EVE online: The POS as a home

Today our latest DLC pack – Home Turf – went live! Home Turf is our sixth DLC and brings with it the biggest addition to DC Universe Online since the launch of the game two years ago – Player Bases. Bases are a player-created and controlled space that can be used as a venue of self-expression in addition to being a place for combat.

Today I saw this advert on steam and I was reminded about http://syncaine.com/2013/01/17/mmo-housing-is-gameplay/ and the POS as a house.

Sony brings player housing as the biggest addition in two years. Obviously they expect this to draw players. I believe the POS as player housing might draw in more players for Eve Online as well.

Since I heard what the term POS stood for I wanted one. Then I heard what was involved. Then I wanted my own outpost since that seemed easier. Now I want something in between.

Everyone is affected by POS-es.
Anyone living in a WH will probably live in one.
Moon mining POS-es create materials needed for everything Tech2.
For jump bridges, as staging points.
For anyone doing serious research.
As storage space.
As a home.

A revamp might not affect the majority of the people that use the POS this way but don't manage it. And I believe CCP when they say the POS revamp is a massive undertaking and that they won't dedicate a single expansion to this.
That makes sense, they just said they wanted to switch from feature expansions to themed expansions. A theme ties everything together and helps with immersion.

If the POS revamp is such a massive undertaking then it's all the more important to start on it sooner rather than later. Make a start so you have something to show us for the winter expansion next year. Then summer 2014 it should be mostly done and another iteration with the 2014 winter expansion to  fix the myriad of problems that popped up.

Please improve POS refining to be competetive, or nerf station refineries to something like 85-95%.
Maybe this will impair mineral compression for transport as well, giving maybe a slight boost to the idea of mining locally if possible.
(The station refinery nerf is just a wild idea that popped up in my head, I am sure there lots of arguments against it.)

Improve POS refit options so people can refit their Tech3 cruiser, you know, those wormholes ships that you can't put together in wormhole space.

Give me a communications array to insure my ships even from wormhole space.

I want a pos as a small destructible station to differentiate them from the more expensive and permanent outpost. With limits on the number of players/ships that can dock. That uses janitors, exotic dancers, alcohol and tabacco besides just fuel blocks to keep online.
 But modular of course. So you can add another ship hanger or maintenance array if you run out of space.

Activity update

Peeveepee is fun and all that but you need iskies to pay for it all as well.

So this weekend I set out to make some cash. When scanning for exploration there is really only one moment. Right after downtime.
When I scan sites on a saterday or sunday right after downtime there are radar, magnetometric and combat sites around. After a few hours you might be able to find the occasional overlooked magnetometric site or drone combat site.

This weekend I scanned over a dozen systems finding only 2 drone sites (independance) and one magnetometric site. Someone else was already sitting on the entrance of the second drone site so I left that alone.

For all the time spent scanning the results were pretty meager. The magnetometric site resulted in a tech2 bpc and some salvage. By now I have about a billion worth of T1/T2 salvage so perhaps it's time to step up rig production.



The drone site did not escalate so only salvage and some drone loot from this, the rest of the salvage is from running a few forsaken hubs.

With exploration not really worth it this time around I also ran a few forsaken hubs since these are the next best thing to a real isk printing machine for ratters.

I got lucky and the first one immediately escalated to a dread guristas fleet staging point that continued to escalate until part three. In the end I was rewarded with some nice loot.

I have done part 3 of the DG fleet staging point three times now.
The first time I used an overtanked broadsword and tengu fearing that citadel torpedo.
The second time I used two drakes but had to warp in and out quite a few times.
The last time I used a Drake and Tengu, switching the tengu to a nighthawk when the energy neutralizing batteries spawned.

With some isk in the wallet I bought a load of tritanium since I noticed local prices hsd dropped below jita point. Previously I had paid 6.12 isk while the price now was down to 5.5
With some fresh minerals in the hangar I set up a new batch of manufacturing jobs.

After refueling my POS I remembered to fill up the free slots with some research jobs again as well:

Earlier I tried out some invention and now have a batch of t2 bpc's but still have to set up PI to get materials for t2 production. Moon materials I will simply buy locally or have to import.

Finally I took a quick look at what I had manufactured and put it on market or modified prices on existing orders where someone had undercut me.

And after that it was time to get some much needed sleep.

EVE Online: My first ship reimbursement request.

This week marked the first time ever I applied for ship reimbursement.
I lost a hurricane. In hindsight this loss was of course easy avoidable. Even when I was getting shot at there might have been time to save myself.

When the call went out for a defense fleet went out I joined but was still over 30 jumps out in VFK.
Jump bridges reduce this to about a dozen jumps and by the time I arrived where the actions was nothing had happened yet.

A small wormhole gang consisting of some stealth bombers had moved into a dead-end system, leaving a scout in local. After that we set up a gatecamp killing two stealth bombers that tried to escape but the rest managed to slip past.

In response we moved 2 jumps to the location of the wormhole and set up a gatecamp there so we could try to catch them again.
Soon after a loki appeared in the wormhole, joined by a second loki and an archon. After that they jumped through and engaged our gang. With the archon providing hostile reps we were unable to break the tank on any of the tech3 cruisers while we had a shortage of logistics.

Quite soon after combat started I was pointed and webbed by the loki.
At first my thought was to pull range to get out of the bubble and separate the loki from the rest of his gang. As I kept getting shot by the legion I turned around to keep in range of any logistics we had and decided to make way to the WH to jump though and lose agression that way.
Unfortunately I was primaried by the rest of the hostile gang before I got close to the wormhole and lost my ship. Luckily I was close enough to the edge of the bubble that I managed to get my pod out in armor.

The end result: http://kb.f-con.us/?a=kill_related&kll_id=229860

Multiple dead FC's didn't help on target calling either.
The moment the archon jumped into our system we tried to keep the gang occupied while calling quickly for a new fleet with neut BS to come in but by the time they had formed up the battle was mostly over already and the archon had jumped back already, collapsing the wormhole.

EVE Online: CSM minutes

Last week the CSM minutes were released.
The most important subject this time was the apparant lack of dedication from CCP to commit themselves to the POS spawning a huge threadnaught on the forums.
CCP responded with a vague noncommital answer and the public calmed down.

Null Sec
Null sec is dead or dying is often said. Pvp-ers need more prey to hunt. Therefore we need more features to draw in the prey.
Most pvp-ers are not interested in pvp, they are interested in killmails. They are not looking for other pvp-ers to fight, they are looking for carebears to gank.
Nullsec already has enough income sources to make it worth living there. The problem is that those income sources are all easily disrupted. And there comes a point  someone will decide they would rather mine or run mission in high because those are more stable income sources, not because they are more rewarding.
And once you switch to high sec alts for money making activities and only log on your main for mandatory cta's and complain about a lack of targets.... well then you are part of the problem and not of the solution.

Space ownership should be based on the ability to use the space as opposed to blowing up structures and alarm clocking.
How could such a system tie in with the current system of ever larger coalitions, renting alliances or shared space between alliances? 
I like the idea that to claim sov you need to mine , rat or kill a certain amount of nonblues in your space, just as you need to mine or rat to keep keep the mining/military index up. Or how about minimum activities to keep IHUBs or TCU's online in a system?

More activities that are taxable by alliances. How about simply giving a corp/alliance the option to set dual tax rates? So instead of 10% corp tax on ratting I pay 3% to the corp and 7% to the alliance. Or a simple 50/50 split between corp and alliance.
My current alliance has us paying a 15m tax per character per month and a 10% tax on PI. At stations I have to pay to rent a manufacturing/research slot (up to 50k per hour). I assume this goes to fill the alliance coffers as well.

Regarding the discussion about "Super veldspar" in null  I can be very clear. A big NO from me.
Null miners go for ABC because these are more valuable to mine. If super veldspar is worth more as ABC ores then null will simply start mining super veldspar and export this to high sec. If not then people will keep mining ABC ores, haul them to Jita to sell and buy a load of tritanium to fill the hold for the way back.
You will always be dependant on Jita anyway as moon and ice materials are region limited.

Ship Balancing
CCP would like to see a combat-oriented and a bridging/covert oriented Black Ops battleship.
More tiericide talk that fits in with the more specialized roles of T2 ships as compared to T1. I always wanted a BO because I think a Widows just looks cool and I imagined it as a safe and secure poor man's carrier. Then I looked at the jump range and forgot all about their existence for two years.

Factional Warfare
Soundwave mentions he would like to remove research agents. Curious to see if and when we will see any changes here but nothing to get really excited about even though I have 5 characters collecting datacores.

Then there was a discussion about FW having effect on high sec.
A tempting idea but one that needs a very careful approach to preserve balance. I like turning over faction navy responsibilities to players.

Bounty Hunting
Bounty button on the forums in the to-do list! ROFL!
No further thinking needed on this idea, just do it. I can already hear the screams and feel the tears.

A paragraph to my liking was:
SoniClover .... was worried further penalties could result in an unhealthy reduction in suicide ganking. He went on to affirm that suicide ganking is needed to make sure highsec is not completely safe, which elicited a nod from Soundwave. I am paranoid, every time I move cargo more expensive as the hull it's in I fear for suicide gankers. But I also think the different game areas are safe enough, espacially high sec. So when CCP defends suicide ganking I am happy I don't live in a theme park.

Mercenaries, Wars and Crimewatch
Tags4Secs was a buzzword here and one that I am in favor of. (Not for myself, I have never gotten a a security standings hit in my life).

In the talk about wars it is mentioned that having your high sec logistics in anything but an NPC corp is stupid.
The use of NPC corps to evade agressors is flawed. But it's just a symptom of current wardec mechanics. In 80% of the cases it's one small group declaring war on a bigger group and the bigger group just docking up for the duration of the war and being unwilling to fight or defend itself.

The only solution offered to the weak for now is Seleene's advice to get more friends and learn how to defend yourself. May the biggest blue blob win!

UI
The drone interface is only mentioned right at the end when Greene Lee and Two Stop mention their desire for something like a simple button to recall drones or order them to attack.
Arrow mentions this is fairly complex where I thought it would be relatively easy. You target something and press a 'module' button to send in a group of drones to attack, mine, salvage, ewar or repair your target?

Live Events
Here the discussion touched the fact that it was ridiculous you can spent all day murdering faction NPC's and then still dock at their stations.
Obviously those pirates are like the SoCo, an outsider might group them together and they might band together against a common threat but  they are all individuals that we just label as one group.

CREST
While I understand that Eve is a harsh place I am not sure about using third party applications anymore. It's ok to use them to scam or gather information on players by copying their mails or sending mails in their name for example. I am with Alek/Trebor on this and think third party developers should be held to a higher standard as ingame players, if only to prevent giving eve apps a bad name as legal spyware/malware. A good point for the case of allowing CREST scams though was made by mentioning eveskunk which I think is an acceptable site. But allowing an application access to mails because I am careless with my api is something else as an application cleaning out my wallet and contracting all my assets to the developer.

Player Experience
Sisyphus explained that for summer they will be prototyping a new radial menu system to replace the existing in-space version using mouse gestures, and eventually the right-click menus
I am a bit hesitant, but curious to see what CCP will come up with. In general I am not that much a fan of radial menus.

Eve Economy
Inflation (CPI excluding PLEX) fluctuated quite widely during 2012, from a monthly low of 4% deflation to a high of 8% inflation. However, taken as a whole, inflation was modest, and stayed within CCP's target range of +/- 1%.
I did not see this coming. I would have expected higher inflation based on plex prices but these are excluded in the calculations.

Eve Marketing
CCP gives a discount to people paying a year at a time, but there’s no discounts for anyone that has, say, 20 accounts.
I have multiple accounts but after 3 or 4 I don't really see the added value unless you are a botter.
It's one thing to be selfsufficient, it's another one to field a complete fleet by yourself.

UAxDEATH suggested a tangible benefit for players with multiple accounts would be discounts on subscription costs. He mentioned that at one time he had 90 accounts, but since becoming a CSM he has cut back to only 37, and asked "what would inspire me to [reactivate] those accounts?" Really? 90 accounts and now 'only' 37? Paid for by alliance members?

Conclusion
A huge document that could be a little bit shorter in my opinion. The russian CSM members were not as vocal as the obvious CSM carriers but they did give some good points.
How do russian players feel about them? Did UAxDEATH, Greene Lee, Dovinian do more or less as expected from them?

EVE online: Gnosis

New ships have appeared on the test server, the gnosis (a battlecruiser) and five pirate faction rookie frigates.

The gnosis has a 6/6/6 slot layout with 5 launcher/turret hardpoints and bonuses to every weapon system and scan probes:
-25% bonus to medium turret damage (energy, hybrid, projectile)
-25% bonus to heavy (assault) missile damage
-50% drone hitpionts and damage (75 m3 drone bay with 50 mbit bandwidth)
-37,5% increase to probe strength
Plus being a battlecruiser it has the usual 99% reduction in CPU need of warfare link modules.

It doesn't share the usual resist profiles either. With resistances at 27,5% for shields and 32.5% for armor it has a true onmni resist profile. No tracking/falloff/optimal so it still has limitations in use but otherwise it's the most versatile ship we have seen so far.

The gnosis screams for use as an exploration vessel due to the probe bonus. Can this ship be used to draw in new players or get more people to try exploration?
No bonuses that depend on your skill level so even with a low BC skill you can scan down a site without a separate scanning ship making it friendly for low sp players.
Medium guns and a BC hull are a bit much to ask a new player to fly otherwise this would have been a great ship to give to new players after finishing an advanced exploration tutorial.

I really hope the gnosis is going to be the 10-year anniversary gift so I get one as well. My fear is that it will be a fanfest gift though.

What would you do with a gnosis if you received one as a gift?

EVE online: Activity update

Just added my api key to eve-kill because I noticed none of my recent acitivity is showing up on killboards. Then I remember that my kills (and losses) do show up on zkillboard.

Joined one caracal fleet for a short roam on saturday (in a drake, I still have some and need to lose them before insurance expires). We chased two tengu's and an ishtar to a dead-end system. Got the Ishtar when it tried to leave the dead-end but the tengu's had logged off and we didn't have a prober with us.

The drake came out again on sunday to kill off a few Black Legion POS-es in Venal.
The drake does not enjoy the range bonus on missiles that caracal has and this leaves my drake with an 18km ham range. Luckily the POS involved were all small so I could orbit at 12-15 km and still hit everything. I just had to move around a bit when we incapped guns.

Manufacturing was about the only thing done this week. The most important thing to come out of production was a batch of scourge heavy assault missiles that I prompty forgot to put on market.

No time for a trip to high sec either so it's all just old market orders.

Down in liquid isk as well since I reserved some money to buy new ships and fittings for when I finish training medium tech 2 guns and bought 2 plex on the market to extend alt accounts.

Time to uninstall games that are not Eve.

EVE online / Blog Banter 44: Local as chat or local as intelligence tool

Through Seismic Stan of Freebooted Drackarn asks us the following question:

"The local chat channel provides EVE players with an instant source of intel of who is in the system. With a quick glance you can tell who is in system and what your standings are to them. War targets, hated enemies, friends and corp mates all stand out clearly. Is this right? Should we have access to this intel for free with no work or effort? Should the Local chat channel even exist? Should normal space be more like wormhole space where the Local channel appears empty until someone speaks?"

Local chat has two functions, a chat tool and an intelligence tool.

Is local chat as an easy intelligence tool broken? Does it need fixing? Are the alternatives an improvement? Should CCP even focus it's energy on this?

Local as chat tool
We need local or an alternative to talk to the people around us. I want more options for interaction with nonblues as just shooting the other guy.
Local grid only would be too restrictive. After escaping a gate camp and warping off I want to be able to mock my opponent and wish them better luck next time. After getting stuck in a WH I might want to be able to ask the local population for help.
On the other hand the flood of 'gf' after an engagement might be stemmed if your only chance to do so is after losing your ship but before losing or warping your pod.

Replacing local with constellation or regional chat and/or only having the chat visible and no names list pane preserves the chat options for the most part while removing intelligence since you only know someone was in the same constellation at the moment they send the message.

So chat can easily be decoupled from the need for local.

Local as intelligence tool
Local shows us immediate information on who is in system. Someone is of the opinion this is too powerful as an information tool. Does it give out to much information? To fast or to accurate?

It tells us exact names, corporation, alliance and standings. The only other way to get this information right now is to be on the same grid or another (intel) chat channel.
So the problem is probably not in the information it gives but the fact this information is immediate, accurate and without any required action.

Wormholes dont' have local. Everyone is used to this mechanic and it's one of it's unique selling points. For intelligence you are primarily dependant on dscan, probes and perhaps an intel channel.
So local channels are not required as an intelligence tool for Eve to function. But the lack of local does raise the barrier for people to live there. Most people are risk averse. I know I am.

High sec is fine with local as intelligence tool. The information given is available for free without any need for action. Any change would only raise the barrier of entry for new players.
High sec should be among the safest place in Eve, where you can learn the game in your time and pace.

Low/Null then would be the two areas most affected by any change and the real reason to change anything.
But what exactly do we hope to accomplish by making it harder to get accurate information on who is in your vicinity?

Increased safety? Don't think so, with local as intelligence tool you immediately know if a hostile enters system and can dock up for safety or switch to a more appropriate ship. Or when entering a system you know if it's safe to warp to an outbound gate if the system is empty.
More goodfites? I don't think so, without local you have to scan an antire system to even know if there is a possible target.

Alternatives
Some talk about transponders that can be deactivated and have people show up in local when using dscan. Wouldn't that in effect result in a local that is 4 seconds delayed? Because you have to use dscan constantly to make sure you notice someone in warp to your location.
A nice idea is the deployable item that would show up in local as a decoy or pilot.

Others talk about buoys or other anchorables. Wouldn't this give too much benefit to the defending population and discourage roams? Already the local population has the advantage of being able to adapt fleet composition to counter the uninvited guests and the increased mobility offered by jump bridges in sov null.

Others mention the lack of basis for local in reality. Well it's sci-fi. Anything can be explained. From people being immortal thought cloning technology to the fact that spaceships behave more like submarines instead of real spaceships with their maximum velocity and drag.

Most calls for transponders or buoys could be implemented as an improvement of dscan. Turning them into a new mechanic or item is so CCP can base an expansion feature on it and of course players always like new skills/items.

Delayed local only allows for more ganks because it reduces safety and forces people to rely more on intel channels or pressing dscan constantly like WH players.
To be fair this seems the easiest solution. I live in sov null so would become more dependant on intel channels and dscan but other that that not so many problems.

How does this all fit in with the talk of 'farms and fields'? Less security means industrialists might be even less eager to actually live in their own space.

Improving local as intelligence tool
Wouldn't it be nice if we had tabs for local chat just like the overview so we could filter out blues?

EVE Online: Suddenly Topics

After reading EveOganda today I came up with a suggestion to make Eve better as well.
Although better might not be applicable. I had been thinking about rising prices and inflation.

Does the game need more isk sinks to counter inflation?
Increased prices for manufacturing slots so it's a substantial part of production costs.
Even more taxes and broker fees.
A fee for corporation maintenance.
Just try to think of all the ways a government can extort money from it's citizens.
Not much an improvement for the players directly but would it improve the game overall economy?

When you think about isk sinks you also have to think about isk faucets.
Which in turn brought me to think about Forsaken Hubs. No ecm. no webs, no scram/point. No frigates at all. The next best thing to an isk printing machine for a ratter.
I would like to imitate Jester here and leave this topic for now so I can make it a separate post later.

And then the topic of local and it's use as an intelligence tool. Sand, Cider and Spaceships  revisited this topic prompting me to start this post about a variety of subjects.
I like local, I also like that wormholes don't have local as their unique selling point. In Null/Low something might be made for the case of delayed local or some other variation but please keep the ease and speed with which you can see if hostiles are in system.

To top it all off and get the day really started CCP released the CSM minutes. A full 113 pages of it.
I still have to read the document so can't really comment on it.

There has already been response to the apparant lack of interest for CPP in a POS revamp. I really hope the next two or three expansions would focus mostly on POS revamp, continued tiericide for BC/BS and maybe another feature. Then tie it all together with a theme.

A theme like the empires going though a tech boom (because they outsourced and institutionalized war with the FW changes?) giving rise to continued improvements of tech1 ships, tech2 BC/BS with specialized roles like and exploration BC with a scanning bonus (not my idea but I love it.) and the introduction of the POS revamp giving us the POS as a personal destructable station.

The nullsec pvp-ers want destructable stations (I dont).
Anyone that ever touched a POS wants a POS revamp.
So make the POS into a small destructable station.

EVE Online: Same same, but different

Anyone that ever visited Thailand has probably heard of the phrase 'same same but different' indicating that two things are similar, yet different.
Some players are seriously involved with a certain activity while others only dabble in it.
We all play Eve but do different things in the game.

Sugar Kyle of Low Sec Lifestyle encourages us to give the various aspects of Eve a try.

I am running a small research POS to get some bpo's up to an acceptable level. With 3 mobile laboratories I have 9 ME research slots. One character with Laboratory Operation V and advanced Laboratory Operation IV can fill all nine slots. Another character with the same skills can fill all PE research slots but these are more of a bonus. There are also some slots for copy jobs in case I want to create bpc's for invention.

For a short time I mined minerals when I had time, joining a mining fleet with my alt while running a site with another character. After losing a vargur due to not watching intel channels properly I decided it might be better to quit the multiboxing for the most part or at least not divide characters among 3 different systems with one mining, one scanning and another one running a site.

So now I buy minerals, haul them to the manufacturing station and start some jobs (from a bpo I did at least some basic ME research on.)

Recently on request of a corp mate I build some kestrel frigates, selling him some and putting the rest on market. Since they sold fairly well I build more and 25 kestrels are now ready. Together with 8 merlins, 6 bestowers and 20 shuttles.

The build costs are 600k for the kestrel from an ME 33 bpo, 560k for the merlin (ME 33), 900k for the bestower (ME 7), and 16k for the shuttle (ME 33).

The cheapest kestrel in my region is 350k but 15 jumps out and 9 jumps to the nearest other seller. My station was the most expensive in the region with a sell price of 1.4m. Mine are on market now for 800k.
Since putting the merlins in the cooker someone else also put some on sale for 510k.
Bestowers  are on market for 1.4m. A big markup but the cheapest in region was 2 million.
Shuttles finally are on market for 30k. In my station the cheapest shuttle was 90k so at least I reduced prices by two thirds despite going for an almost 100% markup.

Other items I manufactured myself and put on market are cap booster 200, core and combat scanner probes, salvagers, scan resolution scripts, salvage drones, scourge ham's and some shield rigs.

From bpc's I found running sites I build 50 ancillary medium shield boosters, 2 large anti-em shield rigs, 10 large micro jump drives and 2 rattlesnakes. One rattlesnake I put to use myself and the other I put on market.

Looking back at the above I am not sure I would call it dabbling anymore. It's more like Eve itself. A hobby that gets out of hand and absorbs more and more time. But it combines well with waiting for fleets to form up and undock. And someone has to pay for those ships.

EVE Online: Eve market blogs

Jester mentioned there are no blogs by a market guy.
Jester calls himself an industry guy and not a market guy, so he does make a distinction by the two. Because while pure market blogs are very rare indeed there are enough blogs that cover industry.  Most blogs cover various aspects of pvp though.

Ardent Defender explains again why there aren't that many market blogs and one of them is because market traders like to protect their own markets. So instead of giving a step by step guide of how they make their money most only give out the general strategies and leave it to the reader to find their own items and stations where to trade.

Of course specifics are not always that interesting. At the moment I live in nullsec fulltime, so only blues have docking rights and the CFC has rules against buying up someone's stock and relisting it for a higher price in the same or another blue station. It does happen though.
With Jita over 30 jumps away people buy locally and and as few stations as possible. Since stations are also less well stocked this means profit margins can sometimes be quite high.
On the other hand I tend to put modules on market with about 10-15% mark-up most often making me amongst the cheapest within a dozen jumps.

A few weeks ago I started my first venture. I took a look what modules I myself needed and expected others to need. Then I looked for modules that were either overpriced or not available locally.
In the end I choose the following items, based more on personal preference as the biggest profit margins or turnaround:
25 1600mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates
50 Adaptive Nano Plating II
200 Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II
60 Focused Medium Pulse Lasers II
40 Heat Sink II
125 Warrior II

I moved or had them moved to Branch and put them on market. The original stock is long gone. Some other people put the same modules on market later. In some I lowered my margin to be cheapest again and in other cases I switched to other modules.
So by now I have removed Adaptive Nano Plating II from my list and added some others.
Cap Recharger II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Hobgoblin II
Hornet II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

In between I put some shield hardeners on the market but those don't give enough profit right now to restock.
It's only small scale so far, or at least small scale for most I guess. For me it ties up the majority of my liquid isk leaving me with less as a billion. So far I invested about 2.7 billion in T2 modules. Sold about 2.3 billion in modules and about 800 million still on the market to sell.

EVE Online: Destroyer/Battlescruiser skill split date announced

CCP Fozzie has made a post (https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2442879#post2442879)

Are the Battlecruiser skills being split into racial version at the same time as the battelcruiser changes?Originally I had hoped to get the changes into this point release, but .... So I now have permission to let you all know that the skill change is scheduled for our Summer expansion 2013

To repeat, the skill split is scheduled for the big Summer 2013 expansion.

Guess I could have finished training those support skills before remapping all my characters to perception/willpower but was afraid the change would come with the dust integration last week so was in a hurry to train those spaceship command skills.
Last week I finished training the destroyers/BC skills to 5 and right now I am training up gunnery skills on all so I can fly fleet doctrine fits instead of hiding behind the excuse that I can't fly armor tanked laser ships and not joining fleets.

My main will be done just a little bit faster as my mining alt with this.

Why are you removing so many empty high slots from BCs when they keep the Gang link bonus?This is a very legitimate concern, and I'm going to be working to see if we can ensure that each race has at least one T1 BC that can fit a gang mod without giving up too much from the highslot. Even though gang links on T1 BCs are not incredibly common at the moment, it would be great if it became more common so we'll see what we can do to help.

None of the caldari battlecruisers have utility slots left as mentioned in my previous post.

EVE Online: Battlecruiser changes announced

The new changes to battlecruisers have been announced by CCP Fozzie on the official forums https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=191595&find=unread

An overall buff to tier 1 BC's and a nerf to tier 2 BC's with the Prophecy and Cyclone changing weapon systems from guns to drones and missiles respectively.

The Caldari ships remain the slowest battlecruisers in existence at 140 m/s

I like utility high slots, whether to fit a salvager, cloak, probe launcher or neutralizer, there was always something useful to fit (when not limited by cpu).
Both Caldari ships are left without any utilty highs at all. Both have 7 highs with 7 turret/launcher slots. (And both remain slow)
The Prophecy and Myrmidon are drone boats so can be argued to have nothing but utility high's.
The Harbinger still has one utility high, the brutix didn't change and still has none.
The Hurricane and Cyclone both have one or two utility high's that can be used for a nonbonused launcher or turrets.

Overall I think the Cyclone will be the new flavor of the week for some time. With the ancillary shield boosters it already got some attention for the massive tank it can now field. With the change to a missile boat with all damage types , it's active tank bonus, it's larger drone bay and its higher speed this ship will the choice of the level 3 mission runner.

Will this be the end of the Caldari dominance and the rise of the Minmatar dominion?

EVE Online: What I do in Eve Online

http://swiftandbitter.com/eve/wtd/
Every eve player should take a good look at this picture before deciding on a career or before quitting because they feel that mining, ratting or running missions are the only options available.

I would like try out all of the options eve offers. So far I have done only a small part of what eve has to offer.
Let's start with a look at the PVE side.

Mining
I mine ice and minerals for personal use. Minerals to build tech 1 ships, modules and ammunition as a side business to supply the corp/alliance. Ice to make POS fuel for my small research POS. In the near future I will again set up PI to supply materials for POS fuel and to make some items for tech2 production. I did PI in high sec for a while but quit when my corporation took down its high sec POS.
So far I haven't done any gas or moon mining.

Industry
Market trading, transport and production.
Every week or so I load up a blockade runner with half a hold of T2 modules that I buy in high sec and move to Branch to put on market locally. Tech1 ships, modules, ammunition and rigs I try to produce myself as much possible, putting surplus on the market or donating to the corporation.
No orca, jump freighter or carrier skills to make moving bigger volumes a bit easier.

Wormholes
Wormholes: I have never lived in a wormhole. I don't like living in a POS and prefer to live in a station. I feel safe when docked up. I don't feel safe in a POS forcefield. I did make a daytrip once and cleared a site in a C2 wormhole but that's it.

Exploration
I like exploration and running sites. Sometimes I run a Forsaken Hub because they are such easy money and might escalate into a Dread Gurista Fleet Staging Point but usually there are more Vindicators as Forsaken Hubs hanging around in our systems. Instead of doing anomalies I like to scan down sites and run those. I run radar/magnetomatric/combat sites to get loot/salvage/materials for personal production and earn a little isk from the rats.

Ratting
I used to run asteroid belts and all anomalies, these days it's mostly exploration and the occasional Forsaken Hub.

Missions, Incursions
I used to do missions in high sec to get standings for jump clones and R&D datacore access. sinc eI moved to null fulltime this has stopped.
I have never done any incursions. I always considered this something for rich players with pimped out ships.

PVP
I never engaged in piracy, scamming, ninja salvaging, can flipping or anything of the like. I always imagine that other guy to be some clueless noob that can't afford to lose his precious raven fit with light missiles launchers, dual armor and shield tank and 3 light drones in the cargo hold instead of a battle hardened veteran that is trying to bait me.

Solo PVP has been very limited for me. I once jumped into a gatecamp with a Rupture and managed to take down an interceptor before dying horribly. I recently got jumped by a gang when I was multi-boxing a mackinaw, vargur and tengu. Lost the Vargur but took down a sabre with me...
Someone still has to learn a lesson about paying attention to intel channels I guess.

I try to join fleets when I can but I like to play in shorter timespans as most fleets last. 2013 I hope to join more fleets and get more kills as in 2012 which shouldn't be to hard.

EVE Online: Introducing myself - part 2

In part 1 I talked a bit about my beginnings and ended the story when Grey Templars joined the Fidelas Constans alliance.

Just as I did Ushra'Khan a disservice by giving them only a single reference, so am I going to gloss over the last year with the CFC campaigns ending with the taking of Tribute.

Time to start living in the present.
A new campaign has started and FCON is deploying again, this time in our own backyard. Black Legion, The Retirement Club, Scrap Iron Flotilla have made Venal their home and have been poking around in our systems.

FCON has switched to an armor doctrine and of course I am a shield tanking and missile launching caldari bear with skills all over the place except in armor tanking and gunnery.
http://eveboard.com/pilot/Raziel_Walker

Luckily Raziel is not alone. I have alts too.
http://eveboard.com/pilot/Duriel_Walker
A minmatar character, meant as pvp alt. Less skills in science/industry and more in various spaceship and gunnery skills. Still not a capable armor tanked though.

But behold, you can have three characters on a single account.
http://eveboard.com/pilot/Uriel_Walker
My amarr mining alt has basic armor tank skills and is not that far from basic T1 laser skills. Time to get out of that skiff and into that T1 cruiser. Instead of oracles I will fly some tackle frigates, tech 1 logistics or other support ships probably. un til those Tech2 lasers are trained up for.

Finally, because there are four races in eve I of course have a fourth character.
http://eveboard.com/pilot/Gabrielle_Walker
Gallente. Goal is to get into a carrier or orca for support roles.

Right now I am training up destroyers 5, battlecruisers 5 and all racial frigate/cruisers skills to 4 so all characters can at least sit in most hulls.
Next is gunnery skills for all. Get the basic support skills in gunnery to 4 first and then some laser skills for all those doctrine fleet fits on Uriel/Duriel while Raziel/Gabrielle will probably go for hybrids.

EVE Online: Introducing myself - part 1

My name is Raziel Walker.
I am a carebear.
I live in nullsec.

Some people choose to blog more or less anonymously. Since it is easy enough to find out someone's ingame identity I have chosen not to hide anything including my alts. Since there was a time I put all my alts in a personal one man corporation they all are linked anyway.

So let's do a quick background check shall we.
http://evewho.com/pilot/Raziel+Walker
So I started playing Eve in september 2009. Already there were training queues, the nano nerf was something of the past, wormholes and tech 3 cruisers had just been released. Dominion with its revamp of sov mechanics was jsut around the corner.

Just a couple of days old I joined a new corp that was actively recruiting newbies, Local Threat. Together with a horde of newbies we moved to providence and started mass training for merlins and blackbirds. Even though the corp was based on scamming newbies out of their ISK I remember this corp fondly for teaching newbies about fittings, teaching us how to earn isk by ninja salvaging and whelping a fleet of 50 frigates on a titan's AoE doomsday before it was nerfed to a single target weapon.

After some leadership disagreements about the future of the corp the majority split off and reformed as Salus Novus. We joined the United Front Alliance, RAZOR's renter alliance and moved to AH-B84. After a while I decided nullsc was not for me and moved back to high sec for some serious bearing.

Stuff happened, mostly boring bearing.

And eventually I joined my current corporation, Grey Templars. For a while I moved to NPC nullsec in Stain but I didn't like that since we were in a station without medical clones.
After some more time our corporation decided to join an alliance and that was Ushra'Khan.
This turned out to be a time of moving around a lot and I wasn't as active in participating as I would have wanted. Fun times but in the end Ushra'Khan went in another direction as Grey Templars and we moved to join Fidelas Constans in Branch.

EVE online: Second First Post

There used to be one post here that was not related to Eve Online.
That post was removed and instead this blog will continue as an Eve Online Blog.

Edit: hindsight....

http://razielwalker.blogspot.nl/2013/08/blog-reboot.html