The ZOMGodness

~ “CCP Proves They Still Have It…”

Ima segue a bit… 
So my NEW JOB (…some of you who follow this know that I have been employment challenged for some time now… 7 months to be exact. Plain drove me outta EVE even it did it did. Well I finally landed not just a job... not just another contract... but a full time position… and from an ad on Craigslist FFS… LOL! I have been an IT Contractor for 17 years, and for at least 7 of those I have increasingly wanted to break out of contracting… so Yay me!) …

So my new job has hours that I really like, 9 to 6. You see I am not a morning person, I would actually like to get all medieval on them as do bounce outta bed at the crack o dawn with a song in dey hearts and a smile on dey lips… effin weirdos… Now don’t misunderstand me, I still have my alarm set to 6AM like so many do, but then it’s set for 6:30, then 6:45 then 6:55 and so on… and like many I nudge my 11 y.o. dottir awake at 6:30… then at 6:45 then at 6:55 and so on… =P (she is no moar a morning person than I am, we get along that way…).

The point being that I have to have Boo (dottir) at the bus stop… (4/10ths of a mile away, at the end of our driveway, you know... just outside the Force Field...) by 7:30A at the very latest… leaving me with a full hour and a half to leisurely meander down the 30 minute of light traffic back roads it takes me to get to work sooooo I am ALWAYS early! Schweet! (Understand this has not always been the standard for me TBH)… and no, I do not even for one picosecond consider the option of going back up that driveway and back into the house until much moar reasonable 8:15ish… oh noes… that would only lead to me waking up, dried sticky drool caked into the keyboard imprint on my face, and calling my boss to tell him what he already knows… that I’m late… again. Nope, circumstances’ forcing me to be early to work inna way I can deal with is a dream come true.

So on the Tuesday the 4th things went as usual… I was hoping against hope, and experience, to actually get up ‘early’ enough to d-load and at least get a look at Phoebe… yea, right… the bed was, as my dottir says… just too warmy warm. Anyhoo the downside to my new schedule is I dunt get home till 6:30 at the very earliest and moar like 7ish most days now… so I dint get to experience all the Phoebeness until nearly 8PM! Oh well… so it goes.  =[

But I digress…

So there I was at 8 in the evening playing catch up with the better part of the playerbase… the client d-loads the patchspansion and it takes no more than the expected time, good good… then it applies the patchspansion, again in good time… and I log on…

And I am amazed. The first thing I noticed is the new HUD and the Compass and BOOKMARKS INNNN SPAAAAAAACE… Whatta concept! Whatta REALITY!!! OK, you may just possibly have the impression I am just a wee bit overjoyed with BMs in Space… and if not, well lemme tell you, I am! I zoom out from the POS and ALL of my pounces and safes are right there!! OMG I can finally SEE how they relate to each other and the POS… How truly wonderful… and after fiddling around a bit I find this…

As you can see in the first pic, by default ‘All the Things’ are shown in space…

But I don’t LIKE ‘All the Things’… especially the Gods Damned Sigs and Anoms. Ever since CCP decided to remove the Mystery from Scanning and Probing and give us all Large Neon Colored Signs in Space showing us EXACTLY where all the “Hidden Stuff” is I have hated that aspect of the OV. I actually spend quite a bit of time quietly hating on the Discovery Scanner every time it sweeps across my screen and reveals everything… and I hate the Large Neon Colored Signs designating where every Signature and Anom in my systems is… and wishing I could turn it OFF… what crap.

But if you right-click on the Compass itself, you get the Sensor Overlay popup… which allows you to ‘choose’ what you want to see in space… oh my, this is the dreamy goodness I have so longed for. (…and yes yes yes, I know all of this is in the Dev Blog… but it bears repeating!!)

You can turn off each item separately by simply clicking on it or,

 Click on the All Seeing Eye and shut it ALL off, including the Discover Scanner Sweep...

Voilà!

OK on to USING the BMs In Space… Yup, all I could have ever wanted. The ability to SEE the relationship of your BMs to the ‘verse is simply too good to be true. We who live in Anoikis  (Anoikisians, Anoikians, Anoikii?) live by the Cloak and BMs moar than anyone else in EVE. And when yer ship is cloaked and you are using BMs to get a pounce or position yourself for the slaughter… erm, umm, I mean to DEFEND our homes this is one of the greatest tools CCP has ever bestowed upon us… and being able to reach out, click and warpto… OMFG

I found at full zoom out, you can even see your off grid BMs and their relationship to the POS and each other… I know a lot of players use Tacs, Pounces and multiple safes etc. … but unless you live in holes and fly ‘round ALLATIME in cloakies (until they need to be sterilized from the pod funk) you cannot imagine what a bag full of win this is for us!

I spent so much time playing with and rethinking my Tac, Pounce and PI BMs and such that I lost track of time… I had wanted to pop out and play with the Multisell and such, but the hour was late and so I turned my attention next to the Forever-Q™ Skill Queue…

I was flummoxed. I had longed for this for years but with one thing and another I had never really worked out exactly what it would mean… how much simpler it was when you only had to plan for 23+ hours and just pop in a long skill when you knew you weren’t going to be able to log on for a while. I need to do some research so I decided to just loaded up everything I had less than a day or 2 to skill and then popped in all the L4 and L5s I needed for Command Ships… 65d 16h etc… again CCP, OMFG!

I have touched on only 2 of the changes to come our way with Phoebe… and I feel like I am playing a new game… I can’t wait to see what emergent behaviors are to come of these changes and what CCP has up its rolled up and ready for a fight sleeves with Rhea and whatever comes next...

I am moar excited for us and for the game than I have been since I first undocked into the cold hard black of New Eden four long years ago… and I do believe I had the same grin on my face then, as I did last night.  =]


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