Merry Christmas!

Have a wonderful holiday both in the virtual world of your choice and in the real one!

Eve: The Assault Stabber

Sometimes in Eve you just need speed. This fit is a throwaway tackler, designed to be used in situations where you perhaps outnumber your opponent but they have the edge in quality. Particularly useful against kiting ships like vagabonds cynabals and tengus which are confident of being able to out-pace you.

[Stabber, Assault stabbers]
Damage Control II
Overdrive Injector System II
Overdrive Injector System II
Gyrostabilizer II

Experimental 10MN Microwarpdrive I
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I
Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor I
Large Shield Extender II

220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II, Hail M
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II, Hail M
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II, Hail M
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II, Hail M
Medium Unstable Power Fluctuator I
Small Diminishing Power System Drain I

Medium Auxiliary Thrusters I
Medium Polycarbon Engine Housing I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I

Top speed is 3211 m/s. Overheating the MWD usually adds at least 30% so over 4km/s with that in place. (Skirmish links can also be used to give a pack of these significant additional speed and propulsion jamming range). It's virtually untanked, a measly 16,192 effective hit points. It's not designed to solo, it's designed for blobbing opponents who feel they are flying ships which counter blobs. The fastest Stabber only has to survive long enough for the second fastest Stabber to catch up and establish secondary tackle.

Any ship tackled by one of these is in trouble. He'll be webbed (-60% speed), scrammed (can't warp off, use MJD or MWD) and will get shot neuted and nosed. The fit does a respectable 260 dps, enough to add up if tackled by several of these. Each neut destroys 180 cap per 12 seconds and the nos sucks up 9.6 cap per 3 seconds if your cap is lower than his. That's not really enough to put most pilots in trouble if tackled by one of these ships but will ruin someone's day who gets tackled by several.

Alternatively these ships can kite using Barrage ammunition. That has a range of 25km to optimal + falloff  (50% damage). The ship does 93 dps at 25.7 km using Barrage ammo.

It's fast tackle but much more sturdy that tackle frigates usually are and packing a medium neut too.

This can be taken out as a gang of just these ships. They're quite survivable as they can burn out of range of most things that can tackle them they still move 478 m/s even when scrammed and anything scramming you is likely to be webbed and scrammed several times over. This makes it a very good training ship for new players as the ship lasts long enough that they can try out different escape methods (eg burning back to the gate, burning out of point range etc).

They fit very well with any fleet doctrine for large fleet fights as long as they hang back until just before the enemy decides to warp out. All big fleets love fast tackle and it's very common that the fast tackle all dies early in an engagement.

If you want to take out a mixed cruiser gang they pair very well with scythes and ewar cruisers as the long range of those cruisers allows them to participate where other cruisers wouldn't keep up.

Low skill notes: tech 1 modules are absolutely fine. It's ok to be a little slower than the maxxed out people. If short of grid drop the nos and the neut.

These can be made and fitted extremely cheaply as part of a newbie free ship programme.

Sinkfleet

It's inevitable sometimes that a FC will have to take out a kitchen sink fleet, everyone having a different special snowflake ship and fit. Sinkfleet is an attempt to impose some uniformity so at least the ships all do the same thing.

What thing is that, you ask? Brawl.

The reason for brawling is there's no point having snipey battlecruisers off doing 200 dps when each enemy ship is in our face doing 700 dps. Every ship counts and the simplest job to give a generic mixed collection is close range damage.

So here's the doctrine:

High slots close range weapons, (optionally neuts). Close range faction or T2 ammo.

Mid slots: web, scram, microwarpdrive,

Low slots: at least one weapon upgrade (eg a heat sink),

In addition try to fit a tank consisting of Damage Control II, and either Shield Extender plus invuln or EANM plus plate. Shield extenders and plates should be oversized if possible (eg a LSE on a cruiser, a 1600 mm plate on a cruiser).

Include drones, damage drones ideally Gallente Tech 2 drones.

Use any left over slots to increase 1) speed and 2) damage in that priority order.

The role of this fleet is just to nuke the crap out of anything it can catch. It's not recommended that anyone bring anything subtle like logistics or ewar, just all come in gank ships and kill them before they kill us.

It's also possible to make sub-doctrines, eg Destroyer sinkfleet, T1 Cruiser sinkfleet.

Eve: Oswaffle Doctrine

This is a doctrine with a story. In our Alliance we're fortunate enough to have a player called Carneros who is one of the most pleasant and gentle people you could ever hope to meet. Especially in Eve. He's the nearest thing our Alliance has to Mother Teresa.

Naturally he flies logistics ships and when he reported for duty a few nights ago he duly asked for an Osprey to fly in a Tech 1 cruiser fleet. Naturally he assumed that the drones inside would be repping drones.

I mean, who would put damage drones in a logistics ship?

This guy would:

http://www.li3.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=15460249

Here you can see that our FC for the night, in addition to being shot by -A-'s Ruptures was also ferociously assaulted by his own healers. In fact Carneros was third highest damage, just behind Makalu (yes, he's that Makalu, if only it had been him killed by the Osprey!).

Carneros was quite cross about the sneaky insertion of damage drones into his healing drone bay but had to finally cease berating the person who fit the ships that way because none of us could stop laughing.

So here's a doctrine inspired by this incident. It's a fleet entirely of Ospreys that slave their drones to the FC, web or scram a nearby enemy then focus on healing everybody. Effective hp is 26,675.

[Osprey, Oswaffle]
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Damage Control II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

Large F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction
Experimental 10MN Afterburner I
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I or Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor (fleet should be 50/50)
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II

Medium 'Regard' Power Projector
Medium 'Regard' Power Projector
Medium S95a Partial Shield Transporter
Medium S95a Partial Shield Transporter
Medium S95a Partial Shield Transporter

Medium Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I


Hobgoblin II x4

Low skill notes: tech 1 modules or lower meta modules are fine.

Eve: HED job fit

This is a frigate with very high locking speed, tremendous speed and not much else. It's very good for the specialised role of getting onto killmails in major gate camps or decloaking stealth bombers who are a fraction too slow to cloak up after jumping a stargate. It has a scan resolution of 4167.8 mm, enough to lock a frigate in 0.5 seconds. Top speed is 4204 m/s.

I've used variations of this fit to catch several cov ops and stealth bombers in the space where we live in Querious.

[Slasher, hed job]
Micro Auxiliary Power Core II
Overdrive Injector System II

Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I
Sensor Booster II, Scan Resolution Script (keep Targeting scripts in case you need more range)
Sensor Booster II, Scan Resolution Script
Sensor Booster II, Scan Resolution Script

280mm Howitzer Artillery II, Tremor S
280mm Howitzer Artillery II, Tremor S
280mm Howitzer Artillery II, Tremor S
Salvager II

Small Targeting System Subcontroller I
Small Targeting System Subcontroller I
Small Targeting System Subcontroller I

Eve: Popfleet doctrine

Popfleet is long range Caracals. The Caracal has a 50% missile velocity bonus which means its missiles fire out further. While there are no modules that boost effective range of missiles, it's possible to rig for both missile velocity and flight duration. At that point the missiles reach out to 141 km if they are faction or Tech 1. (Tech 2 missiles have 75% of that range for Fury and 50% of that range for Precision).

[Caracal, Popfleet]
Signal Amplifier II
Damage Control II
Overdrive Injector System II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

Sensor Booster II, Targeting Range Script
Experimental 10MN Microwarpdrive I
Large F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II

Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Nova Heavy Missile (have Mjolnir Precision Heavy Missiles available)
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Nova Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Nova Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Nova Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Nova Heavy Missile

Medium Hydraulic Bay Thrusters I
Medium Hydraulic Bay Thrusters I
Medium Rocket Fuel Cache Partition I

Low skill notes: try to keep 2200 m/s and the long missile and targeting range. No need for T2 launchers and the tank's not all that important. Don't change the rigs and do add another Sensor Booster if your targeting range is under 141km.


Missile damage can be boosted by target painting and the Bellicose is specialised in doing just that. It will probably be painting in falloff range which means some paints will fail but that's ok. Every paint that lands boosts the whole fleet's damage. This fit also includes light (ie frigate-sized) missiles which give the ship a useful secondary role if tackler frigates get close.

[Bellicose, Popfleet]
Signal Amplifier II
Signal Amplifier II
Overdrive Injector System II
Damage Control II

Sensor Booster II, Targeting Range Script (have sensor script available)
Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron
Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron
Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron
Experimental 10MN Microwarpdrive I

Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Inferno Precision Light Missile (have faction available, also some other damage types perhaps)
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Inferno Precision Light Missile
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Inferno Precision Light Missile
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Inferno Precision Light Missile

Medium Particle Dispersion Projector I
Medium Particle Dispersion Projector I
Medium Particle Dispersion Projector I

Eve: Brawlfleet doctrine

Brawl fleet doctrine has a simple approach to pvp: you chase them down and shoot them in the face. The fleet is composed of just Vexors, although a skirmish link command ship and or perch burner helps a lot.

Its disadvantages are that it is relatively slow, very close range and lacks any form of healing.

Its advantages are that it hits like a truck, webs and scrams anything it catches and the ships are fairly tough. It's also cheap and fun. Plus it's scaleable all the way down to 1 ship.

[Vexor, Heavy Tackle]
Damage Control II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
800mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I

Experimental 10MN Microwarpdrive I
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I
Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor I
Drone Navigation Computer II

Heavy Neutron Blaster II, Void M (note: no point having a long range alternate ammo in cargo, this ship never kites)
Heavy Neutron Blaster II, Void M
Heavy Neutron Blaster II, Void M
Heavy Neutron Blaster II, Void M

Medium Processor Overclocking Unit I
Medium Ancillary Current Router I
Medium Trimark Armor Pump I


Ogre II x2
Hammerhead II x2
Hobgoblin II x1

1534 m/s 736 dps 23700 effective hp.

Low skill notes. Tech 1 versions are fine, meta 4 if possible otherwise the highest meta available/reasonably priced. Can drop low slot tank modules to fit +grid or + cpu modules if necessary, try not to drop damage boosting modules.

Eve: Stabberfleet Doctrine

The notion of Stabberfleet is simply to be faster than most things we fight so that we can outmanoeuvre the opposition. Stabberfleet has two ship requirements: 2700 m/s speed (before boosts and heat) and over 1 minute 20 seconds until cap depletion. Any ship that can manage that is eligible for Stabberfleet although logistics and long range dps are also important.

The healer: Scythe

[Scythe, Stabberfleet]
Overdrive Injector System II
Overdrive Injector System II
Damage Control II
Capacitor Power Relay II
Capacitor Power Relay II

Experimental 10MN Microwarpdrive I
Medium Shield Extender II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II

Medium S95a Partial Shield Transporter
Medium S95a Partial Shield Transporter
Medium S95a Partial Shield Transporter

Medium Auxiliary Thrusters I
Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I
Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I

1 light shield rep drone
4 medium shield rep drones
about 50 Nanite repair paste


Low skill notes: fly an alternative ship within the doctrine.

The main workhorse: Stabber

[Stabber, Stabber]
Overdrive Injector System II
Damage Control II
Tracking Enhancer II
Gyrostabilizer II

Experimental 10MN Microwarpdrive I
Warp Disruptor II
Large Shield Extender II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II

720mm Howitzer Artillery II, Tremor M (also carry Quake M)
720mm Howitzer Artillery II, Tremor M
720mm Howitzer Artillery II, Tremor M
720mm Howitzer Artillery II, Tremor M
Salvager II
Small Proton Smartbomb II

Medium Ancillary Current Router I
Medium Ancillary Current Router I
Medium Ancillary Current Router I


about 50 nanite repair paste.



The smartbomb is for drones. Salvager is for when we hold the field and want to loot. Point is for when the enemy starts to warp off or run we can catch stragglers.

Low skill notes: Smartbomb is not needed. Nor is Salvager. Meta 3 or 4 guns are fine, even lower end guns are ok. Bring faction Carbonized Lead and EMP for T1 guns. If your ship goes slower than 2700 m/s replace low slot damage mods with overdrives. If your cap is low replace low slot damage mods with cap power relays.

The tactical edge: Punisher

[Punisher, Perch burner]
Micro Auxiliary Power Core II
Micro Auxiliary Power Core II
Micro Auxiliary Power Core II
Micro Auxiliary Power Core II

Experimental 10MN Microwarpdrive I
Small Capacitor Booster II, Cap Booster 50

[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]

Small Ancillary Current Router I
Small Ancillary Current Router I
Small Auxiliary Thrusters I

The job of this frigate is to give the FC tactical options by burning around the field. Ideally the perch burner is always 100km behind the enemy as the fleet looks at them. This means the FC can fleet warp to zero and be 100 km off or pick a distance by warping the the Punisher at range. It can be done with an alt but it works better with an attentive and skilful pilot controlling it with no other distractions.

Newbro perch burner

[Slasher, Perch burner - low skill]
Overdrive Injector System I
Overdrive Injector System I

Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I
[empty med slot]
[empty med slot]
[empty med slot]

[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]

Small Auxiliary Thrusters I
Small Auxiliary Thrusters I
Small Auxiliary Thrusters I


The boss drives one of these: Drake

[Drake, Command]
Reactor Control Unit II
Reactor Control Unit II
Reactor Control Unit II
Reactor Control Unit II

Prototype 100MN Microwarpdrive I
Command Processor I
Command Processor I
Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II
Medium Capacitor Battery II

Skirmish Warfare Link - Rapid Deployment II
Skirmish Warfare Link - Interdiction Maneuvers II
Siege Warfare Link - Shield Harmonizing II
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]

Medium Ancillary Current Router I
Medium Processor Overclocking Unit I
Medium Ancillary Current Router I

This ship gives speed, resists and point range to the entire fleet. Also, while it is a key ship to kill, it may appear more sturdy than it really is since Drakes have a reputation for durability.

Alternatively you can use an expensive command ship such as this Loki which also doubles as a prober.:

[Loki, Command]
Co-Processor II
Caldari Navy Co-Processor
Caldari Navy Co-Processor

Command Processor I
Command Processor I
Command Processor I
[empty med slot]
[empty med slot]

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher, Sisters Combat Scanner Probe I
Siege Warfare Link - Shield Harmonizing II
Skirmish Warfare Link - Interdiction Maneuvers II
Skirmish Warfare Link - Rapid Deployment II
Skirmish Warfare Link - Evasive Maneuvers II
[empty high slot]

Medium Processor Overclocking Unit I
Medium Processor Overclocking Unit I
Medium Low Friction Nozzle Joints I

Loki Defensive - Warfare Processor
Loki Offensive - Covert Reconfiguration
Loki Propulsion - Interdiction Nullifier
Loki Engineering - Power Core Multiplier
Loki Electronics - Emergent Locus Analyzer

Eve: We made the news!

I was involved in a fight against Brick Squad. I even took over FCing for a bit. The battle report and a video that includes me calling targets is now on Eve News 24:

http://evenews24.com/2012/12/10/battle-report-friday-night-fights-li3-federation-vs-brick-squad/

Eve: Sniper Corax

Let's have a look at the new Corax:

Missiles, missiles, missiles, missiles, that's what this hull is all about. It spams missiles a quite a long range, and boasts improved explosion velocity to catch those pesky annoying little orbiting frigates.

Ship bonuses:
+5% to rocket and light missile kinetic damage per level
+10% to rocket and light missile explosion velocity per level
Role bonus:
+50% to rocket and light missile velocity



The first bonus tells us to use Scourge type missiles unless we know there's some weakness to another damage type. And it has to be a significant vulnerability as we'd lose 25% damage were we to use non-kinetic missiles.

Explosion velocity is increased damage to fast-moving things. Scourge light missiles have the following explosion velocities with the Corax ship bonuses:
Caldari Navy Scourge Light Missile 255 m/s
Scourge Fury Light Missile 224.5 m/s
Scourge Precision Light Missile 306 m/s
In addition Target Navigation Prediction V means that you can discount 50% of their speed. Frigates generally move 400-600 m/s with prop mod off so we will not see our paper dps reduced by frigate velocity by very much unless they are using a prop mod (afterburner or microwarpdrive). Frigates that are stationery won't reduce damage and frigates that are orbiting will reduce it less than if they were going max speed.

Our last bonus is missile velocity. This does two useful things - it gives us more range and our missiles get to the target quicker.

I'm seeing two strong builds coming from these ship bonuses. The first is to build on the strength of the explosion velocity bonus and make a ship that is very good at doing high damage to frigates. So you would rig for more explosion velocity. Light Precisions now have such a small explosion radius that on that build you would have no need for target painting or explosion radius rigs - the natural explosion radius of Light Precisions is 25m which is smaller than any ship in the game. So this ship would make a really nasty high damage frigate destroyer with precision light missiles and explosion velocity rigs, say 2 flare catalysts and a calefaction catalyst.

The other build I really like is based on the Missile Velocity role bonus. Using the extra range that gives and then rigging for range gives a deadly sniper boat. This ship does 183 dps out to 94 km, well outside tackle range before overheat.

Corax, Sniper

7 Prototype 'Arbalest' Light Missile Launchers, Caldari Navy Scourge Light Missile
2 F-90 Positional Sensor Subroutines, both Targeting and Scan resolution scripts in cargo
Utility midslot
(I put a Phased Weapon Navigation Array before I realised that with Guided Missile Precision V my CN Lights have 30m explosion radius, still less than any ship in the game. It still helps other people so not completely redundant).
Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I
2 Ballistic Control System II

Small Rocket Fuel Cache Partition I
2 Small Hydraulic Bay Thrusters I

Eve: The Retribution Blackbird

A number of my ship fits have been inspired by radical ways in which next week's expansion will be overhauling the various ships. With the Blackbird it's not actually getting changed very much. So you may be wondering why I have picked it to write about as one of my Retribution choices.

Simple answer: it's simply the best. Better than all the rest.

Retribution will see a surge of interest in Tech 1 cruisers and although this one won't be changing much it's an amazing boat - not just powerful but also very interesting to fly.

Blackbirds basically work like this: you target and ecm jam selected targets that are NOT the primary target of the fleet to cause them to lose all locks and be ineffective for 20 seconds each time you land a jam. You can jam powerful ship up to capitals (but not supercaps) and so because they are so good and rather fragile enemy Fleet Commanders usually primary Blackbirds first.

Blackbirds are also very quick to skill into. This means that new players are often encouraged to fly them as they are much more powerful than any other ship a player could use with less than one month's training.

Because they're primaried and because they're often flown by newbies they have a somewhat undeserved reputation of not being great fun to fly. Strong, yes, but who wants to always die in the first few seconds of a fight? However if a player is careful and cunning and fits for extreme range then a Blackbird that doesn't mind running off then coming back then running off a lot is both extremely powerful and very survivable.

Here's the fit:

[Blackbird, Salv]
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
1600mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Damage Control II

10MN Afterburner II
BZ-5 Neutralizing Spatial Destabilizer ECM (note: Meta 4 modules are much better than Tech II modules)
Enfeebling Phase Inversion ECM I
Enfeebling Phase Inversion ECM I
'Umbra' White Noise ECM
'Hypnos' Ion Field ECM I

Salvager II
Salvager II
Small Tractor Beam II
Small Tractor Beam II

Medium Ionic Field Projector I
Medium Particle Dispersion Augmentor I
Medium Particle Dispersion Projector I


2 Warrior IIs (or Salvaging Drones if you prefer)

Swap outs of ECM modules in the cargo hold so you can adapt when given intel about the enemy composition if there's a chance to re-fit.


The key to playing this ship in gang or fleet combat is to be independent. The position you want is about 80-100 km behind your fleet and at least 80 km away from the nearest enemies. If your FC warps his fleet into a rival gang, cancel fleet warp and warp to him at 100 after he lands. Prepare terrain by making perches where you're likely to fight, eg stargates, stations. Elude interception by bouncing off celestials that are at different angles. Imagine a solar system like the one we live in. And you have a spaceship fight at the earth. So warp to Saturn then warp back at 100, then if enemy fast tackle is closing in on that position warp to Mercury then warp to your FC at 100, putting you 150 away from the tacklers who now find themselves on the wrong side of your fleet to come and tackle you. Next time you might warp off to Jupiter so they see you go that direction but rather than warp back to your FC from that side you warp to Mars so that you come in at an unanticipated angle. You survive by always immediately warping whenever you take damage or risk being tackled as you can operate at great distances from the enemy. This is particularly true if most ships on the field are Tech 1 cruisers.


With perfect skills the fit jams out to 117 km. (That's in falloff but losing a few percent isn't a big deal). If you don't have the skills to jam out to 100 km take some tank off and replace with Signal Distortion Amps.


Now you might be wondering about the salvage modules in the high slots. They're there because there really isn't anything else useful to fit - if you never are within 80 km of an enemy you are out of range to shoot him. Putting guns on would just get you killed, this fit is all about running off when the enemies try to kill you then warping back at a useful distance and immediately aligning to prepare your next instant escape. And of course hoovering up the field after a nullsec pvp battle is exceptionally lucrative.


There may be times when you feel that all you're doing is landing on grid then warping off again. Even that is very disruptive to your opponents as they have to break off from what they were killing (perhaps giving your logistics a chance to repair it back up again) to futilely shoot at you only to see you escape. It's quite likely they'll get fed up or distracted and let you land and get some jams on after a while.


So the Blackbird - a great ship to fly in the Tech 1 cruiser battles we'll be seeing soon in Eve.

Eve: a notion of how CCP might fix null sec

I'd like to conclude my so far rather gloomy series of posts about null sec with something more positive. First off, I'd like to say I'm very impressed with CCP, with their awareness of the game issues and their conscientious and thorough approach to iteration. I once played a MMO (Star Wars Galaxies) where the Live team wanted the game to be a different game and played other games in their off-time. It's why it died. I'm now playing Eve where the devs play it when they're not being paid to and where they get their ideas from the community not from (better) rival games.

So Eve is in good hands and is very healthy. Maybe we won't see something much like my idea but we will see something and it will be pretty good.

So how can we fix null sec? First, let's look at what's good about it and what's bad about it.

The good:
- it's fun. It's very exciting to paint the map in your alliance's colours, to undertake massive and difficult conquest of space.
- it's social. It's a communal exercise where it's very hard to solo, you have to group to be effective. (There are exceptions and Eve has plenty of outlets for solo players).
- in some ways the rise of the coalitions is a vindication of Eve's awesome sovereign gameplay.
- it drives the rest of Eve. The destruction of ships and structures in massive null sec pvp provides markets for the builders and traders, keeps rewards high for those who earn loyalty points in Faction War or mission running and is where the high level ships produced from wormholes go to die.

The bad:
- the main issue is that possibly the end is within sight. As I talked about last time we could see an all-blue (non-aggression) null sec simply because expanding your circle of allies is the natural and most effective method of playing the game. So people want to win and because we want to win we risk causing the game to stagnate as an unintended consequence.
- another problem is that the rest of the game is economically dependent on the null sec fighting. Eve has a rare MMO mechanic of destroyable ships which makes it unique and is the reason it appeals to its niche. No other mainstream MMO has so rich an economy or such a fun crafting game and the reason is that the demand is perpetually renewed because ships get blown up. Few other MMOs allow you to risk so much in one throw or ruin another person's day so thoroughly.
- null sec industry is non-functional. People just bring stuff in from Jita. Even null sec mining is barely better than high sec mining.
- it's too small. It may once have seemed epic and vast but the game grew in player numbers continuously from 2003 to 2010 and space has been further shrunk by the efficiency of jump drive using pilots. It's not just the introduction of the capital ships, its their development as players have skilled their characters up and developed alt-based strategies that allow them to move their ships across great chains of jumps.

(I deliberately don't include two oft cited null sec issues as bad. Lag isn't bad now that we have time dilation. And structure grinding is about where it should be so people don't lose their hard-won space too quickly or too trivially).

My solution:

In brief: More space.

In detail:  Deep space sensors across Empire space begin to pick up strange and giant artifacts out beyond the furthest reaches of a number of solar systems. Exploration teams discover vast alien pillars, previously undetectable but now beaming a faint signal. Is this some kind of unknowable invitation? Engineers examining the objects conclude they are some kind of non-operational alien stargates built on a scale never before seen in New Eden. Where they go is beyond anyone's ability to guess. But it does seem as if they could, with sufficient resource investment, be made operational...

This would be an expansion (in both senses of the word) in stages. The first stage is rendering the Cosmic Starways operational. My idea for this is borrowed from World of Warcraft where for the Ahn'Qiraj raid instances each world had to first make a vast communal effort. You'd hand in resources and receive rewards, worthwhile enough that people would feel motivated to do it for the reward even if they didn't give two hoots about opening up what lay beyond. So there would be a Cosmic Starway in each Empire constellation and any player can fly up to one, interact with a Sisters of Eve agent there, and hand in resources and get LP in return. Sisters of Eve LP or LP for some special store, doesn't really matter. This of course would be a useful asset sink.

Opening a gateway should take the entire server weeks or months. There's no harm in making this a really big effort, it makes it feel more epic and sinks more assets.

Each gateway leads to an area of Orion-space, a new null sec zone. Functioning more or less as current null sec except with one crucial difference: the distances (in Light Years) are much bigger. Where a six cyno chain in the current game might let you jump 50 systems in Orion-space you'd travel more like 10. Jump drives are mainly useful for letting you appear in a different place in a system than the obvious entrance rather than letting you move super-fast across regions. In particular the Cosmic Starway that leads in from Empire is hundreds of AU long, meaning that no jumps from anywhere else in Eve are possible. Orion-space does not connect to wormhole space.

Curtailed travel times have the following effects:
- discourages blobbing. A large empire needs to not concentrate all its force in one place because it will be unable to quickly move to help other frontiers if it does so.
- encourages local industry. It's better to make stuff locally than to bring it from Jita.
- encourages political diversity. It's much harder for a coalition or two to dominate everywhere.
- encourages exploration and small scale ventures. You can find a corner of the universe where it might take months before anyone even notices you, much less attacks you.
- encourages ganking as so much more trade is moving in convoys rather than virtually ungankable jump freighters.
- encourages racial homogeneity as it will be hard to get isotopes that aren't native to the region.

Economic notes: Orion-space should not be an exporter to the rest of Eve. There's always a temptation to sell a new feature to the player base by filling it with shinies, this area really doesn't need that. Its inaccessibility is its Unique Selling Point. By the same token anything Orion space can't make locally will be rarely seen. T3 Cruisers would have to be brought in from Empire in Freighter convoys through stargates because those materials aren't available. Amarr type regions (the equivalents of Delve) would be full of Amarr capitals because it would be so hard to run ships that require "foreign" fuel.

Political notes: Orion-space will attract people to nullsec who feels marginalised by the current Eve political situation. Most people don't want to have to become a Goon in order to not get your home kicked in. A new patchwork quilt of rival alliances should emerge, much like early days of Eve. Initially whoever can take and hold the entrance system from the first Cosmic Starway built will have an amazing influence - they'll be gatekeepers to the entire zone. However no one will be able to stop the community from handing in resources for LP across Empire and so the other Starways will gradually get opened allowing more access points. Orion-space would make a great alternatives for alliances that lose in conventional null. Instead of moving to Empire they could come here - an exciting option instead of a dull one.

Afterword: however CCP solve the issue of null sec stagnation I'm sure it will be good and surprising. Eve is in good hands.

Eve: Why players can't fix null sec

I don't think players can fix null sec. I could be wrong but here's why I think the brakes are off and the train is rolling downhill.

1) The combined power of the Honeybadger Coalition and the Clusterfuck Coalition is now too strong for any third party to stand against them. In fact probably only Solar would have any chance against even one of them and if Solar started to win one the other would likely help their bros.

Gevlon made this map showing the HBC/CFC controlled areas in red on the left side of the map. Any veterans of board games like Risk know that once you've got this much of the map the rest is just mopping up. Actually they're doing even better than it looks at the left side of the map is much richer space than the right side - all the Tech moons are in the top left, the right is mostly undesirable Drone regions.

CFC/HFC area in red.

2) The HBC (politically dominated by TEST, the Eve alliance from the Reddit forums) and the CFC (politically dominated by Goonswarm Federation, the Eve alliance from the Something Awful forums) are too friendly, too culturally similar and too hostile to the rest of Eve ("pubbies") to seriously undermine each other. A reset in quest of "good fights" is possible but it would almost certainly incorporate elements of HBC and CFC's current policy regarding fighting between the two entities: no ganking on jump bridges or stations, no sov grinding, no messing with the other coalition's strat ops. Effectively roaming gangs can shoot each other but no consequence-laden pvp is permitted.

3) Enemies are responding to losing by joining the Coalitions as fast as they can. There are a few hold outs but much of the HBC's current expansion has been fueled by enemies flipping sides. Raiden, Initiative, elements of Red Alliance have all joined Honeybadgers - thousands of former enemy pilots coming to where the grass is greener. When The Jagged Alliance was kicked out of HBC, 90% of its members left and re-joined HBC either by finding an alliance that would take them in as a corp or by applying as individual members. This is likely to increase in pace as it becomes more and more evident that the only way to play sov null sec is to be in HBC or CFC or face losing all your invested time, infrastructure and perhaps ships when the steam train reaches your area. Also the more space that is conquered the further the big two have to go to find fights. My alliance (in the HBC) is currently deployed three regions away from where we live because there's simply no one closer to conquer. When we finish conquering Esoteria we'll no doubt install blues to rule it then join with them in conquering some new region because if we don't our pvpers will have nothing to do and get bored (and they are quite rightly the most important people - without good pvpers you don't hold space).

4) The management can't rein this in. The Mittani who runs CFC could tell his alliance to stop recruiting perhaps (although even that could be problematic as it's tied to an external website so possibly not his call to make) but he has no chance of imposing a coalition-wide recruitment freeze. He's repeated many times that other alliances are peers, are friends, not pets. It's the philosophy of both of these coalitions. So each alliance is relatively free to grow however it chooses and there's a flood of recruits coming in as people work out it's the best option. Naturally every "junior" alliance wants to grow and prosper and become as strong as or stronger than Goons and Test and they're all trying to achieve this by mass recruiting.

5) The opposition can't stop them. In theory if the military forces of every non-CFC/HBC sov null sec alliance united against them it would be ample force to prevail. However every attempt to organise has failed and the longer the opposition keeps losing the harder it gets. It fails for many alliances because their highly egotistical leaders fall out with each other. In fact most of this patchwork quilt of small alliances are actively fighting each other rather than preparing to face the juggernaut. With the personalities in place in NCDot, Triple A and so on there really isn't any chance of them all subordinating their alliances to one leader and trusting him. Most of these alliances have very little concept of the new style of diplomacy that CFC and HBC use - they're mired in early Eve thinking - we are elite, we are unique, we may temporarily set someone blue but ultimately everyone else is an enemy.

6) Distance doesn't matter. Titans can bridge fleets halfway across the universe and capitals can jump wherever there's a cyno chain. It takes set up but that's in place. Alliances redeploy to staging systems to conquer new regions. Pandemic Legion showed in the 1V-L12 battle just how mobile forces are when they moved to kill SOLAR supercarriers 33 jumps away from their home.. (In support of NC. and Red Alliance who are more interested in fighting SOLAR than resisting the juggernaut now).

7) Crappy space won't save you. People want to put their flags on the map, new members of the coalitions want to make their marks. We are at the point where close to all non-Drone Region space is under HBC/CFC management or will be within the next couple of months. At that point alliances in the coalition will have to settle for Drone Region space simply because there's no other conquerable space left in Eve that isn't either blue or subject to no sov grind agreement between the Big Two.

Conclusion: without game redesign all of sovereign nullsec will be blue to the two major coalitions within two years. Possibly sooner. And players are not able to prevent this. In fact with the collapse of SoCo and the breakup of the NCDot/Black Legion/Evoke partnership in the North Eve is basically won already, we're in the mop-up phase now.

Eve: The future of Nullsec

Although Eve has moved a long way from its initial state it seems that at one time nullsec was envisioned as the end game of Eve. You start in high sec with safe low paying missions, graduate to low sec where the rule against interdiction bubbles means you can usually escape with your pod and the gate guns and stations create safe areas and finally graduate to null sec where the name implies there is no security, no safety. Ultimate danger, ultimate reward.

In a game so old and so based on emergent gameplay that picture has become distorted. Low sec has, for all the time I've been playing, been far more dangerous that null. Wormhole space is null sec on steroids - more dangerous, more rewarding although with peculiar local rules that limit the size of alliances. Bored nullseccers have turned their attention to high sec making some high sec activities (eg flying a freighter through Niarja, mining ice in Gallente space) amongst the most dangerous in Eve.

So what now is the point of nullsec? It's not the most lucrative, it's not the most dangerous. It's probably not the most interesting, null sec sov grinding being notoriously dull.

I think there are two answers, related to each other. 1) Politics and 2) Marking out a territory. Nowhere in Eve is the political game as important. You have to play politics and play it well. You have politics within your corp as people squabble over competing goals. You have politics within your alliance. You have politics within your coalition or if you don't have a coalition you have to politic your way into one. And all in aid of painting a corner of New Eden with your alliance's colours. (I'm excluding NPC null sec from this analysis as functionally it's more of an extension of low sec than typical null sec).

And what's the point of politics and conquest? Ego, marking your territory or even that weird consensual collective vanity that passes in the real world as nationalism.

So does null sec need "fixing"? It seems to be pretty popular. Although it attracts a high volume of moaning many of those moans are derived directly from how busy it is - lag and blobbing wouldn't happen if only 10 people wanted to do null sec.

There is perhaps a danger that the trend for growing coalitions could change the nullsec we know. What if the bigger coalitions become so dominant that you have to be blue or you're ousted? If that happened there would be no one to fight - nullsec could become a huge farming zone enlivened by the occasional cloaky ganker.

However that's possibly a matter for the players rather than the developers. If everyone wants to blue each other it's almost impossible to prevent, if everyone is relentlessly hostile and prefers a target-rich environment, likewise the players can force that to happen.

What we have seen in the last two years is the triumph of diplomacy over elitism. Alliance leaders who are bad at diplomacy, who make the key failures of making promises they don't keep or letting down other alliances who depend on them are on the way out. This is not necessarily a promise of perma-blue though as it's possible that leaders may decide against perpetual growth. There has to be a concern though as the TEST-led Honeybadger Coalition conquers Esoteria that the war machines may simply become too big not to feed and that Coalitions will be led despite their intentions into eliminating every possible enemy.

The next couple of years will be very interesting. But afterwards null sec Eve may become rather dull.

Bah Humbug!

Well halloween's over and I'm possibly one of the few MMO players who's glad to see the back of it.

I don't generally like these holiday events. I like my fantasy world to be other, to be distinct from the reality I inhabit. It seems tawdry to stick pumpkins everywhere or santa hats or love hearts. Would Gandalf's struggle against the Balrog have been more epic if they had both been wearing party hats and tooting whistles? I doubt it.

On top of that Halloween isn't really celebrated in England much so it's odd to have all this trick or treat stuff. Not only is reality shoehorned into my adventure but it's foreign reality to boot.

But perhaps worse of all is experiencing it in a new game. Having just started GW2 and not knowing where anything is or what the quests are it's very confusing to have an overlay of seasonal quests. They seemed quite oddly implemented too. I went into one which was a maze. We were supposed to collect goo for some NPC before we got beaten up but I only collected 2 pieces and the random strangers I was with did even worse. So we failed, got beaten to death by monsters and there wasn't any apparent way to exit the event. As my character was only level 4 I just checked a couple of days later to see if she was still stuck in the maze then deleted her.

I have read elsewhere that some people loved the events so fair play to them. I reckon the most practical approach for me is simply to not log in for 2 weeks when one of these events come up and leave them to more social people who love showing off their broomsticks or whatever.

Guild Wars 2: Never say never

So not long after posting here that I would not be playing GW2 until they added a dungeon finder I find myself playing it. I bought it simply because a friend bought it and I wanted to join him. In this case friendship is more important to me than principle.

So what do I think?

It's a great game to start off with. All the recent games of this style have had fantastic initial experiences - Rift, SWTOR and so on plus GW2 are miles more interesting and engaging than games we played 10 or 20 years ago.

Whether it will have tenacity is open to question. I do really feel that a lack of a LFD tool hurts it. Having played I can see that moving to the dungeon is a non-issue, they have teleporters at them. We'll see.

The WvWvW currently seems broken but I'm sure that will improve when they stop allowing migration to the winning servers.

PvP I haven't tried yet but I'm sure it will be really well done. It was superb in GW1.

The game is very alt friendly with interesting and complex build trees. For players like me who enjoy searching for powerful combinations there's a lot to wrap our heads around and theorycraft with. Plus the exploration driven maps are possibly more fun to alt on than quest driven maps are.

I suspect that the game will need to develop a stronger end game pve experience to really keep a good population though. I don't think farming noobs in battlegrounds is a sustainable end game and it also doesn't seem like there's enough PvE content to accommodate a genuine pve end game.

For all that there's certainly enough to occupy me for months and I'll have this game on my desktop for years. I've been having a blast so far with my Warrior and am looking forward to leveling all of the character classes eventually.

Eve: Gallente Ice Interdiction redux

http://poeticstanziel.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/as-usual-goonswarm-proves-us-wrong.html

Speculators: consider buying Oxygen Isotopes fast. Failing that the other isotopes rose dramatically last time too.

Moros/Thanny pilots: grab 6 month's supply fast.

High sec afk miners: leave Gallente space.

Yup, folks it's that time again. You can't keep a Goon down.

Eve: The Retribution Moa

One of the most fun ships to fly in Eve is a tackle frigate. This is a small fast ship whose job is to rush to an opposing ship and hold them for a while, then usually die in a blaze of fire but hopefully having held the big expensive ship still for long enough that your back-up has got him nailed to the wall.

Let's review that design:
small - ho hum
fast - Like +1
rush and hold - Like +2
die in a blaze of fire - Unlike -1
your mates kill him - ho hum +0.5 I guess.

Now let's improve that design:

One of the most fun ships to fly in Eve will be a tackle Moa. This is a medium size fast ship whose job is to rush to an opposing ship and hold them for a while, making them think you're about to die in a blaze of fire but holding the big expensive ship still for long enough that your back-up arrives to help you finish him off.

That's better!

Here's the fit:

[Moa, Mother of All Merlins]
Reactor Control Unit II
Reactor Control Unit II
Co-Processor II
Damage Control II

Experimental 10MN MicroWarpdrive I
Initiated Harmonic Warp Scrambler I
Stasis Webifier II
X-Large Ancillary Shield Booster, Cap Booster 400*

Medium Unstable Power Fluctuator I
Medium Diminishing Power System Drain I
Heavy Neutron Blaster II, Void M
Heavy Neutron Blaster II, Void M
Heavy Neutron Blaster II, Void M
Heavy Neutron Blaster II, Void M

Medium Ancillary Current Router I
Medium Ancillary Current Router I
Medium Ancillary Current Router I

3 Warrior SW-300 webbing drones


And here's the gameplan:

Chase them, tackle them, scram them, web them, nos them, neut them and shoot them full of holes. Allow them to shoot out your shields then pop the blue pills one at a time for "miracle" healing when they're sure they've got you losing. Of course if you take more damage you may wish to start shield boosting sooner or even overheat it but the default option is faking that you're losing the fight.

This baby will move 1513 m/s before overheat, has 3 drones which slow them by 5% each even before you catch up, additionally slows them 60%, turns their MWD off, stops them warping off, neuts them, transfers their cap to you if they have more cap than you, and does 227 damage per second with its guns. It tanks 528 damage per second while the cap charges in the ASB last. Should work well in solo, small gang or big fleet pvp. Can function very well in gate camps, point blank brawls and chasing down snipers or protecting sniper gangs of your own.


It's just a bigger badder Merlin!


* Note: the ASB is expected to be nerfed in Retribution. It's likely it will be changed so that only one can be used on a ship (just like Damage Control Units). If that is what happens this fit will be viable after that nerf.

Eve: The Retribution Heron

The Heron is an odd looking Caldari frigate whose main purpose is not as a ship of war, but as a ship of exploration and discovery.

Its getting a fairly major buff in the Winter patch and I'm very much looking forward to using the new versions.

Heron:
Frigate skill bonuses:
7.5% increase to scan strength of probes
5% bonus to Codebreaker, Analyzer and Salvager cycle time
Slot layout: 3 H (+1), 5 M (+2), 2 L (+1), 2 turrets (+1), 2 launchers
Fittings: 24 PWG (+4), 260 CPU (+10)
Defense (shields / armor / hull) : 400(+126) / 200(-58) / 200(-26)
Capacitor (amount / recharge rate / cap per second): 245 (+88.75)/ 135s (+17.8s)/ 1.814 (+0.48)
Mobility (max velocity / agility / mass / align time): 340 (+20) / 3.57 (+0.04) / 1150000 / 3.84s (+0.04s)
Drones (bandwidth / bay): 15(+10) / 35(+25)
Targeting (max targeting range / Scan Resolution / Max Locked targets): 37.5km / 430 / 4
Sensor strength: 12 Gravimetric
Signature radius: 40 (-8)
Cargo capacity: 400 (+243.75)

Its old bonuses were a useless kinetic missile damage bonus, 5% probe scan strength per skill level and a reduction in survey probe flight time.

CCP Fozzie states:

We hope to see them being used for solo highsec exploration for newer players, or to support the combat ships in an exploration group in wormholes or lawless space. They're getting bonuses to hacking, archeology and salvaging so you can use them to both probe and run mini-profession sites.
Their combat ability has also been directed at drones instead of weak weapon bonuses. We've designed them to be able to kill the rats in highsec mini-profession sites, although a combat frig will clear them faster. The ship isn't directly intended for a pvp role, so the ehp remains quite low and we skewed the fittings towards CPU and away from PG. Best way to kill the rats with this ship is fit a light active tank, drop drones and kite.

We wanted these ships to feel like an expedition vessel for newer players, something that can run sites independently and with enough cargo, no ammo use and extra dronespace to take long journeys away from their home base (even if they stay in highsec)

For me, I don't need a highsec explorer but I'm very interested in using this ship in mini-profession sites.  For that role, it's been double buffed - not only does it now have a relevant ship bonus but it also has gained an extra mid slot for another Codebreaker or Analyzer module.

So for sites I'm planning on two Herons, one for Mag sites (archaeology sites requiring Analyzer modules) and one for Radar sites (hacking sites requiring Codebreaker modules)

Heron, Archaeologist

Salvager II
Salvager II
Salvager II

Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I
Analyzer II
Analyzer II
Analyzer II
Analyzer II

Damage Control II
50mm Reinforced Steel Plates II

Small Salvage Tackle I
Small Salvage Tackle I
Small Salvage Tackle I

CPU 234 Power grid 24

Tech 1 modules are perfectably acceptable substitutes for Tech 2 modules. I'd have liked to have used an Archaeology rig but they don't seem to exist. The low slot modules are for the rare occasions when a can will pop frigates which instantly aggro and scram. Warp Core Stabs are an alternative for the low slots. However the job of this frigate is to get in quick and grab the loot so slower locking and lower targeting range (the penalties from using Warp Core Stabs) would impede this. Just goes to show "Stabs" isn't the right solution for every problem!

Here's the radar site version of this ship:


Heron, Hacker

Salvager II
Salvager II
Salvager II

Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I
Codebreaker II
Codebreaker II
Codebreaker II
Codebreaker II

Damage Control II
50mm Reinforced Steel Plates II

Small Memetic Algorithm Bank I
Small Salvage Tackle I
Small Salvage Tackle I

CPU 234 Power grid 24


The ship is also useful in other roles. It's clearly meant as an exploration ship for scanning sites down so let's look at how well it does that:

Scan strength bonuses from ship and fit =
Ship bonus 37.5%
2 Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade Is (note that despite having 3 rig slots we can only fit two of these rigs because they use 200 calibration each) 20%

Compared to a cov ops with a ship bonus of 50% it's worse, however it's just about as good if your cov ops skill is only 4 and better if your cov ops skill is lower. The Tech 2 ship also lacks the mini-site bonuses. The cov ops can warp cloaked which makes it much safer when used outside high sec.

Heron, Explorer

Expanded Probe Launcher II, Sisters Core Scanner Probe (8)
Improved Cloaking Device II

Survey Scanner II

'Halcyon' Core Equalizer I
'Halcyon' Core Equalizer I

Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I
Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I

7 Hornet EC-300 drones


Cargo: Sisters Deep Space Scanner Probe I (1), Sisters Combat Scanner Probe I (8), optionally moon survey probes.

I made some interesting decisions here so let's talk about them. Expanded Probe Launchers allow you to fire combat scanner probes, deep space scanner probes and moon scanning probes. For a real explorer ship you need those options especially the DSPs because you can gain a lot of information very fast from a DSP scan as detailed here. Combat scanners are great if you're even remotely interested in pvp because sometimes you'll just happen across targets of opportunity. I didn't take the Sisters launcher because the ship is too cheap to justify it. Save those for cov ops.

I picked the tech 2 cloak over the basic one even though it hoses the rest of the fit for cpu. This is because the main danger to this ship is accidentally stumbling into a well-organised gate camp. In that situation your cloak is your main defence. Angle the camera either down or up, double click space activate the cloak. You'll drift out of their camp unless you get unlucky and get bumped. Make sure you have an overview that shows everything when you're doing this so you don't pilot your ship into a can and decloak yourself.

Warp stabs give a second defensive option and the drawbacks are inconsequential as this ship almost never target locks anything. I really had nothing I could fit in the mids now, having used up all the CPU so I stuck an asteroid scanner on which might occasionally be useful in grav sites.

The ECM drones are intended to be throw-away. If tackled put some on whoever's got you scrammed and continue to try to warp off. It's another chance to survive.

As before, Tech 1 versions of the modules are fine and this is a ship that is very friendly to beginner explorers or to pilots with priorities other than skilling up for cov ops ships.

The final fit I'll present here is intended for an unusual but very lucrative role: battlefield scavenger. The idea here is that you go to where there's recently been a big fight and salvage the wrecks. It's extremely dangerous doing this as where there are pvp fights there are pvp ships and most would love to blow you up. However salvaging a field of T2 wrecks could earn you hundreds of millions of isk.


Heron, Thief

Salvager II
Salvager II
Improved Cloaking Device II

Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I
Small Ancillary Shield Booster, Cap Booster 25s
Limited Adaptive Invulnerability Field I
Cap Recharger II

'Halcyon' Core Equalizer I
'Halcyon' Core Equalizer I

Small Salvage Tackle I
Small Salvage Tackle I
Small Salvage Tackle I

7 Hornet EC-300 drones (Alternatively leave the drone bay empty and just steal some when you get to a battlefield, there's always abandoned drones about).


CPU 240 Grid 23

Designed to sneak around battles and then when the coast seems clear scoop the loot. In case you get caught it has warp stabs, sacrificing a lot of targeting capability for safety and enough shield tank to survive an interceptor long enough to get into warp. To use this you need offgrid perches at the likely fighting sites - stargates, stations, possibly POSes (although salvaging outside a hostile POS is only viable if the attackers have incapped the defences). Sit just offgrid cloaked checking the progress of the battle on D scan with your D scan range very close. When there are no ships on D scan, just wrecks, it's time to steal. Keep your D scan open as you salvage for advance warning that someone's coming back. You can make perches during fights, even off-grid perches as the ship does over 100 m/s even cloaked.Uncloaked you make perches very fast as you're a microwarp drive frigate.

Guild Wars 2: why I won't be buying it for now

I've had a recurrent experience in several of my last dungeon-based MMOs. I join, start playing, enjoy the starting area then find that the combination of solo questing and organising dungeon groups manually isn't fun.

With Guild Wars 2 I decided to reverse my usual order of : 1) buy it, 2) complain there's no dungeon finder. This time I'm herein 1) complaining there's no dungeon finder. 2) buy it may occur if 1) is resolved.

Having experienced the same arguments back and forth in Rift, SWTOR, and The Secret World I won't go out of my way to make my case - I don't like to commute. I don't like it much in real life and certainly don't want to do it in a game. I also accept that some players feel passionately opposed to them and that currently those people's influence is in the ascendant. All I can do is vote with my wallet.

Forum poster FredtheBeard (magnificent name, sir) started a discussion on the GW2 boards and the ANet staff (who seem keen as mustard) were quick to respond.

Robert Houda in several replies stated:

there are currently no plans to implement a dungeon finder.
If you are having trouble finding groups for dungeons, you can use our LFG system. Open up your contacts menu in-game, and there should be an option in there for grouping. That way it’s not just people standing out in front of dungeons shouting LFG until someone invites them. This system does not stretch across servers, or to other maps.

The main problem I see with our LFG system is that it is tucked away inside your contact menu (which to me is incredibly weird, but I’m a content designer, not a UI designer.. so I’m sure there is some reason for it being hidden in there), which means not everyone is using it, since not everyone knows about it.

Correct. You would have to leave the dungeon to LFG back in the open-world map. The instance remains open for (I believe) 15 minutes with nobody inside of it. So just make sure you pop back in once in a while to refresh the counter while you’re looking to fill your group.

/facepalm. Not only no dungeon finder but the vestigial social system is practically invisible and requires you to exploit to get it to work if someone leaves your group halfway through. And "should be"! Really? You designed this game and you never used this feature? Come on, dude!

You know, there was a MMO once which didn't have in-game chat. Asheron's Call 2. It died a horrible death.

Eve: the Retribution Scythe

Looking ahead to the new expansion I've been thinking about what to fly. And the ship I'm most keen to try is the revamped Scythe.

The Scythe is one of the forgotten ships of Eve. With bonuses to mining and tracking links it has been badly synergised, useful only really for alts newbies or bait.

In winter it becomes a cheap version of the Scimitar, currently one of the most popular ships in Eve.

Here's my Scythe fit:

[Scythe, Healer]
Damage Control II
Capacitor Power Relay II
Capacitor Power Relay II
Capacitor Power Relay II
Capacitor Power Relay II

Medium Shield Extender II
Medium Shield Extender II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
10MN Afterburner II

Medium S95a Partial Shield Transporter
Medium S95a Partial Shield Transporter
Salvager II

Medium Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I

4 Medium Armour Maintenance Bot IIs 
Light Armour Maintenance Bot II

CPU 380/415
Grid 185.6/330

That's a comfortable fit. It's possible that with very good skills you could use a Large Shield Extender II or Large F-S9 Regolith instead of a Medium for even more effective hit points. You might need to change one of the rigs or low slots to fit that.

So what does this fit do:

1) Tank. It's an axiom that "healers" are the tanks in pvp. People who want to kill the other team always go for the healers first. In fact it would be better to take the Shield Transporters off and leave the tank than take the tank off and leave the Shield Transporters. Your role in a fight might often be to buy your side 30 seconds at the start of a fight then blow up.

2) Heal. 2 Medium S95as with the new ship bonuses will put out:
672 repaired shield hit points every 5 seconds out to 66 km for 111 cap per activation. With energy management V the new cruisers will have 1562.5 cap, enough to run both transporters for 14 cycles (70 seconds) before considering cap recharge. It recharges cap superfast.

4 Medium Armour Drone IIs and a small heal 315 armour per 5 second cycle with Repair Drone Operation V and the new ship bonus. You could swap these for shield drones if everyone you fly with shield tanks.

3) Loot. A roomy 475 m3 cargo bay and a Salvager II let you get rich while pvping. Once your shield transporters and drones are on the right ships you can probably get away with scooping loot while everyone else is shooting each other!

Evemeet, Veto corp, London 29th September

I went to the second Eve meeting I've been too and I enjoyed myself. It's rather nice to be in a pub full of Eve players, you can just start chatting to anyone.

I also met someone from my new corp and it was very nice chatting to him and plotting dark schemes in murky corners. Props to Marcko.

The Eve announcements were a little underwhelming. The problem with both London pubmeets I've gone to is that people start drinking early (they started at 11am on Saturday) so that by the time the people from CCP are trying to give what is effectively a short lecture, they need to project over loud drunk people. I really hope the penny drops that they need to do the announcements at the start then kick back and have a few beers rather than letting people get drunk first.

As for the meat of the announcements it was somewhat underwhelming to a null sec player. The ship rebalancing has already been explained on the Features & Ideas forum where the players are interacting with the devs to iron out the ship balance. Nothing was said that was news to anyone reading the forums.

What was news was the Crimewatch changes but a pub is a bad format to explain things about timers and flagging because it's so abstract. It wasn't clear for example that the Winter will see the end of can flipping (in its present form), of neutral remote repping and of ejecting from Tengus when you lose a fight. All sound fixes to borderline exploits.

Also good to hear of a much clearer flagging mechanic: yellow flag = you can shoot it, red flag = you can shoot it, Concord will shoot it. I've always vaguely wondered about the occasional red pod that goes past me in High Sec but I've never really wanted to risk losing a ship checking if they're shootable. Now it's a lot clearer.

I also met Seismic Stan of the Freebooted blog and had a good long chat with him. Hopefully he'll stop by and stay with us for a while in nullsec in his quest to try everything in Eve.

Eve: missile adjustments

Today I'm going to analyse the missile changes proposed for the Winter expansion and already the subject of much bitterness. There are quite a number of changes to missiles but it seems most players when they read CCP Fozzie's post just see this:





Heavy Missiles
-Damage decreased by 20%





Already Tranquility is filled with people fire-selling their Tengus, up until now the most highly regarded PVE ship and also a mainstay of many pvp alliances' ship doctrines.

The first point I'd like to make that people might be missing is that the described changes are cumulative. So for example Scourge Fury missiles, the main armament of the legions of Drakes and Tengus infesting New Eden are all of these:

All Missiles
Heavy Missiles
Tech Two Missiles

and so get a lot of changes all told.

These are the changes to Tech 2 Scourge Fury Heavy Missiles:
- Improved acceleration (from All Missiles). Buff
-Base flight time reduced by 30%. Nerf.
-Base velocity increased by 6.66%. Buff - complements and stacks with acceleration improvement.
-Damage decreased by 20% (rounded to closest digit). Nerf.
-At the moment Fury missiles at Light and Heavy sizes have a faster explosion velocity than precision missiles, we'll be fixing this defect as part of the changes. Bug fix and nerf.
-Remove ship penalties from tech two missiles (ship velocity and signature radius). Tanking buff to Tengus which tank by being small and fast.

Currently most Tengu and Drake pilots use Scourge Fury for everything (I know I do). Even though there's a missile specifically for shooting small targets it's not noticeably better against frigates because of the explosion velocity bug. With the fixing of this bug and buffs to Precision missiles it becomes important to carry both ammo types. So let's also have a look at Scourge Precision missiles:

- Improved acceleration (from All Missiles). Buff
-Base flight time reduced by 30%. Nerf.
-Base velocity increased by 6.66%. Buff - complements and stacks with acceleration improvement.
-Damage decreased by 20% (rounded to closest digit). Nerf.
-At the moment Fury missiles at Light and Heavy sizes have a faster explosion velocity than precision missiles, we'll be fixing this defect as part of the changes. Bug fix and buff.
Precision: Improve bonuses to explosion velocity and explosion radius. Buffs.
-Increase damage to match T1 missiles. Buff.
- Reduce flight time slightly. Nerf.

Missile velocity and flight time multiply to give you your range. Generally these changes reduce flight time and give us more velocity as compensation. These stats are not equal. Velocity is better than flight time as it's very useful to have your damage arrive sooner. For example in pve at long range I can fire 3 or 4 volleys at a NPC destroyer but it will die in the first volley. If I'm being attentive I can fire one volley then retarget but in pve I'm often lazy. I'll press the fire button and not touch it again until its target is dead. For us lazy ratters more velocity less flight time is pretty useful change even if we lose a little range.

In pvp missiles seem especially slow and often people warp out before they get hit. Faster missiles will be a real boon.

Now let's look at damage. Against big targets it's a 20% nerf. However against small targets we will now be using Precision. Precision Heavy missiles are modified for damage as follows:
- 20% damage.
-At the moment Fury missiles at Light and Heavy sizes have a faster explosion velocity than precision missiles, we'll be fixing this defect as part of the changes. More damage against small things.
Precision: Improve bonuses to explosion velocity and explosion radius. More damage against small things.
-Increase damage to match T1 missiles. More damage. Specifically base damage will be changed from 130 to 150, a 15.3% increase.

When we come to add all that up we find that Tengus after the changes kill frigates significantly faster. Tengu pilots can look forward to doing more damage against small targets, having missiles that travel quicker and gaining minor tanking bonuses when using Fury, all offset by being noticeably weaker against larger targets.

We should now consider how Tengus run sites. Most sites consist of rats (NPC pirates) that aggro depending on various conditions. The most dangerous sites have lots of rats close to where you land on grid that aggro at once. After these changes we will land on grid with Precision missiles loaded and blap the only real danger - frigates that warp scram better than we do now. Once a Tengu is out of the entry trap it's pretty safe. I generally orbit a rock semi afk at 80 km and shoot whatever's nearest until it's all dead. I take pretty much no damage and am out of neut/web/scram range of anything but a tower (and towers die pretty fast). Sometimes I dual box with a battleship and let the battleship go in first and get the Tengu to range while the battleship handles the initial aggro. It's amazingly safe and lucrative PvE and quite frankly was in line for a nerf. No other ship could touch the Tengu's ability to do full damage at over 100 km range, to effortlessly tank huge rooms while only half paying attention. Tengus are currently utterly broken and these fixes simply mean that the larger ships will take a bit longer to die, possibly offset by less missile wastage and faster frigate killing.

So take advantage of the current panic and buy a fitted Tengu or two for 400 million if you can.

As for Drakes it's a hit on them, especially T1 fit newbie ratting/missioning Drakes. As so often in Eve well-intentioned changes leave high skill point veterans grinning while making life harder for new players. I also think we'll see the end of Drake doctrine as a major part of alliance pvp. (The ship's fate is not helped by the suggestion that the shield resists ship bonus may be taken away).

Let's now look at other missiles, again bearing in mind that these changes are cumulative. (Note I am unclear whether Fozzie's use of "Light Missiles", "Heavy Missiles", etc covers Rockets, HAMs etc. I'll assume it doesn't.)

Rockets:
- Increased missile acceleration
Javelin: Just remove ship penalties (ship speed penalty - a big nuisance for the small ships that might use Rockets).
Rage: Reduce range, increase damage slightly

Clearly a lot better. The only nerf is to Rage range but you can just switch to Javelins if you're out of range for Rage.

 Light Missiles:
- Increased missile acceleration.
-Explosion radius reduced from 50 to 40
-Damage increased by 10% (rounded to closest digit)
-At the moment Fury missiles at Light and Heavy sizes have a faster explosion velocity than precision missiles, we'll be fixing this defect as part of the changes.
-Remove ship penalties from tech two missiles (ship velocity and signature radius)
Precision: Improve bonuses to explosion velocity and explosion radius, increase damage to match T1 missiles, reduce flight time slightly
Fury: Increase damage, increase the severity of penalties to explosion radius and velocity


Massively buffed. Can't wait to fly one of the new Tier 2 Caldari Destroyers after all these missile upgrades come in. If I'm reading it right Light Precision missiles will get 6 damage increase buffs against small targets!


Heavy Assault Missiles:
Increased missile acceleration.
Javelin: Just remove ship penalties
Rage: Reduce range, increase damage slightly


Oh hey! Drakes and Tengus are getting buffed! Who knew?


Cruise Missiles:
- Increased missile acceleration.
-At the moment Fury missiles at Light and Heavy sizes have a faster explosion velocity than precision missiles, we'll be fixing this defect as part of the changes.
-Remove ship penalties from tech two missiles (ship velocity and signature radius)
Precision: Improve bonuses to explosion velocity and explosion radius, increase damage to match T1 missiles, reduce flight time slightly
Fury: Increase damage, increase the severity of penalties to explosion radius and velocity.


Increased damage on the Furies, Increased damage against small things on Precisions. Ravens are back, baby!


Torpedoes:
Increase missile acceleration.
Javelin: Just remove ship penalties
Rage: Reduce range, increase damage slightly


Yum, faster harder hitting Rage Torpedoes. I may have to resurrect that Golem plan.


Finally let's look at a significant change: Tracking modules. The new susceptibility to Tracking Disruptors will have a moderate effect in pvp and will be an annoyance for pve-ers who fight against Amarr, Blood or Sansha rats. (Unless you're 80km away in a Tengu and out of range).


However the ability to use Tracking Computers - with scripts! - and Tracking Enhancers to improve our missiles is a big boon. On that note I present to you my patented Frig killing Raven fit:


Raven (Battleship)

6 Cruise Missile Launcher IIs, Mjolnir Precision Cruise Missiles
Large 'Vehemence' Shockwave Charge
Heavy Energy Neutraliser II


Large Shield Extender II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
EM Ward Field II
Prototype 100 Mn Microwarp Drive
2 Tracking Computer IIs, Tracking Speed scripts


Damage Control II
2 Ballistic Control System IIs
Tracking Enhancer II

Signal Amplifier II


2 Large Warhead Flare Catalyst Is
Large Warhead Rigour Catalyst I


75k effective hit points, 697 m/s, 2630 volley damage, 126.6 km optimal (may be increased by adjusting scripts), 134 km targeting range (with leadership bonus), hugely bonused against sig-tankers. May be bad for the health of Hero Rifters. Sorry, Hero Rifters!

Eve: Wormhole integrity

D Scan, D Scan, D Scan - that's all any newbie here's about starting wormhole play. You're not safe unless you constantly mash D Scan.

I'm challenging this perceived wisdom.

Firstly because you're not safe if you DO mash D Scan. Tiger Ears who is a wormhole fox explains it far better than a wormhole rabbit like me ever could. He knows you guys D Scan and he allows for it and doesn't show you anything to see until he lands on grid.

Next because there's a superior alternative, at least there is for a low traffic wormhole like the one I live in.

I live in a Class 1 with a static to null. Most of the time there's no K162s into my hole. The only way other people can be in my hole most of the time then is if they live there, they overnight there or a new K162 opens or if I or someone else who lives in the hole warps to the static or some other native wormhole.

We can pretty much discount the first two. No one else lives there and if they did I'd detect something when I scan (the first action any wormholer does when starting play). People will only overnight in a class 1 if they have a special grudge against the owner or if I just get incredibly unlucky, like someone was exploring and lost connection and couldn't get back on. In 8 months neither of those things have happened.

So, realistically, the danger to me is K162s. Which are scannable. 100% scannable with a DSP. No hunter's guile can mask the approach of a K162, if I hit the Analyse button I will get a real time update about whether my hole is safe.

Is it safe? Yes. no way in, no gankers. They can't gank you if they aren't there.

So for people who live in wormholes try seeing your hole as either Red or Green. Red means there's a connection to somewhere else so you should be out in pvp ships hunting people who don't read Stabbed Up. Green means there's no way in so mine, gas harvest and rat while one of you checks the system with a 256 AU dsp a couple of times a minute (done very conveniently with an alt account on a second computer).

This technique relies on people not warping to wormholes. If you warp to a wormhole to read the Show Info you create the K162 on the other side and breach hole integrity even if you don't jump through.

Eve Online: Exploring - advanced tutorial

I'm going to wheel things back a little and continue my series on wormhole life by starting at the beginning. Everything in wormholes stems from exploring, a three dimensional geometry minigame that some players don't mind and some players can't stand. (There's a few who actively like the minigame but not many I suspect. For me, I don't mind the minigame but I actively enjoy the results derived from it).

Most Eve players don't do this exploration stuff and regard it as some kind of mystical voodoo that allows veteran players to suddenly materialise on top of you when you thought you were safe in the middle of nowhere. So before you consider wormhole life you need to be able to say Yes to three questions:

1) Am I competent at the minigame?
2) Am I willing to enjoy or at least tolerate repeating this minigame over and over for as long as I live in w-space?
3) Do I have time to spend half an hour or more doing this before I move on to other activities during many of my play sessions (you can do some things in wormholes, ie anomalies, without exploring first but even that's not recommended).

For the first step, competence, do the in-game tutorial and watch the CCP youtube tutorial.

To make my next point I first have to clear up a myth. Exploration has changed several times in Eve and as a result some people cling to old-fashioned ideas that work very well for them but which are not actually rational. The myth is that certain amounts of probes less than your maximum work better. You'll see people claim that their 5 probe pattern is the best possible set up.

To disprove this myth we'll use set theory which is very similar to exploration. When doing exploration we want the point we are looking for to be inside as many bubbles as possible. Have a look at this Venn diagram:

You see the shaded area? How many circles is it inside? It's not a trick question, the answer is three. Now take a look at another example:

How many circles is the shaded area inside? 2.


Now every time someone insists that their pattern of 5 probes works better than dropping your maximum (which is 8 with Astrometrics V) they are asserting one of two things:

1. That there is a point somewhere that is inside more circles when you have less circles out there for points to be inside. For example somewhere in diagram 2 there is a point that is inside more circles than the shaded area in diagram 1.

2. Or that trigonometry doesn't become more accurate the more vectors you have.

Let's consider that for a moment. Which way is Paris? Point to it. Now imagine we have someone in Capetown, someone in Tokyo and someone in London also pointing to Paris and we can take your vector with theirs and look at the cross section. Which is more accurate? It's evident that the more vectors we have pointing towards our target the more accurate we will be.

So never ever listen to someone who tells you that using 5 probes or seven or three works better than dropping your maximum. Always drop your maximum. (The only exception is if you are hunting people and you don't want them to see your probes and you don't want to spend the time dropping all 8 because you know roughly where they probably are. Even here rushing will sometimes produce worse results).

Next we'll talk about dimensions. I had an epiphany many months after I first started scanning. It sounds really obvious after the fact but it's this:

When plotting a point in three-dimensional space there's only three dimensions that matter.

What this translates to is control your probes by using the arrow keys only, don't click and drag the middle square. If you move the whole thing you can't see how you are moving it in 3 dimensions when you are using a 2 dimensional computer monitor. So drag the arrows so you get the probe cluster centred on the dot, then tilt the view 90 degrees and adjust up or down, tilt back and correct.

Let's take it from the top. Get to a safe, align to a celestial, launch all your probes (usually core, you can use combat with good skills), cloak.

Drag one probe upwards using the arrow. Drag one the same distance down.

Drag one out in front, drag one behind.

Drag one left, drag one right.

If you have an 8th probe (Astrometrics V) place it halfway between the centre probe and one of the others. This gives some useful overlap.

Hit Analyze. See what you get.

Click on any one of the arrows, hold alt and drag them all inwards so they form a neat stack.

Tilt the view so you're looking at one of the arrows on a level, so one end of the arrow points right at you, the other side points directly away on the flat.

Move it by shift dragging the cluster so that it's level with the red dot, the sig. This probe cluster is now, as far as we can tell, at the same height as the sig. We'll go on to correct it in all three dimensions so that it'll be right on the sig.

Tilt the perspective up 90 degrees so you're looking straight down on it relative to where you were before. (So what we've done is change the view so that we're now looking at the two directions that we haven'y yet corrected).

Shift drag the cluster of probes to the red dot.

Tilt back 90 degrees to check the original perspective, the up/downness if you like. See how it's now slightly off on this axis?

Correct it by shift dragging the probe cluster.

Alt drag on any one of the arrow keys to pull the probes apart so we have nice Venn diagram style overlapping circles. Don't go too far or the point won't be inside multiple circles which means we won't get multiple triangulation points. Don't move them too little or you won't get sufficiently different directions for good triangulation (it's not helpful if all your probes tell you the point is West of them).

Scan.

Scanning has given us a better location on the signature. You can see in the Scanner window that the INE-964 sig now has a signal strength of 38.92% meaning the dot is more accurately located in space. As we've passed the 25% threshhold, the Scanner window also now tells us what type of signature it is - Unknown. In Nullsec this means either a tough pve complex which is quite likely to escalate or a wormhole. In wormhole space Unknown is always a wormhole. You can see in this screenshot I've already collapsed my probes on the point in preparation for narrowing down my search. I've also resized the big blue balls. You do this by putting the mouse cursor on the edge of the blue ball until it turns into directional arrows, then shift dragging them in. I usually drop 2 sizes at a time but that's with fairly good skills (all Vs, no implants). So I've dropped from 8 AU to 2 AU. Try that but if you find that when you condense down you lose the sig next time you hit Analyze you'll need to limit yourself to one size decrease at a time (eg from 8 AU to 4 AU).

Note: if you have a filter on you will lose sigs suddenly as threshholds are passed. For instance if you check all the sig types except Grav then start scanning it will allow you to scan sigs down until they pass the 25% threshhold then realise it's a grav site and filter it. However you don't know this so all you know is that you condensed the big blue balls and the sig stopped showing up - you think you've lost it and expand outwards looking for it. You can waste a lot of time doing this.

Always make filters that include the whole group, never cherry pick within groups when making Scanner window filters.

After we hit analyze, we get over the 75% threshhold and the Scanner window tells us what type of Unknown sig we are locating. It's a wormhole. We don't yet have a warp-in at the signal strength is less that 100% but we're close.

I've resized my balls and re-positioned them. When I hit Analyze I'll have the wormhole.

Now go and try it! There's no final screenshot of a wormhole with 100% sig strength because you have to go and get that for yourself!