BB 40: “How Do You Drug Test a Toon?”

or~  “Blog Banter 40: Interstellar Blood Sports”

Fresh from publishing the community spotlight on the EVE blogosphere and Blog Banters, CCP Phantom has suggested a banter focus on competitive tournaments.

There is no finer spectacle in the universe of EVE Online than the explosive dance of weapon-laden spaceships in combat. The yearly Alliance Tournament is the jewel in EVE Online's eSports crown and the upcoming New Eden Open should deliver the same gladiatorial entertainment showcase.

“Given the scope of the sandbox, what part should eSports play in EVE Online and what other formats could provide internet spaceship entertainment for spectators and participants alike?”

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Ok first off I am not a sporto… Dun’t for the most part like modern professional sports A-tall… gripes my ass some bozos can run/kick/headbutt/dribble/throw/toss or hit with a STICK some kinda BALL and make millions… while cops and teachers and firefighters can barely make ends meet.

Just seems bassackwards as shit to me that our “Hero’s” and our kids “Role Models” are, for the most part, greedy useless entertainers… everyone of em damn near as bad as… as… ‘actors’… who make more and actually do far, far less ‘for’ society… (irregardless of what they do or give to charity...) and almost as bad as the lousy ‘actors’ in the WWE… so for me personally, ‘eSports = meh’.

There… ok, got that outta my system.

This year’s Alliance Tournament ‘X‘ was actually the very first AT I followed at all since I have been in EVE. And then really only cause Ripard Teg (IE Rote Kapelle) and RvB were in it. It was exciting and fun to watch and I did get caught up in it a bit… but these guys are not ‘pros’ making millions of whatever you call your local ‘real’ currency.

I have the greatest respect and admiration for anyone and everyone who even dreams or aspires to the Olympics… I watch both Summer and Winter games with utter fascination… My dottir just started Gymnastics and I am amazed at the abilities, concentration, skill and spirit of all of the people at her gym.

THAT is skill and sweat and blood and talent and patience and dedication and sportsmanship.

So where does that leave us? What real sweat and blood and talent and patience and dedication and sportsmanship can you find in a bunch of (mostly young adult) guys mouse, keyboard and computer game skills? How do you test for drugs in a virtual reality game that actually has them? I know as well as you do that that should be easy… the Server Knows All… therefore the Devs Know All too right? Can you really ‘cheat’ in a server environment? meh...

That is one thing that crossed my mind when I was trying to figure out what the hell I was gonna write for this BB… (I really like taking part in them but I actually almost skipped this one, well… I said it above. Change the ‘reward to equal the risk’, IE footballers (any kind)/basketballers/golfers/etc., make the same as a basic middle income (based on your local state/country/etc.) and policemen/teachers/firemen/ etc., make ridiculous millions per year and I will give some respect.)(…evidently there was some left in my system…)  =]

Anyhoo…

AT’X’ was my first exposure to eSports. One of the things that got me about it was how short it was. Each match was over in minutes. I can’t off hand (remember I’m not a sporto) think of any ‘sport’ that has matches that are as brief. I enjoyed it all, but I wanted it to last longer… all of the commentary lasted far, far longer than any of the actual engagements… bla bla bla. The Providence Gank I watched last week felt like it lasted longer...  =\

I have though occasionally thought how much fun it would be to have variety of races in New Eden… something that evidently used to occur (see Rix’s Sandlot Games)… for instance, a 10 or 20 hop loop through hisec, with multiple markers that need to be flown past (inside a specific range to mark time) before you warp to the next gate. Some in system markers would be on the same grid and you would have to fly through them manually (a frig/cruiser/BC Micro Jump Drive or MJD would be the bomb for this kind of sport) and some markers would be multiple in system warp-to’s with a high degree of realignment between warps and then off to the next gate and so on… very, very fast ships with maxed out speed/alignment mods and matching skills would be key.

Or mebbe a Great Race Around New Eden Endurance Team Event with a ‘pass the baton’ mechanic to allow teams to work across TZs (and players OL availability). Something in the tradition of The 1908 New York to Paris Race… with a bit of that other Great Race thrown in for good effect and the lulz…

One variation would be to allow the listed entrants corp members (same as the ATs, a balance of team #s/ships/fits) to be actively involved with just one ‘flagged’ as the active racer (ball/baton carrier) and the rest working as support/interdiction forces… possibly limit fittings to just webs, scrams & mebbe jammers; IE 'tackle'… the active racer could ‘pass-the-baton’ making another corp member the active racer… the possibilities are intriguing. Sort of a Football In Space (US or Euro rules, or mebbe both?) scenario but played across multiple ‘pitches’ as the active racers jump gates…

Would/should CCP allow ganking and griefing during CONCORD sanctioned races (IE CCP sanctioned eSports races)? They take care of this in the AT’s by having them in Jove space… so I would ‘ass-u-me’ that in order to have a gank/grief free event in Empire space, CONCORD would be have to be set to ‘DOKKEN anyone who even begins a targeting cycle on an official race participant.

With the level of ganking/griefing that goes on in New Eden I can’t help but believe that if it was not interdicted by CONCORD (for sanctioned events only) that there are many corps/Alliances who would LOVE to run counter-race ops as a major LOL event…

Well… that’s as far as my imagination goes as regards eSports in EVE… I like races in general, and while not a sports fanatic (and yes ‘fanatic’ is the root of the word ‘fan’) I do often watch the TT… so races in New Eden would be of interest to me.

On the metagame side of eSports & CCP or EVE … I have no idea or clue… and like the toon drug testing thing… I’m really kinda meh…

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

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The Tapestry of Tur’s Travels…

or~ Travelling Without Moving…

"Tur's Travels"

In Mabrick’s recent post, “Getting Around a Bit More than Before” in which he posted a pic of his “visited systems’ and asked if others would do the same in response.

Mab has been ingame 4 years… his map show an almost exclusive large red blob in primarily Gallente space with a smattering of orange tendrils just starting to grow as he experiences W-space life in our C3. We have a static lowsec hole so he is now unavoidably spending time at the least transversing lowsec in order to access Empire for store runs and such. So his very limited red blob in Caldari space has grown yellow & orange tendrils of is new travels in and thru lowsec… it is an interesting map, especially in comparison to mine.

As you can see above mine is a bit more all over the place. I have been ingame only 2 years to Mab's 4 but… approx a year and a half of that time has been spent in W-space.

First, understand none of our travels in W-space show on the Visited Systems Map… I have spent quite a bit of time, as Tiger Ears does most of the time, travelling from hole to hole through the local W-space constellations… none of which shows on the map.

Second, one of the very interesting aspects of W-space life is what I call, “Travelling Without Moving”. Life in a wormhole includes a very interesting element… You see wormholes are the ‘gates’ leading into and out of W-space… only they are natural phenomena not manmade artifacts… (Hmmm, one must wonder at the term ‘natural phenomena’ in a virtual reality game… worrisome huh?) and they have a limited lifespan and despawn and respawn naturally or they can be manually despawned by mass closing, IE breaking the mass limit of the hole forcing it to close.

As we have a static lowsec hole to Empire, when one despawns, another respawns immediately but in a random location somewhere in lowsec Empire space… Plus we can have up to 4 K162s, or random holes, spawn at any given time… they usually lead to other wormholes but can occasionally, lead to any sec of Empire… this mean that every day when you scan down the daily holes you never know where you are going to pop out.

I have seen parts of New Eden I would probably never have ever intentionally gone to… and many systems I would have not had the ability to visit, IE null system deep in Sov held space… lowsec systems that neither business nor pleasure trips would have led me to… other W-space systems that we can raid… (those don’t show on the map of course…).

One of the more interesting things about Travelling w/o Moving are the times when we pop out in a lowsec or a null island... look at Black Rise, Syndicate the Cauldron regions and you will see single instances of visits w/o the connecting line of jmps in or out... this is ONLY something you will see on a wormholers map...

The farthest out I have ever been is here in the Outer Passage region...

This is “Travelling Without Moving”, every day our system is connected to a new set of random systems throughout New Eden and W-space… we get to travel and see New Eden the Wormhole Way!

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

Meh...

or~ NEVER Volunteer...

The HDF =Phergott= docked at the Lab

Just a note to let ya'll know I'm still here, just not much happening to write of in th' hole of late... runnin PI, runnin Sleepers, making some  ISKies... no ganks, no roams (that I have been in on)...

We did have some good friends join us for a welcome back Sleeper Run a few night's ago... 12 sites, an easy 500M ISK.... other than that all's quiet (and therefor lucrative and boring) on the other side of the sky.

On another note, I am struggling with the latest BB on eSports... I am not, nor have I ever been a 'jock' or a sports fan... I was a wrestler in high school, but you don't see 'real' Graeco-Roman wrestling on TV or in the sports pages & mags now do you? I mean the WWE and it's variants, as everyone except the genetically challenged knows, are acting and therefore belong on the 'Reality TV' channel right?

I have also for some unaccountable reason volunteered to 'sum up' BB:39 "Home" which might take a bit... sheesh... =]

HBHI's C3 Homehole

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

Things That Go Gank in The Black...

or~ Anatomy of a Gang Kill…

[my background is the lead pic for this post]

To catch up…

I have been busy w/ some RL stuff (and it is not over yet) but I do log on daily and tend to my flock of planets and I have been able to join in a few corp ops and make a couple'a store runs and am starting to see an ROI (Return On Investment for them as are not finanshally profishent…). Granted I get a real glazed over look in the eyes when I scan down page after page of PI cost overruns… I felt like it will take months of steady sales to put me back in the black… or I could just shoot the CPA’s and burn the ledgers… hmmm… what to do what to do?

Uh, I’ll be right back…

<door hisses open and hisses closes>

<muffled sounds of gunfire and screams cut short>

<door hisses opens, few wisps of acrid smoke curl in the air as the door hisses closed>

OK, please ignore the smell of smoke, it’s being… taken care of…

So, with the two P3 products I am making for sale on the market I have generated almost:

ISK 100,000,000.00!!  Woo    hoo    …oh well.

OK, ok, I din’t really kill the CPA’s, or burn the ledgers (as much as I would like to…) and they report that, over the fiscal period between 17.07.113 and 24.10.113 (EVE HQ API data pull) I have spent, ONLY on Planetary Construction and Import/Export Taxes, on the one hand: (build, tear down in frustration and rebuild, tear down in frustration and rebuild, tear down in frustration and rebuild…)

ISK 128,734,300.08

…so I am not quite as far in the red as I had thought… over the same period my income from all sources, PI sales included, was, on the other hand:

ISK 1,340,730,701.53

…so you ‘could’ say I am catching up on my outlay. And keep in mind my outlay included a lot more than just PI… initial fuel prods for the POS while we were getting PI setup, ISK to support Hiril’s RvB habit, ships n mods, Quafe n Hookers baby!! So, my ‘miscellaneous’ outlay (minus PI) during this time was, on the third hand:

ISK 1,194,358,896.65

… that’s right, I spent over a Bil on cheese-n-crackers (and many Rifters n mods for Hiril) in just about three months. This still left me with a net cash inflow, for this time period, of:

ISK 17,637,504.80

Now this is just a snapshot between the dates of 17.07.113 to 24.10.113, approximately three months, my actual current balance is near ISK 200M… like RL money, I tend to go thru it faster than I can make it, even in th hole.  =]

Now you gotta admit, for just one guy, inna very small corp, having greatly decreased my OL time,  to pull down 1.34 Billion ISK in 3 months is not too shabby. Not like I’m out there grinding FW sites and ganking 3 Billion ISK Freighters now is it?

Which leads us to the main topic of tonight’s flow-of-consciousness… ganking for fun and profit is alive and well in New Eden. This is a Picturepost… I hope you enjoy it…

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A funny thing happened on the way to the forum…

I had made a store run in my Prowler and was making my way back home with an empty hollow hold. I warped thru the gate at Niarja and as the screens loaded I realized I was at the edge of a really large gank fleet…

I insta cloaked and immediately pulled a hard vector change and went to max cloaked speed. It looked like one or two of the gank fleet might be interested in me but then a Providence landed on the gate…

He banged into the gate so hard he bounced approx 50 to 75 Km away from the gate… uh oh. The whole effin fleet turned almost as one and began closing on him as he desperately tried to turn and burn for the gate…

A fat ol Domi finally caught up with him and smashed into him from the side right on the nose… Thrown off of alignment his fate was sealed… The rest of the gank fleet, more than 15 ships from C0NVICTED Alliance <A.I.F.>, closed into range. I had ordered silent running and station keeping at 90Km out from the engagement. I sent my camdrones in and all I could do was watch in fascinated horror as…

@ 2012.10.21 05:15:50 - “Thydon [EXOP] A.I.F (Brutix)” has started trying to warp scramble “tabson [PCS](Providence)”

Once everyone was in range, the end did not take long…

As the Prov exploded my camdrones lost vector lock warped back and this was what I saw…

I sent the cams back and watched as CONCORD did their thing on 15 ships…

CONCORD completed mopping up and, as usual milled around afterwards like drunken automatons… (I personally believe that after they pwn everything in sight they all go back to the mess or wardroom and have doughnuts and kaffe… cops gonna be cops).

Act three, scene one… the cleaning crew arrives. A Charon and an Orca with a Crane in support land on grid and hoover up all the L&S…

After it was all said and done… I must admit I was humbled as I quietly ordered alignment and warp spool up initialized for the next jump gate on our route.

The bridge crew was silent as they went about their duty… often glancing up at the main holoscreen, all thinking such things as those of us who make our living in the black think when faced with such utter destruction, and such callous and staggering loss of life.

The wrecked hulk of “tabson’s” Providence floated still smoking and still glowing in places on the thermal sensors as internal fires burned up the last of the trapped air or as bulkheads breached into space… she drifted, abandoned in the harsh and cold hard reality of life and death in New Eden’s deadly skies.

http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=14936002

Fly Safe out there  =/|)=