A Mistake of Mammoth Proportions...

~or, Don’t Hate Her ‘Cause She’s Fugly…

Ahhh… The Matarii and their butt fugly, bailingwire and ducktape, rustbucket ships… you just gotta love em. Uh… well, unless you work for CCP, in the Art Dept. … the guys (ok, maybe not the SAME guys) who brought you the Mammoth in the first place.

My blog is not a Newz Blog, or a Metagame Blog (well, not usually) so I am jumping on this one a tad late in the day as twere. But, for them as dunt know it seems that part and parcel of the ongoing ship rebalancing act CCP is doing was this gem from CCP Rise in this thread, in which the Mammoth, the BUFF (Big Ugly Fat Fukker) and the backbone of the Minmatar Heavy Haulers was on the chopping block.

The original idea was to totally revamp the Minmatar haulers… remove both and replace them with new ships… then the idea was to upgrade the lowly Whoredur (Hoarder but I vastly prefer the prior spelling…)… really? Uh may one ask WHY? Well, it seems the genesis of this line of thought in the rebalancing discussions was the Art Dept., the ART Dept… really? May one ask what they have to do with the coded mechanics of our ships? I mean these are the guys who gave us that Wonder of The Age, the POS Ship Maintenance Array that is SMALLER than a single Mammoth and yet it can hold, internally, 78 of the damn things!! Forgive me but I am very much of the opinion their concerns are not based on ‘balanced mechanics’.

So it seems the Art Dept., when CCP Rise asked why, responded thusly:

“I just checked in with Art briefly and they confirmed that they simply don't like the way the Mammoth looks."

OK, I get it to a degree. I mean they are graphics artists. I started my tech career as one. Like in any profession you spend a helluva lotta time doing whatever it is you do and that colors your attitudes about that thing. As a tech I often have joked when working with people who aren’t technically inclined, “Look it’s not like its computer science… uh, OK, so mebbe it IS computer science, but that’s not the point!

You see the art dept guys spend all their time LOOKING at the ‘stuff’ in EvE. Their focus is not on how it works but on how it LOOKS. And let’s face it, the Minnie haulers are just damn ugly. They look like rusted out abandoned freight containers that have been hobbled together with a massive number of ion drives just stuck on the ass end to get them moving…

If you fly them ingame at all, when you give the order to go to warp and she suddenly makes a hard port or starboard banking turn, you can actually find yourself unconsciously gripping the arms of your lazyboy in fear and anticipation that she just might break in half from the forces bearing on the bailing wire and ductape holding her together… and you silently tell yourself when you next dock up to have Scotty add another roll, or two… hundred, to the midsection… as, well you know, you can never have enough ductape on a Matarii hauler…

So, we are to lose one of, if not the Queen of Fugly in Space? Well, some would think this a good thing. I mean EvE is a beautiful game… a wondrous space full of awe inspiring nebulae, magnificent pulsars stars, mysterious black hole suns, glistening Golden Amarrian ships, gleaming blue-black Caldari ships sliding silently through the black… and… (WTF!) a Mammoth chugs past… a cloud of rust flakes and bits of… (was that a Primary Buffer Panel?) uh, bits of ‘ship’ silently break away and drift through the void in the wake of the massive hauler like red Minnie dandruff…

And some see removing her as a good thing? May I ask, how? I mean unless where CCP is heading is to open The Eve Gate to STO (Star Trek Online) and we are all suddenly to become peaceful and evolved and lovely and handsome and all our ships will be WHITE as WHITE can BE!!! And there will be no trash or clutter and even our toilets will use transporter tech to instantly whisk away anything smelly or unpleasant… uh, oh dear Gods please NO!

The Mammoth has a beauty all her own. You have only to fly her long enough and you will find, one day, that you have fallen deeply for this wallowing big old ugly ship… and the idea of flyin in New Eden, or on the other side of the sky… without her is simply not something you will even want to truly contemplate.

I can fly almost all the racial Hvy Haulers… and I know the Itty V is the Queen of T1 haulers… but you know what? I have 4 Mammoths and a Mastodon and as long as they exist in EvE, they will be my hauler of choice. Ye gods man! Getting rid of the Mammoth would be like… like… like… getting rid of Drunken Roams! or Griefing! or Scam artists! or even Jita local spammers… EvE has a gritty, dirty, smelly underbelly… and like RL, that underbelly is right out there with all of us every day.

The Mammoth is a reminder that even in the future, man may still be man… we will not be ‘perfect’ and ‘transcended’ and ‘godlike’… we will be just exactly who we are. There will be those among us who can afford gold-plated ships, and gold-plated toilets and slaves to wipe their asses, and there will be hedonists who’s only goal in life is the next high (and they will fly ships that look like they have already had too much) and there will be mindless droans bowing willingly to Authority and creating a society that is utilitarian and ships that reflect that culture… and then there will those who scrape by…

Proud, his head held high as he watches his crew slap on one more thin coat of rust inhibitor (that won’t work)… he breaks open one more case of Duvolle Labs 'ductape'…He wonders once again what in Bobs 'Verse that name stands for as he turns an experienced eye as to where it will do the most good in holding together his pride and joy. A Matarii Heavy Hauler, a Mammoth… Carrying him, his family, crew and cargo once more out into the deep black… and hopefully, safely back again.

Fly Safe and see you in the Sky  =/|)=

At 9:40 06/20/14 CCP Rise tweeted…

“Art happy to allow us to leave the Mammoth as the largest hauler based on feedback. I feel kind of sad for the Hoarder, but oh well =)”

A good day indeed…  =]