Morphisat’s Blog

My eve-online adventures

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Blog Banter #9 – Randomness Be Gone !

June 30th, 2009 · Economy, blogbanter, industry · 14 Comments

This month’s blog banter is a special one, as it is also a contest ! It even made the news on the Eve Online front page. You can read more about it at ck’s blog.

Welcome to the ninth installment of the EVE Blog Banter and its first contest, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

"Last month Ga’len asked us which game mechanic we would most like to see added to EVE. This month Keith "WebMandrill" Nielson proposes to reverse the question and ask what may be a controversial question: Which game mechanic would you most like to see removed completely from EVE and why? I can see this getting quite heated so lets keep it civil eh?"

It wasn’t very easy to come up with something. I know a lot of things in the game could use some improvement or changes, but totally removed ? Even the things I don’t bother with in game, but other people might like, I wouldn’t want to remove.

roll_dice_small Then one Saturday morning when I checked my invention jobs, and 6 out of 7 Hammerhead II jobs had failed, it came to me: RANDOMNESS in invention ! Wikipedia says (amongst other things) : there is the sense of lack of predictability. And that is exactly why I hate it.

Sometimes you’re doing great and 4 out of 5 jobs succeed, then you hit a bad streak and you get one bpc for seven tries. Especially with things like HACs it is really a downer when three jobs, even with expensive decryptors fail in a row !

Of course the cost of invention would have to be changed. Six datacores for a hammerhead invention job, maybe up to 30 for a HAC (from 8 now) and so on. I am sure someone smart at CCP could figure out the economics. But at least you would know what you’re getting and how much it is going to cost ! Especially that last part is important, you can now estimate how much an invention job costs using the online tools, but it’s not ideal.

The title of this blogpost might suggest that I would want to remove all randomness in the game. Well, some of it is needed. Like officer spawns, exploration sites etc. Ecm as well, as loosing control over your targeting really sucks, especially when you would just totally get locked out in a fight, and you know it’s going to stay that way for as long as the falcon or blackbird is on the field. But I guess that could be the subject of another blog banter ;).

So there you have it, my blog banter #9 contribution ! Other participants:

  1. Diary of a Space Jockey, Blog Banter: BE GONE! (ah just noticed someone else uses this phrase)
  2. EVE Newb, (EVE) Remove You
  3. Miner With Fangs, Blog Banter - It’s the Scotch
  4. The Eden Explorer, Blog Banter: The Map! The Map!
  5. The Wandering Druid of Tranquility, "Beacons, beacons, beacons, beacons, beacons, mushroom, MUSHROOM!!!"
  6. Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah, Kill the Rats
  7. Mercspector @ EVE, Scotty
  8. EVE’s Weekend Warrior, EVE Blog Banter #9
  9. Miner with Fangs, Blog Banter - It’s the Scotch
  10. A Merry Life and a Short One, Eve Blog Banter #9: Why Won’t You Die?
  11. Into the unknown with gun and camera, Blog Banter – The Hokey Cokey
  12. The Flightless Geek, EVE Blog Banter #9: Remove a Game Mechanic
  13. Sweet Little Bad Girl, Blog Banter 9: Who is Nibbling at My House?
  14. One Man and His Spaceship, Blog Banter 9: What could you do without?
  15. Life in Low Sec, EVE Blog Banter #9: Stop Tarnishing My Halo
  16. Cle Demaari: Citizen, Blog Banter #9: Training for all my men!
  17. A Mule in EVE, He who giveth, also taketh away?
  18. Dense Veldspar, Blog Banter 9
  19. Morphisat’s Blog, Blog Banter #9 – Randomness Be Gone !
  20. Facepalm’s Blog, EVE Blog Banter #9: What a new pilot could do without
  21. Memoires of New Eden, You’re Fired
  22. Kyle Langdon’s Journeys in EVE, EVE Blog Banter #9 Titans? What’s a Titan?
  23. Achernar, The gates! The gates are down!
  24. Speed Fairy, EVE Blog Banter #9: Down with Downtime!
  25. I am Keith Neilson, EVE Blog Banter #9-F**K Da Police
  26. Ripe Lacunae, The UI… Where do I begin… (Eve Blog Banter #9)
  27. Clown Punchers, EvE Blogs: What game mechanic would you get rid of?
  28. Estel Arador Corp Services, You’ve got mail
  29. Epic Slant, Let Mom and Pop Play: EVE Blog Banter #9
  30. Deaf Plasma’s EVE Musings, Blog Banter #9 - Removal of Anchoring Delay of POS modules
  31. Podded Once Again, Blog Banter #9 - Do we really need to go AFK?
  32. Postcards from EVE, 2009.07.02.00.29.06
  33. More articles as they are posted

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Setting up an Ishtar

June 20th, 2009 · General · 3 Comments

A few weeks back I built some of these Ishtars, they’re still one of the more expensive HACs on the market, with a nice profit margin. I gave one of them to Bela so she can use it to assist me in lvl 4 missions for example.

Before you say OMG Just buy a domi, they have a bigger tank and are much cheaper !!111!!, yes I know, it’s just a lot of fun flying HACs with their nice resistances and cruiser agility, and I had one at hand anyway ;).

There is a guide on the evelopedia that suggests setting up a passive tank. I guess it would look something like this (screen shot from EFT), though that guide suggests (way) more Shield Power Relays. I didn’t actually try this one out, so you should experiment with this one yourself, in case you would try it.

Ishtar - Isht_Shield

It does look decent, but I decided to go with a traditional armor tank. This leaves the mid slots for some nice extra modules like the Drone Navigation Computer and the Omnidirectional Tracking Link.

Ishtar - Bela_Ish

Also don’t forget the small remote armor repairer module to rep up your drones in case they get hurt !

Tried this setup a few times now, and mission frigs get melted very quickly by the warriors or hobgobs, then it’s onto cruisers with hammerheads II, and if there are any battleships left, the Ogre IIs mob them up. In case of aggro, I just orbit something with the AB on and don’t get hit very hard.

Only tough thing to figure out a decent setup, is the lack of cpu on this ship, it’s all pretty tight !

If you have any comments or suggestions, leave a comment…

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There are places I remember

June 9th, 2009 · General · No Comments

There are places I remember all my life,
Though some have changed
Some forever, not for better
Some have gone and some remain.

Thought I’d participate in the Internet Meme Kirth Kodachi started with his blog post The places I have been.

places

As you can see, I spend most of my time in Caldari HiSec and a bit of Sinq Liason. With an excursion every now and then to other places. The few red dots up north are interesting, apparently I spent some time there when I started out, I visited Torrino for the last time in December 2005 !

The bit of red in 0.0 is Wicked Creek where I spent a few months last year.

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Quarterly Yearly Economic Report

June 5th, 2009 · Economy · No Comments

It’s here again, the economic report ! Always an interesting read :).

EVE can teach world leaders how important
trade is for any society, and how valuable trust
is within them. EVE can teach all of us that
by working together there is no obstacle that
is too large for us to overcome – there are no
bridges we can´t build.

InsideMacGames
EveOnLine Devblog

This quote is interesting as well:

The top 10% of all characters in EVE (64,500 characters in total) hold more than 88% of all ISK in wallets at any given time.

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Eve News

May 30th, 2009 · General · 1 Comment

Just a simple post of some interesting news items:

  • Looks like CCP finally figured out it wouldn’t hurt to put in a few extra lvl 4 agents. They are announced at the new dev blog ! I might be looking into the new ones for the Corporate Police Force. Also industrialists might want to try to move some of their wares out there, so you can sell it for over inflated prices to the lazy mission runners ;).
  • Minmatar Millitia downed a carrier thursday night. Props to the carrier pilot, Jay Deah, though who dared to move his ship away from a station for a change ! You can read a Battle Report on the Intergallactic Summit.
  • Blog Banter #8 was a big success, over 30 blogger participated. Check out CK’s post  for a complete list !

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Bhaalgorn Down !

May 25th, 2009 · Factional Warfare · 2 Comments

“Everybody hold on the Amamake gate !” the FC said over the comms. Reports of pirate activity in Amamake had come down through the intel channels and a Minmatar assault force had gathered to take care of the problem.

A cloaking Hound was then set on the top belt to see what exactly the activity was. “I have a Bhaalgorn here, it’s a Bhaalgorn !” our scout excitedly shouted. A Bhaalgorn is a very rare sight. Only obtained on the black market for over a billion isk. Usually fitted with very expensive modules, that are usually obtained through the same channels as the ship, they originate from killing high ranked officers of pirate/outlaw nations like the Sansha’s.

“All fast tacklers go in ! All fast tacklers go in! Everybody else hold on the gate !”. The tacklers were able to get a warp scrambler on the Bhaalgorn. The rest of the ragtag minnie fleet came in and warped on top of the Bhaalgorn. The minmatar stealth bomber in the belt uncloacked and unleashed it’s torpedos, pounding on the Bhaalgorn’s shields and armor. Our ecm arrived at range on the battlefield and was able to scramble those that came to the Bhaalgorn’s aid. Slowly but surely the Bhaalgorn went down. It’s a very well tanked ship so it took what felt like ages. My Stabber rotated around the pirate’s battleship at 3000mtrs, pouring rounds and rounds of ammo into it’s armor.

“ECM is down ! Ecm IS down !”. I didn’t want to hear that over the comms ! Any moment now one of the enemy ships could target me, and rip my poor stabber to pieces. If I hadn’t been in my pod, I am sure the sweat would have poured over my face.

“He is down ! The Bhaalgorn went down !!!” some people shouted over the comms. But we held our composure and disposed of his helpers as well with minimal losses on our side. Certainly compared to the net worth of the Bhaalgorn.

Long after the fight when things had quieted down our pilots were still cheering over this great victory. Word spread amongst the other pilots in the militia and it strengthened our hearts and souls.

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Succubus

May 23rd, 2009 · General · 2 Comments

Suc1

And here it is, the Succubus I won ! It’s a very nice looking frig, if you like odd spikes coming off the front end. It’s got a bit of a cockroach vibe going ;). I armed it with 2x medium pulses and a bit of a shield tank, with quite a bit of power and cpu to spare. It’s very powerful due to the bonuses. At least the few belt rats I tried it on (in hisec mind you) dropped like flies.

suc2

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Sunday’s Frig Tournament

May 18th, 2009 · Corporation · 1 Comment

We had a sunday night of corp activities. It started of with the always fun Free For All in frigs and destroyers. Last time my kestrel got popped very fast, and the rifter in the second round only did a little bit better (at least I took someone with me). This time I decided to leave Morph at home and go with Belautis in a punisher. And this time I was more successful. Lasted a lot longer in the FFA, after taken two tristans and tanking a destroyer I finally went down.

Next up was a 6 vs 6 cruiser fight ! Our side won after a very nice battle. I used a tanked Arbitrator, which worked reasonably well, but I was a bit out of range for the start of the fight and had trouble to catch up. But it was enjoyable nevertheless.

The last part of the night was a ladder frigate tournament, with about 18 people, the other main corp in our alliance joined us. And surprisingly I made it to the final ;). The most intense fight was with a blaster fit incursus. It was a pretty fast fight, both speeding to the center and taking each other head on ! I made it with about 20% armor left.

The final unfortunately was a bit of a snoozefest for the spectators. It was punisher vs. punisher, and I couldn’t reach the other one, as I had a afterburner and he used an mdw (i assume). As I figured it would be fair to let him win, as I was the one who couldn’t reach him, I conceded and took the second price, a faction frig, the succubus !

All in all a very enjoyable evening. And thanks to the people in Hidden Agenda and Iniquitous Technologies for making it happen !

And the prices keep coming in, I won 1st place in the fanfiction contest, goddlesswanderer organized on his blog !

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Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

May 12th, 2009 · Factional Warfare · 7 Comments

So goodbye yellow brick road 
Where the dogs of society howl
You can’t plant me in your penthouse
I’m going back to DalQ_small

It was late last year, when I got tired of war. Of killing. Of podpilots around me being killed. Of the life of a minmatar freedom fighter. I enlisted to help my people, and to be honest some part of me also was looking for recognition. Trying to make a name for myself.

After months of fighting though, I felt empty inside. We took over some systems, killed quite a few Amarr religious zealots, but still… It didn’t seem to make a difference.

It was then that I decided this wasn’t the life for me. I contemplated about going back to my old job, a mammoth freighter trucker. Maybe do some missions for the Republic Fleet every now and then and use my combat skills for at least a somewhat good cause.

It wasn’t an easy decision to make, but late in the fall of last year, that’s what I did. One day I silently left Dal, my war homebase and picked up my old trusty Mammoth in Rens and never looked back. Or at least that’s what I thought.

And that’s when it started, the nightmares. Visions even more horrible than what I ever saw in the war. Not sure how my mind came up with those ! It started with only one a week, but it got worse as time went slowly by.

Till it got to the point where I didn’t dare to go to sleep again. And during the day it was like there was a dark cloud over me. I couldn’t find any joy in whatever I did, and kept thinking of the friends I left behind. Roc Wieler, Angry Fist, Stoogie. What happened to them ? And how were they coping ? The thought that I let my people down, and betrayed my heritage kept popping up in my mind.

Then it struck me:

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way

This was not my purpose as a pod pilot ! I had to get back to Dal and back into the war.

And that’s what I did. And weird enough from the moment I signed on again, the nightmares were gone. Some sort of inner peace came over me inside the turmoil of the war. I found my destiny again, and hope I will never loose it.

Disclaimer: My first effort at fanfiction for Godlesswanderer’s contest, please be gentle :).

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Amamake ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids

May 11th, 2009 · Factional Warfare · 2 Comments

In Fact It’s Cold As Hell

Minmatar_republic The regular Eve Production life was getting a bit stale again, you can get excited about Hammerhead II sales only so many times. So to spice things up a bit I reactivated my Factional Warfare Character Q.

And I must say things have changed a bit since I left in the fall of last year. FW on the amarr – minmatar side is still pretty active. There certainly arent a lack of targets like when I left last year. The amarr put together a pretty large fleet Sunday night. It was amusing, as there were about three minnie fleets roaming around. But a few times we crossed paths and that’s when we were spotted I think. They must have thought that we were one big blob and decided to all group up.

Anyway I was in a few fights over the weekend, nothing spectacular, and dodged at least one camp in my vexor. I saw some old familiar faces and quite a few new ones. Learned some new terms (I am being yellowboxed was one of ‘em). And found out that battleships are more common in FW now.

Then it sort of struck me what a different game this is, compared to running a few missions and mining a few hours in an Orca. The fights are exciting. The banter on EveSpeak is amusing. Adrenaline rush when you jump into a camp and manage to loose ‘em. I am glad I took this step, it was fun to be back again, and hope it will stay that way ;).

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