A Scientist's Life in Eve

So my first ever Logistics loss happened yesterday.  A red fleet was hanging around and somebody called a home defense.  I decided to join in my logistics ship, joined fleet and comms and undocked and warped to the rally point as ordered.  What followed was a disappointing battle where we got a quick lesson on how not to do a home defense fleet.

From my perspective the following problems resulted in heavy losses for no return on our part:

1. The FC didn’t check what ships he had properly before undocking.  -1 point
2. We had excellent intel on their ship types and possibility of reinforcements. +1 point
3. We had two cloakies on grid for warp in points. +1 point
4. We had superior numbers and more logistics, including a couple of carriers at our disposal. +1 point
5. The FC didn’t organise the fleet at all, it was just “warp here”. -1 point
6. Battle Coms did not prevail, it was a bit of a free for all. -1 point
7. Their fleet had a logistics, a command ship and a shiney ship, and then some other fast movers.  FC kept going for the shiney. -1
8. Even when we lost all of our logistics (including me being popped and podded), FC kept blindly warping around. -1

In conclusion, it was a fail.

Now I’m not sure how other FC’s would handle a situation like this.  I’m not an FC and wouldn’t hold myself out as one, or even an option to be one.  We all have our opinion, and we’re all back seat drivers and all know best.  So I guess being an FC is a crap job a lot of the time and I have the utmost respect for you few who are brave enough to do it and take all the criticism and handle us rowdy awkward bunch.  For what it’s worth (about 0.4 ISK I think), my thoughts on the above battle would have been:

1. Ingnore the shiney ship which clearly had a big tank and hit either the logistics or command ship first.  Cut off the booster and/or repper.  At that point our logistics advantage could have been leveraged.
2. Before even undocking, ensure the fleet ranges and roles are understood.  How many people have points (and what sort), how many people have webs.  Who will get fighters from the carriers, if anybody.
3. Battle Comms means battle comms
4. If we’re losing badly, regroup, don’t just stay there and lose some more

As I said, I’m really not experienced in PvP and have never even entertined the thought of being an FC, but from how I’ve seen other FC’s work, the good ones seem to follow the above to some degree.

So the big question is what do you say to the FC of the above op?  I wouldn’t have the kudos to speak to him based on my position in the Alliance, but I know he wants to continue to be, and enjoys being, an FC, but we all have to learn.  Sure if you have a 2:1 or 3:1 advantage with superior ships things are fine, but for my mind the truly good FC would take a situation like the above and win, or at least not lose so badly.

Will this stop me joining fleets FC’d by this guy?  No – it’s my responsibility as an Alliance member to do this, to protect our space, to support Alliance aims and ambitions.  However, I’d quite like it if the FC’s learnt when they make mistakes.

Any ideas?  If you’re an FC, how would you have approached the above?  (and not undocking is not an option as we had a good enough fleet to at least have gotten equal losses, if not actually comfortably won).

So Christmas has been exciting so far – lots to catch up on, so a few posts to do!

Firstly, I logged in to Evegate to be welcomed by a mail about Sov loss.  What?  I immediately spammed the Corp Admin mailing list and got a response back.  One of our Alliance Directors had become disgruntled and decided to turn rogue.  Over the last couple of months he’d decided to leave, and then decided to stay, and at this point it appears he had truly decided to leave, but to leave and betray rather than leave with honour.

So by the time I logged on I found Sov lost in two systems due to the “Director” offlining things like TCU’s and iHubs.  However, I also logged on to a full NC CTA with their station already entering it’s first RF cycle, SBU’s up all over the place and lots of general red killing.  This has progressed over the past week or so, and I’ve been involved in some excellent fleets killing things.  Well, actually I’ve been using my logistics alt and so I’ve been stopping things getting killed rather than killing them

Up until yesterday (and that will be another post), I hadn’t lost a single logistics ship, and all through these CTA’s I still haven’t, which is great.  I’ve managed to help keep lots of ships alive, including fellow logi pilots who are very quick to share the repping love when needed!

But where do we go from here?  Well, things weren’t really that affected.  I’m not quite sure what the “Director” and the other Alliance were expecting to happen, but if one part of the NC is attacked, the whole NC responds.  I’ve flown across several regions to support our allies, and it’s comforting when they return the favour.  OK, smack talk in local is one thing – suggesting that in a one on one fight our Alliance would lose, but then the entire point of groups like IT and the NC are that we are more together than the sum of the individual Corporations and Alliances.

I have no doubt that at some point things will go wrong, and we’ll either have to leave the area or I’ll decide that I’ve had enough of 0.0 and want to do something else.  But for now, the NC is my home and things aren’t too bad – there’s stuff to shoot, stuff to be shot by, and lots of other diversions.

One cool thing was seing a CTA post being pushed by a fellow blogger Hallan Turrek, who has the excellent blog A Merry Life and a Short One – again another blog I follow and well worth reading.  Unfortunately on this occassion I had to log and so couldn’t join this one.

Welcome to the twenty-third installment of the EVE Blog Banter, 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 or so 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 to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check for other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

With Incursion giving us glimpses of what Incarna will have to offer (the the Character Creator), this month’s topic, by @Minerpewpew, comes just at the right time. He asks “What are your thoughts on how Incarna will effect the current EVE Online social dynamic?” I’d like to see this questioning go a bit further. How will this affect EVE’s player base? Who will Incarna attract? New players to the genre? Seduce old players back into the game? Will we see new players come in that will never leave their station? Please explore to the best of your abilities!

OK, so Incarna.  First off, the most worrying part (or maybe the biggest bluff) is that CCP have openly admitted they’re not sure what the actual in-game content will be, i.e. what you can and can’t do.  Now call me old fashioned, but I always thought that you started off with what you wanted to do, and then wrote the code to do it?  It almost sounds like somebody said “hey, I wrote something that could do this, but not sure what it could be used for” and somebody else said “great, we’ll put it in and hope for the best.”

Now before I came to Eve, I’d spent quite a lot of time playing Second Life (I also played QuakeLive in between SL and Eve, which is why I know I’ll probably always suck at PvP).  Second Life is a really social environment.  It has noble aspirations to be used for education and business networking etc, but really it seems to come down to making things look nice and the “darker” side of things.  Real money is essential in the SL environment, as you need it to make your avatar have “good” skin textures, and then to buy nice clothes, to rent or own land and so on.  SL doesn’t have an over-riding aim unlike Eve.  SL lets you do what you want, including the potential to access all sorts of extremely adult content if you were so inclined.

How does this link to Incarna?  Well, without a definite aim for the content, the danger is that aspects of SL could creep in.  The one saving grace with Eve (unlike SL)  is that you cannot directly convert ISK to real money.  OK, you can do ISK trading for real money, but that is specifically against the terms of the EULA and should (in theory) get you banned and the ISK confiscated – yes I’m completely aware of the ISK farmers and macro botters etc, but the theory is there at least.

At least with this theoretical protection in place, you won’t find an online dirty talk bar in Rancer that will cost you 1 million ISK a minute to have virtual relations with an attractively set up avatar and a woman on Teamspeak.

However, I think that Incarna has great potential to be both good and bad.

Corp Offices

So your Corp has an office in New Caldari.  The office layout (which can be customised and upgraded for more ISK) is typically Caldari in nature.  Within this area you can hold Corp meetings on secure comms (Eve Voice – they said they wanted us to use it more).  OK, you’ll probably still all use TS or Vent, but for those who don’t, this would be a nice feature. 

Also in your Corp office you have access to other useful tools such as interactive maps which can be updated by Corp officers with the appropriate roles, including shared bookmarks.  You can browse through Corp ship fittings in a virtual environment, like the actual ship fitting area, but in a virtual sense.  This would allow you to play in EFT as we all do, but then also look at the actual ship in game and play with the fitting (or am I the only person who does this?).

Now I was thinking about the possibility of being able to access other region’s market data here, but would this be too powerful?  Maybe you can link to other Corp offices for virtual meetings (ok, really this would be virtual virtual!!), and maybe the datalink from those offices could include limited market data.

Maybe this would be the perfect time to revamp the Corporate and Alliance interfaces (see below), allowing for more detailed, yet easier control of all sorts of things including assets and members.

Any other ideas?

Alliance Offices

And why not?  Why not let Alliances have an office somewhere.  It may well be in an Outpost for the null sec people, but it’s a thought.  Again it could facilitate shared resources in-game, whereas currently many things are done out of game.

Not sure on this one, but maybe there’s potential here.

Current Station Services

Yes it might be nice to have a better interface, and see your avatar doing things, but CCP must not lose perspective – Eve is internet spaceships, even if you’re a Jita trader and never actually undock!  The worst possible thing they (CCP)  could do would be to force people to dock, get out of their pod, run to an office, interact, run back and then undock.  This might be cute the first time, might be amusing the second and third time, but will be irritating as hell from the 20th time onwards. 

To be honest lots of things currently take lots of time.  The game is full of mouse clicks - the danger is here it becomes a game of mouseclicks and running from one room to another to have a scripted “conversation” with an agent or insurance broker etc.

Everything else

So we’re expecting bars, shops maybe?  Who knows.  I’m sure that there will be micro-transactions for clothing, possibly limited plastic surgery – definitely tattoo’s (and associated laser corrective treatments), piercings?

Again, without CCP laying out their intentions (and hinting strongly that they’re not actually sure yet), the danger is that the void just becomes an industrial land-fill instead.

I really don’t want Eve to turn into Second Life in space with x-rated establishments trying to convince me to spend real money somehow.  I also don’t want to have to run everywhere (let’s face it, there will no doubt be a walk and run option and almost everybody will run) just to buy and fit bits to my ship.

And finally…

How about accommodation.  The Eve blogs that indulge in fiction (and there are some truly excellent ones out there) all involve the characters having rented accommodation somewhere.  This definitely has potential in some way.  Would I rent a room somewhere.  Actually, I think I probably would, depending on how flexible it is and what you can do there (and no I’m not going x-rated here either!).  Accessing my market orders and reviewing the market (I want to look at the market AND my active orders at the same time!), keeping track of my planets, organising my bookmarks (hotswapping sets of bookmarks anybody?).  Linking in to my Corporation’s records to undertake some admin etc.

One thing is for sure, if you look through some of the blogs Eve has some really stunning graphics.  I turned all the graphics options up to full just to try it (in a non-combat situation of course!), and it looked incredible.  So instead of station spinning, what if some of that graphical excellence was brought into the in-station environment in re-doing the user interface.

Would I spend less time in my ship?  Maybe, maybe not?  I think some things could and would be easier to do and graphically make much more sense.  I’d still go out to collect things, to attend to moon reactions, to fuel POS.  I’d still attend CTA’s and home defense fleets.  Maybe a good looking interface would take some of the annoyance away from the (often confusing) clickfest that is required during admin type tasks in Eve.

As to characters, well my main is a girl, my out of Corp Jita alt is a girl, and my other two alts are male.   I just hope that there is enough variety in the final version of the character editor (and the potential for more than one modelling session) so we don’t get hundreds of almost identical characters, just wearing slightly different clothes.  Obviously as a girl my main will require multiple sets of clothing

Participants List:

• BB 23: What comes with Incarna? | A Mule In EvE
• Captain Serenity: Eve blog banter #22 – Force Fed
• Blog Banter XXIII – Incarnal Desires | I am Keith Neilson
• Blog Banter 23: Nobody Will Use Incarna — the remix « OMG! You’re a Chick?!
• Confessions of a Closet Carebear: Blog Banter #23: Who enters the new incarna(tion) of EVE…
• Depth of Vision (Blog Banter 23) | Interstellar Privateer
• Blog Banter #23 – Shiny « Roc’s Ramblings
• Drifting: The 23rd EVE Blog Banter (December 2010 Edition) – Topic: Incarna
• Blog banter #23: The Incarna effect « Diary of a Pod Pilot
• More to come…

I think I’ve said before (at least to a Corp mate if not here), that I would eventually like to try living in a wormhole.  Unfortunately I would rate my skills as insufficient to do this at the moment, for the following reasons:

1. I only have 1 alt who can scan properly
2. I cannot (quite) yet fly T2 or T3 Cruisers
3. I’m not experienced at PvP

Once these three are ticked off, then I would think I could at least start to fail, with the hope I might eventually not fail (at least not all of the time anyway).

For now, I’m relatively happy in 0.0 with the great Alliances and lag-fest fleet battles.  There’s lots I’d like to do out here first before considering switching to try wormholes.

However, one thing that has been making me really start to wish I was further on with my skills queue and experience is the blog Tiger Ears.  I’m finding that I’m really looking forward to every post – the idea of a small Corporation, sometimes running away, not always quite working as expected, but eager to try – and mostly winning.  I like it very much and this is how I would want my wormhole experience to be I think.

I’ve added the link to my “blogs I follow” section, and would recommend 100% that you do the same.

So today is the day the learning skills truly disappear.  I still haven’t completely worked out what to do, but have narrowed it down to two things.

Firstly, due to the increased attributes, I will now have a Christmas present – T2 medium lasers.  Previously Medium Energy Turrets 5 wasn’t going to finish until the 26th, but with the increased attributes it will now finish on Christmas day – cool!  I need to go buy the specialisation skills now and get ready to inject them.

After careful thought about my learning skill point reimbursement, I have arrived at two options:

1. Use them to get T2 shield modules – bit embarrassing being Caldari but not able to shield tank, and general benefits (increased shield strength etc), so this is probably my favourite
2. Use them to part complete Amarr Cruiser 5.  Based on the changes to the attributes again, I think this would then mean I’d comfortably be in a Recon ship before New Year’s Day.  Now that’s something really worth thinking about

However, I still haven’t decided.  What I’m planning to do is to log onto SiSi and play with a Recon ship (as I used the 5 million SP I got from the Mass Test to do T2 lasers and T2 Amarr Cruisers).  This will then help me to decide whether to progress this quicker, or to wait and do the shield tanking thing.  More shineys the first way, but I’d be able to fly more of my ships better with the shield thing.

On another subject, I’m planning to take down the medium POS tonight and put up a large Caldari POS with three moon miners and two simple reactors.  In total, with the unanchoring, anchoring and onlining, I think it will take me around 3 hours. 

During the three 30 minute operations (unanchor medium pos, anchor large pos, online large pos), I plan to change my Elite planet installations around.

As the Corp is collecting lots of planet material, I’m going to adjust things so I have a P4 production planet, a POS fuel production planet, a T2 component production planet, and then two extraction planets.

I need to double check the precise fuel requirements, but with all but one POS in Sov 4 systems, I think I should be able to cover the PI based fuel requirements on 1 planet, but will probably be proved wrong.

Thinking more about the learning skill points refund, I think my logi pilot will now probably use his to get Energy Grid Upgrades to 5, as that will benefit both his Basilisk and Oneiros quite significantly.  Energy Transfer is already at 5, Shield Transfer has 4 days left to level 5, and then it will be around 6 days for Remote Armor to 5.  The only biggie after those is Repair Drones to level 5, and I think that will be around 14 to 15 days sadly.

My PI alt doesn’t have lots of skill points invested in learning, so I’ll just use his to speed up Advanced Spaceship Command 5 by a few days.

However, I’ve now purchased an expensive, researched, blueprint, and I want to start making copies to sell on contract at Jita.  To do this, I think I may need to pause the training on my PI alt for a few days and get Contracting up on my Jita alt, who has practically no learning skills at all.

OK so I planned out my reaction chains and POS modules for the two new POS locations, got started and then failed.

What do you mean not enough CPU, I’ve got plenty spare let me show you my spreadsheet to…. oh.  Oops.  It seems that I had a decimal place wrong on the simple reactor – things you do when you’re tired.

On reflection, obviously I should have used a proper POS planning tool – no excuses really.  So I looked around and I really like MyPOS.

So I’ve started tearing down the medium POS that had been put up and am omw to Jita to get a large Caldari POS.  I should have know better, but was just trying to use what we had (medium POS) and then with stupid Excel not highlighting my obvious mistake to me (everyone knows a simple reactor uses 1500 CPU and not 150, so why Excel didn’t point that out to me…).

Anyway, it just means another run to Jita in my Crane, which doesn’t take too long, however all that unanchoring will take some time.

Still, after looking at things I think we’ll have plenty of spare CPU to put some labs up which will be useful for some extra research and invention.

Things are busy at the moment, we’ve moved a POS to a new system, shut down one moon reaction and I’m just about to put online two more simple and one complex reaction to start making Sylramic Fibers.  In between this, I’m also upping the P4 planetary interaction production and shuttling complex reactions to sell at Jita.  I’m also hoping to get involved in some more CTA’s with the Basilisk, and now that my logi alt has finished Engineering 5 and Energy Grid Upgrades 4 (5 is on the way after I get the three repping/transfer skills to 5), I should be able to fit the Oneiros properly and can then take that out in Armor gangs.

And… I’m also trying to maintain market orders, manufacturing slots and research/invention too.

So I’m pretty busy.  So why do I feel like I’m in a lull?

This took some analysing.  Am I bored of null? No.  Am I trying to do too much and so feeling like it’s a job and not a game?  No.  Do I look forward to logging on or not?  Well mostly.  Then I think I hit upon the issue.  Skill training.  Basically since I lost my skill queues when I had to reset Evemon, I tried something different and set up a group of skill plans – guns and drones, ships, core skills, scanning, T3, science & industry.  The idea was to do a bit from each queue, but this sort of gives me no definite direction.  I think as I can’t look at a definite queue and say “in 5 days I can fly x” or “in 9 days I can use a T2 y”, I feel like I don’t have a defninte direction, even though I’ve actually got quite a bit on at the moment.

I think this also follows on from my lack of specific direction with my main character too, hence setting a number of more general queues rather than one focussed queue.  As I said in an earlier post, do I go for a really good ratting character or try to specialise in ewar or something else.  My logistics alt will invariably be used for CTA’s and home defense fleets, and doesn’t have particularly expensive implants in so I won’t get too upset if/when he getts podded.  My PI alt should only ever die if caught moving around, as he’s not set up to shoot – although in a year he’ll be in a carrier, so that will be a different situation.

So I need to decide what to do with my main.  To give you a rough idea (again, as I’ve probably already said most/all of this before):

• She’s Caldari (so what - makes no real difference!)
• Can fly Amarr and Gallente T2 Frigates (not Interceptors – about 15 days to get into those I from memory)
• Can fly Amarr, Gallente and Caldari Cruisers
• Can fly Amarr, Gallente and Caldari Battlecruisers
• Can fly Amarr Battleships (would be just over 4 days each to get into either Gallente or Caldari Battleships)
• Can fit T2 small lasers
• Will be able to fit T2 small hybrids in just under a week
• Can invent pretty much anything
• Can build most things except some T2 larger ships and actual Capital ships (but can build cap parts)

Bear in mind the following:

• I have an alt who does PI to level 5′s and runs a cloaky transport ship, so I’m not planning to duplicate that.  He is on a long term training plan to fly Caldari carriers
• I have another alt who can fly a freighter, but whose main role is to fly logistics, and I plan to use him to attend all CTA’s and home defense fleets where possible

So, any suggestions?  My plan(s) contain obvious things like getting T2 medium lasers and T2 cruisers (about 10 days and 17 days respectively), but I do not have a focus.

Questions, advice and suggestions please!  Meantime I’m finishing off training the basic gunnery skills to 4 and getting into T2 small hybrids so I can fit T2 blasters to my Daredevil, so I have about a week’s time to work this out.

I logged onto SiSi to get the free SP, and it took me about 5 minutes to realise that all I needed to do was ensure a skill queue would be active overnight, so I set a 3 or 4 day queue with all three characters and then logged onto TQ to see what was happening in the Corp – which to be honest wasn’t too much, apart from a pre-arranged meeting where we talked about lots of Corp business and the importance of role modelling as Directors etc.  All good stuff and I’m going to actively try and increase the number of HD fleets and CTA’s I participate in, although now that I can fly the Basilisk with my logistics/freighter alt, I think I was always likely to do this anyway.

I ended up spending 50 million on getting a Coreli A-type afterburner for my Daredevil last night, and so have a spare Gisti B-type to sell.  That 3 powergrid makes all the difference.  This has also made me think more about my skill queue and what I’ll do with the returned SP.  I’ve narrowed down to:

• Main – small hybrid to 5 so I can fit the Daredevil properly, or some shield stuff so I can move towards the Nightmare quicker (although that’s not really a good ship to have for PvE in the region I’m in), or Cruiser Construction to 4 so I can build these Ishtar’s I’m stockpiling materials for
• PI alt – speed up training towards a carrier
• Logi alt – remote armor repair to 5

So, actually that’s not really as narrowed down on my main as I thought, as more ideas popped into my head as I was typing.  Oh well, I’ll play with the 5 million SP on SiSi and use that to decide I think.  I can try ALL of the above and decide which I like the most, and what best uses the available SP.

Annoying – I have a sell order up for some Interceptors, and somebody else also has one up.  I’m now checking the market twice a day and adjusting my sell order by the obligatory 0.02 ISK (sometimes I get lazy and just do a whole 1 ISK!).  Even so, the other sell order always seems to quickly drop lower than mine and, more annoyingly, over the past week all the ships purchased have been brought from his order and not mine.  Frustrating – if this were Jita I’d understand, but it’s not.

Secondly, I’ve just realised I got the wrong faction afterburner for my Daredevil, so I need to take the one I have back to Jita and put it on the market / in contracts and buy the other one.  Annoying again, but just shows I need to pay more attention to whether it’s a B type or C type or whatever.

Over the past couple of days we’ve had some CTA’s.  The time was right, my skills were sufficient, so I rolled out my Logistics alt for his first outing in the Basilisk – and I absolutely loved it.

The organisation was great – separate chat channel, organised cap chains, fleet history, specialised overviews, it’s great and I really enjoyed the role and, more importantly, I didn’t die!

The first CTA was a bit laggy, and unfortunately the targetting delay meant that I didn’t get some people locked before they popped, but we saved a good number of people, and as local dropped below the 1,000 mark things improved and so did our repping rate.

The second CTA was really a “repping party” CTA, as it consisted essentially of repping up a station and services using logistics and carriers in triage mode, with the rest of the fleet bubbling gates and dropping cans to catch incoming ships, both cloaked and uncloaked.

OK, the second CTA wasn’t really that interesting, but it was really good to chat to the other, experienced, logistics pilots to find out how things work and such.  I need to top off a couple of skills to give me cap stability in my Oneiros with the fleet fit (finishing Engineering 5 now so I can actually put the fit on first!).  The question then is whether I train to the T2 repair drones or go for Amarr Cruiser 5 to get in to a Guardian.  To be honest I’m tempted to stay on my planned skill queue at the moment, which involves getting Energy Emmission, Shield Emmission and Remote Armor Repair all up from 4 to 5.  Each of these skills is just over 7 days, with the repair drones to 5 being nearer 16 days if I remember correctly.  Amarr Cruiser 5 will take me just under a month, so that would actually be shorter than doing the others.  Hmmm, decisions.

And on that note, the second part of the post title… fresh starts.  Evemon broke, so after messing around for about 30 minutes with things I gave up and admitted defeat and reset it.  So I have three characters with no skill plans.

Now I broadly remember/know what I was planning to train for each, but even so with the upcoming learning skills reimbursement and an empty skill plan, it is a good time to rethink things and, particularly with my main character, possibly be a bit more focussed.  Flying the logistics ship has really made me think, as I’m leaning towards the idea that I’ll use him for all CTA’s and home defense fleets, meaning that my main character maybe needs to consider the training queue again, as I was getting her skilled up for more ewar/tackling for CTA’s.  OK it would mean I can offer multiple options, but as our Alliance seems very PvP heavy, they always want more logistics and every time somebody has offered the choice, they’ve always been told to bring the logistics ship.  So maybe I need to focus my main onto the PvE side more so that she’s essentially a carebear – industry, science and PvE as my ISK generation machine.

This then leaves my PI alt, who by the nature of the very specialised queue I put him through (including remaps), only has around 200k of SP in learning skills, so not really much to play with.  I’m still of the opinion that I should train him up to a carrier (long term aim ofc), but the thing about needing logistics to do the triage function probably means that my logistics alt would be better suited for this instead.  So in that case, what do I use the PI alt for – maybe train for mining?

As is the case with Eve and the sandbox environment – too many options!