BB77: Climate Change…

~or “Change is the Only Constant.”

Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 77th edition! For more details about what the blog banters are please visit the Blog Banters Page.

Blog Banter 77 - The Malaise

Is there a malaise affecting Eve currently? Blogs and podcasts are going dark and space just feels that little bit emptier. One suggestion is that there may be a general problem with the vets, especially those pre-Incarna and older, leaving and being replaced by newer players who are not as invested in the game.

The colonists versus immigrants? Is this a problem? Are there others? Or is everything just fine and it's just another bout of summer "ZOMG EVE IZ DYING!"

Banter on...

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OK. Here’s the thing. Global Warming and EVE have a whole lot in common... except of course, for all the differences. What do they have in common you ask? Glad you asked says I.

Global Warming is to reality like EVE IS DYING is to EVE… IE not. You see Global Warming is bullshit… it’s actually just one more statistical point on a long long graph called Climate Change and that has been a “thing” since the earth first accreted out of the primordial cloud left over from Sol’s little bang.

So, Gobal Warming is the idea that our world’s climate is a stable thing and changes are usual. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The earth’s climate is and has been in a constant state of change and flux for as long as the earth has existed and it will only become “stable” if or when the earth loses all atmosphere and hence all liquid surface water and all life etc., etc. … IE when the earth is as dead as the moon THEN and only then will it have a "stable" climate… just like the moon. But as long as there is air and water heated by the sun above and a hot core and flowing magma below… the earth itself and it’s climate WILL be in a state of constant change. Whether it changes slow or fast is up to the observer… IE time scales are (1) important and (B) subjective.

Do you think an ant or a Mayfly experiences time the same way you do? Do you think a Blue Whale or the Pando (Quaking Aspen) experiences time the same way we humans do? I don’t. Imagine if you will that to a Mayfly there is no ‘climate’ there is only now and to the Pando, estimated to be 80,000 years old, this current warm period is just a decently leangth summer… You see the Pando was alive during the last actual Ice Age.

The Earth is currently in what is called an interglacial period of the Quaternary Ice Age, the last true glacial period of the Quaternary ended approximately 11,700 years ago with the start of the Holocene epoch, which from the Pando’s point of view probably seems like just a few years ago.

Global Warming is a null phrase, it is meaningless. The earth's climate will warm up and it will cool down but it will never be stable. Climate Change = Weather on a geologic time scale, this is the norm people, it changes, get over it.

What has this to do with EVE? Guess what… EVE has and is and will continue to change over time too. EVE unlike the Earth is an artificial system, but while the game is a series of intermeshed man made programs and complex computer code it still does evolve in its own way. As the players change, as the devs change, as the technology that it is based on changes so too does EVE change.

That EVE is changing is abundantly clear to anyone familiar with the game. But do these changes mean the death of the game anymore than global temperature changes equal global disaster? Simple answer, of course not. But haters will hate because hate and anger are easy… it is so easy to go straight to the negative. Yes, the PCU is down and yes, some older established blogs have gone dark. My last post was on that very topic. But... new players are trialing the game, and as always some do stay and there are new blogs and some of the older ones, Hermit's, Nevillie’s, Kirith’s, Drakarns’s and even mine for instance, are still here, still playing, still posting.

In the short view, let’s call it the short sighted view, these changes can be easily charged with emotion and cries of "ZOMG EVE IZ DYING!" are sooo easy and, they do get attention too don’t they?… as compared to cries of “EVE is ok.”… not nearly as much fun to run around shouting “EVE is fine, we’re all good here.” now is it?

EVE is going on 14 years old and no one yet knows how long shared persistent virtual realities can last, what their expected life spans are, they are too new a thing in the world. Yes things are changing in EVE but like so many things that live longer lives change is not necessarily fatal, it is however absolutely unavoidable… just like the weather.

Fly reckless but carry an umbrella and I’ll see you in the Sky  =/|)=

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Drifter Mining…

~or “Wake Me When the Drifter is Dead…”

OK, yes I’m still alive, yes I still logon, yes I still play EVE… just haven’t had a lot to SAY is all.

But a thing did come to mind a few days ago when running the “New Improved ™ Sleeper Sites w/ Added Drifter Fun!” You see we, well, my Corp leaders worked out a very smooth and highly effective Drifter comp over on Sisi in the days leading up to the roll out of the “New Improved ™ Sleeper Sites w/ Added Drifter Fun!”. This comp is a tad on the expensive side, but not too much and it is very sweet for small to medium gangs.

OK, we live in a C4 and primarily run C5 sites for ISK and in the process we scan & roll looking for sites and the occasional PVP op. We don’t run caps so we aren’t running any escalations. We run a site… drop MTUs, kill all the shooty things, snag the MTUs and salvage all the left over burnt up things.

Small Note here:

I have never been FC, probably never will be FC… I’m that guy over there who, during a site run (and sometimes during PVP) occasionally turns off his overviews so he can take pix and Ooooh and Ahhhh over the deep and awe inspiring beauty that is EVE… No, you do NOT want me FCing anything… even a mining op in Hisec… That said I will possibly, hell probably get details such as DPS numbers, ranges, speeds, etc. etc. … you know the DETAILS all wrong… so sue me.

We run with anywhere from 4 guys to upwards of 8 or so and we had gotten good at using pretty std. Ishtar/ Guardian / Whatever-you-can-fly fleets for the Pre Change Sleepers. We run a x2Geko/Hammer-II/x2Hob-II drone mix for all ships so DPS is decent and our ISK/hr was good, 30ish minutes a site.

So… the change drops and now instead of massive waves of mixed Sleeper frigs/cruisers/BSs now we get a few paltry token waves before the Main Show… the decloaking of some dumb artifact and… once you aggro the artifact and one second not before… a Drifter Response BS spawns and off we go! 4000ms and Holeee Sheet Batman DPS! So how do we counter it’s initial approach speed reaching over 4k, and orbit range of 15k at approx 2500m/s and normal attacks dealing approx 1K DPS (5k approx every 5 seconds)?

Well, I can tell you that Ishtars supported by Guardians doesn’t do it. So what do we use? The Kobayashi Maru Comp. Nestors with a link Eos supporting Ishtars. A minimum 3 Nestors cap chained as armor Logi, supporting a Linked Eos boosted Ishtar drone DPS wing. The Nestor’s of course add a full X2Geko/Hammer-II/x2Hob-II drone flight each and all drones are assisted under one member’s control.

The Nestors have a very short Cap range so they are always flying grouped tightly together. Their rep range allows the Eos and Ishtars to range a bit further but as DPS is, of course, all drones all we have to do is mitigate the incoming DPS and work the drones down the NPCs spawning each wave in turn until we uncloak the Unknown Structure.

Now we run two fits for the Nestors, the first is our Standard Sleeper Fit:
in the Highs, X3 Lrg Armr Repper IIs / 3 Lrg Cap Trans IIs / Drone Link II;
in the Mids, x2 speed scripted Omnidirectional Tracking Link IIs / x2 Lrg Cap Battery IIs / Drone Nav Comp II / Lrg MJD;
in the Lows, 1600mmSteel Plate / x2Imperial Navy EANMs / DCU II / x2Drone Dmg Amp IIs;
Rigged with Lrg Anti-Exp Pump I / x2 Lrg Egress Port Max IIs.

The second is our Drifter Fit: 
Swap out the Hi Drone Link for a 4th Lrg Cap Trans II;
Swap the x2 Omni’s for a T2 Web and a Grappler and the Drone Nav Comp II for a 100MN AB.

For std Sleepers, we cap chain all up (or down) so 3 Cap Trans in series. Rep as needed, all drones assisted to one guy... Nom Nom Nom...

For Drifters... swap Cap Chain to x2 up x2 down. EVERYONE webs the Drifter. The Drifter 'normally' targets just one of the Nestor's and tends to stay on him, but occasionally will aggro switch (we've lost a few Gekos that way) allowing the others to focus reps as needed.

A bit a go Fozzie made a change whereby you can decide whether or not to spawn the Drifter. If you shoot the Structure, he spawns, if not you take your measly ~30m ISK per wave (x3) and head home. We put a pea shooter (any gun/laser/whatever will do) on one Ish and after we have run the std. Sleepers, we refit, pull drones, the guy with the gun plinks the structure… the drifter spawns, everyone fires up the Abs, launched drones and we all burn hard for the Drifter.

First the Instars get webs on him, that allows the Nestor's to get in web and then Grapple range and then things really get good. Once we get him slowed down enough to get the Grapplers inside their 1km optimal range (-80% speed reduction within that 1km) it’s all over… The Drifter is, for all intents and purposes gangwedgied to death. He is slowed to 29m/s and this is when the drone ball really gets its licks in. Everyone simply hangs on to the Drifter (the Nestors comically staying within 1k of the Drifter... basically a really slow gangbang) while the drone ball eats its way through the Drifters rather impressive omnitank.

Now we have found that the Drifter seems to have some slight resist holes. Not big one’s but enough that we now initially field Ogre IIs (or faction) for the shields and swap over to Praetor IIs (or faction) when we burn through to his armor. We have found this takes them down noticeably faster, not greatly, but a percentage faster than our std. drone flights. We pop the Drifter, refit for Sleepers and warp off to the next site.

Now as to the title of this piece? It seems that the change to Drifters as the End Boss in Anoikis sites, or maybe our comps ability to deal with them has… well… running sites is now, if anything, more lucrative than before… but it is also far, far, far more… boring.

Don’t get me wrong, if the feces impacts the rotary cooling unit during a Drifter run then things get interesting, deadly and with 3 to 4 Nestors on the line, very expensive very quickly, but, so far so good. We have not lost any ships to the Drifters, and we run sites basically at the same rate we did before but, we believe, with a slightly higher ISK/hr. Plus we have been getting some Pew Pew… not a lot by some standards but enough to keep things fun for us.

Two of my recent favs were, one, a group we engaged, after the fight, asked how many ships we had lost to the Drifters... We were like... "Uh none." They said they had lost 6 Domi's in the last few weeks and could we maybe help them with theirs?... seemed they had a Drifter loose in their system... LOL.

So we fleeted up and formed up on their hole (yes knowing full well it could be a trap, but we just fought them and if they went into a fight with their 'C' Game just to get a crack at our Drifter comp with their A Game, then they deserved that crack for the long and impossible con it would have HAD to have been).

They had eyes on the Drifter, we jumped, warped and did that thing we do. We got the schweet lewts and salvage for our troubles and headed home... Sov told us that when we landed and started in on Drifter, the guy on convo said... "Holy Geko." reverently...  LOL

My second fav was when this random 1.3B ISK Occator kill followed by this 1.8bil ISK pod kill… followed by this in local…

Scooter Tazinas > o/ hey guys there is a guy in a proteus that should be coming thru here later…

I love Anoikis… =]

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

The YC118 Upwell Keynote...

~or “Finding What I Liked and Ignoring What I Didn’t…”

Fair Warning to Readers: LOTS O PIX ahead... 46 to be exact.

Finally got to watch the EVE Fanfest 2016 Keynote last night… I really hate to say it but like Neville, I was not overly impressed. There was a lackluster feel to the presentation. Like Seagull, Fozzie and the rest would pause for applause… and there was only a smattering, a half-hearted clapping of hands because it was expected, not a sudden response to something exciting, something… good.

Started with a SCOPE News Broadcast on the Final Rounds of the Amarr Succession Trials… While I LOVE the Lore and I do love that CCP is trying to include us in the NPC Lore story… it felt… I dunno, kinda thin as a way to kick off the Fanfest Keynote.

CCP Seagull kicked it off… bla bla bla…

Then CCP Quant and some Graph Porn!!! Let’s just say THIS was worth watching… but when is graph porn NOT worth watching? This was as usual a very informative and fun presentation, google it, well worth the time.

This was fun...

The Battle of Asakao vs The Bloodbath of B-R5B... (each blue square = 1 PLEX) cool.

And this...

Daily Trade Value pre Skill Trading... (each blue square = 100 PLEX, a Titan = 110 PLEX) interesting...

I was pleased and a bit surprised to find that 67.1 Trillion ISK is tucked away in Anoikis… Please keep in mind dear reader, there are NO invulnerable stations in Anoikis… ONLY POS’es, destructible POSes… and of that only 9% is in Thera, the only Wormhole to actually have (indestructible) NPC Stations.

I went through the whole presentation and here are the totals…

Anoikis            67.1 T ISK

Lowsec            518.5 T ISK

Nullsec            785.1 T ISK

Hisec               1,699.3 T ISK

Total                3,070 Trillion ISK… Total player holdings in game, 3.07 Quadrillion ISK.

And just for fun, Hisec’s top 5 trade hubs…

Hek 8-12          18 T ISK

Rens 6-8           25 T ISK

Dodixie 9-20    48 T ISK

Amarr 7            104 T ISK… more than ALL of Anoikis.

Jita 4-4              467 T ISK… almost as much as all of Lowsec.

Total ISK cash in EVE… 978 T ISK… less than one trillion. And then Quant made a funny… 3,070 / 978 = 3.1415… yes, dear reader… we have PI. Pie in the Sky...  LOL

Back to CCP Seagull… and CSM11… My overall take, Yuch. Voter turnout was just barely above 2014 numbers… and the end result?

If you’re in nullsuc, you might care… because that’s all we got. I believe Steve Ronuken is the ONLY non-nullsec player on the council… so the vast majority of the players… all those in Hisec, Lowsec and Negsec are going to be all but ignored by the current council. Oh joy. All I can tell you is I voted… and this shit aint what I voted for.

Next up was A HUGE plus for me personally… I am a big bookworm. I actually am usually actively reading 2 to 3 books at the same time. IE I have several with bookmarks and can pick up anyone and fall right back into the story or any one of them anytime. I was one of the 3116 backers of the Andy Groen’s “History of the Great Empires of EVE” and got my promised paperback version which I avidly read… but I also have bought the EVE Source and EVE Universe books and just yesterday received my hardbound copy of the “History of the Great Empires of EVE” for my collection.

CCP TOriFrans came out and announced a book for summer 2017… and book of ship plans… cutaway views of the Frigates of EVE. O M G. You see the only thing I ever went to college for was drafting and mechanical design. One of the reasons I did was my deep love of the pictorial isometric cut away views of WWII ships, subs, fighters and bombers I fell in love with as a boy in a large number of books I have collected down the years.

I myself when I first saw the cut away view of a Comet in the EVE Universe book…

I was, as so many were, a little upset that CCP hadn’t spent more time on cut away views and on the ships themselves. Well… it seems CCP heard us. We are now getting that book. I just hope CCP realized it cannot end there… you do the frigates, you damn well better do EVERY CLASS and EVERY HULL CCP!!!  YOU HEAR ME!?!?!

Breacher (full view)

Breacher (detail)

Executioner (full view)

Condor (full view)

Condor (thruster detail)

Condor (cockpit detail)

There will be artwork to go with the stories of the various hulls design, manufacture, use and support.

Condor under construction

Tormentor (full view with pull out)

Tormentor (cockpit detail)

Tormentor (approximate page) 

Enyo (full view)

Enyo (reactor detail)

 Amarr Priest Engineers and Overseers directing repairs.

Kestrel (full view)

Kestrel (cargo bay detail)

Frigates of EVE Online... coming Summer 2017

Charles White is a Knowledge Management professional with NASA’s JPL in Pasadena. Charles, also known as Max Singularity the 6^th, First of His Name, is also going to be a guest writer for this book on the subject of propulsion.

CCP Seagull presented a CCP created Cell App for iOS and Android. It looks cool, I have used a few over time… but I’m not a big “phone” guy… not one of those who spends every waking moment staring in some form of tech rapture into a 2x4 in. or even a 4x8 in. screen when I’m not doing something more important… or like so many who stare into the damn thing even when it puts my life, and others, at risk.

Biggest thing I liked about it was EVE Mail finally outside of the client, and POS notifications… other than that, meh.

So on to the Roadmap. We’ve all seen it, CCP Seagull’s Roadmap for EVE Online. She rolls it out and says, “With the Citadel expansion, I would place us about here on the big picture Roadmap." This does kinda jibe with my feeling of how CCP has been doing.

Then came CCP Fozzie and CCP Larrikin who presented us with a series of Upwell Consortium Commercials. I liked em… A nice lore’ish feel with real ‘verse impact. First up, the Citadels… nice visuals showing off features and gameplay.

Astrahaus (medium)

Fortizar (large)

Keepstar (xlarge)

Docking

Citadel Doomsday AOE Weapon

Fighter Squadrons

Palantine Keepstar... There can be only One!

They announced that this summer Contracts will be made available in Citadels, we will get more new Citadel modules like a Ship Tractor Beam (something my crew has long joked about and wished for) and a Ship Repulsar AOE weapon to push ships away.

Then another Upwell Commercial, this one for the industrialists…

Venture Command Deck (as I have always seen it in my mind...)

A Bright Future for us All

Medium Industrial Array Design

Med Industrial Array concept

The first BPO/Cs for the New Industrial Arrays will be available this fall. The next will be Drilling Platforms (to be available this winter).

Drilling Platform concept

The plan seems to be to offer these replacements for POS uses until they reach parity with POSes, then POSes will be going away. By Fanfest YC119 CCP will have begun the POS buy-back program.

Next up, The Rorqual is getting the love… Free upgrades from ORE, powerful medium range Mining Foreman bonuses, and a weapon… a Defensive Super Weapon that will make you and your mining fleet invulnerable… for short periods of time.

Rorqual

Plus a new mining drone… an Excavator Class Mining Super Drone… created from Rouge Drone tech… what could possibly go wrong? These require rouge drone salvage… from the outer regions… from nullsuc.

Excavator Class Mining Drone (careful with these...)

There are planned Upgrades and improvements for all the mining barges.

Upgraded Covetor

Upgraded Procuror and Skif

At 46:05 (here) Fozzie was giving an Upwell Mining Pep talk when the Angels and Serpentis broke into the stream with an announcement about their new Capitol ships…

After the stream cleared up, CCP Larrikin announced that the pirate factions were so scared by the battle of B-R and have, as a result, decided to get into the capitol business themselves. Check out the stats!!!  OMGLOL!

The Vanqusher Pirate Faction Titan

The Vehement Pirate Faction Dreadnought

Warefare Links are getting iterated… plus the usual ongoing iterations, changes and additions.

Back to CCP Seagull… some talk on NPE and bringing new players into the game. More control over the risks of bringing in new players to a corp (IE less effective corp thefting/spying in the future). She introduced CCP Ghost, a new producer who will be solely focused on NPE.

CCP Ghost

Very weird talk at first… he kinda rambled around (a lot) about him and his brain to get around to how he met Hilmar. He quit his job at the Iceland Prosecutors office to work on why we have only approx. 300k active accounts when last year alone 1.5mil trialed it… half of them, approx. 750k players dropped out within a few hours of trying EVE.

Imagine if we hooked only half of those… every year. Just imagine.

So we have approx. 2 hours to ‘hook’ a new player… if they don’t get it by then, they just move on. I liked his answer to how we might do this… “Immersive experiences that provide meaningful gameplay plateau.” IE We need to get new players emotionally involved in the game quickly… very quickly, in less than 2 hours quickly. He then asked for our help. I liked him.

Back to Seagull… More stuff like Operation Frostline, Bloody Omar, and other Events and story arcs will be coming along these lines.

Then… the Upwell Citadel Commercial… pretty sweet actually.

Fly reckless and see you around the Citadel =/|)=

Not Dead Yet...

~or, “RL >EVE…  sux."

I’m still out there… even loggin’ on occasionally, runnin sites, getting jumped, lost ships, even killed a few… just not a lot to talk about really. Personal life stuff is working out better, which is good for me, bad for ya’ll…

And I know all ‘bout the Goon War, The Casino War, World War Bee, whateverwar… I even sorta brought up that mebbe we, my gang, might wanna consider mebbe leaving th’ hole for a bit to… you know, join in the GoonStomp and mebbe get to say “We were there” n shit… my guys weren’t really going for it though. We’re wormholers, Anoikis is our home and the space we love best and the goings on in Empire… well, we just don’t care that much really.

So, I’m still here… and I am just not doing anything much that’s prompting my muse is all. Still love the game, still play it more than any other, still care… just not motivated blathering wise ATM is all.

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

So This Happened…

I was one of the 3116… the total of us who contributed to Andrew Groen’s Kickstarter campaign to write a History of the Great Wars of EVE Online. This history covers the early years of the settling of New Eden’s null sec regions from Alpha and Beta to initial release in 2003 to 2009.

I received this mid last week and was going to post this that night… but I started reading it and, well… so you’re getting the news as ‘twere now.  =P

Anyhoo SOOOOO damn much win in Andrew’s effort!!!! Did you know that Steve the Titan, the very first Titan in New Eden was built by Ascendant Frontier in 2006 annnnd… the day it was first completed… the day, the very hour, the very minute the very first Titan in EVE was completed… CCP was not ready. And I quote… (hopefully Andrew won’t sue me) pg 102… (Italics mine)

“Ascendant Frontier had actually been so efficient that it had finished building the Titan before CCP Games had finished all of the code to implement Titans into the game. These ships were such colossal undertakings that CCP assumed they had time to complete the code before anybody could actually build one. The bit of code that allowed Titans to be launched from a capitol shipyard hadn’t been written yet.

Within two minutes (after the ship had supposedly completed) CCP developers were on the scene and privately met with CYVOK (CEO of Ascendant Frontier). They audited the build operations, verified that everything needed for the construction was present, and manually materialized an Avatar titan next to the shipyard.”

For me, as a veteran of 5+ years ingame it is not the great sweep of event’s, not the naming of names that grabs my interest… those of you who know me know I have no love lost for nullsec its denizens or gameplay… I am a wormholer, a resident for nearly all of my EVE life of the greatest space in EVE… Wormholes, AKA Anoikis. So I care little for much that takes place on the other side of the sky from my beloved home.

No, nullsec itself means little to me… BUT, the GAME means everything. And stuff like the above little tid-bit… well, that shit just thrills me and Andrew’s book was WELL worth the money invested… plus, I sent in $25… and the MSRP? $24.99…  LOL

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