Little of This, Little of That

  Much has been happening in my travels through New Eden and beyond. So I guess this post is kind of a check up/update kinda things. More to figure out what I've done so I can remember what I still need to do :P

  So Mech has been able to fly Orcas now for a couple days and I have to say...I love it. It's awesome. The drag of training all the skills up was so very worth the ability to have my own mobile base. I can shove ships inside it, spare modules and assorted loot that I can then use the Orca to fit on my ships, and an ore hold for when I decide to carebear it up. Space is a premium when you live out of a POS, so having your own "private" space is quite a luxury. I love it even more when I take it out to kspace. I said I was going to try highsec explo and boy have I. My first try at it was just alone in my Gila scanning systems near the exit we had into highsec. I got very lucky and almost immediately got an escalation that had me traipsing all over the Forge/Citadel area. At the end I got some Dread Gurista missile launcher and a pitiful deadspace frigate sized shield transporter that nobody wants. But I was hooked. So now, with my very own Orca, I went back into the Citadel/Forge area loaded up with my Buzzard, Gila and a few other handy ships and modules to try again. Sadly, I was not so lucky or successful. My best find was a radar with 2 Tuning Instruction thingies. But I will press on and be more intelligent in my planning of routes. With my refining, I shall bring you my experiences and advice should you want it.

  I also mentioned a bit back that we had a rather awesome operation against some Russians. That will be its own post, a rather long one, when I can kick myself enough to write it. Life has been very hectic lately and it is only getting worse. But my thorough enjoyment of cloaky ECM has hardly been halted. The last couple weeks have been filled with some interesting kills, pricey shiny kills, and this extremely embarrassing kill among many others. That last one..I just don't know. The more I live in wormholes, the more I seem to run into complete idiots. Seriously, failfit AND carrying fighter bomber books, drone books, warfare books, and those drones you see were never even launched. He came to kill us....and never even launched drones. I've gone over 200 kills which is big for me and almost 50 billion ISK destroyed. Maybe I'll do a blog celebration at 50..idk xD

  One of the hectic things is the podcast. I want to apologize again for the failure to get iTunes to work with us, even after some frustrating emails with people I'm not sure knew what I was even asking. In the interest of sanity and progress, I have started the process of re-hosting the podcast on a different page. Maeve initially did this, but has taken a break from Eve and NEC for a little while, so I am doing what I can in the interim. It is still on podbean and I am working to make it look identical, but the site is driving me nuts with confusing upload requirements and errors as well as my lack of understanding much about feeds in the first place. This is all because iTunes isn't letting us resubmit the first feed we had, thus my current predicament. Hopefully, though, this will mean we can give you all an iTunes address to be more convenient. Thanks to all the listeners for being ever patient with our bumbling. Getting this started was much harder than I anticipated. We were supposed to record Ep 2 this last Friday, but CK posted on FB last minute that he had a RL engagement come up and rescheduling has yet to happen. I really hope things don't failcascade, because I am enjoying it and think it'd be a great podcast to keep up.

  For those of you that read my posts from the RSS feed, you won't have noticed anything different. But for those that use browsers, you may have noticed a new little thing under the post. It is an ad. Only one, so don't worry I won't be spamming anyone with ads. It's something I never thought I would have, but recent encouragement from a few people has had me try at least. Never feel pressure to do anything with them, you can ignore them altogether if you wish. It is kind of an experiment on my part, but also perhaps a way to earn a buck or two every once in a while doing what I love. I am hardly a novelist...yet ;P As a college kid, and one that is trying to pay off a ring for that special girl, I figured it might be a way to worry less about Eve subscrips. Nothing more, this blog is dedicated to Eve and thus anything that comes of it will be as well. Anyways, that's enough of that.

  Time to sleep. I have a lecture Scuba about biology and need to review the physics lecture we had last week. Heh.

  Fly well my friends
-Mem
 
 

 

Hulkageddon Neareth

  And so it has come, another Hulkageddon to purge the cosmos of the defenseless. This iteration is slated to haunt systems all around from February 19th to the 28th, midnight to midnight. Of course, as always, there are prizes for those who kill and whatnot. This time, though, be aware that industrial ships are fair game. That means haulers and Orcas and basically anything that can't shoot back. The official website with FAQ and lists is here.

  I try to stay reserved with my opinions about it. I have mixed feelings, but this is a blog of course so I get to spout whatever I please :P Anyways, I do know the reasons. It fuels the economy with the demand for ships rising rapidly, the tears that they enjoy..a point I will come to later, the fun of sploding pixels, so on and tiresomely so on. I have never been tempted to do this and probably never will. I know people that have participated and it doesn't sound half as fun as what people make it out to be.

  I understand the reasons. But I really don't like it. Not because I can't or won't fight back, that point is moot since I don't mine in kspace. Simply because blowing up people that happen to enjoy shooting rocks instead of people and cannot fight back in any effective way in that setup is just sad. I really don't understand the joy gankers/ninjas etc get out of ruining peoples' day and I have stated this before at length so I won't drag that on. I live in wormholes, called the wild west for a reason, and I do blow up anything there including miners and haulers. But the setting is what matters in my mind, so Empire space having laws means something. No, space is not safe in Eve no matter where you go. I just find that going out of your way to do such things is low and in some ways just makes me pity the person. Remember, I am only talking about those that do it for the tears and enjoy the making others angry.
Now Memoo, this is just a game blah blah blah blah
Why yes it is. It's a game with pixels that nobody should get overly upset about losing. I am able to shrug losses off and move on as every pilot should be able. It's also a time investment and highsec is home to carebears. I now see I did drag this out...sorry. Moving on.

  So! Instead of whining about it, here's some words of caution to the wise. If you can help it, just don't undock in those ships. It's simple. Mission run or find a different facet of Eve for a bit. If you really can't handle the urges, the do it smart. A good quick list to run down is found on the Eve O Forums. Smart advice, that post. Heed it and live it while HG IV is raging. Or, if none of that works for you, come to wspace to mine. You can control the environment far more and I highly doubt those roving gangs will go anywhere near wspace. Keep an eye on D, if you do. I might find ya ;)

  So, be safe out there. Or have fun blowing up carebears. Either way, can't say I didn't warn ya :P
-Mem

Innovation in Planetary Interaction

  The expansion of Incursions has brought many changes to Eve. Some hailed as good, some not so much. One of the good ones, at least relative to its old state, is the nature of planetary interaction. When PI was introduced in Tyrannis, it was a strange beast that to many was nothing but a massive series of clicks. Well that era has ended. Perhaps it is a little late in coming, but it has nonetheless.

  So, for those that have already had their fingers in PI, you most likely already know these things. But for those of you that have been thinking of getting into it and waited for this change, perhaps I can shed a little light to help ease you into the logistics of the process.

  As with the previous iteration, one must have the appropriate skill levels to start. These being Command Center Upgrades, Interplanetary Consolidation, Planetology and Remote Sensing. The last two are less vital, but can be handy when selecting your target planet. The higher the first two, the better off you will be in the long run.

  First, you will want to decide what you intend to build. Organizing this information will be very important if you have a lot of logistics to do or to make the most informed decision on the planets you want for your operations. To this end, this PI material guide has done me worlds of good for tracking what I need and where I can get it. Many thanks goes to Korai for this.

  Now, it used to be that you had to purchase the right CC for your level of skills. ie. Basic CC for level 1 Command Center Upgrades and so on. Well that has been done away with, thank goodness, and now you simply need the right CC for the planet you wish to colonize. So grab it, stick it in your hold and make your way to the system you're using. You only have to be in the system, not at the planet, to set up. So if you can sit safely inside POS shields, go ahead by all means. Next, you will want to select your planet and hop into planet view mode.

Simply named Gas Command Center now. Ignore the dancers :P

  This is where the Planetology skill comes in handy for scanning for resources. For our purposes, I shall set up a Gas planet. The better the skills, easier it is to find better resources. So here, I am looking for Noble Gas and Aqueous Liquids. These will later refine into water and oxygen. Placing your CC can be crucial, especially with lower skills. The farther your setups are spread across a world, the more powergrid and cpu it will need. So when I scan a planet, I play around.

Scanning itself can be confusing. When you first see it, it'll look like this:

  This bar is what will allow you to change and see varying degrees of resource deposits. Cooler colors mean less and hotter colors like red and white are the richest. The left most side is the lower limits and the right the upper limits of your scan. If the left shows 50 of resource X, bringing the slider farther to the right will bring that up. Thus, when you see blue on the planet, instead of only being 50 it is 150 of that resource. It is hard to find resources so rich that you can see white on the planet when the slider is left in this position. So I bring mine more toward the middle, meaning I find plenty of the resource I want in sustainable quantities. So it will look something close to this:

  After you do so, you want to switch between resources you plan to harvest on the planet and plan your CC placement accordingly. So on my gas planet I have noble gases and liquids as so:

  It seems I am in luck and the resources are very close to each other, nearly in the same place. I place the CC closer to the lesser resource, since the more abundant one is usually close by or there's enough to make the placement satisfactory. Switch over to the build tab and click on your CC, placing it where you deem best.

  So, now we don't use different types of CC's, but what does that leave us with now? Upgradeable command centers. I love it.

                                            

The green upgrade level is an indication of how awesome you are

  

Your skills will apply now in a different way. You can, for a sizable amount of isk, upgrade your CC to the appropriate level that your skills allow. For me, I can get up to all but the highest.

 As you can see, the change in PG and CPU is enormous. This allows me to have a lot more flexibility with my building. Of course, the millions you spend up front will be remade in the long run, so if you can float this you're fine. Hit the submit button when you are ready and we can move into setting up the rest of the colony. 

My first placement is always a spaceport. Why? A couple reasons. I route everything into it and it allows import/export. I stopped using the CC as a launcher after my first day of PI, I hated it. I also tend to use it as an anchor point for routes, etc. and it means there's need to link anything to your CC. After this, you can build the extractors. These are now called Extractor Control Units, because they use "heads" for the actual extraction and are quite handy. They also had a wide diameter of operation, so setting them down can be quite a bit easier too.  

The ECUs now cover a larger area than before

  Go ahead and set them down and link them back to the spaceport. I do as much in the edit mode as possible just in case I need to fix something and not waste ISK. So here we go:

The start to our production line.

  If you notice, these two ECUs take up a sizable amount of grid and cpu, so be wary of how many you use and how far they are. Linking things together, while relatively cheaper, still adds up. Hit submit and click on an ECU. Click the survey button and you will be presented with a new type of window. It can be rather confusing too. 

  Your first action will be to select the resource you want on the right hand side. Doing so will bring back your visual scan and show you where the richest deposits are. Next, head over to the left side where you see those columns of circles. Those are your heads. Each one is placed in a different spot in a circle around the ECU itself. Now, before you go extracting anything, you can click on those individual heads and move them where ever you want inside the diameter of the ECU's control range. This is an amazing and useful tool to enable you to balance the resource depletion against extraction rates. These will add more load to your grid, but as long as you have decent skills you should be ok. The cost only comes from adding the heads, not placing them inside the control range. I try to keep it to 3 heads placed in a fan towards the resource, just so I have decent extraction, but room left for other actions I need that cost PG/CPU. When you place the heads, you will see bars jump up in the middle like a graph. This will show you how much you can extract within your overall cycle. If you look in the lower right corner, it will give you the per hour and total output numbers. However, I have found in my work that those are far from accurate and can't be trusted unless CCP decides to actually fix it. They may  have already and I hadn't noticed, but I doubt it. So look at those numbers and take it with a grain of salt. The more the better, either way. Now that you have it all set, what time do you want it to run? The great part about this new stuff is the ability to set the time anywhere from 1 hour to 14 days. You can even do it by 15 min increments.

  The thing you need to worry about now is resource depletion. Play with the time frame and watch your heads. If you notice, the field around them expands outwards the longer you have the cycle set. If you have it set to 14 days, the circle around them looks like it is filled with white noise. Find a setting that works for your schedule most of all, but also allow regeneration time for the resources. I live in wormholes so I barely have to worry about all that. For now, I'll set it to a day and a half, the graph showing that the resources deplete over that timeframe:

  After you are done submitting for both ECUs, don't forget to route the materials into the spaceport. It is likely that you will get denied, though. Don't worry, there is a fix. The culprit is usually the links that bear the load of transport. They default to 250 m3/hour, so I upgrade them to 1000 m3/hour if I have the grid. It'll look something like this:

  Now you can properly route your materials. Hit submit and let them run while you set up the next step. This will let you have the materials to use in the later stages so you don't have to come back to route them later. 

  Next, you will want to set up the basic industry facilities to refine your extractions. If you don't want to refine, then you can stop there and just set up more ECUs more mass extraction. But onward we go. With so many materials coming in, I tend to set up two refineries for each resource to make sure things are running efficiently. You can set up more if you want, it all depends on your needs and your abilities. 

  Now my colony is shaping up nicely:

  When you set them up, set them close to your storage to use as little grid as possbile. If you need additional storage, you can always set it next to the spaceport as well, the layout is entirely up to you. Click on the facilities and choose your needed blueprint and route them back to the spaceport.

 If I wanted to run advanced refineries, I tend to place them at the top, mainly just to look pretty, but also because the basic refineries can link straight to it and route the materials it needs into it. If you have too many basic material refines coming out, just route them to storage and then back into the advanced facility so as to not waste. Now, those extractions you had going? Hopefully you are close to getting the first cycle dumped into storage. If they have already, make sure to route those into the refineries one at a time. However, if they haven't completed yet don't worry. All you have to do to get those materials routed is to use the route you have already established. What do I mean? Click on your storage, then the links button on it. When you find the incoming materials, click on that and create a route with it into the processors and you are good to go. This will take those materials when they get to storage and immediately put them into production. Then hit submit and watch the whole process heave into motion. Soon you will have piles of what you want that you can then export and pick up at your convenience. (Protip: You can use the customs office as extra storage. If you need to import materials to react in advanced refineries, keep spare materials there and import when you need so they don't take up space on your planet)

  There are many needs for PI and thus many different set ups that you could possible need. It could be nothing but extractors routing to storage to launch out or you could have a complex web of links and routes. Play around and tweak as you wish, it's quite customizable and interesting when you get down to it. 

  

 So there you have it. The new face of PI in all its buggy glory. It's not a perfect system, but people wouldn't play anything if they wanted perfection. It works and that's all that matters I suppose. For me, it is a great tool to help my corp and to satisfy my carebear ways now that I have turned into a death machine. Almost 200 kills as of this writing, woot. :P I'll leave my usual updates on things for the next post, since I intend to link this to people when they need the information. 

  I hope it has helped with your own endeavors. If you find better ways of doing things or have more info, feel free to comment here or shoot me a mail in game. If you need any other pointers or info, feel free to contact me as well.

-Mem

Saviors or Slaughtered

  The hostile incursions of Sansha Kuvakei have begun in earnest. The debrief from CONCORD gave some interesting information, even disturbing. The resulting chaos has shown how capsuleers may or may not be able to actually work well enough together to overcome a common enemy. As I read some of the dialogue and things from the Live Events, the nerdy RPer in me got all giddy. It's hard for me to like RP in video games, preferring table top and my imagination. Video games are too meta for me to be able to get fully into character. But reading the way others do so is pretty awesome. Roc Weiler had quite an interesting write up.

  But alas, I have yet to experience anything of the sort. This expansion will have to work hard to prove itself, and the effort:reward ratio is severely unbalanced in my limited opinion. It seems so many players have already been slaughtered, in highsec even, trying to combat the invaders. Consequentially,  ship prices have been on quite the rise. None of this really affects me, seeing as I already deal with Sleeper drones on a daily basis. I am an incursion already, you could say. I have lived in Empire and now wormholes and it's my opinion that the release of wormholes was one of the best expansions. CCP wouldn't go wrong to throw us a bone with the Sleeper story line or mechanics for living inside wormholes.

  For now, I will watch and listen to others' take on the slaves Kuvakei has released on New Eden and observe from afar. The encouragement of blob tactics and crashing nodes in kspace is rather...unfortunate. I believe it could have been handled a bit better, but that's just me. I have not had a post in a while for RL reasons and because I have a very big post coming up. I have gotten some very good, and some very odd, kills in my Falcon and I am loving it. Let the hating and flaming begin.

  Mech is a day away from his Orca and I cannot wait. I have, with quite a bit of convincing from corpies through their own success, have decided I will try my hand at highsec exploration and use the Orca as my mobile base. Get a good circuit and you could make quite a bit of money in an evening, depending on your luck. I hope mine will be good and I will of course chronicle my exploits. Will I find expensive faction mods? Will I finally encounter ninjas or griefers? Will I find romance among the stars? Who knows! It will be quite exciting.

 School is currently curbstomping my face, so I apologize for the lag in posts. Life has certainly turned the heat up lately. Anyone have that issue? Heh anyways..

Lemme know what you think of the Incursions
-Mem

Incursion's Reveal

  This has certainly been an interesting patch, hasn't it? For myself, I was rather frustrated to begin. After a 12 hour day of moving apartments, ubercleaning the new on, and getting much needed supplies I was worn out and ready to see the new stuff. Well that would have been nice if CCP hadn't decided to screw Mac users over. It seems I got the least of the trouble, as my verification failed for the download only once. From what I saw on the forums, it seems quite a few files got corrupted for many users. I do understand patch days are impossible to predict and I do commend CCP on their vigilance in rectifying the problems. But I missed out on a massive fight as I was waiting to redownload. Oh well. I finally got it up and going and went straight to sculpting Memoo. You can get in game without doing this for 30 days, but after that you have to make your character. Besides, why wouldn't you want to?

  I started playing and seeing what they had done to polish the creator. Which is to say, it was basically the same as the SiSi version. No tattoos for Minmatar...? No difference between castes in races? Hmmmm....I also had a bit of trouble since the FPS was extremely low and my character moved, which made me angry when it messed up my work. On I trudged.

I was very tempted to go white guy corn rows, as I used to have dreads...but resisted. Mem didn't seem to like it much either :P

  I tried to use my SiSi model as a reference, but I just couldn't seem to sculpt it the way I had then and wanted him to look. My SiSi model looks young without looking like a child and has a look like he knows a joke that you don't know. Well....my new model looks slightly more anorexic and not so subtly coy. 

I tried..

and tried. Played with lighting and poses, I kinda like the seriousness here.

I reeeeally like this one. The dramatic lighting, pose, and background. It works, but too serious for Memoo?

  So, I finally got to where I wanted it and was happy to save. So I hit save. Then I hit save again. Frustrated, I mashed my mouse as fast as I could. Well dangit. For some reason, the idiotic editor decided to say "Screw you!" and I couldn't even save my model and pose. I went back and tried again, to no avail. I had to start over. 

  By this time I am tired and frustrated, so I fly through the remake and this time it takes. It left me with this...um...gem.

Still deciding on it.

  Not what I wanted...not sure how I like the look. But as I passed through Amarr, someone sent me a mail saying "Cool avatar"...that made me feel pretty good :) Corpie said he looks metro since you can't see his arms very well or something..whatever. The good news? We get a do over, so I may just redo Memoo. They are adding UI changes and a few things, so use your redo wisely. I will wait a bit, methinks. What do you think? Should I leave it or go for the dark and serious or something else entirely?

  Also, with ongoing communication and patching from CCP, it seems:

"We will be introducing the ability to repeatedly recustomize characters in a future release. The current plan is to introduce this at the same time as we release tattoos, scars and piercings so players can take advantage of these new assets. We are still in the early design phase, so we don't have any more details at present. Expect a devblog explaining more in the coming weeks"

  As for the rest of the patch, things are certainly changing. Sometimes that's great, sometimes I wonder if CCP is smoking crack. For instance, the game now measures a decloak range 2,000 km from the edge of an object, yet still measures distance from the center of an object. lolwut? Sleepers are now also harder to kill/kill you harder, so I anticipate T3 production costs rising quite a bit. That means we make more money if we get our Pve faces on. PI is now a bit of a different beast, it took some playing to figure it out too. Although most features are the same, extractors have had quite a work over, placing heads and extracting far more with time intervals that you choose. It can be anything from 15 minutes to days and day, chosen by the hour or half hour if you want. Time to finesse my production lines, it seems.

  By and large, this is an interesting and massive patch that has done quite a bit of good. But I still think there's polish needed and I am hardly the only one to think so if forums and conversations are any measure. Step in the right direction, anyhow.

  Oh yea, and while I was gone the whole day doing things? Yeah, I got Recons trained. I got my Falcon Viperous Strike home and fitted up. I am waiting for Recon IV before I really take it out, since fitting and flying are two entirely different things. I don't have all the mods on it that I want, but it's rigged and cloaky, so I'm excited. Time to jam some people into submission. One of my corpmate has also seen the light and loves his new Falcon as well. *evil chuckle*

  Anyways, there is still much RL for me to do. I am far behind already since profs are insane. Time to work and play catch up.

  Laters

-Mem

  

Incursion preparation

  Just wanted to give you all a quick reminder to set long skill queues. This patch is looking to be a monster and Tranquility will be going offline earlier than usual. Who knows what the aftermath will look like. I have a 3 day skill in myself, just in case. If all else fails, CCP will just give us free SP like they did previously. I hope :P

  I am pretty excited for this patch, but my day will be spent moving apartments and playing catch up in RL. My how it can just throw everything at you at once and leave you feeling like you're drowning.

  Anyways, good luck and see you on the other side
-Mem

Capital Punishment

Unfortunately, my life is crazy chaos right now so this won't be the detailed and fun post I want it to be. You have my apologies.

  For those of you that think carriers are beasts and triage carriers are nearly impossible to kill, I bring you evidence of the contrary. After an hour or two of fighting, we took down an Archon and a Thanatos that had battleship support including Scorp, Amrageddons, Raven, Proteus, and others.

Battle Report

 We only lost 2 in the fight, the first loss was unrelated but still shows in the report. You know you are truly a Pvper when you see carriers not as something to be worried about, but something to put on your killboard.
 
  Also proving once again that ECM is amazing as are logis. Oorah ADHC, you guys are awesome.
-Mem

Moar Learning and Podcast Note

  Just a small post for today. I posted before about finding the neocom able to hide. Well, I have been missioning lately to grind up R&D agents and noticed this is quite helpful to know when you complete a mission. The whole thing comes out as well as your journal flashing, so it's a good visual to notice when you can leave. A post over at Zraltori's blog also taught me the wonder of the control button. You can use it to lock everything on your HUD, so you can keep menus from going away or you can keep your overview locked so you target the right thing in a fight, etc. My corpmates jestingly mentioned that I can move my targets....something I have wanted to do for a long time and never noticed the nearly invisible anchor that was barely on my screen. Fail CCP or fail me? lol

  Beside my display of ongoing noobishness, the next episode of New Edens Chronicles will be in the works very soon. RL comes first, so getting 4 people's schedules to coincide can be difficult. We have put it off to also allow the final part of Incursions to release, giving us lots of good stuff to talk about and get your feedback on as well. The first episode was at a rather awkward time I think with holidays and school restarting so hopefully it gets much smoother in the new year. I'm pumped, even if I feel like I'm flying by the seat of my pants sometimes :P

  I also had a cool conversation with someone that recently started reading PH, one of the few times I've been convo'ed in game :D Always awesome to hear from all of you, so thanks for stickin' around.

 Just wanted to keep you all in the loop.
-Mem

Blog Banter 24- Synonymous or Anonymous?

  Welcome to the twenty-fourth 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!

  This month's Banter topic comes to us from the ever helpful Eelis Kiy, capsuleer behind the "Where the frack is my ship" blog. She asks: How does your real life personality compare to who you are as a character in EVE? Does a good leader of people in the real world make a good leader of pilots in game? Or vice-versa? Do your real-life skills help you with the roles you fulfill in your corporation or alliance? Or do you behave completely differently? Does the anonymity of the Internet allow you to thrive on the tears of others in New Eden whilst you work as a good Samaritan away from your keyboard? Or are you as mean outside of your pod as you are inside it? Have experiences in EVE Online affected your behavior, skills or attitudes outside of the game?


  How do I compare to Mem? There really isn't a big difference, if at all, to tell you the truth. My view of actions dictates how I am no matter the environment. This is why I have an issue with ninjas and griefers.  I uphold my values, those leaning toward honor, respect, and dignity in the game as the "Good Samaritan" that Eelis calls it. The anonymity that the internet has given to the world has, in my opinion, been one of the worst things to affect society in this century. Go to Youtube and read the flaming comments on any given video, you'll lose brain cells for it. Simply because the game mechanics allow it, I do not turn into some douchebag that's out for the tears of others. I cannot tell you how much I hate people that feed on the misery of others. I've been told my sense of justice is rather strong and I guess it is since I see things as black and white in life.

  It's not like I think the person behind the keyboard griefing is a terrible person because of it. I don't know them so I have no place to make that judgement. But actions are what show me one is capable of such things. Is there something in people's lives that they need to have such an outlet? Not a clue. But it's not something I could do myself. But Mem, you live in Wspace, how do you reconcile what you do there? That is something that has come up in the corp as idle chatter a couple times. How do I think of it? Simple. Wormhole space is lawless and uncontrolled. Those that go into it and establish a life there effectively forfeit all they have by doing so and accept the risks. The ships I have in wspace are already written off in my head. My Gila has been quite lucky on a number of occasions, but if I lose it I lose it. So if you are mining or roaming wspace and I blow you up, it's not something that is outside my bounds. You're simply my prey at the time. Those getting blown up may feel otherwise, but theres no CONCORD, there's no law. Those that gank, steal and grief in highsec are breaking specific laws intentionally. It may be getting into RP quite a bit, but that is how it is. You may think that is sufficient, you may not but this is my .02 ISK for the Banter.

  As to real life skills and abilities, of course. If one is charismatic in real life there is no reason it cannot translate to the game. They become corp or alliance leaders or great FCs and deservedly so. This may also be the case when developing skills in Eve that could be applied or the principle of the skill applied in real life. If you become confident in leading as FC, you can become confident leading a team on a project. Games can be a very productive form of entertainment or hobby. People have attributed stereotypes to gamers and mock games, many of whom don't blink at the thought of passively watching hours of television or movies. What we do is active, social, engaged, and in some cases demanding. Games are quite underestimated in my experience and opinion.

  I do not think Eve affects attitude outside of Eve, but it may influence skills or behavior. The behavior one is a subject I am reserving for the next episode of New Eden Chronicles. Skills would only be strengthening social and leadership skills, perhaps refining diplomatic skills. Other than that, nothing that comes to mind for me.

  Enough about me, though. What about you? How do things relate for you?
-Mem

Thoughts by others on the matter:

1. EVE Blog Banter #24: Be, all that you can be, and so much more!
2. BB24:RL + EVE = | A Mule In EvE
3. Freebooted: BB 24: You Talking to Me?
4. where the frack is my ship?: Blog Banter 24: Behind the keyboard
5. (OOC) CK’s Blog Banter #24: I Am Prano. « Prano's Journey
6. mikeazariah » Blog Archive » BB24 Who are you, who hoo woo hoo
7. Drifting: The 24th EVE Blog Banter (January 2011 Edition) - Topic: EVE and Real Life
8. Victoria Aut Mors » Blog Archive » Eve Blog Banter #24 – Where Eve Meets Real Life
9. Who is more real?? « The Durzo Chronicles
10. Captain Serenity: blog banter #24 - Personalities
11. Confessions of a Closet Carebear: EVE and Real Life (EVE Blog Banter #24)
12. The 24th EVE Blog Banter - EVE and Real Life - The Phoenix Diaries
13. » EvE Blog Banter #24: EVE and Real Life EvE Blasphemy
14. Blog Banter 24: In Real Life « Yarrbear Tales
15. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Alt « the hydrostatic capsule
16. Blog Banter #24 – Me « Roc's Ramblings
17. Blog Banter: Personalities in game and out of game
18. Fiddler's Edge: Game Face - Eve Blog Banter #24

You Learn Something New..

  We all know Eve has something of a steep learning curve...

 
  Yea...so as a testament to how Eve sometimes has too many clicky features or how you can always find something new to learn in Eve, I had something of a doh! moment recently. My brother was on comms and mentioned right clicking the neocom. And you can make it autohide.

Oh. My. Goodness.

  I just got like an inch of my screen freed up for whatever I want! Yes, I never knew you could do that or move sides with the neocom..I guess I just didn't explore enough in the beginning and never went back to it when I got comfortable. Doh. Needless to say, I'm pretty happy about this. I always wanted a way to get more space and to get that annoying thing off my screen til I need it.

  Learn something new every day.
-Mem

Create A Starship Redo

  As you may or may not have known, a second contest has been administered after the debacle with DeviantArt. It is in its final stages of entries and you can vote for 3 from your Facebook account...that is if you have one.

  Final Vote Link

  Now, my votes were a bit biased for a few reasons. The first being: Seriously? So many freakin' Amarr ships? I understand the design characteristics lend themselves well, but there really is no need for more Amarr...dirty slavers.

  My second was the fact that, for the love of everything pretty make something symmetrical!! I am not sure why CCP became so infatuated with lop sided hunks of ship, but it drives me insane...personal preference perhaps, but one I find many share. Symmetry is beautiful..nice and even..so yeah...

  My other thought is, why doesn't anyone design a decent Caldari HAC or similar vessel? CCP right out said they won't fix things like the Eagle because nobody uses them...as if that logic is something you want to use when shaping a game environment. *rolls eyes* The Cerberus can be outdone by a Caracal in many instances or a Drake. The only ships Caldari pilots really fly are the Drake, Tengu, Raven, Scorp, and of course my beloved Falcon. Ravens have largely been reduced to mission running or POS bashing, the Tengu is excellent at Pve and alright for Pvp, and the Scorp has to be primary with little tank if it wants to be able to have enough jammers.

  Anyways, I will withhold my votes so as not to bias anyone else, but I think I already let that ship sail with my previous points. Good luck to the incredible designers and I can't wait to see who gets voted to the top.

-Mem

Adhocracy....At War?

  Here I thought these were over after the Uni, but sadly not. We are indeed at war as of a moment ago by Federation Mercenary's. I think this is the second time in the last year or two that a proper dec has been issued to ADHC. And it's great when people that can't even spell mercenaries correctly wardec you.  Their entire killboard amounts to around 3 or 4 billion ISK destroyed....we've destroyed that much in a single kill and do as much damage on a regular basis.

  Now, the question is where it came from? They are obviously amateurs that we can eat for breakfast, but what else is behind it waiting? We have had a few recent run ins with AHARM...ones that were hardly civil from their end. They got pissy and tried to come into our home, getting spanked for it. They planted a scan alt in our place with threats and bluffs all around from their joke of a diplo, who said he can't even order his own corpmate to leave...most useless diplo I've ever seen then. Of course, if they ever really do try to bring the fight to us they don't know what kinda hurt they are in for. They also can't do it alone, as they've proven against other corps, having to hire mercs and usually pull out their capitals. But hopefully it'll be good fights.

  Perhaps there's nothing behind it and the mercs are stupid enough to think we are carebear haulers and easy targets. There is also speculation that it is over a 6bil lottery that one of our member won from Eve Radio today. Apparently some guys were trash talking about how the winners should get ganked and 2 min after our guy won...this lands. Coincidence? Maybe. This is the more likely reason, but you never know. Possibilites abound. It makes me happy, though, since I will soon be jamming noobs in my Falcon, named after it's gifter, Viperous Stark. I won't get in until I have at least Recon IV, but it means as soon as I do I will have targets to annoy.

  Things are certainly getting fun in the new year
-Mem

A Whole New Look

  I *FINALLY* got SiSi to work long enough to get something out of it for you guys. Memoo has looked like some French weirdo punk rock wannabe for too long and the character editors on SiSi are fun to play with. Now, they are really incomplete because the lighting effects wouldn't work for me and some details wouldn't generate like hair. So instead of having a mohawk that stands up, Mem just has a strip down the middle of his head...lol

This is what I started with. Time to mould 

A bit into it, I decided I wanted a less naked Mem

A closer look. Mem is sporting a younger look, but not too young

I like being able to do so much to get a great shot. I did a few, just playing around and not really caring since it's not permanent. The multiple slots makes me wonder if we can use them alternately.

  All in all, this is a far leap from our current avatars, and a precursor to walking which will be fun. I enjoy the updated look and the control over your individuality.

Before

After

Mem

Busy Bees

  Firstly, a bump. A bit ago I did a forum sig for a Unista that returned and requested it also be a blog banner. Looks like we have a new blogger, so head over to Zraltori's place and say hey. I'm not sure that the sig scaled well, but he likes it so I'm ok with it. Since I started out as a miner, his blog can let me shoot roids vicariously through him I suppose while I kill stuff. I also keep totally forgetting to mention that Azmodeus Valar chose my design as his blog banner as well, which I thought was pretty cool.

  Speaking of killing things, I just hit 100 "real kills". I broke 100 a while ago, but I wanted the real kills before I mentioned it.

99.05% efficiency, love it. 

  Last night was a marathon of killage, rolling holes and finding targets. Amusingly enough, they happened in very similar circumstances in each instace. The first hole we jumped into found us an offshoot wormhole that had a POS under siege by a bunch of battleships. Armageddon, Raven, Rohks, and others that were mainly T1 fit.

Like a Maelstrom.
Shooting missiles.

  Seriously...where do people get these ideas? Mixed tank fleet and the only logi boat is a Basilisk and a bunch of drones. Fail. But it makes for good times for us. But it seems they were at least slightly less dimwitted in scouting since they saw our cloaky jump in and convo'ed him, offering "safe passage" to highsec. Well, we fooled him into thinking we went home. Then watched as we got a warpin and a fleet assembled. We then get the green light to jump in and hold cloak, waiting a few seconds before warping in. It seems that was our error because they aligned and when we landed with our bubble up there were only 2 left for us to pop and pod. It was a rather lesser fight than what we hoped we were getting into, but kills all the same. After getting mailed by these guys, it seems the POS owner was a corp thief, he was even yapping in local asking if we were gonna sit or finish the job...seriously. So temp blue status was given and we told them to come finish the job. We aren't bad guys, we just want to kill pixels. If the other guy had come out with a battle worthy fleet, we would have engaged him. And them. Just saying :P

  So we rolled the hole with little use left in it. The next hole gets scouted out and I soon here that another POS in under siege. The aggressor was a part of Transmission Lost, a newer group that we have run into before. They are competitors of a sort and ones I don't mind taking out at my earliest convenience. I don't really like TL. Anyways, there's 2 battleships and a bomber bashing some abandoned POS, so we do what we do best and drop on them. Well the bomber cloaks and gets away, leaving a hostile in system, but the other two are popped and podded. It also seems someone was good enough to check the tower, because we now see it is in structure. Easy killing for easy loots. So we reship into a fleet of bombers and go at it, quickly downing the tower and leaving the arrays inside free for our taking. We get a bit antsy though, because hostiles starting coming back into the hole. A Falcon and a scanner come through, but our eyes are too far to get them. Then a pod from the Abaddon we killed comes back, having to slowboat out of the warp bubble they had put down on the exit. So our man pods him yet again. I hope he didn't update his clone or had nice implants, cuz that's just funny.

  We get to popping the arrays, but nothing really comes out other than a couple cans. But the cans are so nice inside, I'm a bit surprised. Domination and Federation Navy modules littered along with T2, jump fuel, a Deimos, Myrm, a couple Skiffs, and tons more stuff. Talk about a nice haul. Getting kills and massive loot so fast is awesome. A few people grab haulers and get it home, myself as well. I reshipped to my Gila just as the Falcon decloaked and jammed the only guy still on site, a Hookbill. Apparently the bomber came back as well, but failed to pop our guy and they both soon left when we returned. After all that noise, we rolled the hole again so we didn't have to worry about retaliation.

  All in all, a good day and fun times.
-Mem

Gank Gone Awry

  If there is one thing I love about wormholes, it is our neighbors. It could anyone on any given day and our encounters range from bloody and hostile to merely noticing each other in passing. Or in the case of this post, camping them until your eyes bleed.

  Local in any system can be interesting, but wormhole local can get hilarious. I even made a thread in our forums dedicated to these kind of events. Since local is delayed and you don't want to talk to give away that you are there, it's usually blank. If someone chooses to, it usually turns into a real jem. In this instance, I have been highsec missioning for R&D agents, but got bored and wanted to come home. Thankfully, after days of links that are 30+ jumps away from me, I got a 7 jump trip. So I made my way in a shuttle, leaving my mission Drake behind. As I came into the lowsec system that ran home, it was called on comms that a Chimera, Tengu and Nighthawk had appeared on Dscan, one by one. Sounds tasty. So I wanted to get in and reship to be useful. Well, I got told to sit tight so I don't spook what may come of it. Bloodthirsty scoundrels :P

  The carrier made its way enough to poke outside the POS shields and sit. He most likely intended to assign fighters with the carrier and then solo sites in the T3 or command ship. But then he simply goes AFK. At this point I make my way in to home and reship to my Gila and camp the hole back. So we get restless enough to send a pilot in to poke around and look dumb in his Cane. We don't usually bait with Canes, but that may be a good thing. So he starts trying anomalies, but it turns out his tank won't last the second wave so after one site he moves to the next and lets the trigger simply live.

  This seems to get the carrier's attention as he reships into the Tengu and warps off. Next thing I hear is that he is on grid with our pilot, 100km off. He was cloaky so it's rather odd that he decloaked and then warped off to a planet. Then the fun begins in local.

[06:25:13] Issaqauh haven't seen you guys in our wh for awhile

We didn't know we had been here before, much less made ourselves known to his corp. So what do we do? Have fun.

[06:26:27] Our Guy Is there someone in here?

[06:26:46] Our Guy I ran out of ammo, and this frig wont let me go

[06:26:48] Issaqauh ofc, lol

[06:26:56] Issaqauh but you already knew that....

[06:29:11] Our Guy do you have any extra EMP laying around or something? or could you kill the frig?

[06:29:38] Issaqauh I do but last time you guys were in our wh you set a trap and got some of our ships.....

[06:29:56] Our Guy ?

[06:30:04] Issaqauh Adhocracy corp

[06:31:09] Our Guy i dont recall being in this wormhole before

Then our prey gets smart. He read our corp descrip or something because all of a sudden he is in our public channel. O.o

[06:31:48] Issaqauh > I think it was Asayanami Dei and Klak...??? something and some others

  Ok, now I'm really interested so I go digging in his killboard histories. It's not so much a killboard as a lossboard, really, and I still find no results showing for us killing his corp or alliance mates. But he obviously remembers us. We figure, playing dumb may get us something to play with so a collaboration springs up from a few corpmates.

[06:32:56] Corpie > hmm?

[06:33:05] ilove fallout3 > que?

[06:33:29] Issaqauh > I was chatting with your guy in local, thought I would answer him in here

[06:34:17] Corpie > Local, where, in lowsec?

[06:34:26] Issaqauh > nah, in our wh

[06:34:49] Corpie > Uh ... why was he even talking in local?

[06:34:52] Our Guy > oh, hey!

[06:35:17] Our Guy > oh... right

[06:36:23] Corpie > So, dude, local chat, really?

[06:36:32] Issaqauh > my fault,

[06:37:12] Corpie > oh?

[06:37:23] Corpie 2> dude, thats against our policies, im reporting your ass to a director

[06:37:33] Our Guy > what, seriously?

[06:38:45] Our Guy > kinda need help. this frig wont let me go and im out of ammo

[06:39:07] Corpie 2 > dumbass, where the hell are you?

[06:39:09] Corpie > Geeze dude

[06:39:18] Corpie 2> did you get yourself stuck soloing shit again?

[06:39:22] Corpie > how far in are you?

[06:39:49] Our Guy > um...

[06:40:16] Corpie > Am I really going to have to stop mining to kill a frig for you?

[06:40:29] Our Guy > my bookmarks say im in hole 5

[06:40:40] Corpie 2 > sec

[06:40:42] Issaqauh > normally I would help a guy out but....... last time you guys were in here you set a trap and got one of my corpmates

[06:41:08] Corpie 2 > sorry man, you might have to eject or some shit... someone didnt put the bookmarks back

[06:41:15] Corpie 2 > check your cargo

[06:41:38] Our Guy > um... how long would it take you to rescan...

[06:41:45] Corpie> the bookmarks haven't been updated?

[06:41:46] Our Guy > i think i still have the BMs

[06:41:51] Corpie 2 > 5 holes deep? fuck if i know =/

[06:42:11] Corpie > yeah, that really helps loads man, you have the bms and you can't get back

[06:42:22] Corpie 2 > err, lets take this to corp chat and not do it in public

[06:42:28] Corpie > gj buddy

[06:42:39] Our Guy > well, i would be okay if this local guy would drop me some ammo or something

[06:43:26] Issaqauh > lol, ofc you know you can just move away till out of range..... they do stop following at some point.....

[06:43:38] Our Guy > really?

[06:43:43] Corpie > I say he should put you out of your misery for you getting into the situation you're in, IMO

[06:43:56] Our Guy > f-

[06:43:57] Issaqauh > someone with your experience..... from 2006......?

[06:44:11] Corpie 2 > gd ebayers

[06:44:19] Our Guy > top speed is like 75m/s gonna take forever

[06:45:14] Corpie > How are you gonna get out man?

[06:45:27] Corpie > you're way too deep, we don't have bms

[06:45:28] Our Guy > gonna try to motor out i think

[06:45:37] Corpie > podexpress?

[06:46:08] Our Guy > nah, got like +3s. besides, i think i have the BMs back

[06:46:51] Our Guy > just gotta get away from this frig

[06:46:55] Corpie > How about you put him out of his misery Issa?

[06:47:26] Issaqauh > nah, this is too fun to watch :-)

[06:47:50] Corpie 2 > 10mil reward to the first person to scan him out of there - from his wallet

[06:48:29] Corpie> I feel like washing my hands of this, mining seems more productive

[06:48:40] Our Guy > sorry guys :(

[06:48:56] Corpie2 > get back to sucking, at least youre making money unlike that scrub

[06:49:29] Our Guy > he can't make money, he can't even kill that frig and he's scrammed

[06:49:29] Issaqauh > lol

[06:54:19] Our Guy > wait, i think the frig just unscrammed me for a sec there

[06:54:41] Corpie > and you didn't leave?

[06:54:47] Issaqauh > he has atleast a dozen times since i've been watching....

[06:54:47] Corpie 2 > ...

[06:55:02] Our Guy > i didnt realize he would do that...

[06:55:17] Corpie 2 > you have drones right?

[06:55:33] Our Guy > i do not, or this stupid thing would be dead

  It seems I lost the last bit of chat, but it basically ends up that he warps out when the frig stops scramming him and thanks the local for the tip. Our guy now looks like a complete idiot to everyone in our public chat, but that may come in handy some day. The ad libbing that went into this was phenomenal and I almost wish I could have added to it, but we wanted to keep it to as few as possible. It was almost as good as actually killing this guy. Almost. He was a bit observant on a few points, enough to keep out of our grasp, but gotta give points for playin' with us.

  So even when you are staring at the butt of a wormhole for nearly an hour to end up not getting a kill, it can still be fun. We have some pretty funny stuff in that thread, I may have to dig out some jewels for you all.

  Always fun times in wspace
-Mem