EVE online: Exploration profits

The previous time I talked about exploration I just had an exceptional haul from two magnetomatric resulting in almost 300m in loot. To end a week of a scanning and running sites I located one radar and one combat site.

The radar site was just some datacores and decryptors.

The combat site was a Gurista Military Operations Complex where the commanding officer dropped some pith loot.

The disadvantage to running exploration sites as opposed to ratting directly for isk is that I don't get isk for my work. I get items that I still have to move to high sec and sell first before I see any isk.

So I put all the faction loot and tech 2 salvage from all those sites in my tengu and moved it all to Jita to put on market there. Please do keep in mind that this the the result of several months of running sites. (Except the two small shield boosters, one was from an old tengu fit, the other from a pimped hawk that stopped using because I was afraid of losing a 300m frigate.)

Two days later most of the loot has sold and I am 3 billion isk richer.

EVE online: Comment in a post

Someone replied to a post Mabrick made and said he scams/awoxes for the fun, for the endless tears coming from players that will never be able to hurt him back.

After which TurAmarth ElRandir said:

"What, in the context of EVE Online, is a game?" and

"What reasoning, in such a 'game', makes it acceptable to willfully and intentionally cause emotional 'hurt' (his word, HE used twice) another REAL HUMAN player?"

Convince me… really convince me that intentionally and willfully causing another living human being, someone who is not in any way interacting with or threatening you, that to cause them emotional stress and intentional 'harm' (the end product of 'hurting' someone) is acceptable and proper in ANY venue at ANY time ANYWHERE and I will seriously consider changing my mind...

Please explain how you justify HURTING someone intentionally. I really do want to hear this and understand how you have determined that it is OK. While EvE is just a game, your personal ‘enjoyment’, the ‘thrill’ you feel and the ‘glee’ you have when you intentionally cause someone else emotional stress and anger, what you call “tears”, is just as real as your victims emotional reaction to YOUR willful act.

All griefers/gankers/scammers say that carebears need to quit crying like babies and ‘HTFU’ that it’s only a game… but you then go on and on and on about how WONDERFUL it made YOU feel to make them feel that pain… how the be all of your game is to make someone so upset that they quit playing EvE… and that somehow that is GOOD for the game. Go on… justify that utter bullshit.

Who has a problem here? The guy who has an emotional attachment to virtual stuff he spent many very REAL hours of his time virtually creating or the guy who has an emotional attachment to causing other people emotional stress and pain?

I mean if they really ARE that dumb and stupid (IE mentally challenged), then you ARE just a bully picking on, as he said, people who "...will never be able to hurt me back..." and if not... then what?

If they are not dumbass noobs, but reasonably intelligent young adults just like yourself who simply haven't played the "game" long enough to realize it's FULL of other real players who will lie and cheat and trick and scam and grief them every chance they get... then what are you?... just a guy playing a game? Still looks and sounds like a closet bully to me.

This is exactly why I have never scammed, ganked, griefed or any of the kind. That is not to say I will never do so though. I can easily imagine myself doing so just to prove myself I am capable of killing a miner before concord can kill me. Or some other reason. But I don't think I'd make it a habit.
After all, if I want a challenge, kill or loss, all I have to do is visit low sec or wormhole space and poke around a bit.

In Eve you can lose your assets. For most players that will be part of what drawn them to the game. Eve is not a theme park game, there is a risk of loss. That doesn't mean anyone seeks it.
I don't want to lose my ratting ship. I don't mind losing the a ship in a home defense fleet though, that's exactly why I have that ratting ship.
I am aware of the game rules though. If I mine in high I am aware I can be suicide ganked. I am also aware there are potentially 7500 other solar systems I could mine in.
Since I live in null I accept I can be killed by undocking even if I don't want to.

But the post above was not about people that understand the rules, it was about killing people that don't.

Is there a way to protect the players that need protection without making a theme park for the players that don't the same treatment?

EVE online: Exploration again

The last three days after downtime I logged on, jumped into scanning tengu and started scanning neighbouring systems.

The first day I found two magnetomatric sites in one system.

Took me about 10 minutes to scan down both sites and another 30 or so to run them. Usually I clear the entire site and kill/loot/salvage all rats but this time I just took the cans and only killed rats in range.

Next I scanned down a pith penal complex in another system only to warp to empty space right as it despawned. After another 30 minutes of scanning and finding mostly wormholes I decided to give up for the day and do something else.

The next day it took me about 25 minutes to locate my first exploration complex, a Gurista Military Operations Complex although the only drop of value was a 20th tier overseer effects. Clearing this site took at least two hours but I walked out with every piece of loot in the site.

Today I spent about 30 minutes scanning 10 solar systems, locating two wormholes and one Dread Gurista Fleet Staging Point but the owner entered system and started running the site while I was still trying to scan down the site.
A site like the maze or DGFSP only spawns as an escalation so the sites are hard to scan down and the person that received the escalation might not approve of someone else running 'his' site.

I was determined to scan something down and started on the next constellation. The first system was empty of signatures. The second one had three so I started to scan down the signatures in anticipation of.. well something at least. Unfortunately all I found was three wormholes.

Perhaps I should get the hint and just get a WH exploration ship? After all wormholes have sites as well and the only real difference is the lack of local and the need to press Dscan.

The system after that I managed to scan down a Pristine Guristas Explosive Debris only to see another ship warp off as I enter the site. Well at least he left me four BS rats to kill before the site despawns.

As I have been scanning for almost two hours without result I decide to take a break and do something else. Maybe it's time to check the market and see how my sell orders are doing.

EVE online: Pew pew

This simply part two of the previous post again. The previous version was made late at night and in the morning it didn't seem that coherant anymore so I broke up the bigger post in two smaller ones.

Another pos shoot! This time there was a defense fleet waiting for us.
http://kb.f-con.us/?a=kill_related&kll_id=234286
We outnumbered them and won the objective despite heavier isk losses.

On our return from yet another pos shoot we are made aware of hostile gangs in the region and one that has set up a drag bubble at VFK station. We burn at maximum speed towards VFK hoping to get in on some kills before goons form up a home defense fleet. We make the dozen jumps in record time and arrive just in time to coordinate with the home defense fleet. They undock, bait the hostiles and keep them on the field long enough for us to take the JB into system and get a warp-in.

Looking at the killboard I would guess that VoC and TEST were two separate fleets but I do not remember exactly what happened since all the fights of the past few days merged a bit in my head.
http://kb.f-con.us/?a=kill_related&kll_id=234553

Yesterday I was going to try some belt ratting and warped to top belt just as a neutral entered system. I reported the neut and warped off to station. Saw the call for a home defense fleet to kill it and some other hostile in the area so docked up and joined fleet.

With my pvp ships in our staging area and nothing ready for pvp in the local area I took a claw I had just for moving around fast. It was a dualprop inty with speed mods/rigs so I quickly pulled of a the cloak, ab and overdrives and replaced them with point, dcII and 200mm plates.

Undocked, made my way next system to the fleet and managed to get on two killmails
http://kb.f-con.us/?a=kill_related&kll_id=235515
After this we chased the Tengu but lost track of it, partly because I might have misspoken when the FC asked for confirmation about something because the tengu pilot had a similar name to one of the SFI pilots from before.
I then chased a loki for almost a dozen jumps before losing him while the rest of the fleet went another way to try and cut him off. Later I caught up with the loki again but he logged off and I failed to use dscan correctly to help our prober locate him before he disappeared.

EVE online: To pod or not to pod.

As far as I am aware the Retirement Club (401K) has been killing or harassing the Space Monkey Alliance (SMA) and FCON alliance has been ordered to help out SMA.
As a result I have joined several fleets this month killing or defending towers.

A call had gone out for a POS save fleet. We had about a 100 man fleet in arty canes and heard about a 40 man TEST gang in the VFK area. Our FC was convinced there was enough time to still get to the POS in time we took a quick detour and engaged them.
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=16292780

After that we got intel about a second fleet jumping in so we moved one system, burned off the gate to our optimals and started our wait. Test jumped in after us soon after with the same results as the first time. http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=16293502

This person was probably in the wrong clone wearing a full snake set.
http://kb.f-con.us/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=233310

In the past I didn't have capsules on my fleet overview but recently I repaired that oversight and with things dying so fast this battle I just locked up everything I could and killed quite a few pods myself.

Should I feel guilty for podding people or am I just helping them to reship faster?
I fly with implants myself and always breathe a sigh of relief if a battle is without bubbles or at the edge and I can warp my pod out in one piece after losing my ship.

EVE online: The great ship skill changes of summer 2013

Earlier today a dev blog was published regarding the ongoing tiericide/ship rebalancing.
See http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=74234 for more details.

This will be the new simplified ship progression tree.

To train battleships right now you need frigate and cruiser skills at rank 4.
To train battleships in the future you will need the frigate, destroyer, cruiser and battlecruiser skills at rank 3.
So to compensate players for needing more skills they reduced the required ranks as well. Spaceship command will of course also remain as a required skill in all cases.

Frigates and destroyers are a rank 2 skill, cruisers x5 and battlecruisers x6 (and battleships x8).
In the old setup you needed 384.440 sp to get the prerequisites for a battleship.
In the new setup you will need 144960 sp to get the preqrequisistes for a battleship.

This will help new players to get into bigger hulls faster. Whether that is a good thing or not is another discussion really, but I think new players will like the change because it allows them to reach a specific goal faster or will allow for faster specialization.

Capital ship requirements will be lowered to BS rank 3 as well, allowing for faster specialization and also allowing you to branch out to other races more easily.
Do you think this will get some tears from the 'elite' pvp crowd because they wasted some precious skillpoints? Or will they 'harden the f*ck up' and accept that eve is not a static game.

Tech2/3 ships will only require the relevant racial hull size. So to fly a command ship you need the command ship skill but no longer do you have to train up assault frigates and heavy assault cruisers as well.
You won't need skills in one tech2 ship as requirement to fly another tech2 ship. So it wil be easier to get into recon, hac and command ships.

I am an industrial player without orca and there are times I really miss the ability to move big amounts of ore/minerals/ice products etc. The rebalancing will ease requirements to get into an orca as well for which I am grateful. Training time should be reduced by about a month.

A while ago there was news about new pirate rookie ships and someone made a comment that it would make more sense if in caldari space you get new a caldari rookie ship instead of having your insurance company keep gallente rookie ships in supply.
With rookie ships only requiring spaceship command 1 everyone will be able to fly all rookie ships.

Faction navy ships will get their requirements changed to rank 2 instead of 3-4 as it is now for most hulls. Faction BS however might only require rank 1 to fly now and will require rank 2 after the change.
This is one of the few cases where you won't be able to fly the hull after the changes while you can do so now. The reasoning is that training from rank1 to rank2 will only take a few hours at most.

Capital ships will get some requirements reduced and some increased. In general the capital ship skill will have to be trained to a higher level as before and some specialized skills needed to fly the ship anyway (jump drive skills for example) will be added to the requirements as well.

So to make it more clear to players just how long it will take to get into a hull the requirements for specialized modules will be added to skills.
For example to fly an interdictor you will need graviton physics I and propulsion jamming V.
Must say when I started reading the article I assumed requirements for T2 ships would be lowered as well but it seems CCP remains of the opinion that T2 ships are specialized ships. Meaning they are a bigger timesink for a smaller reward. Although thavign those skills at 5 will make you help that much more effective and make optimal use of your ship.

EAF receive another change as well. Currently you need Electronic Upgrades 5 to fly an EAF.  This will change to Long Range Targeting 5 instead.

If you have Destroyer and Battlecruiser 5 trained, you should account for approximately 6.2 additional million skill points.
Yay, that is a 15-30% increase in SP for my characters.

All in all I am a happy person with the proposed changes. Do you feel these changes are all for the better or do you think there are serious negatives as well?

EVE online: Catching up

Finally had time to catch up on some blog reading after being sick for a few days.

CCP Fozzie in https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2482199#post2482199
Open up the use of Covert Cynosural Field Generators on any Strategic Cruiser that has the Covert Reconfiguration subsystem fitted, as well as on Blockade Runners. This means that the availability of covert cynos is consistent and simple. If you can jump through the bridge you can light the cyno.

Soon we will be able to use a blockade runner as miniature jump freighter. Gives us a nice chance to try out the jump mechanic without an expensive BOPS or capital ship.
Since only the Prowler has the ability to fit both a cloak and covert cyno would it be a good idea to speculate a bit with these? Or is the prowler market to small/locaked anyway?

--snip--

In other news, the CFC/HBC war was averted, sov grind cited as the main reason. 
Shadoo of PL talks about a sov grind? I thought PL didn't want sov, why would they go though a grind then?
If you want fights just reinforce some POS/POCO or plant SBU's to draw out a defender?
And you don't have to grind your enemy into the ground, you can always accept surrender/vassalage.

--snip--

http://themittani.com/features/clone-upgrade-bills-painful-throwback
Clones upgrade costs are not just an isk sink , they can also be seen as a way to force a player choice. Do I put all my SP in one character that is capable of multiple roles or do I specialize and train alts. A good example would a cyno alt that only needs low SP. Or a frigate focused character so your clone won't be more expensive as your ship plus fitting.
Clone cost could also be seen as a way to discourage clone jumping by podding.
I am not in favor of clone cost removal, although at least removal of insurance would balance out the isk sink/faucet a bit

--snip--

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2507518#post2507518
More CCP Fozzie news!

As such we're working to ensure that each of these ships can fit a warfare link without sacrificing a bonused highslot. We eventually want links to be something you use on field and part of that will be ensuring that you can use links while also also enjoying the normal on-grid gameplay.

To get these highslots back we've moved the new slot on the Ferox from low to high, and given the Brutix and Drake the "double damage bonus fewer weapons" treatment.

Last time I complained about the fact that the caldari BC were left without utility high slots. Glad to see CCP agree that those slots have a function and are needed.

The drake and brutix had 7 bonused high slots, this will be reduced to 6 but with double the old bonus. So both go from 7 x 1,25 = 8,75 to 6 x 1,5 = 9 effective launchers/turrets (at skill lvl 5).
The drake gets locked even more into kinetic damage this way though.
Switching to another damage type meant you only lost the 25% damage bonus. Shooting anything else as kinetic will result in 50% damage loss.