In missions on
25 July 2008 with no comments
The Ancient Gaming Noob has a great post exploring the buy vs. build economics of acquiring a Golem - Caldari Maurader-class uber-missioner. It *looks* like a sweet ship and one I would LOVE to fly with Daniella, but I really do wrestle with the overall cost of the thing relative to a well-fit Raven (not even a CNR). I have no doubt it would shave some time off missioning, but only if you really powered through them quite frequently vs my once-in-a-while to catch up on some ISK for Furious.
My Raven post to come shortly…meantime go read Ancient’s post.
In industry on
25 July 2008 with 1 comment
(sorry for the lack of posts - I start up a new blog, then get sent off on various work trips. sigh)
If you haven’t seen the EVE news today, the devs dropped one of those “OMGWTF they killed my ships!!!” trial balloon game balancing blog posts. This one has been a long time coming - ways to pull EVE back from the “ludicrous speeds” that seem to dominate PVP. Predictably, the outrage (and celebration) is in full form.
All is well and good, I think that unrealistic speeds take away from the fun of the game. But that’s not my story here.
The past couple of evenings have been a bonanza of ISK making for Daniella - from finally getting standings with Carthum up to allow her to use all level 4 Carthum R&D agents, to some lucrative missioning (Blockade FTW!), to a bit of manufacturing fun. The last one may bite me, as this morning I decided to use up some of my hard-won salvage materials and build some rigs for the market, including (this should be fun) two Polycarb Engine Housings, aka the “Gold Plated Speed Rig”. I sunk 60-70M+ ISK worth of materials into them and proudly put them on the market at 42M ISK apiece. A nice, comfy 10-20M ISK profit margin. I was happy.
And then I read this, not 2 min later:
Polycarbon engine housings are overpowered, both in general and with regard to corresponding modules; this is because the tech1 version is currently more effective than a tech2 nanofiber. Following our changes we’re looking at them being 30% less effective than their module counterparts, which is more similar to the difference between modules and rigs in other categories.
oooh, that’s gonna hurt. Now I’ll just sit quietly and pray some eager-yet-ignorant nano’er is out there and snaps up my quite generously priced rigs before he pops on over to the forum.
Like all economics, the real money is made - and lost - in the realm where imperfect information rules.
In random on
14 July 2008 with 2 comments
One of the paradoxes of EVE is how ridiculously vast it is - see the colored galaxy map below, each dot being an entire star system with moons, outposts, asteroid belts, and from zero to thousands of players - yet how unbelievably small it can be in practice.
By MMO standards, the place is enormous. You can career out in EVE without ever leaving a relatively small section of space, given the depth of content and geography in every star system. I generally have, over time, ended up mostly in Amarr space and the Tash-Murkon and Domain regions (mid-southwest on that map) and those could provide me with a lifetime of gaming fun if I so chose. I so happen to have “lived” in a dozen or so other regions in all four corners of the galaxy, and that alone illustrates why this is a paradox:
By game design, EVE really is a small place. Thanks to interplanetary warp drives and interstellar warp gates you can traverse dozens (or more?) star systems in less than an hour. You can, in effect, crisscross the map of the entire galaxy in an afternoon. This leads to some weird gameplay effects that really stretch the “realism” of the experience - massive “roaming gangs” of ships who randomly decided out of boredom or ambition to go kill some other folks on the other side of the galaxy, and yet be home before the six-pack runs out. Or, for example, the massive economic focus on one star system, Jita. These wouldn’t be possible without the hyper-efficient means of interstellar travel built into the game.
While convenient, it really highlights the one thing that I love in good space games and yet fled from me after a couple weeks of playing EVE - the awe-inspiring vastness of space.
Playing Freelancer a few years back, I got some of that. The core, safer systems had travel means similar to EVE and you could almost get around as fast. But the outer systems required you to mosey along outside of travel lanes at a relative snails pace. When you were out there, the time, distance, and mixture of great atmospheric graphics just screamed “damn, this place is eerily big”.
In EVE, that feeling is definitely there when you first try it - early missions may have you go one or two jumps from home, which seem like a big deal especially when you fire up the galaxy map and see the thousands of star systems that await you later on. But play for a bit, and you realize that running a few hundred or thousand light years, sprinting through 2-3 dozen star systems on the way to a trade hub is the in-game equivalent of running to the corner store to buy some milk - albeit in a particular nasty part of town.
I miss the empty, chilling, awe-inspiring vastness of space in EVE.
In missions, r&d on
9 July 2008 with no comments
This is an angle I hadn’t really thought of before - using pirate tags as currency to grind up faction standings in a hurry:
This guide was written to give a simple explanation to how you can grind up a fresh character to be able to use 5 lvl4 Mechanical Engineering agents. This guide will focus on Minmatar/Gallente agents from three corps: DuVolle Laboratories, Core Complexion and Boundless Creation.
It looks like it may work. I still need to get Daniella up a bit more with Carthum in order to accces the last level 4 R&D agent, so maybe I’ll go out and try some pirate tags just to see what comes of it.
(h/t to Angelonico in Amarr Militia chat)
In factional warfare, ic, pvp on
9 July 2008 with 2 comments
[IC-Furious]
My eyes started blinking involuntarily in rapid succession, some futile instinctive reaction to the mass of goo that seem glued to my face. All I could see was a white haze all around, until a hand reached out from it to wipe a clear path across the upper half of my face. That same hand proceeded to lift me up slowly to a sitting position and wrap a heating blanket around my shoulders.
“Well, we haven’t seen you in a while. Been playing it safe, eh?” A snickering laugh.
A white and red suited technician stood over me, with some kind of shit-eating smile on his face that in some twisted way put me at ease.
Familiarity.
Ah…the medical center, clone section, in the schoolhouse orbiting Marthia I. An old friend. I grunted out something approximating “nah, just lucky” and started at last to gather my wits and recall how I ended up sitting waist deep in a vast of nasty, clear jelly.
Adrenaline. Stabbing at drone controls. Radar targets dancing in and out of range. Gate flashes. A final desperate explosion.
What a fight. An ill-conceived, rash, ultimately losing fight, of course, but instead of feeling regret I felt keenly alive. And yes, I see the irony in that statement, having suffered corporeal death just moments before. The life of a capsuleer provides for some strange kinds of perspective on experience.
Just a few hours before, after taking a long week off from the Minnie front lines, staring at walls and silently going crazy buried in the cavernous walls of Emperor Station, I decided the time had come to shoot something. If only for the sake of sanity. Surveying my hanger, and doubting my own rusty reaction time after so long out of my pod, I selected “Mama Duckling”, a sweet Arbitrator cruiser-class drone boat, as my ride for the upcoming patrol. She has wonderful lines, with almost a predatory maw out front, and of course glistened Empire Gold. Plus or minus a few rust streaks - it shows character.
The Arbitrators are the oddball of the Amarr fleet - more Gallentean in their focus on drone-based weapon systems with laser almost an afterthought. Fortunately a Gallentean “business woman” owed me a favor or two back in the day, and paid her debt with a wealth of drone skill books, turning me into a vaguely competent drone captain. But that’s for another story.
As I immersed myself in the loving embrace of my pod’s special goo - not that grade C junk in the clone vats - and felt my neural net come online, I rapidly tuned into the comm channels for the 24th Imperial Crusade. A disorganized lot, which I found downright ironic given the nature of the Empire I so love, it still yielded the best opportunities to kill Matari. So my banner flew with them, for now.
Tonight however, the comm channels were more of a wreck than normal, and that’s saying something spectacular. Anger and recriminations flying back and forth - from the brawl of human voices I made out that several of the capsuleer corporations flying for the 24th had decided to wage war against each other. New or old grudges, I could care less. For my immediate needs this translated into a distinct lack of major fleet operations to link up with. Itching for a fight, and finding no one to coordinate with, I steeled myself for what could only be considered a suicide operation - running scoutless into Minnie-controlled territory in a armor-plated hog of a ship that couldn’t run a stargate camp by any stretch of the imagination. I loved the Mama, but speed was not her forte.
“Disgusting…” I forced the infuriating, pointless backchatter from militia comm channels out of my mind, just as the ship slid out of interplanetary warp to cosy up to the Kamela gate in Tuomuta - right on the edge of the true combat zone. Or in it, for all I knew of the news of late. The word was Amarr’s capsuleer forces were backpedaling in the face of overwhelming Minmatar numbers - what drew independent corps to the Minnie side I have no idea, but come they did and pushed Amarr back system after system through the Bleak Lands front. Whatever - the politics I could less about. I’m in this war to kill some rebels, damn to whatever flag flew over the starsystem on the neocom map where they died.
Gate flash. Kamela, lowsec space and definitely front lines. Silence. Local comm net indicated an even mix of Amarr and Minmatar capsuleers, but oddly none at the entrance gate to secure Amarr space - a natural killing ground most days.
Let’s go hunting, screw waiting to find a fleet to join up with.
10 minutes. Nothing aside from a friendly waggle of an allied Megathron-class battleship as it warped off the 24th’s station in system. Let’s take this a step deeper - warp right on the gate to Kourmonen, a major staging ground for rebel fleets. I was sure to find a fight there.
The flashing red radar signature that greeted as my warp bubble collapsed was the reward for my effort. A Thrasher-class destroyer - an excellent frigate killer but by itself no match for my cruiser. So of course, it wasn’t by itself. Two more Thrashers warped in from deep space to join the fray. All worked for something (someone?) named Huang Yinglong. Whatever - their autocannons ranging on my hull, followed quickly by EMP rounds ripping into my shields, proved their loyalties.
I stabbed out my scram, tracking disruptor, weapon systems, all the while toggling the microwarp drive to slide into a tight orbit with my target. Once within 10km a quick flash of my energy neutralizer danced out alongside twin pulse laser beams to wreak havoc on the smaller ship. 5 Galentean drones spiraled around him, adding to the sheer joy of the moment.
Seconds later, the first Thrasher exploded in a satisfying fireball. His compatriots fled, though I realized that it wasn’t entirely from my own combat prowess: an interceptor and stealth bomber from the 24th had joined the fight at the last moment. I loved the help but admittedly felt a bit cheated of the ego-padding solo kill. Fortunately Mr. Thrasher yielded some nice loot. Unfortunately, I yielded that loot right back to his friends just moments later.
Why? Eh, boredom. I knew his fleetmates had fled into Kourmonen, and that in all likelihood a gang was clustered around the other side of the gate waiting for me to be stupid - or aggressive - enough to follow them through. Stupid or aggressive, I was probably a bit of both.
“Ah, screw it. Let’s see if we can catch them off guard!” Plus I had recently updated both my medical clone and ship insurance, so the loss wouldn’t be too hard to take (goo notwithstanding). Who knows, maybe I could pop one or two along the way.
My instincts, unfortunately, proved accurate. Three Thrashers and a Stabber-class cruisers awaited, and my newfound gangmates had scouted a couple jumps out in the opposite direction. No help for me. Well, that’s what you get for being greedy - might as well go out in glory.
Fast forward 90 seconds and some tens of lightyears, and back to my vat of revolting clone goo. I didn’t even manage to kill one of them, and what’s worse, records show much of the original Thrasher’s loot survived the carnage of my ship’s destruction. I may as well have gift wrapped it for them.
Trading a cruiser for a destroyer is not the fast-track to fame, fortune, or respect among combat capsuleers. But the thrill of diving into the fight was worth every last ISK.
At least that’s what I told myself as I boarded a shuttle for passage back to Amarr Prime and my waiting ship hanger. On to the next one.
In r&d on
8 July 2008 with no comments
Well, it turns out there is a nice little market for datacores of various flavors in the Amarr region. Earlier Daniella kicked off her experiment of using level 4 R&D agents as passive income generators, and hoped to net 30M+ ISK for a few weeks run time. Just checked her sell orders tonight after a few days away from the market to discover an oh-so-nice 33.6M ISK series of sold datacore orders. A bit of ISK to fatten her wallet, never a bad thing, and a nice payoff after weeks of running mind-numbing courier missions for the ungrateful Carthum booking agents. Now it’s just a matter of running a 30 jump round trip every few weeks in Yellow Fever, her fast Crane transport to collect cores from the various agents.
Perhaps she’ll celebrate with a romp out to kill some Sansha’s in the Oh Billy (battle-scared standard issue Raven)!
The timing couldn’t have been more perfect, as rumor has it Furious took a beating tonight on the front lines of the Amarr - Minmatar lowsec capsuleer war. Looks like Daniella better step up the revenue generating activities just a bit more…
In pvp, setups on
7 July 2008 with 2 comments
The Arbitrator is something of an anomaly amongst the Amarr - it’s a drone boat with an ewar (tracking disruptors) bonus. It feels much closer to Gallente though it clearly looks (and smells…damn slaver hounds) Amarr. If you happen to have nice drone skills, as I do having cross-trained Gallente, the Arbitrator is a sweet, cheap little boat for inexpensive PVP fun.
My preferred setup, based on a smattering of experience and some good recommendations from friends - I need to get out and try this a bit more in combat before I swear to it though:
HIGH:
1x Medium Energy Neutralize
1x Standard Missile Launcher
2x Focused Medium Pulse Laser
I know you’re reading this thinking “don’t split weapon systems!” Normally I agree, but I happen to think the Arby works well set up like this.
MID:
1x 10mn Microwarp Drive (MWD)
1x Stasis Webifier
1x Warp Disruptor (20km)
1x Tracking Distruptor (TD) (with a Tracking Speed Script)
LOW:
1x Medium Armor Repairer (MAR)
1x Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane (EANM)
1x 400mm Armor Plate
1x Reactor Control Unit (RCU) to make it all fit
DRONES:
5x Hammerheads
5x Vespa EC-600
5x Warriors
5x whatever lights
You can swap in T2 or nice named, but this is a throw-away cruiser so why bother?
Tactics:
Approach on MWD, kick in the TD if you’re facing a turret ship. Either orbit at 15km or so and pepper with your drones, lasers, and missiles OR switch to multifreq crystals and get in under web range and rely on your Neutralizer to cap the bad guy out before he can kill you in return. The Warrior’s are there in case you run up against any Interceptors or nano’d frigates - at least scare them out of scram range so you can flee. The Vespa’s are there to either a) break their scram and flee or b) just annoy the hell out of them. You lose a lot of DPS with ECM drones, but it could make for some entertaining combat. Plus you’re that much more of a help to your gang.
EDITED: in light of a very good comment that I got carried away with acronyms without spelling them out. Sorry about that!
In random on
7 July 2008 with 1 comment
In EVE, you know you’ve made it when…CrazyKinux includes you on his speedlinking! Now the pressure is on to start putting up some more quality posts.
One great thing I got out of CK’s speedlink - a new blog to read in EVE’s Weekend Warrior (and his guide to can-flipping for fun and profit. Although I thought the point of it was to entice people into combat…?).
I need to start up a pirate alt sometime - my guys are all goody goodies and maintain positive sec standings. Must unleash the darkness! I also must play more this week - I start a blog, and then work and family kick in immediately to impede my ability to actually play. Fun.
In factional warfare on
7 July 2008 with 1 comment
The EVE Chronicles have been getting vastly better of late, with the influx of fiction that wraps around the Empyrean Age expansion. This latest, “The Dark End of Space” is as well nicely done. Aside from the contributions to the Empyrean storyline, I like the setup - four Admirals talking to four of their trusted Captains. A peek into the machinations of what’s to come, it seems.
And I do love this line, from an Amarr Captain:
Admiral: “Master politico-theologians say we’re experiencing a glorious sea change of unprecedented proportions, with nothing but celestial glory and heavenly fate that awaits us.”
Captain: “Theologians can suck my Apoc, sir. We’re the ones manning the guns.”
Though, to be anatomically accurate, shouldn’t that have been “…can suck my Geddon”?
In missions on
5 July 2008 with no comments
For all you mission runners out there, there are two sites I have come to lean on to make the most of the “daily grind” for ISK: EVE Agents and EVE-Survival’s Mission Reports (ex-Kill Mission Survival Guide).
EVE Agents
If you are just getting started, moving up a level, moving locations or corporations, or venturing into R&D - whatever the situation, EVE Agents is a fantastic resource to tap into. This is another one from Chribba (EVE Search, EVE Files…) so you know the quality is going to be high. Aside: Chribbs has one of the best RL company names I’ve seen yet: OMG Labs. I used this religiously to select where Daniella would primarily base out of to run her level 4’s (hint - Amarr L4Q20 kill mission agent with no risk of being sent into low-sec!). I also recently used it to select Carthum for Amarr-based R&D agents and find the research specialties of several level 4 agents. Again…invaluable.
EVE-Survival’s Mission Reports
If you run level 4’s, bookmark this site NOW. It recently found a new home and moved to a more wiki-like format, as I believe the strains of maintaining the constant flow of updates was wearing on the site owner. Note that this is a good problem to have, as it’s in large part due to the steady flow of new and revised PVE content CCP is putting out. The guides, while occasionally imperfect, are the single best way for a mission-runner to avoid losing that favorite faction-fitted CNR (excluding Goon suicide ganks, of course). When I have Daniella out building up some ISK, I keep the Mission Reports open in a browser at all times for quick reference.
If anyone knows of any must-have PVE resources, please let me know in comments!
