Operation Smile: Eve Maria

My writing time is gradually being eaten up by work again, so I'll leave you with this video the CCP favored on its YouTube channel.  Something soothing when things get a little hectic.

They Told My If I Voted For Mike Azariah for CSM6 That ...

... we wouldn't see null sec issues publicly debated in the CSM, and they were right! 

Well, Mike is afraid that with the way The Mittani is structuring the internal communications within the CSM, no issues will really be debated in public and the CSM will just serve as a rubber stamp.

“We are seeing the results but not the process.  I like to see how things are done . . . is it one hero driving through all the issues?  Are people all participating?  Who are the go-getters and who are the slackers?  When I was able to read the raw minutes this sort of thing emerged, allowed me to know what was going on.”

Mike has a point.  Since delegates are now allowed to run for re-election, seeing how the CSM delegates perform is a worthwhile thing.  Now, we don't need to see all the internal discussions.  We could get the same sense of a delegate's worth if during the next CSM fireside chat more delegates spoke.  If we could see that delegates could speak knowledgeably about an issue, we could those views as a basis for a vote when it comes time to possibly re-elect that member.

Mike is what we in Illinois call a "goo goo", which considering this is Eve Online we are talking about is rather appropriate.  Of course, goo goos like Mike lose elections to machine politicians like Mittens most of the time.  But reading Mike is about as close as we get to reading Mike Royko in the Eve universe, especially now that we have a version of The Boss perched atop the CSM.

CCP's War On Bots: TinyMiner

For those wondering about CCP's War On Bots™, the "Reporting from the front line of the Bot-War" thread is pure win.  Yesterday CCP Sreeg left this tasty tidbit in the thread:

"In actuality, the normal player is the one who has the most to lose. We will catch him and he will lose all his stuff. It's the cheaters who don't fit the mold who will require the most attention. We went after a new one today. HAPPY EASTER!"

That new one appears to be TinyMiner.  While I couldn't get into the forums because it requires registration, NinjaSpud reported the following:

Website B (TM) has started to report losses. For a while no one was saying anything (and I feared that they where somehow being missed by CCP), but I found similar posts to this:

"User XXXXX2 is banned
Last login: XXXXX2
Number of visits: 861
Reason: EULA/TOS Violation - Macro use
Until: 2011.05.04

Got Banned today in my 2 accounts BEWARE EVERYONE THEY ARE CATCHING THE PPL who is using the bot "

I'd go out on a limb and say Website B is officially under siege.

While the forums require registration now, Google did cache the thread if you would like to read it for yourself.


And in a related note, April 24th came and went for the new release of Roid Ripper and it is still down.

There may be other sites affected, but I don't know the Eve botting world well enough to know exactly where to look for more.

Related Post: CCP's War On Bots: TinyMiner Tears Not Bad Either

My First Look At Captain's Quarters

Over the weekend instead of spending my Eve Online time grinding status with the Brutor tribe, I downloaded the Duality test client and took a look at the initial public version of Captain's Quarters.  CCP Tanis warned that the devs were "still at the chisel-in-hand-in-front-of-a-marble-form stage," but with Star Wars: Galaxies not satisfying my desire to walk around a game in an avatar, I decided to brave an MMO test server for the first time.
CCP Tanis' warning was very true as I experienced periods both in and out of Captain's Quarters where I could not move and the screen froze up.  Yes, this truly was an alpha version of the game's build, so I expect just about everything is subject to change.  The devs already had a list of issues to work on by the time I logged in on Saturday, so I won't mention those here.

One thing I'd like to see change is for the devs to put a light dimmer in the main room of the Captain's Quarters.  It was very dark and hard to find some of the features.  Finding the re-customization button was almost impossible.  And sometimes I couldn't find it even when I knew where to look.  Sometimes watching the screens in the dark is enjoyable, just not all the time.  Of course, CCP could come up with a lore explanation for the darkness and then the NPC station masters could offer better quarters for sale in another iteration of CQ.

Did I mention Captain's Quarters are dark?

The only other thing that really bugged me about Captain's Quarters was that the main screen would turn off and then the bulkhead behind the screen is visible.  Actually, once I started looking for it, the bulkhead is visible when the screen is showing news as well.

I won't go into what I think about the new crash tutorial because I really think that the lag interfered with the testing experience.  Yes, I'm pretty sure that the lag prevented parts of the tutorials from displaying.  If you are interested in my thoughts, you can read my first Eve Online forum post with my impressions in the feedback thread.  That's right, I played for over 1 1/2 years without posting on the forums. 

One thing I would like to add that I didn't feel was appropriate for the feedback thread is that I hope that CCP comes out with jewelry, especially wristwatches or some sort of wrist comp.  The avatars have a habit of looking at their wrists whenever they are idle for too long.  The avatars wouldn't look so silly if they had something on their wrists to actually look at.

While playing around on Duality I decided to make a movie showing my experience.  Wandering Rose does the honor of walking around and that is her Hurricane in the docking bay.  I had to do a lot of editing because I never did have more than 30 seconds of play before being hit with a "spatial anomaly."  The actual experience was not as smooth as the video might lead you to believe.

Tattoos and Piercings

I got home late from work last night and decided to finally redo Wandering Rose's looks by adding some tattoos and piercings.  I'm not a big fan of tattoos and piercings and I wasn't sure if I could redo her looks and still retain a working spacer look.

Being Minmatar Wandering Rose had to get a tattoo.  The tattoo is faded because she's had it most of her life, but at the same time is one of the more unobtrusive tattoos.  I didn't want something ostentatious that shouts out her heritage in some sort of attention-getting cry.  And while she can afford any type of body modification, her old tattoos are a reminder of the life she had before becoming a capsuleer.  A reminder of her humanity, which so many capsuleers tend to lose after holding almost god-like powers for awhile.

The same thought process covered the body piercings.  Because you never know what emergencies may occur outside the safety of a pod, Wandering Rose just prefers simple earrings.  Nothing for an enemy to grab a hold of and use against her.  This is especially true since CONCORD is expected to pass a regulation in the next few months requiring pilots to leave their ships whenever they dock at a station in Empire space.  Wandering Rose rarely left the safety of her pod when docking at Amarr stations.  Now, she hopes for the best but prepares for the worst.

I also decided to darken her hair and redo her makeup a tiny bit.  I also decided to get a long sleeved shirt.  All in all, I think I managed to improve her look.  Of course, it just might be the lighting.  I'll put the before and after pictures up and let you decide for yourself.

Before

After

Two final thoughts.  The first is that if you are going to redo your looks, don't start playing with the character creator if you get home from work at 11pm and have to leave for work at 7:30 the next morning.  Time does fly when your having fun.  The second is that I really need to post the background stories for Wandering Rose and Rosewalker on the blog.  I faded a bit into character in this post and I really should get the whole story written.

Captain's Quarters: An Anti-Botting Feature?

With CCP's War on Bots™ underway, I've engaged in the sport of googling Eve botting sites looking for juicy forum quotes.  I found a couple that gave me the idea for this post.

First, from the RoidRipper forums, where a replacement bot still is not posted:

"I hope the macro will still get support after the station is replaced in incarna."

Second, from DamnCheaters.com came this statement from a moderator:

"The bot will be updated to work with any changes made to eve UI. Unless they remove overview, HUD, local which is highly impossible I see no real threat to botting."

Hmm.  But aren't players forced out of their ships when they dock in Incarna?  And isn't the new UI going to spread UI elements like the market, wallet, inventory, fittings window, etc. throughout the Captain's Quarters?  And won't each of the four races have different layouts in their stations, and thus, four different UI layouts?  And if CCP creates different tiers of quarters, won't there be even more different layouts?

Since bots have to return to stations in order to drop off their ill-gotten loot, won't the changes to the stations pose a challenge to bot writers?  If CCP does Captain's Quarters correctly, I can see bot writers having a challenge on their hands, especially if CCP rearranges the furniture every couple of days.

Forums Highlighting CCP's War On Bots

I spent a lot of time reading a thread on the Eve Online forums last night about CCP's war on botting.  The thread has a lot of nice information put together by NinjaSpud.  At Fanfest, CCP Sreeg said he would like to just shut down a botting website's bots and watch the rage on the site's forums.  The first victim of this tactic appears to be a bot called RoidRipper.  Following the clues in the thread, I found out that the bot had been taken down and all the subforums had been closed.  At this point it appears that the efforts are really targeted at mining bots, although the ratting bots can't be far behind.

Video: CCP Soundwave Explains Why TQ Crashed - The Elephant Incident

I finally finished manufacturing my Mastodon and needed to come up with a name.  So I figured I would commemorate CCP Soundwave's classic explanation of why Tranquility crashed on the second weekend of Alliance Tournament 7 back in 2009.  Of course, that led me to tracking down the mp3 file from the broadcast, which I found on EVE Files.

Now, I came up with the idea of trying to post the clip on the blog so I could share it.  The only problem is that Blogger does not allow for uploading sound files.  However, if I turned the clip into a Windows Movie file, I could then post it on YouTube and show it that way.  So I took the plunge and created my first video.  I hope you like it.

I couldn't figure out how to include this information, but no elephants were harmed in the making of this video.

Downloaded Star Wars: Galaxies

I don't know what this says about RIFT, but yesterday I downloaded the 14-day trial for Star Wars: Galaxies.  I may be crazy, so is this just proof that I should take "may be" out of the statement?  I'm not so sure.

I've been playing RIFT, and while Trion created a nice game, I played similar DIKU-style push button combat games, between WoW and EQ2, for over 4 years.  And after realizing that Eve University was created before WoW was published, I figured that maybe I needed to look at some of the older games for some avatar combat.  Besides, with The Old Republic due out in the near future, Star Wars: Galaxies may be in its final months and I'd be kicking myself if I never gave the game a try.

I do advise that anyone who wants to try SW:G first try the free trial just to make sure it runs on your system.  I have doubts it will run with my ATI 4800 series video card (and yes, the drivers are up to date) but it runs okay on my computer with an NVIDIA 7950 GT card.

I've only played a couple of hours so far but the combat is different.  I actually have to target with my mouse and fire, not just click on a mob and mash buttons on the action bar.  It is a little bit twitch-based combat, which is something I'm not really good at, but I'm looking for something different. 

Each character profession is also supposed to have a different storyline.  For my first character, I chose a spy.  I've already run into one mission that was a bit difficult until I realized exactly how stealth works.  After that, I had to do something a bit unexpected, but running out of a successful mission followed by a hail of gunfire was pretty cool.

I don't know if I'm really going to play much, but I haven't played RIFT in about 2 weeks now and I want to get some avatar game play in.  CCP just did too good a job with the Future Vision video and now I want more.  Maybe I just need to stick to science fiction from now on.

Eve's PvE Play Can Be A Tad Slow

This week I am on vacation.  Well, not really a vacation, more of a staycation.  I'm doing important things like filing my taxes, going to the dentist and learning how to use Twitter.  And when I'm not doing that, I'm getting some much needed time flying internet spaceships.

Now, being a carebear isn't all rainbows and unicorns.  Being an industrialist, at least the way I'm playing, involves sneaking through low-sec to get free slots to copy blueprints or perform material research.  But with a lot more free time this week, I'm doing a couple of things I usually don't do a lot of: missioning and mining.

I'm glad I dual-box, because I think trying to do level 4 missions with just a battleship would drive me crazy.  Instead, using an artillery-fit Maelstrom to poke things from long range while dashing around with an autocannon-fit Hurricane keeps things interesting.  This really comes into play when doing a mission like "The Score" when I just fly from one gate to the next and the battlecruiser just eats up all the small stuff while the battleship crushes the Serpentis' battleships.

Of course, sometimes the missions are still a bit slow.  So far this week I have not only gone on-line and paid bills while running missions but also wound up installing a new version of my anti-virus software.  Of course, I waited to reboot my computer to finish the install until after I finished the mission.

One other interesting (to me, at least) fact about "The Score" is that the first room has a lot of pyroxeres in it.  I live in Metropolis and Heimatar and pyroxeres is usually only found in Amarr and Caldari space.  What makes pyroxeres so interesting?  Nocxium.  Sure, pyroxeres only has trace amounts of nocxium, but I currently have a thing about harvesting all my own materials outside of moon products if possible.  Throw in all the other minerals pyroxeres contains (tritanium, pyerite and mexallon) and that is just a lot more minerals that I don't need to buy for my ship building program.

What I really like are drone missions.  Those basically combine missioning and mining and give me a lot better selection of minerals than mining. But I do have a nice Orca and it just seems a shame not to use the ship's mining bonuses at least once a month.

Was mining all that pyroxeres really worth it?  No.  Sure, I had the time to write this blog entry, but how fun is the game play if I'm writing blog entries while playing?  Then again, this is mining in Eve.  To anyone who does this a lot, my hat's off to you.  I don't think I could do this more than once a month.

Update:  After waking up, I started looking on the markets and at Rens prices I can dump the minerals on the market for 54 million isk, with 26.5 million of that nocxium.  But the boredom!