Caldari Navy Ibis: Noob Adventures in New Eden

A.E.

2008-05-06T10:02:00.003+01:00

I guess it is inevitable, but I hate the way that whenever someone from Goons or her allies posts about Titans anywhere there are several posts saying it's because they couldn't beat BoB or whatever. Come on guys, keep that shit in CAOD. Contrary to popular belief, there are a lot of very intelligent people in Goonswarm. Do not confuse "I don't like them" with "they are stupid", please.

Now having said that, I'm going to put myself on the line a little and say I am a goon (even if this character isn't) and I do think Titans are a little overpowered. This is not me crying about not being able to beat them (hell, I'm so new that practically everything beats me except for maybe shuttles and Ibises) but I do think there is an issue with them currently.

Now I say currently because a part of the problem is lag. Were it easier to actually warp out when you saw a Titan on grid with you, you'd stand a more reasonable chance of being able to get out. The issue is that Titans are often used when there is already relatively heavy lag and you often find yourself not able to escape. I'm sure that as CCP put more work into the new technology to reduce lag, it will become less frustrating to see a Titan on grid with you as you'll no longer have that sickening feeling of certain death.

However it's not all lag. There have been many proposed solutions, some better than others and I will address some of them from my opinion here.

Make it harder to build Titans.
This is occasionally bounced around as people fear the proliferation of Titans. People envisage a time where each large space-holding alliance has dozens of Titans, effectively making it impossible to ever take a cynojammed system again. While I don't fully agree with the doomsayers, it will become a problem if left as-is with current POS warfare mechanics. However, I don't think it's necessary to make it harder to build them as this will only further cement the issue of those who currently own one being far superior to those without. This idea will blunt proliferation of Titans but not entirely stop it and it's probably unfair to those who are currently without.

Make the Doomsday Device a focused-fire shot rather than affecting the whole grid.
Another popular option which does have some merit, but one that ultimately removes a lot of the combat-usefulness of Titans. It would, in my opinion, be a shame to give more reason for them to be logistics outposts rather than combat vessels. It's a neat idea and having the option to choose to either one-shot a capital or nuke an entire fleet of sub-capitals does remove the whole "won't be used in combat" issue to a degree, but I still fear that unless very well balanced, you won't see the cap-shot option used too much. Why kill one Mothership and leave yourself vulnerable to all those Dreadnoughts sitting beside it?

Increase the risk of using the Doomsday.
The other main option seems to be this one, albeit in various forms. The problem with Doomsdays is largely that they are not particularly prohibitive to use and so they are used often. My favourite of these is this:

- There is a countdown timer set between activating the module and it firing of around two to three minutes.
- From the moment the countdown is started, there is a warp-disruption field around the titan (maybe 150km or so).

This means that people will need to decide whether to evacuate the area in advance, leaving their Titan vulnerable for a few minutes, or keep the support nearby and risk having them die to the Doomsday.

Generally, I like the idea of firing your Doomsday having a form of risk attached to it but, having said that, killing a Titan should still be an absolutely epic achievement. We shouldn't see them getting killed left, right and centre, so the increased risk would have to, in my opinion, maintain the "oh my god we actually killed a Titan" factor, which makes this option incredibly difficult to balance and implement.

Make Titans susceptable to Electronic Warfare.
The ability to jam a Titan and stop it from using its Doomsday should be incredibly hard, but possible in my opinion. In order to balance this, I believe a new module or even class of ship is preferable to a blob of Blackbirds with racial jammers. A Titan Jammer could have different properties, perhaps making it hard to fit or with reduced chances of success, whereas trying to shoehorn in different jamming mechanics with current jammers just seems like a nightmare. It also addresses the fact that a Doomsday doesn't require targetting whereas current jammers are set up to block targetting. A specific module would certainly be preferable for this option, in my opinion.

Make velocity a factor in Doomsday damage.
Currently, unless I'm mistaken, the damage you take from a Doomsday is unaffected by the normal things that would prevent damage. If velocity (not transversal, that doesn't quite make sense to me) or signature radius or the like helped to reduce damage then damage would be more proportional to your chosen ship class. It should still be hard to "tank" a Doomsday, but giving some of the smaller ships a fighting chance of survival can't hurt, especially if they are either fast-locking ships that can prevent it cloaking straight afterward or Dictors/Hictors able to tackle it. I know some ships are able to survive a Doomsday already, but maybe something other than effective hitpoints can help here?

Anyway, I think the conclusion I have drawn from going over the suggestions above is that there is no easy solution. People who post saying "nerf Titans" or whatever would do well to go over the options themselves and look for the challenges in each, as well as the benefits. Right now, it should be clear from the above what I personally believe the options are but I assure you that I had no preconceptions of the "best" answer going into this. I find it odd that the options I favour are the ones less often discussed on eve-o and perhaps that is a result of sitting and thinking through it logically over the space of a few hours.

No doubt, however, this will be met with some people thinking I'm either a crying goon or the "we know the game mechanics better than you" posse giving me grief for not knowing every facet of how things work (because we all know game mechanics and game balancing are the same, right? :rolleyes:). I don't care; think what you like. These are just my thoughts on the issue and I don't plan to go banging on CCP's door demanding change.

Discussion very welcome, with the usual caveat that I would appreciate a higher caliber of post than on EVE General Discussion.

The New Atlantis?

2008-05-01T16:08:00.002+01:00

So, BACON huh? It certainly seems to have ruffled a few feathers and that's for sure.

Part of me wonders if its authors are actually doing it to try and force CCP's hands in terms of doing something about local, like those hackers that write programs that exploit security gaps in Windows not out of malice but to force Microsoft to address the issue. Part of me does.

The other part of me is just a little... well, disappointed I guess. The thing is, the harsher the penalty becomes for losing in a game, the more likely it becomes that people will do things to get around the issue. In that sense, perhaps something like BACON was inevitable. That said, I still think it's a shame. I don't think it's doing anything wrong as such and I don't think it will bring about the death of all small-gang PVP / gank squads as, come on, most EVE players don't pay anywhere near enough attention to eve-o to find it and even fewer are going to actually use it.

What irks me about it though is the fact that it really just encourages semi-afk gameplay. I'm as guilty of the next person of occasionally taking a couple of minutes to read something on the internet when I know I should be dilligently gatecamping and watching my overview but that comes with an inherent risk - you place your fate more directly in the hands of your FC alerting you to what needs to be done. BACON effectively automates one of the most basic parts of being an FC which is to make sure you're paying attention when you need to be paying attention.

Whether CCP will do anyhting about it or not remains to be seen and if they eventually deem it a 'legal' use of the logserver then I'm sure we'll all find our way around it and adapt, but not before I've ended up reading a billion horrible threads in General Discussion. I've said it before but I hate that place. Why I read it at all is beyond me.

On that note, today has also seen a number of unfunny parody threads. The one called EGGS was actually relatively amusing, I'll give it that but what has happened is four billion people have all decided to make the exact same thread but with other things related to fried breakfasts. Is it really that hard to post something even vaguely original? :argh:

In other news, I'm very close to getting my hundredth kill on my PVP character now, after less than two months' existence. I really don't care about K/D ratios and other stuff, but as a milestone of sorts it's something I'm proud of. I can now even enter some fights without dying and I genuinely feel I'm getting much better at PvP, which is a great feeling.

Anyhoo, that's enough for now. I have some more pictures to put up soon as it's been a while since I have. I also plan to finally finish the desktop wallpaper I'm making out of some of the Tournament pictures that the awesome Mr Winterblink was kind enough to send me, so I will gladly share once that's done and I'm happy with it :)

New post coming soon (tm)

2008-04-18T11:11:00.002+01:00

Wow, it's been almost a month since I last posted here. Strangely enough, it's been about a month since I started my goon account and I've found myself playing Mertannia less and less ever since. I've been keeping up-to-date with training etc (she's on her way to being able to fly a covops right now) but something about the excitement of Delve right now keeps me there rather than in Empire.

In a way I feel quite sad - Mertannia's in an amazing corp with great people and until I decided to try PvP I was having an absolute blast on that account. It's just that now I've seen what else the game can offer I rather feel like I've found my calling and I just can't bring myself to run missions any more.

All of which has conspired to present me with a predicament. As I see it my options for Mertannia are:

1. Get Caldari Battleship V on the go and allow the account to lapse while I work out what I want to do.

2. Keep the account for those desperate isk-scraping moments and use it to fund my PvP account.

3. Dedicate some time to it and try new Empire-related things such as exploration or invention or something.

4. Move Mertannia into a 0.0 corp and possibly begin to specialise as a hauling / mining / covops alt (or maybe just start working toward it being a carrier alt or something).

I honestly don't know but I'd be very interested to hear from anyone who found themselves faced with a similar predicament and what they did, whether it be something like one of the things above or something else I haven't thought of. For the first time in EVE, I feel like I have a genuinely big decision to make and it's proving really rather difficult for some reason.

Answers on a postcard!

Council of Stellar Management - Open Questions for Candidates

2008-03-27T15:09:00.005Z

Frankly, I don't know any of the candidates well enough to know who I would vote for, but the idea intrigues me nonetheless (perhaps more so, even). That said, I am a firm believer that if you are given a vote and a voice then it is your responsibility to ensure it is used so I do intend to vote.

Earlier, I thought up some questions. They may be a bit tough to answer in places, but they are all things I am genuinely interested in hearing people's responses to. I'm publishing the questions here in the hope that I can reach all of the candidates. I plan to also post them on campaign websites / blogs I come across but if you have seen this first or I simply hadn't got in touch yet then it'd be great if you were willing to take the time to respond to them.

If you do want to respond, I really don't mind how you do it. Feel free to comment here, copy/paste to your own blog or site or post them on eve-o - it matters to me not. If you'd like to only answer some or re-order them for clarity then that's also cool. Other than the questions that I happened to think up, consider it carte blanche on if/how you want to answer.

Anyway, without further ado, here are the questions:

Who are you and what do you primarily do in EVE?

Can you give an example, either from real life, from EVE or from another MMO of when you've had to remain objective in an issue that negatively affects you or someone close to you?

How did you react to that situation? Is there anything you feel you could have done better, now that you have the benefit of hindsight?

As a pure example, imagine you were in Alliance A and a proposed change in game mechanics would be beneficial to your corp and allies but disadvantageous to your enemies, Alliance B who happen to outnumber you 3:1 in membership. How would you disasociate yourself from the pressures you might feel and ensure you are giving fair and unbiased representation of the player-base? How easy is it to put personal feelings aside?

As a delegate to the CSM, what expectation of privacy and anonymity do you have? Using the example above, even the announcement of a unanimous vote without specifics could still cause Alliance A members to feel resentment toward you if they became aware that you had voted for an issue that ultimately benefitted your enemies in-game. How would you deal with potential backlash from friends and allies if you vote against what they believe is right?

Again using the example above, what would you do if you suspected that a fellow councillor was abusing their position to try and manipulate decisions to their benefit, how would you address that issue and what do you feel you would need to be cautious of when doing so?

I'm aware that you probably haven't had the opportunity to gather feedback at this stage, but if you were to pick three topics right now that you feel genuinely warranted being brought to CCP's attention, what would they be and why?

While we're talking about feedback, is there any primary medium you believe you will use for gathering it?

When reading EVE General Discussion to look for pertinent issues for the community, what one criterion would you feel was the absolute most important in deciding whether something is worthy of further discussion or not? Why?

Do you believe the CSM's role is to be exclusively about in-game issues (or those which affect in-game issues such as abuse of Dev powers) or do you think there will be some effect on the community side of EVE such as, for example, EVE TV, Alliance Tournaments, Fan Fest, etc?

Please sum up the key messages of your candidacy in 100 words or less.

Anything else you'd like to add?

# Suicide is painless #

2008-03-25T13:10:00.003Z

My friend has been playing EVE for a couple of months more than me and he's always joked about coming down to blow me up. The other night, we arranged for him to come to me in his PvP Drake and we'd have a battle to half-armour.

Figuring that even if I brought my own Drake, he'd probably have the DPS and Tank advantage on me with his extra skillpoints, I fitted out a Blackbird with some Caldari jammers, a sensor booster, a small tank and some heavy missile launchers. Seemed like it might be a good fight if I could make it past his tank (albeit slowly).

I suggested a nearby 0.4 system we could go fight in, but he said to meet him in a 0.7 system as if we were in a gang together it'd be fine. So I warped to him, he sent a volley my way just before I stuck on the jammers.

Then all of a sudden, from out of nowhere a blob of CONCORD appeared and immediately vapourised his Drake.

Maybe he was wrong about the "if you're in a gang" thing, maybe it was something changed recently by CCP or maybe it was a genuine glitch. Regardless, it was incredibly amusing to watch. After months of telling me he's going to gank me, we finally get around to meeting up and he lasts about five seconds.

Anyway, no real point to this post other than to say I was highly amused.

Allahu Ackbar!

# Down time, things'll be great when there's down time #

2008-03-13T11:19:00.002Z

I've been playing EVE for what, two months or so and even I know that when there's a patch you set extra long skills in case it takes longer than advertised. It's not complicated.

So this post is pretty much just to laugh at those pre-Trinity and even pre-Revelations people who are now rabbling away about lost training time because they set a skill to finish seven minutes after the extended downtime was due to end.

Me personally? I had Caldari Cruiser IV going (due to finish some time tomorrow morning, I think) on this account and Gallente Frigate V (due to finish in just over a week) on my goony goon goon alt.

But in order to keep in the spirit of Patchmas, I want an extra day subscription, I want CCP to have auto-finished my skills for me (love that one), I want some extra skill points to distribute as I wish. Oh and for a little tinfoil hattery, I hear they're going to roll back the database so that BoB has a cynojammer in QY6 again. You heard it here first, guys :P

Rough Trade

2008-03-10T21:15:00.004Z

Something that caught my eye today is this thread on eve-o.

Some time ago, I bought a book called One Red Paperclip to read on a train journey. I'd heard about this guy's blog before vaguely, but the book really puts it into a better perspective than the short news article ever could.

Basically, this guy got one single red paperclip and traded it with someone for a pen. He then traded the pen for something slightly bigger and so on all the way up to a house, going via a role in a movie and a snowmobile. By trading something that was always only slightly better than what he had, he found many willing participants.

Anyway, someone called Bournville has decided to do a similar thing in EVE by starting with one piece of Trit and seeing how far they can get by always trading slightly higher each time. Who knows where it might end? Faction ship? T2 BPO? Very own station in 0.0? Just like the guy who went from a paperclip to a house, so could someone go from one Trit to something immeasurably more valuable. It's certainly not impossible.

Remembering the book that had inspired this person, I contacted them in EVE and offered to trade. Luckily s/he was only 11 jumps away from where I was and apparently I was the first one. I grabbed a shuttle and made my way down, eager to get the ball rolling as it's a cool idea and it'd be interesting to see how far it can go.
Here is me, trading one Tripped Power Circuit for one Tritanium.

If you know of the One Red Paperclip guy (or even if you don't, but think the story is cool) then check out Bournville and see what's up for grabs. Who knows, by the time you read this it might already be something incredibly valuable being offered :)

Paging goons, eve-o needs Shark Week, stat!

2008-03-06T11:35:00.005Z

You know, everyone says CAOD is a toilet but to be perfectly honest, I find EVE General Discussion to be far more irritating. An example:

The first page this morning has a thread started by a new person to the game who asked if there was any difference between the "classes" in EVE and whether it affected the moneymaking paths he might have open to him. Okay, some vague innacuracies in his understanding but, to be fair, the guy was brand new and presumably came from another game where such questions would be more valid. This guy got flamed to hell with people telling him it was the "clearly" the wrong game for him and that he should quit. But amidst this e-peen waggling and widespread insecurity was a small group of people explaining that the beauty of EVE is that your starting race doesn't define what you can train for and that you can fly other races' ships if you want.

Okay, so standard General Discussion nonsense so far. What amazed me more was the very next thread down that was complaining about some apparent "nerf" to EM resistances that is coming and how this basically means the end of the world for everyone and how it means Gallente have been overlooked and how blah blah blah.

You know, maybe it's just because I'm a new player and I don't yet "get" EVE or something, but it strikes me that if there's this wonderful ability to train for any ship you want then... wait for it... you can train for another ship if you don't like what's happening with one of them.

Sorry, I probably should have made sure you were ducked and covered before releasing this bombshell, I know. But if they announced tomorrow that all races would now on only have pea shooters for guns and all required POS fuel just to move except for the Jovians whose Tech 1 frigates are essentially mini Death Stars capable of travelling at 50km/s while still doing 1,000dps then do you know what I'd do? Well, I'd probably think CCP had gone bonkers, but after that I'd go train Jovian.

Eventually, someone would realise that this had harmed the balance of the game and the Jovian Frigates of Doom would suddenly be overpowered by Minmatar battlecruisers or something, at which point I'd either stick it out, try a new fitting or just train something else for a bit.

I know I'm over-simplifying the problem greatly here, but really, what does it matter if CCP have reduced the effectiveness of a certain module in order to try and improve balance? Even if you spent four years and billions of isk on it, if it's considered game breaking or at least harmful to the balance of combat then it needs to change, end of story.

The other thing that always gets overlooked is the possibility that any changes are not soley to improve balance now, but are in fact part of a wider, future-looking strategy to balance modules or ships in light of new ones that might be around the corner? Say, for example, there was a new T2 Battlecruiser on the way for Gallente that had a 10% bonus to EM damage or something. All of a sudden those tears about the EM resist nerf fiasco would be forgotten in an instant.

So why does everyone whine endlessly every single time there's a change to anything? Seriously, think about what you're saying before you hit the post button. Say you got your way and they decided not to go ahead with the reduction to EM shield resists but you did get your EM damage dealing doomboat in the next patch. Wouldn't it suck if that was totally useless and nobody wanted one because anyone who's anyone has a 90%+ resist to EM damage anyway?

I say embrace the changes and use it as a fantastic excuse to train something else and experience a new ship class or race that you've not tried before. Who wants to play an MMO where you intend to only experience 5% of what's on offer anyway?

Sheesh.

EVE Photography: PvP Volume One Addendum

2008-03-06T04:01:00.007Z

Just the one, but a new ship I got to try tonight due to lack of availability of an Incursus at short notice.

Eventually it got killed and then my pod got doomsdayed (lol) along with a bunch of other T1 frigs, cruisers and at least one Battlebadger, haha. Good fun.

EVE Photography: PvP Volume One

2008-03-04T19:04:00.010Z

The first Titan I've ever seen. If you look really closely you can see a little speck in the middle. That's me!

The first of many Incursi I'm sure to lose.

Told you I'd lose it!

# PVP - an Evee's pyrrhic victory #

2008-03-04T11:37:00.003Z

I took the plunge and made an alt for PvPing the other day. She's Gallentean and she started with some pretty awesome drone skills. While I don't want to give too much away about her identity, suffice it to say that I headed directly to the alliance I thought most likely to accept a total noob with no skills who wants to try his hand at the ol' pew-pew.

So right now I'm logged off with nothing to my name but my pod and the promise of a noob frigate in a safe spot in QY6 having spent most of last night learning the role of a tackler right in at the deep end. I managed to get on the killmail of a Broadsword and a Scorpion before my Incursus eventually couldn't take it any longer. Not bad for my first time out, lacking even the skills for a Micro Warpdrive :)

Getting down to QY6 was amusing. Thinking my best bet would be to just pod-jump there, I suddenly learned just how difficult it is to get someone to pod you for no reason! I didn't want to just self destruct on my inaugral voyage to 0.0 so I thought I'd plot a course from wherever I was at the time and see what happened.

Firstly, I learned that 0.0 isn't as scary as one is led to believe. For the most part it's empty really. I didn't run into a single gate-camp moving through low-sec either, which may have been pure luck but still, making the trip wasn't the big ordeal I thought it might be.

So I started along my journey to QY6 in my Incursus and found... nobody. There were hostiles in local sometimes, but clearly none of them were interested enough to come gank a noob who was passing through. This was getting irritating - I wanted to get podded so I could join the fun down there as quickly as possible, not make 45 jumps through no-sec in a frigate with no fittings. Why, these hostiles were nothing of the sort.

Eventually I decided to leave myself orbitting a gate somewhere in V-L and go fix up a bite to eat. Thankfully, in the half an hour I was afk someone had the good grace to pod me. Finally!

So far it's been immense fun down here, shooting BoB and getting killed. Finding ships and fittings is a pain compared to the total luxury of Empire space (seriously, I will never again complain about having to pay 400k for a frigate!) but luckily there are plenty of people around that will gladly give you such things just for asking.

I have a few "photos" from the op to put up when I get home (including a shot of the first Titan I've ever seen, which was cool) .

[WTB] Social Adaption Chip

2008-02-29T12:58:00.005Z

I mentioned before about the Warp Drive Active podcast and how it's really cool to listen to when commuting or pretending to work or just taking ten minutes away from my desk or whatever and lo and behold, two more spring up [instert "it's like buses"-based witticism here].

The first new one is called The Drone Bay and is a little more serious business than WDA (without being boring). What I really like about this is that they clearly want to be inclusive of new players. WDA is too, but despite the occasional tutorial section their focus definitely has a "news from 0.0" slant - this is perfect for someone like me who is interested in the wider political side of EVE, but may not appeal to everyone equally. What The Drone Bay does is it teaches without being patronising and it encourages without being conscending to anyone's playstyle.

Something else that I feel is very important is that it's really encouraged me to try and get more involved in the community side of things. My corp are a brilliant group of people, as I've said before, but I avoid posting on eve-o like it's got airbourne AIDS and generally don't venture too far outside of what I know.

I did eventually get up the courage to send an EVE Mail to Urban Mongral, to which he replied, but I've just been a little scared to reply - this is my first "proper" MMO and getting over the fear of looking like an idiot noob who nobody wants to speak to is, for me at least, a bit part of the Famous Learning Curve of Death that exists in EVE. Nobody minds you asking questions (in fact, most seem to love it) but it has yet to be determined whether people in the main appreciate you just showing up and saying "hey, you don't know me but hi..." Crovan's words about the community stuff in his podcast may just see me speaking to more people if the opportunity arises. Maybe I'll even start actually telling more people about this blog!

But I digress - the second new podcast, of which there is a small preview in the new WDA is called Warp Drive Active: Industry and is due to go live some time in the next few days, I think. I haven't listened to all of their segment on WDA yet but from the bits I managed to catch today, it sounds like it's going to be very interesting. For anyone who ever read Freakonomics and subsequently fancied themselves as AN ECONOMIST then it's for you. Reports on the market, any IPOs and analysis of the quarterly economic reports all seem to be promised. The fact that you could even fill an hour with that kind of stuff every week is a clear example of why EVE is so great. People who post on eve-o complaining about lag and saying the server should be sharded take note: the economy and scale of the game is only achieved through being on one server. Yes, there's sometimes lag, but the benefits of having an entire economic subsystem that doesn't rely on eBay (WoW, I'm looking at you) far outweigh the lag which will eventually be reduced as higher bandwidth technology becomes more readily-available. Trust me on this - real world technology develops at a much faster pace than CCP updates its game. In five years time, I doubt EVE will suffer from lag at all.

Anyway, enough about podcasting for a second. There's something else to to talk about - the first time I will have ever get to watch a live Alliance Tournament begins today! Unfortunately I'll probably miss the first hour and a half or so due to being at work but the thought of going home to watch such a specatacle is quite exciting - I hope it's a good one! I read some threads about how it's been organised badly but hey, as long as ships I won't be able to fly for at least a year or more go bang in spectacular fashion then I'll be happy. Who knows, I might even learn something along the way.

Moving Home (sorta)

2008-02-27T13:25:00.002Z

A few milestones last night - at least, big deals for an enthusiastic Empire-dweller such as myself:

I now have the standings necessary for that Q19 Level 3 agent I've had my eye on. This should mean higher income for me from this point onward. After exploring the possibility of having one built for me and finding out that they sell on the market for the same cost as building one, I just flew over to Tash-Murkon Prime and picked up a Drake. No rigs or Tech II fittings to speak of so far, but it can still basically tank for ages. Long enough for me to nip off to the bathroom anyway, heh.

The thing is, my agent lives ten jumps or so away from my previous base in Mani. It's a weird feeling, leaving your home. I know Mani, I know its residents and I can navigate myself around most of the surrounding systems without needing to have the auto-route thing tell me where to go. Besides that, I've spent literally every day in EVE so far based out of there - it has those station cans set up so I can order my stuff and all sorts of useful things. It'll be weird, but fun. I think.

I'm currently in the process of moving all my stuff to my new home. I bought a stack of skillbooks from Tew, as I didn't know where the nearest book spawn would be in the new system (it's in Domain and I'm too lazy to check, basically). I packed up all my commonly-used modules etc. I figure I might be out this way for a while.

My current plan (and bear in mind this has changed about twice per week so far) is to stick around in Empire until I can fly a Covert Ops ship or similar and then go check out the fun down in Wicked Creek. Lots of the corp spend their time down there and I'd love to check it out. It's the getting there that I think may be an issue - some of the systems en route are notoriously gatecamped and I'm just not sure I have the skill to avoid that at present.

We shall see.

EVE Photography: A Few More

2008-02-25T03:58:00.009Z

A few pictures taken today whilst on my travels (again, click on the images to see tham as they were intended).

My Kestrel watching someone jump through a gate in front of me - very pretty!

The Same Kestrel idling by a planet and looking at the nice bloom lighting effects...

Flying in front of the weird-looking station in the Recon 2/3 mission.

EVE Photography: First Attempts

2008-02-22T18:47:00.000Z

Some random images I've made (Print Screen and then Photoshop, although I now have Fraps installed which will help!) I'll hopefully add more as I get better at doing them - hopefully also some other weird and wonderful ships rather than just things I own. Click on them to view them at full size :)

A Gallentean shuttle approaching Mani VII/10 for docking.

Palmer Eldrich, my Caracal, passing a stargate in Zehru.

My Badger II, docked in Mani VII/10. Also known as "Gordan Freemon".

A discussion on risk

2008-02-22T09:36:00.002Z

There are a number of threads on eve-o at the moment all talking about the concept of (and reaction to) risk and loss in EVE but, typically, these have all descended into flame-fests. I'm generally put off posting there because of the astounding number of idiots that inhabit it, but I figured I'd give my opinion here where I control the strings and idiots will be smacked with the banhammer on sight.

Put simply, risk is a good thing for a game. I play a browser-based colony management slash war game called Lunar Wars (join GOONS, the alliance for whom I am Defensive War Director!) and the problem, as far as I can see it, is that there's no real risk to getting obliterated and, as such, inter-alliance wars often begin with very little casus belli and are typically fought until one side gets bored and decides to start peace negotiations. Rebuilding afterward is laughably easy and so there's no real impetus for the side getting destroyed to stand down - they can just rebuild and strike again within a week or so at most.

So this got me to thinking about whether EVE is the same. Certainly people shy away from danger a lot more but is that because of an inherent greater risk or due to something else? Few people fly something they can't afford to replace and Jump Clones avoid any risk to your implants as well. So if you can get cheap ships and components relative to your income and your implants aren't in danger then what causes the greater perception of loss when your ship goes bang?

One argument might be that EVE forces you to work for your money. In browser games, typically collecting money is a case of logging in and collecting taxes from your little pixelated citizens at an allotted time. There are things you can do to boost your income, sure, but it's not like you have to work to get some cashflow.

But is the threat of having to 'work' in a videogame enough in itself to create the perception of huge risk? Some arguments would suggest so - Goonswarm reputedly give free frigates to members for life and, as such, you see large swarms of frigates in many of their battles (at least, from what I am told). When you're not 'working' to fly the ships you're losing then it is natural to feel no personal attachment to it. But is Goonswarm a legitimate comparison? After all, they exist in 0.0 and operate for the sole purpose of PvP in its various forms.

I don't believe I've experienced enough in EVE yet to say one way or another, but the subject interests me - what is it about PvP in EVE that makes your heart thump in your chest? Why do people gladly throw away their pixels in one game yet feel an almost loving attachment to them in another? Of course, I'm not talking about people with 2bn isk ships, but even those flying a tech 1 cruiser seem averse to losing it or pushing it to the very edge.

I'm well aware that I'm comparing chalk and cheese here, but the attitudes are very different between the two games. I've asked a lot of questions here and if anyone reads this and wants to answer then, of course, they should but these are largely intended as placeholders for myself. Once I've been in EVE a lot longer and experienced much more of it, I plan to return to this post and try to answer some of my questions. It is often said that the penalty for loss in EVE is "too harsh" and yet, to my mind at least, it is well-balanced and acceptable. I believe a large part of this perception is due to the game allowing you to become attached to your property and encouraging you to be so even. Certainly something I'd like to revisit in a year or so to see if I still feel the same way and if any of the questions can be answered.

Anyway, enough about that, time for some recent personal achievements:

- I have recently got past the 2m Skill Point barrier.
- I have all the Basic Learning Skills to 4 now, as well as one Advanced to 4 and another to 3.
- I have my first Level 5 skill trained that wasn't one that I started with.
- I have been podkilled and I have found it to be oddly cathartic.
- I have ratted in lowsec without fear of being outside of Empire.

All nothing for an experienced player, but huge milestones for someone so new. Many more to come, hopefully :)

So, it's a blog...

2008-02-21T01:56:00.001Z

I'm not entirely sure why I decided to make one. Possibly because it's what all the cool kids are doing and I want to make one so I'm prepared for when the revolution comes. But also because I've recently started playing EVE Online and I've really enjoyed it so far so I figured it'd be nice to have some record of how it was when I started out. That way if I ever become cynical and jaded and start writing "can I has ur stuffs lolol" on eve-o, I'll be able to look back and remember, with fondness, my early days.

At the time of writing, I've been playing EVE for a little over a month. When I first started my character, I looked through all the race bios and basically narrowed it down to either Caldari or Gallente. My friend who got me into EVE basically told me not to "go French" and so I ended up as Caldari. I'm sure there's a far more scientific way of starting your character for optimal starting stats and so on but, frankly, if you're thinking about that in your first day in a game then you should probably do something more interesting like brush your teeth or get a girlfriend. Two paragraphs in and I've probably already offended someone... this is going to go well.

I picked a girl avatar because if I have to look at something every minute I'm in-game, it might as well not be some ugly bloke who looks like he spends a lot of his life going up and down the M1 and reading The Sun at South Mimms Service Station. There goes the trucker market for this blog... maybe 'stream of consciousness' wasn't the best idea here... hmmm.

So I did the tutorial and the starter missions and managed not to have any problem at all with the invention mission that the forums are clogged with people not completing for some reason and then did the story missions they give you before promptly heading off down to Amarrian space and joining the corp my friend is in. They're an industry corp that mainly build and sell capital ships but, more importantly, they're a really great bunch of people and are really helpful and patient with someone who had so many questions.

So I hooked up with an agent down there for the Amarr Navy and went and blew up some rats. I got really worried at one point because I saw the corp's ticker on the wreck and thought maybe I'd accidentally killed someone from the corp. I'm serious, I really was that stupid. I decided not to ask in the corp chan just in case I had done and I eventually worked it out by myself. Scary stuff though.

Recently we got war dec'd by a corp led by the world-famous ArmageddonPSA who makes the comic. Despite being so new, I actually managed to get my Caracal onto the killmail where we blew up his Armageddon, which is pretty nice. PvP is loads of fun and even though it ended up getting me podded and me losing that set of +3 implants I spent most of my cash on (I believe this can be filed under "carebear mistakes" or some such) I still had a blast. I'll definitely be checking out 0.0 at some point. I managed to help blow up some other stuff before getting podded, but the podkill was as a result of me jamming the hell out of people in a Blackbird so I might as well have had a big sign saying "I'm the guy you wanna be calling primary on" above my head. Managed to escape the huge swarm of drones with something silly like 27% structure but then got scrammed on the other side of the gate when I jumped through. Worse luck.

But anyway, while I feel I could probably write an essay just on what I've experienced and learned over the past month, I'll try and save some of my anecdotes du noob for another time.

Before I do sign off though, it's probably worth mentioning the Warp Drive Active podcast - if you like your MMO broadcasting media to be 100% serious business then it may not be for you, but it's very cool. If you have never listened to it, I recommend downloading all the episodes to date from iTunes and listening to them concurrently - after a while it stops being two dudes doing a podcast and becomes more like the little voices in your head that tell you about EVE whenever you're on the bus/train/toilet. Trippy. But seriously, it's worth checking out: LINK

Also, one of the two voices in my head that talk to me about EVE makes a comic (yet I've never been on a killmail for him, so it's not that I must destroy all comic writers or anything) and his most recent one (number 150) really made me laugh. They're all good, but for some reason this one really amused me: LINK

This is all starting to sound a little WDA FANBOI though and that wasn't the intention of my post so I'll shut up about them and about EVE temporarily. Hopefully I'll remember to update this again at some point, but if my Livejournal / Myspace / Facebook / whatever pages are anything to go by, I'll probably do a couple and then forget the site ever existed. Bah.

By the way, I own the BPO of the Navy Issue Ibis and no, I'm not selling them.