bloggedy blog blog #14

Posted: 2010-01-14 | Author: | Filed under: eveonline | Tags: , , , | 2 Comments

Welcome to the fourteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com.

The first banter of 2010 comes to us from the EVE Blog Father, CrazyKinux himself, who asks the following:
As we begin another year in New Eden, ask yourselves “What Now?” What will I attempt next? What haven’t I done so far in EVE? Was it out fear, funds, or knowledge? Have I always wanted to start my own corporation, but have never dared doing so? Is there a fledging mercenary waiting to come out of its shell? Or maybe an Industrialist? What steps and objectives will I set myself to accomplish in order to reach my ultimate goal for this year? EVE is what you make of it. So, what is it going to be for you?

So far, in my Eve life, I completely ignored the trial and spent five conceding trial accounts learning how to play until I gave up and ran the tutorial.

Anyway, so far, I’ve done the following, in order:

Mined in highsec
Mined in lowsec
Mined in nullsec
Mined in wormhole
ninja salvaged
Ran missions. a bit.
Started authoring for a blog

What I want to do:
Fly a carrier
Fly a dread
Fly tech 2 gallente cruisers
Fly command ships
Get a hulk to maxed yield
Establish and run a nullsec PoS
Be involved in a nullsec corp in some form.
Actually get around to PvP
Figure out how to research
Figure out how to invent
Start up a hulk production line
Buy a covetor BPO
fly assault ships
legitimately kill someone else(currently at 0 kills 35 losses)

I have been stopped by time and money and experience insofar.
So, to do list, in order:
learn how to research things
learn how to invent things
buy a Covetor BPO
invent a bunch of hulk BPs in the WH
Sell the hulk BPs and use the profits to buy tech 2 parts, squirrel them back to the WH
Build hulks in the WH, move them out for profit.
Use the profit to buy a rattlesnake, fly around the stars enjoying the combination of heavy drones and missiles, my two favorite things.
lose the rattlesnake in some sort of epic fighting, possibly manage to kill a rifter or something.
use the vast social network established by this point to set up moon mining PoSes, start cranking out hulks, sell them, do whatever the heck I want to, forever.

Crazy Genius!

Posted: 2010-01-11 | Author: | Filed under: eveonline | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 15 Comments

is what I’d like to refer to myself to as, but with my current self-esteem issues the closest I can get is “Lucky Idiot” in that most of my incredibly stupid ideas work out in an awesome way. I think this is the result of my analytical mind complimented with Attention Deficit Disorder, so I think of crazy ideas, then make them plausable, then convey them in a humorous enough way that everyone is attracted enough to actually think about it and maybe do it, see my afterburner/orca and ECM hulk ideas.

Alright, the ECM hulk didn’t work out very well, but my idea to fit low-friction nozzles to help us run away faster instead of cargo optimizers was a great idea and now everyone in our WH has them >.>

My point is, most of these ideas are gems while a goodly percent turn out to be ridiculous. With that in mind, here is my latest silly idea:

Because all the gankers in hulkageddon need minerals to buy ships to kill us, let’s hold off on selling minerals for a week or two. This may actually help megacyte’s current price.

No, that isn’t actually my idea nor the idea I had in mind. THAT idea is, *drumroll*, Static WH mining.

People will say that WH space is completely random and silly, and use the analogy that K-space is an empty glass and WH space is a pile of BBs you just poured into the glass. And you enjoy shaking the glass every 24 hours and listening to the people living in the BBs curse.
Anyway, that’s not necessarily true. WH space is really like a three dimensional series of orbiting spheres interlocking, rotating at different speeds, which, if someone ever actually mapped that thing, would look insanely beautiful and would probably help a lot of WH miners and such.
Oh look, there goes my brain, feeling euphoric at the possibility of learning how to program something like that.
Anyway, what that analogy was talking about is that some/all WHs have static links, I.E. whenever you scan, you are guaranteed to find a WH leading to that type of exit. If the WH leading to that type closes through whatever means, a new link will be established to another WH of that type.

Another bit you need to understand is site despawning. Once you completely shoot/mine/explore the crap out of any specific site, it vanishes next downtime. As you do whatever to more and more sites in one specific WH, the sites spawn slower and slower until you’re stuck sitting there watching Stargate SG-1 reruns until a new grav spawns in a week or so.

Anyway, here’s my idea: Since we’re currently in a C5 with a static C6, why not mine the gravs in the static? That way, we’ll never run outta sites and have nigh infinite ore available. Here’s how I think this will play out:
We find a C6.
We move an orca and a few BSs into the WH, the Orca sets up a PoS with some guns while the BSs open a grav site.
The BS pilots go back to the pos in the C5 and get hulks(or Covetors) and mine in the C6, while the orca pickups and drops the ore in the small pos corp hangar, and once the op is done, the miners use T1 industrials to haul the ore out through the WH to preserve the integrity.
The orca has scan ships and/or a probe launcher fitted in case of the second worst case scenario or less:
Worst case scenario: we lose 6 Covetors and a fully insured Orca. Losses: not very much.
Second worst case scenario: we lose the mining ships and the orca gets locked down in the small pos, attackers wait it out and close the link to the C6 from the C5.
Counter: the orca warps to a safespot and cloaks/and or logoffskis. Logon/decloak later and scan an exit.
Note that this has to be done AS the hulks are being destroyed >.>

Stupid idea? Really stupid idea? Stopped reading halfway through because of the stupidity? Genius idea? Already thinking of ways to counter it? Tell me!

P.S. Orca with a scan ship fitted to it… hehe… that gave me an image of an Orca with a buzzard welded to the side…

Edit: corp mate gave me the idea of using a BC for boosting in hostile WHs, eliminating the need for a PoS and reducing losses, if an itty V, myrm and 6 covetors are use for mining, to…lessie…
6 covetors: 10 mil to fully insure
1 myrmadon: 30 mil.
1 rigged itty V: 30 mil
so 120 mil if we get completely screwed, compared to
6 hulks: 1.2 bil
rigged orca: 400 mil
so 120 mil minimum risk for obscene profits.

Hulkawhat?

Posted: 2010-01-08 | Author: | Filed under: eveonline | Tags: , , , | 29 Comments

Warning: contains small amounts of miner whine. Drink responsibly.

So, apparently Hulkageddon II or whatever started today, or yesterday, depending on what time zone you live in, what time zone it was based off, I really wasn’t paying much attention.

Sometimes, I really like mining in WH space. Sure, someone could kill you at any moment, but the chance of it happening is much, much less than two dudes drunk in catalysts alpha striking your ass back down to covetor, financially, while giving them enough ISK from insurance and your modulated strips to do it all again to the point of organizing a contest based around screwing dudes over.

So, some dude said one day “Hey, let’s make other people’s lives miserable and hide it behind a facade of killing macrominers, requesting that the insurance system be fixed, and the words ‘arr’ and ‘allah ackbar'”. And apparently, all the people who joined him on this had so much fun that they said they should have a second one. Which they did. And then they kicked a puppy to get the puppy to whimper at them while they kicked his puppy friends too.

I know that mining barges, are, by design if not name, mining ships. I know that since they far outstrip(Pun intended) all other ships in terms of sheer minage ability. But does that really mandate a complete lack of defensive abilities and less offensive capacity than a tech one frigate?

A hulk has, base, approximately 7k EHP. You can tank that to the point that it can hold against most nullsec rats without much expense or spend a hellovalot and get it to tank all nullsec rats, but you won’t because the only reason you’d do that is if you either didn’t have a combat ship in the null system or you wanted to AFK in nullsec, two choices that would immediately drop-kick you back to a starting systems.

I know that I’m not the first person to whine about this, but when I get warp scrambled in a hulk, I take my hands off the keyboard. There is absolutely nothing I can do, offensive or defensive, that will prolong the combat enough for anyone friendly to step in and save me. Attempts at fitting an ECM hulk have gone horribly, since the ONE situation where I was in a situation where a hulk was being tackled, I locked the offending Loki, engaged the ECM and watched as absolutely nothing happened.

The concept of a Hulk is, bluntly, a ship that’s slow as hell, tankless as hell, unoffensive as hell, slow to align as hell, with basically every possible stat set to the lowest and boosting mining ability to the very highest.

Am I crazy, or does anyone else think that a Hulk, currently a 190 mil ship, shouldnt be able to be killed for under a mil, reward the killer with 7 mil, on average, worth of modules and payout 4-10 mil, depending on insurance, to the killed?

I mean, hell, letting strip miners do some damage would mollify me. It wouldn’t have to be much damage, just enough for me to think “HA, I can hurt you a little before I explode” instead of “Oh, I’m scrammed. Time to make a sandwich”.

I realize that I’ve kinda shot myself in the foot for almost ignoring the hulk’s dronebay, but when was the last time you felt threatened by five hobgoblins?

Alright, that would be a bit threatening…. Checking EFT, five hobgoblin IIs is…85 dps for me. So, in the fifteen seconds it takes to kill me, I can seriously threaten anyone with 1240 EHP or less. Boo.

Also, I’m sure this question has been asked and answered, but why kill miners? Be forewarned, any answer that sounds like “FOR MINER TEARS LIKE THIS ONE YUM YUM SLURP SLURP” or similar will be met with extended metaphors talking about kicking a puppy to listen to the whines. Dude, why would you kick a puppy? Unless it was a pomeranian one. That, I could sympathize with. For the non-dog-fanatics, Pomeranians are the small yappy dogs that are balls of fur with a face, bred for long, silky hair and a tendency to bark at anything percieved as a threat. Which is everything. Which gets EXTREMLY annoying when you’re the neighbor of someone with not one, but two Palmeranians that won’t shut up at one in the morning.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, we just got the first snow of the season so I shall be trying to carve a snow-hulk.

Edit: first attempt went horribly, as did later attempts to make a snow-capsule.

The problem with immersion

Posted: 2010-01-05 | Author: | Filed under: eveonline | Tags: , , , , | 10 Comments

It’s been a while since any talk of walking in stations, so I thought that I’d stir up the riverbed.

The problem and fix, in CCPs esteemed opinion, is that players think of their ship as their avatar, and to fix that they’re going to give us all 3D avatars of whatever characters we made at the beginning of our respective careers, presumably wearing the same face that you see in profile, which should lead to some interesting in-station conversations with someone constantly looking to your right.

Anyway, I’d like to say that walking in stations is a horrible idea in any way it could be implemented, but I’m confident that CCP has thought of something I haven’t and everything will work out. Based on the information I have currently, however, I’m fairly certain Incarna is going to be horrible.

The first, and most glaring issue I have is the trade system. Currently, you dock and whatever items you wish to buy or sell are magically sold and/or bought, the moment you dock.

Magically.

In a walking in stations world, you would have to leave your ship and walk to the market, and perhaps stop by the gift shop on your way out. This will only serve to add another step to the buy low, fly somewhere, sell high process, alternatively the buy at high prices, go off and get killed, buy another damn ship process. I think that the twitchy ADD sufferer in all of us will agree that adding more steps to any process that must be accessed several times a day will become irritating.

Alternatively, CCP could visualize the mountain of complaints from the twitchy people and make it so that you wouldn’t have to leave your ship for trading, ensuring that 95% of the people would never leave their ships, since the only reason they docked in this station out in the boondocks was for the cheapest vexor in the region. Considering this would be the equivalent of hiding all the work they’ve been doing on this project for who knows how many years under a black tarp,  I’d guess that most of the designers would stick their hands in icelandic/russian/shanghai beehives (second and third varieties exceptionally painful, bees that can make hives out of metal and ice sound scary as hell)  before not making us notice the work they’ve been doing.

After watching the minute twenty second section of CCP talking about walking in stations last fanfest(@ 53:00), I was filled with more doubt. On the first point of running your own establishment:

Why?

If you want to sell something, you make it as visual and as available as possible. In Eve, this generally means logging in every few hours, cancelling your sell orders and relisting them as .01 ISK less than the jerk who undercut you by .01 ISK. You do not bury your stuff inside a station and make someone walk there by themselves when they are already trying to buy that nanite paste and get out as fast as they can. Now, if they used the establishment as, say, a trophy room, that could work.

Hunting NPC outlaws:

With what? Will my gunnery skill translate into a pistol? Will I have five hobgoblin IIs following me wherever I go?(If so, walking in stations is going to be BADASS). Or will I use some sort of diplomacy to convince someone with a bounty on their head to turn themselves in? Again, either it’s not as profitable as ninja salvaging or something else that a new char could do, and no-one does it, or it is more profitable and people do it and complain about how silly it is.

Gambling:

That Eve poker thingy. Already have it. Alternativley, this might actually work, assuming there’ a craps table that has billions of ISK in liquid form for when that rich dude finally wins.

I admit, the option to walk around gleaming steel and see others walking around, maybe talk to them, and possibly have to walk to the clone bay will be pretty immersive, but again, all it’s doing is adding unnecessary steps to the standard processes we use today. I’m open to walking in stations being a good plan but it seems less and less likley the closer it comes.

Orgres and Wardens and Gardes, oh my

Posted: 2010-01-03 | Author: | Filed under: eveonline | Tags: , , , , , | 6 Comments

As my skillbook would tell you, I fly gallente frigates, gallente cruisers, battlecruisers and gallente BS. Also caldari frigates, but that doesn’t really relate at the moment. Regardless, I have hull upgrades V and armor compensation at III across the board. The problem I have, tho, is offensive capability. As a Miner, I’m getting my ABC skills to IV but after that, I’m going over to improve my drone skills.

Bty, this has nothing to do with me getting completely outdpsed by the new guy with his shiny Ogre IIs last sleeper site.

I’ve got drone interfacing at IV, combat drone interfacing at IV, scout drone operation at IV, Sentry drone operation at II(facepalm) and Heavy drone operation at II(double facepalm). I’ve been told by various older players to train drone interfacing to V first, and the 20% damage bonus makes me agree. But what after that?

In the WH, sleepers target drones first, so having sentries seems better over ogres since you can recall them instantly as opposed to pressing recall and watching it explode 6km away from you, reducing your dps by a fifth.

But are sentries better in other applications? WHs are fun, but if CCP, I dunno, starts enforcing their “no WH long habitation” and make PoSes run out of fuel four times faster or make WHs show up on the overview or something, I’d like to have a fallback plan.

Anyway, which is better for missions, fleet fights and gang PvPing, sentries or heavys?

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