, my mind wandered back to the cartoons of the 80's where more often than not, the superhero group that the show revolved around had a ship that was made of many constituent parts, which all joined together to make a larger, more powerful ship. This is the basis of my proposal - the Hydra (and just for the record, I dont really mean Power Rangers, I'm thinking about the big transformers that were made of lots of smaller transformers, or possibly even Voltron... but I guess Power Rangers count as well)
As everyone with a knowledge of mystical creatures knows, the Hydra is a beast with 5 heads... and thats the basis of my design.
4 pilots control an individual frigate sized ship, which are constructed as a completely independant ship, but without any 'subsystems' as such, each ship would be a subsystem. The price for each of these ships would be around about the price of a current tech 3 subsystem (40-50 million ideally) and be equal in power to an assault ship. A fifth pilot would control a cruiser sized ship, which was about equivalent to a HAC type assault ship individually, and be around about the same price (100-150 million or so) which would also act as the central host ship.
Each of the pilots could then fly within 2km of the host (or be together in station) to form a larger ship, which is about the equivalent in ability to a command ship.
Now for the complicated bit - how to determine the power of the ship. Obviously you couldn't use the individual weapon systems of the component ships, as you would end up with lots of frigate sized guns. In my view, the host ship (and therefore cruiser sized weapons) should determine what the fittings are on the resultant ship - the individual smaller ships which connect to it will provide bonuses based on the joint skill levels of all pilots involved. The host ship needs an interfacing skill which will allow up to 4 of the smaller ships to connect (level 1 skill to use your own ship, each level after that to add one additional ship) and each of the smaller ships can contribute towards a bonus towards engineering, propulsion, defence and offence in a smilar way to the current subsystem skills.
The real benefit of this ship over a single man tech 3 ship would be that you could potentially have up to 20 levels of skill bonuses (up to level 5 in each category by each subcomponent ship pilot) to provide a greater bonus than what is offered at the moment, making a much more deadly ship, with the obvious risk involved in that one person controls the risk for 5 pilots.
Much like the subsystem choices with the current tech 3 ships, each of the frigate type ships would contribute different bonuses, but it would need a bit of testing to make sure that 4 pilots contributing towards a 'armour hitpoint' boost wouldn't make it have rediculous amounts of armour, much as we have seen with tech 3 ships, you can have upwards of 400,000 hitpoints with the correct modules and implants, you wouldn't want a battlecruiser sized ship with the same defences as a titan for instance!
I'm still undecided if the individual pilots could control invididual weapons/systems of the host ship, or if this would be too unwieldy to organise, and if the 4 other pilots would play no real part in the running of the larger 'combined' ship other than being additional eyes for the host to keep him informed of whats happening around him/her.
So there you have it... an idea born from too many years watching cartoons in my youth... I'm really interested in seeing what others have dreamt up.
This month's banter comes to us from Joe Brusati a long time reader of CrazyKinux's Musing, who asks the following: CCP states that T3 Strategic Cruisers are just the start for the T3 line-up. In future Eve expansions what would you like to see as the next T3 ship type. Please be specific on details about what role this ship would play, cost of manufacturing, and the different modules that would be available for it, and of course you must give your T3 ship a name!
So I guess tech 3 cruisers are a bit of a speciality of mine at the moment, what with my 'still to finish' series on them and the tech 3 building article in the recent EON magazine.
I was racking my brain thinking of something that was new and unique in the universe of eve, and thought 'why has there never been any passenger ships available to transport a few players' ?
Whilst I dont think that a passenger ship would be worthy of the expense and hassle of making a tech 3 ship, my mind wandered back to the cartoons of the 80's where more often than not, the superhero group that the show revolved around had a ship that was made of many constituent parts, which all joined together to make a larger, more powerful ship. This is the basis of my proposal - the Hydra (and just for the record, I dont really mean Power Rangers, I'm thinking about the big transformers that were made of lots of smaller transformers, or possibly even Voltron... but I guess Power Rangers count as well)
As everyone with a knowledge of mystical creatures knows, the Hydra is a beast with 5 heads... and thats the basis of my design.
4 pilots control an individual frigate sized ship, which are constructed as a completely independant ship, but without any 'subsystems' as such, each ship would be a subsystem. The price for each of these ships would be around about the price of a current tech 3 subsystem (40-50 million ideally) and be equal in power to an assault ship. A fifth pilot would control a cruiser sized ship, which was about equivalent to a HAC type assault ship individually, and be around about the same price (100-150 million or so) which would also act as the central host ship.
Each of the pilots could then fly within 2km of the host (or be together in station) to form a larger ship, which is about the equivalent in ability to a command ship.
Now for the complicated bit - how to determine the power of the ship. Obviously you couldn't use the individual weapon systems of the component ships, as you would end up with lots of frigate sized guns. In my view, the host ship (and therefore cruiser sized weapons) should determine what the fittings are on the resultant ship - the individual smaller ships which connect to it will provide bonuses based on the joint skill levels of all pilots involved. The host ship needs an interfacing skill which will allow up to 4 of the smaller ships to connect (level 1 skill to use your own ship, each level after that to add one additional ship) and each of the smaller ships can contribute towards a bonus towards engineering, propulsion, defence and offence in a smilar way to the current subsystem skills.
The real benefit of this ship over a single man tech 3 ship would be that you could potentially have up to 20 levels of skill bonuses (up to level 5 in each category by each subcomponent ship pilot) to provide a greater bonus than what is offered at the moment, making a much more deadly ship, with the obvious risk involved in that one person controls the risk for 5 pilots.
Much like the subsystem choices with the current tech 3 ships, each of the frigate type ships would contribute different bonuses, but it would need a bit of testing to make sure that 4 pilots contributing towards a 'armour hitpoint' boost wouldn't make it have rediculous amounts of armour, much as we have seen with tech 3 ships, you can have upwards of 400,000 hitpoints with the correct modules and implants, you wouldn't want a battlecruiser sized ship with the same defences as a titan for instance!
I'm still undecided if the individual pilots could control invididual weapons/systems of the host ship, or if this would be too unwieldy to organise, and if the 4 other pilots would play no real part in the running of the larger 'combined' ship other than being additional eyes for the host to keep him informed of whats happening around him/her.
So there you have it... an idea born from too many years watching cartoons in my youth... I'm really interested in seeing what others have dreamt up.
List of Participants:
- A Mule in EvE - ‘Thor’ the Minmatar T3 ~ Banter #11
- One Man and His Spaceship - Blog Banter 11 - The many heads of the Hydra
- Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah - Strategic Capitals
- Achernar - Strategic Battlecruisers: the Spiders
- Journey to New Eden - Eve Blog Banter #11: Introducing the T3 Strategic Mining Barge
- Kyle Langdon's Journey in EVE - Strategic.... EVE Blog Banter #11
- The Captain's Log - Blog Banter 11: Increasing our knowledge of the universe
- Deaf Plasma's EVE Musings - Eve Blog Banter #11 - a ship called Starfury
- Yarrbear Tales - Blog Banter 11: T3 Destroyers
- Break Vol - Blog Banter #11
- Harbinger Zero - EVE Blog Banter #11: T3 Landing Craft
- Diairy of a Pod Pilot - Blog banter #11: Strategic frigates
- Mike Azariah - Blog Banter #11
Friday, 21 August 2009
BPO seeding locations
Does anyone know how you go about finding the NPC stations for a particular BPO these days?
I used to just look on Chruker's data dump site, but I cant find anything on there, and there doesnt seem to be any info on the Eve item database linked to the main forum either, so I'm presuming they took that info off the data dump.
Obviously im looking for the rig blueprints, but I was looking up the 'old' rig blueprints (i.e. prior to them getting size specific) since none of the sites have the latest information on them.
I used to just look on Chruker's data dump site, but I cant find anything on there, and there doesnt seem to be any info on the Eve item database linked to the main forum either, so I'm presuming they took that info off the data dump.
Obviously im looking for the rig blueprints, but I was looking up the 'old' rig blueprints (i.e. prior to them getting size specific) since none of the sites have the latest information on them.
Thursday, 20 August 2009
Tech 3 Cruiser - Proteus
Its that time again... time for another infamous PDF upload.
This time, we concentrate on the Proteus, one on hand, the most devastating medium blasterboat available, and on the other, the poorest cruiser sized droneboat ever designed.
You can see the guide in all of its glory in the link below:
Proteus Guide
This time, we concentrate on the Proteus, one on hand, the most devastating medium blasterboat available, and on the other, the poorest cruiser sized droneboat ever designed.
You can see the guide in all of its glory in the link below:
Proteus Guide
Sunday, 16 August 2009
Expanding my horizons a bit
In a break from Eve related news (kind of) I've just upgraded my computer - no longer am I running on the couple-of-year old HP laptop which has satisfied my Eve craving for all this time, I've now reverted back to having a desktop. An Acer Aspire Predator 7200 gaming rig (yeah boo, hiss should have made my own up from bits, but I was feeling lazy and it was on a sale)
Because of the added computing power I've upgraded to though, I've got a few more up and coming games that I want to give a go:
Aion - I've signed up for this, was hoping to get in on this weekends closed beta event, but thanks to the terrible download speed I get from my ISP (Sky) during the day, theres no way that the client would be downloaded in time - its currently sitting at 85% downloaded after the better part of 2 solid days on the go... so much for the '5 hours' it first estimated when I was getting 400kb/sec first thing on Saturday morning.
So it seems that I'll be in Aion when open beta comes around (pretty sure thats due soon after the closed beta events finish) on or before September.
I've also gotten signed up for Champions Online - though again, just a preorder at the moment, but that is going to come in DVD format to install rather than try and download it after the experience of Aion. Problem is that theres a great offer for Champions online that lets you get a life long subscription for about a 1 year cost... but in order to get it, you need to have taken this option before the 1st September when the game goes live.
With the pre-orders supposedly getting a 'head start' entry on the 28th of August, it does give a day or two to test the game before making the decision to drop the better part of £140 on a lifetime subscription, but knowing the uselessness of the british postal service, I'll probably not get the game until after the 1st of September and by then it'll be too late. Dunno if I should take the gamble and go for it - everyone whos played in the Beta who I know has said it's a fun game and definately should keep anyone entertained for at least a year, so the lifetime subscription should pay for itself.
I've also been getting hold of a slightly older game in the form of Dawn of War II (warhammer 40k spinoff computer game) which should satisfy my strategy cravings for a little while. The beauty of that supposedly is that its got a good online system/community which is what I always look for in games these days (I never really have much interest in offline 1-player games anymore, I get bored without some human contact after years of MMOs) so I'll see where that takes me after I learn how the game works a bit more.
Add to that I'm also discovering the joys of Quake Live (oddly enough even though its just a browser based version of Quake, my HP laptop really struggled with the framerate on it, and its taken getting the new PC to really make it shine) to give me a bit of an FPS fix means I'm covered for the forseeable future with pretty much all genres of games I've got an interest in.
Now I just need a few long skills I've got planned in Eve to finish as well so I can try something new I've had queued up for a while, and it seems that over the next few months I'll be a very busy bunny indeed.
I suppose the question for anyone out there in blog reader land is whos planning on joining me in any of these games? I'm looking for Europeans preferably so im not sitting there like the lonely old soul in the corner of a new party trying to find someone to chat to so I can make friends... I always prefer to drag my own company along and get everyone traipsing to be friends with me - I always find its easier to get groups when you have 2-3 people as the backbone of any group trying to find 1-2 more, rather than running around trying to find groups of random pickups.
Because of the added computing power I've upgraded to though, I've got a few more up and coming games that I want to give a go:
Aion - I've signed up for this, was hoping to get in on this weekends closed beta event, but thanks to the terrible download speed I get from my ISP (Sky) during the day, theres no way that the client would be downloaded in time - its currently sitting at 85% downloaded after the better part of 2 solid days on the go... so much for the '5 hours' it first estimated when I was getting 400kb/sec first thing on Saturday morning.
So it seems that I'll be in Aion when open beta comes around (pretty sure thats due soon after the closed beta events finish) on or before September.
I've also gotten signed up for Champions Online - though again, just a preorder at the moment, but that is going to come in DVD format to install rather than try and download it after the experience of Aion. Problem is that theres a great offer for Champions online that lets you get a life long subscription for about a 1 year cost... but in order to get it, you need to have taken this option before the 1st September when the game goes live.
With the pre-orders supposedly getting a 'head start' entry on the 28th of August, it does give a day or two to test the game before making the decision to drop the better part of £140 on a lifetime subscription, but knowing the uselessness of the british postal service, I'll probably not get the game until after the 1st of September and by then it'll be too late. Dunno if I should take the gamble and go for it - everyone whos played in the Beta who I know has said it's a fun game and definately should keep anyone entertained for at least a year, so the lifetime subscription should pay for itself.
I've also been getting hold of a slightly older game in the form of Dawn of War II (warhammer 40k spinoff computer game) which should satisfy my strategy cravings for a little while. The beauty of that supposedly is that its got a good online system/community which is what I always look for in games these days (I never really have much interest in offline 1-player games anymore, I get bored without some human contact after years of MMOs) so I'll see where that takes me after I learn how the game works a bit more.
Add to that I'm also discovering the joys of Quake Live (oddly enough even though its just a browser based version of Quake, my HP laptop really struggled with the framerate on it, and its taken getting the new PC to really make it shine) to give me a bit of an FPS fix means I'm covered for the forseeable future with pretty much all genres of games I've got an interest in.
Now I just need a few long skills I've got planned in Eve to finish as well so I can try something new I've had queued up for a while, and it seems that over the next few months I'll be a very busy bunny indeed.
I suppose the question for anyone out there in blog reader land is whos planning on joining me in any of these games? I'm looking for Europeans preferably so im not sitting there like the lonely old soul in the corner of a new party trying to find someone to chat to so I can make friends... I always prefer to drag my own company along and get everyone traipsing to be friends with me - I always find its easier to get groups when you have 2-3 people as the backbone of any group trying to find 1-2 more, rather than running around trying to find groups of random pickups.
Monday, 10 August 2009
Legion Guide - At last
Sorry for the delay between posts, between getting sent away and following up on the few days of missed work, everythings been a bit hectic over here.
Without further ado, heres the Tech 3 Legion guide:
http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Karox/Understanding_The_Tech_3_Cruisers_-_Legion.pdf
Up next, quite possibly my favourite of the ships, the Gallente Proteus - a ship that with the correct setup has the punch of a Diemos, with the survivability of a Phobos... im sure theres a Life on Mars reference in there somewhere.
Without further ado, heres the Tech 3 Legion guide:
http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Karox/Understanding_The_Tech_3_Cruisers_-_Legion.pdf
Up next, quite possibly my favourite of the ships, the Gallente Proteus - a ship that with the correct setup has the punch of a Diemos, with the survivability of a Phobos... im sure theres a Life on Mars reference in there somewhere.
Sunday, 2 August 2009
Quick updates
Firstly... to do with Eve... I've been on the test centre to check out the material requirements for the new rigs, and I must say, they look very nice... should be a nice little production sideline in the near future, since my alt character can make the small ones without any waste reductions at the moment (I only got the alt to PE4)
Seondly... to do with the blog - Sorry I've not updated the guides on the Tech 3 cruisers yet, I've been meaning to do the Legion for a few days now (im about 2/3 through it), but, as you'll see with point 3, its been a bit difficult
Thirdly (yeah you can tell I was getting to this from my last point above)... I've just been given a new contract to work on at work, which sort of dropped in my lap at very short notice (last Thursday) so I've been working hard to get that set up, which means I didnt have much chance to work on my Legion guide. On the plus side, it means I'll be travelling to Dubai for a meeting next week, so I won't have much chance to do anything until the end of next week at the earliest.
So anyway... goodbye rainy Britain, hello sunny Dubai for a few days at least. Should hopefully go a long way to recharging the flagging batteries.
Seondly... to do with the blog - Sorry I've not updated the guides on the Tech 3 cruisers yet, I've been meaning to do the Legion for a few days now (im about 2/3 through it), but, as you'll see with point 3, its been a bit difficult
Thirdly (yeah you can tell I was getting to this from my last point above)... I've just been given a new contract to work on at work, which sort of dropped in my lap at very short notice (last Thursday) so I've been working hard to get that set up, which means I didnt have much chance to work on my Legion guide. On the plus side, it means I'll be travelling to Dubai for a meeting next week, so I won't have much chance to do anything until the end of next week at the earliest.
So anyway... goodbye rainy Britain, hello sunny Dubai for a few days at least. Should hopefully go a long way to recharging the flagging batteries.
Sunday, 26 July 2009
Start of a new mini project
I'm going to do a small series of mini-guides aimed at getting the most out of the 4 strategic cruisers that are curretly available on the market.
Now I'll be the first to say that this is pretty much all theorycrafting, as I've had very limited experience with these 'in the field' so if theres any really obvious bits I've missed, feel free to leave a comment and ill see about incorporating it in a revised version of each of the guides.
Now, disclaimer aside... heres the first of the guides, aimed at the Caldari Tengu.
http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Karox/Understanding_Tech_3_Cruisers_-_Tengu.pdf
Now I'll be the first to say that this is pretty much all theorycrafting, as I've had very limited experience with these 'in the field' so if theres any really obvious bits I've missed, feel free to leave a comment and ill see about incorporating it in a revised version of each of the guides.
Now, disclaimer aside... heres the first of the guides, aimed at the Caldari Tengu.
http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/Karox/Understanding_Tech_3_Cruisers_-_Tengu.pdf
Thursday, 16 July 2009
Corp Infiltration Double Cross
We've been wardecced again... nothing major, it happens every few weeks it seems.
However, this one is quite different in that they secluded a spy within our ranks a few weeks prior to the war going active...
We took on a new member who hung around with us for a few days, and after a few sessions where they joined us on level 4 missions, the guy seemed quite chatty and was quite well trained (able to solo level 4 missions at least) so we thought we would give him a go.
Anyway... after we were wardecced, we begun to suspect that there could be 'eyes in the camp' so to speak after the enemy seemed to anticipate our move - so we set a trap.
Publically, we set up a fleet that everything was known, and waited for the enemy to travel to us, in a system we dont usually form up in - sure enough they arrived in relatively short notice (now admittedly, I know that it was possible to just use a locator agent to search us out, but it was way too quick) and we sprung the trap - the secret, second fleet we had jumped in from the system over and we pincered the enemy.
Ultimately there werent many deaths, the enemy scattered, but now that they have lost their mole, the enemy have been very disorganised and its been much easier to trap them in ones and twos and pick them off.
In fact, so much so, they had resorted to posting fake killmails on our killboard (which ultimately, it was something we forgot the spy had access to still, but a quick password change has altered that)
However, this one is quite different in that they secluded a spy within our ranks a few weeks prior to the war going active...
We took on a new member who hung around with us for a few days, and after a few sessions where they joined us on level 4 missions, the guy seemed quite chatty and was quite well trained (able to solo level 4 missions at least) so we thought we would give him a go.
Anyway... after we were wardecced, we begun to suspect that there could be 'eyes in the camp' so to speak after the enemy seemed to anticipate our move - so we set a trap.
Publically, we set up a fleet that everything was known, and waited for the enemy to travel to us, in a system we dont usually form up in - sure enough they arrived in relatively short notice (now admittedly, I know that it was possible to just use a locator agent to search us out, but it was way too quick) and we sprung the trap - the secret, second fleet we had jumped in from the system over and we pincered the enemy.
Ultimately there werent many deaths, the enemy scattered, but now that they have lost their mole, the enemy have been very disorganised and its been much easier to trap them in ones and twos and pick them off.
In fact, so much so, they had resorted to posting fake killmails on our killboard (which ultimately, it was something we forgot the spy had access to still, but a quick password change has altered that)
Friday, 10 July 2009
We're looking to recruit
Just a quick word out to all those in pilot-land.
Between the members of my corp, and the alliance that we are in the process of getting set up, we are looking to expand, to get a decent amount of members flying under our banner.
Eventually as the alliance, we are hoping to get a foothold in 0.0 space once we have the logistics and supply chain sorted out, but at the moment, we are quite happy with a mix of Highsec (industry/missioning) and Lowsec (anti-pirate) operations under our belt.
What we are looking for primarily (corps or individuals):
PVP focused players - we have a decent industrial backbone now in order to cheaply replace ship losses, and once we have enough cash in the pot from our in house industrial manufacturing processes, provide replacement ships lost in the line of duty. Whilst a lot of our members have decent experience of PVP, we have identified that we need more who are willing to get into the thick of the action.
If you are fine with standard NRDS rules, which are focused strictly in antipirate operations, we'd be happy to chat with you or your corp.
Experienced battle commanders would be of a great benefit.
Industrialists - We have a cash generating programme in place to fund alliance activities. We ask that industrialist players with suitable skills donate 1-2 of their manufacturing slots every now and again to build out projects that are alliance funded, which the alliance will then sell on to retain the profits for future alliance activities.
All timezones - We have members active in all timezones (as far as I know... Ive not been awake 24 hours to see), I dont think that should be any limitation to anyone who wants to join.
I'll try and flesh this out a little more a little later, but if you are interested, either drop me a line on karoxlominax@googlemail.dom, send me an eve mail in game, or reply below, and we can see about arranging time for a chat to see what we can do to help each other out.
Between the members of my corp, and the alliance that we are in the process of getting set up, we are looking to expand, to get a decent amount of members flying under our banner.
Eventually as the alliance, we are hoping to get a foothold in 0.0 space once we have the logistics and supply chain sorted out, but at the moment, we are quite happy with a mix of Highsec (industry/missioning) and Lowsec (anti-pirate) operations under our belt.
What we are looking for primarily (corps or individuals):
PVP focused players - we have a decent industrial backbone now in order to cheaply replace ship losses, and once we have enough cash in the pot from our in house industrial manufacturing processes, provide replacement ships lost in the line of duty. Whilst a lot of our members have decent experience of PVP, we have identified that we need more who are willing to get into the thick of the action.
If you are fine with standard NRDS rules, which are focused strictly in antipirate operations, we'd be happy to chat with you or your corp.
Experienced battle commanders would be of a great benefit.
Industrialists - We have a cash generating programme in place to fund alliance activities. We ask that industrialist players with suitable skills donate 1-2 of their manufacturing slots every now and again to build out projects that are alliance funded, which the alliance will then sell on to retain the profits for future alliance activities.
All timezones - We have members active in all timezones (as far as I know... Ive not been awake 24 hours to see), I dont think that should be any limitation to anyone who wants to join.
I'll try and flesh this out a little more a little later, but if you are interested, either drop me a line on karoxlominax@googlemail.dom, send me an eve mail in game, or reply below, and we can see about arranging time for a chat to see what we can do to help each other out.
Thursday, 9 July 2009
EON 16 Errata
Thankfully, its CCP's fault this time...
No doubt you may all be aware, but a few days before EON 16 was shipped out of the door, CCP released a patch which adjusted several factors to do with Tech 3 manufacturing.
It seems that its possible to get more than 3 runs now on a Tech 3 blueprint - i'm still trying to find out exactly what the effects are from the patch, but I've seen a few 10 run subsystem blueprints, so im not sure if thats the new default (I've only seen 10 run or 3 runs on the contracts at the moment, I'd appreciate some confirmation from anyone who may have done some reverse engineering since the patch)
Update: Seems that the new blueprint rates are 20 run for intact relic-run reverse engineering jobs, 10 runs for Malfunctioning relic run RE jobs, and 3 run for Wrecked relic run RE jobs - at least for subsystems anyway... still waiting to find out the breakdown of figures for the ship hulls. Theres still some issues with it as per Letrane's comments below though.
Secondly, the material requirements for the 'Fulleroferocene Power Conduits' has changed - the 4 units of Carbon-86 Epoxy Resin have been removed from the blueprint, and instead 10 units of 'Scandium Metallofullerene' have been added in its place.
You never know... maybe next time I put an article in EON, hopefully CCP wont change things just prior to it coming off the presses.
No doubt you may all be aware, but a few days before EON 16 was shipped out of the door, CCP released a patch which adjusted several factors to do with Tech 3 manufacturing.
It seems that its possible to get more than 3 runs now on a Tech 3 blueprint - i'm still trying to find out exactly what the effects are from the patch, but I've seen a few 10 run subsystem blueprints, so im not sure if thats the new default (I've only seen 10 run or 3 runs on the contracts at the moment, I'd appreciate some confirmation from anyone who may have done some reverse engineering since the patch)
Update: Seems that the new blueprint rates are 20 run for intact relic-run reverse engineering jobs, 10 runs for Malfunctioning relic run RE jobs, and 3 run for Wrecked relic run RE jobs - at least for subsystems anyway... still waiting to find out the breakdown of figures for the ship hulls. Theres still some issues with it as per Letrane's comments below though.
Secondly, the material requirements for the 'Fulleroferocene Power Conduits' has changed - the 4 units of Carbon-86 Epoxy Resin have been removed from the blueprint, and instead 10 units of 'Scandium Metallofullerene' have been added in its place.
You never know... maybe next time I put an article in EON, hopefully CCP wont change things just prior to it coming off the presses.
Monday, 6 July 2009
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)
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)
Wednesday, 1 July 2009
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.
Monday, 29 June 2009
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)
"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:
On to the other participants:
- Diary of a Space Jockey, Blog Banter: BE GONE!
- EVE Newb, (EVE) Remove You
- Miner With Fangs, Blog Banter - It's the Scotch
- The Eden Explorer, Blog Banter: The Map! The Map!
- The Wandering Druid of Tranquility, "Beacons, beacons, beacons, beacons, beacons, mushroom, MUSHROOM!!!"
- Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah, Kill the Rats
- Mercspector @ EVE, Scotty
- EVE's Weekend Warrior, EVE Blog Banter #9
- A Merry Life and a Short One, Eve Blog Banter #9: Why Won't You Die?
- Into the unknown with gun and camera, Blog Banter – The Hokey Cokey
- The Flightless Geek, EVE Blog Banter #9: Remove a Game Mechanic
- Sweet Little Bad Girl, Blog Banter 9: Who is Nibbling at My House?
- One Man and His Spaceship, Blog Banter 9: What could you do without?
- Life in Low Sec, EVE Blog Banter #9: Stop Tarnishing My Halo
- Cle Demaari: Citizen, Blog Banter #9: Training for all my men!
- A Mule in EVE, He who giveth, also taketh away?
- Dense Veldspar, Blog Banter 9
- Morphisat’s Blog, Blog Banter #9 – Randomness Be Gone !
- Facepalm's Blog, EVE Blog Banter #9: What a new pilot could do without
- Memoires of New Eden, You're Fired
- Kyle Langdon's Journeys in EVE, EVE Blog Banter #9 Titans? What's a Titan?
- Achernar, The gates! The gates are down!
- Speed Fairy, EVE Blog Banter #9: Down with Downtime!
- I am Keith Neilson, EVE Blog Banter #9-F**K Da Police
- Ripe Lacunae, The UI… Where do I begin… (Eve Blog Banter #9)
- Clown Punchers, EvE Blogs: What game mechanic would you get rid of?
- Estel Arador Corp Services, You've got mail
- Epic Slant, Let Mom and Pop Play: EVE Blog Banter #9
- Deaf Plasma's EVE Musings, Blog Banter #9 - Removal of Anchoring Delay of POS modules
- Podded Once Again, Blog Banter #9 - Do we really need to go AFK?
- Postcards from EVE, 2009.07.02.00.29.06
- Harbinger Zero, Blog Banter #9 – War Declarations & Sec Status
- Warp Scrammed, Blog Banter 9 – Never Too Fast
- Ecaf Ersa (EVE Mag), Can a Tractor Tractor a Can?
- Thoughts from an Accidental Minmatar Revolutionary, EVE Blog Banter #9 - Aggression timers, WTs and Stargates
- Mike Azariah, I don't put much stock in it...
- Rettic's Log, Blog Banter: Overview Overload
- A Sebiestor Scholar, [OOC] EVE Blog Banter #9: Slaves
- Diary of a pod pilot, [OOC] EVE blog banter #9: Because of Falcon
- Roc's Ramblings, Blog Banter #9 – Taking Things Slow
- The Gaming-Griefer, EVE Sucks, But I Love It: The Memoir of a Masochist
- Letrange's EVE Blog, Blog Banter #9: Bye Bye Learning Skills
- Lyietfinvar, Remove that monopoly
- Sceadugenga, Blog Banter #9
- Industrialist with Teeth, EVE Blog Banter #9
Thursday, 25 June 2009
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.
Sunday, 21 June 2009
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)
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)
Saturday, 20 June 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, 17 June 2009
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.
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.
Friday, 12 June 2009
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:
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.
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