Shout-out to Talvorian Dax, hero archivist

With the unfortunate shutdown of Eve's official wiki, the Evelopedia, one blogger has taken it upon himself to preserve some of the site's most useful content, the guides to running cosmic signature PvE sites. (The database closure made headline news on TMC and EN24).

Running these sites is actually pretty fun and if you're interested in doing Eve pve you should try it as it's both interesting and lucrative.

A cosmic signature PvE site

They have a lot of rats inside

It's a huge help to have the walkthroughs so do check Talvorian Dax's new cosmic signature ratting guide section. It's a work in progress, he's been adding pages all day. You might want to tip him some isk for the help. Or just let him know that the hard work's appreciated.

Even without this very useful project Talvorian has emerged as one of Eve's outstanding bloggers and his site should definitely be on your readers/blogrolls/whatever.

AAR: Eve London

I successfully deployed to the Weatherspoon's pub in central London for the Eve Meet yesterday where I met corp mate Heathen Blackguard. He does, in fact, look somewhat like one would imagine a heathen blackguard to look like, fortunately he took the night off from holding up stagecoaches or whatever he does in his regular life to drink me under the table instead.
 
It was a quieter turn out than usual, one of the oldest Eve Meets it's been eclipsed by louder showier rivals but it's still a fun place to go talk about Eve. There's always a mix of Eve players, some quite casual, some famous FCs or alliance leaders. I met Rocket X, Suas and Sort Dragon who are all pretty high profile. I also met Omega from PL who was really nice and got to have some real talk about what might await me if I eventually get into PL and try to run fleets. It didn't put me off but it did prepare me for what would probably be a tough landing for a new FC to that alliance. There was a drawing competition and a guy from Rim C won himself a Rhea by drawing one. I also met Tibs again from Eve NT who I know from previous Eve Londons, he's so genial he's always a pleasure to chat to. I briefly met the CEO of Bovril Borers but I didn't get a chance to chat to him, people kept distracting me with alcohol.
 
I also met a CCP dev but didn't catch his name. I did appreciate his laid back humour, I guess working at CCP and dealing with all of us nerds hones a sense of humour.
 
I was introduced to a concoction called "POS fuel" which is served in a bucket and looks like sewer water. But hey, it's got Pernod in it so it can't be bad right? Hmmm, not sure about that one.


One of the more entertaining moments of the evening was watching Omega trying to explain entosis to Suas while Sort Dragon interrupted every couple of minutes with an obscure (and possibly wrong) correction. Apparently once the beer glass has been entosised salt and pepper pots magically appear throughout the constellation and then something something.

There will be another one in about 6 months or so so.

Instructional video for new FCs

BB 72: Roadmap for me; roadmap for Eve

BB72 is on the subject of roadmaps  and I'll break it into two parts.

For me I have a very clear idea of what I want to achieve in Eve.

- I want to FC Titans.

- I want to win the Alliance Tournament.

- I'd like to sample each and every new experience that our developers introduce.

With ambitions so grandiose I have to break it down into smaller achievable steps. Currently I'm in Waffles, feeder corp for PL, because getting into PL would be a step toward the first two goals. If I do get in then the next steps will be getting into the AT squad and getting accepted as a subcap FC. If I don't get in I might have to shelve one while focusing on the other as few alliances both fight with titans and have a decent chance to win the AT.

These are long term ambitions that may take me years but I'm very clear on the direction I want to go.

Wide open road

By contrast with Eve overall I'm much more inclined to be laid back about things.

In general I think the people at CCP are getting most things right, are far better game designers than me or any other player and can pretty much be trusted to develop the game on our behalf.

I have a few random thoughts:

- I hope the new areas of space that are opened up do not favour the large well-organised established powers. This is something they pretty much got right with wormhole space.

- I would like isk generation to be more susceptible to disruption. POSing up, perfect Local intel, etc, the only times players die while making isk in "dangerous" space is when they make a really glaring mistake.

- I would like to see disruption more susceptible to counterplay. As I write my alt is cloaky camping some enemy whose fleet of miners are POSed up while he's afk. I'm afk; he's afk, it's all very boring.

- I would like the same iteration and tuning that have been used to great success on the last three years of ship rebalancing to be used for other elements of the game, eg anoms and missions. Missions that people avoid should maybe pay a little more, Forsaken Hubs, so heavily farmed, need to be brought into line with the anoms no one ever runs. Just keep making small tuning passes that reduce the extent to which  PVE is solved.

- I would like players to be able to offer constructive feedback without these massive drama-bombs that seem to dominate dev-player dialogue. I don't really have any good solutions but listening to the latest Goon leader to be deputised to the CSM was just appalling. His interview was arrogant bragging about his ability to intimidate CCP staff, it seems their approach is "you didn't like the last bully  we sent so here's someone even worse."

- I'd like to see a shift away from the most vocal players. "Listening to the players" sounds admirable but in practice it means listening to a small subset of highly invested very vocal players whose interests run directly counter to most of the player base.

Our game in her hands - fine by me

Overall Eve Online is rolling along in a pretty healthy way and it's important to remember in thinking about mapping out new features that it's a very sound game that the people playing already enjoy. I want a roadmap with few sharp contours taking us in comfort through gentle country where  we feel at home.

Feedback on Jason Quixos' latest soloing post.

Jason wrote a somewhat frustrated post on his excellent blog. I started to write a comment then realised a) that I had too much to say and b) that a lot of people are interested in soloing and might find it useful to read his and my posts.


Some constructive criticism:


- first off, just having the balls to go out and try to solo is rare and awesome.

- don't worry about losing. Even the best soloers are usually under 50% on their killboards. Learning and improving is your goal as a soloer, challenging yourself so that you have to do  your best.

- join in-game channel Bringing Solo Back.

- you need to visualise the play. In sports athletes get taught how to do this. So for example a soccer player might imagine that to score a goal he might need to start his run late, get across his defender and glance the ball to the top of the goal at the far post. He won't always get it right but he's much more clear than someone who intends to just rush to the ball then slam it goalwards.

The reason I say this is that looking at the lossmail I'm thinking that there's a lack of a plan. Some of the modules suit a kitey plan, often referred to as "nano." It has railguns for long range, a long range point but what on earth in today's meta would take a fight with a Myrmidon but be slower than it? It's a slow ship with no nano and an armour plate. You won't be able to kite anything and your "kitey"modules are bad for brawling.

There are two basic plans in Eve solo pvp: brawl and kite. For brawling you take the short range weapon system (eg blasters), web, scram, mwd, then rush on top of someone, pin them in place then hope that your tank and gank numbers are bigger than theirs.

For kiting you want to be faster than them and never let a hostile get within 20km while killing them slowly from range.

The way you fit your ship should support your plan. Figure out the plan first, then the fit.

Here's a sample plan:

First you need to chose one of the archtypes or something out of the box entirely. We'll pick brawler.

We need to pick a ship. We'll go with Myrmidon, it's a strong ship at a low price and very engageable so you will get fights.

The ship has a drone bonus and an active armour rep bonus so we'll plan for that.

[Myrmidon, Brawler]

Damage Control II
Medium Armor Repairer II
Medium Armor Repairer II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Armor Explosive Hardener II

X5 Prototype Engine Enervator
X5 Prototype Engine Enervator
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
Medium Capacitor Booster II, Navy Cap Booster 800
50MN Quad LiF Restrained Microwarpdrive

Heavy Neutron Blaster II, Void M
Heavy Ion Blaster II, Void M
Heavy Ion Blaster II, Void M
Heavy Ion Blaster II, Void M
Heavy Ion Blaster II, Void M

Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Medium Nanobot Accelerator I


Ogre II x4 (active)
Ogre II x4 (spares)


Inherent Implants 'Noble' Repair Systems RS-603
Inherent Implants 'Noble' Repair Proficiency RP-903


Null M x1000
Void M x3000
Improved Exile Booster x2 (Standard is fine)
Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M x1000
Nanite Repair Paste x100
Navy Cap Booster 800 x14

The fit I've designed uses double web and scram to pin someone in place and then outlasts them due to an extreme tank. Generally people will die to you when they make a mistake and the mistake we're planning for them to make is to underestimate your tank. With heat this thing tanks 1000 dps (all Vs, no links) so a small gang of 300 dps cruisers should be beatable. If they have 4 guys shooting you, once you get one down you can comfortably tank them. If they shoot you with explosive ammo - normally correct for an armour tanked ship - you can tank a lot more with overheated armour hardener.

The stats on this fit overheated are 691 dps, 1032 hp/sec repaired vs omni, 1585 hp/sec repaired vs explosive, 13km web range, 1636 m/s speed, price 109 million isk.

There is a lot of player skill required to really master this - heat management, cap management, drone management, target assessment. Fortunately a very low level of player skill is needed to get started. Approach, web, scram, set Keep at Range to the optimal of your guns and shoot them and put drones on them while repping yourself. Turn off your mwd once you have them tackled and try not to waste cap. It's reasonably powerful even without heat.

You can gain real advantage by fighting in favourable terrain which is this: less than 30km off a  stargate. Here's how a fight should go. You get spotted, hero tackle come in. Don't aggress, let them take the gate guns (if you're not a pirate). They will want to scram you because they'll be worried about you burning to the gate or MJDing. If they can scram you you can scram them back except for a few ships (lachesis, proteus, keres, Navy maulus). If you see these ships you may be best to just leave and find another fight.

Once you scram and web something most things are going to die unless they have logi. Logi is another reason to leave and look for a different fight.

You will probably kill something then see their numbers build up. If you think you have the raw stats to out-brawl them keep going, otherwise look to deaggress. If they've got you pinned away from the gate kill scrams, then webs while approaching the gate, deaggress once you are nearly close enough to jump, overheat reps and mash the gate until you jump. Against a confident gang there's nothing wrong with taking the fight at zero to the gate. Once you jump you have the option of fighting them on the other side when they'll be a little disorganised and perhaps you can kill one then deaggress and jump back through. Using the stargate to split their gang is a big advantage and helps you play around enemy links.

Try to assess how many people they will bring. It might be better to learn one constellation well rather than to roam. Where Stay Frosty live in Ishomilken might be a good place to gather intel. Gather intel simply by flying there in a frigate and seeing who's in Local and who's on D scan. Get  a feel for how they respond and what they bring. Stay Frosty for instance respond much less aggressively when Rixx isn't online.

 Where we live in Kinakka is normally good but we're not home at the moment. Hard University stage out of Kehjari and they'll probably bring a disorganised frigate blob to try and kill you. Which of course is awesome. Don't fight in staging systems and don't pick on strong alliances like Snuff Shadow or Bebop.

Nullsec entry systems like EC- or A2- are great places to try this too. Querious in particular is full of gangs of all sizes.

Good luck, I hope that's some help.

Fraps yourself and watch your fights afterwards to see how you could improve.

For those about to blog.. we salute you.

I mentioned in my last post that a Blog Banter can be a good way to start blogging and I'm writing this post with the hope of encouraging new Eve bloggers.

Blogging can be really good fun and it's a personal soapbox where you get to shout your opinions out to the rest of the community. It creates a personal history, like a diary, I can use the sidebar to see where my head was at regarding this game in 2009 because I blogged about it back then. It gives peer review of your ideas which can help you refine them into better ideas.

Let me briefly mention what blogging is not:

- blogging is not a way to make money.

- blogging is not a way to become "space important."

- blogging is not a way to keep secrets. Don't put stuff you're not supposed to tell people in your blog.

- blogging is not a way to farm upvotes on reddit. A typical blog link gets downvoted to oblivion, there are about 3 exceptions to this, all very well established bloggers.

So where should you start?

Most blogging posts are one of two kinds: a soapbox post (eg offgrid links are EVIL!) or a diary post (today I lost my first Stork). Both kinds are fine.

Read other people's blogs with a view to what they are doing that you can also do. Some bloggers take extreme positions such as the Greedy Goblin, some people just churn it out with consistency and regularity like TAGN, some people are diarising the interesting gameplay they get up to like Cloaky Bastard.

It's really easy to start, just pick Blogger or Wordpress and take the defaults then publish. It's not really any harder than posting on a forum.

I suggest you start by writing for yourself. Do an article, then do another, then do another. Look at them, is this something you want to make part of your hobby?

If it is build an audience. Here's several ways to get people reading your blog.

- comment on other people's blogs. Many bloggers will click on interesting commenters and follow them back to their blogs.

- link selected posts on reddit. I definitely wouldn't make it a habit as it's demoralising to be downvoted but remember the people downvoting you are usually doing so for strategic reasons, as a way of gaming reddit, not anything personal.

- ask other bloggers to add you to their blog roll. If you reply to this I'll take a look and if I like your blog I'll add you. Don't be a pest, no one wants to be asked 50 times, you'll just get yourself blocked.

- write with consistency. Generally the most popular bloggers in the Eve community write daily. I don't, I don't want to work that hard nor am I worried about popularity but it works well for many bloggers.

- stay on topic. This is a rule I don't follow. If I wanted this blog to be more popular I'd stick with a topic, say FCing and publish only high quality articles that are relevant to people wanting that info. But the blog is for me more than for anyone else so if I want to sidetrack and write about something else I do it here. But that adds "noise" for people hoping to read something that interests them.

- get yourself added to Eve aggregator sites. https://evebloggers.com/ http://totaleve.com/
Please don't do this until you've stuck with it a couple of months.

Good luck and don't be timid about putting your views out there. It's what the internet is for!

BB71: Dear Santa. Thank you for all the presents!

A blog banter is a shared topic for bloggers to share their views about a controversial topic. BB71 goes as follows:

Too Many Ships Spoil the Sandpit?

We all like important internet spaceships right? The more spaceships the better right? Or are we getting too many to be easily to remember them all. A Mastodon on scan? That the hell is that and what does it do? Oh! Never mind!

Are we getting too many ships. Is it too complicated to remember them all and what their traits are? Do FC's these days need an encyclopedic knowledge of ship types unless they want their fleet to DIAF. With more and more ships being released each year will we ever reach "too many" or do you think there can never be too many important internet spaceship types?

Source: Blog Banter 71 - Too Many Ships Spoil the Sandpit?

You'll find a bunch of very good articles listed there from many of Eve's bloggers and, if you feel it's time you entered the discussion, start up a blog and post your thoughts, a blog banter is a good place for a new blogger to start.

This Banter seems to be seeing a general consensus that lots of ship complexity is a good thing although some bloggers admit to being rather befuddled by all the ships. Still you can be both befuddled by the complexity and still think it's a good part of the game.

For me the multiple ship types is part of what makes Eve an amazingly fun game. As a FC not only do I have to decide which ship type to fly (actually that's usually from quite a short list because for various operational reasons I like to fly the standardised doctrine fits from my corp) but also I have to assess support ships and I have to recognise and decipher an opponent's battle plan from the ships he has on field.

I'm going to use the rest of this post to talk about FC decision making and to show how Eve's rich range of ship types play into making that a complex and fascinating game with a high upside for mastery.

So a couple of nights ago I take a gang out. I decide to take Vexors for operational reasons - we had just deployed and an importer had earlier announced that he'd stuck a load of Vexors and Ospreys up on contract. I think it is a hallmark of a competent FC that he/she can run a fleet that isn't their own personal special snowflake brew, it's a trap for FCs to EFT some amazing fit and try to run that every fleet. So Vexors it is, not perhaps the strongest modern fleet comp but they apply well and kite well for cruisers.

Support is a key aspect of any fleet - how many Logi, how many Scouts, any special role ships. I would have loved a boosher but there wasn't one available so my support was 2 scouting Inties and 4 Logi cruisers.

We headed up the pipe towards Delve, passing a nullbear system which we shotgunned for a mining barge kill. Shotgunning systems in Vexors? One works with what one has. And it was in fact one of our inties that caught the miner.

As we neared Delve scouts reported a couple of cruisers, a couple of Canes and a Scimi. This is where I made a mistake.

A Scimitar is an expensive T2 logistics cruiser. In nullsec people don't usually fly them alone because the ship is much worse without anyone to rep it. This is generally true of all logistics because they don't rep themselves - if a gang has one logi then when we shoot the logi there are zero logi repping it. if a gang has two logi then when we shoot one they have one logi repping it etc. N minus one.

Hey ho I thought, a slightly smaller number of slightly higher quality ships, game on, let's brawl.

Then I made my second mistake. Numbers in Local chat increased as we jumped into them and started fighting and in my multitasking I missed this key indicator. Sure enough the rest of their 30 strong gang arrived on grid and I realised I'd made a complete cock up of this.

3 or 4 cruisers died, plus when I extracted we lost another on the way out. Not my best fleet.

Knowledge of ship types should have signalled me to get better intel and be more cautious. A Scimi? OK where's his friends? If I'd had one of my Inties check 2 systems ahead it would have found the rest of the gang and my group of a dozen cruisers would have tried to evade rather than taking the fight.

Later that evening I ran another fleet. This one worked out differently. I won this fight, it actually turned out to be a bit of a turkey shoot.

A gang had come, as gangs do, to the Pandemic Horde staging system in A2- in Querious. Ever see *Return of the Living Dead* where the zombie, after eating a policeman's brain, picks up the police radio and says "Send more cops?" That's what A2- is like these days. Please feel free to visit :)

I was planning to surprise them so I had my guys in Svipuls docked up, waiting for Horde to engage them. I knew that they might run so I had chosen my comp for the mobility and fighting power of the Svipul which I thought would do well against Battlecruisers. In fact when Horde undocked 30 Talwars they bizarrely decided to run. We undocked and, with our newbean friends, chased them to the outgate. They shed various members on the way, a Prophecy was tackled on our undock which I ignored, we killed a Blackbird on the outgate.

Here's where the difference between our type of ships and their type of ships really mattered.

I knew that even after a 60 second time-out due to our aggression we still had a great chance of catching the slow aligning, slow warping battlecruisers.

We caught them two jumps away in Ashmarir and belatedly they decided to take the fight. We lost one ship early then our Deacon logi - a new ship introduced in December - managed to stabilise us and we stopped losing ships. We killed a bunch of cruisers and battlecruisers while only losing the one ship. I was being backseated by an expert FC from PL who advised me to primary the Blackbirds first - a ship that can cause disruption out of all relation to its tankiness. Horde piled in in Talwars and helped us but frankly the battle was won. What was useful was that the opposing FC, despairing of killing our low sig high resist ships - Svipuls and Deacons - switched to the Horde Talwars and killed half a dozen of them, staying longer on field which was great for us as we were chewing through Battlecruisers. Thanks my Horde friends for your sacrifice!

I belatedly realised after the fight that perhaps I could have killed even more by deaggressing then chasing, depending on what route they took we could possibly have caught stragglers in another couple of jumps for what would have been basically free battlecruiser kills.

So this example tells us a lot about ship types. Which ships work well in which context. The Battlecruiser fleet lacked effective paints and webs so we could get away with running small sig low hit point ships against it because the application of the weapons would be poor. The usefulness of the new Tech 2 logi frigate - it's just tanky enough to hold where Inquisitors would not have been. The advantage of high warp speed. The correct order in which to choose primaries against a kitchen sink fleet.

That's the complexity that makes Eve Hard to Master. The old Blizzard mantra of Easy to Learn Hard to Master is a good indicator of an enjoyable game that will endure replaying over and over and the complex arsenal of different ships adds greatly to the Hard to Master side of the equation.

Does ship complexity penalise the Easy to Learn part? I think only if you are a FC or a soloer and those are clearly hard paths for players to take and they're not paths played by the majority of Eve players. So Eve offers plenty of Easy to Learn avenues while including features that make it Hard to Master for those who seek a difficult challenge. And that's the key to what makes this a superb game.

In conclusion ship complexity is a great part of Eve and adds depth to the game. It's definitely what can be considered "good complexity" as opposed to say things being complex because the UI is so confusing. It doesn't hurt new players as they don't need to know but some players will be drawn to paths that require us to learn ship types because we like and seek deep gameplay.