OMG New Ship

So, we have a new ship. For PI.

It looks nice, and that’s about it. It’s almost exactly the same, functionality wise, as the Zephyr. It looks nice, it has a novelty or two but you’ll soon drop it for ANYTHING better. Unless you’re a trial account, who can’t use haulers. If that’s you, have fun with your 1600 command center bay and 1000 “PI bay”, cause you’ll have a heck of a time fitting anything in the 100 m3 cargohold, even with four low slots worth of expanders.

I’m a bit at odds with some people over new ships. On one hand, we don’t really need any. On the other, they’re really cool and you get that nice “new stuff in my game” feeling that isn’t a stripped down version of simcity or facebook.

Basically, for any given role in Eve, you’ve got the cheap option and the pricey option. If I want to haul through lowsec, I can drop 100 mil on an occator, 1 mil on a MWD and 6 mil on an improved cloaking device, or I can grab an itty V for less than a mil, another cloaking device and an afterburner for a mil. There’s a much greater chance I’ll splode, but it was cheap.

By the same reasoning, I can drop 20 mil on a nice interceptor, or I could throw about a mil at Jita and walk out with a tackle slasher. Any possible thing you want to do in Eve already has a cheap and expensive option, some with several of each. As much as I’d love a ship made of, say, gold and pudding, it wouldn’t cover any new ground because all the ground is already thoroughly covered.

So, being one of the few people who actually needs a Primae (forgot to train haulers on my alt and now can’t be asked), I’ll be hauling stuff, 1180m3 at a time, out of the customs office.


How to be an idiot

One of my favorite things to do in Eve is not to haul through low, not to scan, but to be an idiot for giggles. Here’s a sample chatlog that I’ll take you through in detail.

Casiella Truza > I love finding abandoned drones on gates.

Cas here is our unwilling straight man. Throughout the convo, he will make completely rational points. The goal is to confuse/annoy him to the point that it becomes funny.

haav0c > i love boiled peanuts and creme soda
haav0c > to each his own

I’ve started with a simple straight counterpoint to his “I love” statement.

Casiella Truza > ew.
haav0c > *rude gesture*
Casiella Truza > don’t blame me for your terrible taste
haav0c > no, i’ll blame you for your horrible taste
haav0c > boiled peanuts are the shiznit.

Boiled peanuts are nice, but I don’t defend them this fervently often. This is the first part of acting like an idiot, support a given topic fervently.

Casiella Truza > I dislike nuts and they sound high in sodium
haav0c > sodium is also the shiznit

Repitition of the word “shiznit” implies that I love high sodium intake as much as I love delicious boiled peanuts. This is the first inane statement, from which you develop from.

Casiella Truza > not when you have hypertension, it’s not :p
haav0c > i take it hypertension is not the shiznit?
Casiella Truza > aka “high blood pressure”
haav0c > that’s the bit where you’ve got the
haav0c > ohhh
Casiella Truza > heart attacks are definitively not the shiznit
haav0c > only if you’re not manly enough to defend yourself!
Casiella Truza > …

Now, here’s your first “dumbass” statement. A good statement is funny and cannot be justified in any way but the inane. Stay away from things actually defendable or you might rope someone in who will legitimately defend the claim, and that just gets awkward.

haav0c > i shall eat enough sodium to have a heart attack just so I can defeat it!
haav0c > just to show how manly I am.

“Manly” and it’s unquantifiable nature is the core of this specific stupid argument.

00sage00 > good luck
Casiella Truza > yeah, good luck with that.
Casiella Truza > can I have your stuff when you die?

00sage has entered the convo. Depending on what mood the third player is in, he’ll either play a second straight man or we can bounce ridiculous phrases off each other.

00sage00 > how about you stick your head under a semi’s wheel? you can really be manly about that

Alright, he’s not a second straight man.

haav0c > how exactly can you challenge a clogged artery to a duel?
00sage00 > 😀
haav0c > is there a wiki for that?
00sage00 > the wiki for RealLive(TM) is http://www.wikipedia.org
haav0c > doesn’t seem manly enough
haav0c > /emote trademarks “manlypedia,org”
Casiella Truza > do you define “manly” as “stupid”? >.>

O noes! Cas has figured it out! If you ignore the accusation, he will keep going back to it. Use inane logic to explain the situation and move on.

haav0c > it’s an odd coincidence that manly things can also be interpreted as stupid in almost all scenarios.
haav0c > It’s vital to my manliness that I look at it as manly and not stupid.
Casiella Truza > . . .
haav0c > or i’ll look stupid.
haav0c > for example!
haav0c > cutting off your own head with a chainsaw
haav0c > manly, yes?
Casiella Truza > no.
Casiella Truza > just stupid.
haav0c > it is.
haav0c > no, see, that’s the trick
haav0c > you musn;t think of it as stupid or you’ll be thinking the ENTIRE time “oh how silly i look”
haav0c > instead of “man, i’m so manly, I hope someone’s filming this”

Rationality: AVOIDED!

Casiella Truza > no, no, that’s just stupid. “being a good father”, now THAT’S manly.

The straight man plays his job too well. He’s gone into territory that may make you seem like an asshole if you say the wrong thing. Use inane logic to point out how his point is slightly good but you have several better ones.

haav0c > does being a good father involve…lifting heavy objects?
Casiella Truza > it certainly can
haav0c > copious amounts of women?
Casiella Truza > have you ever lugged a baby carrier around the mall?
haav0c > or a combination of the two?
haav0c > were you bench pressing the carrier in question?
00sage00 > too much of a woman
Casiella Truza > need not be copious, but at least one, by definition….
Casiella Truza > bicep curls.
haav0c > mmhm.
haav0c > not, say, juggling it?
haav0c > this doesn’t appear as the manlyest use of your time.
Casiella Truza > given that yesterday was Father’s Day, I’m just declaring being a good dad “manly” by fiat.
haav0c > try grimacing more.
haav0c > very manly.
haav0c > do you have a manly beard?
Casiella Truza > my 3yo colored on the walls yesterday, I was grimacing like John McClane
haav0c > you need at least two manly beards.
Casiella Truza > I had one until this weekend.
haav0c > more is preferable.
00sage00 > grimaces and beards do not make you manly
00sage00 > penises do

Thank you 00sage for changing the topic.

Casiella Truza > Bears have a weird mystical power.
haav0c > penises with beards?

Hint your support to the new topic!

00sage00 > python is manly
Casiella Truza > Beards too >.>
Casiella Truza > BEARDS ARE MANLY.
00sage00 > PENISES ARE MANLIER.
haav0c > INDEED
00sage00 > can you be manly without a penis?
00sage00 > nope
haav0c > it is very difficult
haav0c > what if you cut the penis off with a chainsaw?
Casiella Truza > Hmm. Point taken.
haav0c > we can all agree that would be very manly.
00sage00 > that would be unmanly
Casiella Truza > No, we cannot.
haav0c > hey, by your own words
haav0c > manly-stupid
haav0c > penisectomys=stupid
haav0c > penisectomys=manly.
00sage00 > penises = manly

Inane math can be used often, by the same logic as “if all A are B all B are A”

Casiella Truza > No, I said YOU define manly as stupid.
00sage00 > no penises = not manly
Casiella Truza > I do not.
haav0c > hmm
haav0c > maybe we need to define the baseline of manly.

Subject change!

haav0c > for example, lifting a car with a finger is manly.
haav0c > what is the most borderline manly thing?
Casiella Truza > /emote is manly.
haav0c > lifting half a car?
00sage00 > me
haav0c > hmm.
Casiella Truza > I thought 00 was a kid?
Casiella Truza > >.>

Danger! He’s trying to draw me and sage into the “you guys are young and unmanly” setup! Try to change the subject, and when that fails, quantify age as being no issue.

haav0c > he has numbers in his name, how could he possibly be a kid?
00sage00 > i’m a man too 😦
Casiella Truza > THAT’S WHY I THOUGHT HE’S A KID
Casiella Truza > because of the numbers.
haav0c > you’re not making much sense
Casiella Truza > having random 0s in your name tends to make me think you’re younger.

Fair play, straight man. Fair play.

haav0c > hmm.
Casiella Truza > And if 00 is a kid and a man, then he’s borderline, agreed.
haav0c > would a baby lifting a car be more manly than a man lifting a car?
haav0c > in that case, would being younger in fact be more manly?
Casiella Truza > just more freaky
haav0c > hmm.

I’m using math again, just without = signs.

haav0c > we can all agree that hypothetical all-powerful kung-fu geniuses are usually very old.
haav0c > but also badass
haav0c > and by that, manly.
haav0c > so, if we’ve established that a baby, old man, and lumberjack are all manly
Casiella Truza > um. Bruce Lee wasn’t very old.
Casiella Truza > In fact, he died young.

Fair point. Let’s get a counterpoint going.

haav0c > then manlyness has no age definition
00sage00 > you’re making this too complicated
00sage00 > penis size determines manliness
00sage00 > tada. end of discussion
haav0c > could bruce lee beat bruce lee if the second bruce lee trained for another year?
Casiella Truza > I think haav is younger than 00
Casiella Truza > osht then.
haav0c > thuse we conclude that bruce lee, if he were older, would be better at kung-fu
haav0c > THUS the most badass kung-fu dudes are old men.
haav0c > Q.E.D. manly has no age.

I’m not entirely sure what Q.E.D. means, but I’m fairly sure it means “I’m right you’re wrong”. Anywho, his counterpoint has been countered. Time for a subject change!

haav0c > thus, regardless of my age, when I defeat my own heart attack i shall be tha manlyest man ever
haav0c > by reason that it has never been done.
haav0c > if you need me, i’ll be buying sodium patches.
00sage00 > my grandpa survived two heart attacks

Great, now sage is playing the straight man, AND he’s made a possibly awkward point. Tread carefully.

haav0c > but did he DEFEAT them?
Casiella Truza > HE was manly.

Now the initial straight man clings to sage’s point. It is vital you defeat this!

haav0c > was he all like “man, that heart attack was coming at me with a knife, but I got the knife and killed im. twice”
Casiella Truza > surviving mortal enemies is defeating them.
haav0c > or was he “man, that heart attack got me with the knife but I’m OK now”
haav0c > can’t be, the heart attack came back a second time
haav0c > what if the heart attack tries to poison him?
Casiella Truza > new heart attack
Casiella Truza > sent to avenge the first.
Casiella Truza > it failed.
haav0c > mmhm
00sage00 > and obviously the heart attacks are now too scared
haav0c > supporting my previous hypothesis of manlyness having no age.

Since you failed to defeat the point, agree, but use inane logic, again, to make the point seem to support you. Subject change!

haav0c > hmm
haav0c > how many heart attacks would i have to defeat to be the manlyest man?
00sage00 > all of them
haav0c > like, what’s the highest number of heart attacks one person survived?
haav0c > of course, DEFEATING one heart attack is probably better than three, maybe four, survivals.
haav0c > again, how do i challenge a clogged artery to a duel?
haav0c > you guys arn’t being very helpful.
haav0c > I’ve tried yelling already.

Asking stupid questions is a good way to roll a straight man in so you can make an idiotic counterpoint.

00sage00 > you jump a freighter with officer mods into lowsec and watch me shoot it
00sage00 > boom, instant heart attack
haav0c > officer modding a freighter would be manly indeed.
haav0c > ah
haav0c > so, when I’m having the heart attack, THEN i yell at it
00sage00 > no, fill the freighter with mods
haav0c > genius!
haav0c > hmm…
haav0c > walgreens has no sodium patches.
haav0c > can i make them at home?
00sage00 > real men don’t use sodium patches
haav0c > of course!
haav0c > /emote looks for an IV drip
haav0c > thank you sage!
haav0c > I put the salt in the saucepan but it isn’t melting
haav0c > what’s the melting point of sodium?

stupid + dangerous = funny.

00sage00 > defibrilator may be better than an iv
Casiella Truza > AFK a bit.
haav0c > like, spread salt on the paddles?
haav0c > also afk
00sage00 > hi spec
haav0c > watching manly shows
Casiella Truza > SPEC I THOUGHT YOU LEFT AGAIN TODAY
Spectre3353 > lawl you took that seriously
Spectre3353 > L A W L
Casiella Truza > OHH EMM GEE
haav0c > quick, specter
haav0c > cutting off your own head is manly, right?

Since the argument has worn down, I’m trying to pull specter in, either as a straight man or a foil.

00sage00 > no it’s penis size!
00sage00 > cutting off the head would be like 15%
00sage00 > so you’d be 15% less manly

thank you sage.

haav0c > no, the thinking one.
haav0c > wait, let me clarify that
haav0c > the one with hair…no.
haav0c > the one with a nose.
haav0c > the head of a penis is only like 15%, true
Casiella Truza > okay, AFK for real now. lost my ship anyway.
Spectre3353 > yes
Spectre3353 > its manly
haav0c > thank you.
haav0c > had a bit of an argument.

At which point the argument has died. So, that’s how to be an idiot. Good grammer is preferable but unnecessary, almost any point can be defended, and even if no-one laughs SOMEONE is enjoying it. Usually, an unknowing straight man gets a smug sense of satisfaction that he’s smarter than someone else, and you can laugh at that if nothing else.

Fly into a brick wall.


no, YOU’RE a jerk

My childhood was fairly introverted.

That’s a bit of an understatment. I specifically remember a nice girl walking up to me back in elementary school and saying “I think you’re cute”. My brain responded with the thought “IT’S A TRAP”.

So, I was a bit of a shut in. The friends I made either changed schools or turned out to be complete jerks, my parents never loved me, yadda yadda yadda /wrists boo hoo.

Anyway, with this post I’d like to talk about the social aspect of Eve. Now, the difference between a single player game and a multiplayer game is the human element. So, I play single player Starcraft, I’m good at single player Starcraft, but regardless of what I type in chat I’ll never get a response. That’s really what’s gotten me bored with single player games in general.

Call it a dick waving competition, call it trolling, spamming, griefing, a multiplayer game is built on other players. And in general there’re two groups, with plenty of overlap: Jerks and friends. Adapting this from general multiplayer to Eve, you replace the classes with “people who shoot me on sight” and “people getting me to trust them so they can betray me later with no reprecussions.”

Apologies to the people I laugh with often, a good 70% of you have said you’d shoot, pod, and grief me on site. Yay Eve!

Anyway, Eve’s become a bit of a second social life. All attempts at merging my two groups of online friends and friends bound by the basic standard of human decency have gone horribly, with no Eve friends willing to move within walking distance of me and no nearby friends stick with Eve for more than a week.

I’ve made a post dedicated to recording “lol”s. Admitted, I haven’t updated it recently or much at all, but it’s there. I like to make people laugh, and the internet is basically the worlds biggest audience only they’re not allowed to throw things at you.

I’ve been griefed. I’ve been ganked. I’ve been every negatively-correlated word associated with harm or starting with “ge” you care to name. Through all of it, even as my ship explodes I try to get a laugh out of the killers/jerks. If I don’t get anything, not even a response, then it’s like being killed by a bundle of ones and zeros.

Way back, when UK wardecced my mining corp, I had an itty V full to bursting with stuff for my very first trip into WH space ever. I had been given a bookmark situated in a lowsec system 20 jumps away with a note that said “have fun”.

And UK was camping the station my Itty was in. (this was back before I knew what insta-undock points were.)

UK taunted me and all the other miners/pvpers that were in system. We taunted back, and after a few hours I managed to get the Itty out using a combination of luck, an alt in a second Itty V and several Itty Vs lost to U’K. At some point between Itty V #1 and #2, one of the U’K people mentioned that they weren’t allowed to talk in local. That really doesn’t make sense to me. Sure, in WH space talking in local makes at LEAST three sets of combat probes deploy looking for you, but in highsec there’s nothing lost, aside from pointing out that you’re not AFK, and the lasers had already made that pretty clear. I’ve heard things like “We want to appear professional and complete”, and that seems all well and good for some badass merc corp that wants to paint across the sky “We are professional and stuff please hire us so we get paid for shooting”, but where’s the fun in that? From a griefer’s perspective, what’s more fun, killing a hulk and him just sitting there or killing a hulk as he desperate tries to align and warp off but fails?

My point is, I play Eve less for the explosions and ISK, but for the people to laugh with. Is this some pathetic substitute for a social life or am I playing the game right?


Planetary Lovemaking

So, on the morning of Tyrannis, my alarm went off at the start of downtime. Like all the rest of the bandwagon nerds, I sat and waited while CCP toyed with my frustration, until I was finally able to get online. Since the skills were seeded, my freighter alt’s been training command center upgrades, my scan alt and pos manager have center upgrades and interplanetary consolidation to IV, w/ the scan alt also picking up advanced planetology III.

A comparison of no planeology skills vs advanced planetology III:

However, somewhere along the line I forget to get the scan alt into anything bigger than a frigate. So, while he can use level IV command centers, he couldn’t fit them in his ship and thus deploy them until I had made a pit stop for some meta 3 cargo expanders and stripped an old salvage catalyst.

With that minor hurtle over and the two litres of creme soda already half empty I started PI. Six to eight hours later, I had built all ten colonies, demolished two thirds of them, rebuilt them better, demolished half of those, rebuilt, ectera, until I got sick of placing links.

Still not happy with them, as my first road trip to jita revealed that I should be mainly focusing on t1 processing and leave t2 processing to the freighter alt. I’ll fix that once I can stand to look at a command center without having to stop myself from closing Eve.

Along with a year of NPC pos fuel (divided down to a month and a half amoungst eight poses), which was about 650 mil (I forget), about 1 bil of reaction profits and various sleeper bits (100 mil), I sold four days of PI material for about 40 mil.

So, profits a bit…meh, but no-one can say anything until the NPC buy and sell orders are removed. Which they have been. So no-one can say anything until the vast stockpiles run out and we start depending on PI to keep, well, everything running.

Again, I honestly didn’t expect much income if any from something with no upkeep besides clicking required to keep it running, but the number of clicks is ridiculous. I clicked so many times that my index finger grew a pair of wrists and started cutting itself in a misguided attempt to make me stop.

So, give it a week or four and we’ll see how the market reacts to the economic equivalent of getting a spin kick to the back of the legs.

P.S. Every time I think “hey, this would make a nice post”, Letrange has already covered it, more thoroughly than I could have from an analyzing standpoint. So, I’m a bit short of ideas. Suggestions?


fix the damn overview

Looking at the title, it looks like it might be a “Wah wah CCP fix this pls” post. It isn’t.

Incidentally, I support the “CCP fix this pls” thread.

As the previous post hinted at, I don’t pvp much. Generally, when someone I don’t know shows up on overview, my mentality is “can you flee? y/n” “y: flee” “n: die”.

So as you can imagine, I’ve never had to really screw with the more complicated overview settings until now.

Scanning for a WH to get PoS fuel to our…PoS, I find squat. To clarify, I’m obligated to only scan in systems my alliance has renters rights. With, on average, our “I make more WHs lulz” space upgrade giving us a 5% chance of a WH per system, this gives me a 15% chance to find a WH. So, once a week if I’m lucky.

Not being satisfied with 15% chance, I go over to our neighbors space (who are incidentally very nice and generous, forgiving people) and find a WH. Then another.

Four WHs later, I find a highsec WH. All of the WHs have been activated by me, so apparently they found a WH, and got through one, maybe two before going back to enjoying things in their nullsec.

So, I pop back out into the null system.

haav > Hey, where’s the guy that asked me to scan this WH? Oh well, who wants the BMs?

So, hand off the BMs to a few people or two and head out to get an industrial of pos fuel in. Everyone wins!

Anywho, I pop back out the highsec in my trusty itty V, when the WH flashes after I’ve gone through. dude neutral to me appears.

Let me stress that if a person you’re neutral to comes through the same WH you’ve gone through, nothing good can come of it.

So, to keep an eye on things, I get an alt on and have them watch the WH. The neut, in a caracal, sits with me. It’s like a mexican standoff, but without guns.

Watching the WH, a badger in the same corp as the neut appears off the WH. Then, a badger blue to me, in the alliance I gave the BMs to jumps through and appears next to me. THEN, the CEO of chained reactions, appears next to me.

So, we’ve got four corps staring at each other, each wondering what to do. For those unaware with how WHs work, here’s the dilemma:

The WHs are more than one WH deep. What this means is that once you warp off the initial WH, you have no idea what you’re up against and you can’t go O NOES THEY HAD MORE PEOPLE and jump back to highsec immediately. Since my corp has “industry” in its name, I don’t think I’m one of the major players, moreof a WH corp, a WH alliance and a nullsec alliance staring at eachother and wondering how many friends each person has, hidden of course by the lack of local.

I’m about to suggest a joke contest when the CEO of chained reactions opens fire on the badger. In his Loki. He immediately gets concorded.

Apparently he forgot it was highsec.

So, I fill my Itty V with PoS fuel, fit it entirely for cargo with an afterburner and an improved cloaking device thrown on. Why? That’s how I fly.
By the time haav gets back to the WH, everyone else has gone. While usually this would be cause for calm, I’m worried shiteless.

Eventually, I jump my alt into the WH and run her through. Clear. I then jump the itty V through the highsec WH and into the first C3. No-one uncloaks and tries to make me into a hood ornament. I overload the AB, align to the planet closest to the next WH and engage the cloak, disengage, warp, yadda yadda look up cloak-warping.

Land on the next WH, jump through. I am now officially in the ” If someone has a warp disrupter in my general direction, I’m screwd” zone.

Warping to the next WH, I misclick and warp to the planet nearest to the WH. Whooopsie.

So, warp from a dead stop to the WH, I realize I’ve forgotten to check directional. I open it, hit scan, and realize that I’m still starting to warp. I madly hit cancel…

“Too late, already in warp”.

The directional results come in.

Onyx.

CRAP!

And, thanks to Tyrannis, I can’t wuss-disconnect. So, land on the WH. Surprise surprise, there’s a negative standing pilot in an Onyx. Or, by its full name, “shit shit crap crap bubbled cancel warp nononononono HIC interdictor flee o no I can’t!”. No bubble tho, so I jump through and madly warp to the next WH, powered by sheer panic.

Two WHs later, I recall that the dude in the Onyx is, in fact, the dude that I gave the BMs to back in null.

./facepalm

We convo, have a good laugh, and I get the PoSes refuled. His blue standing to me was apparently overruled by his wanted status which I should probably fix, considering that I actually run into people who are blue on a regular basis.

This compared to WH space, where I ran into a blue once and never even saw him.

Fly how it suits you!