In a Constantly Changing Universe…

~or “The Only Constant You Can Count on… is Change.”

At Fanfest 2013 CCP Seagull announced the Next Science Fiction Theme for EVE... where she asked us to “dream with her”… about “Space Colonization” and “the Rise of the Capsuleers, taking over what the Empires used to control”… “imagine what could lie beyond the known, if only you could construct the right kind of stargate ”… which ended with the Big Reveal that we were going to once day build our OWN Stargates leading to New Spaces.

At Fanfest 2014, CCP Seagull expanded on this and gave us the Roadmap to Player Built Stargates.

And we have been living that dream and on that road and following the map she laid out that night ever since… And we have seen CCP do exactly what she promised.

First up on the Roadmap we had Rubicon, Nov, ’13, which brought us player owned Hisec customs offices, ghost sites (from which we understand we are to collect the BPs, materials, etc., needed to build the PBSGs) and new hacking mechanics among others… the first steps towards Colonization.

Then eight months later came Kronos, Jun ‘14. Small note; and the beginning of the new 6 week schedule… and one of the things we lost to that faster paced patch schedule was those amazing Expansion Trailers… but CCP instead gave us… this.

Kronos was slated to begin the Industry changes, but they were rolled back to Crius. A benefit of the 6 week schedule was the ability to do this… to roll back something that was not ready without forcing us to wait six moar months. But we did get the new Mordu’s Legion ships, low slots on Freighters, removal of the Lewt Spew™ mechanic and the Serenitization of the Moa among others… so this ended up being an interim patch, nothing directly required by the Roadmap.

Then Crius, Jul ’14, with the long awaited Industry revamp. Complete overhaul; of the Industry interface, Corp standing removal, Industry “Teams” among others. Required by the Roadmap.

Hyperion, Aug ’14, which was focused primarily on wormholes as well as their game mechanics plus things like the L4 Frig missions. An interim patch.

Oceanus, Sep ’14, Burner missions, lots moar wormhole stuff. An interim patch.

Phoebe, Nov ‘14, “Phase One” of the jump changes for Capitals and Supercapitals, introduction of Jump Fatigue, bookmarks in space, multiple sell orders and unlimited Skill Queue among others. Major requirement of the Roadmap.

Rhea, Dec ’14,  Complete overhaul of the Death mechanics… no SP loss and removal of Clone grades, 101 new ‘shattered’ wormholes, Thera, T3 Dessies and the Bowhead. I feel this is one was definitely on the Roadmap though not a ‘big’ waypoint.

Proteus, Jan ’15, Combat Recon scan immunity, Hi-end explo sites added, and lots of graphical work, an interim patch.

Tiamat, Feb ’15, Emergence of the Drifters and increased NPC interaction across Empire space, Svipul T3, corp friendly fire toggle… I am not sure if this is on the map or not. I can see the Drifters and the Sleeper lore and NPC behavior possibly becoming important in or leading to the New Space, especially if it is Jove Space as so many seem to think.

Either way, a hugely improved AI and increased NPC initiated interaction is, IMHO, nothing but good for EVE as a whole… I’m putting this one in the “CCP Seagull Sekret Roadmap” category.

Scylla, Mar ’15, mostly focused on EVE Launcher Improvements, download on demand, etc., NPE improved by the new “Opportunities” Ishtar/droan nerf… a solid interim patch if not actually on either The Map (or the Sekret Map), which it may be, too early to tell.

Mosaic, Apr ’15, Entosis Link introduced, SKINS, T3 rebalance among other changes. Definitely on The Map as the Entosis Link is required for the New Sov mechanics.

Carynx, Jun ’15, (sorry, the en.wiki only goes to Mosaic so I have to use the moar graphical and hence a bit less bulletpointed updates.eveonline.com site…) Carnyx brought us “Phase Two” of the Sov changes started in Phoebe back in Nov of 2014.

The core of the New Sov system… the Entosis Link module is the core of the new Sov plus the Asset Vulnerability Window and the Occupancy Defense Modifier, Cruiser Burner missions, moar SKINS, PBR graphics, Jackdaw T3, Drifter inhabited wormholes and the highly debated new OV Icons… Major requirement of the Roadmap.

Aegis, Jul '15, brings us "Phase Three" of the New Sov. the Entosis Link expands to all Sov structures; vulnerability windows take effect and constealltion-wide capture events and Freeport mode become active, a lot of balancing and the T3 Hecate. Again, major requirements of The Map.

Galatea, Aug ’15 (our most recent patch) Sov balancing and fixes, Drifters Invading the Throne Worlds, new SKINS, clothes & graphics… good stuff but an interim patch or on the edge of The Map.

And Vanguard is on its way, set to drop the 29^th of Sept. only 16 days from this writing.

In Vanguard we are slated to get, Multi-buy, Jump Gate Cloak Invuln timer, WH Jump Polarization timer (Yea!), improved Probe scanning map, new Guristas Burner missions and more graphics enhancements… Plus in this Dev Blog, Next Set of Sov and Capital Movement Iterations by Team Five O we read…

“Team Five 0 is hard at work on our next set of iterations to sovereignty (as well as some changes to Jump Fatigue)…”

“These are the second set of major iterations to the Sov capture system since Aegis, with the first set having been released in our earlier Galatea release.”

“The first of these changes is scheduled for the Vanguard release on September 29th, and the rest will be coming in the Parallax release on November 3rd.”

Looks like Troll ‘ceptors will be a Thing Of The Past with ‘ceptors losing the ability to fit an Entosis Link, some really boring “numbers” and “words” about something called Passive Regeneration of Structure Capture Progress… OMFG… (I will NEVER understand nullsec or them as care about it…) anyway, this was cool… Ability to Self-Destruct Sov Structures…. FTW! And other changes they are not far enough along on to discuss ATM.

But it seems the Parallax release will also contain a significant iteration to the Jump Fatigue mechanic to “…reduce the damage that a character can inflict by overjumping, reducing the maximum possible fatigue from 30 days to 5 days.” This is so “…a player who is mostly active on the weekend will have fully recovered from one weekend by the next.”

These changes (1) are definitely on The Map and (b) seem to me to be quite close to if not The Business As Usual of iterations, balancing and tweaks that CCP does normally in keeping EVE healthy and interesting.

So that is where we are now. If one were to graph (cause we all like graphs) completion indices on the Roadmap now, close to 2 years and 14 patches after the original announcement… I wonder if CCP Seagull’s looks something like this…

The above is my take on where we are currently in order to get to Stargate Construction and Control according to my reading of the patch notes and Dev Blogs etc. CCP is obviously done with Industry. We know they are on the way to the final tweaks and iterations on the Sov & Warfare changes.

As for that sliver of green I put on Corp & Alliances… I have seen a few iterations and tweaks here and there… expanded Corp size, bookmark sharing and improvements and overview sharing, Friendly Fire, improved Corp adverts… but nothing writ large so I feel while some work has been done, Corps & Alliances major changes are still to come. And of course, we are all eagerly anticipating the upcoming Station, Outposts and Starbases changes that have been the talk of the ether for some time now.

So… here’s the genesis of this post. The players who applauded CCP Seagull back in 2013 when she announced the Player Built Stargates and in 2014 when she showed us how we were going to get there… are all playing a quite different game than the one we all logged into back in ’13 and even in ’14.

You need to remember there was eight months between Rubicon on the old twice yearly Major Expansion cycle and Kronos and the beginning of the new six week Patchspansion cycle… and it has been a year and 3 months since Kronos dropped, 12 patches total in that time. On the old expansion cycle we would have seen just 2 expansions and even going back to Rubicon we would by now only have seen 3.

So where am I leading with all this background?… I was thinking of all the all the hoopla and hype over the idea, at that time, that Goons or at least nullseccers in the form of the Great Coalitions, were going to be the players in the best position to be the ones who were gonna build those Stargates and then force the rest of us to pay tolls or simply lock us all out and take ALL of the new space for themselves…

Kinda moot now dontcha think? I have spent a good part of this evening wondering just what the New Eden political and player starscape will look like in ’16 or ’17 when CCP get’s all those arrows green so we can ALL find out just what it will take to build “the right kind of stargate” and explore, discover and fight for whatever lies beyond the known…

CCP Seagull… You go gurl!

Fly reckless and see you in the New Sky =/|)=

Back in the Black…

~or “So… How Do You Play This Game?”

I’m back, or really we’re back… or at least we were last night.

Got home a twee early last night, IE I left work on time for a change, because we have visitation with my 12yo son on Wednesdays, so after dinner, dropping him back off, and settling in afterwards I fired up TS just to see if it was still a ghost server and lo and behold actual live people were online! And not just any people but Sov and Tsra, our Fearless Leader himself himself and Le Banc! Oh frabjous day!

So after a bit of “Who the hell are you?” and other such trollery we ended up having enough people get on to actually consider running sites… especially as we now have a support Archon in our home. We did not build it for ratting, it is primarily a POS and fleet support carrier, but on those nights as we have enough people on and really solid hole control, we may occasionally use it for ratting cause, well… it’s a Support Carrier FFS.

So last night instead of flying in my usual logi role I was but one moar Ishtard Drone pusher applying my awesome droan DPS to fukkin UP some Sleepers and with Archon Logi... well, the Nefarious Forces of Naptime couldn’t even scratch our paint! But it was not about the ISK or the gameplay or the PVE… the fun was being back in the black flyin’ with my guys in the deadly skies of New Eden.

It’s funny… there is so much Elite Dangerous has that EVE doesn’t… a full 6 degrees of freedom in supraluminal flight, 400 BILLION stars, amazing detailed first person flight mechanics, actual Physics, a much more deeply interactive NPC community, the very real promise of landing on planets… with space Jeeps! Sol system and mother Earth just to name a few… but the one thing EVE has that E:D doesn’t overshadows it all…

EVE was envisioned and created as a social game and CCP has devoted the continuing development and support of the social aspects and interactions in EVE. And THAT makes it far far more than just a game.

I was seriously lookin’ at corp hoppin’ and joining Noir. Academy with Epigene… but as long as there are guys on TS and in the game like Sov n Tsra n Endy n Elru and the rest… well, I’m a wormholer at heart… and home is where the heart is.   =]

Fly reckless and see you in the Hole =/|)=

Days of Malaise…

~or “My Give-A-Damn May be Fixable…”

I have not been playing much EVE these past few, ok, threeish months… and in the last few weeks I have not even played much E:D either. I usually hate when RL gets in the way of my fun, but lately I have been wondering if it is that, or something else that stays my mouse finger when hovering over the “Login” buhtan.

IRL we are in the middle of a ‘space re-allocation’ at work. They have basically cut the IT User Support area into thirds and we are losing significantly more m3 than one of them. During construction we have been jammed into a much smaller, ¼ section of the same room. To say this has been little ‘disruptive’ is to say the EVE playerbase can be a little 'contentious'…  Add to this I have been putting in some occasionally serious OT and ‘ol Tur has simply been going to bed earlier then he has been used to and that cuts heavily into my gaming time.

That’s the RL side of my reduced gaming activity… but if I’m honest with myself, and you gentle reader, it’ not all of it. Looking back I realize there have been nights, more than a few, where I ran the launcher but then got into blogging and reading and even watching upcoming movie trailers and when I realized it was past my bedtime… there was the client, buried under multiple windows and ignored. Not forgotten… ignored. Seems at some point in the last month or so my gaming give-a-damn got broke and I dint realize it.

As for not loggin into EVE that I feel is really due to 2 factors… (1) I have a lot (for me) of ISK now and the push, the need to grind sites or even just keep PI going so I can make enough monies to pay the bills so to speak is just not there. And (b) the guys I have always flown with are on sabbatical or taking a break or whatever it is that is keeping them from loggin in and they are the real reason I want to play anymore…

As for Fozzie Sov and other “things of great import” going in in EVE… I have no idea nor any opinion… There’s this Chairman Mao saying… (paraphrased) “Frogs at the bottom of the well, only see a part of the sky.” I live inna hole man.

As for my recent E:D malaise… this I am uncertain of. I still like the game immensely and I do have fun when I play and find it fulfilling and there is a lot I want to get into and explore and do in E:D… so why have done nothing except fill my cargo hold, several days ago, in prep for a Rares run I have yet to make? I have no idea… so I’ll talk about what I do when I DO login.  =\

On the E:D side…

I started working the “Rares” circuits. Rares in E:D for them as dunt know are items available only in one system what can be extremely valuable when sold many light years away from their origin systems. Basically the Rares mechanics are, (1) buy the tan highlighted items, (2) sell them a minimum of 120 LY from origin system and (3) reap approx. 800 to 900% ROI (Return On Investment)!

The chart below (SPREADSHEETS INNNNN SPAAAAACE FTW!!!) shows my last full Rares Circuit in which I spent a total of 105,674.00c to make 1,046,521.00c after investment recoup, a 980% profit… not too shabby for approx an hour of easy gameplay hm?

Much of the details of the Rares Trade Circuits and mechanics have, of course, been worked out by other players such as Commander Gid who provided the map below which I found on “Fingerbob's guide to Elite Dangerous Trading, Part Three” along with some of the best info and advise on Rare Trading in E:D.

That’s pretty much all I have been doing in E:D. I hit a few systems, load up on Rare goods and head out into the black. Oh and I always use the most economical routes. Routes that cover like 30 to 40+ hops. Why? Cause I won’t pay for gas anymore and I prefer to make even more credits.

Free Fuel… It is far far faster to scoop the small amount of fuel expended on a small hop than for one at the edge of my max jump range, that can be near a ¼ tank and take a few minutes orbiting the sun and I don’t like being ‘exposed’ to attack that long.

Moar Credits… At every system you pass through run a deep scan before you jump out… you can sell the data at systems at least 20+ LY on down your route. And the price goes up the farther out you get… if you wait till you get to your destination, say 180LY out, you can make from 50,000 to over 70,000c in addition to your trades… that alone usually covers my initial investment in my cargo.

Tonight I logged in just to show my son (AI, the one what got me into EVE who we’re visitin’ in Georgia ATM…) all about E:D. Gave him a basic run through, how fight n flight and such works… and even have a hold full of Rares to boot, half a mil credits just waiting for me to make the 165LY run to Zaonce… and yet after I boofed around showing AI how E:D works… I just docked up and logged off instead of making the run.

Now, as for EVE…

I have been keeping up on the blogs both player and Dev, the EVE-O forums (where and when applicable)(and stomachable) the Local News as reported by The SCOPE and suchlike… and I have my concerns. There seems to be a malaise the days in New Eden… seems like a lotta people beside me might has a broke Give-a-Damn.

Though… I did get a stirring deep in my EVE nethers recently… enough of a stirring that I actually logged on night afore last, scanned the holes in Home, found the pipe out to Empire and went and docked Tur up in Amarr. You see I “do” want to play EVE, I just don’t wanna do it solo and my guys in HELPeR are on a break or sabat or somesuch and there just aint much going on that I wanna take part in or much even TO take part in.

But… I read my friend Epi’s post, Into the Black, where he announces he has joined Noir. Academy one of New Eden’s most respected Merc Alliances and that got my attention. You see for them as don’t know me and mine, by that I mean my home corp HBHI, were once a part of SYJ Alliance in Anoikis. SYJ, Surely You’re Joking [HAHA] Alliance was an Anoikis Merc Alliance when we were with them, and at the time, a damn good one though not as… moral? honorable? decent? as Noir. But DAMN did we have some big fun and made mountains of ISK with them until they decided to leave Anoikis and head to losec with the idea of trying null out… at which time HBHI & SYJ parted ways.

So here I have Epigene, someone I have kinda always wanted to fly with, or against, either would be fun, joining a Merc Corp, a well-respected Merc Corp…

and I miss flying in EVE…

a lot…

and I miss being a merc…

a lot…

hmmm…

decisions decisions…

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

Han Solo or is that, Han Social?

~or “A Social Player Playing Asocially…”

I have logged into EVE something like 3 or 4 times in the last 2+ months. I have however logged into Elite Dangerous nightly in that same time. At first I thought it was just that first flush of excitement when tackling something new… you know, the unveiling, the first time you hold a new joystick, the first time you log into a game and ‘see’ a new world… those first heady days of learning and exploring and joyful confusion… But then time wore on, and I found myself thinking about loggin into EVE less and less… and that worried me. A lot. A helluvalot.

But last night I realized it is not a lack of interest in the game, it is that I, in EVE, am a social player and there has been very little social activity in EVE for me to take part in.

You see basically after the stress of the move out-n-in from the old hole to the new and then the (seeming) loss of the 2 Directors to RL work/life needs etc. … well, the majority of the membership of our little band sorta backed off playing EVE.

We had night after night of people loggin in and asking if Sov or Tsra was on… and if no, poof! they’d just logoff and go play League or something else. Got really frustrating for a while and there was some talk talk about it, some “…well, how about staying logged on in case someone DOES show up!?” and some “…so instead of waiting on Sov or Tsra how about WE fleet up and run sites or go look for pew pew huh?!?!” … needless to say we tried this and we tried that and… well, there are people in the ‘verse who are just simply good at FCing and then there’s the rest of us.

So there we were, kind headless in a way with both Directors AFG due to RL shit, with the new bros not really wanting to play without our FC on, and the vets as left were seriously affected by all the above. In a joint corp/personal note… my son, AINeumann decided to take a break, one of those long ones with no scheduled return date… so he consolidated his assets in an NPC station in Empire, sold off a really huge amount of his stuff, and gifted out a not small number of billions of ISK (and yes I got some, and no you can’t has any…) and he left the game. AI is my son and he was the reason I came to EVE… to say this has been hard for me is putting it very mildly… so all in all things had kinda ground to a halt for our intrepid little Anoikis band.

As of this coming Nov I will have been playing EVE for 5 years and I have played solo and in small, middle sized and large groups and I thought I was competent and comfortable in all those playstyles… and here I was as guilty of popping into TS, seeing no one on and loggin right off again same as the new bros we were getting upset at for doing the same thing. Seems at some point the social aspects of EVE have begun to heavily outweigh the other gameplay options for me.

So, here I was with not much to do in EVE and basically no one to do it with and I, like all of us, knew all about the two biggest potential rivals to EVE… Elite Dangerous having gone live in Dec of 2014 and of course, Star Citizen, release date TBD (though according to the game's website, crowd source funding surpassed US$87 million in August 2015). So I gave each a try. Star Citizen just confirmed my belief that I am not a betahead. I want to PLAY the GAME… not ‘test’ the hangar.

And as of right now, Start Citizen reminds me far too much of Incarna… where you have these fantastic ships (avatars) and clothing and monocles (ships and stuff you can buy for really ridiculous amounts of RL money) and NO WHERE to fly them (just like the CQ)… granted they do have a Thunderdome you can ‘pretend’ to play the game in, but that holds no interest for me… Yeah all in all a bit too much like our avatars in EVE if you think on it a minute. I’ll wait for them to ‘open the door’ so to speak on Star Citizen before I invest too much time in it.

But Elite Dangerous… well, that’s all together very different as you have read here or mebbe even on a few other blogs. As I said at the top of this post, I had found myself thinking about loggin into EVE less and less, and that worried me… but I figured it out.

EVE is a social game, E:D is, for me, a solo game. I have enough ISK in EVE that I don’t have to grind site or even PI to afford ships to lose, and ATM I also have quite enough of them as twere so my desire in EVE is not ISK motivated now, it is ‘where are the guys’ motivated and the guys are, for the most part, busy elsewhere.

So E:D fills my needs at this time perfectly. I do have a few friends here, 2 of the guys I work with IRL who joined us in EVE have also decided to give E:D a try and, well, they are as taken with the FPI (First Person Immersion) as much I am. And they too were affected by the whole EVE corp’s slowdown in activities etc.

But even knowing they are out there, I simply don’t have the same desire to mix it up socially as I do in EVE. The mechanics for group gameplay in E:D, well… they suck in comparison to EVE TBH. There is a ‘wing’ mechanic and they guys are playing with it to see what it gives you, but it is nothing like Fleet in EVE (or what used to be Fleet in EVE… have they killed that off yet?) and there is nothing AT ALL like corps or Alliances in E:D… nothing period.

No contracts, no personal trades, no station hangars, no buying and storing modules… you can own more than one ship and what is fitted on it, but that’s all… and I have found no way other than on-at-a-timing it on your own to move ships around from station to station. And this is a far far more painful process than in EVE.

Yes, there are some real downsides to E:D… it is not EVE and I know now it cannot replace it. At least not for me, not as long as I would really rather fly with my bros in the deadly skies of New Eden… and I do miss my corpmates. I have heard rumors of rumors that they may have more free time in the not too distant future… and if that comes to pass then I will… once moar…

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

DoP...

~or “Driving on Planets…”

It aint WiS, but it just might lead to something BETTER…

You see one (there an many ATM) of the reasons I have been playing Elite Dangerous more than EVE lately is greater “personal” immersion.  Not that EVE isn’t immersive, we all know how deep that great game is… and E:D is no replacement for EVE, again comparing a watermelon to a grape… both round n food n tasty n all, but NOT the same by any means.

However as Mynxee recently discussed in her post, Walking In Stations: An Impossible Dream?, CCP was at one point going to expand EVE in a moar personal direction and give us ‘Ambulation’ (horribad name that, sounds like we're all shuffling over to an ambulance…) moar colloquially and better known as WiS or “Walking in Stations”… IE we could get out of our PODs, scrape off the goo and wander ‘bout and kill shit as PEOPLE for a change. But CCP screwed that pooch without Vaseline or a reach around… I have said my piece many times on my desire for WiS and feelings about how CCP horribly mismanaged it. But at the risk and desire of repeating myself once moar…

The Why...  

On The EvE of Contention…
On The Bone of Contention…
On Getting Back in Contention…

The Dream… 
Worlds and Stations

Watch this just once moar to see what we missed... 
A Presentation by CCP T0rfiFrans

OK, so that’s what happened in EVE… and it does not seem like CCP wants to do a helluva lot about it either, or, at least they are keeping their mouths shut about it if they are looking at a WiS feature for EVE… and after Incarna, that would be best. I just hope and pray they are because the competition is heating up… really heating up.

My title reference to DoP, ‘Driving on Planets’ is about Elite Dangerous and the Horizon expansion coming THIS YEAR… and as there are only 4.5 months left in 20and15 and the beta for Horizon is out NOW then we will actually see this SOON™. The Horizon expansion is a very reasonable, logical and workable first step into a fully immersive First Person SciFi Space MMO game.

You will be able to fly your ship, from space down to the surface of ‘airless’ planets and moons (leaving dealing with atmo flight etc. for a later iteration, smart that). Once down you will have a vehicle… a Surface Recon Vehicle (SRV) called the ‘Scarab’. That’s what depicted in the Title pic above… we get a teaser glimpse in the Horizon trailer… fast shot, speed blurred, of a Scarab BLASTING in 8 wheel glory over a moonscape… OH HELLZ YES.

Per the Horizon site’s blurb… “The first expansion, Planetary Landings introduces players to planet surfaces and the first all-new Surface Recon Vehicle (SRV) the ‘Scarab’. Scanning airless planets and moons brings new gameplay as players detect signals, crashed ships, mineral deposits, outposts and fortresses.”

All good stuff IMHO and a great step towards one day landing, getting out of your seat, walking to the cargo bay, getting in the Scarab, dropping the ramp, finding a wreck and getting OUT in your EVA suit and Walking On Planets… and in stations, and in our ships… oh hell man, I wanna walk ALL OVER the place, and fly all over space, and drive it like I stole it!!

And in Elite Dangerous… it looks like the Devs at Frontier want the same thing.

Now…

1. Should EVE have the same thing or at least something similar?

B. Should CCP “copy” Frontier?...

A. Yes.

2. Not if they had done it first…

Some things to consider though… E:D aint EVE and EVE aint E:D.

E:D is far more a PVE game with PVP allowed but somewhat heavily restricted (as compared to EVE’s open world sandbox), and with few mechanics for really cooperative gameplay and with player Emergent Behavior affecting the verse to a greatly lesser degree. So is E:D gonna sway huge swathes of players from EVE?

I don’t think so due to the different gameplay and goals. However, those who want a vastly moar solo game with reduced yet still existing risks will be drawn to it. Add to that a greatly expanded gameplay ABILITY… First Person, flying and driving and one day walking about… so yeah, I think CCP needs to read the writing on teh wall and get to coding on teh screen.

Should WiS in EVE be like E:D? Nope… it should be like WiS in EVE and take into account EVE's basic nature and playstyles and Emergent and NPC lore and playerbase. Before I just really wanted WiS in EVE for myself… now I believe it really needs to happen… for the game.

Fly reckless and see you… on the Surface =/|)=

Boring is Mining, but Mining isn’t Boring…

~or “A Mining We Will Go, A Mining We Will Go…”

OK, I think I figured out mining in E:D… and I like it much moar than in EVE. Mining in EVE is all but a fully automated process and hence quite boring as anyone who has ever done it knows... even those who LIKE it know it is boring but they use the ‘staring at screen’ time to do other things… read blogs, work on spreadsheets, watch streams, play League… etc., etc.

In E:D however, mining is real PvE, and a quite active PvE to boot. Several things I have learned along the way… Your ships fit is, same as in EVE, critical yet very very different. The modules interactions are more granular, more detailed than in EVE and in many ways more realistic.

So I fly out to a “Resource Extraction” site… IE asteroid field, which in themselves are a bit more realistic too in that they are not silly little partial arcs of rocks with no sensible reason as to why or what they are arcing around… These are fields of rocks of varying sizes usually very (very) close to a sun. And the first time I landed at one I trundled over to a rock and hit mouse1 to run out the mining lasers and… my ship shut down. Powered off. Dead in the water… there I was… adrift in the black...

Yup, all powered systems shut the eff off and I see this timer, in RED telling me my oxygen will run out in 8m24s… 8m23s…8m22s…8m21s… wait, what? WTF??

After a few very interesting minutes I finally got the power back on… turns out I was badly overbudgeted for power. IE out of Cap. There are 2 modules that run your ‘grid’ in E:D, the Power Plant and the Power Distributor. The Power Plants are nuclear fusion reactors and the Power Distributor manages the power output to the ships Systems, Engine, and Weapons. It uses capacitor banks and has a set recharge capacity.

These 2 systems provide all the power to run all the systems on your ship. Ask for more power than your plant and distributor can provide and you blow fuses and melt busbars and…  BZZZZZzzzzzz  zzzzzzzzz  zzzzt!… everything goes offline.

So you have to do like we do in EVE and balance your Power and Distribution (as compared to Capacitor and CPU) as you fit up your ship. You can even run higher capacity mods by offlining some while onlining others and swapping around as needed… but unlike EVE, this is a simple flip of a switch without any need to wait for the grid to recharge to 95% or be at some set distance from X thing or whatever… So there I was overbudget on power by like 120% with all mod on, and deploying all hardpoints promptly tripped all the breakers… oh joy.

Anyhoo… once I got past that (by shutting off ALL defensive and offensive mods) I mined up enough creds to buy a Power Plant and Distributor that easily handles all my power needs… Now I’m running at 90% power draw with 100% mods online, Schweet. So I can head back out and concentrate on actually mining instead of being all focused on not asphyxiating in my ship cause Im’a derp.

Now as to the mining itself… that was interesting, and fun. I have found my best method is to… but first, a few notes of importance…

NOTE on Collector Drones:

You have to buy and load up on Collector Drones. They are cheap but they take up 1 ton each, IE 1 space in your cargo racks. If you have 16 ton racks (currently I have x2 8 ton racks), you can carry 16 Collector Drones. But… you need to leave at least one space free for your first completed bin. Plus the drones have a limited lifespan.

Lifespan ranges from 300 to 720 seconds… yup, 5 minutes to 12 minutes max. Depending on class and rating you can have from 1 to 4 active and they can have ranges from 600m to 2,380m.

Mining solo with one laser and one ship I carry 10 drones. I found I can keep each one quite busy with the above method until they die and I have enough drones to make it through to a full 16/16 cargo racks. My only wasted drone up-time is travelling between rocks and as you can’t (as far as I can tell) order an active drone to dock up, and they are cheap, 120c each, I moar than cover the losses. Plus, if you think on it you soon realize you need to free up the cargo racks those drones are taking up for your completed refined ores anyway… so 10 drones at 1,200c against a 30k to 50k cred haul? Yeah, I’m ok with that.

NOTE on Prospector Drones:

I tested Prospector Drones early on. Fire and forget throw away drones, their job it to tell you the exact composition of a given rock… useful stuff to be sure and I can see the value in carrying them, I just don’t have the cargo racks for it yet.

NOTE on Rocks:

As far as I have been able to find out so far (PLEASE correct me if I am wrong here ok?) but there is no way to mark or tag rocks you have already depleted… I guess maybe Prospector Drones might help with that, but the HUD is limited and the rocks don’t POP (despawn) when done so you run a very real potential to get confused and waste time burning on a rock you already depleted… that is a bit of a pisser TBH.

OK, back to the How Tur Mines in E:D…

1. Warp in, land, get your bearings, choose a rock;

2. Approach till it’s clearly defined on your HUD;

3. Open Cargo Scoop;

4. Hit Fire1 to deploy weapons/mining laser/launch & program a Collector Drone;

5. Line up your laser so it’s getting a good hit near the center of the rock… some rotate fairly fast and you want to be burning rock the whole time without having to change your aimpoint;

6. Start burning the rock;

A. Chunks of the rock will be cut free and float off, the Drone will automatically fly out and snatch them up and pop them into your cargo hatch where they are loaded into the Refinery;

B. Keep burning continuously and chunks will be cut off slightly faster than the drone can collect them keeping the drone very busy;

7. Toggle ‘mouse free look’ (button push the mouse wheel) and turn slowly to your right, until the right side control panel just opens up;

8.   Switch to the “Cargo” tab to manage the Refinery and your Cargo hold. (see below)

A. I have upgraded to a 3 hopper Refinery, you will want to buy and fit the highest grade Refinery you can, more hoppers = less wasted ore = moar credits;

9. Once the drone delivers a chunk the Refinery will tell you what it is composed of and you can select what to refine.  Keep in mind you will be stuck with refining whatever you select until each hopper is filled (1 ton)(or you decide to vent the refined ores… not) once full, the ton of refined ore is automatically moved to the cargo rack freeing up that hopper. This means upon occasion you may/will find yourself throwing away very lucrative ores… so save up and get those upgraded Refineries.

OK, so now you settle in… The laser burns and cuts, chunks of rock break off and drift away, the drone zips back n forth collecting and delivering, you sit and actively hold fire on the laser while deciding and selecting what gets vented and what gets refined and while keeping an eye on the asteroid watching for when the (square white) chunks stop popping off… IE for when that rocks worthwhile ores are depleted.

10. Once the rock is depleted, stop burning and allow the drone to clean up the last of the chunks while picking out your next rock then get over there and get started as soon as possible to maximize the time you have on your drones…

Rinse and repeat.

Once your cargo racks are full, head in to a station and sell your ores. Even the way I am doing it solo is better money than the hauler contracts. I tried smuggling once… may give it a go later when I am better situated to cover the loss of cargo, the fines and repair the damages to my ship from hammering off the docking port while under boost while getting scanned… And I have yet to try any PvP or fighting PvE as I am simply not confident of my fight n flight skills… though I seem to be a god in the training simulator.

Anyhoo, to put it all in pitchers…

Fly reckless and see you in the Miningfield =/|)=

Livin’ the L33T Life…

~or “Muddlin along Not-So-Dangerously…”

I had done the trading thing and enjoyed it quite a bit so I decided to try the mining thing, and bought a Cobra. The Cobra Mk. III is a midsized hull, with a very good cargo capacity, 16 tons, matched with a low heat sig and the ability to outrun most ships.

I fit it up for mining… x2 Mining Lasers, a Refinery and Prospector “limpets” err…  droans. (limpets are what they call droans in E:D… I simply cannot call them limpets as they are most definitely NOT aquatic snails with broadly conical shells.… so I shall l henceforth call them droans and you can ping me all you want about it, I will not change) I also really want to fit Collector Droans but they were not available at Worlidge Terminal in LHS 3447.

So I fitted her up, upgraded a few base modules then ran out of money. I then promptly went out, warped to an asteroid belt and tried my hand at mining in E:D… I lasered the fuk outta’ a rock or 2 afore I figgered out how to find and target the pieces that I was blasting off… even depleted one rock completely and never saw one piece of it.

For that matter I never got even one piece at all because I discovered I can’t, or don’t know how to, open my Cargo Scoop… supposed to be the “Home” key but nothing works to open it… so I bumbled around and promptly crashed my ship into a number of rocks, causing damage I could not afford to fix.

So I returned to trading and stuck with it ‘till saved up a touch over 400,000c. Not just so I could afford to fix my mining ship but so I could also move that ship over to Dalton Gateway station. I have come to prefer, from a RP viewpoint, Dalton gateway over Worlidge Terminal as my ‘home’ in E:D. Worlidge is one of those ‘box’ stations, what they call a “Coriolis” station… I don’t like Coriolis stations much.

They are a “Cuboctahedron” and they are so uniform in shape that when you land at one, unless you land on the dock side, you have to sorta guess which end to fly to… but first you have to watch for a second to see how it’s rotating so you can determine which of the ‘sides’ the dock might be on then I look to see which of those sides ships are flying around, if any… All in all simply too much bother. In fact it is so much bother people have even made HOW TO videos on this… sheesh.

Dalton Gateway however is how I have always seen working ‘real’ space stations in my mind… Dalton is an “Orbis”. Now the Orbis looks like a SPACE STATION!! It’s a Stanford Torus and this makes sense to me. The location of the docking port is blatantly obvious at the hub end of a huge wheel, and it has torus (the wheely part), a doughnut shaped hollow ring that rotates to give artificial gravity via centrifugal force. The interior is open with a floored space that has dirt and farms and lakes and buildings and parks and trees… a simulated ‘natural’ ecosystem for food and living space… in space.

This is my new home. I instinctively know where to head to in order to dock up…

And here is where I live... or where I'd like to... really really would like to!  =] 

There is one thing I noticed the first time I idled over and sat a few K off the hab ring roof and looked around inside… A Stanford Torus design always includes a mirror system to magnify and reflect sunlight into the interior of the torus. These mirrors are adjusted to simulate the day/night rhythms all planet evolved species need. E:D’s torus stations do not have this… the light from the sun is interrupted in many and fascinating ways as the ring revolves… but not in ways conducive to healthy crops or healthy people for that matter.

But it is just a game right? I mean, what could they possibly DO about it? Hmm. So much attention to SOOO much detail… and yet.  =\

Anyhoo, so I decided to move my Cobra from Worlidge to Dalton. Now in EVE we do that by podding or shuttling around, or we pay a corp group or a hauling service such as Red, Blue or Black Frog Freight to haul the ships for us under contract. No such luck in E:D. Your ships are yours alone and I can find not one hauling services much less ships capable of actually hauling other ships around, E:D dunt work like that.

So you have to fly them around yourself. And there are no PODs nor cheap as dirt shuttles either… you have to buy a noob ship, the trusty Sidewinder Mk I. At approx 32,000c not too bad and like in EVE you can sell it when you swap to the ship you are wanting to move for I think most if not all of the buy price so meh… it’ doable.

I brought my Cobra to my new home and at last have all 3 of my ships in the same station. Sweet. I was also happy to discover that Dalton Gateway’s market has Collector Drones! Schweet! I got rid of the Prospectors and loaded up on Collectors and went back out to chew on some rocks.

It is a fascinating and incredibly different from EVE, mining in E:D. You choose and target a rock, toggle a Collector Droan off (he sits patiently underneath your ship below the cargo hatch), you open the cargo scoop (IE hatch… OH and I did find out that I can open and close my cargo scoop from the left hand panel Functions tab, I guess I need to set a key bind…). Ok so now yer set… you fire on the rock until a chunk breaks off and drifts away and you target the chunk, the Collector Droan automatically swings out and snatches the chunk and pops it into your cargo hold.

Now you have to Allocate the Resource. The Refinery tells you what you have and you have to decide what you are going to refine and keep, and what you are going to throw away... wait, huh? It turns out with the base model Refinery you have only 1 refinery bin and well you see with only 1 bin you can refine only 1 element… then you have to vent, IE throw overboard, IE throw AWAY all the rest… no matter what it is. I was refining for Palladium and got a chunk with silver and gold in it… and had no choice but to chuck them overboard. Geez really? And you have to do this multiple times until you fill the bin (1 ton) and move it to your cargo hold and free up the bin again.

OK, so I did that long enough to get a feel for it and said to H with this until I can upgrade to a multi-bin Refinery. Simply not in me to throw good credits right out the window cause I don’t have good enough equipment. Eff that.

So… back to trading. Though I just might buy a second Cobra and fit it specifically as a hauler… it does carry 16 tons, twice my little 8 ton Hauler and it is supposed to be faster and a little better at the GTFO. I am not looking at any of the TypeX Freighters yet… they start around 1mil Credits and I aint there… just yet.  =]

Fly reckless and see you in the hab =/|)=

Ohhhhh hells yeah.  =]