My father died a few weeks back. He succumbed to a serious illness in a matter of days and the whole thing sort of took me by surprise. I knew he was ill and we had made all sorts of arrangements with the inevitable in mind, but even the doctors thought he would have at least a year to go. But things didn’t work out that way.

So now I’ve had much to think about and a funeral to organize and gaming just hasn’t seemed that important. I haven’t really played much anything the past few weeks, much less felt like writing about it.

I just wanted to drop a few lines for those of you who have been following my blog and wondering about my absence. I’m sure I’ll be coming back to this blog in the near future, but I can’t really say just when. Until then, keep yourself safe and enjoy the summer.

The initial tutorial is rather well written and managed to immerse me in the game world. Without giving out too much spoilers, lets just say the tutorial walks you through the basics in a suspenseful instance that gives you a brief lecture of the FE world history and the different factions. It actually felt so much like Fallout 3 that I at one point walked away from the keyboard and remembered that this might not be entirely wise in a MMO upon returning. Of course the tutorial is probably safe enough for afk, but anyway…

The graphics aren’t much to write home about. I guess they do their job, but they are well below those of Fallout 3 and especially the characters look more like something out of 2006 than a modern game. They’re not exactly bad, but the semi-realistic style makes them somewhat unbelievable. But I’m sure it’s not enough to break the immersion; the guy named ’1337boydick’ jumping naked in front of you,begging for a hand out should accomplish that well enough…

The controls will take some getting used to and I’m almost certain that I will shoot someone in the face at some point when I mean to interact with them. The whole use either mouse button click to interact, especially combined with the combat mode setup, seems kind of weird. But again it probably just takes some time to learn.

The combat itself seems like a prime candidate for degenerating  into a chaotic click fest at times, but otherwise the pseudo-fps style seemed to work well for me. Producing head shots with a scoped rifle (even though I know it is stat based underneath) was surprisingly satisfying.

I’m going to be away for a few days, but we’ll see what the future brings in the wastes when I get back. Cya!

It turns out I still can’t play Fallen Earth. Last night I was finally ready to launch the game. Only they had just released a patch which needed to be downloaded. I’m not entirely sure how big the patch was, but the launcher seemed to say something around 280 MB. Well, that’s not too bad for my 2 Mb connection. It should take around, hmm… that’s about 250 KB/s, but let’s say 200 KB/s to be conservative… about 25 minutes to download. Fair enough. But wait a second, what’s this estimate here in the launcher… 16 hours… WTF??

I guess the download servers at Icarus Studios aren’t the hottest things around. I’m sure there’s a lot of load to the system on patch days, but 16 hours FFS! Every MMO company that plans on releasing patches should implement a fucking torrent downloader in their updater. Period.

The download was finished in the morning, but of course I have to work for living…

What I’m feeling is a general lack of goals and purpose. I’ve just finished training my two gals to stealth bombers and now I’ve found that there is not a lot to do with them. My casual play style doesn’t really work for SB hunting. If I only have an hour or two to play in the evening I can’t really use three hours to hunt for targets in wormholes, now can I?

And otherwise I’m sure we can agree that the solo PVP in EVE is pretty dead. Hunting for targets in low sec is like constipation; you have to work really hard for a even the smallest of results.

On the PVE side I feel I’ve pretty much seen everything the low sec exploration I’ve been doing has to offer. I don’t think there is much to do about that other than to move out to null (or wormholes) if I want to experience something new.

I’m sure things would be a lot different if I joined a good corp, but I feel that that requires a level of dedication I’m not ready for. Red vs Blue would most likely offer some nice PVP opportunities, but I’ve never been a fan of pointless PVP. If I’m hunting for targets in wormholes I’m doing it partly for fun, but I’m also hoping for some profits. Staged fights may be fun, but it still feels too artificial to me.

The previous time I felt like this was in the fall last year. Back then we were just about to head out for a month long vacation in the States, which brought a month long break from all things EVE. When we came back from the trip things felt new and it was easy to pick the game up again.

Which is why I’ve decided to take another break from EVE. I’m going to set up some long time skills for training and just forget EVE for a while. Of course, things wouldn’t have the required drama if I hadn’t also met someone new…

It’s not you, I just can’t seem to settle down…

For the past six months I’ve had several games on my radar that I’ve been following with interest. I have not been exactly looking for a new game but just keeping an eye on the industry.

One of the older ones I wanted really badly to be a winner was Champions Online. It unfortunately suffered from a premature launch and seems to have run permanently aground. It is really a shame since I liked City of Heroes thematically, but the game mechanics didn’t really win me over and I succumbed to WoW in the end. I was hoping Champions would be the successor for CoH which would fixed everything that was wrong with the older game.

Another hot title on my watch list is of course Star Wars: The Old Republic. Who Star Wars fan wouldn’t be excited about that one? But the game is still in early development and scant details have been released so far. For me SWTOR is starting to feel a lot like WoW in the Star Wars universe. From what I’ve read it actually seems like a solo rpg dressed up as a MMO, but of course initial impressions may be misleading. We’ll just have to wait and see with this one.

A bit of a surprise contestant has turned up lately with All Points Bulleting. APB is more like a massively multiplayer fps than a rpg, but I’ve found myself strangely intrigued by its mechanics. APB release shouldn’t be too far off so I’m sure there will be more information available soon.

The problem with the above games is that they are either (seemingly) dying or haven’t been released yet. This makes them rather poor substitutes for EVE.

I don’t really know her yet, but she seems really nice…

I’ve been reading about Fallen Earth for a while and while the initial reviews weren’t entirely positive the user base has shown the same enthusiasm that I’ve come to find in EVE. FE may be a bit rough around the edges, but it is getting constant love from the developers and its core seems to be pretty solid. It is said to have a punitive learning curve, requiring (and rewarding) dedication to master and offering the player a pretty free approach to their character development. Sound like any game you might know?

On the other hand FE is most definitely not a sand box game the way EVE is. This is not necessarily such a limitations as one might easily gather from discussion with a Eve fan. It is true that EVEs most prominent advantage is the sand box model, but it is also its greatest pitfall.

The emergent gameplay that arises from the EVEs world being such an open playground produces the amazing stories that almost everyone interested in gaming has read. It does require that the players make these things happen. For a solitary player it is easy to feel left out and that is when EVE starts to look less promising.

Sure, you can do what ever you want and set your own goals. But what if you don’t really know what to aim for? It is pretty easy to start to lose the focus and then your goals become just arbitrary landmarks. So I can now fly stealth bombers, so what? What am I supposed to do now? Aim for recons? But then what?

Without the framework created by other players, EVE really does lack the story to keep you playing. For a solo player EVE is just not always much fun. The obvious answer is to get together with some other people and get that social network to support your in-game actions. This again has its own downsides, but I digress…

I guess what eventually lead me to try Fallen Earth out is the loving memories I’ve with the Fallouts. FE is pretty much the Fallout MMO that never was.

So we’re not going out tonight?

I must say that Fallen Earth has done its best to keep at a distance so far. I bought the game on Friday from their online store and figured I would have the game downloaded, installed and ready to play by Saturday. Unfortunately the game requires a product key to install and didn’t seem to be getting the receipt email containing. After three hours had passed and no email was to be seen I send the support an email asking about the problem. And promptly got no response. It was getting late and so I headed to bed slightly miffed.

In the morning there still was no product key or reply and so I surfed to the game forums. I found some threads asking about similar issues and since posting in them seemed to get dev attention I also posted a question. Within an hour I had gotten a moderator response and when I checked my email I had a product key waiting. Nice.

I soon fired up the game launcher and got to downloading the client. It is a pretty big download, about 4-5 GB in all, and the launcher happily announced that my installation would be finished around 9 pm. Well, no worries. The day time is family time in any case.

When I stopped by to see how things were progressing some six hours later I was greeted by “5 days remaining” estimate even though the download had progressed to about 2 GB. Something was definitely wrong here. After some investigation it seemed that the download server was capping my connection under load. I guess they don’t have a very robust server cluster down where they are distributing the files from. Patch days may prove interesting…

Luckily there turned out to be a official torrent for the complete client and so I stopped the launcher and started to download the client from there. Six hours passed and I had the client ready to install at around midnight on Saturday. I decided to call it a day and left the installation for morning.

Yesterday I finally got the game installed, but it was such a busy day that I didn’t even get a chance to boot up the game. This is where I’m at now, eagerly waiting to get a go the game when the wife and kids are snugly in bed. Hopefully it doesn’t have any more (nasty) surprises in store for me.

My main reason for not posting is really that I haven’t been playing Eve much the past weeks. I could blame the new version of Dwarf Fortress but it is only partly at fault. I played Empire: Total War for a spell and then killed some zombies in Left 4 Dead, but gaming has really been a somewhat secondary (or tertiary) activity lately.

In Eve I’ve spent some time setting up skill training and some long term trades. It was only last week that I finally found the energy to get my deadly duo to the long planned wormhole hunt. Results have been somewhat disappointing.

All the world is blind to my passing

The plan was always to get one of my gals in a covops to do the scanning and the other in a stealth bomber to kill any juicy targets I might find. My stealthy approach was much inspired by the diaries of Genocide Machine on his Confessions of a Wormhole Killer blog.

Since Lass is far better at the helm of her Hound than Mynthea with her Nemesis the coin toss was passed in Lassies favor. Mynthea got into her Helios and started looking for a suitable entry hole.

My original idea was to keep scanning for high sec entry holes and only dip in for a roam before coming back out near my home base. It soon became apparent that this plan had the serious drawback of me not finding good holes in my neighborhood. Most holes seemed to lead to null or other high sec areas and so I decided to move completely into the first WH I could find and roam from there on out.

The first hole was a C3 which didn’t have any residents and only a null exit so I came back out in high for another look. Next hole was a C5 with a cataclysmic variable and while it too was empty of people it had an exit to a C3. In we went.

I’ve been combing the holes now for about three or four nights with no notable results. The only C3 hole with residents seemed promising for a while as I spotted a Mammoth, an Orca and some combat ships which immediately started scanning for me when they caught a whiff of my probes. I decided to let things quiet down for the night.

The next evening when I logged in the tower had been taken down and only some ecm modules remained. I have no idea why the corp decided to vacate the premises, but I waited by the tower for a while in case someone came back to pick the stuff up while I scanned for the next hole. No-one came.

Ghost towns

So far I’ve only really seen abandoned holes, with a few towers or modules left behind by past residents. It is beginning to dawn on me that it isn’t very easy to find targets in the wormholes. I’m sure my skills and tactics have a lot of room for improvement, but jumping on a mining op isn’t easy as you first have to find their island in a sea of wormhole systems.

I will keep searching for a while still and hopefully I can find someone to engage. I was considering making a raid to a null sec system if I came across a suitable hole, but from what I’ve understood it will be even more difficult to find bomber targets there as people will dock up as soon as a red enters local and wait for the cavalry to arrive. The whole solo PVP of Eve is beginning to look grim.

Low sec is the playground of pirate blobs and while it is probably the best place to look for solo targets it is still pretty difficult to actually find one. Null is not suited for a solo player for the above mentioned reasons and now that wormholes seem to be as bad as well I’m starting to feel the only thing left for me is PVE. Oh well, maybe things will better tomorrow.

I really like building computers. It’s a sort of hobby with me, but of course I can’t practice it too often. Computer parts are really prohibitively expensive when you move out of the entry level and where’s the fun in building just adequate systems? =)

Of course, nothing ever goes as planned when building computers. Much exasperation ensued as I tried to get the damn thing to work…

The old horse gets a makeover

My old comp served me faithfully for about three years and I used some pre-owned parts to build it to begin with, so it was no wonder its age was beginning to show. My computers are usually a result of several iterations of upgrades. I think the origins for the previous build was about four years ago when I wanted to silence the system.

Back then we were living in a two room apartment and my ‘workdesk’ was located in the corner of our living room. My wife kept complaining how my computer kept up such whoosh that she couldn’t watch the television in peace. I used this as an excuse to break the machine apart and build a new one with silence in mind. I didn’t really upgrade anything on the performance side, simply worked on the noise problem.

I bought a new case (Antec P180), a new power supply (Seasonic S12), a new hard drive,  some fans and various quiet cooling kits. The result was a very quiet system and I was happy for a year or so until I ran into performance problems with World of Warcraft.

We were just beginning our house project so budget was a bit tight and so I decided to shop around for second hand parts. I bought a pre-owned processor (AMD Athlon 3200) and some memory, but ultimately had to buy a brand new mobo (Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe) and graphics card (Asus GF7600 GS). The graphics card was the only passively cooled one I could get my hands on in a hurry, so it had a bit lower performance than I had wanted but at least it was totally silent.

Again it was nice system and I was really happy with it even though it didn’t have any real power on the graphics side. It ran WoW smoothly enough and that was pretty much the only thing I played back then. During the years I’ve had to get a new main hard disk as the old one broke and I did buy a new monitor last year too.

The new monitor is what eventually pushed the old system over the edge. A 1900×1200 resolution was simply too much for the 7600 GS and most games I own started to choke on anything but the minimal settings. So I started to shop around for a new setup and this time I didn’t really want to go cheap on much anything.

Mind you, I don’t go for the top of the line on anything (other than the mobo maybe) when building computers; there’s simply too much premium on the prices of the best components. The second best is usually where the price and value really meet.

So my new setup was this:

Intel i5-750 processor
Asus Maximus III Formula P55 motherboard
Sapphire Radeon HD5770 1GB Vapor-X graphics card
3x2GB Kingston DDR3 memory
WD Caviar Black 500GB hard drive
WD Caviar 100GB hard drive
Seasonic S12-II 500W power supply
Sony DRU-700A dvd drive
Antec P180 case
BenQ G2400WD 24" monitor
Hyundai L90+ 19" monitor

The new parts were the processor, mobo, graphics card and the memory. Rest I figured I could keep as they were working ok and would not really affect performance. The only thing I was worried about was the length of the CPU power line from the Seasonic PSU as the P180 case is a bit challenged in this aspect. The P180 relocates the PSU to the bottom of the case which is good for heat control, but not so nice when your PSU has shortish lines. With my old setup the CPU line was constantly under tension as I had to route it under my graphics card and past the CPU.

Siren song of the PSU

My fears were unnecessary as the new parts fitted in very nicely. The old parts were giving me some trouble however. Being a new mobo model the Maximus didn’t have any IDE connectors and of course my older HD and DVD had never even heard of SATA. Well, they weren’t critical components anyway so I could get a new DVD drive and some adapters later on. No biggie.

I soon had the system ready to run and excitedly I switched the power on and waited  for the windows to boot. Immediately I realized that something was wrong as the machine emitted a high pitched electric screeching or squealing sound. Things seemed to be loading otherwise smoothly so I tried to pinpoint the sound within the case. The noise occasionally turned into a varying pitch chirp, much like the sound that my old ZX Spectrum used to make while loading games from a cassette.

After a moment of acute listening I decided that it was the power supply making the noise. Well, this was a higher power setup compared to the old one, so maybe the PSU was running at the peak of its range and was screaming out its pain. Since everything seemed to be functioning correctly I decided to proceed with the driver installations and shop for a new PSU the next day. It wasn’t long before I had to power down the system as the annoying noise was giving me a headache.

The next day I went and bought myself a Nexus RX-8500 850W PSU which was said to be a nice, quiet power supply with plenty of power for my needs. Back at home I took the system apart again and fitted my new power supply in. Powering up the system I was greeted by the same obnoxious noise emitting from the new PSU. WTF?

So this wasn’t a problem with the PSU after all. I started browsing the tech forums for clues about the problem. It turned out that PSU noise is a pretty common phenomena and the most common reason was a capacitor noise due to faulty components. I was really confused as how could it be that both my old and new power supply had broken down at the same time?

The more I thought about it the less it made sense for the PSU’s to be at fault here. The noise must be generated by some other component of the setup. But which one?

I started swapping out parts as I had the old gear sitting right there. Nothing seemed to change the situation. Frustrated I browsed some more. The funny thing was that the noise seemed to change with my browsing activity. Especially mouse activity like resizing the browser window totally ended the noise. I googled some more and hit a forum where such symptoms were discussed.

The discussion was really just a lot of guessing but one post caught my eye as the person simply said that changing a C1E setting in the BIOS had helped him. When another guy chimed in to agree with this I decided to give it a try. It seemed like it was either this or hauling the whole kit back for a RMA.

But first I looked up what the setting did: C1E basically allows the system to throttle down the CPU when it is idle by lowering the front side bus speed. Well, this sounded interesting.

I rebooted the system and went to the BIOS. There under the advanced CPU options was an innocent looking line with just the text C1E enabled. I changed it to disabled, saved the settings and rebooted again. To a world of blissful quiet.

Good times, bad times

I’m not going to bother finding out exactly why the C1E causes the power supply to squeal like that, but disabling any unnecessary hardware options seems like a good idea. The systems nowadays are full of features that are nice and handy in some circumstances, but completely unnecessary for most users.

So for anyone suffering from a screeching (or squealing, chirping, buzzing) electric sound emitting from their PSU: try disabling the C1E option from the advanced CPU settings in BIOS.

That’s all for today. I know this post wasn’t what most of you were expecting but I needed to offload this experience somewhere. I’ll get back to Eve soon. I promise. =)

I seem to be hitting the mental phase in which I tend to drop any demanding activities and opt for more passive ones. My interests seem to follow these cycles which often follow the same pattern.

The Ferris wheel

My mind seems to work in a rotating pattern that takes me through the same phases over and over again, much like the Ferris wheel. The phases last usually for a weeks or two and each drives its own kind of activity.

The upward swing has me full of energy and ideas, creativity is high and I often undertake new venues. At this time I usually do lots of design and make plans for future. It is a happy sort of buzz that leaves you with a feeling that the world is full of possibilities. In Eve this usually translates to a lot of forum crawling and the EFT warrior definitely jumps out. Skill plans are created and prerequisites are collected in game to make the plans work. Thoughts like “Maybe I could put up a POS? Could I make a profit running reactions in low sec?” pop into my head. A lot of posts also appear here on the blog and they tend to focus on analyzing some game mechanics and detailing future plans.

This phase is definitely the domain of the subconcious, the muse that spurs us to great heights if we listen to it. When the upward swing starts to reach the top I have a great view of my mental landscape and can make out lots of interesting details.

The next phase is usually filled with determination and concentrates on examining and implementing the previously formed ideas and plans. Design ideas get worked into actual concepts or mechanics, which are further put down to code if they are ripe enough. Lots of learning takes place here as the ideas are often just vague shapes and to utilize them one needs to give them proper form.

Things like “how to turn a interesting new game mechanic into a fulfilling player experience” or “how to best create database schema to support a new game mechanic” gets worked out. My programming efficiency really peaks at this time and I can produce quite a stack of code in a very short time.

In Eve I usually take a new ship or a fit out to try it in action. Or maybe put up new invention jobs or set up R&D agents; whatever it is that has captivated my imagination previously. This phase also sees a lot of posting here as I want to share my experiences. If I’m in the mood, my trading alt also gets a lot of love and attention as does the trading tool.

I’d characterize this phase as the domain of the intellect; my rational mind goes over the things my subconcious has put out for it and works them into something “real”. It is also a very rewarding phase in that you accomplish a lot and can feel good about yourself when a task is finished.

But sooner or later things will start to bog down. It gets harder and harder to pick up an unfinished code or to motivate myself to write another post here on the blog. That’s when I know I’m reaching the downward swing on the mental Ferris wheel.

Slowly the energy gets drained out and I start to lose focus on the tasks I have set out for myself. In Eve I log in more and more infrequently and while in game I usually just chat and maybe make some hauling runs semi-afk. Finally I just log in when I need to queue up skill training.

I wouldn’t say I’m depressed, it is nothing like that mentally. I simply seem to want more passive forms of entertainment, anything that doesn’t require much mental activity. I usually read a lot, but opt for the fictional literature instead of the more educational material. High fantasy beats game design at this point.

Movies and television are prime candidates for a pastime activity and I often play other games than Eve. When you come to think about it, Eve is pretty demanding as a game. I’m sure you can do some missioning pretty casually but it is a world away from, say, Super Mario Galaxy.

I’m metaphorically recharging my batteries during this phase. The intellectual part of my mind needs to rest after a spell of hard work and the subconcious is starving for some stimuli. So I just let them both hang loose and feed them new experiences.

And sooner or later I will find myself sitting in front of the television, thinking how “that motorcycle gang setting would make for an interesting game theme”…

Angels fall first

So as not to make this post completely about me and nothing to do with Eve, I’ll give you a rundown on the stealth bomber ratting tour I did. Overall I’d say the tour was a success.

The SB works just as efficiently against the big rats as one would imagine. I could take 850K bounty rat down in about 10 volleys (that’s just over two minutes in time) and I wasn’t even using the Caldari Navy torps. As discussed earlier, the only problem is the smaller rats that like to eat SBs for breakfast.

My solution was to take out a cruiser fitted for tank and cargo, which would take and hold the aggro while the SB killed off the big rats. I fitted a Vexor for this purpose and it worked like a charm. As was pointed out an Exequror would make for an even better supply cruiser with its enormous cargo bay and I’ll probably get one the next time I’m going to rat in hostile null sec.

I didn’t really rat for much more than maybe three hours in total as most of my time was spent in setting up bookmarks and getting the supply cruiser past some gate camps. The total worth of bounties and loot after my short tour was about 18M (+ about 2M in corp taxes), which makes for about 6-7M per hour. It is really a pretty low estimate as I was generally learning the ropes first with the SB and then the teamwork with the supply cruiser.

I’d imagine I would make closer to 10-15M if I’d have a ready system (bookmarked) and just stuck to it without much interference. Also getting to a better system would help as the highest bounty rats in the system I used were the 850K battleships. So expect a lot more isk/hour if you’re thinking about this.

All in all I’d say that ratting with the SB (+ supply cruiser) was pretty ok, especially considering how cheap the combo is to put together. I’m hard pressed to come up with a ship that will kill the BSs as efficiently for less than 50M. Of course you do need two accounts for this to work, so it’s not exactly comparable to a single ship setup.

I really wanted to try out the Hound as a ratter and so I sneaked in to the nearby null sec for some fun and games. Some problems became apparent and I came up with some nice solutions which I then tried out.

‘Woof woof’ says the dog

Getting the stealth bomber to null is not much of a problem. If you keep your eyes open you’ll be able to spot the gate camps and sneak around them pretty safely. I really do love the covert ops cloak for the safety and freedom it provides. Unfortunately the stealth bombers are paper thin when it comes to combat.

In the systems where I started ratting the biggest rats are in a spawn with a BS (650k bounty) and two escorts (frigs). Some other spawns are four battlecruisers or a BC with two cruiser or destroyer escorts. So these are not the bigger rats I’m hunting, just something to try things out.

The most secure way for a SB to rat is to get into position (20-30 km away) and repeat a cycle of: torps hot -> decloak -> target -> torps off -> wait for the hit -> recloak -> wait 5 seconds and repeat. This allows you to beat the BS down one volley at a time while remaining out of combat. But it is pretty slow going and on the third or fourth volley the escorts usually pick you up and engage.

I found that I can usually finish off the BS (BCs for sure) with the escorts attacking me as it is maybe three or four volleys left to a kill. My medium shield extender gives me enough buffer to take some frig fire while aligning and firing the last torps before warping out. But that leaves the escorts at the belt and makes looting a pain in the ass as you’d have to sneak in cloaked to quickly grab anything valuable.

The slow pace of ratting this way really kills any isk/hour chances and while everything shouldn’t be about the money, I feel kind of stupid if I’m doing things that don’t make sense to me.  I mean lets face it, ratting is not that much fun by itself. It is an adequate pass time if you’re looking for some PVP targets, but I wouldn’t want to focus on it solely for the fun of it.

Of course the Hound faces the same problems as any (non-lazor) ship  ratting in hostile 0.0. You only have so much cargo bay and the torps will eventually run out. Loot is next to impossible to collect as BS modules are rather big and you’re soon juggling the junk to figure out what is more profitable to keep.

I was rather disappointed until I realized that I could waltz in Mynthea with some other ship to help with the ratting. Since the problem was the small rats and their unwanted affection towards the SB, I figured something that could tank the rats while the SB smacked the big rat was in order. If it could also carry extra ammo, salvage and collect the valuables all the better. Enter the supply cruiser.

‘Sit, stay’ says the dog wrangler

My logic for choosing a cruiser centers on the size: a cruiser is small enough to speed tank the BS yet big enough to fit some tank against the smaller rats. Cruisers can also be fitted for a moderate sized cargo bay and with a flight of Warrior II’s you can take out the small rats easily. Cruisers are also really cheap to buy and  fit so losing one to a gate camp wouldn’t be the end of the world.

Since I’m a Gallente gall and I have been flying a Vexor for half my life I immediately thought of it for the hull. It has a fairly sizeable cargo bay which I extended with a few cargo bay expander II’s. Its slot layout also makes for a possible passive shield tank (even with the cargo expanders taking two lows) and a passive tank seemed like a good idea as I don’t want to be juggling too many modules when dual boxing.

The idea is to fly the supply cruiser in to the belt and immediately set it to orbit the big rat to maximize transversal. Then all it has to do is wait for the SB to decloak and torpedo the big rat down, at which point it will throw out the drones to finish of the rest of the rats while the SB recloaks. Fairly simple plan, really.

For this purpose I kitted the two remaining lows with meta 4 shield power relays and the mids got two large meta 4 shield extenders aside a MWD. This gave me a 53 dps tank which I further boosted to 66 dps with a core defence field purger rig I had lying around. You could slap in additional rigs to further boost the tank, but I didn’t have any available and didn’t want to wait for a production job to finish.

Besides, that 66 dps tank should hold of the smaller escorts for long enough to kill the BS. And if the incoming dps seems too high you can always thin the crowd with the drones as long as someone keeps the BS pointed. The buggers have a tendency to warp out if their escorts get killed.

The only thing I was slightly worried about was the ability of the BS to hit my cruiser, because that dps would be too much for the tank. My experience with a Thorax is that pretty much the only damage coming from the BS would be missiles and that would be mitigated by sig radius (so no MWD on while orbiting!), but this of course was a different boat so I couldn’t be sure.

The highs got a set of a tractor beam and two salvagers in addition to the mandatory cloak. With nothing better to fit in the last high I slapped on a medium Nos.

This got me the following fit:

[Vexor, Null sec supply]
Local Power Plant Manager: Reaction Shield Power Relay I
Local Power Plant Manager: Reaction Shield Power Relay I
Expanded Cargohold II
Expanded Cargohold II

Large Azeotropic Ward Salubrity I
Large Azeotropic Ward Salubrity I
10MN MicroWarpdrive I

Prototype Cloaking Device I
Medium Nosferatu I
Small Tractor Beam I
Salvager I
Salvager I

Medium Core Defence Field Purger I

Warrior II x5
Hornet EC-300 x5

The drone bay has lots of room for utility drones (shield maintenance drones?), but I tried to keep the costs down as a ship loss in null sec is just a matter of time. The cost for this ship was around 15 million which is quite cheap all things considered. All I now needed to do was load up a stack of torpedoes in the cargo bay and make my way to 0.0.

Test drive 1, crash test passed

Flying the ten or so jumps into null sec was pretty uneventful and I was quite happy to get there so fast. Lassie was waiting for me and after swapping a set of bookmarks and some loot we were ready for action. With everything in order and the system all quiet Lassie warped to the first belt seeking for prey.

Luck was with us as the first belt had an Angel War General (BS) and an Arch Angel Rogue (scram frig), which is pretty much the biggest rat spawn in this sec system. Lassie moved the Hound in position and I engaged warp engines to 10 km from her.

Coming out of warp I immediately flipped the MWD on to close the gap to the battleship before they would start firing me. It was only about 20 km, but the Vexor seemed slower than ever as it crawled towards the targets. Something was definitely wrong here and I checked the speed which read 280 km/s. WTF?

It pretty soon dawned on me that I had fitted a 1MN MWD to the cruiser hull, giving me afterburner speeds with a huge sig radius. Great!

But I got over the gap before I got targeted and then it was simply a matter of soaking up the damage. Meanwhile Lassie decloaked as soon as I had gotten the rats to engage and started firing her torps at the BS. My tank was holding well and it didn’t take much more than 10 volleys for the  War General to explode in a cloud of dust and debris.

At that point I launched my flight of Warrior II’s and started salvaging and looting the wreck. The small Angel frig soon joined it’s commander in the afterlife and things were quiet again. Looting and salvaging didn’t take long and we were both soon cloaked and ready for another round. It was getting late however and I decided to call it a day.

Overall I’d say that my experiment with the supply cruiser was pretty successful. It did everything it was supposed to do and the teamwork with the stealth bomber was simple and effective. The ships complement each others weaknesses beautifully and smoothed all the ratting wrinkles I had experienced with the solo SB earlier.

I would probably fit the supply cruiser with some more shield rigs to increase the tank further. And a correct sized MWD would be nice too (doh!). But other than that I don’t see many problems. I think I’ll give the duo another spin today and see how well they perform in a longer ratting session.

Until then, fly safe and keep your eyes open for any stealth bombers lurking around. =)

Of course this list of issues got too damn long and what I ended up with was a reply to the thread in which I try to collect the wisdom in one or two (or maybe just a few) posts. However, it is getting really late and I don’t dare to post my stuff at this time so I’ll just put it up here. The original thread can be found here.

This has become a pretty long and intense thread and I think it might benefit everyone if we could just do a quick synopsis of the main issues and proposals discussed so far. I’m not sure if I’m the best person to do this, but I’ll give it a shot anyway.

The story so far

The whole thread starts with the OP fretting about the fall in prices of the high end ores since Dominion came out. Everyone pretty much agrees that this is due to the sudden increase in ore availability in 0.0 brought about with the system upgrades of the sovereignty revamp and to a lesser degree by wormhole space supplying said ores.

Since the amount of ore is no longer a limiting factor in 0.0, everyone+dog is shifting to mine high end ores in hopes of better profits. This in turn causes massive oversupply which starts to bring down ABC prices. Much lamentation over diminishing profits by former 0.0 miners can be heard.

Drone alloys as a source of minerals is brought up in the conversation, but it is generally agreed to be a small(ish) factor in the current situation. The same applies to T1 loot drops as a source of minerals, although it is seen as a more of an issue. Generally it is felt that T1 drops could be balanced better, but don’t need to be completely removed.

Tying into the mineral price conversation is also the issue with insurance (or IER = insurance exchange rate) which acts as a floor to mineral prices, but is seen problematic by many. Suicide ganks are brought up and while somewhat offtopic, they are used to illustrate the problems spurring from insurance. Removal of insurance is predicted by many to cause a universal crash in mineral prices and so cannot be done without introducing replacing mechanisms.

A universal agreement is found in the fact that any solution/change that would lead to fewer subscriptions for CCP will unlikely be implemented. CCP has stated that they want to reinforce the original ideal for sec areas (high/low/null) and that their wish is to move more people out from empire space.

This is seen by some as the overarching goal for any changes proposed, so that for the proposal to have validity null sec needs always to be “better” than high sec. Others maintain that there should be no difference to the sec areas if their inherent risk vs. reward ratio doesn’t support the differences (i.e. null sec mining shouldn’t be inherently more profitable than high sec mining if more high end minerals are produced than the market demands etc.).

An underlying theme found here is the premise that the risk vs. reward ratios of the different sec areas are skewed against the desired population ratios. The usual view of the current situation is that:

High sec = very low risk vs. moderate payout
Low sec = very high risk vs. moderate payout
null sec = moderate risk vs. high payout
wormholes = moderate risk vs. high payout

The result is that high sec and null sec (with wormholes often seen as an extension of null) are seen as the only areas worth inhabiting due to the risk vs. reward ratio. Some 80% (?) of players are inhabiting the safe empire space, which is what CCP wanted to change with Dominion.

With the cap removed from null sec ores there are no real limits anymore to null sec population and a mass exodus is happening as alliances want to exploit their unlimited ore reserves. Some people see this as a problem (for example diminishing profits from 0.0 mining due to oversupply) while others would like to see empire space thinned even further. However, almost everyone agrees that low sec is currently ‘broken’.

Many people also feel that the market is currently working as it should be, since the high end mineral prices are dropping because a new (huge) supply of high end ore was introduced. Once the high end prices drop to whatever level makes mining them less profitable (risk vs. reward again) than high sec mining, people will move back to empire space and things will balance out. The argument against this is that while the market may technically balance the mineral prices eventually this would be detrimental for the game as mining (as a profession) and sec areas as a whole would be harmed in the progress.

The actual discussion has of course been rather heated at times and the ghastly ‘do/don’t do this and EVE will die’ card has been played more than enough by some the more excitable persons.

What can we learn here?

From this setting several opinions on the cause of the problems and proposals for solving them come about. The ones listed here are only the most prominent themes, with individual solution proposals filed underneath.

1) Mineral distribution is flawed and should be corrected for the sec areas and mineral prices to balance.

The main issue claimed here is an inherent problem with the ore distribution and their mineral composition where the different sec areas (high/low/null) have different ores and the ores yield different amounts of different minerals. The ore mineral composition prevents miners from selecting which minerals to mine as the high end ores (ABC) also yield low end minerals. This combined with the manufacturing requirements of ships/modules leads to disparities in mineral prices and prevents the market from balancing the prices correctly.

The core problem is seen as the markets inability to regulate itself through supply and demand. The demand side is inflexible due to the mineral requirements of manufacturing and the insurance system only pronounces this. On the supply side, mining high end ores also produces low end minerals which doesn’t allow miners to focus on market demands and produces a surplus of undesired minerals.

Solutions:

1a) Introduce ores containing all minerals to all security areas so that the miners can self regulate the supply (essentially remove sec area based ores). The mineral yield should be balanced so that the desired reward ratio for different sec areas is maintained (i.e. mining zydrine in high sec should be as profitable as mining trit in high sec).

Arguments against this say that this would simply fix the prices of all minerals between each other and ultimately to the best (risk vs. reward) available sec areas value distribution. Since it is next to impossible to perfectly balance such yield (risk levels change with player activity) this just causes sec areas to have disproportionate risk vs. reward ratios, which in turn leads to the ’80% miners live here’ issue with one area.

1b) Re-balance refining yields across the sec areas so that refining gets more efficient in lower sec areas. This should increase loot and mineral value in underpopulates areas while mitigating mineral supply in high sec.

Many argue that this would simply raise the low end mineral prices (as supply drops) without significant changes to population densities (the payouts should raise considerably to mitigate the risks associated with lower sec areas).

1c) Introduce mechanics to convert minerals to other minerals (mineral alchemy). This should allow for the market to regulate the supply side. No counter arguments here.

1d) Adjust the Bill of Materials for manufacturing so that high end ores are needed more in manufacturing.

The main arguments against this is that it is very difficult to balance the nearly 500 items in game without disrupting the overall game balance (knock-on effects). It is also seen as a temporary solution as re-balancing might be required every time the game changes to any significant degree.

2) Mineral oversupply is the problem and should be fixed to balance the mineral prices.

The biggest problem is the general oversupply of minerals vs. the markets ability to consume them. Market will balance the mineral prices if the supply meets the demand.

Solutions:

2a) Remove (or lower) insurance and introduce NPC buy and sell orders for some modules currently only supplied by NPCs (like POS components and POS fuels) to set limits on mineral prices. This would allow the market to use isk faucets/mineral sinks (sell to NPC orders) when mineral prices are too low or isk sinks/mineral faucets (buy from NPC orders) when mineral price rise too high. While mineral prices are in the desired range players will trade said items with each other.

2b) Limit POS usage in wormholes to prevent “permanent” residence. This should curb mineral flow from wormhole space, although wormhole minerals are not seen as a major problem at the moment. Orca based moving “bases” are often  offered as a more suitable solution to wormhole exploitation.

2c) Introduce alternative methods of income to mining professionals. If miners could utilize their skills and ships to earn isk they would more easily move away from mining and thus reduce mineral supply. Proper mining missions and new mining options (fuel mining etc.) have been suggested.

During the weekend I also got back to exploring a bit and ran some new sites I had never done before. This involved a dip into a C1 wormhole system too. Here, I’ll take you through the week…

Mainly stealth, few explosions

After my shopping spree for Hound and modules I still needed to wait a few days for Lassie to get her support skills high enough to fit everything I wanted. I spent the time setting up some trawl orders (this is what I call wide range, low ball buy orders for items that will slowly accumulate) for the torpedoes, hopping into Heimatar for some skill books and eventually bought some torpedo BPCs too.

My Hound fit is a pretty basic MSE fit. I opted for the medium shield extender to get some buffer as I’m not comfortable with flying a SB yet. Full out damage fit leaves your pretty boat paper thin and a fumble will usually result in a wreck.

After some launcher rigging and weapon upgrades training I could just fit everything but the probe launcher and figured I was ready for a test drive. I took the ship to my usual exploration system and set up a few belt bookmarks just in case. I didn’t have to fly around for long before I came to a rat spawn that seemed suited for my testing. It consisted of a Sansha BS (650k bounty) and two frigates tagging along.

I have read all the SB guides and figured my best option for a solo kill with the frigs around was uncloaking for a single run and then recloaking before getting targeted. Rinse and repeat until the BS is dead seemed to be the idea. So I got into position some 30 km away from the group and dropped my cloak.

The siege launchers hissed as they spewed the torps out towards the unsuspecting rat. I was somewhat nervous so I managed to recloak early, losing lock before the torps hit their mark. Ok, live and learn. Another try and I managed to hit the BS and recloaked succesfully. The damage wasn’t very good though. The torps only hit for just below 800 damage, barely denting the BS’s shields.

Frustrated I uncloaked and started pounding the BS while aligning for a safe. The frigs started closing in but couldn’t really hit me and my shield soaked up any hits they managed to put in. I fired about ten volleys before the frigs got too close and the BS was about half way into armor at that point.

I was really angry when I took off. That was 30 torpedoes spent to scratch the paint job on the Sansha battleship. Stealth bomber my ass. Sneaky paint remover more like it.

In retrospect I realize that the Sansha are the least opportune target for my Hound and its Bane torpedoes. Explosive damage is exactly what the Sansha resists are hardest against and while I could have swapped the Banes for Mjolnirs it would have removed all the ship bonuses seriously dropping the dps. But it would have been more effective even so, damn you 75% resists!

Next time I’ll head to the nearby Angel space and try things out again. Maybe even Mynthea will have her SB ready for some duo fun.

A quick detour

During the weekend I was back scanning in my usual system but I had spotted another scanner there earlier on and now sigs seemed few. The only thing I could find was a wormhole leading to a C1 system. This sounded as good as anything so I dropped the BM in a can at a safe for Mynthea and in I went.

I quickly set up a set of safespots before starting to probe. Setting up safes has become second nature to me after spending so much time in low sec and I do it in about two minutes nowadays. First order of business was checking for other people and a quick cover with combat probes showed a single tower and no ships to be seen. The tower was online, but since things were pretty quiet I didn’t mind it much.

Unfortunately the only site I found was a mag named Forgotten Perimeter Coronation Platform. Well, that was better than nothing so I warped in at range to look around. Only three cans and no sleepers to be seen. This was a bit of a letdown as the salvage from the sleeper ships is often quite valuable. It was time for Mynthea to come in.

It didn’t take long for her to warp to the site and as she got to work on the cans I kept a nervous eye on the directional. Everything went smoothly and we weren’t disturbed by either sleepers or residents.

Of course the loot turned out to be really crappy, just some sleeper parts worth nothing. Disappointed we jumped back to our familiar low sec.

Have junk, will travel

Last night I was at it again, scanning my home away from home. Things were really quiet and quite surprisingly I hit five sigs on initial scan. Conveniently located at only two planets I picked the one with three to go first. Within five minutes I had a radar (Decayed Sansha Mainframe), a mag (Decayed Sansha Mass Grave) and a grav (Small Gneiss Deposit) pinned down.

Normally I would have gone straight for the radar, but I had never seen a mass grave before so I was intrigued. Besides, Mynthea had an analyzer fitted on the Wyrm and I couldn’t be assed to go fetch a codebreaker. Still, there were two more sigs to scan and soon I had another mag (Decayed Sansha Excavation) and a wormhole added to the list. That settled it, I was going for a junk run.

Mynthea was already in system so it only a matter of me getting into position for her to warp in. Coming out of warp at the mass grave I begun the understand the sites name. Looming at me was an eerily familiar structure, so gigantic that it eclipsed the sun as it blocked half the view. As I looked at it closer I realized why it was so familiar looking: it was the remains of an Amarr station.

Littered around the station remains were eight containers that seemed promising for a salvager like me. Guarding them were five Sansha cruisers and two frigs. Nothing much to worry about. The only problematic thing about the site was its sheer size. Since the cans were spread pretty much all over the place it meant having to fly around the station to get to all of them. I really hoped Mynthea had a MWD fitted…

I signaled Mynthea to fly in and she soon set to work on the cans. The rats proved little resistance to her drones and soon the only thing limiting our progress was the sorry ass cap on the Myrm that let her only pulse the MWD. I mean, the damn thing recharges at the speed of a snail on hot tar. Those shield power relays sure come with a price.

A few more frigs spawned while Myn was cracking the cans open but otherwise there wasn’t much to do except marvel the sights. In the end we left the site with pretty meager loot. The cans contained a crap ton of salvage and a Amarr encryption methods skillbook, but moneywise it wasn’t much above a few million.

I immediately warped to the excavation site as I was really bored. When the ship came out of warp I groaned. The site had seven cans again littered all over a huge asteroid mine. The cans were in a string about 40-50 km apart from each other with something like 400 km to cover all together and some rocks to dodge on the way. At least there were no guards here.

Mynthea warped in again and started traversing the obstacle course. Again the MWD could only work in pulses and I was half asleep by the time she was finished. It was another load of salvage, but nothing worth much.

I guess it is nice to get some salvage for my rig building, but I think I would have been much better off just running the radar. Oh well, at least the grave site was a sight to behold.

Dual vision, double fun

I bought a second monitor (a 24″ BenQ) last summer and I’ve been running Eve in the new monitor and surfing and whatnot in the other. Ever since I got the second account it has been bugging me that I have to switch windows to see what is going on with the other char. While this has been somewhat annoying it hasn’t been a real problem since I’ve mainly scanned with one char and run the sites with the other.

Now that I’ve got the capabilities for the alts to participate in combat (at least potentially so) I seriously wanted to get the second account to run in the other monitor. So far the real problem has been the horrible performance (about 5 fps) when running in two monitors and I always figured it was just the lack of horsepower in my graphics card.

After perusing the forums a bit I gathered that the performance degradation is due to the screens overlapping each other. If one game screen spills just one pixel over to the other monitor your framerate drops like a sack of bricks. So last night I tried things with the Evemons relocation function which basically just moves the screen so that it appears to be full screen and also relocated the second screen on the second monitor. Suddenly things worked pretty well.

Both game clients need to be in windowed mode with the screen resolution set to the respective monitor resolutions for this to work. Having “separate” clients using junctions (I think the Windows XP shell extension for this was named Link Shell Extension) helps as you don’t have to fool around with the settings all the time. The game windows still overlap a little at the edges, but since it is only the window border and not the actual 3d contents it doesn’t seem to affect performance much.

The performance is still only around 30 fps for the active screen and about 15 fps for the non-focused screen, but I think this is due to my low power graphics card (passive Asus GeForce 7600 GS). It’s enough for me to play although I wouldn’t necessarily seek pvp with this setup.