My first op: Lonely Roids

See all those huge roids tumbling in space, always alone and without company? I am sure I would feel lonely if left alone for so long with no one to talk to 0:-)
What about visiting them for a nice chat?


Those were the words with which I advertised my first corp mining event (together with the banner I made for it). I have to admit that my try to get the roids in our home a bit more company was a bit spontaneous, so I was doubly surprised when actually a few corp mates did participate. The op actually lasted a lot longer than planned as well. We normally do quite a few corp mining ops for fun (and profit) but my op fell into a time where no new mining-op was announced when at the same time quite a few new people joining the corp. And as a mining op (with a lot of relaxed chatting) is the best way to get to know each other, I tried to improvise one. And it worked! :-)
Lots of new people made for a more varied "mining"-ship approach, which I liked as well. Below a new member in his miner/hauler Wreath

and here we could even witness the maiden voyage of a Rokh

All in all a quite nice op (if I might say so) 0:-) Though I have to admit the official one we had the week after was much better (e.g. with more Hulks and Orca support).

EVE Blog Banter #8: Signature Characters

OOC:
Welcome to the eighth installment of the EVE Blog Banter , the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here . Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month's topic comes to us from me, Ga'len at The Wandering Druid of Tranquility. He asks: "What new game mechanic or mechanics would you like to see created and brought into the EVE Online universe and how would this be incorporated into the current game universe? Be specific and give details, this is not meant to be a 'nerf this, boost my game play' post like we see on the EVE forums."

Well I guess there exists a universe of ideas already that all do have their positive and negative sides. Among others it would be really nice to see more of planets, to perhaps see more about our crews (who they are, if they are happy or if they are slaves, if they could be freed – if slaves – or cared for better I am sure the performance of the ship would increase as well). There are ideas about planetary rings, and comets as well ideas about fleet maneuvers. All of those look very promising and sound quite nice! My addition to these cool thoughts would be a better integration of the rich background story into the game itself. One way to do that would perhaps be to create missions where it might be possible to meet EVE's signature characters.

I spelled out the idea already on the EVE-O forums in this thread:

First of all I was quite happy to read the new rediscovered scrolls dev blog and am really looking forward to see more epic mission arcs. In regard to players interacting stronger with the core storyline elements of the EVE universe I guess a highlight of some such arc might surely be the meeting of an EVE signature character (like as a mission "agent"). Examples might be:

For an Amarr character e.g. it surely would be epic to be able bring a report on sleeper activity to Jamyl Sarum herself.

For a Minmatar it might be as epic to step onto an Eldar Titan and get a nod from one of the legendary elders e.g. for helping in the survival of a forgotten Minmatar tribe.

A Caldari might be honored to get an interview with a megacorp CEO upon getting a report from Heth to deliver (with the choice of either helping the CEO or Heth).

A Gallente would surely be honored to get a letter from his President for a secretive meeting with and advisor who might propose a secretive mission.

And so on and so forth. Even if this interaction is more like PC-agent interaction (well cut-scence would also be HUGE but probably much more time-intensive to implement) I guess such an interaction with the EVE signature characters would help a lot immersing players in the interesting backstory of the universe they are playing in.

A scholar goes exploring

Things are progressing quite well! Not only corp-wise but also personally. I still have to find a hacking site yet, but my first expeditions in my rusty but trusty Probe frigate went quite well. Actually I could pilot a Cheetah as well, but I guess I first will practice with that ship.

Above my trusty rusty Probe: Z Ranger 1 above an interesting planet that does look quite habitable.

I already found a small site with a few Omber asteroids that went on to help me get the Isogen needed for a building project (made me a Vexor that I sadly can’t yet fly). There you also see my new pride: the Covetor. Said ship is atm in the process of being redesigned into a Hulk. For this I’d like to thank Zino (quite some corpmate)!

Z Curufinwe in action before she went into Zino’s factory.

Probes launched from Ranger 1 also managed to find me my first salvaging site which can be seen below:

But this was not everything. I got lucky as well and found a Serpentis Hideout and a Serpentis Lookout and – just yesterday – I got lucky to find a Serpentis-Phi Outpost! The latter I was too cautious to try alone. But a nice and helpful corpmate (Swisstuck) helped me. Together with him it was quite a breeze.

Above shot of both Swisstuck’s vessel as well as my Cane at the Serpentis Outpost and below the spectacular fight against my first Serpentis Faction Battelship (the explosions wrought by Swiss’ ship were quite spectacular).

Capsuleer: The datapad app for pilots

I do use my portable datapad for easy reference and lookup about the status of the cybernetically injected skillbook dataware from which I try to learn in my spare time. The code I used for that was actually once the one called "EVE Tracker", but I did start using Capsuleer as well. At first the plus side of Capsuleer was the nice graphics as well as the date and time information when a certain skill would be finished and fully absorbed into my brain. Especially the information when that was scheduled to be by date and time (as compared to just giving an ETA in days/hours) was nice. The plus side of the EVE Tracker was still that I also got more information about all the skills.

But since the Capsuleer code got updated to revision 2.0 it really shines and is quite some nifty peace of software! Especially as it now also has integrated a lot of skill information. It even allows me to get connected to over pilot's public logbooks - a feature that I use quite a lot now.

As I am quite a happy user of this code I was quite happy as well to see that a lot of other people are using it as well (which is kind of a thank-you for the huge work the authors Pyjamasam and Roc Wielder put into it). But instead of us happy users thanking them - as should be the time honoured fashion to do things - they did thank us for using it (some strange world we are living in ;-) ). The thank you involved quite a nice collage with the capsuleer logo made up of pictures of pilots who make use of the programm. And look what I found:



A picture of myself made it into that collage as well! 0:-)

EVE Blog Banter #7

OOC:
Here we go: my first try at participating in Crazykinux's blog banter. His question to us players was:
"What 3 things haven't you done in EVE and why? Would you be willing to try one day? Why so? Why not?"

As I am quite new to the game, there are a lot of things I haven't done. A few of those are things I will never consider doing and other things I am looking forward to do someday. I'd like to begin with one from the first category:

Griefing/can-flipping/pirating
This I will never do. I do play this kind of online game to be able to interact with other players and to do things together with them, to help them to have a fun time with them and to find friends among them. I am quite sure others are also playing this game to have a fun time, to relax and have a nice time. So I do find it quite wrong that some players seem to find it fun to ruin the fun for others. Sorry but ruining other ppl's time is not among my definition of having a nice time. Just the same as hurting others is not my definition of having a nice time either. I do guess it is too easy to say that destroying other ppls ships/play-goods is nothing personal if you don’t see/know the person on the other side, but one shouldn’t forget that there are other persons on the receiving end of this kind of "fun".
e.g. take can-flipping (which did happen to me already): Imagine the time it takes for a poor frigate to get a can full of ore. Even in my Retriever it takes about 1 hour for me to fill a can solo. Now along comes someone who just "flips" the can so that I am no longer safe to get the goods I mined back. I just have to cut my losses and warp away. I do hope that was fun for those ppl to ruin my (about 1 hour) game time in the evening where I was hoping to relax a bit from work. It sure wasn't fun for me. Sure I got over it, but sure as well I don't have any love left for any type of greifer. May that greifing come from can-flipping or pirating or ganking transports or what have you.

I am sure most in-game griefers who like to ruin other ppls spare time are much nicer in real life, but I am sure as well that being a greifer in a game shows also a bit where your real attitudes lie. Either that or they are are too dumb to know that the ppl whose time he ruins are real people as well.

After this rant off to 2 things I would like to do sometime in the future:

I would like to explore a wormhole together with others (e.g. my nice corp mates) and secondly I would like to be more of a help to them when doing missions. Well actually both of this goes in the same direction so I do hope it might count as only one of my 3 available points 0:-) because as a third thing I would like to do is be more the scholar that I am and exploring the universe.
One project in that regard is surely going to be a visit to the EVE gate in a Covert-ops ship :-)

Corp mission night: One report of many

I am still training up and preparing myself to help my corporation with clearing criminal influences near our offices. But even though I am yet not much help I was still invited to join and could watch with awe what my corp-mates were doing. Here is a report of one of these endeavours that my sensors picked up while I watched the battle:

>>> Data connection opening
>>> Subject: Battleship fleet sighted in Sol
>>> Sender: Serpine Sol Inquestor 389
>>> To: Serpentis 3 HQ
>>> Transmitting data

Around 2000 hours a battleship fleet has been sighted prowling the nebulae of the Sol region. It was quite an ominous sight.



Due to electrostatic interferences of these particle clouds my team had trouble localizing them. Our cov-ops sensors were to weak to penetrate too far into the clouds. When we finally found out were they were haeding, we immediately alerted the local station to scramble their fighters and followed the fleet invading our territory.
Finally free of those clouds we could make out their signatures: The fleet arrayed against us was made up exclusively of ships of the Black Thorne Corporation. Intel suggest they are mostly miners, so we didn't investigate them. That was quite a mistake of intel as it turns out!

Following is an inquestor probe feed of the invading BTC fleet facing our ships.


Sadly the fight didn't fare too well. Here you can see one of your battelships being hammered quite heavily by incoming fire.


They didn't suffer any losses and our ships were smashed. It was terrible to behold! And they didn't stop there but did advance on our Station in system as well, smashing the stations defences with ease.


Our station sits undefended! I am awaiting your instructions how to proceed! What? Looks like I was discovered! There was a rupture hiding between those battleships. It is targeting me ...

>>> Transmission closed

Ruin

I just read through the new chronicle called "All These Lives are Fit to Ruin". I have to admit it was quite a read and one that made me thoughtful as well. Are we Capsuleers really that unthinking of other lives? I do fear so. But I guess it's always better to look first before your own door (or however that saying goes): I do think that I so far only shot at those things that really matter to the outcome of a mission. But I fear that there might have still been a bit collateral damage that could have been avoided. That story at least opened my eyes to these matters. I hope now to be much more sensitive to such issues (concerning not-military structures). And regarding my crew ... well I guess most of us don't think about their crew too much. I guess I will try to get to know them better. Capsuleers don't have to be monsters, they are human still. I am human still. Or better: I want to be human.
What do you thin about that esteemed reader?

Tepet's Pride my first T2 ship whose crew sadly died when I was doing a mission versues Mercs that warp scrambled me.

All these Habitation Models survived my visit btw 0:-) And here is also the first picture of my new pride (my first BC which is self-made as well) :o)