A.E.

I guess it is inevitable, but I hate the way that whenever someone from Goons or her allies posts about Titans anywhere there are several posts saying it's because they couldn't beat BoB or whatever. Come on guys, keep that shit in CAOD. Contrary to popular belief, there are a lot of very intelligent people in Goonswarm. Do not confuse "I don't like them" with "they are stupid", please.

Now having said that, I'm going to put myself on the line a little and say I am a goon (even if this character isn't) and I do think Titans are a little overpowered. This is not me crying about not being able to beat them (hell, I'm so new that practically everything beats me except for maybe shuttles and Ibises) but I do think there is an issue with them currently.

Now I say currently because a part of the problem is lag. Were it easier to actually warp out when you saw a Titan on grid with you, you'd stand a more reasonable chance of being able to get out. The issue is that Titans are often used when there is already relatively heavy lag and you often find yourself not able to escape. I'm sure that as CCP put more work into the new technology to reduce lag, it will become less frustrating to see a Titan on grid with you as you'll no longer have that sickening feeling of certain death.

However it's not all lag. There have been many proposed solutions, some better than others and I will address some of them from my opinion here.

Make it harder to build Titans.
This is occasionally bounced around as people fear the proliferation of Titans. People envisage a time where each large space-holding alliance has dozens of Titans, effectively making it impossible to ever take a cynojammed system again. While I don't fully agree with the doomsayers, it will become a problem if left as-is with current POS warfare mechanics. However, I don't think it's necessary to make it harder to build them as this will only further cement the issue of those who currently own one being far superior to those without. This idea will blunt proliferation of Titans but not entirely stop it and it's probably unfair to those who are currently without.

Make the Doomsday Device a focused-fire shot rather than affecting the whole grid.
Another popular option which does have some merit, but one that ultimately removes a lot of the combat-usefulness of Titans. It would, in my opinion, be a shame to give more reason for them to be logistics outposts rather than combat vessels. It's a neat idea and having the option to choose to either one-shot a capital or nuke an entire fleet of sub-capitals does remove the whole "won't be used in combat" issue to a degree, but I still fear that unless very well balanced, you won't see the cap-shot option used too much. Why kill one Mothership and leave yourself vulnerable to all those Dreadnoughts sitting beside it?

Increase the risk of using the Doomsday.
The other main option seems to be this one, albeit in various forms. The problem with Doomsdays is largely that they are not particularly prohibitive to use and so they are used often. My favourite of these is this:

- There is a countdown timer set between activating the module and it firing of around two to three minutes.
- From the moment the countdown is started, there is a warp-disruption field around the titan (maybe 150km or so).

This means that people will need to decide whether to evacuate the area in advance, leaving their Titan vulnerable for a few minutes, or keep the support nearby and risk having them die to the Doomsday.

Generally, I like the idea of firing your Doomsday having a form of risk attached to it but, having said that, killing a Titan should still be an absolutely epic achievement. We shouldn't see them getting killed left, right and centre, so the increased risk would have to, in my opinion, maintain the "oh my god we actually killed a Titan" factor, which makes this option incredibly difficult to balance and implement.

Make Titans susceptable to Electronic Warfare.
The ability to jam a Titan and stop it from using its Doomsday should be incredibly hard, but possible in my opinion. In order to balance this, I believe a new module or even class of ship is preferable to a blob of Blackbirds with racial jammers. A Titan Jammer could have different properties, perhaps making it hard to fit or with reduced chances of success, whereas trying to shoehorn in different jamming mechanics with current jammers just seems like a nightmare. It also addresses the fact that a Doomsday doesn't require targetting whereas current jammers are set up to block targetting. A specific module would certainly be preferable for this option, in my opinion.

Make velocity a factor in Doomsday damage.
Currently, unless I'm mistaken, the damage you take from a Doomsday is unaffected by the normal things that would prevent damage. If velocity (not transversal, that doesn't quite make sense to me) or signature radius or the like helped to reduce damage then damage would be more proportional to your chosen ship class. It should still be hard to "tank" a Doomsday, but giving some of the smaller ships a fighting chance of survival can't hurt, especially if they are either fast-locking ships that can prevent it cloaking straight afterward or Dictors/Hictors able to tackle it. I know some ships are able to survive a Doomsday already, but maybe something other than effective hitpoints can help here?

Anyway, I think the conclusion I have drawn from going over the suggestions above is that there is no easy solution. People who post saying "nerf Titans" or whatever would do well to go over the options themselves and look for the challenges in each, as well as the benefits. Right now, it should be clear from the above what I personally believe the options are but I assure you that I had no preconceptions of the "best" answer going into this. I find it odd that the options I favour are the ones less often discussed on eve-o and perhaps that is a result of sitting and thinking through it logically over the space of a few hours.

No doubt, however, this will be met with some people thinking I'm either a crying goon or the "we know the game mechanics better than you" posse giving me grief for not knowing every facet of how things work (because we all know game mechanics and game balancing are the same, right? :rolleyes:). I don't care; think what you like. These are just my thoughts on the issue and I don't plan to go banging on CCP's door demanding change.

Discussion very welcome, with the usual caveat that I would appreciate a higher caliber of post than on EVE General Discussion.

The New Atlantis?

So, BACON huh? It certainly seems to have ruffled a few feathers and that's for sure.

Part of me wonders if its authors are actually doing it to try and force CCP's hands in terms of doing something about local, like those hackers that write programs that exploit security gaps in Windows not out of malice but to force Microsoft to address the issue. Part of me does.

The other part of me is just a little... well, disappointed I guess. The thing is, the harsher the penalty becomes for losing in a game, the more likely it becomes that people will do things to get around the issue. In that sense, perhaps something like BACON was inevitable. That said, I still think it's a shame. I don't think it's doing anything wrong as such and I don't think it will bring about the death of all small-gang PVP / gank squads as, come on, most EVE players don't pay anywhere near enough attention to eve-o to find it and even fewer are going to actually use it.

What irks me about it though is the fact that it really just encourages semi-afk gameplay. I'm as guilty of the next person of occasionally taking a couple of minutes to read something on the internet when I know I should be dilligently gatecamping and watching my overview but that comes with an inherent risk - you place your fate more directly in the hands of your FC alerting you to what needs to be done. BACON effectively automates one of the most basic parts of being an FC which is to make sure you're paying attention when you need to be paying attention.

Whether CCP will do anyhting about it or not remains to be seen and if they eventually deem it a 'legal' use of the logserver then I'm sure we'll all find our way around it and adapt, but not before I've ended up reading a billion horrible threads in General Discussion. I've said it before but I hate that place. Why I read it at all is beyond me.

On that note, today has also seen a number of unfunny parody threads. The one called EGGS was actually relatively amusing, I'll give it that but what has happened is four billion people have all decided to make the exact same thread but with other things related to fried breakfasts. Is it really that hard to post something even vaguely original? :argh:

In other news, I'm very close to getting my hundredth kill on my PVP character now, after less than two months' existence. I really don't care about K/D ratios and other stuff, but as a milestone of sorts it's something I'm proud of. I can now even enter some fights without dying and I genuinely feel I'm getting much better at PvP, which is a great feeling.

Anyhoo, that's enough for now. I have some more pictures to put up soon as it's been a while since I have. I also plan to finally finish the desktop wallpaper I'm making out of some of the Tournament pictures that the awesome Mr Winterblink was kind enough to send me, so I will gladly share once that's done and I'm happy with it :)

New post coming soon (tm)

Wow, it's been almost a month since I last posted here. Strangely enough, it's been about a month since I started my goon account and I've found myself playing Mertannia less and less ever since. I've been keeping up-to-date with training etc (she's on her way to being able to fly a covops right now) but something about the excitement of Delve right now keeps me there rather than in Empire.

In a way I feel quite sad - Mertannia's in an amazing corp with great people and until I decided to try PvP I was having an absolute blast on that account. It's just that now I've seen what else the game can offer I rather feel like I've found my calling and I just can't bring myself to run missions any more.

All of which has conspired to present me with a predicament. As I see it my options for Mertannia are:

1. Get Caldari Battleship V on the go and allow the account to lapse while I work out what I want to do.

2. Keep the account for those desperate isk-scraping moments and use it to fund my PvP account.

3. Dedicate some time to it and try new Empire-related things such as exploration or invention or something.

4. Move Mertannia into a 0.0 corp and possibly begin to specialise as a hauling / mining / covops alt (or maybe just start working toward it being a carrier alt or something).


I honestly don't know but I'd be very interested to hear from anyone who found themselves faced with a similar predicament and what they did, whether it be something like one of the things above or something else I haven't thought of. For the first time in EVE, I feel like I have a genuinely big decision to make and it's proving really rather difficult for some reason.

Answers on a postcard!

Council of Stellar Management - Open Questions for Candidates

Frankly, I don't know any of the candidates well enough to know who I would vote for, but the idea intrigues me nonetheless (perhaps more so, even). That said, I am a firm believer that if you are given a vote and a voice then it is your responsibility to ensure it is used so I do intend to vote.

Earlier, I thought up some questions. They may be a bit tough to answer in places, but they are all things I am genuinely interested in hearing people's responses to. I'm publishing the questions here in the hope that I can reach all of the candidates. I plan to also post them on campaign websites / blogs I come across but if you have seen this first or I simply hadn't got in touch yet then it'd be great if you were willing to take the time to respond to them.

If you do want to respond, I really don't mind how you do it. Feel free to comment here, copy/paste to your own blog or site or post them on eve-o - it matters to me not. If you'd like to only answer some or re-order them for clarity then that's also cool. Other than the questions that I happened to think up, consider it carte blanche on if/how you want to answer.

Anyway, without further ado, here are the questions:

• Who are you and what do you primarily do in EVE?

• Can you give an example, either from real life, from EVE or from another MMO of when you've had to remain objective in an issue that negatively affects you or someone close to you?

• How did you react to that situation? Is there anything you feel you could have done better, now that you have the benefit of hindsight?

• As a pure example, imagine you were in Alliance A and a proposed change in game mechanics would be beneficial to your corp and allies but disadvantageous to your enemies, Alliance B who happen to outnumber you 3:1 in membership. How would you disasociate yourself from the pressures you might feel and ensure you are giving fair and unbiased representation of the player-base? How easy is it to put personal feelings aside?

• As a delegate to the CSM, what expectation of privacy and anonymity do you have? Using the example above, even the announcement of a unanimous vote without specifics could still cause Alliance A members to feel resentment toward you if they became aware that you had voted for an issue that ultimately benefitted your enemies in-game. How would you deal with potential backlash from friends and allies if you vote against what they believe is right?

• Again using the example above, what would you do if you suspected that a fellow councillor was abusing their position to try and manipulate decisions to their benefit, how would you address that issue and what do you feel you would need to be cautious of when doing so?

• I'm aware that you probably haven't had the opportunity to gather feedback at this stage, but if you were to pick three topics right now that you feel genuinely warranted being brought to CCP's attention, what would they be and why?

• While we're talking about feedback, is there any primary medium you believe you will use for gathering it?

• When reading EVE General Discussion to look for pertinent issues for the community, what one criterion would you feel was the absolute most important in deciding whether something is worthy of further discussion or not? Why?

• Do you believe the CSM's role is to be exclusively about in-game issues (or those which affect in-game issues such as abuse of Dev powers) or do you think there will be some effect on the community side of EVE such as, for example, EVE TV, Alliance Tournaments, Fan Fest, etc?

• Please sum up the key messages of your candidacy in 100 words or less.

• Anything else you'd like to add?

# Suicide is painless #

My friend has been playing EVE for a couple of months more than me and he's always joked about coming down to blow me up. The other night, we arranged for him to come to me in his PvP Drake and we'd have a battle to half-armour.

Figuring that even if I brought my own Drake, he'd probably have the DPS and Tank advantage on me with his extra skillpoints, I fitted out a Blackbird with some Caldari jammers, a sensor booster, a small tank and some heavy missile launchers. Seemed like it might be a good fight if I could make it past his tank (albeit slowly).

I suggested a nearby 0.4 system we could go fight in, but he said to meet him in a 0.7 system as if we were in a gang together it'd be fine. So I warped to him, he sent a volley my way just before I stuck on the jammers.

Then all of a sudden, from out of nowhere a blob of CONCORD appeared and immediately vapourised his Drake.

Maybe he was wrong about the "if you're in a gang" thing, maybe it was something changed recently by CCP or maybe it was a genuine glitch. Regardless, it was incredibly amusing to watch. After months of telling me he's going to gank me, we finally get around to meeting up and he lasts about five seconds.

Anyway, no real point to this post other than to say I was highly amused.

Allahu Ackbar!

# Down time, things'll be great when there's down time #

I've been playing EVE for what, two months or so and even I know that when there's a patch you set extra long skills in case it takes longer than advertised. It's not complicated.

So this post is pretty much just to laugh at those pre-Trinity and even pre-Revelations people who are now rabbling away about lost training time because they set a skill to finish seven minutes after the extended downtime was due to end.

Me personally? I had Caldari Cruiser IV going (due to finish some time tomorrow morning, I think) on this account and Gallente Frigate V (due to finish in just over a week) on my goony goon goon alt.

But in order to keep in the spirit of Patchmas, I want an extra day subscription, I want CCP to have auto-finished my skills for me (love that one), I want some extra skill points to distribute as I wish. Oh and for a little tinfoil hattery, I hear they're going to roll back the database so that BoB has a cynojammer in QY6 again. You heard it here first, guys :P

Rough Trade

Something that caught my eye today is this thread on eve-o.

Some time ago, I bought a book called One Red Paperclip to read on a train journey. I'd heard about this guy's blog before vaguely, but the book really puts it into a better perspective than the short news article ever could.

Basically, this guy got one single red paperclip and traded it with someone for a pen. He then traded the pen for something slightly bigger and so on all the way up to a house, going via a role in a movie and a snowmobile. By trading something that was always only slightly better than what he had, he found many willing participants.

Anyway, someone called Bournville has decided to do a similar thing in EVE by starting with one piece of Trit and seeing how far they can get by always trading slightly higher each time. Who knows where it might end? Faction ship? T2 BPO? Very own station in 0.0? Just like the guy who went from a paperclip to a house, so could someone go from one Trit to something immeasurably more valuable. It's certainly not impossible.

Remembering the book that had inspired this person, I contacted them in EVE and offered to trade. Luckily s/he was only 11 jumps away from where I was and apparently I was the first one. I grabbed a shuttle and made my way down, eager to get the ball rolling as it's a cool idea and it'd be interesting to see how far it can go.
Here is me, trading one Tripped Power Circuit for one Tritanium.

If you know of the One Red Paperclip guy (or even if you don't, but think the story is cool) then check out Bournville and see what's up for grabs. Who knows, by the time you read this it might already be something incredibly valuable being offered :)

Paging goons, eve-o needs Shark Week, stat!

You know, everyone says CAOD is a toilet but to be perfectly honest, I find EVE General Discussion to be far more irritating. An example:

The first page this morning has a thread started by a new person to the game who asked if there was any difference between the "classes" in EVE and whether it affected the moneymaking paths he might have open to him. Okay, some vague innacuracies in his understanding but, to be fair, the guy was brand new and presumably came from another game where such questions would be more valid. This guy got flamed to hell with people telling him it was the "clearly" the wrong game for him and that he should quit. But amidst this e-peen waggling and widespread insecurity was a small group of people explaining that the beauty of EVE is that your starting race doesn't define what you can train for and that you can fly other races' ships if you want.

Okay, so standard General Discussion nonsense so far. What amazed me more was the very next thread down that was complaining about some apparent "nerf" to EM resistances that is coming and how this basically means the end of the world for everyone and how it means Gallente have been overlooked and how blah blah blah.

You know, maybe it's just because I'm a new player and I don't yet "get" EVE or something, but it strikes me that if there's this wonderful ability to train for any ship you want then... wait for it... you can train for another ship if you don't like what's happening with one of them.

Sorry, I probably should have made sure you were ducked and covered before releasing this bombshell, I know. But if they announced tomorrow that all races would now on only have pea shooters for guns and all required POS fuel just to move except for the Jovians whose Tech 1 frigates are essentially mini Death Stars capable of travelling at 50km/s while still doing 1,000dps then do you know what I'd do? Well, I'd probably think CCP had gone bonkers, but after that I'd go train Jovian.

Eventually, someone would realise that this had harmed the balance of the game and the Jovian Frigates of Doom would suddenly be overpowered by Minmatar battlecruisers or something, at which point I'd either stick it out, try a new fitting or just train something else for a bit.

I know I'm over-simplifying the problem greatly here, but really, what does it matter if CCP have reduced the effectiveness of a certain module in order to try and improve balance? Even if you spent four years and billions of isk on it, if it's considered game breaking or at least harmful to the balance of combat then it needs to change, end of story.

The other thing that always gets overlooked is the possibility that any changes are not soley to improve balance now, but are in fact part of a wider, future-looking strategy to balance modules or ships in light of new ones that might be around the corner? Say, for example, there was a new T2 Battlecruiser on the way for Gallente that had a 10% bonus to EM damage or something. All of a sudden those tears about the EM resist nerf fiasco would be forgotten in an instant.

So why does everyone whine endlessly every single time there's a change to anything? Seriously, think about what you're saying before you hit the post button. Say you got your way and they decided not to go ahead with the reduction to EM shield resists but you did get your EM damage dealing doomboat in the next patch. Wouldn't it suck if that was totally useless and nobody wanted one because anyone who's anyone has a 90%+ resist to EM damage anyway?

I say embrace the changes and use it as a fantastic excuse to train something else and experience a new ship class or race that you've not tried before. Who wants to play an MMO where you intend to only experience 5% of what's on offer anyway?

Sheesh.

EVE Photography: PvP Volume One Addendum

Just the one, but a new ship I got to try tonight due to lack of availability of an Incursus at short notice.








Eventually it got killed and then my pod got doomsdayed (lol) along with a bunch of other T1 frigs, cruisers and at least one Battlebadger, haha. Good fun.

EVE Photography: PvP Volume One

The first Titan I've ever seen. If you look really closely you can see a little speck in the middle. That's me!





The first of many Incursi I'm sure to lose.















Told you I'd lose it!