A quick question for those who read this blog via RSS feed..

As per the subject line, a quick question for those who read this blog via RSS feed…

I follow 50+ odd blogs, mostly about EVE.  Those on WordPress I get e-mails for when they post something new, and for the rest I keep track of new posts via RSSOwl.

I also follow my own blog on RSSOwl – as a form of backup.  It is the only WordPress blog I follow that way.

I’ve noticed once a week or more that RSSOwl will think all my posts are new and download the last 10 of them again.  This happens outside of when I actually write new posts.  Sometimes it might happen a couple of times in a day. Does anyone else have this issue?  Is it something specific with my Blog, or a general thing with WordPress RSS?

 

** Edit – Thanks for the feedback.  After some additional Google searches it doesn’t look like it is anything I am able to change or fix.  It seems to be the way WP does it RSS, conflicting with the way some readers work.  Bugs me a bit though – don’t like the unprofessional image it portrays.

 

No EVE time for me

Work has been hellishly busy. I’d like to say this is because of new customers or new projects, but instead it has been fighting fires and fixing mistakes caused by the offshore resources management have decided to use.

I’m barely managing one half reasonable play session a week at the moment.

Last weekend my Low-Sec scout found a useful wormhole to Hi-Sec, so I managed to move in some supplies, a Salvaging Destroyer and Venture between constant interruptions from work and family. This rather piddling result took some 10 hours.

This weekend I’ve been testing a few fits and doing some PVE. I’ve been playing around with a lot of Hawk fits for a while now – and while I have decided on a PVP fit I will leave in Low-Sec, I decided to give up on PVE fits. It is just too slow when compared to the Retribution when working through sites. I also decided on what I would do with the extra high slot on my Viators – which are getting Core Probe Launchers.

I probably shouldn’t be admitting it – but in the earlier years of my EVE playing I would be feeling rather grumpy and frustrated by now at my limited game time. I’d be throwing out “nose off to spite face” comments such as it is pointless to play the game in such circumstances. Now I accept it is not EVE’s fault, and try to appreciate whatever free time I do manage to wrestle from my busy life, and don’t dwell on it. It helps that I don’t have to feel guilt about letting down a Corp.

I was bemused by the Kronos 1.4 patch. The notes on the update were sparse, yet it required a 229MB download.

I was also bemused to see my name mentioned in Amarr local recently. Apparently I was paid out several 100 million ISK by one of the duplication scammers. I had the Window’s helpdesk call me for the 350th time recently, and I asked the person why they were using the same old scam, and couldn’t they come up with something more original each time they called. They just hung up. I wonder the same thing about EVE scams. In the grand scheme of things there isn’t as much variety as there should be.

BB57 – The Mountain or a Molehill

BB 57 – I am going to paraphrase the topic of the latest blog banter.  What can be done to help people who don’t know how to fit their ships, and do veteran players have a responsibility to help them?

There’s a scene in the fourth series of Game of Thrones where Cersei Lannister approaches Gregor Clegane (otherwise known as The Mountain) while he is having some outdoor sparing practice. In this series the character is played by the huge Icelandic strongman Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson. The practice involves a guard thrusting a weapon into the hand of a slave and pushing them towards obvious and inevitable death. None put up a fight of note and The Mountain duly kills them.

When I watched the scene I immediately thought of EVE Online, and the tendency for people to post links to Killmails of poorly fitted ships. They are unremarkable kills that required little skill, little risk, and have a hapless victim.  Yet here are the posts – look, look, look at me – here’s an easy kill of someone who hasn’t played the game for long – let me crow and strut and announce to all and sundry my superiority.

The problem is not the poor fit – that is something most people will learn from one way or the other. The problem is the reaction to it.

So what can veteran players do? Well, it seems simple. They can keep their killmail links to themselves. Just send an EVEMail to the pilot saying you noticed their fit was less than optimum, and that if they would like some pointers to some better fits, just ask.

Other posts can be found here

The one who makes jokes

I’m not managing to do much in EVE between Mondays and Fridays at the moment. Busyness is conspiring against all my forms of relaxation.

I noticed this video on a friend’s Facebook feed the other day. It is a couple months old, but still quite interesting.

http://mashable.com/2014/04/28/oculus-rift-flying-drone/

Serpentine Logic linked to some very interesting graphs about speed fitting options for freighters.

http://serpentinelogic.wordpress.com/2014/06/04/fitting-freighters-for-speed-a-comparison/

The Price gouging is still high on the warp speed mods, but I found fitting 3 Inertia Stabilizers makes a noticeable difference in the time it takes to get off gates in a Freighter.

One last idle thought – am I the only one who is reading a new blogger who writes very much like Jester? (To the point I was compelled to compare their posts side by side..)

All quiet on the CCP Front

CCP seems to have been uncharacteristically quiet on the Dev Blog and Forum front since Kronos was released. CCP karkur alluded to the distraction around the retrenchments having an impact on scheduled tasks which is not surprising. A consequence of this lull seemed to be an increase in the philosophical bent in the topics of some EVE bloggers.

I wasn’t able to play since last weekend, and this weekend’s free time was limited. I really should have done something concrete in game, but I resorted to hauling and tinkering with fits again. I was in need of that intangible but worthwhile mindless distraction.

I completed my move from my old home into my new one, shifting some 60B ISK in assets without incident. (I did have a moment where a black skulled flashy pilot turned up in a destroyer on a gate as I jumped into a system. While he paid me no attention, it was a reminder of the underlying risk I was taking in moving everything.)

I never auto pilot in a blockade runner, just in case someone takes a gamble on me carrying something of worth in my cargo hold. If someone noticed my frequent travels and ganked me going in the right direction this weekend, they’d have had a chance at a 2 to 3B ISK drop.

My Alliance only has one active blue standing at the moment – to a Corp in my old home. We have mutual 0% tax on our POCO, a suggestion we would be willing to help each other defend them, and an open offer to share Orca boosts. We don’t chat often, but we certainly see each other daily. (Just between you and me, the fact they regularly strip the belts clear was one of the reasons I moved!) Their CEO remarked that they would be sad to see me around less. A reminder that even when you play solo, you can be a familiar part of other people’s game.

I am pleased with the new home system though. Being closer to Amarr and Jita makes it much more viable just to grab something off the market to either try building something new or trying out a new fit. It is also quieter, so will be easier to do some mining when I feel inclined.

I also spent some time working out the cost to attend EveDownUnder 2014 in Sydney this November. While I like the idea of going, it would really put me out of my comfort zone. It is the sort of thing I could easily end up regretting the effort and expense of doing. I’m not suggesting the event won’t be worthwhile – I just don’t know if I could push myself out of my comfort zone enough to make the most of it. (As I remark occasionally, I’m a Hermit for a reason.)

I mentioned it to my wife and she was really keen for me to attend. Overly keen actually. While she is prone to being genuinely nice at times, my suspicions were confirmed the following day when she dropped a comment on how she’d be planning for some trip away for herself in return. That ups the ante significantly, as not only do I have to worry about enjoying it, I then also have to worry about how much it will cost me afterwards. I’m not sure how it is for other husbands, but in these sorts of deals I usually seem to end up being well behind. (I remember one such deal where I got something so small and insignificant I couldn’t tell you what it was – and my wife got a trip to Japan for a week to visit a friend.)  I think I’ve talked myself out of it.

Everybody Shuffle it

I was home a day earlier than expected on the weekend due to heavy rain closing roads in an area I had planned to visit. Since my wife had assumed I wouldn’t be around she had already organised a social outing with the kids that I wasn’t expected to attend. I found myself home alone with no plans. How fortuitous!

I spent a lot of time playing EVE. I don’t have anything in particular of note to write about – I just wanted something mind-numbing and relaxing to do, so continued the process of moving my various Alts into the new home base. Shuffling so many characters, clones and various assets about gets complicated – trying to ensure I was storing the right ships with the right clones in the right stations.

Again I was thinking there is no way I could sell this process to another gamer as fun – but I found it an agreeable distraction.

In the grand scheme of things Kronos seems to have gone in rather smoothly. Post update patching has been minimal and generally the loudest complaints have been about balance changes. They were not however really pushing boundaries with what they were doing. The Crius update might be different.

By now I think a lot of people will have noticed this little tidbit of information:

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=4616825#post4616825

Maybe in the next few months we will see something in place for the removal of offline control towers. That could be very interesting, and frankly with the approaching ability to anchor POS anywhere without standings, it will be needed.

Throw enough mud and you get mud everywhere

There are a couple of articles doing the rounds about CCP and more retrenchments. If you are already in a poor head space about EVE and CCP and don’t want to feel any worse, you should probably ignore them.

The first has quotes from an unnamed source/s, an annoyed past employee, and reads a little like they have an agenda as opposed to reporting just the facts.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/05/world-of-darkness-the-inside-story-mmo-ccp-white-wolf

The second is something we should see an official announcement about, but the reporter heard about it early from an inside leak.

http://www.polygon.com/2014/6/5/5782190/ccp-iceland-layoffs-eve-online

In summary, the (apparent) final phase of the already announced restructuring and retrenchments at CCP are occurring now, and the management of the development of the World of Darkness MMO lacked cohesive direction.

 

Reading the articles did make me stop for a moment and think about where EVE is at.

. There is steady and constant improvement to the game

. There are fixes to the current game to look forward to

. There are new features and content to look forward to

. The development of EVE doesn’t seem to be particularly dysfunctional

At the risk of sounding like a fanboy, I’m not particularly worried at the moment about the game EVE.

 

It does however put me in the sphere of a pet topic of mine. For the last 20 years I’ve been working for Consulting Companies – providing mostly remote support for the IT infrastructure (databases and ERP software) of clients. I have had extended dealings with more than 80 organisations – from Local Governments to the smallest Mining company to the largest Retail conglomerates in my country. (By extended I mean frequent contact for anywhere between 6 months and a decade). Out of all those organisations, and the companies I have worked for, there have only been 3 or 4 I have thought were actually managed and run well. Many more of the companies were successful – but I would not have attributed senior management as the key reason for that.

I am not actually suggesting I could do any better – but there seems in my mind something wrong with the corporate culture and effectiveness at the most senior levels.

That does not excuse CCP for its habit of stumbling and making mistakes – or the fact that you don’t really seem to hear about the senior managers being highlighted as failing and suffering any appropriate consequence. In my mind however it isn’t really just a problem with CCP, or the Game industry in general. It is probably much wider than that.

You should have a couple quiet days from me. On the road again.

Welcome, new sites and ISK

Sometimes a short EVE session is all you can manage. When this happens I put aside my ship spinning and force myself to undock in an Exploration ship.

Yesterday I scanned down a Contested Guristas Covert Research Facility, and while in warp realised there were also two Lesser Sansha Covert Research Facilities in my new home system.

That’s an unexpected cluster, and I took it to be a nice welcome.

 

The contested Guristas site is a little odd – just a floating container you hack. The Sansha sites dropped nothing much of value. I am going to have to think about fitting a MWD to my Stratios so that I can more reliably get to a second can before the rats arrive and everything blows up.

I then ran a couple of anomalies to test the drone changes to the Gila. Not sure I like that hull as much anymore. I then went back and hoovered up the wrecks in a Noctis.

Finally, noticing a new signature in system I scanned down a wormhole. It was to unknown space so I ignored it. I did however notice a steady stream of pilots passing through it, probably on their way to Amarr which was conveniently nearby.

I was undocked for less than 30 minutes and made around 5M ISK, but managed to look at one of my ship fittings impacted by Kronos and happen upon one of the new sites.

If you looked at that in a min/max sort of way the session would have to be considered an abject failure. I should have been spending my time inventing Prospects or hunting Low Sec for the new Mordu’s Legion BPCs. I could have been earning much more ISK.

Instead I was just enjoying space, lining up the new solar flares against the updated rich golden shine of my home station and smiling at the effect. EVE once had a manic hectic pace for me. Now is provides moments of calm and peace. Until the kids start screaming about how one hit the other, or the more recent delightful behaviour of who was spitting on who.

I must be getting old.

And that pointlessly small 5M ISK? I throw it into my “To Sell” container, and without much thought or effort, and the occasional lucky drop, it slowly turns into 100s of millions.

…

I added a new site to the blogroll – Killmail Archivist:

http://namamai.wordpress.com/

Well worth a read. Jester like in many ways with a deep understanding of game mechanics and history, and the ability to clearly and interestingly explain the topics.  I hope they hang around.

Smoothly does it

I worked till 10:30pm yesterday, kicked off patching of my EVE client while I had a shower, then sat down and looked around New Eden until 12:30am.

The Kronos update seemed to go in smoothly. The issue thread is very quiet, especially if you remove those complaining about balance changes that were widely advertised and discussed for months. What remains were mostly issues specific to the individual. Mining barges will need a fix in the next day or two to reduce their capacitor use for warping, and I’m still not 100% sure if I gained or lost SP with the removal of Combat Drone Operation V.

I logged in both my characters to look at the new warp in and out effects. I need to try that again with bigger ships, as the frigate sized ones were hard to spot. The new sun flares though are nice, and the different station colors add more to the game than I would have expected. It makes things a little less vanilla.

I played around with some sound sliders and muting on secondary sessions. It comes under a nice to have option.

I looked at my low slots on the Obelisk. Yep – they were there.

I looked at my Gila, which manages to carry forward the Moa DNA and turn it into a much nicer looking ship.

I purchased and started training Expedition Frigate skill on my main and main alt.

I purchased Transverse Bulkhead rig BPOs.

I appreciated seeing the Corp bookmark limit increased from 250 to 500. I was almost running out – and I’m the only actual person in my corp.

The NEX store was unavailable – but I understand there were load balancing issues. I looked through it today, but there wasn’t anything inspiring.

I’ll have to wait for the prices to come down before looking at any of the new ship hulls.

So welcome Kronos – I hope your reputation isn’t sullied too hard by ship balance changes.

Pre-Kronos and appearing out of thin air

Obviously I am not going to do any Clone jumping or anything major in the game for a day or four. Kronos is being implemented tonight my time, so I will park myself in my main training clone.

This little CCP features page does a good job of summarising Kronos

http://community.eveonline.com/releases/kronos

Not sure about the large “Reactive my Account” buttons at the top and bottom of the page.

There’s plenty of content in Low Sec, but I’ll wait for the initial rush to calm down first before dabbling in it. The only thing I can see as being dangerous for the game client are the sound changes. As I remarked, there are just a lot of changes that will see me having to revisit my ship fits. I’ll have to look at the forums later to check the state of the pyfa and EFT fitting tools.

I did have something odd happen during my move – and it is not the first time. I had some modules unexpectedly appear in my hanger after I had finished. I’ve had this before – it is like in the transfer of 1,000’s of items between containers, holds and hangers some things are missed, and later on some housekeeping process realises this and deposits them in your personal hanger.

Now – I am likely talking out of my backside and there is nothing like that in the game at all. But the item this time was very specific – the Prototype Iris Probe Launcher. I had 1 in my collections container and 2 in my spares container. These fit on the Zephyr frigate – of which I have three. jEVEAssets – not updated recently, also reports that I have three.

After my move I found 3 of these launchers suddenly in my personal hanger. Now I have 6 – one in my collection container, two in spares, and 3 in my hanger. As I said this is not the first time this seems to have happened, but it is the first time it was clearly so questionable. If I ended up with something out of nothing, what might I be missing that I did not realise?

Where’s my Tinfoil hat…

** Edit – changed my Tinfoil hat for a Dunce hat.  As explained in a helpful comment any time you assemble a zephyr it magically creates a Prototype iris probe launcher.  Embarrassing…

 

Burning holes in the pocket

One of the fiddly bits of moving home is also shuffling the jump clones. (Sorry, I think the better management of Jump Clones has become another harp topic – after “Solo play is fine” and “I’m really busy in RL”.) My Main and Main Alt each had three clones there –

. +5 Training Clone with expensive mining and boost implants
. +4/+5 Mission Clone with expensive implants
. +3 PVP Clone with cheap implants – just in case I needed to defend my POCO

Admittedly I haven’t run a Mission in years, and no one has looked sideways at the POCO, but I like to have options even if they never get used.

So I jumped each character to their Mission Clone. I move my main’s Tengu, Noctis and Hauling Orca to a station near my new home and parked them for the 19 hours I have to wait before I can move to the next Clone.

I then swapped to my Main Alt. He only has the one Mission hull – a very tanky boosting claymore. I then (entirely unnecessarily) blinged out his implants for the amusement value.

+5’s on Intelligence, Perception, Willpower and Memory
Low-grade Crystal Epsilon (5% Shield Boost bonus)
NN-605 (5% Velocity)
AM-703 (+3% HAM Damage)
Zor’s Custom Navigation Hyper-link (+5% to AB/MWD)
Republic Fleet Warfare Mindlink (already had this one)

I have the Low-grade Crystal Epsilon implant on several of my clones now. Even by itself it makes a worthwhile difference, and it only impacts the Charisma attribute. I got that tip from Jester. (*Quivering lower lip*)

I parked his Claymore and freshly updated Clone in the same station as my Main’s mission boats, and now have to wait again.

Last of all – I purchased myself a Rorqual. No – not because I now have a ship skin for it (I think I like the original look better). I have been thinking about it for quite some time. I simply wanted to see how the Clone Vat Bay and Industrial Core’s work for myself, particularly with the planned industry changes. I’ll have to plant a POS temporarily in Low Sec to try some of this out. It seems an impractical thing for a solo player, which makes it a perfect thing to blog about. Expect to see plenty of posts – or maybe a killboard link and a sad face.

(* While the Rorqual was funded by myself, this is probably the first impact from AD’s Legacy.  It made it easier to justify the cost of the experiment.)

Oh my back

I’ve moved my personal and corporation assets into the new home. It took much of the weekend. I still have to move various jump clones and the ships associated with them, my Industry Alts, and AD’s legacy.

From a game perspective you can’t really sell this process as fun, but I find it really intriguing and rather satisfying. The research, planning, effort and the reality of successfully moving so much of your personal wealth through space to a more beneficial home is gratifying.

While flying through space I took the time to read through the Kronos Patch notes. ( http://community.eveonline.com/news/patch-notes/patch-notes-for-kronos ). The main impact will be on having to revisit the fits on a sway of my ships. Some of these are sitting in or behind low sec, so it might take some planning to move modules around. I also suspect Low Sec will be crazy busy for at least the first few weeks.

The other thing I looked into was the Rorqual ORE Development Edition Skin. I saw mention that it was available to those who purchased the EVE Collector’s edition, although I hadn’t seen an email about it so wondered if it was only for new buyers. I visited https://secure.eveonline.com/Vouchers , logged in with the account I redeemed my EVE Collector’s Edition Mystery Code with, and found one there waiting for me.

Some random person dropping in on my warp tunnel as I haul

Jester’s Tank

Ripard Teg has announced he is closing down Jester’s Trek.

http://jestertrek.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/no-tank-lasts-forever.html

It seemed so abrupt that I had to triple check it wasn’t April 1st, and even now I am still not sure I believe it.

Despite the shock, I am also not surprised.  I thought many times over recent months that he appeared to have been worn down by the unfriendliness in the community.  (In fact I’d stopped reading the comments on his posts due to the obvious attacks and trolling.)

There has been a general negative vibe across the blog sphere for a while now – something I have remarked on but tried not to harp about. **  Jester’s Trek going isn’t evidence that the game is dying, but it is a big loss non-the less

If I was to recommend to players just one blog to follow about EVE, his was it.  I have always appreciated his efforts to promote EVE in an almost always calm and rational way – enough to quietly donate some of my ISK to his yearly drives.

A heartfelt thank you Ripard Teg, may you fly safe and find the happiness in game that you are currently missing.

 

(** Instead I’ve been concentrating a little harder on my little corner of the game, working to ensure I keep myself amused and happy.)

 

Closing a wormhole

I’ve spent quite some time recently reviewing Dotlan stats and flying around Empire systems, looking for a better place for my central base.

This is where I keep my training clone, spares, the collectibles CCP has given out over the years, and assets I am not using.

I don’t make such a decision lightly due to the volume and value of assets I have to move, but with having to adjust to the constant ship and module rebalancing, the approaching industry changes, and my loss of Price check alts when I dropped back to two accounts, I decided I needed to be closer to Amarr and Jita.

I decided on a new system the other day. It is quieter than the old, 5 jumps closer to Jita, and 4 jumps closer to Amarr.

The move will likely take weeks to complete, but I began the process with a trip in a Blockade runner moving some small but valuable cargo. After returning I noticed there were half a dozen signatures in the old home system, so I undocked a Stratios and scanned them down. In amongst them was a Wormhole to another Hi-Sec system. In an unusual stroke of luck it exited near to my new home, cutting the trip in half.

I made the most of the opportunity and moved a mass of stuff through the wormhole and stored it in a station on the other side. For I think the very first time, I caused a wormhole to collapse due to the mass moved through it. I was rather amused by this – although I didn’t much like finding myself dumped unexpectedly next to a gate with an Orca holding 4B ISK of cargo, instead of next to where the Wormhole used to be.

I spent the rest of my session ferrying these assets to the new home.

So that makes it three new bases of operation I’ve moved to over the last few months. One in a Hi-Sec island surrounded by Low Sec, another half a dozen jumps into Low Sec, and now this more centrally located yet still backwater central storage station. The common theme across each is that they are relatively sparsely populated. As I have said – this gives me ready access to resources suitable for my sporadic and short game sessions. It’s a logical decision for me.

I was thinking however as I made jump after jump in lumbering haulers, how much of my comfort about living in these locations actually comes from the reduced conflict and competition in them? I’m a bad MMO player. At least it sees me spending large periods of time undocked.

Anyway there is a sense of urgency in finalising these moves. I mentioned back in mid-April that my wife was leaving her toxic job. The expectation was for her to have 6 months off to be a Kinder Mum. I also mentioned at the time that the job market was very bleak. We have more than half a dozen people in our close circle of friends and family struggling to find white collar work at the moment. Given that, my wife put out feelers and applied for jobs to get a sense of the market and to ensure her resume and approach were appropriate.

She learnt some valuable lessons – such that there were more than 1,000 people applying for the jobs she was, and that unless she applied within an hour or two of the adverts being posted, her resume wouldn’t even be looked at. She must have adapted quickly as she has now been offered a job. It is with a good company, on a good project, pays reasonably well and will be great for her career. It is however full time and on the other side of the city – so instead of spending more time with her kids as she had hoped, she’ll be out of the house before they wake and home when they are tired and getting ready for bed. She knows she is very lucky to have this opportunity, but I understand why it is bitter sweet. She was really hoping to experience being a stay at home mum for a while.

What it means for me are some extra 15 to 20 hours of Dad duties a week on top of what I already do, and of course my own job. I will really need to have my shit sorted in EVE, to allow me to make the most of what might be very limited opportunities to play.