EVE Online: First tears collected

The first thing I saw on overview was a Vherokior Probe loitering on the wormhole.

I had just jumped my pve Oracle from high sec to a class 1 wormhole. I decloak, lock up the target and shoot the ship first and the pod second as it doesn't warp off. Seconds later a retriever leaves warp so gets shot as well, unfortunately the pod is able to warp off.

http://zkillboard.com/detail/33801048/
After killing the ship I felt a bit sorry for killing what was probably an afk noob on a daytrip.



http://zkillboard.com/detail/33801053/
After killing the pod I felt annoyed that this guy went afk in a dangerous spot and would probably end up blaming me.



http://zkillboard.com/detail/33801063/
After killing the retriever I felt like it was my birthday party and I wished that second pod would stay and let me crack it open to see what was inside.



Lessons learned:

• Refit that pve oracle. Replace those cap rechargers with sensor boosters. Lack of cpu (36 available for two mid slots) prevents me from fitting anything really useful in the mids but sensors boosters are
• Watch dscan, next time it might not be a retriever that leaves warp.

Lesson's taught:

• Don't go afk uncloaked on wormholes.
• Warp to zero, that retriever landed 10 km away.

Reaction from the victim:
Mail 1: ты сука пролетела через нашу систему, и еще насрала там
Google translate: you bitch flew through our system and there is still shit

Mail 2: ты мразь у меня инет глюкнул, тебя бы там разодрали на твоем оракле
Google translate: you scum I Inet glyuknul, you would be there on your tore Orakle

Local chat:
[13:51:53] pirdutcho > че мрази спрятались
Google translate: human scum hiding
[13:52:22] pirdutcho > бледво
Google translate: bledvo

And after that I decided to move on to my destination system, apparently some people are unwilling to take responsibility for their actions.

I do not believe Gevlon Goblin would have approved of this mining fit.

EVE Online: Four years

Time flies when you are having fun. It has been over four years since I started playing Eve at the urge of one of my best friends. Unfortunately he didn't stick around.

At the start I had only one account, after a few months I realized the only way to 'level up' a second character was if I had a second account. The other purpose was to have a scout when moving around in slow but expensive ships like a drake or raven.



Raziel, birth date 12-9-2009, 64m SP
My main prefers to fly caldari hulls. Skill training has been all over the place and next twelve months will be used to raise existing skills to rank 4 to fill gaps in support skills.
Most flown ship: HAM tengu, it gets boring.



Uriel, birth date 4-10-2009, 46m SP
Uriel prefers amarr hulls. Main purpose is as an industrial character doing PI and manufacturing. Secondary goal is firing (mining) lasers. Long term training goal at creation was to get into a dreadnaught. The next year will be spent getting into and orca, archon and amarr tech2 hulls while fleshing out industry skills where needed.
Favorite ship: anything with lasers. Ungroup for better effect.



Duriel, birth date 24-1-2010, 62m SP
Duriel prefers minmatar hulls. Main purpose is as pvp character, secondary as scout and support. Long term training goal is to fly all subcapital hulls. Next twelve months will be mostly support skills because those are subpar
Favorite ship: stealth bombers. Theory only.



Gabrielle, birth date 9-8-2010, 47m SP
Gabrielle prefers gallente hulls. Main purpose is industrial support for Uriel. Long term training goal at creation was to get into a carrier. The next year will be spent getting into a carrier hull and improving drone skills.
Biggest disappointment: blaster proteus. Navy megathron does it better.



Finally I have two minor alts.

Minor alt 1 (6m SP): 3-4-2011, freighter pilot.
Minor alt 2: (8m SP) 3-4-2011, meant to be a pirate or suicide ganker or something else not carebeary. Currently engaged in carebear activities.

Assets
A while ago I valued my own assets at about 15 billion isk, this was excluding any production materials and modules I had lying around.

This week I downloaded jEveAssets and it gave my total asset value as 19.503.030.987,34 isk
This took me four years to accumulate. Gevlon Goblin had 20 billion isk in two months.

Speaking of Gevlon. I saw his two ganking alts pass through my high sec mining system twice today reminding me I might want to look at changing my mining fit. A retriever with MAPC and MSE for shield tank. I could replace the MSE with an invulnerability field. This would remove the need for the MAPC freeing up a low slot for a second mining laser upgrade.

SOMER T20

Post inspired by http://funkybacon.blogspot.nl/2013/10/somerblink-t20-13.html

In short, CCP gave SOMER employees rare Ishukone Watch Scorpions.
http://themittani.com/news/ccp-secretly-gifted-somer-blink-ishukone-scorpions

Some people are raising hell and equating this to the T20 scandal, others think it is overblown and SOMER just received some gifts comparable to othere freebies CCP has handed out to community sites in the past.

SOMER blink is not a community site.
SOMER blink is a gambling site.

And that is why I believe SOMER should be treated differently from real community sites.
Other community sites generate advertising income or receive gifts from CCP as well but those sites are still presented with their service as primary goal. SOMER does not exist to sponsor events, that is just advertising to promote their primary service, gambling.

Gambling is not a community service.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

http://crossingzebras.com/2013/10/06/conflict-of-interest/
First reply: Colluding in a secret process makes it appear seedy and underhanded. If it is a reward why not celebrate it in a public way to encourage other people to contribute to the community?

http://jestertrek.blogspot.com/2013/10/hobbit-birthday.html
http://jestertrek.blogspot.nl/2013/10/conflict-diamond.html

I won't quit EVE over this, I won't threaten to quit EVE over this. At best I will keep it in mind the next time CCP slips up again. I think this is how bittervets get born?

EVE Online: Standings repaired

A few days ago I finished Penumbra, the final of the four epic mission arcs.

One of my long term goals is to have is high standings with all four empire factions. The time I started the standing repair plan my gallente standing was about to hit -5.

These standings were with the connections skill at rank 3
Caldari State   8,66
Amarr Empire   5,6
Gallente Federation   -4,71
Minmatar Republic   -2,96

I started by completing all tutorial missions and did datacenter missions by turning in dog tags and running the courier mission chain. Of course I did storylines in between as well though I should probably avoid doing those in the future.

Faction standings before I started the 4 epic arcs with connections 4
Caldari State  4.64
Gallente Federation 3.78
Amarr Empire  3.72
Minmatar Republic 3.54

Faction standings after finishing the 4 epic arcs, the SoE arc (Minmatar variation) and training connections 5.
Caldari State 5.68
Minmatar Republic 4.91
Gallente Federation 4.66
Amarr Empire 4.52

Training connection skill rank 5 my caldari standing went from 5.5 to 5.68.

The Blood-Stained Stars was done in a nighthawk, previously a hawk was used. Next time I'll try a crow. That should speed things up nicely 3 months from now. Combats are mostly against noob frigates and most time is spent warping around anyway.

Totally off topic, ships will travel faster as a result of the warp changes. This would allow fleets to move around faster if titan jump bridges are ever nerfed in a far away future.

Old Man's War

This is not a story about Eve Online and pvp in Old Man Star.

This is about two secondhand books I bought this afternoon.
Last and First Man by Olaf Stapledon
Old Man's War by John Scalzi

I am about 100 pages into Old Man's War by now and hooked. It was mentioned as reminiscent of Heinlein's Starship Troopers and Joe Haldeman's Forever War and while I don't have Starship Troopers I do have 6 other Heinlein books and both Haldeman's Forever War and Forever Peace.
So far OMW is on track to be just as entertaining and engaging.

John Scalzi apparantly was a creative consultant for Stargate Universe. I own season 1 on DVD and seen the first six episodes. Stargate and Atlantis were more enjoyable more but perhaps the characters will grow a bit more likable over time.

Last and First Man has been named as an influential book by a lot by other writers so looking forward to that as well.

Other books I have recently read are:
Fate of Worlds by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner
The Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks
The Science of Discworld IV: Judgement Day by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart & Jack Cohen
Fluke, or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings by Christopher Moore
and Saga of the Pliocene Exile, a trilogy by Julian May

Back to OMW.

EVE Online: Customs Code Expertise

CCP SoniClover came with news about high sec player owned customs offices. The full article can be read at http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/player-owned-customs-offices-in-hi-sec/

Of course the real news is the introduction of an awesome new skill!

Customs Code Expertise
This will reduce the NPC portion of the tax rate, by 10% per level (so at level 5 the NPC export tax rate will be 5% rather than 10%). Again, this skill only affects the NPC portion of the tax, not the player owner tax.



Reducing tax by 40 or 50 percent sounds pretty decent even if taxes are only about 10% of the sale price. Giving us this skill at the same time when any NPC customs office can be destroyed and replaced by a player owned one...

Ripard Teg mentioned CCP devs trolling players?

EDIT:

The NPC tax will continue for hi sec POCOs (as we want low sec POCOs to still be competitive). The tax rate stays the same, at 10% for export and 5% for import. This is then in addition to whatever tax the player owner sets.

Perhaps I should have read this part a few times more. The good news is that reading http://mabricksmumblings.blogspot.nl/2013/10/we-need-better-than-double-taxes-and-no.html pointed out this mistake to me before someone had to do it in comments.
The bad news is that it removes the point of my article since Customs Code Expertise is apparantly a real skill and not some dev trolling.

No regrets about moving my PI operation to a C1 wormhole.

EVE Online: Certificate changes

CCP Ytterbium posted a dev blog yesterday with details about the certificate system revamp.
http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/license-to-kill-certificate-overhaul/

Just my feedback here, anyone can read the full dev blog for themselves, no need to rephrase and repost the entire blog.

Certificates can no longer be set as public.
I liked setting non-pvp certificates public. It gives people a little idea of what my character focus is and might lower the barrier to approach me or ask questions.
http://eveboard.com/pilot/raziel_Walker/certificates

Removal of redundant starter profession certificates.
They are redundant because they cannot be made public anymore. Was I the only player that ever looked at them? Did roleplayers have any use for them?

Automatic certificate claming.
Only now do I realize I should have trained basic certificates, claimed them and set them public. Then train the improved/elite certificate and do not claim it. That way people might think my character is an untrained alt and underestimate some skills despite his character age.

Ship masteries
Shield reinforcement and tackling certificates for a Megathron?
I understand maximizing anything that might be relevant for rank V mastery but it still looks a bit silly.

Corporation created certificates
Are these possible or will this be possible with a future release?
This is the real new news that will get people excited about this dev blog.

You want to fly the fleet doctrine fit?
Match this certificate to be eligible for ship reimbursement.