Category Archives: Opinion

Crossing Lines

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Poetic wrote a post about a former CSM candidate that is apparently a rather unpleasant person.  Corelin wrote a rebuttal and covered CCP’s decision regarding the issue.  I have no desire to elaborate more, as I do not want to give any more attention to this person, but it brought something back into the forefront of my mind that comes and goes.  That something is the language we use in Eve, and other games. I will not enumerate terms, as they are plentiful and pointless.  But one term, in particular, has become personally relevant to me.  In the world outside my computer, I am a married man with a wife who is extremely tolerant of my gaming habit.  She lets me play quite often, and even lets me schedule things around Eve once in a while so I can make it to a fleet or event.  I’ve never gotten the red-box of wife aggro, and for that I am grateful.  Some of you may think this is stupid, but to all the other married pilots out there, you understand how great it is when your partner lets you indulge in just a few more minutes of fake spaceships. One of Continue Reading →

Odyssey Mumblings, The First

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Odyssey is upon us.  As much as I’d love to make a crack a Jester’s great caravan of the stars, there are some other ideas I’d like to spin out a little.  With the hints in CCP’s release at PAX, there’s plenty of opportunity to speculate and put on our tinfoil hats!  I’ll put some posts up over the next few days regarding the topics announced in at PAX, and my thoughts regarding those topics.  Today I want to talk about exploration a bit. Discovery scanning.  We have no idea what it is.  I can hope that it is a system that makes the process of scanning sites down more enjoyable.  Currently the dedicated explorer is pigeon holed into a few core concepts.  You need a scanning ship, either a CovOps or a T3 fit properly.  If you are serious about beating the competition, you probably also have another account with a combat cruiser, again likely a T3, flying with you to jump into those sites as soon as you find them.  The choice of useful ships is rather limited, and the fitting requirements to take advantage of those ships narrows the selections even more.  The skills needed to fly Continue Reading →

Objects in Space

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Note: This is old material, sitting in my draft bin for a long period of time.  The links are also to the old articles that got me thinking. Why should ships log off when players log off?  This has always interested me in Eve.  My understanding of the current mechanic is that, aside from timers, if you log off while in space, you go into a “warp stasis”, where your ship is apparently in a pocket dimension that you mysteriously come back from when you log back in.  From a technical standpoint, I can sort of understand this.  There are already enough objects in space on the server.  But perhaps if you log off while in space, your ship should stay where you left it? This would fit with the ideas behind stations and POSes.  Stations are where you go to get out of your ship, get other ships, trade, and so on.  Stattions are also the only almost completely safe space in Eve.  No one can blow up your ship while it’s docked.  In space where stations do not exist, POSes fulfill this role with hangars and force fields.  Would anyone leave a valuable ship sitting in a WH Continue Reading →

CCP Bullcrap

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I have been blitzing L3 missions, trying to repair Caldari faction standing, and came across this: I’ve mentioned it before, but CCP really has some fun ways of making people want to not play their game.  In case it’s not obvious, I declined an anti-Gallente mission, as my goal is to get back to 0.0 for all factions, not tank one to raise the other.  And the response, after waiting out the decline timer, is to offer me the anti-Minmatar version.  With a taunt, no less. Great way to get me hitting the log-off button.

HMLs, HAMs, and The Crazy Physics of Eve

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There is a fun little debate over heavy missiles spawned CCP Fozzie talking about reducing range and damage of HMs.  Read the comments of that blog post for fun. At the crux of the argument seems to be the underlying strengths of various battlecruisers, the weapons they fit, and range.  In the interest of full disclosure, I fly Drakes and Tengus a lot, and usually they sport HMLs, either T2 or Faction flavors.  And I think the hatred of those two ships using missiles comes not so much from the damage projection as from the rather outlandish interplay of slot layout, cap usage, and the location of armor and shield tanking modules. I’m a relentless fit experimenter.  I love trying to come up with crazy tanks while still putting out enough DPS to complete L4 missions in something resembling a sane amount of time.  A common thematic problem I run into is the fact that a shield tanked ship, on average, can almost always get a better tank and a better gank because of the slot layout when designing to PvE activities as compared to an armor tank.  Some ships buck this trend when you factor in drone bonuses, but Continue Reading →

Back in the Saddle

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This last week or so is the first time I’ve had to dedicate some solid time to Eve since early May!  Life got busy. I was living with my now, but not at the time, parents-in-law.  You can infer from the previous that I am now a married man.  I moved across the country twice.  I am also ramping up into a master’s project for my program, so a bit of time was poured into that!  I also developed a small Minecraft/Tekkit addiction that the wife’s father could at least understand, so it seemed more acceptable as leisure with the computer in a public space.  That said, and back to Eve: A lot has changed. On the individual front, 4 months of afk training has given me the ability to sit in a new T3, all the T2 hulls skills below battleships, T2 projectiles and hybrids, and a lot more skills overall.  I’m about a month from being able to fly every sub BS ship in the game, and fit them almost appropriately.  That’s after… about 31 million SP.  It’s rather interesting to log in, look at my skills, and see not a long list of what needs to be Continue Reading →

Inferno First Impressions

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The Good The new missile launchers are very pretty.  Staggering launchers is now really fun! The Wardec screen is much more legible. All the new screen revamps look pretty. Most of the new SB models look nice. Once you get used to it, looting no longer has the slight movement every time you get to a new wreck. The Bad Right clicking on a corp in the wardec screen only gives “Declare Mutual” and no option to “Show Info”.  That’s frustrating. It is now much harder to see into two “containers” at once, such as your ship’s hold and a loot can.  Grr.  Shift clicking is an extra step.  I didn’t try it, heard it works, we’ll see.  It’s still an extra step… The new Tree structure on the Inventory eats screen real estate.  This is challenging when you open, say, Inventory, Market and Wallet screens to manage market orders. The Inventory takes longer to load.  Not good. The “ghosting” effect of text in the new inventory.  It’s harder to read.  The Ugly The missile launchers on my Tengu.  I would really like to see either larger wings with an over/under turret placement, or place them in a nice line Continue Reading →

Adding Weight to Wars

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After reading a lot of post about wardec changes, and thinking about the new v the old systems, and then digging into my own thoughts, I keep finding myself asking:  What is the point of War Declarations in High Sec? At the core, a war dec allows Corp A to pay a penalty (isk), and in exchange Corp A gets a free pass to kill anyone in Corp B for a period of time.  Simple enough, you are paying to suspend the normal rules of the game.  But what is the point of this suspension of rules?  It is clear for Corp A, if ship destruction and loot, or the more esoteric value of tears are considered valuable.  Corp B gains very little.  A change to learn how to harden up, possibly get some kills or loot, or a chance to sit in a station for a week to hopefully bore the attackers into not paying for more rule suspension.  Oddly imbalanced no matter how you look at it.  And if you have made it this far, I promise there is an actual point to MY ramblings on this topic. What is missing in this whole equation of war decs Continue Reading →

Fail Fits and Rookies

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Edit: A commenter noted that I am wrong about the tutorials teaching players to use multiple tank types.  This is very probably right.  I do no think that alters my fundamental point. Read this over at Poetic, and the comments.  Always a fun time, reading the comments.  I’m torn on how to handle fail fits.  I’m sure I have some fail fits that I like, elite players be damned.  I also want to laugh at fail fits.  But then I wonder, did that fail fit player buy some PLEX and go nuts, only to get his investment all blowed up and not understand why?  And why do so many people ignore advice from those that blew them up?  Questions without answers.  But one thing could be done. CCP could make the tutorials actually teach people about fits instead of having tutorial missions that encourage fail fits in a roundabout way.  I’m talking about those starter tutorial chains that give you a frigate, then give you an armor repper, then give you a shield booster.  And each mission tells you to use that specific module.  Not very good.  Arydanika talked about this on her blog a few weeks or months ago Continue Reading →

Escalating Your Inferno

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Aside from the 30 Day Market Challenge I have not been as active in Eve this month because I am trying to find a job, and my spring semester is ending, hence finals…  Oh the life of a grad student.  But here are some off the hip thoughts on the Escalation. Flashing Lights I got to see the new status effects in the flesh today while running missions.  It is a very nice addition, and it makes easier to tell if that stupid frigate is webbing me (not that important) or scramming me (more concerning).  Also, as I tend to mission in Caldari boats seeing any sort of target painting or an inept npc tracking disruption is entertaining.  C’mon pirates, a Drake already has a sig the size of Ohio, and a Tengu gives no shits about your turret effects. Looting the Corpses Also in missions, I find the loot drop changes to be very nice when I salvage.  Instead of ignoring the drops until I get around to refining/selling/whatever, I get excited when I see a pile of named mods gloriously uncluttered by other junk.  I almost wonder if it would be worth CCP just taking out the metal Continue Reading →