Thursday 28 October 2010

FIRE!!!!!!!!!!!

FIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now in most eve blogs this would be in reference to activating your guns..sadly in this entry it is not.
On Saturday evening I sat down with my wife for the evening and as she flicked on “strictly come dancing”, I tuned out, and out came the laptop ready to get my eve on. I sat down and placed the laptop on the arm of the sofa and hit power…my first clue something was amiss..no power to the screen, followed by smoke from the vents and a nice warm orange glow…

Several muinites later and my laptop is a smoldering wreck. The timing couldn’t be worse this close to Christmas and a holiday, and my wife’s laptop is so full of crap and virus’s it barely loads eve to let me change a skill..
As a result I have been forced to take a break for eve until I can replace the laptop..when ever that may be.

Friday 22 October 2010

yipppeeee

WOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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The party is underway…

I am back in high sec people! After a shit load of ratting I am finally allowed back in 0.5 systems, I have moved some of my gear to deltole and will be ratting in the plex over there and doing a little exploration in the surrounding systems over the next week or 3.
My return to high sec also means I am now a director of Btek properly and myself and Reltso the CEO have been toying with lots of ideas for the corp, we have several very cool events coming up such as a lowsec frig roam in November and a frigate tourney on the 7th with some nice prize’s. its quite likely we will also be starting regular corp mining ops and have lvl4 missions and exploration training for newer players. If any of this sounds like a corp you want to be involved with drop in to “Btek pub” and have a chat with us.
Another thing we have been weighing up is joining a hi sec alliance? We have looked at a few but none seem to really offer that much we need. Most seem to think their alliance will protect us from war dec’s, which it may stop 1 man corp war decs , but im not exactly worried about them…they are actually fun ( for me). The war decs that people need to worry about are from well run merc corps or greifing corps with large numbers of experienced combat pilots, such as noir, and a 50m war dec fee to them wouldn’t matter at all neither would more targets in the form of alliance members.
I guess what id like from a high sec alliance would be things like possible access to wormholes, help protecting large assets and a LOW PROFILE lol. Will I find a alliance like that who knows?

Wednesday 20 October 2010

like capsuleer...only better

Ok now capsuleer has officially gone. Its very sad. So I was thinking to myself today about trying to develop an app to replace it, in reality it wont happen as im shite at programming and have no knowlage of building apps for apple..but some of my readers might, so here is what I would like to see in a app for an I phone that I would be happy to pay for.

• Real time training tracker, much like what we had in capsuleer, see how long till training finishes on each toon
• A blog reader, ideally for all blog pack blogs, but able to add blogs you like to make it more custom, I like many blogs not in the blog pack
• A item data base for all ships mods and skills, that shows items pre-requisits, base training time and your training time based on skills/implants
• A link/parse to my ingame eve mail
• A link/parse to my in game calendar
• Optional jump planer
• Maybe a link to eve central to look up trade routes and buy/sell orders
• A link in to eve survival to view mission guides


I know that is a hell of a lot of programming but that would be one hell of an eve app. Id gladly pay through the nose for it…
Someone build it..i dare you
What functions would you like to see in mobile app?

-4.8...so close

I had yet another fun night in provi last night.
My night started off quite subdued, a few battleship kills and a couple of true sansha cruisers nothing much of note, after an hour or so we had CVA begin coming in, including one guy in a caracal that thought he was some thing special lol.
As killing people tends to be counter productive to repairing my sec status I left him be, hell its not my war. I then started getting asked questions in local about my corp ( its not mine by the way, Reltso yand is the CEO) and are we hostile to CVA, I tried to explain in the nicest way possible, I could not care less either way with CVA, I am however hostile to people that continue interrupting my ratting. He then got a bit defensive and started telling me im not that bright because CVA don’t shoot neutrals (first- in provi I trust no one that isn’t blue to me, second I have no way of knowing if im still nutral), at this point the pirate in me reared its ugly head, I modified my harby fit and with the message in local, “ok lets test the NRDS policy” I undocked and made full speed towards the caracal sitting 120km off the station..

Him-“are you going to shoot me?”
in my head-Of course..mention to all legio members in system am going for tackle
me-“no of course not im seeing how close I get before you shoot me”
100k
80k
60k
Him- “I need to go shoot hostile’s now”
Warp out of system asap.

Runs away, not seen again that night lol.

I had a chuckle to my self about that, and went back to my ratting I thank fully did not change my fit..im happily killing a couple of battle ships when a nuet hop’s into system, from something like the 107th space marines ( one of CVA merc corps I think), a scan shows him in a tyrannis.
Ok ill align out …a few seconds later it appears next to me and starts shooting..as I said im glad I hadn’t changed my fit..drones kill kill kill! Web! Scram! Lazor lurve attack! Lol, he ran out of my point range with 80% structure remaining, I offered a GF in local and got chatting apparently he was hoping CVA would jump in and assist him and they… refused as im still a nuet lol.
I know this is gonna jinx it now but, the entire time I have spent in provi I have lost a total of 0 ships…not even close to losing one, and as im now at a sec status of – 4.8 and leaving when I hit -4.5 I don’t even care if I get popped.
Fun times indeed
07

Tuesday 19 October 2010

im AM a nice ex pirate.

Last night I got to repay some eve karma, and I felt pretty good.
While I was messing about popping some of the rats last night I was musing about the bounties on them in our corp channel, one of our new members, uncle shen, said he was looking forward to the day he could handle rats that big.
He then went on to explain he was having trouble with some of the more “difficult” lvl 1 missions. I asked what he was flying ..a destroyer.
He said “ I was doing ok but im fighting more cruisers now and finding them more difficult, I really need to get into a cruiser”…at this point I had a flash back to my early days, and how hard some of the missions seemed.
I asked what was stoping uncle getting in to a cruiser, he told me he had seen a vexor he was aiming for costing 3.5 mill but he didn’t have the isk yet …another flash back to my CEO helping me buy my first battle cruiser then another corp mate helping me replace it after I got it blown to bits on a lvl 4 …
I decided to pay back some karma, of the friendly corp mate that lent me a hand at the start of my career.
“check your wallet” I said
“DAMN! Thank you”
To me it was 20 mill, maybe an hour or two ratting, to him it was his new shiny and all the fittings he needed.
Felt good to help again.

Monday 18 October 2010

arsing about at the weekend

Hello my happy reader types..
Had quite a bit of eve time this weekend much to my wifes annoyance, some was carebear-ish some was not.

My weekend started in the normal way for me at the moment logging in to astral to commence several hours ratting in the pursuit of high sec, however I kept being interrupted by CVA types, a few fleets passing through but for the most part it was assholes in cov ops and interceptors, with the odd T1 frigate passing through.
After an hour or so of keep darting back to the station I gave up trying to rat, broke out some rum and thought it might be more fun trying to pick off stray CVA bods for a giggle.
I missed a few to begin with but then worked out there was a big fleet battle next door and it was reinforcements coming through, as this dawned on me a Merlin came through, he immediately warped to the other gate (sadly before I could scram him) I followed.
As I landed he was 7 k off the gate slow boating in..i was in my trusty punisher of DOOM lol I locked all auto cannons webs and scrams and opened up …sadly at this point he woke up and bolted through the gate denying me a kill. Bugger.

As I sat waiting for the next idio…..CVA person to roll through a claw appeared next to me, wonderful, started shooting that too, he also ran and jumped through the gate. Why does no one want to fight me?
Then hello the claw re-appeared. ..open fire!! After a few mins swapping shells he realised close range with me = dead captor and moved out of my optimal and web range…now im not sure what this guy was thinking but he never threw a scram on me, so when he started winning , I left lol.
I warped to the station but didn’t dock.. a few seconds later, he appeared again, open fire!! Shot him till he again moved out of range …still didn’t have a scram on me, I leave again.
At this point I mention he sucks at frig killing in local, he tells me he can easily kill me and he is no refusing to chase me. Despite the fact if he gets close enough to keep me there my thicker armour wins and he dies and if he moves out of my range I can leave at any point. He seems annoyed, I am satisfied I have annoyed them back for disturbing my ratting.
Sunday I returned to my ratting and I didn’t see much of anybody all day, a few corp mates came donw and istalled jump clones near me so thay can come play, I had a awesome message from some one called “frognugget” in local wishing me well with the ratting, that made me smile. I also had a nice true sansha spawn in one of the belts, I am now the proud owner of a couple of true sansha hardners but the real gem was a meta 8 true sansha heavy NOS, I have no real idea what its worth, so I had it moved to jita and vespa stuck up on a auction contract, if any body wants it go bid lol. After several hours of ratting my sec status is now a healthy -5.2 another evening or two (depending on CVA) and I should be able to move to Deltole and pop rats in high-sec.

Have fun all!!

Tuesday 12 October 2010

General thinkage...

Today is a general smattering of thoughts that popped into my head..

Firstly, I am honoured to say I have my own troll lol, he pops up through my blogs comments every now and again and seems to have a real dislike of me, you know you have a good blog when you have your own troll. As is normal troll fashion he has no basis for most of his comments, which are anonymous, and normally consist of “ your dumb/stupid!!”. If you ever have a valid critique to make feel free, I am not made of glass and comments correcting my mistakes I am grateful for, I even tolerate people with differing opinions, I even except people who point out spelling and grammer mistakes (of which I make many).

Secondly people have been asking if I move around systems while ratting as this increases the number of sec status gains you achieve per hour…short answer is yes I do, when I can.
I am currently a guest of LAA who set me blue and kindly allow me to rat within their systems and make use of their stations, they have been exceptionally kind and lenient with me, asking very little in return , they are however at war at present and as such my ability to move around the systems without attracting to much attention is gone as most of LAA’S systems have covert ops camping them waiting to hot drop people like me out ratting.
I have been getting the general feeling LAA aren’t fairing to well, I truly hope I’m wrong, and If I’m able to help them defend these systems I will, but as a single pilot with limited funds I may not be that much use.

Lastly I have been considering aging and gaming.
Most people of the generation above mine (I consider my generation 30-40) are not gamers, video games really came about with our generation in the 80’s and 90’s and have gone from strength to strength over the years, if you look at who is playing vido games today the percentage og gamers over 40 is probably quite small, however looking at the amount of adult gamers aged 30-40 is much larger than you would think, I can tell you from personall expirence I have grown up playing and prefer to be gaming to watching T.V
Makes you wonder if in 30 years I will still be gaming and it will be common for pensioners to be keen gamers still, logging on to play MMO’s or having nursing home “clans” lol, seems far fetched but I don’t dee me stoping playing anytime soon, some memorable moments in my life have come from gaming and it is a big part of my life, and as my life is evolving with time so is my gaming.

Monday 11 October 2010

absent minded ratting

Hello all,
Hope you had a productive weekend, mine went quite well. I managed to do a fair bit of ratting and have dropped my sec status from -7.8 to -6.9 on Saturday, which I was very pleased with.
I did however almost get caught with my pants down. Since I have been in null ratting I have avoided losing even a single ship through cunning, skill and blind luck. However half way through my ratting on Saturday my concentration began to wander…which is never a good sign.
While killing the last big rat at a belt I checked my armour, 65% and holding the rat is going down, I’m in no trouble…I look away at the T.V, I look back at the screen a few seconds later Bs rat half dead…dramiel at 54 k…WTF!! I tried to align out and warp but the dramiel closed the gap as fast as I knew he would and his scram kicked in half a second before I would have entered warp…fuck.
Now the problem the drameil had was I was flying a harbinger, and my skills and fitting are pretty good, but this was a PVE harb, not fit for killing dramiel’. I had beam’s fitted which was a problem as the tracking speed on them couldn’t hit a dram I also only had T1 drones on board and no scram. A war of attrition then! I was a little worried as I was already at half armour and also had a sansha lord trying to kill me..but my tank was holding just fine ..my cap was running low tho, I still had 8 cap charges left..I felt confident I could hold on till a friendly in a combat ship would show up and lend a hand….then some thing funny happened…the dram came inside 10k.. that was silly, web and NOS went straight on, drones kill kill kill… to be fair my lasers still couldn’t track him so he wasn’t really in trouble and what happened next was either a stroke of luck or him seeing a NOS and web on him and thinking he was fucked, but he E-warped.
I of course recalled drones and docked up, he came back a few min’s later saying he had disconnected..possible. regardless I offered a GF in local and waited for him to sod off before continuing my ratting.

Null-0 Astral-1

In future I must pay more attention to local while ratting.

Friday 8 October 2010

fridays musing- free to play in eve?

Morning guys,
If your looking for any for of action this morning this post contains NONE.

I have spent my Friday morning the way I often do, reading google reader at work catching up on all the comings and goings. Now my google reader account is totally filled with eve blog's (hundreds of em), but also a few of the larger sites/blogs like kill ten rats, massively and ten ton hammer ect, which let me know what’s going on in the MMO world as a whole. And as anyone not living in the most remote wormhole will know, many MMO’s old and new are adopting a free-to-play business model.
Now the free-to-play thing is false advertising in my eyes as it really means we will have a real money store where you buy things you need to progress through the game. In eve terms it would be like a indefinite trial period, you cant move money around or fly anything bigger than a cruiser or train half the skills but you can “play”.
For a while now I have been looking at these business models and thinking if they could be applied to eve if CCP got greedy, and they probably could in a whole bunch of ways. the most money grabbing would be to charge for ships, say 20p for a frigate, 50p for a cruiser, £1 for a battlecruiser ect, and at the rate ships are destroyed you could garuntee a fantastic turn over of revenue.
The slightly less gready way would be to charge for skills, a pound or two for each skill would again see a fair turn over of profit but would be far less regular, and would I think lead to having far more specific specialised character’s in eve.

Now I am really off the opinion that I DO NOT want eve to go to a free-to-play model. For one thing it tends to lead to far more assholes in game, secondly I don’t like people trying to grab my money in a stealthy way..if they want £100 a year from me id rather they just say that, it allows me to budget for it with ease, and its easy to judge if the enjoyment of the game is worth that.
Now taking all that into account I don’t think eve could go to a free to play model for 1 reason, most items in eve already have a real money value. Because of the plex system (which I like) we have a real money value for isk. If you can buy 2 x30 day plex for £25, and sell them in game for 500-600m isk (roughly) then 1 million isk is around 5p.
So now every item in eve already has a real money value, including things like titans which are valued at thousands. To introduce a real money shop would either, devalue every item in eve massively, or you would have items that most people could not afford without some major savings, can you imagine the conversation “honey that 4 grand we had put by for a holiday this year..i’m buying a titan with it on eve instead” or “mum can I have an advance on my pocket money this week I need £200 for a command ship”.

Would you guys like eve to go free-to-play? have you got any thoughts or experience with this? id be interested to know.
07

Thursday 7 October 2010

a year on and lowsec advice.

So I have been thinking about the future in eve a bit today.
The main reason for this is astral is almost a year old ( on the 21st I think), I have spent the first year of my eve time in a somewhat unfocused blur. I have been a care bear to begin with, afraid to go to places like lowsec, I then became a null sec dweller for a few stints and saw my first actions and grew as a player, then moved to lowsec to learn to fight properly as a pirate, the wealth of experience has been awesome but there is still so much to do and learn!
I now find myself in the situation where I am trying to return to care bear land, but unable due to my adventures in lowsec, which are forcing me to stay in null for now lmao!
It’s a funny old world this… eve.
So where do I see myself in a years time? Hard to say with certainty, still playing I imagine, tho I will have a son or daughter by then . Id like to think still with btek, my current plan is to run missions and train new players and also to take some of the older players out for the odd roam to lowsec for some pvp practice when we get time. I also plan on running lowsec scan sites for a little fun now and again, and am working on my pilgrim skills so I have a decent cloaky lowsec boat. I can see these goals lasting a year, id also like to think doing al this carebearing will increase my wallet a little, tho I will probably blow it all, I have recently developed the urge to buy a pilgrim a absolution and a archon …so that’s a years isk taken up lol.Photobucket

In other news I have been informed that btek will be hoasting its first t1 frig fight soon, the details are still being hammered out (our CEO sent the rules out today but I will make a couple of additions, as he has not taken boosters, implants ect into the rules which most carebears wouldn’t think of but I would use to cheat)

Lastly I recived a email form someone called tekei, asking some advice about setting up a lowsec corp. I will reply to your eve mail later when I get home with specific’s but thought id share some general pearls of wisdom here for anyone with the same idea :
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1- If you are looking for a “friendly” system in lowsec you have the wrong idea, all lowsec systems are unfriendly the only variable is how often you will be station camped. In low this doesn’t happen as often as you would imagine but if you are worried pick the system to base out of a couple of jumps out from high sec, the reason for this is most pirates will base them self’s in a high sec entry system to allow ease of bringing in supplies with a hauler alt and picking up easy pray that drifts in from high sec. also stay away from faction warfare systems.

2- Pick area based on what you are looking for, if you are a pirate as I said you want high sec entry points, for pirate hunting you want several (active) pirate corps in the area, if you a small group looking for mild pvp, pick a back water system with little traffic and pick of roaming gangs and the odd solo pirate while running plexs and scan sites.

3- Get to know the locals. After a while you will get a feel for what they like to fly, know if they are a threat and what the threats are hell if you keep friendly and respectful in local you may even make some friends or be asked to join their corp/alliance.

4- The golden rule of eve applies double in low sec “NEVER FLY WANT YOU CAN’T AFFORD TO LOSE” you will be killed in lowsec, but it happens less with practice.

5- See rule four for all further rules. and enjoy lowsec.

Have fun guys 07

Wednesday 6 October 2010

WTF?!?!?

Im puzzled?
Last night I was doing some bits with my indy alt vespa which saw me roll into hek at about half 8 GMT last night, in local there were crys of the sansha invading?
Wtf I thought the sansha incursions were due to start in November?
There was even calls of a sansha titan, although im pretty sure that part was bollocks. So although I was only in a shit fit merlin I followed the noise to see for my self. I warped to the planet the sansha were supposed to be at …as I arrived I was blown away , the remains of a HUGE battle containers sansha wrecks and about 2 dozen capsuleers rocking about in everything from haulers to battleships.

Now have I been living the the back of beyond to long or is this unusual, I was under the impressions these hadn’t started yet?
Oh and for those keeping track astral is now at -7.8. im not ratting as often as I could due to the wars going on in provi at the moment.

Tuesday 5 October 2010

a rethink.

Ok…earlier I was a bit harsh.
I said with out capsuleer we would only be left with “iclone” which is a poor substitute, and that was unfair to iclone and its developers. I clone is a very good app for eve users, I have used it in conjunction with capsuleer for quite a while, as it has a decent item data base, jump planer and a few other nice bits that capsuleer lacked. Its biggest flaw’s were it at times felt a bit buggy and sluggish lacking the polish of capsuleer, and of course the blog pack was on capsuleer meaning you had access to a knowledge base and entertainment.
I have over the last few hours (along with doing some work) been reading a petition started on nashh kadavr's blog to keep capsuleer alive (please go read then sign it!!!)
The pessimist in me also was looking at other iphone apps to see if anything could replace capsuleer, and I clone in its current state is the best alternative…
What I was day dreaming about would be a combination of the two, the polish and the blogs from capsuleer and some of the more in-depth functions of iclone ? would it be possible to merge the two? Or maybe if capsuleer cant be saved donate some of the code it uses to iclone to give blog readers a new recourse?
I’m no programmer I don’t even know if that could be done but it would provide the best of both worlds.
I’m still hoping capsuleer can and will be saved it, but if not maybe another program will step up to the plate.

Back, but to sad news.

Hi guys,

As some of you may have noticed I haven’t really posted over the last week and a half. This has been due to several reasons, firstly a little bit of eve burn out, secondly the release of halo reach, I’m no halo fan boy but I have enjoyed the series and wanted to get some play time in with the new game. Thirdly a nasty wisdom tooth extraction ( my third) which saw me not doing a lot for a few days.
I am however back and will be a little more active over the coming weeks. Btek has grown considerably in my absence, and is well on its way to becoming a some corp again, my toon’s are developing well, Vespa is currently getting a little love rounding out her core skills and science skills so she can delve into r and d. My P.I ventures are not doing so well, I keep forgetting to restart the cycles and find the whole process “unnatural” feeling but I will continue trying to learn.

On a Sad note I have seen capsuleer is coming to an end. I cant express enough thanks to they guys that developed it and am secretly hoping a random rich person will step up to finance capsuleer as it has provided the best external eve app for skill tracking and blog reading, and with out it we will be forced to use “I clone” which is a very poor substitute.
If ccp ever reads this blog, please work out some arrangement with capsuleer to keep it running, the community will suffer with out it.

Fly safe guys 07