High Sec Station Nerf Incoming

Sometimes one can tell about the biases of a news site or blog by clicking on the hyper-links embedded in a story and reading the source material.  The latest case involves TheMittani.com and an article on faction warfare.  TheMittani.com is owned and operated by people heavily invested in Eve Online's null sec warfare first and general player vs player combat second.  High sec in general and high sec carebears in particular are looked down upon.  I think this article, while I really enjoyed Endie's writing, shows that bias.

What shows the bias?  The fact that he did not discuss one of the biggest nuggets of news in CCP Ytterbium's post, the planned nerf of high sec stations.

• Q: ONE OF THE REASONS FOR LOW-SECURITY SPACE BEING CRAP REMAINS THAT HIGH-SECURITY STATIONS ARE TOO GOOD IN THE FIRST PLACE, DO YOU HAVE PLANS TO ADJUST THIS?

A: Indeed we do. This topic brought quite an internal discussion, and while this most likely won't be part of a Factional Warfare iteration, we do want to have a look at reducing high-security stations effectiveness to make other areas of space more interesting. Some examples could be reducing refining rates, increasing ISK payment to install jobs. Nothing is set in stone as this is not planned for the immediate future however. Another good idea we noticed here was to tie high-security tax with the war performance of its related Factional Warfare Militia. So if, by example, the Caldari Militia are losing the war in Factional Warfare, all taxes in Caldari State high-security space could go up to support the war effort.

I have expected a move like this for quite some time, which is why I am currently making the adjustment to low sec life.  I should also add I do not expect to see this occur in the Winter expansion as CCP has bigger fish to fry, such as fixing faction warfare.

I would like to add that in this case bias is not really a bad term.  Endie's article focused on faction warfare, and as CCP Ytterbium stated in his post the high sec station nerf is not a part of any faction warfare revamp.  Keeping an article focused is actually a sign of a good writer.  Also, Endie is the managing editor (I hope I got the title right) of TheMittani.com and he does have to think about future content.  TheMittani.com has posted 6 articles today so he might save the high sec news as weekend filler.

Still, passing over the news does show a bias in what TheMittani.com considers important.  That's why clicking on the hyper-link is important.  In Eve, gather all the information possible.

Abandoning High Sec Planetary Interaction

My intention to move to Eve Online's low security space became more serious last night as I decided to shut down my 15 planetary interaction colonies scattered throughout Minmatar and Ammatar high sec space.  That means spending a lot of time this weekend picking up the final products and dismantling the colonies I've worked for over a year now.  But I won't miss them.

When I began my involvement with the planetary interaction mini-game, the feature was new and a great way to pick up a nice chunk of ISK for relatively little risk and effort.  I still recommend PI as a way for a player addicted to losing frigates and cruisers in PvP to get the cash to buy replacement ships.  Or, as I did, to afford the materials to buy the materials to build myself tech 2 ships as well as the more expensive skill books and tech 2 modules off the market.

Planetary interaction is basically a puzzle game.  Even with the help of Eve University's planetary interaction guide the feature can provide hours and hours of entertainment first in trying to understand how it works and then figuring out what to build.  I was pretty happy for months just coming home from work and spending 15 minutes a night maintaining my colonies and taking my products to Rens once a week.  Good times.

But a few months ago I lost that desire to just go out, make ISK and collect ships.  I blame Fanfest.  While I'm still in my own personal corporation I realized on my pilgrimage to Reykjavik that Eve is more about what a player does with what he collects more than about the collecting itself.  While exploring low sec previously a goal for something I should do, after Fanfest spending time in low sec was something I wanted to do.

After Fanfest, planetary interaction was an anchor keeping me in high sec.  The money was too good to pass up as I built up a nest egg to cushion myself against the inevitable losses I will sustain by living in low sec.  But then a funny thing happened.  Riverini picked up The Nosy Gamer for syndication by Eve News 24 and a rather large infusion of ISK from writing came into my wallet.  I've spent a lot of money on mining barges, but I can afford to lose a few Procurers and even a combat ship or two now.

Last night the final piece fell into place for me.  Instead of doing my PI maintenance, I hopped into a Hound and a Procurer and started mining at a belt.  One feature of the Procurer I didn't realize before is that I can fill up the ore hold in less than 12 minutes.  So I can mine a low sec ore, fill up the cargo hold and feel like I accomplished something, like not losing my ship doing something foolhardy, in about the same time I took to take care of my PI colonies.  Then I hopped in a Cheetah, scanned down a magnetometric site and picked up about 10 million ISK in salvage materials.  The mining and running the site probably took about 30 minutes.  More importantly, I had a lot more fun than just clicking on and moving extractor heads.

So this weekend I probably won't spend that much time in low sec.  Instead I'll close up one more chapter in my Eve life so I can move on to the next.

WoW Is Not Dead Yet

Over the weekend a tidal wave called Guild Wars 2 hit the MMO scene and garnered great headlines.  Looking at the numbers from Xfire an MMO not made by Blizzard sat atop the rankings for the first time in years.  But does that mean that Guild Wars 2 is the fabled WoW killer?

Perhaps in the future, but not now.  Last weekend was the head-start weekend for those who pre-ordered the game and ArenaNet announced that they sold over 1 million copies before the launch date.  While impressive, that number is still dwarfed by the 9.1 million subscribers Activision Blizzard claimed on their latest earnings report.  So despite GW2 having more than 60% more time played by the Xfire community on Sunday than World of Warcraft, the Blizzard game is still the 800-pound gorilla in the room.  And with the release of Mists of Pandaria on 25 September, look for WoW to regain its position at the top of the Xfire charts as well.

The Digital Dozen: 28 August 2012

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 26 August 2012.  For more details about the methodology, click here.  Historical data can be found here.

Rank	Prev Week	Game	Score	Hours Played	+/- %
1	--	Guild Wars 2	50.0	79,622	--
2	1	World of Warcraft	30.7	48,913	-1.6
3	2	Star Wars: The Old Republic	3.9	6,245	-16.3
4	3	Aion	3.1	4,973	-3.9
5	4	Eve Online	2.2	3,512	-9.6
6	9	Metin 2	2.1	3,306	+31.3
7	5	Lord of the Rings Online	1.7	2,754	-10.0
8	8	APB: Reloaded	1.6	2,574	-1.2
9	10	Need For Speed World	1.3	2,056	+7.5
10	11	Maple Story	1.2	1,881	-0.8
11	7	The Secret World	1.2	1,835	-34.1
12	12	Star Trek Online	1.0	1,558	-12.8

  Total MMORPG hours played Sunday: 189,576

Sunday saw the most time spent playing MMORPGs by the Xfire community since mid-April as Guild Wars 2 stormed past World of Warcraft and seized the number one spot in The Digital Dozen.   Overall players spent 62.9% more time playing MMORPGs than they did the previous Sunday.  The biggest losers of players (besides the original Guild Wars) in percentage terms were The Secret World (-34.1%), Star Wars: The Old Republic (-16.3%) and Star Trek Online (-12.8%).  Two games managed to buck the GW2 tidal wave: Metin 2 (+31.3%) recovering from a bad previous week and Need For Speed World (+7.5%).

Today is the Guild Wars 2 launch:   Despite the gaudy numbers, the scary thing for other game developers and publishers is that this weekend was just the early launch for those who pre-ordered GW2.  The official launch of the game is today.

Weathering the storm:  Guild Wars 2 vaulted over World of Warcraft, leaving Blizzard looking up at another MMORPG for the first time in years.  But don't blame Blizzard as they pulled out all the stops in order to retain their players including today's Mists of Pandaria pre-patch that will allow all players to play all races, even if they have not purchased the relevant expansion.  The Blizzard push worked as WoW only saw its playtime decrease by 1.6%.  But what about next weekend when everyone can play GW2?  That is the real test, at least until MoP comes out on 25 September.

A change in format:  This week I added a column to the table to show the percentage change in the number of hours played compared to the previous Sunday.  With all the developer vs developer action occurring this summer, having the ability to see at a glance what the effects are is an overdue change.

My First Gravimetric Site

I finished running the Wildfire level 4 epic arc on Saturday and shifted my focus back on low sec armed with a set of 10 RSS Core Scanner Probes.  Of course, one doesn't just run out and do something in low sec.  Okay, I don't just run out and do something in low sec.  I spent the evening buying equipment and moving stuff into a nice out-of-the-way station that I picked out a couple of months ago.

Sunday morning came along and I hopped into a Cheetah and did a little exploring.  Yesterday was the first time I used probes in low sec and for a few minutes I thought I was in over my head.  The system only had one signature that I barely picked up and even when I reduced the search radius down to .5 AU I still was only able to identify the signature as a gravimetric site and then only with a signal strength of 47%.  I was only using 5 probes and thought I would have to go back to the station and get more, if not purchase implants, but when I reduced the radius to .25 AU I received 100% strength.

The result was a pleasant surprise: an average spodumain, crokite and dark ochre site.  A surprise because I didn't think I'd find a site containing spodumain so I hadn't trained spodumain processing past I.  D'oh!

To explain the excitement over the find, here is a list of what is refined from each ore:

Spodumain (per 250 units refined)
Megacyte: 140
Pyerite: 410
Tritanium: 3190

Crokite (per 250 units refined)
Nocxium: 331
Tritanium: 331
Zydrine: 663

Dark Ochre (per 400 units refined)
Nocxium: 500
Tritanium: 250
Zydrine: 250

That's right, lots of high-end minerals.  The challenge was to mine all of the minerals without losing a ship.

In the end, I didn't really have much of a problem.  The Procurer has two advantages that outweigh the ship's low mining yield.  The first is that the ship is cheap and I don't think too many pilots want to go out of their way to kill one.  The second is that the tank I put on it was sufficient to stand up to the pounding from an NPC battleship.

I also had one additional advantage: I was also sitting in the site in a Hound.  I think two pilots thought about going after my mining barge.  One of them stayed in the system for what seemed ten minutes before leaving.  The other had actually launched Sisters' probes and I think found the site but then moved on. 

He was actually quite pleasant to talk to.  He came back a few hours later.  He saw the mining barge but I think he was a bit nervous about engaging since he didn't know where my second pilot was.  I think he went around to all of the stations looking but he told me he was watching me mine.  He also told me that I needed to be more careful because he could have killed me anytime he wanted.

I'm not so sure about that.  If he didn't come in stealthed, then I could see him enter grid and I'd be able to warp off.  Procurers are that agile, especially when I fit mine with agility rigs and Nanofiber Internal Structure IIs.  And if he did come in stealthed, then I had a bomber of my own on overwatch to at least scare him off and let me escape.  And if the torpedoes didn't get him, the Hobgoblin IIs would have let him know he was in a fight even if I lost.

But we didn't come to blows and I was able to peacefully mine.  Well peacefully when the Angel Cartel wasn't trying to kill me.  But they never ran me off.  Instead I managed to collect over 4.5 million ISK in bounties and an estimated 6.4 million ISK in drops.  No salvage, though.  I didn't put a salvage mod on my bomber.

How about the mining?  The quick little mining excursion turned into an all day event.  While the cost of the minerals I gained wasn't anything to brag about, I now have a nice cache of high end minerals to build items with.  If I'm going to move to low sec, I probably need to have the capability to make some things for myself without having to run to high sec all the time.  Like tech 1 ships and ammunition?  Definitely ammunition.

I should close with what I came away with from my mining efforts since the Evelopedia currently does not have a list of what ore is located in an average spodumain, crokite and dark ochre site.

One day's mining

The only item missing is the 249 units of crystalline crokite I mined since 250 units are required for mining.

I don't think I would ever mine out a gravimetric site solo again.  Next time I'll cherry-pick the rarer ones and leave the rest for other people.  But for a first effort, I'm pretty happy about how the whole day turned out.

Another Reason To Mine In Low Sec

While doing the Wildfire level 4 epic arc I ran across another reason to do low sec mining: nocxium.  Ore containing nocxium is found in high sec, but only in regions controlled by the Amarr and Caldari and their associated vassals like the Ammatar.  Sure, pyroxeres only yields a trace amount of the valuable mineral, but as long as a pilot does not have to evade the faction police mining some is pretty risk-free.  My problem is that I'm a Minmatar pilot aiming to get the Tempest Fleet Issue blueprint copy from an agent, which requires getting my Minmatar faction standings up to 9.9.  Think I can avoid getting in trouble with the Amarr Navy while doing that?  Me neither.

Mining in low sec solves that problem.  Actually mining in low sec solves the foolishness of mining in high sec unless I'm really bored, but that's a different subject.  Minmatar low security space has a wonderful rock called hedbergite that yields 708 isogen, 354 nocxium, 290 pyerite and 32 zydrine per 500 units refined.  A lot better than the 11 units of nocxium that pyroxeres yields.  The zydrine come in handy because I've developed a fondness for torpedoes since I started ratting in a Hound.  I have a quirk going back to my EverQuest 2 days that I like to manufacture my own ammunition.  If I start purchasing a second set of ammunition blueprints for use in low sec I'll probably stay in low sec more.

I'm sure some people will say I'm foolish to mine in low sec.  Not profitable enough, I'm told.  But I'm not doing this for the money.  I just am curious to find out if living the live of the low sec carebear is actually possible given the current rules set.  If Sugar Kyle can run high sec incursions and Mabrick move to a wormhole, I surely can give low sec living a go.

Answering Comments On The War On Bots

Yesterday I received some good comments to my post, "CCP's War On Bots: Don't Get Cocky".  I thought I would go ahead and respond to a few of them.

Powers wrote:  "I am pretty sure they are getting banned due to virtual machine usage. That seems to be the common denominator from a lot of your summaries that you've posted."

One of the factors of getting banned is virtual machine usage and I am pretty sure that virtual machine usage flags an account for closer inspection, if not plays a major factor in the detection algorithm.  But other factors that all the botting forums seem to agree on is length of time spent logged in and how the bot acts while logged in.  CCP Stillman told the CSM at the Spring Summit that Team Security uses a combination of technical and behavioral detections when evaluating whether a player is a bot (p. 146).  That seems borne out by the stories I've read over the past year.

One item of interest is that I believe this commenter is the Powers that is a moderator over on TheMittani.com.  Will we see a in-depth look at botting and illicit RMT on TheMittani.com in the near future?  I hope so because on Eve News 24 we only get to read syndicated blogs covering the subject.  I want to see a real high-quality piece written about botting and the illicit RMT trade.  As the TheMittani.com explains:

"There are other news sites for Eve, too, but the level of quality tends to be awful.  With a few exceptions, articles tend to be scrawled in a patois only vaguely related to any written language known to man, while desperation for content means that badly-disguised sock-puppet pieces explaining the links between Test Alliance and the Knights Templar appear with alarming regularity.  Syndicated blogs tend to be of mixed quality at best, and bias is not just tolerated but celebrated."

Gevlon wrote:   "The 'sentiment among botters that if you bot you will eventually get caught.' worries me. It means that they know that they'll get banned but it still worth to them, assuming they can protect their main account. Simply the bot punishments are rather bot costs that one pays for profit. Botting won't stop until being caught = being utterly destroyed."

When I first started covering the War On Bots™ I considered calling the feature "The Shadow War".  I still may because that is what Team Security on one side and the bot developers and illicit RMT sites are waging: a war in the shadows.  I don't have figures to back this up, but I get the impression over the past year that the more casual users of bots have decided that botting is not worth risking the penalties that CCP Sreegs has imposed.  This means the opinions of the hardcore are more prevalent.

For those who don't know, Gevlon is the proprietor of The Greedy Goblin.  I'm not sure how goblinish his conclusion is that botting will not stop until being caught means being utterly destroyed.  I don't think wide-spread botting will truly disappear until two things occur.  The first is tht the illicit RMT shops conclude that selling ISK in Eve is not profitable.  Some sites, most notably IGE, have stopped selling ISK.  The second is when null sec alliances stop engaging in or encouraging botting.  I know of one botting forum that allows the advertisement of renting space in null sec to botters.  As long as alliances believe that botting can help them in their sov wars, I don't see the bots in null sec systems going away any time soon.

Anonymous wrote:  "nice writeup.  would be curious to see if the increase in bans of bots has any impact on economy yet?  Alas, with CCP holding numbers close to the chest I doubt we'll ever know :("

 I think this passage from the CSM Spring Summit notes may answer this question.

"Finally, prices began to fall when Burn Jita started, then stabilized during Hulkageddon.  Hulkageddon appears to have stopped a natural fall in prices by reducing supply, but at the same  time, between Escalation and Inferno, mining activity dropped in all sectors of space. The CSM had many theories to explain the changes in mining activity and prices.

"CCP Dr.EyjoG expressed his awareness of concerns about inflation, and that it might price T1 ships and components out of the reach of younger players. However, he noted that EVE is a sandbox game, and the systems are functioning, so for now he is just watching to see how things play out.

"CCP Dr.EyjoG : When you put it all together (game changes, wars, player events, banning of bots, etc.), you can say we had a perfect storm."  (pp 160-161)

Mabrick wrote:  "Thanks for the update! It's truly fascinating stuff to ponder.  As for your comment about CCP taking the low hanging fruit, there is another interpretation: CCP reduced the noise to signal ratio. By getting rid of the easy stuff, it makes more clear how the hard stuff is working. That's difficult to ascertain when you are sifting through reams and reams of 'intelligence.' Now with the easy stuff gone, what is left is bullion rather than gold dust if you follow the metaphor."

That comment makes a lot of sense.  I used the term "low hanging fruit" because that is what I read in the CSM Spring Summit minutes (p. 149).  I think we will see a lot more information revealed by CCP Stillman at Eve Vegas in October.

Anonymous wrote:  "I do not call this a success. These people are a few private botters, which do not cause any harm to the economy. The true damage is done by the large bot-networks using the ISK to RMT or finance empires such as SOLAR.  They stay under cover, even though EVERYONE in EVE knows what they are doing."

A few private botters?  Try hundreds, if not thousands of accounts over the past year.  According to the CSM Summit minutes, before Fanfest Team Security had been banning 1,400 accounts every ten days (p. 146).  Either CCP was going after the large alliances or there were more than just "a few" private botters.  Trust me, just from reading the botting forums there were more than just a few casual botters.

And isn't SOLAR a Russian alliance?  I thought the whole "Russians are the only botters in Eve" meme went out the window at Fanfest when it was disclosed that the largest amount of botting occurred in space controlled by the CFC.


I should add an explanation about the jab about the high quality of writing at TheMittani.com.  The level of writing really is pretty high.  But as I am one of those syndicated bloggers that appears on Eve News 24 from time to time, I just couldn't help returning fire just once.  I still do want to read a piece over on that site about botting.  I'd like to hear the null sec view of the subject.

CCP's War On Bots: Don't Get Cocky

"Great, kid.  Don't get cocky."
- Han Solo

Last Saturday’s CSM Town Hall meeting touched on many subjects important to the Eve community.  Unfortunately, in my opinion, security in general and the war on bots and the illicit ISK trade in particular was not one of them.  I can think of a lot of reasons that the CSM didn’t discuss security issues.  Perhaps CCP Sreegs is about to come out with a security blog giving everyone an update on events since the Spring Summit.  Maybe, unlike real world politicians, the CSM actually cares and understands about operational security and doesn’t want to give the bad guys any actionable intelligence.  Or perhaps the CSM looks at Team Security’s success so far and believes the War on Bots is essentially over and CCP won.

Browsing the botting forums I get the sense that the shock and awe of CCP Sreegs’ spring offensive has worn off as botters have figured out the behavioral parameters of Team Security’s detection algorithm.  Or maybe not.  Here are some recent forum posts.

5 August 12

LoPhatMelk (Eve Miner) - "Well that didn't take long... I've used this bot maybe a week to two weeks and already both accounts are banned. Pretty conservative use with safe boting practices, good thing I only paid for 1 month trial of this bot..."

markbt (Eve Miner) - "Also received today a ban, a new character, just two weeks. The bot worked 8 hours a day with three breaks ... Assets confiscated when a ban for macros? I had assets more than 15kkk ("

LoPhatMelk (Eve Miner) - "Yea I'm negative 220kk between my 2 accounts... which is BS because I know I didn't make that much when botting..."

10 August 12

Armadillo11 (Questor) - "Been banned on my 3 accounts for 14 days, only 1 was used for botting though.  Ran it for 12-23h (shouldn't have, i know..)."

15 August 12

Sollo (Eve Trader) - "This is about the 3rd time I've been banned. My first char was banned twice for macro use even though I use custom timers and delays. Custom log off times that i change daily with more than 10-12 hours of bot downtime. And I don't trade high volume items. Maybe items that sell 3 or 4 a day at the most on average. After the first char had been banned twice I created a new account new VM machine the works with even slower bot speed using all custom delays and timers and changing them daily. Lasted about a week before it received a ban."

Also, remember all the talk about how the mining ship changes that came out in Inferno 1.2 on 8 August were a boon to bots?  The changes caught at least one botter by surprise...

18-19 August 12

justaminer (Eve Miner) - "Wait, what? Did something happen that made Hulks worse than retrievers? I still mine using several clients in a fleet (all hulks, not using jetcans) and all hulks."

ComalDave (Eve Miner) - "Retrievers now have a large ore hold that takes 30 minutes to fill. Hulks have a small ore hold that takes 7 minutes to fill. The Retriever spends more time mining and less time travelling back and forth from the station. Mining vessels are no longer made out of tissue paper and tin foil so it is much safer to mine now."

justaminer (Eve Miner) - "How long has this been true for?"

meloncholy (Eve Miner) - "Almost 2 weeks ago."

I wonder how much money I would make if I could write a bot to read Eve patch notes for botters?  But the mining barge changes seem to be a big hit with the botting community.  Well, those that know about the changes anyway.

But while bot users are stumbling around making me laugh, bot developers are getting their acts together and fighting back.  With the use of VMWare flagging botters for attention, a new application, Red Guard, is becoming popular with some botters looking to protect their main account when CCP catches botting activity on other accounts.  Perhaps more importantly the bot devs have managed to obtain some of the code CCP is using to detect python injection.  One bot dev posted the code and suggested countermeasures on the Public Demands forums.  The post on the Public Demands led to this amusing exchange on the Questor forums:

9 August 12

Da_Teach (Questor dev) - "So far its only half-assed checks, but I'm sure that'll change."

aziz001 - "so for now better stop using Q or not? i know we are always in danger, but seems now we are more in danger than early?"

Da_Teach (Questor dev) - "Yes, you are all going to get banned, once your banned, CCP will call up your internet provider and get you disconnected and CCP will claim your first born baby."  

"Or, if your scared about getting banned, you shouldn't be botting in the first place..."

I wasn't aware that CCP Sreegs had changed the penalties for botting, but I often see the sentiment among botters that if you bot you will eventually get caught.  The other important piece of information from this exchange is that Team Security is now making efforts to go after bots using python injection and that one prominent bot developer expects that effort to become more sophisticated over time.

I think Team Security has finished picking the low-hanging fruit in the War on Bots™ and are now going after harder stuff.  The current efforts have generally suppressed bot use from 23 hours a day down to 8-10 with built-in breaks during that time.  Now CCP Sreegs' strategy appears to have moved onto detecting injection bots, a long time irritant to CCP.  Of course, that is harder to do and Team Security will suffer setbacks because bot developers will not just sit back and let CCP take their income stream from them.  But at least now we know the battle has commenced.

The Digital Dozen: 21 August 2012

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 19 August 2012.  For more details about the methodology, click here.  Historical data can be found here.

Rank	Prev Week	Game	Score	Hours Played
1	1	World of Warcraft	58.0	49,698
2	2	Star Wars: The Old Republic	8.7	7,461
3	3	Aion	6.0	5,175
4	4	Eve Online	4.5	3,884
5	7	Lord of the Rings Online	3.6	3,061
6	10	Guild Wars	3.4	2,915
7	8	The Secret World	3.2	2,785
8	6	APB: Reloaded	3.0	2,606
9	5	Metin 2	2.9	2,518
10	11	Need For Speed World	2.2	1,912
11	9	Maple Story	2.2	1,897
12	12	Star Trek Online	2.1	1,786

  Total MMORPG hours played Sunday: 116,389
Last week was a bad week for playing MMORPGs in the Xfire community Sunday with the overall time playing games in the genre fell by 9.4% over the previous week.  Percentage wise the biggest gainers in time played were Guild Wars (+28.1%) and Aion (+9.9%).  In the games seeing losses World of Warcraft saw a bigger decrease in hours played (5,298) than any other MMORPG besides Star Wars: The Old Republic saw hours played.

The calm before the storm:  With Guild Wars 2 releasing on 28 August and Blizzard just announcing they are deploying the big pre-Mists of Pandaria patch on the same day, I wonder just how big an effect those two games will have on other games.  Was this week's drop just a long delayed summertime lull or are we seeing people drop their subs in favor of playing Guild Wars 2?

Another patch doesn't keep player interest:  One noticeable trend this summer is that a game releases a patch, players log in to check out the new content, then the next week all the players don't return.  Eve Online's saw all the gains seen last week wiped out as the CCP offering returned to the level of play seen on 5 August.

Preparing For Wildfire

"Two things I've learnt lately.  One -- don't get jammed.  And two... Stationary ships don't react well to fourteen hundreds."

- John Rourke, Clear Skies 2

This weekend I decided to play in high sec instead of exploring low sec.  But that doesn't mean I'm abandoning my goals in low sec.  That's because I worked on doing the Minmatar level 4 epic arc, Wildfire.  I mentioned in my goals for this year that the level 4 epic arc mission gave both a nice boost in Minmatar faction standings plus the RSS Core Scanner Probe, which has a greater scanning strength than the Sisters Core Scanner Probe but at the cost of having 1/4 the flight time.

Preparing to do Wildfire also gave me a chance to work on ship fittings, another goal I have for the year.  I like my fit for my command Hurricane but I've never liked what I came up with for my Maelstrom.  When I bought my first Maelstrom I came up with this fitting.

My first effort

I don't remember exactly how I came up with this fit.  I think I went to Scrapheap Challenge and tried to adapt an auto-cannon fit into a long-range artillery fit.  But a year-and-a-half later I've learned a lot more skills so I decided to do a little theory crafting and revamp the fit.  I came up with this fit.

My Wildfire Fit

I had a couple of criteria for this fit.  First, I wanted to fit 1400mm Howitzer Artillery IIs.  I've always wanted to use them ever since the first time I watched Clear Skies.  Next, I wanted to fire out to my maximum range using the close range ammunition.  I almost accomplished that with a maximum range of 92 km including falloff by fitting a Tracking Enhancer II.  I also wanted a much tougher buffer tank just in case anyone ever decided to gank me in high-sec.  I'm not sure why they would because the most bling I put on my ships is tech 2 fittings, but this is Eve.  I definitely accomplished that.  I don't have a cap booster but this ship is designed to fight from distance, with drones and the command Hurricane providing close-in anti-frigate and anti-cruiser support.  Using the afterburner to dictate distance from the heavy ships should allow me to just pulse my shield booster.

Because Wildfire leads players on a journey through the Minmatar Republic and Ammatar space, I decided to use my Orca as a mobile base.  If the ships don't fit in the ship maintenance hanger I'm not taking them.  So in addition to the Maelstrom which doesn't fit in an Orca, I'm taking the command Hurricane, my salvaging Thrasher, a cargo Probe and a Cheetah.  In other words, nothing I either don't have at least two of or a ship I can't afford to replace.  I'm leaving the Noctis behind which means salvaging will take a bit longer, but I'd rather do that than make multiple trips between systems shuttling ships back and forth.

Hopefully by this time next week I will have completed the mission chain and returned to low-sec.  I have a couple of new ideas I want to try out and maybe having those faction probes will help out a bit.