Dark undock

Just a short comment. I haven’t spent time out in that Null Sec pocket for a while now. I still have the issue where when I undock from a station I have an extended period of just seeing a black screen. I’ve tested with my alt – and he could see and lock my main when he undocks – before the main’s client displayed anything or allowed me to react. As you could imagine – not ideal. I’ve reset the cache and what not without effect. I’ll contemplate a fresh install of the client – but at the moment I am not inclined to.

Done at Silver

With a final push that saw me fly across Domain, Tash-Murkon, Khanid and Kor-Azor, I reached 25,050 Serpentis Event points and was awarded the Silver Ouroboros. It included a handful of skins and the 72-hour training time booster.

I had placed all the loot I picked up in a container, which the client suggests is worth around 600M ISK (including 274 Serpentis Modified Capital Microprocessors and 4 Low-Grade and 1 Medium-Grade Asklepian implants), plus the two time-limited skill boosters that I used for myself, plus several hundred ISK from bounties.

I guess that is somewhat anticlimactic, but overall the event did keep me half amused and I played more EVE than I have for a long time. It goes to show just how hungry I was for some accessible new content.

There’s some promise of what could happen in the future if CCP improves on this concept.

I’m not sure what to do next. I did enjoy the long distance roams, so I might do some exploration content where I don’t keep cycling back to my home. I’ll just need to sort out what ship hull to fly that will work against all the rat types, can carry a fair bit, and is quick.

Roaming

I’m down to 2,950 points required for the Silver reward of the Shadow of the Serpent Event. I’ll cover that comfortably within the 15 days left of the event. I will stop running the sites then as I won’t get anywhere close to reaching the Gold reward.

I have already complained about the grind of this event, and my opinion on that has not changed. There are also Challenges that I won’t do, such as run an Incursion or killing Drifters, which can end up filling 3 of the Challenge slots and only leave the option of running “Keep Up the Pressure” (those Serpentis Shipyard and Research Facility sites) over and over for days on end.

I have however really liked other aspects of the event. I liked the mining challenge when I (very rarely) got them. I liked some of the small challenges that required specific ship hulls, such as kill an Angel Cartel Pirate in a rookie ship, or Serpentis Guards in a frigate hull. They got you thinking and flying something you might not always fly. I also liked how I ended up flying vast distances, sometimes visiting upwards for 30, 40 or even 50 systems over a day as I crisscrossed regions visiting the quiet and dead end constellations to hunt down some of the less common sites.

It could certainly be improved. I think there needs to be more than 4 Challenge slots – at least 6, or otherwise the option to remove / clear / swap out one challenge per day. I think there needs to be quicker Challenges added – more of the do 1 of site X for 100 points, and less of the do 10 of site X for 1,000 points. I could only play once or twice a week, so more than once I would get 6 out of 10 of a certain site, but have the challenge de-spawn by the time I could log back in again, leaving no reward for the effort. It would be nice to have more options to log in, play for 20 minutes, and see some small movement in your Event Points.

Something else I have noticed – players have been rather courteous in sites. The only site that drops loot are the Shipyard and Research Facilities. I have operated on, and been afforded the same consideration, that the first pilot in the site gets the loot. Of the 10’s of these sites I have run contested, I have only had one single pilot rush the container after arriving late to the site. I guess CCP might not be pleased with that – but when you have to grind so many of these particular sites, if you have to deal with assholes constantly I would have given up on the event long ago.

Mining for an Event Challenge under the not so watchful eye of Serpentis and Angel Cartel Guards, who strangely leave you alone.

Bronze

It took three long EVE sessions across a week or so, but I managed to get to the first reward tier of the Shadow of the Serpent Event.

However – each of those sessions involved 45 to 65+ jumps back and forwards through Hi-Sec, including several mind numbing periods of visiting every belt in system after system. That was how much effort it took to find 5 Angel Research Bunkers, or 5 Serpentis Transportation Facilities, or 5 Serpentis Guards. In between those were the bread and butter Serpentis Shipyard and Research Facilities which I’ve run over and over and over again.

You collect the Copper Ouroboros through the redeeming system.

The interface for opening the container is somewhat new / odd / unnecessary?  (Particularly as the items are placed in your inventory once you open the container, so are revealed before you click on the reveal buttons.)

You get some clothes, a frigate skin, and a training speed boost which from memory reduced my training queue by something like 9 hours. In total the entire effort was worth 500M ISK.

I still have around 12,000 points for the Silver reward. I am not sure I am going to be able to make it that far. As I said in my previous posts, the event has certainly seen my activity in EVE increase dramatically, and I think the general idea and approach by CCP isn’t bad. However, I feel it is too much of a grind, and when it finishes (or I get sick of it), it won’t have a long term positive impact on my pattern of logging in. It might even leave me burnt out.

Camera Settings

Quicker than expected, you can now turn off those pesky dock and undock animations – along with other “dynamic” things.

As shown in today’s patch notes – https://community.eveonline.com/news/patch-notes/patch-notes-for-118.6-release

“Introducing a setting called ‘Dynamic Camera Movement’ in the settings menu that allows you to enable or disable automatic camera movement, this will be a single setting that enables/disables all of the following:

• Docking animation
• Undocking animation
• Ship change animation
• Animation when logging in to the game in space
• Dynamic FOV
• Dynamic center offset”

I happily turned it off.  While I still get an abnormally long blank screen when undocking (most, although not every time – seemingly introduced by the June release), the process is otherwise back to normal.

This change does seem to have introduced a bug.  The Scope Network Information box – up near the Route / System name details, closes a little while after you dock.

Am I just being a Bitter Vet and not giving these things a chance, or has CCP’s camera related updates involved misstep after misstep?  The game feels snappier without the dock transition animations.

 

 

Statistical Anomaly

I had a mining opportunity pop up in the Shadow of the Serpent Event – collect 500,000 units of Scordite for 1,000 points. There was no explanation on if it could be Standard, Condensed or Massive Scordite, or if it had to be delivered to someone. Given I had visited 20 systems to earn 500 points, I figured it was worth a try.

I undocked in a Skiff and warped to a belt. It was soon apparent that the counter towards 500,000 units increased when the Scordite – of any type, hit your Ore hold. Some quick calculations showed I could collect 22,313 units of Scordite each 145.8 seconds at a range of 15km. With perfect (but impossible to achieve) timing, it would take 53 minutes to harvest.

I undocked my Alt in his Orca to haul and provide boosts. It has been quite a while since I have done that. Doing so increased my Skiff’s yield to 25,663 units of Scordite each 98.6 seconds at a range of 25km. That brought the perfect mining time down to 32 minutes – plus I wouldn’t need to dock or move to collect it all.

I wrote down my yield at quarter, half and three-quarter cycles, and using the survey scanner ensured I minimised unproductive mining time. In less than 40 minutes I had completed the opportunity and was docked with a bit over 11M ISK of minerals.

While I did not pay attention to it this time – during my second mining opportunity for Veldspar I noticed the Ore in my Orca did not add up to the Ore in my counter. It was roughly between 5 and 10% less.  I did not lose any ore that I noticed – certainly not due to lack of space, or jettisoning some.  It was as if the calculations were wrong – maybe my short cycling of the mining laser confused things, or the counter gave you benefits for mining the better versions of the asteroids.  Or more likely – I am just not seeing things right again.

It had been a long while since I had focused on efficiency when mining and I didn’t mind the process for a change.

The next thing I wanted to look at was a revisit of the Keeping up the Pressure opportunity – where you have to clear five Serpentis Shipyard and Research Facilities. In a comment on a previous post a reader (Mark) had suggested these could be blitzed by just removing the central spawn and then looting the container. He also said it was worth running the site with others because anyone involved got attributed one count in their opportunity.

Once again I fleeted up with my Alt. Mark was right on both counts. The problem is being able to keep the middle spawn identified. The Serpentis Event Rats both damp you and close very quickly. Before you know it you are surrounded by a mess of mixed up ships. I first tried to just lock all the central targets using my Legion (can lock 5) and my Alt in his Claymore (can lock 7 from memory). The damps however would often drop these locks and before you have time to think all spawns were together. The Spawns would sometimes switch targets as a group so you could work out the middle spawn that way, but this was not a reliable option.

In the end it worked out better to solo this site to blitz it. I would lock the middle spawn, fire a shot, then slow boat straight away from the loot can. The middle spawn would then be drawn out and you could reliably kill them off. You could then burn back to the loot container, clear it, and the site would be done. While efficient, it does mean someone else could easily enough take the loot. I’ve collected 3 implants from the container so far – so it can on occasion have something worthwhile.

There is a level of exploration and enjoyment in finding efficient methods to clear these opportunities – and not just a little luck. (It took 20 systems to find my first Serpentis Guards, the second time I had the opportunity I found them in the second belt of my home system.)

I am now up to 7,300 points – including 2,000 for killing 200 Serpentis rats within 24 hours and another 1,000 points for 500,000 units of Veldspar which took less than 30 minutes. I have logged in more often and for longer in the last few days than I have in months – and CCP’s statistics will be showing them a success.

That is unfortunate however – as it is not entirely accurate. The scope of the grind is not as enjoyable as it could be, and I don’t feel like once the event (or my goals within it) have finished that I will maintain anything like this pattern of play.  I hope CCP don’t just focus on their stats – they seem to be on the right path, but they really need to finesse it to hit the mark properly.

On the other hand – I am now considering researching Drifters and Sleepers (do the Circadian’s count?) – aspects of the game I have basically ignored but come up as Opportunities. Are you able to solo a Drifter battleship in Hi-Sec without a guaranteed loss of your ship for example?  In that sense, the event might be more successful in changing the game longer term for me.

 

Snake Bite

The June Release Feedback thread holds some good news

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=6550145#post6550145

Some time soon CCP will allow us to disable the dock and undock animations. The odd thing – in a sort of CCP way of giving what we want but not entirely in the way we want it – is that the toggle to turn it on and off will include several other camera actions.  Unfortunate if you like those.  I do remember CCP suggesting that they were running out of space in the options windows, so that might be the reason.

The Shadow of the Serpent Event had me undocked today for the longest period in months, but it did not leave me particularly enamored. One of my opportunities was to clear 5 Serpentis Shipyard and Research Facilities. I am not sure if the NPC counts vary, but they contain around half a dozen Battlecruisers, a dozen Cruisers, and a dozen and a half Frigates.

I ran them the same way – slow boat towards and orbit the loot can, clearing the Frigates first, then Battle Cruisers, then Cruisers. The first 4 or 5 I ran didn’t bother my tank in the slightest, the last couple actually had me thinking about overheating my repairer or aligning to a celestial at midpoint. The game logs suggested a lot more ships were hitting me. I don’t know if this was just circumstance or something more – but I remember a similar thing happening last event.

The sites took a little while, but I found them within a few jumps of home.  That got me 5% of the way to the lowest level of reward, along with around 20M ISK worth of Bounties and Serpentis Modified Capital Microprocessor parts, plus a 100M ISK+ implant.

(Apparently you can blitz these by just taking out the middle spawn.  I didn’t do any research before running them the first time – makes the exploration more interesting.  I might try that next time.)

The next challenge was to kill half a dozen Serpentis Guards in a Frigate. Guards are normally found in groups of 5 – 1 Battleship, 2 Cruisers and 2 Frigates, in Belts or on Gates.  They didn’t do a great deal of damage, but the BS could tank well, so after a bit of trial and error I went for a high DPS Worm. I then had to search 20 systems, every asteriod belt and in and out gate, before I finally found 5 Serpentis Guards. I did see a dozen Angel guard spawns and a handful of wrecked Seprentis Guards. The worm setup worked well. This moved me along to 15% towards the lowest reward, but took a hell of a lot of effort. Total ISK reward was maybe 10M, including a couple Faction Spawn.

I don’t mind seeing different things in belts and what not, but some of these sites would give newer players a heart attack.  The rewards however require far too much of a grind.  I’m not sure I will continue to make an effort.

The extra two screens in my Study work a treat.  Obviously they were a luxury / because I can / amusing myself type purchase.  There was no specific or pressing need to get them, I’d just liked the idea for some time now.  I don’t use them every time I sit down at my PC, but it was great being able to leave Dotlan up full screen on one and EFT on the other during my EVE sessions this weekend, and I use them regularly in my day to day tasks, particularly playing media or keeping track of Instance Messaging / Social Media.  They worked out better than expected.