Life is a Mind Bending Puzzle

EVE online used to inspire the best writing about games. The sandbox universe of New Eden gave rise to a million stories and the uncompromising ruthlessness of the game ensured that many of those stories were worth reading. Epic stories like the Guiding Hand Social Club's meticulous evsiceration of Ubiqua Seraph  caught the attention of main stream media but I have always enjoyed more mundane stories of the day to day experiences of capsuleers: tales of piracy and revenge, tales of exploration and discovery, tales of incompetence and mastery. I myself was never more than a very casual EVE player and yet it inspired some of my own favourite writing Where have all these great EVE blogs gone? Some stalwarths like Wilhelm over at the Ancient Gaming Noob   still write regularly about the game but these are stories of participating in mega alliances and huge wars. This seems to have become a feature of EVE writing lately. The politics of mega alliances dominates everything and g...

I re-subbed to EVE yesterday and spent two hoour in game without getting even a single frigate out of the dock. The game has been in the news a bit lately with their annual fan fest in Reykjavik. I am also aware of forthcoming changes in skill trees that make it very beneficial to skill up destroyers and battle-cruisers before the next patch so I decided to buy a months sub to finish off the training needed. This is perhaps not the best motivation for returning to a complex mmorpg and indeed I am at a bit of a loss to decide what to do with my month of play time. Implementing my skill training plan took about an hour - downloading the latest version of EVEmon , setting up APIs and ensuring that I can get the skills required before the patch deadline. After that I decided to play around with some frigates partly because there has been some significant changes to frigates since I last played and partly because frigates are cheap to lose if I screw up. The once humble Slasher seems to b...

The good news is that the gates to Jita were open again last night with well over 2,000 pilots in local. It looks like I was just unfortunate the night before to pick a time when numbers were being restricted. Jita IV, IV was the usual mess of trash frigates but the Jita side of the perimeter gate was encased in a solid blob of Tornado and Thrasher gank ships. By the time I got there they were clearly picking and choosing targets because I saw a few industrial ships slip through while a freighter that was silly enough to poke it's nose in was ganked. The bad news is that I clearly do not know how to take screenshots in EVE. I was sure I got a few nice shots of the blob from a Tornado's eye view but this morning I can find no trace.

It is the 28th of April and today is the big day when Jita is set to burn under the assault of Goons and assorted followers. Syncaine , Cyndre and Wilhelm Arcturus have been posting about the preliminary thinks that have been going on since the 26th apparently. Well not to be outdone I got myself into a noobie frigate and set my course for Jita last night to see some splosions. Sadly it turned out I had already missed the good stuff. At Eurozone prime time all the gates to Jita were locked and I couldn't fly in. I did manage to clone jump in (by dying) and parked my self in an Ibis just off Jita IV, IV dock. Lots of pilots in space and plenty of shooting going on but it was almost entirely trash frigates like my noobie Ibis.  It seems that the more valuable stuff was either staying away or was unable to get into Jita because of the locked gates.  Wilhelm from Ancient Gaming Noob writes about a pile up of ships in the gateway system of Perimeter being bombed  so ...

Two months ago when I was contemplating a return to EVE I said that "I generally don't have the patience to hang around long enough to achieve substantial in game goals." History is repeating itself and I find that my urge to play the game has once more subsided. My sub is still active and I still log in to update my skill queue but that is about it. There just isn't anything else I want to do in the game as solo player. For various reasons I am not in the mood to join with others and engage more fully in the social side of EVE at this point in time although I wouldn't rule that out in the future. I am still keeping up with EVE blogs and forums and I have decided to keep up the sub up for a few months to pad out my "core skill sets" which should give me a better platform the next time I come back to the game. If I do come back what will I do next? I am a carebear at heart and I am not particularly competitive so I am probably not a grea...

In a trip back to the ancient history of EVE I spent four hours yesterday pinpointing these three containers without the aid of scan probes. The cans were quite well hidden. They weren't on a direct warp line between any two celestial objects and they were more than 14.3AU from anything else which put them outside the range of the directional scanners on board ships in the normal traffic lanes.  I only spotted them by accident when I was making my own safe spot , similarly distant from normal lines of communication. I thought I was quite well hidden so I was surprised when three containers popped up on my scanner almost 13 AU away from me in empty space. Miners regularly anchor secure containers at asteroid belts but there were no asteroids around and these containers were unsecured meaning anyone could access them and take whatever was inside. I was intrigued and decided to investigate. I know that the right way to do this is via scan probes and that the process takes a f...

Jump clones are wonderful things, spare bodies that allow you to zip around the universe and keep different sets of implants for different applications. Their use is subject to a number of number of restrictions however and I am coming to realise that I need to rethink my ideas about being able to jump around at will. The first restriction is that you can only jump between clones once every 24 hours. That time delay is proving more frustrating that I thought it would be. If I need to jump back to my high sec clone then I am stuck there for at least a day. The next restriction which I completely overlooked is that clones can only be stored in stations meaning you need a friendly station to dock in before you can clone jump out (some of the bigger ships can carry clone bays apparently but that is way out of my league at the moment). I had naively assumed I could hide my cloaky frigate in a remote region of space and then jump out but that is not so. This wasn't really a problem ...

Welcome to Jita IV, Moon IV, Caldari Navy Assembly plant: the busiest station in EVE and by far the biggest trade hub. If it exists in the game then you can buy it or sell it in Jita. More than any other system Jita deserves the title of "Heart of EVE". It is a shining star of capitalism and purest manifestation of the thriving economy for which EVE is so rightly famous. So ... it's a nice place then? Eh... no. If you ask any veteran of the game they will talk about Jita in a tone contempt tinged with horror. They will  complain about the crowds, they will complain about the lag, they will complain about the gankers and scammers and two bit con artists who infest the place. They will either avoid Jita completely or go only when it is absolutely necessary. It is true that despite its high security status Jita is one of the more dangerous systems in EVE. Legions of suicide gankers queue up to pick off richly laden haulers on their way to market. Corps who engage ...

Gazing upon the glowing inferno which is all that remains of the wormhole that used to link the universe of EVE to the rest of humanity I could not help but wonder if it was worth coming to see it at all. Yes EVE-gate in the system of New Eden is the birthplace of EVE. The link to the home world of humanity from whence the gameworld is supposed to have been populated many generations ago. Today however the system is a lifeless derelict. The wormhole itself remains unapproachably distant even if it does outshine the system's weak star. The most interesting thing to see are the cans left behind by many visitors to mark their own personal pilgrimage to this most sacred site in EVE. Several other pilgrims came while I was there and like thousands of others before them they set their MWDs to maximum and headed out to see how close they could get to the anomaly. Most give up after a few minutes. Some have persisted for hours. My scanner picked up one can 150,000km from the Starg...

She waits in Balle tonight just as she waited last night and the night before. The Tornado she flies is one of the newest ships in New Eden. Its battle cruiser sized hull puts out as much damage over time as a full sized battleship but this pilot isn't interested in damage over time. All that matters is alpha. The overwhelming impact of that first broadside which will obliterate her chosen foe in the seconds before Concord appear out of thin air to vaporise her Tornado. I waited myself and watched her a while in the hopes of seeing this feared predator in action but she is a choosy hunter. In the six weeks since she started her hunt career she has only made seven kills. Each one a humble T1 industrial. Their contents were not so humble though. Total value of kills: 9.9 Billion isk. Total value of loot dropped: 4.1 Billion isk. Against this you must offset the loss of a 60 million isk Tornado for every kill. Net Earnings 4.1 Billion - 7x60 million =  3.6 Billion in six weeks....

My great new Eden tour started a bit earlier than I expected with a visit to a busy mining colony in the Minmatar Region of Molden Heath. I wasn't deliberately sightseeing, it was just a test flight for my new travel fit cloaky Rifter. I figured an isolated asteroid belt would minimise the chance of something going wrong as I struggled with the unfamiliar modules. It was a pleasant surprise then to stumble across a thriving mining colony: there were hulks, retrievers and covetors all busily chewing away at the rocks as well as support ships. They had somehow even managed to organise an escort of Concord ships to watch over them as they mined. Sightseeing is all very well but I had work to do. I didn't think they would mind a single non-threatening frigate making a few trial passes around their asteroid belt. I was wrong. I don't think they were too bothered until I started playing with the cloak but as soon as I started disappearing and re-appearing they all upped ...

One of my medium term goals in EVE is to take a cloaky ship and go exploring, to become an EVE tourist as it were. The ideal vessel for this is probably a covert ops ship like the Cheetah but while I am waiting for the appropriate skills to train I intend to see how far I can get in a cheap Tech1 frigate fitted with a cloak. No doubt I will lose shipa and pods as  I try to explore the more lawless regions. Ships and pods can be replaced but this  does raise some logistical questions. If you are podded you wake up back in a medical clone which is likely to be many systems further back. There are some npc stations even in the wilds of 0.0 so I could try to bring my clone with me as I travel but waking up in a dangerous spot far from home with only a rookie ship and no means of earning isk is not ideal either so I set about getting myself some jump clones. Jump clones are like extra bodies that you can magically transfer to (with a 24 hour cooldown). It seems to me that by...

Its just over a week since I hesitantly ran my first level 4 missions and after completing about 25 of them over the intervening period I notice they have gone from dice with death warp out in flames experiences to pretty routine fair. I am not at the speed running stage but I can comfortably clear any mission in well under an hour without ever being in danger of losing a ship. How have the missions become so much easier for me? For the most part I am using exactly the same Maelstrom battleship set-up . The only material difference is that I have trained up Tech 2 drones which speeds up killing small annoying frigates but the real explanation is that I have "learned"how to use the ship properly in these missions and it has become second nature. Most of this learning is subconscious but I will try to summarise the main things I remember:  1. Artillery is a long range weapon - distance is the best way of keeping your targets angular velocity low enough so that you guns ca...

"You want me to deliver 8000m3 of gewgaws to the low security system of Ingunn, known hideout of murderers, thieves and other undesirables? You do realise that I will need to bring my industrial ship to fit all that junk? The big slow one with paper thin armour and a massive target symbol painted on the side. Have you considered that the miserable 175,0000 isk you are offering me for this mission won't even pay for a replacement clone following my inevitable podding in that cesspit." You need to run 16 regular missions to get an important storyline mission that, usually, offers better rewards and a significant increase in faction standings. So after 16 combat missions I get my first level 4 storyline mission:a crappy delivery mission to low sec. Random numbers suck sometimes. By every logical reason I should have declined this mission. Bringing a slow industrial into pirate infested low security space is just asking to come home in a pod and the standings loss I was ...

I am almost half way through the months sub I used to reactivate my EVE account. Time to reflect on where I have gotten to and where I am going. During those two weeks I unlocked level 4 missions for the first time and I have been running them successfully in a newly equipped battleship . I am still new enough to this that I need to pay attention and plan carefully for each one but I have about a dozen missions under my belt at this stage so I think it is safe to say "I can do it". Missions are a useful source of ISK income and at  the moment I am finding each new mission an entertaining diversion. I have little doubt  though that they will soon a repetitive chore. It is time to start thinking about my next goal within the EVE universe. Perhaps the most obvious goal would be to optimise mission running. While I can see missions themselves becoming tedious I still very much enjoy the meta game of ship and tactics design. The main difficulty with this is that I would requi...

I detest ECM. Last night I did a mission  Mordus folly which put me against a lot of missile spewing Caldari Ravens. I took me a while to break through their tough self healing shields but I managed to whittle them down one by one until it was just me and the undefended supply depot objective. That should have been easy except that two jamming cruisers spawned. Their little missiles didn't pose a threat but I couldn't target or use my guns while they perma jammed me like a tag team. I managed to get my drones to attack them but the drones were unable to take down a cruiser. I tried distance but I couldn't get far enough away to break the jam (even at 75km). My only option was an intensely frustrating 40 minutes of waiting for chance based gaps in jamming and trying to lock and fire a single volley before jamming started again. It worked evetually but it was extremely tedious given the likelihood that a cruisers shields would fully heal before I could get another shot of...

The Minmatar Maelstrom has bonuses to active shield tanking and large projectile weapons so it doesn't take much though to pick active shield tanking and large artillery cannons. For a pilot with limited skills however it can still be challenging to squeeze everything you need into the available power and CPU limitations while still maintaining reasonable capacitor life. Here is my current incarnation that works with the appropriate skills at mainly 3 or 4. [Maelstrom, Working LVL4 Maelstrom] Beta Reactor Control: Diagnostic System I Beta Reactor Control: Diagnostic System I Damage Control II Counterbalanced Weapon Mounts I Counterbalanced Weapon Mounts I 100MN Afterburner II Cap Recharger II Large Shield Booster II Shield Boost Amplifier II Invulnerability Field II Invulnerability Field II 1400mm 'Scout' Artillery I, EMP L 1400mm 'Scout' Artillery I, EMP L 1400mm 'Scout' Artillery I, EMP L 1400mm 'Scout' Artillery I, EMP L...

Last night I decided that something must be done about the ever accumulating pile of mission loot that was accumulating in my current home station. Most of the stuff is complete junk, worthless tech 1 modules that no-one wants to buy. Hidden in among the dross however are a few pearls, individual modules and components worth millions. Sorting the pearls from the dross is not an easy job sadly.  Anyway after some thought I eventually came up with a "method"which automates the job to some extent. It is not completely painless but it does speed things up considerably. Step 1: Invest in some Giant Secure containers. Give them helpful names and use them to do an initial sort of your stuff. I have Ammo, Fittings (stuff that I will probably use myself ), Tags and Loot. Sort the stuff you want to keep into the relevant containers and put all the stuff you want to convert into ISK into "loot". Giant secure containers really are one of the most useful things in EVE. Even...

Marb Pelico has slipped into the well worn care-bear groove of running combat missions and this weekend he finally graduated to level 4. This is generally regarded as the highest level that is realistically solo-able and many players farm level 4 missions for loot and bounties. I am sure that mission farmers have the ships and skills to make these missions an exercise in boring repetition but for a new player (just 5 million skill points to date) they represents a new and fairly daunting challenge. A brief sortie in the hurricane that saw me though level 3's quickly convinced me that I needed bigger guns so I bought and outfitted my first battleship, a maelstrom. If I get a chance later I'll try to post the fitting but as usual in EVE it was a case of drooling over uber powerful setups that are well outside my level of skills and isk and then bastardising them down into something that I can actually fly. After several major compromises to my skill set and my wallet I ended...

The identity of the evil scammer who thwarted my attempts to transfer cash ( last post ) is revealed. It was me! Thanks to Yazel and Stabs for explaining it to me. Apparently in EVE's market you will always buy from the cheapest seller but you can pay a higher price if you like. When I clicked on my multi million bullet I set the price to x millions but I still bought the bullet from the cheapest seller and he got my millions! Duh.... Feeling embarrassed now.