Go Forth And Conquer!

Today marks the start of the Eve planets coming to life and being used and abused as resource rich celestial objects begging to be exploited for isk gain. I'm talking about Planetary Interaction, a key part of the Tyrannis expansion, which is being launched today.

Planetary Interaction allows players to harvest the many planets of Eve and create vast industrial networks to produce some of the key items used by players ingame. It is a further step along the way to create a fully autonomous, player generated market.

Personally I really like Planetary Interaction as an addition to Eve and I'm really excited to see how it will be developed further. One small thing I should mention though.

I will not be taking part.

You won't find me rushing out to buy command centers or scanning planets to find a fantastic vein of precious minerals. That might sound a strange thing to say, given my support for Planetary Interaction, but it mirrors my viewpoint on a lot of the more industrial features of Eve as a whole.

Here's my take on it. I love the industrial side of the Eve universe. I love the fact that it has an almost entirely player-driven market. I love it that market hubs like Jita, Amarr and Rens are creations of the players rather than the choices of the developers. I love the concept of ships I fly having been created by someone, somewhere and having a history that I know nothing about. I love seeing Freighters moving vast quantities of goods around the universe. I love the sight of market orders continually under-cutting each other. I love the idea of huge spreadsheets tracking profit and squeezing every last isk possible out of consumers like me. And that's the key thing! Maybe you missed it, so I'll say it again in bold:

I am a consumer.

I'm the person that uses. I fly the ships that you took days to make. I shoot that ammo that you transported all across the galaxy. I accept your market-order that undercut your competition. I give you the isk that justifies the effort that you industrialists put in. Because of this, I'm afraid I will never be one of you.

I just prefer to fly space-ships. So while I am very proud of Eve market, while I love the concept, the idea, the vision behind it, I won't be the one doing it. It is the same for Planetary Interaction. I applaud the idea of tapping into those celestial isk-mines, but I won't be doing the dirty work myself. I suspect I'm not alone in my attitude to all things industrial in Eve.

So, industrialists of Eve, go forth and conquer! Spreadsheet like you've never spreadsheeted before! I don't wish that the development time had been spent elsewhere, neither do I envy you for your new feature that I will never use. Just be warned, that if I do happen to have a Planetary Command Center in my cargohold, it will most likely be the one I just looted from your wreck.

Just Call me the Drone Commander

Just a short one.

Yesterday I experienced my first armour tanked wormhole PvE fleet. Previous to this point I've always flown in shield tanked fleets, which are a slightly rarer breed. I really enjoyed the experience, especially since the fleet was huge, so we raced through a good number of sites.

I was piloting a Loki which is great for taking out the Sleeper frigates. Fit it with two webs and some autocannons and those frigates just go pop! Although I have to admit, maybe that was because I had about 40 drones assigned to me! The number of drones we had on the field was crazy, and controlling them was great fun - all the Sleepers just melted against them. When I have a bit more experience of armour tanked fleets I will be writing a comparison between shield and armour tanking. I'll be able to discuss the different setups and give you a good idea of fleet composition for each.

In other news, the new patch Tyrannis has arrived. I'm enjoying it so far, but that's not really because of any new content, I'm just enjoying the game at the moment. In fact my favourite thing so far is that I don't have to listen to that horrible Dominion load screen music ever again! Hopefully I'll be able to play with some of the new features in a little more depth soon.

But I'm afraid that next week I'm off on holiday. So I've taken the opportunity to put some nice long skills on train. I'll be back and posting again on June 5th.

One last thing. If you have anything you'd like me to blog about when I return, just pop it in a comment, or send me an evemail to Banear. It could be a question about wormholes or ship fitting or anything really, I'm just curious about what you would enjoy reading.

This is a Live Event Right?

Recently CCP have reintroduced Live Events to Eve. A Live Event is an in-game story scripted and coordinated by CCP Devs, in which capsuleers can participate. The Live Event currently being played out in Eve revolves around the entity Sansha's Nation who have been manipulating wormholes in order to launch attacks on systems all over the universe and kidnapping citizens of various planets.

I'm afraid I'm not going to give a potted summary of the story so far. Firstly because I don't know most of it myself, but also because I have to talk about what happened yesterday.

Although I personally haven't been able to get involved in any of the actual events, one member of our corporation, Darkcoro has been heavily involved in many of them. He was recently mentioned by name in a news article when a Sansha's Nation wormhole was collapsed by a fleet he was helping to lead. So he has been a really useful and interesting to source to have around while the events have been ocurring.

Yesterday, the 25th of May, a rumour was circulating that a Sansha's Nation invasion event was going to occur one hour before the Tyrannis patch downtime. Since I hadn't been able to witness any of the previous engagements, I felt it was time I should make the effort and see what it was all about. Darkcoro gave both myself and other members of our corporation an invite to the Operation Bad Moon fleet. Operation Bad Moon are a group of roleplayers who have been at the forefront of player interaction with the Live Events.

Once in the fleet, we were told that information had been leaked regarding this invasion event. Apparently it was to occur in a lowsec system called Maut, which is one jump from Gallente Highsec. Other rumours suggested that the CCP Dev players were going to bring a whole cap fleet, incuding a Leviathan Titan to the engagement! The fleet started to gather in Auvergne, Gallente Highsec, and the lure of getting on a Titan killmail eventually pushed the number of pilots in the fleet above 200.

This number of pilots was something that the Operation Bad Moon leaders weren't prepared for. Fleet discipline was becoming difficult to maintain and many of the wing commanders seemed rather clueless as to what the big plan was. Attempting to use Eve Voice was not a success as it seemed to be a bit tempremental so I ended up just joining the corp Vent channel.

Our corporation had our own squad in the fleet. I decided to go all-in and bring a PvP fitted, armour buffer Typhoon Battleship. In our squad we had a couple more Battleships, some Stealth Bombers and a Cruiser. We ended up at the highsec gate to Maut waiting for the action to begin.

At around 01:00 Eve time a report came through that a cyno had been lit in Maut. Through this cyno came a Nyx Supercarrier and Carrier support. In the Operation Bad Moon fleet it was assumed that these ships belonged to players who had aligned themselves with the cause of the Sansha's Nation invasion and that the actual Sansha fleet would follow. Further reports started to come in about more cynos being lit in system. Eventually our fleet was ordered to jump into Maut.

Local in Maut numbered around 600. So once grids had loaded the fleet was warped to the cynos that were close to planet six. Upon arrival our 200 strong fleet was greeted by the sight of a staggering number of Carrier, Dreadnought and Supercarrier capitals belonging to the Nullsec alliances Morsus Mihi, RAZOR Alliance, Wildly Inappropriate and Pandemic Legion, just to name a few.

It is safe to say that at this point nobody in our fleet had a clue what was going on. There didn't seem to be any Sansha around to shoot. A primary was called but a 200 man mixed sub-capital fleet couldn't make a dent on anything. After a while battleships began to be picked off including my Typhoon. At this point lag was making the game unplayable and there was a small node crash. I ended up being thoroughly confused, logging off in my pod just before the patch day downtime hit.

So this morning I endeavoured to find out what had actually happened. Where were the Sanchas? Why were so many Nullsec alliances involved? If CCP was involved why wasn't the node reinforced?

The brilliant and hilarious truth of the matter?

This was not a CCP run Live Event.

From what I have been able to make out a rumour was started by a number of Sansha sympathising players about the Live Event which the RolePlayers fell for totally. The players spread all sorts of rumours about there being an invasion in Maut just before patch downtime and there being a possibility of a Titan kill. The initial cyno in Maut was lit by these sympathisers who jumped in the Nyx piloted by ECHAeries with two triage carriers in support. Cry Havoc opportunistically lit the second cyno in Maut and jumped in a sub-capital fleet. They were then jumped by both the Morsus Mihi and Pandemic Legion capital fleets. Another cyno was also lit by United Star Federation who also brought in a few carriers. These were all joined by our large sub-capital fleet and possibly other fleets as well. I know for sure there was an Eve University fleet in the area.

It seems that ECHAeries' Nyx was primaried but due to an interdiction mistake it was able to warp out when deep into armour. The capital fleets then picked off random capitals before turning their attention to any of the sub-capital ships that remained. As downtime approached the fleets moved out of Maut and the fight ended quickly.

So far I have managed to find killmails for 1 Chimera, 3 Thanatos, 1 Moros and an Archon, along with plenty of sub-capital losses, mine included. None of the Nullsec alliance fleets seemed to suffer any losses.

All in all it was an incredibly entertaining evening, and even more so now that I know the truth of it. Is there a game like Eve where a single rumour can trigger an engagement on this scale? Tyrannis is currently patching and there will be some nice new features to play with, but it's worth remembering that sometimes it's the players that create the best content.

Interesting Links

Pandemic Legion Battle Report
Morsus Mihi Killboard
Eve Forum Thread
Scrapheap Challenge Forum Thread

Sorry, I've Been Enjoying Eve Way Too Much to Post!

My title for this post is really the only legitimate reason I could come up with for not posting properly for so long; and the best thing about it? It's totally true!

The benefit of this little break from posting is that I have tons of stuff to talk about. But let me first tell you what's going on.

With an alt character I have joined SI Radio, an ex-wormhole dwelling corporation who are known for the show Planet Risk produced by two senior members Luminus Aardokay and Quivering Palm. Planet Risk is a great show that revolves around wormhole exploration and exploitation. SI Radio were recently forcibly evicted from their class six wormhole by the Lowsec pirate alliance Rooks and Kings. They now reside in Providence as renters living in a small pocket of nullsec systems owned by Noir Mercenary Group.

But despite living in Nullsec SI Radio have not lost their love for wormholes, otherwise I would not have joined! Nullsec systems can now be fitted with sovereignty upgrades that increase the amount of wormholes that spawn. So the big plan is to continue battling Sleepers in wormholes from the base in Nullsec, while also getting involved in the PvE and, more excitingly, PvP of the region.

The region Providence is very active and exciting at the moment. It was overrun by the big alliance Against ALL Authorities or AAA earlier this year. Rather than owning the systems themselves, they have installed other smaller alliances in the systems under strict orders not to engage in sovreignty warfare. The smaller alliances are often called 'pets', they are used by bigger alliances to live in space that the bigger alliance doesn't have the members or inclination to use properly.

As a result, Providence is a busy place, filled with small alliances. The region is currently partially united in its efforts to expel the remnants of the old sovreignty holders from the region. In particular two alliances, Curatores Veritatis Alliance or CVA and Paxton Federation who are making things as difficult as they can for the new alliances settling in. But once they have gone it is to be hoped that alliances begin to reset their standings towards each other, and the region is likely to become a haven for small gang PvP. The new space-holding alliances are very diverse in nature and play-style, from the professional mercenaries for hire, Noir Mercenary Group, to the Minmatar roleplaying alliance Ushra'Khan and many more that I currently know nothing of.

SI Radio is a tiny part of this. We rent systems from Noir Mercenary Group. So maybe that makes us AAA's pet's pet. But, whatever we are, I'm completely new to Nullsec so it feels like a whole new game for me!

So, there's your update of what's going on. I now have one character living in a class five wormhole and another in Nullsec. My focus for the blog is still going to be wormholes. But don't be surprised if some of my Nullsec exploits also begin to creep in!

Quick Update

Just a quick update for everybody.

I've been pretty busy recently so I've not managed to post a great deal. But Tyrannis is just around the corner and several interesting things have been happening so expect some good posts next week!

Just a reminder: last chance to vote!

I'm also going to stop being impartial and say, if you haven't voted yet, please vote for TeaDaze! Because he has just started making the most amazing CSM data website and it would be a crime if he didn't get on the CSM and continue the great work!

Please check the website out!

Excercising Your Right to Vote

The Council of Stellar Management, or CSM for short, are a group of 9 individuals elected by Eve players. Their job is to take the views, suggestions and criticisms of the Eve playerbase and present them to CCP, the developers.

Voting has just begun for 5th term of the CSM and will continue for two weeks. There are 53 candidates running for a place this year. If you are anything like me, you will have never heard of the vast majority of them, have no idea what they stand for and have no idea how to find any of this stuff out!

So, in order to help you excercise your right to vote, here is a collection of links that should help you find out everything you need to know about the CSM, voting and the candidates.

About the CSM

CSM Summary - A short summary by CCP of the structure and purpose of the CSM

CSM Expanded - A much more in-depth look by CPP at the theory and design behind the CSM

About the CSM - An Evelopedia article explaining the CSM

The Work of the CSM

The Assembly Hall - An Eve forum where game issues can be raised and brought to the attention of the CSM

Jita Park Speaker's Corner - An Eve forum for CSM members and candidates to air their views

CSM Meeting Minutes - An archive of all the minutes of CSM meetings

CSM Issues - A list of all the issues that have been raised by the CSM

Attendance

Attendance of previous CSM members can be found from the meeting minutes.

CSM4 Attendance - CSM4 Secretary TeaDaze has compiled a handy attendance report for CSM4

Candidates

Candidate List - CCP's list of candidates for CSM5

Most candidates for CSM5 have posted a campaigning thread in the Jita Park Speaker's Corner forum. Read these threads for information about the issues candidates are campaigning on.

CSM Candidate Interviews - Mandrill of the 'I am Keith Neilson' blog has posted the results of interviews he has conducted with applicants

Vote Match - An interactive survey created by Dierdra Vaal that shows you which candidate agrees the most with your opinions

Voting

Candidate Page - Vote for your candidate here, this will require logging in

Hopefully these links will give you a little more information to help you choose who to vote for. If you have any other relevant links or data please tell so I can include it.

Do We Need More Sand?

Eve prides itself on being a game that allows the players to create content and story themselves rather than being led by the developers along a pre-conceived narrative.

This is the famous 'sandbox' idea. The player is given an non-linear game environment and they are left to interact with it. There is no definite end to the game and there is no progression other than the goals which players set for themselves. Eve players are free to do what they like.

The only limitations of Eve are the environments and tools that we are given by the developers to play with. Or, sticking to the analogy, how much 'sand' we have. The 'sand' we have been given is geography, such as Empire space, Lowsec, Nullsec and wormholes. We also have infrastructure like open markets, stations, planets and stargates. Finally we have the ships, the modules, the enemies and so on. All this 'sand' is of course hugely important to the game. The players can only develop emergent behaviour and innovative gameplay if they have the materials to work with. The big question I want to ask is, do we need more sand?

The most obvious way to give players more 'sand' is to create new environments. New environments spawn the most distinctive differences in gameplay. For example, life as a player in Empire is totally different from Lowsec, which in turn is also nothing like Nullsec and living in wormholes is different from them all! These are the four very distinct environments that Eve players adapt to fit into. CCP has created these environments and the laws that govern them. The players and corporations have created play-styles and professions that function well in those environments.

Getting to grips with new environments is also something that Eve players find very enjoyable. The most sucessful Eve expansion so far has been Apocrypha, which tempted people to play by the lure of both a whole new environment, wormholes, and a new way to exploit them, T3 ships. Apocrypha attracted many new players to the game, and also rekindled the interest of players who had become slightly bored.

So back to my big question. Do we need more sand? Does Eve need to continue to create new and unique environments? Or do we already have enough? Will the current environments be able to satisfy you for a long time to come? Or will you need a constant stream of new material to keep you interested? Maybe you are more concerned with balancing and tweaking the environments we already have?

What do you think?