Sunday Morning

The family was at church so I spent some of my Sunday morning taking photos of me playing EVE instead of actually playing EVE.  (4K screens and a 3K laptop since I’ve last done one of these.)

Lately I’ve been undocking in my Exploration Confessor and as the mood has taken me, cleared the sites from my local system. I throw all the collected loot into a station container to sort later. Without a notable effort, just 10 minutes here, 30 minutes there, the loot value has passed 350M ISK.

It is a reminder that – although it can be frustrating not being able to tackle anything meaty in game, small efforts can add up over time.

Passion

*Non-EVE Post*

A mate of mine asked about my plans over the next couple of weeks. I said I needed to try and fit in another Duck Hunt before the season ends, and that I had only gotten out twice this year. He said that was a pity, as he knew it was one of my passions in life.

I’d forgotten that it was.

I loved getting out into the country side hunting and fishing, but now it is something I can barely squeeze into my schedule. I was passionate about the modified car scene for years, but now I don’t even glance sideways at the note of a nice exhaust. I used to be an avid reader, but I looked at a decade old photo of my study the other day and realised my pile of books to read haven’t shifted in all that time. Photography, Role Playing Games, I’ve even been contemplating giving up EVE as I just can’t find the time to do anything worthwhile in it.

How did that happen?

I continually put effort into the relationship I have with my wife. I’m a reasonable father to a pair of somewhat difficult kids. I do more than my fair share around the house. I have become a better person than what I was 20 years ago. Why has the price of that turned out to be the things I was passionate about?

I guess the obvious answer is to be passionate about my wife and kids. I love them dearly, but frankly if I said to my wife I was going to be more passionate in our relationship her response would be “no you’re not”. The kids would also be most put out if I asked them to put aside their screens to spend more quality time with me. I guess I could turn into one of those obsessive compulsive house cleaners. My wife might agree with that option.

Alternatively maybe I should just stop chatting to my mate.

Scooped

I played around with probing using the new map the other week.  It looks nice and works reasonably well in window mode on a large resolution screen.  It was good to be able to see what was going on around you in space while scanning.  I did not like how it kept zooming out whenever I double clicked on a item to centre the map.  I haven’t checked if that behaviour has changed since.

One of the hits was a combat site whose initial rooms were all empty.  I ran through them to check if there was some trigger object left in the final room which needed to be popped to allow it to de-spawn.  To my surprise I found the faction spawn which netted me 55M ISK.  I presume a newer player had run the site but not been able to clear the final room.

Another of the sites I found during my testing was a Wormhole to Thera, which is the first one I have come across.  Nice that they are labelled that way.  I didn’t visit however as I had expensive implants in.

Finally today I pulled down my POS, which was relatively painless.  I have a few BPO which still need research, but I can just use NPC stations for that.  I am going 3 or 4 days between logging in at the moment, and am unlikely to have noticed if anyone had declared war on the alliance.  It will be the primary issue with the new structures as well – I just can’t log in regularly at the moment.

If just to reinforce how little spare time I have for myself, I just noticed my backlog of EVE blog posts to read is just about to reach 1,700.  I am just going to have to delete everything older than 3 months.

My home is my Citadel

CCP has released a little more information on their new structure direction.

http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/shake-my-citadel/

The first ones they are working on are Citadel class structures, which are Market and Office Hubs. The choice sounds a little strange at first, but their focus is on asset safety, protection, and a feeling of home. They are fortified bunkers equipped with weapons.

Within the Citadel group, they will begin with Medium (Solo / small groups) and Large (Corporation / Small alliances) versions first. They suggest what sort of armaments will be able to be fitted, and remark on what will be useable in Hi-Sec, and what won’t.

It is certainly an interesting concept, and I am guardedly enthused.

Coats

I was disappointed to see how expensive the permanent ship skins are. While I loved the back story CCP used to introduce their latest iteration, in game they are completely cosmetic with no impact, and barely anyone will be zoomed in close enough to notice them. I would have hoped you could get 5 to 10 for a PLEX, not 1 or 2.

Regardless – I still support CCP’s endeavors, so when I purchased some PLEX to be donated to PLEX for Good, I grabbed some extra AUR as well.

In hindsight, while there might be 100 skins to choose from, they were mostly for hulls I never use (T1). I ended up with an Exequror and an Orca skin. That was my small effort to encourage CCP to continue with their skinning path.

I’ve upgraded to Dual 4K screens, and am now running my EVE clients in 3000×1800 windows. It looks glorious. It is a nice upgrade for EFT as well, being able to have so many ships open at the same time.

I was updating my overview to make use of the extra space and warped a Noctis into an Asteroid belt so that I could quickly lock up 10 targets, just to check their position on screen. I soon realised I was not alone – with two Drifter Battleships floating around near me. I hastily warped out – landing on the station to find a bunch of Circadian Seeker wrecks. Cool CPP, cool.

I grabbed one of the Entosis Link BPO’s, and am researching it at the moment. I hadn’t realised it in effect projects yourself into a structure. That kind of explains why you can’t just disrupt the connection.

A full sized screen capture of the new EVE client resolution I am now working with.  I’ve been staring more at my ships of late.