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 =/|)=

Tis Saturnalia Yet Once Again...

or ~ Why is there a Tree in the POS? <- warned ya it might be on every Christmas Post back in ‘ought 12…  =]

It is that time of year once again. A time of reflection, a time to look back on the year past, and forward to the year to come… a time to, well, to reacquaint once self with those strange people in your house who seem to be always hanging around, eating your food and asking for money… and botherin’ you about things that you and I know are simply not as interesting, or important as anything you do when they leave you alone.

But that’s what these dead of the winter days of gatherings & gift giving, family & friends and dining & drinking… (til you puke up multicolored fruit cake… which BTW, IS real) are for, right?

As for Flyin the Deadly Skies of EVE… (or Elite Dangerous or even Star Citizen) Well, there have been a lot of changes since I last posted a Saturnalia update. HBHI has been mothballed for a few years now, an alt of mine holds sway there, all on her lonesome…

We had all joined HELPeR a corp we have been close friends with for as long as I have been in EVE. Then my son, AI, went on sabat… sold off a goodly portion of his stuff (gave me some major ISKies) and mothballed AI.

We had a rollicking good time for a number of months… old friends, new members, moved to a C4, ran C5 sites, made some mad ISK and roamed lowsec for PVP… then the usual summer malaise seemed to take hold, however at this time it still remains basically unbroken. I log in alone, run gas and Frostlines and log off… alone.

Tsra is keeping the POSes fueled and will until the corp either starts loggin’ back in or decide to unanchor and move out to Empire for a spell.

For me I went to my first EVE Meet, then another… started my first real alt. We had Seekers in Hisec and the advent of the Drifters. I started playing Elite Dangerous and even bumbled around Star Citizen a bit… that added to this and that IRL and I have not been logging in nor blogging as much as I used to.

For EVE we have had a HUGE number of changes… lots of new ships, really massive changes to nullsec Sov and Force Projection, some scandals and lots of drama both in the game and in the meta. We have gone from Major Expansions with point patches to no Expansions but a steady 6 week roll out schedule, and now we are back to Major Expansions with point patches again… Proteus, Tiamat, Scylla, Mosaic, Carnyx, Aegis, Galatea, Vanguard, Parallax to… well, whatever you call the Dec 8^th patchspansion.

2015 has been a strange year for EVE as I am sure most will agree…Here’s hoping 2016 brings as much excitement, change and possibility as 2015 did… as the Chinese saying goes,

“May you live in Interesting Times.”

So grab a Grolsh from the Beer Tree out on the ramp, pull up a seat and let's talk spaceships... =]

Fly Safe and see you in the Sky and Merry Christmas everyone! =/|)=

The Parallax View...

~or “My Notes on the Patch Notes…”

Browsed through the Frosty December (whatever) Patch Notes and dug out just those things of interest to me…

FEATURES & CHANGES:

Audio:

EVE has sound...? (sorry, I had to...)

Module Balancing:

* Module Tiericide on Remote Repair Modules. More details can be found here.

This is of interest to me obviously… but I am not a number guy so I usually wait for the changes to land then test ‘em out and see what I will see. However I am interested in how all this, “…remote armor, shield and hull reps all now have falloff (this falloff reduces effectiveness as you get further from your target)” will affect us in site running… and PVP.

Exploration:

* The presence of Drifter wormholes around New Eden has been increased.

Lots of changes to exploration, but I don’t do a lot of that so…

Graphics:

* Visual Damage System - Your ship will now display a shield when taking damage, if your attacker gets through your shields you will see localized armor damage.

Have seen the shields vids and prayed for something like it for YEARS!! Am very pleased to read that we will also see armor damage after shields drop… Yeah CCP!

* The battle between light and dark is over, the brightness slider has been implemented into the settings menu!

As long as this means I can adjust the brightness of those godsawful gas clouds in sites… then just Oh Hellz YES!!

* The following visual effects have been renovated:

    Ship & Drone engine boosters

    Warp Entry

    Wormhole Jump

    ECCM

    ECM Burst

    Sensor Booster

    Stasis Web

    Survey Scanner

    Tracking Booster

    Smart Bombs (EMP, Graviton, Photon, Plasma)

* Your ship will now accumulate dirt and grime over time. (Note: You can clean your ship’s hull through the fitting window.)

All the above just simply good stuff, ‘nough said. And I know, I know… Kill Marks… Look, I’m usually a Logibro or Hero Tackle so when WE get Kill Marks for assists then I’ll care.

Modules:

* Three new ice Mining Lasers usable only on Expedition frigates are now available.

* The Micro Jump Field generator is now available. More details can be found here.

* Missile Disruption modules are now available. More details can be found here.

Good, mmmmmm... good…

Missions & NPCs:

Science & Industry:

EVE has Missions & NPCs and Science and...? (you know...)

Ships:

* The brand new Expedition Frigate known as the Endurance has been released. More details regarding the Endurance can be found here.

* Four brand new Command Destroyers, which can utilize the new Micro Jump Field generators have been released. More details regarding the Command Destroyers can be found here.

* Four brand new Tech II Logistics Frigates have been released. More details on these ships can be found here.

All of these just make we wet.

Skills:

Books for teh new ships of course…

SKINs:

Some care, me not so much.

Technical:

* Grid boxes have been increased in size from 250km to 7800km.

This is huge… I mean HUGE… and not just 7800km huge either. HOLEE SHEET! Logged on, setup an all-fast-nothing-else interceptor and burned hard north... new off grid safe at the POS?? 13,395km... Yup... we do shit BIGGER in holes!

User Interface:

* Visual update to probes and d-scan cone.

* Added an icon to the Watch List for when you are targeting and have targeted a member.

* Interbus Ship Identification System has been renamed. (interesting… LOL)

* Broadcast section of the fleet window is expanded by default.

All good worthwhile changes.

FIXES:

Audio:

* Expanded the advanced audio Atmosphere slider to include Incursion system entry sounds.

Oh thank the gods…

Gameplay:

* Attacking Mobile Scan Inhibitors and Mobile Micro Jump Units no longer causes a significant security status penalty and kill right.

Corps and Alliances:

Meh

Graphics:

* Expanded the 'Camera bobbing' option to enable the deactivation of bobbing in hangars.   

Mac-specific Graphics:

Someone cares? I jest, I jest… (no I don’t…)

Missions & NPCs:

* Minor balance tweaks have been made to Drifter Battleships.

PvE:

Factional Warfare:

Technical:

User Interface:

I am sure there are people who care... I am happy for them. Seriously. I am.   =\

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