The EvE Lull

It keeps happening to me; every so often I just don't want to log in.  For me the thing that brings me back is my friends in this game and not so much the game itself.  I've found myself getting *older* perhaps but somehow not "feeling" EvE the same way I once did.  Granted, those "glory days" as some of us may think of them were actually pretty hard times in many respects but they also had some feeling of freedom that I feel less and less with each patch.  There was once a CCP who was irreverent when it came to the MMO community and embraced their brazen players.  Now they are trying to get back there but they have gone a long way towards mainstreaming.  Those characters that made EvE have \*sorta*\ pushed through but it has become a PC New Eden despite their efforts.  I lose friends to other games or just not caring anymore monthly.  EveE is really the only MMO I have played or ever will play, and I was lured in by the rogues gallery that it used to be.  I do hope we somehow get back to that feeling; I know we need to bring in fresh blood and I think that is great.  However I don't think that should come at the loss of "eve'ness" so to speak :)

Pancho and Lefty

As it applies to EvE, our friend and corpmate continues to harass the WH lanes :)
 All the federales say
 They could have had him any day
 They only let him slip away
 Out of kindness I suppose

http://splatus.wordpress.com/2012/11/22/anatomy-of-a-whoopin/
http://eve-kill.net/?a=pilot_detail&plt_id=363845

Read his blog here: http://u93ajax.wordpress.com/

So many dev posts :)

I love all the dev post activity leading up to Retribution...  It seems like they have a renewed interest :)

We Are Recruiting

We're recruiting

  My new corporation - Shadowland Rangers -  is recruiting.  We are small and a part of a new alliance but we are growing and are mainly focused on having fun.  We do focus on 0.0 PvP but we stay out of the  SOV game.  Shadowland Rangers is welcoming to all fun loving players and our we are actively immature :)  We are recruiting two types of players at this time

1. New players or PvE veterans who would like to learn the ways of 0.0 and PvP
2. Experienced players who are looking for something different or more opportunities for fleet leadership

  We offer a lot of training opportunities as well as openings for experienced or aspiring fleet commanders.  We do require a short interview or a reference, the ability to use TS3, and an API review.  Please feel free to post in our recruitment thread and get in touch with us.

Entering Null

Shameless repost from JonnyPew and EvEGuide (Sir Livingston in game) but nice as a primer.  You will learn you're own ways in time :)

Retribution Ships

  You may have already seen it by now but the new ships set to launch in (or around) Retribution are starting to take shape on Duality.  I always love new ships in EvE and have been wanting some more destroyers to play with for a long time.  The destroyer hulls have always been a mixed bag so I'm excited to see more options here.  I am especially excited about the Amarr and Minmatar hulls.

  The Amarr Tier 2 destroyer promises to be a mini-curse in many ways.  It appears to be geared towards energy dampening and drone based combat.  It will likely be a tough one to fly and require a bit of real life skill from the pilot but looks interesting.  The Minmatar variant on the other hand, is shaping up to be a very nice kiting machine.  It looks to be fairly fast and agile while packing a little weaker punch than the minnie's may be used to.  The Gallente and Caldari versions will be welcomed options but I don't see much to set them aside from better options in a frigate/destroyer hull roam if I'm honest.

  Visually the Amarr version is the best (IMHO of course) with the Caldari coming in second.  The Minmatar looks pretty racially accurate but kind of looks like a souped up transport ship or something, not the Minnie's best work.  The Gallente ship seems interesting but it's just not my cup of tea; I'm sure others will like it just fine though.

  Then of course there is the new Ore frigate which I'm not sure will find a lot of use but looks very cool nonetheless.  

There is also a new Salvage Drone which in itself may not be very useful except for those Goons looking to sweep the field a little faster :)  But, I am very much hoping this starts a trend into more utility drones or just more cool drones in general.  The small webbing drones were awesome and I think more cool toys is just fun  for anyone.

I'm happy to see CCP back to having a little fun and also keeping in touch with the community more often these days... They are still a mature company now but it's good to see a bit more fun :)

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=73509

Rixx In a FFA :)

http://eveoganda.blogspot.com/2012/10/frigate-ffa-tomorrow.html

Bounty Hunting... Maybe

I'm just going to link to the CCP post here because it's a long read and a lot of details but it is a step in the right direction.  It looks like CCP is finally catching up on all the features they never iterated on.  I would say I'm excited that maybe someday (soon?!?) EvE will become a fully functional game but I have to say that with every step EvE makes towards growing up I feel I'm losing a bit of that wild west I fell in love with.  Now... I know this needs to happen and if we want to keep playing EvE it's a good thing, but you'll have to forgive me if I'm a little nostalgic every now and then :)


http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=73446

I Love A Good Battle Video

So this one is a little old but my buddy in Tri-Gun pointed it out to me... The music is a little much but it's not bad, also it's a great battle!

Updates to Aggression

  As many of you know the EvE aggression system can be a little like black magic, leaving those who understand it (mostly) with a big advantage over those who don't.  That's especially true when one party understands some of the mechanics but not the intricacies; this can lead to a lot of juicy tears though.  After reading the CCP blog post Introducing new and improved crimewatch it sounds as if there were even some internals at CCP who weren't 100% sure. Thankfully for some EvE players CCP is taking a swing at updating this system.  It sounds like they aren't going to take current functionality away but just update it.  While this won't keep you from being popped for doing something dumb it will publicize the aggression system and it's mechanics, very likely enlightening a lot of people.

  Keeping with this years EvE updates CCP is adding another feature that is probably 10 years behind but still greatly welcomed.  Soon you should have the ability to see your aggression states, and not just have to guess or go run errands while you wait.  I think this one will make pretty much everybody happy.  I know it was probably a massive behind the scenes effort so I'm glad we're getting it now, but this one has been wanted for a long time.

  Still more but exciting changes for those of us that enjoy a little LowSec roam every now and again.  No more insta-death for jumping into HiSec, the battle can just continue on the other side (somehow I assume this might get revisited by CCP).

Illegal attacks on ships (not capsules) in low-sec only incur a Suspect flag. No CONCORD response if the attacker subsequently jumps in to high-sec.

  With potential bounty changes and consensual PvP possibilities it's looking good for winter.

Interesting, will be happy to hear more. http://www.eveonline.com/retribution/bounty-hunting/

Back; With a New Corp

    Well, it's been another very long while since I posted and I must admit to being extremely burnt out on EvE again.  At the time I last wrote Fatal Ascension and the CFC were going on our third or fourth campaign of the summer and I had been keeping up a pretty high activity level.  Although the campaigning season slowed a little after that I maintained a higher than normal activity level for a while.  Eventually I got pretty burned out and even considered quitting.  In the end I parted ways with FA and tooled around for a little while before deciding to setup my own corporation.

  With so many of my old friends spread to the four winds of EvE I thought I would create a place for them to join up as well as new and veteran players alike.  We're not going to be pirates but we will be taking on PvP in pretty much any form we can.  If you would like to join up drop me a line in game or swing by our forum to start chatting.  This is a new venture so please bear with me a bit as I get technical issues sorted :)

  While I was away from writing I did stay pretty close to EvE, although I enjoyed not logging in every day.  Ahead of this winter a lot has gone on that I am very late in covering, so I'll just toss a few big ones below.

• It looks like we are getting a wide variety of ship balancing and CCP is moving away from the tier philosophy to embrace roles more thoroughly.  I don't love every change but I like the ideas very much.
• TheMittani.com was created to mixed reviews but like everything bearing his name, a lot of noise was made.
• Unfortunately the EvE community lost Vile Rat; no matter if you loved or loathed him as a player we all feel terrible for him and his family as a person.
• As a part of the ship balancing we're getting a re balanced mining barge system.  I haven't used a barge in a while but I feel like this is a good thing.  The mining frigates may seem useless to a lot of players but I have no doubt that wormhole dwellers looking to recruit newer players will see this as a huge advance!!!

Let 'em Play Coach

  Given all the amazing things that happen in EvE I hope we all know that meta-gaming is a huge part of New Eden.  If you don't, well get out of hi sec people, EvE is much more fun than that.  I know this match is over, but still a good article.

Blink for 250 Billion

  If you like Blink as much as I do to keep you busy on those long ops, don't forget to Blink a little extra this week as each time you do you could be winning yourself 250 billion isk on the side :)

Fun on SiSi

Poof

  Yesterday it seems that CCP decided to let us all have a little fun and seeded titans and super carriers onto the market.  Between fleets and after I got too tired to stay up for another op I hopped over and fitted out an Erebus so I could finally take a spin in every pilots dream.  I spent a solid half hour or more buying Nyxes and warping right into the titan to be DD'd, it's the little things in life.  After that got boring (and I got tired of refitting said Nyx everytime) I sent the alts back in for one or two last doomsdays so I could grab a few screen shots.  It is still quite a sight to behold.

  Guess it's time to go back to TQ and back to regular ships, le sigh.

Step into the light

AT X FA Wins First Match

  Today was entertaining, FA won our first round of the alliance tournament and with many of us chilling in comms together it was quite funny when our first ship (kitsune) suddenly went *poof* almost as soon as the match got underway.  Above is not the official CCP video as that will likely take some time to come up, but it still works :)

http://www.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=13846868

  Enjoy, an interesting fight even without me personally rooting for FA.  Much better than the brick vs brick fight that followed soon after.

War Raging On

  EvE is a harsh place and I love it. With our exploratory expedition in Syndicate wrapping up I'll be moving on to join what is shaping up to be something massive out in Delve. To be honest I've read many reports on what is going on but the only thing that really matters is this is could be about as close to an "all-EvE" fight as we may see (at least for now) and I'm very interested to see what actually happens out there. Fatal Ascension will be deploying in support of the Test/PL coalition (which is odd but interesting nonetheless) and the Goonswarm/Friends coalition.  The enemy is formed up in another loose confederation of friends and temporary friends.

As you can see, it's a bit of a trek

  Typically I don't get a lot of play time during the summer months due to the beautiful outdoors and work taking up so much time. Luckily I was able to carve out some time to enjoy the Syndicate expedition and enjoy it I did. We faced a variety of very able opponents in the area including Rooks and Kings who I have always respected for their great tactical abilities as well as fleet composition. As an FC: in my first meeting with them I was trapped and my fleet murdered so I do hope I will continue to learn and improve for the next chance I get to fight them.

  In the Delve deployment I very likely won't have the chance to lead as many fleets as there will be so many coalition FC's around but I will be trying to sneak out and run a few.  I will also be doing my best to assist in the larger fleet fights whenever I get a chance so I'm looking forward to it.  See you in Delve.

When My Luck Ran Out

So as some may have heard I welped a part of my last tempest fleet but got a lot of guys home safely... That was soon followed by me getting pipebombed by Rooks and Kings. For most of you that don't know, one of the thins I have always wanted to do is go toe to toe with RnK, however this wasn't that... Despite the fine fleets I've had before and since this one sticks with me as I knew exactly how I was about to get raped and just the single decision to warp somewhere caused me to get waxxed by these guys. They are definitely great PvP'ers but I still look to the day when I can take my fleet 1 on 1 with one with them outside of bridge range... we can all have dreams right :)

Two New Ships/One Night

Even though I've had a Tornado and Tengu fitted up for quite a while now I've not really had the chance to use them.  When I take out my own fleets I typically go for something a little different than either of these fleet types, and most of our coalition fleets also go another direction.  However today I had a chance to take both ships out for a little spin and nab a few kills along the way.

Tornado: http://edk.evemeatay.info/?a=kill_related&kll_id=3094
Tengu: http://edk.evemeatay.info/?a=kill_related&kll_id=3103


Added a few to my total number of ships used, maybe some day I'll get a few more one there: http://edk.evemeatay.info/?a=pilot_detail&plt_ext_id=435212753&view=ships_weapons

Good time to be back

  After a long vacation in Europe it's good to be back, and just in time for the Alliance Tourney :)

Fix Titans? Add More Ships

  With the latest version of the upcoming Titan "fix" landing on SiSi just recently there is more than enough talk going around.  While something should probably be done, one thing I dislike is nerf-batting a ship because it's better than others.  To me it would seem more natural that this points out the flaws or missing ship roles prompting improvement to other ships or the creation of new ships altogether to fill the void. Just off the top of my head in the shower this morning I thought of at least a few new ship designs that would be cool to see, even if they do create their own balancing issues.  Keep in mind they are high end T2 ship hulls so they would likely be a little less than cheap:

• Introduce a pair of T2 dreadnought variants aimed at stealing some of the Titan's thunder but not being able to do both in 1 ship:
• A T2  dreadnought hull able to fit the dreaded doomsday device previously only fielded by Titans, likely lacking a little bit of it's punch since the dreadnought would naturally not have the power reserves of a Titan to produce as much damage.  Here I'm imagining the engineers stripping out all the guts to cram in a super weapon, so it would lose all it's ability to use siege bonuses of course.
• A separate variant able to squeeze on the jump portal generator allowing the slinging of fleets across space to a cyno beacon.  This already has the natural disadvantage that the dreadnought is way down on available cargo space compared to the Titan so it seems a pretty fair ship.
• Add a T2 carrier removing all remote repair or energy transfer bonuses (just the bonus, not the ability to use the capital mods) and swapping them for racial leadership bonuses.  Replace the triage ability with the ability to deploy these capital command ships into a "command base" greatly increasing their leadership bonuses (sort of like the Rorqual).  Also, improve their ship maintenance bay size giving them more room to bring friendly pilots reinforcements right into the fight.
• Using the tier 3 battleship hulls create a T2 ship built specifically to handle the tackling of capital and super capital ships.  Give it bonuses per level to cyno generator cycle time and to the range of scripted warp disruption field generators (note that it should only be able to use them with scripts).  Make sure it has plenty of tanking power and perhaps even a role bonus to signature radius to make it a nightmare for a an unsupported super capital.

-Meatay

Intrepid Crossing CSAA Burn

  Last night Intrepid Crossing (IRC) had a POS containing two CSAAs coming out of reinforced.  The tower was initially attacked by -A- who were possibly payed off to prevent them coming back to kill it.  As you may already know, the CFC is engaged in a little fight in Tenal with Raiden. as well as having prompted -A- to promise a fight after recently assisting in the defense of C-J6MT.  Despite these other commitments the CFC basically dropped everything, formed up, and made a bee-line (it's a pun) for Q-VTWJ.  The battle summary is still a little rough as it doesn't look like everything has landed but it's pretty clear that despite calling a red-pen op IRC did not successfully defend.

  Despite the heavy numbers and extreme TiDi the servers held and for the most part everything remained stable.  It was an impressive example of the changes to EvE to sit on a gate with >100 bubbles anchored and 400+ drakes lobbing missiles at each other (not to mention the other ships) with barely any real de-syncs.  Keep up the good work here CCP!

  From the ground level perspective it did not appear that IRC had much of a strategy outside of anchoring hundreds of bubbles and parking in them.  They ended up being slaughtered pretty handily by at least one of the 4 different types of fleets the CFC fielded for the fight.  Most pilots reshipped and it appeared that many of them grouped up and warped right back into the CFC fleets increasingly overwhelming numbers.  Eventually -A- brought in a fleet looking for a brawl but the killing in Cobalt Edge was over by then.  The (relatively speaking) smaller skirmish took place in Tenal with -A-/IRC engaging the CFC fleet heading home.  Although a bit more respectable the CFC crew won this fight as well.

 From my point of view it was a fun fight as well.

-Meatay

Voices from the Void Mittani Interview

Give it a listen:

Voices from the Void Mittani Interview

Nuke it From Orbit

Fanfest is still ongoing and exciting news keeps coming out from CCP.  It looks like one very cool piece of information that has come out is that the EvE <-> Dust 514 link will include at least some form of orbital bombardment.  This is basically the only thing we EvE players want out of Dust 514: to flex our superiority over those "walkers" by nuking them from orbit!

cross posted on http://www.evenews247.com/

Remembering Those Early Days

 The new rookie ship models are out and they look pretty darn good.  I couldn't help but recall a little bit of that magic when I first launched EvE and received my little rookie ship.  Even though the old Velator was hit a few too many times by the ugly stick it always did have a special place in my heart.  While the new one looks a little too much like a furnace it's still much better, and the high def skin really makes an improvement.  The Ibis looks far far better than the old model though and the Amarr rookie ship appears to have just gotten a high def face lift which is perfectly fine.  The Minmatar newby ship also looks good but somehow I feel that a high def version of the original would look a bit better.

  Looks good though!

The patches, they burn

  The EvE launcher recently landed, took me by surprise since I had completely forgotten about the patch... whoops.  After going through a few downloads, patches, re-start EvE blah blah blah; everything seemed to work, except my other toons at the same time... whoops.  Oh well, other than being very late for an op after the unexpected DT patch it didn't really affect me too badly and now that I can launch multiple accounts from the same EvE launcher it actually makes it just a little bit faster for me.  Here's hoping that someday it will gain the magical ability to manage multiple accounts via a single secure sign on... a man can dream.

  I suppose if you don't follow the forums or the alternate 0.0 forums out there you may have missed the proposal on changes to Titans.  You should definitely skim that thread: no matter how indifferent or passionate you are about Titans there is some funny tears, trolling, and rage in it.  Oh EvE, you never stop delivering tears.  I'll wait to see what actually comes about I guess since CCP doesn't typically deliver the same things they propose, be it better or worse.

I will copy/paste my response on our alliance forum though for my thoughts in general:

  Even though reality has no place in the "space fluid" of EvE it would make sense that a ship that takes that long to train for and costs that much could somehow manage to tag a nearly mile long Battleship (Maelstrom for example 1,484M length) with a 60+ foot wide projectile (Antimatter XL for example 10M radius) .  
  It's completely ridiculous that it could hit a BC or below though.  But that probably says more about the "physics" of EvE than the way titans work.  It seems logical that MWD make the ship easier to spot and lock onto but it doesn't actually make the size any bigger so that big ass piece of metal still has to somehow land in a very small box in space (again, I know EvE isn't Realistic) .
  Either way, here's hoping Erebus's come down to a price I can afford without mortgaging my house for Plex  

Also, I think you will enjoy this song parody on EvE.  I found it pretty funny/spot on:

A Sea Change

I abandon the glory and distinction of such offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate all honorable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do to take care of myself, without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not.
-Herman Melville

   Recently I stepped down as the CEO of Night Thiefs and handed the reigns back over to more experienced hands.  I had good fun during my run and my guys made me proud for such a small group.  The corporation and many of my longtime friends are moving on and I will remain in Fatal Ascension.  I believe I served the corp well though and I am not leaving them any worse off.  So I feel good about my time at the helm.  I am certainly going to miss my comrades but it's really a good time to make a change in my EvE life.

  I feel a little greedy thinking more for myself than my compatriots but having placed loyalty above my personal -EvE- benefit several times in the past I'm taking an opportunity to do something a little different than I've done before and just sit back, relax, and play eve.  I'll continue to take out fleets and do some other things but for the most part I'm looking forward to simplifying things for a while.

  On the plus side, or the negative who knows, I've already managed to squeeze in a blog post with my extra time.

Still like the banner I made though

Squee!

Missing on the good stuff

  Wasn't really paying attention yesterday and was far too lazy which lead to my missing out on a pretty good outing:  Killmails

  But is isn't all bad I suppose since I did have a pretty good day on Somer.Blink:

Shiny New EvE

  I am loving all the little tweaks and fixes being pushed into EvE in Crucible and the subsequent patches, it's really making me enjoy some aspects of the game again.  There are still things that need some love and I know CCP will have to get back into adding new content and features soon but here's hoping the fixes keep coming.

  I'm also looking forward to the completion of the re-skinning project since that leads to a lot of promise for the millions of hello kitty thorax's we can expect to see if they allow custom skins.  But for now I'm enjoying how much better many of the ships are looking.