Member of the EVE Tweet Fleet

Friday, September 30, 2011

For Serious, Incarna Stuff

  Ok, so my last post was playing around and trollin' a bit, but this one is for cereal.

  It seems CCP is finally moving forward with Incarna features, albeit stuff that most people will ignore entirely. If you haven't gotten the SiSi client downloaded and installed, you may want to soon to get a preview of the upcoming cyno effect change, addition of other CQ types, and supposedly a new font.

  New Cyno Video

  New CQ types will be cool and should have been in the first iteration consider the time they had...so now they better be even better. But that's superficial stuff. The font is what really intrigues me since the current one is such an abomination.

  Maybe it's because I do a lot of typography and my font collection is as big as my music collection, but this font is the worst thing possible. There's waaaay too many characters that look the same and it's hurts my eyes to read. I hear the new one's not that great, but I want to see it for myself.

  The cyno effect is a neat change, not that I'll see it much. The current one is pretty crappy, considering the original was so hardcore.

  And, drumroll please, SiSi is also showcasing the return of ship spinning! So, no more whining eh?

  Personally, I'm unimpressed. It's like when I do a design that gets torn to pieces and then redo it. The next week, my professors will make the comment that it's finally where it should have been in the first place. Just so with CCP, they waste resources and then waste more redoing something that should have been done correctly the first time considering the time and effort spent. And while we all know and expect that, I am not satisfied with simply saying "welp, :ccp:" and having to continue to wait on the proper execution. Not that there is much I can do and that I do end up having to simply say it, but still...

EDIT: Forgot to say Time Dilation is now on SiSi as well. I hear it's pretty cool.

  You heard it here first. Maybe.
-Mem

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Incarna For Older Systems

  I was so happy when a corpmate gave me this link, it saved me so much hassle from dealing with the demands Incarna places on my machine. 


  Rise up, ye who CCP has abandoned!

-Mem

Monday, September 26, 2011

As The Universe Burns

  The red plague has been pushed back and the fight is being taken to their door this time.

  My last post mentioned a general call for help in wspace from AQUILA, a close ally of Narwhals Ate My Duck. Many responded and the big who's who showed up, like AHARM, Transmission Lost, DUCK, Talocan United, ADHC, and some others. The only way corps like this could come together and not shoot each other would be the threat of the Russians and their attempt to dominate wspace. I decided I wanted to be a part of this, since it's not every day this kind of a party goes down. And it turns out it's a good thing I did, because I can see Eve history being made.

  Apparently, over the last few weeks Starbridge forces were secretly infiltrating the AQUILA system with their forces, with as many as 4 dreadnoughts and a support fleet. This last weekend, with their wspace allies, Starbridge brought a 140 man fleet and began reinforcing towers. This was when the call went out. With these towers incapacitated, the defending fleet was hampered as arrays were inaccessible and resources became limited.

  But that hardly meant they were about to roll over. As the Russians logged for bed and left an RR Tengu tankball as hole guard, the defending pilots mustered their own force to kill and pod as many Russians as they could to free the hole and allow their own allies a route in to the system.

  In a surprising turn around, AQUILA was also able to hack the Russian POS forcefield password, through simply entering numbers since some Russians use QWERTY while others use Cyrillic keyboards and tend to use numeric passwords. This enabled them to steal some unsecured assets and decimate a couple dreadnoughts. Props on that. Although this also leads me to believe that they may have a spy in Starbridge, who knows. I believe this was also around the time when they reinforced the Russian tower. My knowledge is a bit broken up on all this.

  It was around this time I was able to make my way into the target system, quaintly named "Banana Hammock" with my cloaky Tengu. While they were running a mishmash of fleets, mainly armor, I was simply there to provide cloaky eyes and a bit of dps wherever it was needed. But I had only gotten in after the majority of the fun was already over. By this time, the Russians had decided to run as is their usual way. That evac group was around 55 ships with 2 Moros in tow, a force that could still put up a good fight regardless of what we had now. But of course, they had other plans and left at our low time.

  So all that was left was to wait for reinforce timers to run out and to pick off stragglers. I missed a few, but I was able to help pop and pod a Basi that logged on and bounced off the shields. I was extremely busy this weekend, so I kept getting off Eve to focus...only to come right back.

  The last time I was on for the day, I ended interviewing an applicant right before the POS bash. My computer was melting with the load I put on it with a Windows virtualization, web browsing, Eve and trying to do an interview while I shot a tower. Oh the fun of multitasking.  But that tower went down quick and I finished things up as I motored back home. The bash was quick with no resistance, although the CEO of Starbridge sat inside and watched in a nullified cloaky T3 til it went down.

  But as I motored home, it seems this group was still bloodthirsty and decided it was time to take the fight to the Russians. They got a way into a Power of Two system and are working on taking that down as of now. History happens when you least expect it. From this great "pew-alition" many things have come onto the drawing board. I hardly have the place to be talking about it, so I'll leave it at that. But maybe, just maybe, we can push the red menace out of wspace and keep their farming and botting in nullsec where it belongs. Or something.

  From all this I gained much. Much enjoyment in smashing a few Russians, a much different view of other corp cultures, and a much better post than usual :P It really was quite the scientific curiosity to watch and listen how all these corps interacted and how they all differ in terminology and philosophy when it comes to WH life.

  So I guess this is one of those times in Eve history when I get to say "I was there"....heh.
Now I am scrabbling to make up all the work I wasn't doing like I needed to be >.<
-Mem

PS. I want to also give another big thanks to Viperous Stark. PH readers best readers. I'll be shooting Russians that much longer now.

PPS. Make sure to check out the Aquila battle report too.

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Why I Hate Russians

  I should probably qualify that title by saying I hate Russians that play Eve. 

  It's a seems to be a pretty common feeling amongst the Eve Online community for one reason or another, but it is my repeated run-ins that have made me a bit...pessimistic. Every time I run into them in a hostile situation, they immediately run or SD everything they have to keep it from generating a KM.

  The only time I have ever had a decent fight with Russians was back in January of this year. In an operation codenamed Enchilada, we had an epic fight on a POS we erected to siege a Russian corp, but then they proceeded to SD as much as they could when they lost a lot of support and some caps to us. That's a whole story I'll leave for another post.

  I'm not quite sure what CCP was thinking when they decided it was a good idea to implement a self destruct mechanic that is available during combat. Not only that but, even with the ultimate destruction of a ship you have had a hand in beating to death, a successful self destruct does not generate a kill mail. I think that's my biggest gripe, the second being that I am denied the spoils that get destroyed thanks to the cowardice of my enemy.

  It's not as if this is a new issue nor one that would be hard to correct. A quick and simple change in the mechanic would be to simply disallow such an action if you have a combat timer. There is simply no reason a capital pilot should be given the choice to run into a combat situation, decide it's easier or better to SD the ship, and then do so before the opposing force can burn it down. 2 minutes flies by when you are trying to eat the tank of a carrier or dread, not to mention that of supercaps. Extending the timer would be just as easy or work just as well. Making the time 15 or 20 minutes for a capital size or larger means that they still have to work to get a successful SD, depending on what is killing them. It may even be prudent to extend the log off timer for this reason, making it so cap pilots can't simply log off and wait.

  This is a built up frustration that came to a head today, when we had capital targets. Our home chain extended out like a rat's nest, and in one hole we found around 5 or 6 caps...piloted and active. There were other caps floating around, but those piloted were gearing up for Sleeper site running. So we amassed our forces to jump them at a time of our choosing. This was the perfect opportunity to get my Vindi in on some hardcore action. I was hardly alone in the bling, since we fielded a couple Bhaals, a Mach and a ton of cruiser sized ships that we are accustomed to for fleets. We had logi, neuts and heavy dps ready to make this a glorious victory.

  We waited til the Sleepers were few, then sprang into action as our cloaky grabbed points on a dread and their Rapier. The Opfor at the time was a Rapier for painting and webs, a triage Archon, 2 Moros, and a Rev. Straight off we nailed the Rapier to keep from losing transversal and getting painted to all hell and got his pod. As it was, we nearly lost a Bhaal before our logi could save his hide. My client decided to die here, warping me out. The precious minutes it took to relog may have lost us the Archon kill, because we had everything point and began slamming the Archon with neuts. Then came the self destruct notifications. All of them, at once. The Archon came out of triage for some reason, only to go right back into it and proceed to slow our dps enough to keep any hope of burning the caps down quickly enough. Even with everyone overheating guns and draining every bit of cap we could, it wasn't enough.

  I had something of a small paddy when they each popped one after the other, denying any chance at phat lootz or grand KMs. Comms lit up with frustration and anger, to the effect of "fucking Ruskies".

  Not that CCP cares or will actually do anything about it for :18 months: but it's something of a sore point for me since it's rare we get great action and people just decide to flip us the bird with SDs. As a corp, we respect those who give us gudfites and even more so to those that bloody us up something fierce. Heck, even if people give us a good go and then pull back out of strategy rather than cowardice we are cool with it.

  So, as one bitter optimist, to you my dear reader I think I have a bit of a chip with Russians. Which seems quite perfect in timing because apparently everyone who is anyone in wspace is in a fight right now with Starbridge. Like, at this moment. We had a contact from Narwhals Ate My Duck asking if we wanted to join the party with AHARM, TALUN, LOST and others. It seems many have answered the call to unite long enough against the red invaders to beat the Ruskies out of wspace. They already took over nullsec, so we certainly can't have them thinking they own the true nullsec of wspace.

  I may be pulling some older material out for future posting or actually talking about the devblogs I've avoided til now because Mem's sub time is almost up and I don't have the ISK for a PLEX due to some recent losses and lack of time to get PvE in thanks to RL. Seems Eve is now mimicking RL :P

  May the road rise to meet you, wherever you are
-Mem

PS. One of ours snapped on FRAPs after they SD'ed and put it up here. There should also be a longer version of the entire fight coming later.
  

Monday, September 19, 2011

Wormhole Wisdom #7

Only you can prevent d-scan clutter. Put your toys away before you log, or that Archon may not be there when you get back.

Saturday, September 17, 2011

A Peace of Sorts

  Mech let the soft murmur of his ship's systems wash over him as his mind wandered nowhere in particular, letting his body relax in his bridge chair.  It was peaceful and exactly what he had always wanted out of life. There was enough chaos and confusion in the 'verse and he was glad to stay away from it. Finally peace, after a life under the Amarr Empire, and Mech was determined to savor every moment of it.

  The life as a transport pilot was a good one. Honest, steady work was always available in New Eden. This was especially true, what with the fickle nature of capsuleers that never stayed in one place for long. The ponderous movements and spacious compartments of his Orca class industrial suited his personality, such a reverse from the combat ships he had been forced to crew before Mem had saved him from that servitude. It seemed a lifetime ago to him now.

  Mech's mind shied away from the dark ruminations and he let his fingers fidget over the panels in front of him. Mem had given him the life of the capsuleer, but he preferred life outside the pod and being able to interact with his crew and ship in the way in which he was accustomed. Perhaps that's why his crew had come to trust him as they would a friend, no matter where he directed their path. Which was all the simpler, since he had come into the unknown depths of wormhole space after much convincing on Mem's part. 

  While Mech was happy to simply float around peacefully, Mem had a penchant for wanting a bit more...zest out of life. Of course, you'd never get him to admit it since his history was a rather tame one and he took pride in the rise of station from a mining family to capsuleer pilot. Let him take the risks, Mech would make sure his assets made it wherever they needed to go. 

  Mech let his mind be captured once again by the pings and reports of the vessel. Savor every moment.

  Besides, it wouldn't be long til---

  "Incoming transmission." Aura intoned.

  "Put it through." He sighed. Not long indeed.

  Mem's smirking face lit up the display. Mech couldn't help but chuckle, a rarity from the large Brutor.

  "I know that look all too well. Where to now, boss?" 

  "Told you not to call me that. But since you asked, looks like it's time for some new scenery. But.." 

  "But it could be risky?"

  Mem gave a nod that ended in a short laugh when Mech replied.

  "Ain't it all when you're involved? I can be ready to depart in a few hours, just need a heading."

  "Sending them now. I'll comm back with a move list in an hour, but need to take care of a few things. Glad to have you along, Amosan. Fly safe." The comm link died and Mech turned his attention to the readings Mem sent over.

  Then the Brutor's eyebrows slowly raised.



  ----***----

 It's been a long time since I did any IC posts...a very long time. And it was for the good reason of my last attempt being pretty terrible.

  I decided to just keep away from RP for the most part and stick to the game. I do have rough backgrounds for Memoo and Mech and I tend to keep those in mind when I play each of them. It kind of explains their training as well. But I don't want to restrict myself to the game if I do write any fiction, so I've decided that if I do any further fiction that it may or may not even be relevant to my in game dealings.

  They might also be random, not at all chronological and could be completely boring. I hope not on that last one, but that's a danger of creative writing based around a character that only you really care much about. :P

  I also hope to get a few good posts done in the near future since lately school is giving me the ole' 1-2 and the posts I have rattling around in my head are far from a complete thought. I hate putting up incomplete posts.

  I am also still pondering the whole change in hosting/design for PH. I'll give you plenty of heads up if the change becomes reality, but I do hope that if it happens I get to keep all you loyal readers.

  Keep on rolling
-Mem

Friday, September 9, 2011

This Is Where Your Sub Money Goes..

Take a look.

  Ok, back? Yes...it was a runway show of barbie avatar. Cool tat at least, but seriously...why is CCP wasting time and resources with this. Publicity surely, but beyond that I do not find this reassuring of how CCP makes decisions.

  Nothing new I suppose.
-Mem

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

What Is This I Don't Even...

  This should never ever happen. It was the only one of the 3 that we popped and podded. But if you are ever so filthy rich that it crosses your mind to fit faction or officer to your gas Ferox...just resist.

 Or better yet, do so and let me know where you are so we can do this again. Easiest 300+ mil to ever "work" for, so I'm hardly complaining :P

  Protip: Don't afk gas mine in wspace in a faction Ferox.
-Mem

Saturday, September 3, 2011

The Ups and Downs

  Today was an interesting day in Eve for me. It was a contrast in experiences, with regard to shooting other people in the face.

  It started when I had woken up and didn't have class for some time. Apparently, we had just scanned out a new static chain and had a few people poking around with probes of their own. So, instead of lumbering around in my Legion or Falcon as usual, I decided to ship into my Daredevil.

  Now this ship is one that has been around a long time for me, much longer than I originally anticipated when Kane Rizzel, whose blog now gives me a malware warning lulz, gave me the little monster. For a while, since I was still a young E Uni pilot and blogger, I feared losing it. It was a gift after all and I didn't want to lose it stupidly.

  Well I have repurposed it for wormhole hunting and lovingly named it Grim's Reaper, to be a fast tackle cov ops killer. I don't really use it at all, the only kill I think I've gotten in it was some miners. But today was to be different.

  Settling into the smaller vessel, I initiated warp to our static connection to do the wonderfully enrapturing activity of staring at a wormhole. Sometimes, even shooting it. Gotta make sure those things don't get away, man. I noticed I wasn't in fleet yet, so I decided to do so after accidentally locking the wormhole up. Bad timing on my part because my client chose to lock up.

  A Cheetah jumped in and decloaked. I could have sworn he jumped back out, but I think he just cloaked because he reappeared and tried to burn off the hole. That was a very stupid idea, since we had a Stiletto and Arazu with me. By this time, after a bit of muttered curses, I had the Cheetah locked and pointed, turning on my afterburner to hump his hull and light up my blasters. His fragile craft didn't last long.  Even more surprising, perhaps because I am not at all used to fast locking and fast moving, I nabbed his juicy pod and didn't really wait to extract the corpse.

  It was an amusing way to start the day and I was pretty excited to get the Reaper some action. But that was the extent of the goodness.

  Later, I signed on just as one of our scouts was calling that he was tackling a Rook that was a few holes away and one I didn't have bookmarks for in the first place. *cough*ccpdocorpbookmarks*cough*
  That pilot decided it was cool to come to our public and be a bit butthurt. I'm not really sure when people are going to realize that there are no fair fights and if you wander around solo in a wormhole without a cloak, you are asking to get ganked...anywho.

  The next disappointment came when we were picketing our static system since probes were moving around. I had gotten distracted with some work while I was sitting cloaked on a hole when a Thorax jumped and randomly warped off. He soon came back and our Stiletto was waiting, but he did some jumping. As I go to jump, my system thinks now is a perfect time to freeze my comms and crash Eve. What. The. Frell. (5 isk to whoever knows where that word is from)

  So there you have it. Wormhole space is a harsh mistress that will take as much as give, if not more. I should probably also start mentioning Bob in these posts somewhere. My corpies would say I'm some sort of heathen not to be proselytizing the wormhole god in all his power. Bob giveth and all that.

  So I sleep now, hoping for better blood tomorrow
-Mem

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Incarna Moves Forward

 Well it's moving forwards in bits, at least. There's some cool stuff like API changes that make data mining easier and a hopefully successful one that stops my client from crashing every time I use EVE voice in Incursion fleets.

  There's other items on the list, so I'll just let you take a look.

[Build 277036 to 287702 addresses Patch Notes for Incarna 1.1


To be released Thursday, September 1, 2011. The following are the relevant file sizes for client updates:

* Windows from Incarna 1.0.1 to Incarna 1.1 is 21.6 MB
* Windows full client 4.4 GB
* Mac from Incarna 1.0.1 to Incarna 1.1 is approximately 34.4 MB
* Mac full client 5.1 GB

EVE Gate (new forums will be open on Monday, September 5)
New official EVE Forums

* A new server environment is being deployed to host the new forums.
* A new player forum will be added to EVE Gate and will replace the old forum on eveonline.com. It will include the same forum functionality previously enjoyed by the community, along with additional features:
o Simple and advanced search options.
o An option to choose between normal or compact view for the threads.
o Ability to “Like” posts and see number of Likes per post.
o Each thread has an option to "Tag as Favorite"; this will add it to your Favorites page so you can easily find it again and quickly spot any new activity in the thread.
o A quick reply function that allows you to post a reply to a thread without loading a reply page with full formatting options.
o A character dropdown list full of handy options, such as sending EVE Mail or going to their EVE Gate profile via one click, or the number of Likes the user has received in total on the forums.
o RSS feeds for threads and search criteria.
o DEV, GM, CSM, ISD and External Partner characters have a colored badge overlay on their avatar. Additionally DEV and GM badges have been added on EVE Gate profiles.
o Forum Settings will now be located on your EVE Gate profile settings page, retaining the usual functionality of toggling corporation/alliance information.
* The old forums will be cast out into space to be frozen in time and remain fully viewable, but in a read-only mode. Threads and posts from the old forums will not be included in the new forums.

Activity Notifications

* The Activity Notifications function lets you know when you have interesting activity happening on EVE Gate and EVE Forums. The alerts appear in the notification icons found in your EVE Gate header; as real time popups, and for those moments you are busy looking at another site - you can see the number of new activity in your EVE Gate or Forum browser tab.
* The Mail Icon notifies you when you have new unread mail. Clicking it will take you straight to your EVE mail.
* The Notification Flag shows you how many new activities you have on EVE Gate and the forums. Clicking the flag gives you a dropdown listing your new activities and takes you straight to them. At the bottom of the notification dropdown list you find a link to your Activity Notification page where all notifications are listed by date.
* Players will be notified of the following activities in real time:
o When somebody posts on your wall.
o When somebody comments on your wall post.
o When somebody comments on a post other character has made on your wall.
o When somebody posts a reply to a forum thread you subscribe to.
o When somebody likes your post on the forums.
o When you receive an event invitation.
o When you receive new EVE Mail.
* In your EVE Gate profile settings you can customize which notifications you receive.

Personalized backgrounds

* You can now choose from a selection of backgrounds in your EVE Gate profile settings. This release includes seven backgrounds: Minmatar, Caldari, Gallente, Amarr,Incarna, Incursion and Tyrannis.
* You can have a different background for each of your characters.
* Players can personalize their EVE Gate backgrounds in their EVE Gate Profile Settings.

Captain’s Quarters

* Some visual improvements have been made to the main screens and menu systems within the Captain's Quarters.
* Fixed a rare case where action objects would not be interactable.
* Fixed several potential crash issues with EVE Voice.
* Fixed an issue with fleet voice chat that could prevent people from using voice chat at all.

API
Customizable API Keys

* Customizable API keys and a new, improved method of accessing the API, were implemented. Please refer to this dev blog for more information.
* The new API management website is located at https://support.eveonline.com/api.
* The API system will still accept legacy API keys for a limited amount of time.
* Please make sure you update your third-party applications and create a new API key for them!

Contracts

* Contract updates are now available to third-party applications. For more information, please read this dev blog.
* Three new pages were added to the API (in both /char and /corp): Contracts.xml.aspx, ContractItems.xml.aspx and ContractBids.xml.aspx.

Miscellaneous

* Items in the AssetList and ContractItems will now include a rawQuantity attribute if the quantity in the database is negative. Negative quantities are in fact codes: -1 is a singleton item and -2 is a blueprint copy.
* MarketOrders.xml.aspx will now return all active orders plus all orders issued in the last seven days. An optional "orderID" parameter can be provided to fetch any order belonging to your character/corporation.
* CharacterInfo.xml.aspx now includes employment history.
* WalletJournal.xml.aspx should no longer cause an error when rowCount is high.

User Interface

* The “Show Info” window for drones in your ship's drone bay now displays the correct attributes according to your skills.

Graphic General

* Resolved a sorting issue which made hair render in front of the ship's hologram in one's Captain's Quarters.
* The Machariel will now be animated in your station hangar view like all other ships.

Technical

* Switching ships while docked in a station no longer causes a session change.
* When adding or removing turrets to/from the ship, the hangar and the fitting window view wasn't updating until the next ship change or undock. This has been fixed.
* CarbonIO has been activated on the game client. More information regarding CarbonIO and our future plans can be found here CarbonIO will continue to work on the server but will not be activated in the client during this patch but is scheduled for a future deployment.

Localization

* The German and Russian clients have had several changes made for consistency and linguistic issues throughout the game.
* The confirmation message when abandoning loot now displays the option to not show the message again for the Russian and German clients.
* Some formatting issues in the ESC menu have been resolved for the German client.

Mac

* Fixed an issue where NVIDIA hardware would render characters with yellow hands; this fix only affects Snow Leopard as the NVIDIA driver was fixed in Lion.
* Optimizations to VBO (vertex buffer object) should provide a performance boost to AMD systems in some cases.
* An issue where the Jukebox cut off the end of some songs has been substantially reduced in scope, some songs still lose a few seconds at the end though.
* Some memory-related fixes were introduced, significantly reducing the number of crashes due to running the client in high-detail mode.
* A workaround was implemented to circumvent a NVIDIA 9400 crash that was affecting users running OS X Lion.
  Well it's moving a bit. There's some cool API changes that make data mining a whole lot easier and an Eve Voice bug that kept making me crash in Incursion fleets. I'll be testing that one soon.]


-Mem