That was quick…

CCP was quicker to respond than expected.  The Inferno 1.0.1 patch notes included these lines…

“Fixed an issue where the new Unified Inventory would reopen every time a character jumped, docked, undocked or otherwise performed a session change.”

 “Inventory window locations that are still accessible between docking and undocking will now remain open. For example a ships Drone Bay, if opened in a separate window”

 “Fixed an issue where Corporation hangars would not load correctly”

That will hopefully resolve the main things I was complaining about with the new Inventory window.  (Although I am steering clear of mining and looting missions just for the moment…)

Inventory Window with a mind of its own

I updated the client and log into Inferno.  I realised none of my Toons are anywhere near a missile ship, so I will have to wait a bit before enjoying those new visuals.  I checked out the new War related information to find it, well, kind of underwhelming.   Never mind – I have the new inventory Window to get used to.

Performance seems ok and its use is mostly logical.  I always keep my ship cargo hold open and anchored at the bottom of the screen – so I separate it from the Inventory window, minimise the index and filters, and resize it to suit.

I undock, and my cargo hold window jumps back to the middle of the screen in the new inventory window format, with the index opened again.

I can’t separate the cargo hold window using shift (I assume because it is the only window), so I minimise the index and filter, resize it, and move it back down to the bottom of the screen – again.  I make several gate jumps and the window stays where I left it.

I then dock in a new station, and find the Cargo hold window jumps back to the middle of the screen in the new inventory window, with the index opened again.  Ok, I think I know how this is going to work.

So I undock, and the inventory window disappears, as does the Cargo window.  I click on the Cargo icon and it opens anchored in the right spot and the right size.

Not ideal, but at least it seems to be remembered.  I guess I can live with that.

I jump into the next system, and the cargo window disappears.  Huh?

I dock at a new station and again the inventory window opens by default on Cargo.

I undock.  No cargo window.  I manually open the Cargo window.

I jump into the next system, and the cargo window disappears.

I jump into the next system, and the cargo window automatically opens.

I jump into the next system, and the cargo window disappears again

I dock – and no inventory window appears.

By now I am assuming there isn’t a proper logic to this, and it is buggy.

I head back home with my trade goods, with the Cargo window opening or closing by itself after every jump.

I dock back at my home station – and my corporate hanger isn’t showing up in the inventory window.  I open the Corpration Assets window, but can’t copy anything into it.

So I undock, close the cargo hold, redock, and thankfully have my Corp hangers are again in the Inventory Window.

I don’t know.  It seems that every time CCP makes changes to the UI they introduce bugs.  Bugs which you just can not fathom how you would miss them in testing.  Going forward I will try to kepe my Cargo Window Anchored in the Inventory Window, and not have it (or any other inventory window) openned while jumping between systems or docking.  Hopefully CCP will finesse this moving forward – but a the moment the new Inventory window appears unreliable and inconsistent in its behaviour.

Light a match

Today’s the day of the Inferno release.  The Patch notes are up.

http://community.eveonline.com/updates/patchnotes.asp?newpatchlogID=72746

 

Overall I am not particularly enthused with this expansion.

I wrote a long post about the various additions, but kept finding a sarcastic edge to my commentary.  It is the Faction Warfare changes which irk me.  In part they seem too arbitrary and on initial view seemingly unbalanced.  More than that though, I am left with the impression of CCP being too heavy handed.  It hurts my notion of a sandpit.

I am looking forward to seeing the new Missile effects and Stealth Bomber hulls.  The latest EVE Trailer uses them to maximum effect.

http://au.ign.com/videos/2012/05/21/eve-online-inferno-teaser-trailer

 

I see much of the War Dec changes as positives.  No longer needing to vote on War is good – it can now be triggered by the CEO or Directors.  Corps fleeing Alliances will carry the War Dec, and Players fleeing Corps will not be able to rejoin new ones immediately, both good changes.  The possibility of putting surrender terms against a War Dec is also long overdue.  The public war reports might be interesting – although soft targets might find them a source of more griefing.  The Ally / Mercenary support concept is also cool – although I wait to see how it is actually utilised.

Out of the new modules, it is the Ancillary Shield Booster which interests me the most for solo and small gang PVP.  I hope they don’t end up being too expensive.

There are some items of minor concern.  CCP is starting the transition from Tier to Role based classifications for ship hulls – one of those was changing the Tormentor Frigate from a mining to a combat ship.  I have wondered at what they will be leaving as mining frigates – if anything.  They were an important first step for an industrialist.

There was this little note – “Research Point amounts will not be adjusted in any shape or form with Inferno release”.  So you if you have not cashed them out, they will halve in value overnight.  I guess they are like certain Government Bonds.

Another little item – “Market tax has been increased from 1% to 1.5% as a part of our initiative to keep the EVE economy healthy.”  I wonder at the specific goal of that – and how it keeps the economy healthy.  I guess it depends on how you look at the change – only a 0.5% increase in the cost of doing business, or a 50% increase in a tax.

And the last one that stood out – ““If a player logs back in whilst his ship is still in space at a 1-million-km emergency-warp point, their ship will now be vulnerable to warp disruption bubbles at this location as it attempts to e-warp back to its original position”

Some recent community blogs which add more detail:

The Ally System:

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=72742

 

The Skin colour changes in the character generator:

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=72330

 

And more detail on the Factional Warfare (although check the release notes for more specifics)

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=28659

 

 

The Line

Chribba has another Outpost to his name – this time in the rather famous HED-GP.  He had an Outpost in 9UY4-H Providence for over a year, leaving it open for anyone to dock.  I seem to recall reading that he had at least one earlier to that, but only for a short period of time.  The fact that can happen in EVE endears the game to me.

http://evemaps.dotlan.net/outpost/HED-GP

 

There was a new DEV blog out with some refinements to announced updates:

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=42269

Good to see the cost of war against large alliances has been reduced through a somewhat complicated looking equation.  I must admit I hadn’t realised before that the minimum cost of any war is now 50M ISK.  That might cut down a fraction on the griefing of small corps.  (Well, I did say a fraction.)

It also covers 7 of the new modules coming into the game – the biggest from a PVP point of view will probably be the Ancillary Shield Booster’s, which are fed from Cap Boosters.  They are also changing the Capacitor Battery, which will now reflect a portion of Nos and Neut effects back on the attacker, which could be interesting.

Not all of these modules however will be seeded directly on the market – some will only be available in BPC drops from professional sites and rats.  I’m not entirely sure I like that.  Some of these new modules could make quite a difference to standard fits – but the scope and impact will depend on just how readily available they are.  If they end up being the equivalent of faction modules, they might simply not be used by the masses, which would be disappointing.

 

Last of all, something I have been sitting on.  This was raised across various EVE blog sites a while back – including on EVE News 24

http://www.evenews24.com/2012/05/04/tweetfleet-to-get-screwed-by-goonswarm-next/

In short the Goons are looking to use their numbers to possibly disturb and troll EVE related twitter feeds.  I am not a Twitter user – but understand there is a very active EVE community, including CCP employers such as CCP_Diagoras (who puts a wealth of interesting game related statistics up). I assume they want to make the main Twitter tags unusable through flooding.  I briefly read the Twitter terms and conditions, and it doesn’t look like the Goon’s would be technically doing anything wrong.

Does this cross a line?  There are certainly some in EVE who follow the credence that the ends justifies the means – such as the illegal hacking of EVE related forums, or the Denial Of Service attacks on Voice Comms or Websites.  While I don’t condone it, it is usually being done for an in game benefit.

The threat from the Goons doesn’t really seem to be about an in game benefit.  (Well – I guess it might build more comradery, or reinforce the Goon being Goon legend.)  They are looking to disrupt and grief people outside of the game or game specific forums, for their own amusement.  I know by writing an EVE related blog that I would likely face trolling through comments, being called an idiot in EVE forums or on other blogs, and possibly get hassled in game.  While not an especially pleasant thought, I accept that.  I hadn’t considered the surprising lack of boundaries some people have when it comes to what is only a game.  The whole thing just doesn’t seem to sit well with me.

Faction Warfare Datacores

RL is knocking me about at the moment, so I am only logging in EVE once every two or three days.

My two day PI schedule tends to slip out to 3 or 4 days, but the setup is effective enough for a first iteration.  Trade has died away – even more so than expected.  Very little is moving.  Whereas a couple of weeks ago I was competing against 4 or 5 active traders, now it is down to only 1.  (And they are updating their orders almost as infrequently as I.)

There was a Dev blog on the Faction Warfare (FW) changes:

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=28659

My Corp / Alliance can’t be involved as our membership includes relaxed empire dwellers, and FW is not Carebear friendly.  For me, the thought of ending up with very low standings against one or more factions that you would then have to tediously grind back up again to use their space is just unbearable, so I won’t be getting involved either.

Even though most players don’t do FW, we are all about to be directly impacted by it due to the datacore supply changes.  Datacores are used in the T2 invention process.  The number of datacores I collect from my research agents will drop by half, and come with an extra tax.  Instead the FW pilots will be expected to supply the market from their LP store purchases.  We will have to wait and see where the price and availability of supply ends up like.  I do however get the strong impression that a small number of people will be able to manipulate these changes to make an excessive profit for themselves.

From an industrialist point of view it doesn’t really matter – you adjust your prices to suit the new supply costs and pass it on to the market.

I’m mildly annoyed at the personal income nerf.  I currently make around 100M a month on my datacores – although it takes a couple hours to fly two Toons around the 70+ jump circuit to collect and sell them.  It is not enough to make a huge difference to my game, but it adds up over time.  It also makes it a little harder for those players who like to source as many of the raw ingredients they can for themselves.  But that is EVE – the rules of the game change and you adjust.

And that would be it – except I still find myself irritated.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1230077#post1230077

CCP Soundwave commented “We want to move T2 production more towards low and zero-sec. This gives us a very cool venue for FW to influence the rest of the universe instead of being a closed-loop system.”  Later he also remarked “All I can say is that if you’re good at killing things, you’ll benefit”.

I can’t say I was surprised that CCP Soundwave was involved – he usually gives me the impression that he’s far more PVP focused.  I’m not sure what it is – probably just my own Carebear tears and bitching and moaning.  I look to CCP to provide balancing, new tools for the players, and new options.  Manipulations like this however seem to be more about CCP saying “this is where and how we want you to play the game”, which I don’t like from a sandpit point of view.

Taking the timely reminder from Ardent Defender ( http://ardentdefense.wordpress.com/2012/05/10/public-service-reminder-rd-agents-datacores/ ), I ran around and collected all my datacores before the nerf hits in a couple of weeks.  I “sold” them to my Industry Alt to stockpile for her invention.

EVE is 9 years old today

I’ve been playing EVE for the last 5.5 years.  My Main has 97M SP, my main Alt 90M.  My in game assets would be worth over 30 Billion ISK.  While I am more of a casual player who prefers to be self-sufficient, I have spent more than half my career in corporations run by other players.

As with previous years, CCP are giving away free stuff.  For the most part these follow the new trend set last Christmas by being somewhat underwhelming. I now have more refining skill books than I know what to do with.

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=28620

The system my Industry Alt lives out of is generally quiet, although it is not uncommon to have a couple individual miners working the belts.  Since Hulkageddon started, this is the more common view on D-Scan:

Someone was running low level missions in a destroyer while I was moving around some trade goods and sorting the PI installations.  It was amusing to see the innocent movements of the pilot spook the miners, who decamped and docked for a while.

There have been another two DEV Blogs from the Security Team:

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=28581

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=28628

 

The Nosy Gamer (a blog well worth following) posted a series of interesting posts relating to the war on RMT and bots:

http://nosygamer.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/ccp-sreegs-unleashed-three-week-update.html

http://nosygamer.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/ccps-war-on-bots-questor-developer.html

http://nosygamer.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/ccps-war-on-bots-questor-tears-mixed.html

 

I am keeping half an eye on the upcoming changes in the Inferno Expansion.  The new inventory system is getting some rave reviews from within my Corp, although it sounds like it isn’t bug free yet.

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=28637

 

The kill mail updates are partially interesting, although as with most features CCP introduce that mimic a function 3rd parties have already filled, I’m not sure it will change how players collate and report on these things.  Being able to save the fittings though within the game is nice.

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=28602

 

Some of the War Mechanic changes were noted – although the new pricing is just bizzare and makes no sense to me.  There are extra reports and such, which might be of interest if you are into that sort of thing.  It will be interesting to see what they end up deciding on with regards handling players joining and leaving corps with war decs on.

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=28542

 

There were other DEV blogs related to the Escalation release which I hadn’t flagged – such as more UI tweaks (must remember to try out updating my orders from the market tab):

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=28606

The EW notification icons (a good idea)

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=28603

Details of the Rogue drone system Security changes:

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=28587

And so on.

There have also been a lot of interesting Forum posts, Facebook comments, Tweets, EVE News articles, Blogs etc which help to convey the scope of the upcoming release, and the fact many aspects of it are not yet set in stone.  Six months ago I would have said this meant they would not make it into the release, but Crucible showed CCP is more adapt at getting changes across the line.  The video’s I’ve seen of the new launcher effects look excellent – and I suspect they might have the same sort of visual impact as the Nebula did, and just yet again up the visual goodness.   The replacement stealth bomber hulls also look great.

Change

Passing through a system on the weekend I caught part of a conversation between two new players – one was being told by the other that he could earn 2Mil ISK an hour with missions.

It might have been a while, but most of us did have a time in our EVE game where that was a lot of ISK.

I’ve been watching the markets go haywire in response to the incoming mineral nerfs planned for in the Escalation release.  I finally spent a few hours on the weekend with a mix of buy orders and purchases of minerals, and resold the lot a day later at a trade hub for a 150M profit.  I was pleased with the quick turn over and the fact I wasn’t left holding stock.  I am somewhat uneasy at the thought of how long the current market speculation bubble will continue, and then what the final prices minerals will settle at.

CCP Greyscale made a couple of interesting remarks on the forums yesterday about the mineral nerf.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1106977#post1106977

To paraphrase out of order – “We’re already committing to a mineral supply “shock” in this patch”… “Our plan for this is basically to make the changes, see where prices end up settling and then potentially make further adjustments (to the game as a whole) to react to this.”

It is an important statement – CCP are quite deliberately throwing this upheaval into the game without knowing just what its impact will be.  Reading between the lines, I get the impression if the end results are unpalatable that there won’t just be a reversal of some kind, but an attempt to fix with a more complete adjustment to the game.

Forcing change upon the EVE community was part of the theme of the latest EVE video blog, this time with Jon Lander (Senior EVE Producer).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVFToHN15QQ

He remarked that the ship balancing and lots of new modules coming up in the next two expansions were aimed at trying to force change into the old cookie cutter fittings and fleet doctrines.

There’s an element of risk with the overall approach, but I’m inclined to give CCP leeway when mayhem and unsettling the status quo are their stated objectives.  Adjusting and adapting is part of the fun.

CCP knows how to find drama

A summation of the Crucible 1.5 features (currently scheduled to be released on the 13th) are available here:

http://community.eveonline.com/en/crucible/features/

Good to see more DED complexes with new loot. I might have to do some more Exploration after it is released to check them out. The additional information in the Route Tab sounds interesting. I also love the concept of having color coding on market orders – to see if they are along your current route. Useful when you are on your way to Jita, but checking the regional markets for similar prices as you travel. The “Shift Drag” option for placing a Blueprint into the quick bar to get a neat list of ingredients is also very nice. It all seems to be a continuation of the Crucible theme and feel.

Next there was a very big Dev Blog on ship rebalancing:

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=9129

This one could be interesting. I can see the logic in racial Destroyer and Battlecruiser skills. I can also see the logic in removing the tier system, and replacing it with a role classification. Some of the skill requirement changes might also work ok – such as dropping the requirement for the Covertor to rank IV. I don’t really like the idea of reducing the racial Capital perquisite to Battleship IV – but having more badly fitted and flown Capitals on the kill boards is probably a good thing in the end.

I do hope though the process doesn’t hit some of the more unique hulls – such as my favourite hauler, the Exequror cruiser. I also hope CCP improves on its math’s – when it indicated a racial Battleship would take “a bit longer” to train, I was assuming 5 to 15% longer, not 88% more. (That is more than a “bit” CCP Ytterbium)

But then I had to face the issue that was worrying away at the back of my mind. I have rank V in all racial hulls from Frigates to Battleships, plus in Destroyers and Battlecruisers. This change, on initial view, would see me lose the ability to fly 75% of the Command ships and interdictors I can fly now. Finding myself having to train the next 4 to 5 months just to get back to the same position would be infuriating.

So it was off to the forums – where the feedback thread was 40 pages long and growing rapidly.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=898361&#post898361

What I did find was multiple comments from CCP that if people can fly the ship before any changes, that they will be able to fly them afterwards. Given the training costs for the extra racial hull skills are the same as the old generic skills; that would suggest the possibility of a whole heap of extra SP. Maybe if you don’t have them, queue up Destroyer and Battlecruiser V immediately.

So – assuming I don’t have to spend time training ships I already can fly, the general idea of these changes is good.

Last of all, Jester’s Trek Blog has a couple of interesting posts recently. The most recent is a continuation of his review of the EVE average log on counts, which is well worth a read:

http://jestertrek.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/snapcount.html

Previous to that was a less than positive review of the Eve – CSM match website.

http://jestertrek.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/garbage-in-garbage-out.html

Funny enough I had already tried that site out (having used it last year also), but while I am full of praise for the idea and effort, the results in practise were next to pointless.

Speaking of pointless – I am quickly heading towards the decision of not bothering to vote for this years CSM. I’ve read the starting post of about a third of the independent’s CSM threads, and come away disillusioned by the lack of platforms or an overview of goals. There were just too many iterations of “Hi, I’ve been playing EVE for x number of years, and am familiar with it – vote for me.”

To my mind a CSM member has no power to implement a game change – they just provide feedback on what CCP wants to do. At best they might be able to proffer up ideas, or warn off CCP from bad ideas. What I want is someone to vote for who I feel thinks similarly about the game as I do. An understanding of Carebears, a focus on the sandpit nature of the game, an appreciative love of the game, and the ability to communicate and be mature enough to interact positively with players, other CSM members, and CCP. Sell yourselves for goodness sake.

A mishmash of nothing

The kids were sick for a week with gastro, so very little was accomplished in game. While they are ok now, my wife and I are still somewhat shell shocked. At one point I counted more than 20 loads of washing done in 4 days.

It took a while to motivate myself, but this afternoon I finally managed to log in and update my various industry activities. My PI has basically ground to a halt, with none of my stocks moving. It is waiting for me to identify what items currently sell at a worthwhile profit. While that wouldn’t be difficult to do, the thought of changing all my planets has sapped any motivation to get started. General trade volumes remain low, with related subdued profits. I have sold some 175M worth of T2 item’s so far that I’ve manufactured, which makes a bit of a dent into the setup costs. I suspect I won’t be manufacturing Crow’s all that often. I can’t make a profit on those at trade hub prices.

The DEV blogs have continued over the last fortnight.

A team has been put together to revisit the new player experience, to try and improve the retention rates. Obviously worthwhile:

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=3421

 

They announced that there should be small releases in March and April, with the next major release being called Inferno, coming out just before the northern summer. It was light on details – as is pretty common before Fanfest, but it will apparently focus directly and indirectly on conflict.

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=3433

 

There was a blog from the Avatar team. Again this was relatively light on detail, basically saying they are just working on some minor tweaks while going back to the drawing board to try and identify the most effective way for WIS technology to enhance the game.

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=3430

 

The new launcher has reached Singularity if you want to have a look at it now:

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=9082

 

They are remodeling the Rookie ships – which is a good starting point for the new player experience. All of them look better.

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=3435

 

There is an explanation on the standardisation of EVE modules, implants and script names. I understand the need for this, although it will take a little while to adjust to it.

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=9130

 

There are 40 candidates for the upcoming CSM elections. I’m not sure I will have the motivation to read all their campaign messages. I guess after I arbitrarily dismiss the Null Sec voting block candidates, it might be more manageable. I was rather horrified to see that Mintrolio was the only Australian candidate. I don’t know why his obviously faked; one trick pony comment style garners so much mirth or support.

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=9128

 

Last but not least, we learn no one was at the helm of the anti-bot processes at CCP for a while, but they flicked a switch again recently and identified 1,000+ more accounts using bots. What was particularly nice to read is that once warned for this, a character will be locked to that account from then on.

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=9133

 

Even though I haven’t been that active, the skill training is however rolling along.

My main is just short of 94M SP. His Capital skill training is coming along well – covering off all Racial Carrier, Local and Remote Capital Amor, Shield and Energy, and both Tactical Reconfiguration skills to rank IV. He still has 3 Racial Dreads, and various Dread weapons to get from rank III to IV, but I put them temporarily on hold just to cover off a few different things. I’ve recently picked up Transports IV and Infomorph Psychology V, and am currently working on Black Ops IV.

Alt 1 is up to 87M, and after finishing up all the Minmatar medium T2 hull and weapon skills, is currently working on Recon V.

Alt 2 has hit 20M, and is currently working on Frigate Construction V so she can manufacture the Retribution BPC’s she invented. (Can’t remember if I remarked or not, I ran 18 invention jobs for 7 successes.) After that it will be science skills for further invention opportunities.

I won’t have much time for EVE in the next few weeks, but after that I should have some extra free time in my evenings. I had been getting stuck in DDO night after night trying to keep up with a burst of Guild activity based around several friends working towards completionist goals. Miss a couple nights and you basically would never catch up. They have however scaled the schedule back to 3 nights a week.

Recent Dev Blogs

Over the last month, CCP has continued their relatively good work. The somewhat confusing EVE Online website has been rebuilt and restructured.

The main portal is now targeted towards new players –

http://www.eveonline.com/

 

It doesn’t quite hit the mark for me, but is certainly a great improvement.

For existing players, we now have a community portal –

http://community.eveonline.com/

 

Again this is easier to navigate than the old – particularly with the useful drop down menu in the top right of the pages.

 

I might have missed it, but I didn’t notice a link to the eveisreal website. I’d have thought they might direct possible new players in that direction, to see what current subscribers are able to create in the game.

There have been a few new Dev Blogs related to the CSM, which I am ignoring somewhat. This election seems a little more heated and personal, and not particularly enjoyable to read about.

 

CCP Diagoras continues providing interesting EVE statistics –

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=3407

 

There was also a Dev Blog with graphs on the impact of Time Dilation. I have not experienced it myself, but almost everything I have read on it by players has been positive towards it (once they understand and get used to it. The only provisos I have noticed is that off reinforced nodes, the response has been a little less positive.

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=3412

 

Crucible 1.2 was released with (so far) relatively few complaints. I was somewhat surprised, given it was focused on UI optimisations, an area CCP has messed up plenty of times previously.

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=3417

The most obvious thing about this update is that the overview font is now smaller. I let out a small cheer when I realised, I reduced the amount of screen real estate it required. I don’t know if it is related, but the Corporate Hanger and Asset windows also seem to be quicker. I hope that is the case.

 

Last of all on this light weight post, I made a small adjustment to how I stack some of my windows after seeing it done on an EVE related Youtube video.

I now anchor the Asset, Corporation, Wallet, Science, Contract etc windows together at the top of the screen, and minimise / restore using the standard double click on the header method.

 

 

This was prompted by how the new neocomm handles minimised windows, which makes it hard to keep track of what windows you have open.

A screen capture from my alt is shown below

 

I used to do that for chat channels, but not for most of the others windows. Not sure why I haven’t done this earlier, it works quite well.

Wormhole Suicide Trip Preparations 02

I’m leaning towards burning a Loki for this little experiment. Given my lack of solo PVP skills, it should die in a horribly embarrassing and inept way, probably on my first jump. I figure it is ok if that is what I am aiming for.

The first thing I wanted to confirm was what skill points you lost

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=629

This old Dev Blog indicates it is a rank off one of the racial subsystem skills. I only have those at rank 4, so can handle that.

Next I played around with a basic setup with Covert, Exploration and Interdiction Nullifier subsystems. This one seemed to work out ok:

[Loki, WH Suicide Trip - Shield]
Damage Control II
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II

Y-T8 Overcharged Hydrocarbon Microwarpdrive
Warp Disruptor II
Stasis Webifier II
Sensor Booster II, Scan Resolution
Invulnerability Field II

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Expanded Probe Launcher I, Sisters Core Scanner Probe I
425mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M
425mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M
425mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M
425mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M
425mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M

Medium Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I
Medium Core Defence Field Extender I
Medium Core Defence Field Extender I

Loki Defensive – Adaptive Shielding
Loki Electronics – Emergent Locus Analyzer
Loki Offensive – Covert Reconfiguration
Loki Propulsion – Interdiction Nullifier
Loki Engineering – Augmented Capacitor Reservoir

Does 303dps, 35K EHP, resists are ok and moves at 1340m/s.

I then played around with other fittings, dropping the Interdiction Nullifier for a low sig, 100MN AB variant.

[Loki, WH Suicide Trip – Sig Radius]
Damage Control II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Medium Armor Repairer II
Gyrostabilizer II

100MN Afterburner II
Warp Disruptor II
Stasis Webifier II
Sensor Booster II, Scan Resolution
Cap Recharger II

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Expanded Probe Launcher I, Sisters Core Scanner Probe I
425mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M
425mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M
425mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M
425mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M

Medium Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I
Medium Anti-Kinetic Pump I
Medium Anti-Explosive Pump I

Loki Defensive – Amplification Node
Loki Electronics – Emergent Locus Analyzer
Loki Offensive – Covert Reconfiguration
Loki Propulsion – Fuel Catalyst
Loki Engineering – Power Core Multiplier

Does 203dps, but only has 23K EHP, with pretty average Kinetic and Explosive resists. It does however move at around the same speed at 1360m/s. The armor rep is more about repairing after combat, given I won’t have support with me. This fitting needs more work and more EHP. I like the concept that it has a sig radius as low as an interceptor with a MWD operating, but I am not sure how that works out in reality.

Both fittings has a probe strength of 94.8.

Once I settle on a fit, I’ll go look at what reasonably priced faction modules I can use to boost things up a bit, and to give the solo rifter pilot who kills me some worthwhile loot.

In other news, the Crucible 1.1 patch notes are now available here:

http://www.eveonline.com/updates/patchnotes.asp?newpatchlogID=3382

Stumbling at the first step of a Wormhole suicide trip, plus Crucible 1.1

Given my main character hasn’t been doing much for a while, I figured I would re-fit one of my recon’s for exploration, find a wormhole, and dive in on a suicide mission to see how many of them I could travel through.

I spent a good hour or more looking at the options before settling on a shield tanked Rapier. The Probe Launcher wasn’t too hard to fit, it aligns reasonably, and I figured it had the DPS to take down easy targets.

[Rapier, Suicide WH Explorer]
Damage Control II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Co-Processor II

Y-T8 Overcharged Hydrocarbon Microwarpdrive
Sensor Booster II, Scan Resolution
Stasis Webifier II
Warp Disruptor II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II

425mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M
425mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M
Expanded Probe Launcher I, Sisters Combat Scanner Probe I
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II

Medium Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I
Medium Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I

Warrior II x8

I was able to set this up with my spares in 0.0 – except for the Probe strength rigs. I haven’t done much scanning for a while – so I figured this would also give me a refresher. I checked my clone, undocked, drop probes, warp to a safe and start scanning. And scanned. And scanned some more. I just couldn’t get the only signature in system. Part of the problem was obviously my rusty skills – but looking in EFT, the strength of the probes in the Rapier was 61.6, while in the bonused Helios I use in 0.0, they are 104.3.

So do I abandon the idea; source some Gravity Capacitor Upgrades to bring the probe strength up to 74.5; Switch to a covert ops but give up the hunting aspect of the trip; or go that extra step and setup an exploration based Loki to suicide in?

The CSM minutes from their last meeting have been released:

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=3377

I have a half written post on these to finish off – but I find I keep getting discouraged reading through it. There is some good stuff there – but I just can’t shake the feeling that if the CSM had their way, I would not enjoy playing EVE as much.

There was a Dev blog discussing an upcoming focus on the EVE Client and how it behaves. I support that approach. (Plus I would love to be able to run three clients on my PC again.)

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=3380

Crucible 1.1 is set to be released tomorrow. An overview of the features can be found here:

http://www.eveonline.com/en/crucible/features/

Some additional information on these features can be found in this Dev blog:

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=3381

There are some of these I am quite looking forward too – particularly condensing chat member lists.

Last of all there were some interesting stats on the game:

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=3288

There is quite the flood of interesting bits and pieces on his twitter feed:

http://twitter.com/CCP_Diagoras

Well worth keeping an eye on.

Updates expected in Tranquility by the end of January

After a quiet period over Christmas, CCP have released new dev blogs discussing some of the updates expected to be live in Tranquility towards the end of the month:

These include updates to the Neocom:

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=3362

 

And more of Team BFF’s excellent little tweaks and polish:

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=3365

 

I must admit the Neocom changes don’t look that interesting, although being able to customise what is shown will probably be worthwhile.  Team BFF though is giving us some great little game tweaks.  I will certainly make use of the filter box on the training queue.  Watch lists increased to 15, and now supporting drag and drop is nice.  The compact chat member list options are excellent – especially when displaying local in 0.0.

I have had a quiet few days as far as EVE is concerned, only logged in to change skills and have missed a cycle or two of PI and trading.  The consequence of having to go back to work, and suffering from more wife and child agro than normal.

The clean out sale has completed.  I sold the Mining Foreman Mindlink for 545M.  I checked the Jita price afterwards and found they were going for around 490M, so that was a reasonable price.  After the EOS sold the total proceeds were just over 1.6B ISK.  Funny how much expensive junk you accumulate over time.

My Main is a couple days off Fighters IV.  His Capital related skill queue is down to a manageable 138 days now.  Alt 1 has less than a day to get Heavy Assault Missiles V.  He has about 36 days to cover off the remainder of the skills required to fully T2 fit the medium gun/turret options used by Minmatar.  Alt 2 has picked up Engineering V, and is working on Mechanics V now – prerequisite skills for what she needs for invention.

I will have to try and spend a bit of time in EVE later today.

Back in action, for a few minutes at a time

The Physio is allowing me to spend short periods of time in front of the computer again.  The CT scan has shown a slipped disc and an adjacent disc bulge.  Thankfully they are on the small side, so I just need Physio and rest.

Because of that, my EVE play has been rather barren for the last 6 days.  I moved my main and Alt1 out of 0.0 and into their +5 clones, figuring I wouldn’t be undocking for a little while.  I then added some longish skills to the training queue.  I have missed the last three 48 hour PI cycles, didn’t do my weekly market update, and only glanced at EVE blogs and forums.  I might try to get some of that done later today or tomorrow.

EVE has had several patches deployed for Crucible, including one scheduled for tonight.

Crucible 1.0.0 has had 3 client updates

http://www.eveonline.com/updates/patchnotes.asp?newpatchlogID=3219

1.0.1 – was a substantial list of fixes, and included 2 client updates.

http://www.eveonline.com/updates/patchnotes.asp?newpatchlogID=3264

1.0.2 – to be deployed tonight, also has a substantial list of fixes

http://www.eveonline.com/updates/patchnotes.asp?newpatchlogID=3270

 

The DEV blogs continue.

Here is an update on the search box options, and the related information in the Wiki.  Useful information to keep handy.

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=3220

http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Assets

 

They also released stats on ships that are blown up in game and where:

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=3235

And some stats related to some of the new items in cruicible, such as the Teir 3 Battlecruisers, Player Owned Customs Offices, and the increased activity in game:

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=3266

 

The second of the free gifts has been released, and CCP is also now allowing you to select your own Christmas Gift from a list of options.

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=3269

Jester does a reasonable job again of giving an overview of what is available:

http://jestertrek.blogspot.com/2011/12/whats-it-worth-to-you.html

The primary thought amongst bloggers seems to be that the remap is the best option.  (Although as I write this, it has been temporarily removed.)  I actually have spare remaps on my accounts, so didn’t bother with that option.  After humming and haring for a while, I ended up selecting a set of Fuel Block BPO’s, and two lots of the Medium Navy Missiles.  (Figuring out of all the options, those were the ones I would most likely use all the ammunition types from.)

PI.13

Funny what little details you spot in EVE.  Today was the first time in Planet View that I noticed the Custom Office’s orbit is shown.

I’ve finished my PI changes which were triggered by the Tax increases.

. The extraction Cycle has been reduced from 7 to 2 days for all planets

. I’ve gone from 10 planets exporting goods each cycle down to 6, 3 only exported as production requires their input, and 1 now spare

. I was importing goods onto 4 planets.  Now it is only 2

. I’ve dropped a couple items that I was producing, and increased the extraction head units for the remaining ones

. Going forward I will be reducing and better balancing the ingredient stockpiles I operate with

Be interesting to see where the PI prices end up.  There has been some obvious market manipulation and speculation, which has seen price increases of between 10 and 30% of the various items I keep an eye on.  From the first big PI effort since Crucible, I spent 30M in Taxes, Planet changes and PI Market buys, sold 46M, and have another 60M for sale on the market.

EVE seems a bit busier since the expansion.  Yesterday there were 40,000+ people online, which was higher than I have seen for a while. Today when I logged in there were 47,000+.  That must give CCP a little hope.

In all my running around today, some of the little Crucible changes have really shone through.  Clicking Jump on a distance gate, and automatically warping to it first is excellent, and a real time saver.  (Plus I assume it will stop the horrible issue of having your freighter hit a gate and bounce 100km off while you are not watching.)  I can however see me clicking on it by mistake in 0.0, and losing ships.

Being able to auto pilot to a Station is also excellent.  A nice touch is that just like the icon of the next gate being highlighted in yellow, so is the station icon.  Unlike gates, where you warp in at 15km, and travel to 2.5km from it before jumping, with a station you seem to warp to 12.5km, and dock once you hit 0km.  I really do like that one.

The new PI transfer window is better, and saves on the number of clicks you need to do.  It is still not entirely intuitive though.

PI.12

After spending most of the year slowly introducing myself to PI, tweaking and experimenting (at a somewhat glacial pace I will admit), I come to what will be my last of the “old” Saturday morning PI runs.

The tax changes mean your PI decisions have consequences.  Make a mistake and you lose ISK on it.  Further – it has the chance of throwing the entire PI market on its head, so it might take a while before things settle on new price benchmarks.  As such, I need to change how I am doing things.

. I had planned to get Command Center Upgrades and Interplanetary Consolidation from rank IV to V on my two PI alts.  Alt 2 will finish Command Center Upgrades V in 3 days.  Once that is completed I will hold off on doing the remaining skills, until I understand the new reward levels from PI.

. I was using spare capacity in my network to stockpile different sorts of PI goods, some with long term goals, some speculative.  I will cut those out unless I have a specific and active goal.

. Of the PI goods I was using, due to unbalanced supply, some have slowly been stockpiling.  I will cut that production back.

. I will change my PI cycle from 7 days to 2 days.  I may not do the collections more frequently, but that better suits a more streamlined production of extracting only what I need.

. I am moving PI goods too much through a chain of planets and production facilities.  I will have to change this, and set up one or two primary factory planets.

. The PI goods I do put up on the market I will price towards making the same profit levels as I was getting before the tax increases.  If they don’t sell, that will in effect be stockpiling them for a while.

There is a supercilious glee from some quarters about the PI changes – happy that empire PI is being nerfed, happy at the thought Carebears are complaining, and somewhat over optimistic that this will mean more haulers for them to target outside of empire.  At the same time there are people on the other side complaining bitterly, saying that this will be the death of PI, the skies will fall in, and the game will end.  Yes – it is a nasty and unexpected ISK hit, and suddenly PI requires yet another set of EVE spreadsheets.  It is however EVE – adjust, see if the new price points still make it worthwhile for you individually, and change your approach accordingly.

There are a couple things about these changes which annoy me.  The first is that PI had a very low entry for new players.  Now there is a moderate hurdle they have to jump – first they could lose a lot of ISK if they don’t select PI items that sell well, and second, they now need to have enough collateral to pay for the taxes before they manage to get their first P4+ items to the market.

Second –Basically PI has become much riskier outside of Empire.  POCO’s are not really a solo option (unless you like to gamble).  They are probably best suited to 0.0 Alliances with established territories and region wide Intel channels, and possibly wormholes.  If people wanted more targets in low and null sec, this might well have the opposite effect.

Crucible thoughts 02 – Bend over PI; I have a little surprise for you

I’ve had a substantial increase in visitors the last couple of days – the vast majority of them seemed to be searching on PI taxes.  That was odd, so I went off to visit my normal EVE blogs, and soon found the busy Ripard Teg had the explanation:

http://jestertrek.blogspot.com/2011/12/doubled.html

CCP confirmed it:

http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=4813

So – the taxes had more of an impact than expected.  How bad could it be?  So I checked the impact out against 1 of my 2 PI alts.  Before Crucible, the weekly cycle was roughly:

Planet 1 – Export P2 – 4K
Planet 2 – Export P2 – 6K
Planet 3 – Import P2 – 3K, Export P3 – 2K
Planet 4 – Import P2 – 3K, Export P3 – 2K
Planet 5 – Import P3 – 5K, Export P4 – 75K

100,000 ISK in Taxes, making around 18M Profit for an hours effort.

After Crucibles 5 to 10% tax increase:

Planet 1 – Export P2 – 400K
Planet 2 – Export P2 – 300K
Planet 3 – Import P2 – 500K, Export P3 1,000K
Planet 4 – Import P2 – 500K, Export P3 1,000K
Planet 5 – Import P3 – 500K, Export P4 2,200K

6,400,000 ISK in Taxes, making 11.6M Profit (at current prices) for an hours effort.

WTF!?  A cost factor increase of 64 times!?  To maintain the same profits I will have to increase my prices by 30%.  Given the lack of product on the market right now – it wouldn’t surprise me if I got it.  I wonder how smart and dynamic CCP’s calculations are for their taxes?  Are we going to end up chasing our tails – with a 30% increase in prices, resulting in a 30% increase in the amount of tax taken, which will mean we have to increases our prices again.  It will balance out in the end, but you get the idea.

Oh well, it makes the tax return on your own custom office much more plausible now.  Meanwhile I notice in Alliance the chat is about how many Dreads you need to remove a Custom’s Office in one siege cycle, as they experiment while removing (mindlessly?) those in a NPC 0.0 system. It is EVE – you have to adjust. I am just glad I don’t have a POS right now.

Edit -

I just eyeballed the costs in my initial post.  The EVE Wiki outlines what the tax costs are now based on:

http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/CustomsOffice

“. Tax % is taken off the material’s taxable value. ◦ This value is set by CCP and is based off the market values in November 2011

. Import Tax is always half of export tax

. The taxable value are the same for all items in the same tier:

- Advanced Commodities: 1,350,000.00 ISK
– Specialized Commodities: 70,000.00 ISK
– Refined Commodities: 9,000.00 ISK
– Basic commodities: 500.00 ISK
– Planet Resources: 5,00 ISK“

A fair bit of rage and cheering on the EVE forums.  Rage from people who think such a huge increase in tax is unjust, and will cause big impacts on the markets.  Cheering from people who think PI is too easy to earn ISK from, and others who think people will now flood low sec and null sec with their POCO’s.

Crucible thoughts 01

There might end up being 101 of these sorts of posts…

My wife has no interest in computer games, but even she was impressed with how good the Nebulas look.  I’ve been playing EVE for over 5 years now, and I don’t think any single graphic update has had such an impact on the atmosphere in game.

To add to that – these are not just static backgrounds, but actual positional pointers in the sky that mark your location.  The reality of that hit home when I first undocked from an empire station, panned the camera across the sky, and noticed a faraway Nebula which was familiar.  It normally engulfs my 0.0 home – and here I can see it, in the far off distance, from empire.  I’ve never had that feel of proximity in the game before.

It is strange – Incarna was meant to help with people’s immersion in the game, but personally, the Nebula and how they have been implemented has been far more effective in doing that.

The brighter star fields also works well, although the sunlight could be toned down a touch.

I’m a bit on the fence with regards the v3 set for the Caldari and Gallente ships.  It tends to make them look less glossy and a little more flat while docked.  In space it depends on the ambient light.  The Nighthawk seems to look a little better, but the Megathron not so much.  I expect before long I won’t remember the differences though.

I hadn’t bothered to look at the Raven model update closely, but from the complaints I wasn’t expecting much.  Turns out I think it is an improvement – although it didn’t make me want to go out and buy one, like the Scorpion hull update did.  (I must undock in that Rattlesnake again.)

I’m still on the fence with regards the new font.  I run my main EVE client in a 1920×1080 window.  The font seems to shrink that screen real-estate, making it feel more cluttered.  It is easier to read (for the most part) – I just wish they included a condensed version of it.

I’ve read a few blog comments about how this expansion is actually just one huge patch.  I know it sounds lame to admit it, but the visual updates alone seem to give Crucible its own life.  Undock in Crucible for the first time, and you know are not in Incarna anymore.

Do you wish to launch the repair tool

Home and work have smashed me a bit today, so I haven’t been able to explore Crucible.  I did download the 1.2GB patch and hit a snag.

 

That gave me a bit of a heart attack.  The repair tool had to do very little and the client was up and running quickly. However…

… it had deleted the 1.2GB patch download, and I had 3 more clients to update!  So I downloaded it again, but this time before the patching of the second client completed, I copied the download out of its directory so I can use it again.  (Noticed others complaining of the same issue on some of the EVE forums.)

I then logged my main in…

 

… and realised I should probably not have left myself sitting in a ship that was being hit by the nerf bat.

Thankfully I loaded fine, but found my faction fit Dramiel had 2 offline guns and that I needed to rethink the fit.  I had assumed that would be the case, but quietly hoped that maybe I wouldn’t need to given the amount of faction stuff on it.  Nevermind.

Last of all I redeemed my 3 CA-1 implants, one for each of my accounts.  As I grabbed the last one, I had a fleeting glance at the expiry date and saw the 2nd of December.  Was that 2011, or 2012?  If it is only available for 3 days, you will want to grab it quickly.  Initial prices on contracts when I looked were buy orders of over 45M, and sell orders of around 80M.  This is a sought after freebee.

Today is the day

The Crucible update is scheduled today between 08:00 and 14:00 UTC.  Given the player revolt against Incarna, it is important that this goes smoothly.  Good luck CCP.

The deployment announcement is here:

http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=4804

The ever important patch notes (which I haven’t gone through closely yet) are here:

http://www.eveonline.com/updates/patchnotes.asp?newpatchlogID=3219

And the dumbed down feature list here:

http://www.eveonline.com/en/crucible/features/

In amongst the information is a warning that your overview and window placement will all be reset.  Not uncommon – and mildly annoying, but at least we know in advance.

 

In the week that was:

A summary of the Blog Banter 30 has been posted by Seismic Stan.  He’s done well:

http://freebooted.blogspot.com/2011/11/blog-banter-30-review-crucible-10-patch.html

 

CCP’s latest video was released.  It didn’t really cover anything new – localization, moving bookmark folders to the server (hoorah), etc – but it was worth a watch just to try and work out the source of the accent to CCP Punkturis’ English.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZZOu_t5Azw

 

CCP ran a live player event where a fleet of them came out in pimped ships and took on any players they came across.

http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=4799

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=401722

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=3210

An interesting idea, they dropped impressive loot, and it sounds like a great deal of fun was had until the null sec titan fleets cyno’d in.

 

A Dev Blog was released on the Corporation Bookmarks.  I am very pleased with this change – our Corp, like many, share bookmarks in the hangers, and they are forever being lost or not copied back.

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=3113

 

A Dev Blog was released just finalizing the Custom Office changes.

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=3143

 

There was a big Dev Blog on localization (allowing the easier handling of different languages – a good thing to be honest as it increases the potential audience to the game).

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=3214

 

A Dev Blog on Engine Trails – including some geometric calculations which I assume were added to hint at how they are actually more complicated to do than you might think.

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=3217

 

And finally (unless I missed some) a little more information on the free implant coming player’s way:

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=3221

I don’t actually fully understand what the 50% set bonus means – I assume the power grid and capacitor bonus increases to 2.25% when paired with the other in its set.  I wonder if that includes the +3 Perception – having it go up to +4.5?  I assume not, but would be interesting to find out.

 

I expect there will be a hive of activity once the game servers come back up again.  I’m looking forward to it all.