Note To Self: Visit Singularity

I've spent my time in Eve this week grinding faction with the Republic Parliament.  I really should have visited Singularity to see the latest changes.  I hear they are beautiful.  But one change I'm not really thrilled with is the changes to planetary interaction.  Instead of listening to people, I really should have just visited SiSi and seen for myself.  Of course, that would have taken away from this really "fun" grind that I want to finish.  I'd like to finish it before people with nice shiny new gank machines (buffed destroyers and tier 3 battlecruisers) decide they want to use my industrials doing nice peaceful courier missions for target practice.  I never fly using autopilot, but why take chances.  Yes, I can afford to lose the ships, but not the time to replace them.

TEST's New Fleet Commander?

I listened to the rewind of Bigcountry's talk show on Eve Radio from Wednesday which ran during TEST's eviction of Chribba from 9UY4-H.  His guest showed up late due to having to FC the TEST fleet in Providence that took 9UY4-H away from Chribba.  So who was the FC?





More evidence that Pandemic Legion and TEST are getting closer together?

TEST Captures 9UY4-H

Test Alliance Please Ignore's campaign of vengeance against CCP for permanently banning DurrHurrDurr successfully culminated today in the capture of the Unity Station in 9UY4-H from Chribba's Otherworld Empire.  The IHUB was destroyed on 19 November with the TCU falling to the forces of Pandemic Legion at 0105 this morning.

Of course, DurrHurrDurr was not actually permanently banned, as the killmail on the IHUB shows.  DurrHurrDurr was only banned for three days; the belief that he was permanently banned was due to a successful troll on the Kugutsumen forums, a story that was spread around everywhere from Eve News24 to Eve Radio to the Voices of the Void podcast.  Well, except for the troll part.

One of the goals of the TEST campaign was to engage a large fleet of high-sec carebears rushing to defend Chribba.  TEST did manage to intercept a rescue fleet that formed in high-sec in system KBP7-G, one of the few null-sec systems directly adjacent to high-sec.  However, according to the TEST killboard, the fleet was filled with members of 0.0 space holding alliances like CVA, Sev3rance, White Noise., and Yulai Federation.

In an interesting note, CCP formed up a fleet at 1700 yesterday that was announced by CCP Navigator on all social media.  Some believed this was a relief fleet, but with the small amount of ships reported (12-25), such a fleet would be way too small to successfully intervene with the operation.  While having a CCP fleet roaming around would distract a lot of TEST members (look, shiny!), the possibility of CCP coming to Providence could have influenced Pandemic Legion's interest.  I heard one rumor that PL was attempting to hit the CCP gang with 30 Falcons as a protest about the state of electronic warfare.  Another reason for PL involvement may be the reported forming of the Honey Badger Coalition of TEST, PL and Elite Space Guild.

The Role of Cookies in WoW and Eve

I saw this comparison of World of Warcraft vs. Eve Online in the Eve-Radio in-game chat channel and just had to post it so I don't forget it.

"WoW holds your hand from 1-85, and makes sure you get a cookie regardless if you win or lose.  Eve not only takes your cookie, but laughs at you for bringing one in the first place."

And that is why I like flying cloaky ships.  You can't take my cookies if you can't see me.

Chuck Norris WoW Commercial

Yesterday while watching the Bears-Chargers game (go Bears!) I saw the premier of the latest Blizzard commercial for World of Warcraft featuring Chuck Norris.  Yes, a Chuck Norris commerical was inevitable, wasn't it?  And I was there!  In an effort to keep from getting round-house kicked, since my game is Eve Online, here it is.

Eve Online Receives Some Vampire Love

Players in Eve Online finally found a reason to like CCP's World of Darkness project as four devs from Atlanta switched gears from working on vampires to improving an internet spaceship game for three weeks.  The resulting dev blog is getting rave reviews as the temporary Team Papercuts worked from Team BFF's Thousand Papercuts list improving the quality of life in New Eden greatly.  As nice as the UI and inventory changes are, this is my favorite part of the dev blog:

"We also added an improved Jump command so that it behaved more like the Dock command. Currently, when you hit Dock, it will warp to or, approach the station you’re docking at, before finally docking to once you’re in the appropriate range. The same idea now applies to Jump, where you will Warp (or Approach) if you’re too far away to interact with the gate, and then jump through once you get there. The task asked for the same functionality for Acceleration Gates and Wormholes. Being a player myself, I instantly noticed the next logical step for a feature of this type… so I just kind of… did it. In addition to Dock, Jump, Activate Acceleration Gate, and Enter Wormhole you can also now request to Open Cargo, Scoop to Drone Bay, Scoop to Cargo Bay, Scoop to Ship Maintenance Bay and you’ll attempt to get to the correct range and do the action.

"You’ll also find a couple of drone improvements on the way. Nothing is worse than warping off to find that you’ve forgotten your precious drones. Well, fret no more! You can now reconnect to lost or abandoned drones that have been left behind as long as you’re still in the ship that launched them. Right clicking on your ships right-click menu, you’ll now find a command to Reconnect to Lost Drones. Alternately, if you like keyboard shortcuts, you can map a key to this as well. In order to prevent this from being completely abused and used for evil, you’ll only be able to reconnect once a minute (this time is subject to change) and if you have more drones around than you have the ability to control at once, you get no say over which ones will come back under your control… so when you’re attempting to reconnect, make it count!

"You’ll also find that when your ship is forced to make an emergency warp, your drones will attempt to return to the drone bay before you take off. Hopefully this can save you a few drones when your cat walks across the power strip."

I'm really looking forward to Crucible, although I haven't drunk enough Kool-Aid to keep me from putting some long skills in my skills queue for the 29th.

Eve Online And Real Life Implant News

I know that a lot of people will be disappointed that CCP is not giving out snowball launchers (yet) this holiday season, but players in Eve Online will receive something almost as cool: implants:

CCP is pleased to announce that starting with the release of the Crucible expansion and throughout the holiday season, we will be giving away several gifts to players with active subscriptions to EVE Online.
Players logging in on November 29^th will discover a unique new implant waiting to be redeemed - The Genolution CA-1.  First of two in the ‘Core Augmentation' implant set, the CA-1 offers the following benefits to its lucky hosts:

·         Boosts perception by 3
·         Provides +1.5% powergrid bonus
·         Provides +1.5% capacitor amount bonus
·         Implant set bonus: 50%

The Genolution CA-1 will be distributed during the Crucible release to all active subscribers of EVE Online. Instructions for redeeming items can be found here.

Watch the EVE news and the Crucible Feature Site for more information on what's in store for your characters this winter!

Happy Holidays!

But the technology behind Eve Online's implants is not in a galaxy far, far away 200 centuries in the future.  On Sunday the University of Pennsylvania's School of Medicine published a press release on their latest work in the field:

"A team of researchers co-led by the University of Pennsylvania has developed and tested a new high-resolution, ultra-thin device capable of recording brain activity from the cortical surface without having to use penetrating electrodes. The device could make possible a whole new generation of brain-computer interfaces for treating neurological and psychiatric illness and research. The work was published in Nature Neuroscience.

'The new technology we have created can conform to the brain's unique geometry, and records and maps activity at resolutions that have not been possible before,' says Brian Litt, MD, the study's senior author and Associate Professor of Neurology at the Perelman School of Medicine and Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. 'Using this device, we can explore the brain networks underlying normal function and disease with much more precision, and its likely to change our understanding of memory, vision, hearing and many other normal functions and diseases.' For our patients, implantable brain devices could be inserted in less invasive operations and, by mapping circuits involved in epilepsy, paralysis, depression and other 'network brain disorders' in sufficient detail, this could allow us to intervene to make patients better, Litt said."

 FuturePundit had the quote of the week concerning this news:

"The scientists say it is for people with diseases. But of course the gamers will eventually be the biggest users. Of course, if virtual game playing is an addiction the scientists are right anyhow."

FuturePundit also had more on another study about video game addition which is a bit off-topic but still worth the read:

"What I wonder: have video games shifted people from drug addiction to game addiction? If so, video games might actually be reducing brain damage by giving people something less harmful to get addicted to. On the other hand, since video games are [sic] illegal and have less of a stigma about them more people can become addicted to them more easily."

I'm constantly amazed at how much I see the beginnings of the tech seen in Eve Online emerge into the real world.  I'm tempted to put FuturePundit on my blogroll just to remind me of the fact.

(h/t Instapundit)

Not Just An Inadequate Substitute For Caffine

Sleep.  Blessed sleep.  I don't even have the excuse of a CTA to blame for needing it.  I was up at 3am yesterday to do some testing and I had more testing to do at 10pm.  All I managed to do yesterday was move my new PI alt 25 jumps from Amarr to Derelik.  Thankfully I take the train into Chicago instead of driving.

At least I got more accomplished than TEST in their war against CCP.  As I post this, Dotlan shows Chribba still holds 9UY4-H.

Sleep ... not just an inadequate substitute for caffine anymore.

TEST vs Chribba

Sometimes Eve Online makes as much sense as real life politics.  The latest example is Test Alliance Please Ignore's intentions to take 9UY4-H system away from Otherworld Emipre.  The Eve News 24 article left out some embarrassing information.  What could be more embarrassing than picking on Chribba?  Let's follow the timeline.

Apparently the MOTD for the Recruitment channel was changed to not allow scamming, a favorite pasttime of TEST members.  The much beloved (at least by TEST members) HurrDurrHurr decided this was an abomination against all that is good in Eve Online and began a petition campaign to change this policy.  But he didn't create a petition, he wanted people to send petitions and flood the GM staff.  He was a bit too enthusiastic about sending petitions to CCP and received a ban.  For some reason he did not know how long his ban was for, so he was suseptible to a troll on the Kugutsumen forums and believed he was permanently banned.

Unfortunately, that belief spread to other TEST members who came up with a plan to hit back at CCP for banning their beloved HurrDurrHurr.  Attack Chribba!

Oh the humanity...
If you haven't already heard the great terrible news, Durr has been permanently banned from Eve Online by some dick eating a rotten shark sandwich. No one really knows what the exact justification for the ban is, but apparently it has something to do with Durr getting a bunch of SomethingAwful guys to mass petition CCP regarding some GM adding anti-scam rules to the Recruitment channel. There is nothing in the rule book that specifically states that is wrong, and certainly nothing that would indicate that it is a instant perma ban offense.

At this time we ask that you not mass petition CCP while the CSM/higher level GM's get to the bottom of this mess.

Striking back

Instead, we will fight back the only way we know how, by shitting on the Empire pubbies that this anti-scam rule protects, and we'll do it in nullsec. You may be asking yourself, "How will we get a bunch of Empire pubbies to tear themselves away from the teat of Level 4 missions!?!?" and the answer is that we are attacking their Mecca and Muhammad all in one shot. We will be attacking 9UY4-H, home of Otherworld Enterprises, Chribba's alliance. If you've been wanting to see a bunch of empire pubbies frothing at the mouth even more than they have been, now is probably a good time to login. In the eyes of the average empire dweller we are now literally Hitler.

We will begin deploying to Providence in a few short days along with our allies Elite Space Guild aka Broski aka Shurk aka fuck it you know who. Some other friends of ours will also be making an appearance, but that will be revealed later.

Goals
Primary: Get at least 500 Empire dwellers in 9UY4-H at the same time
Secondary: Actually take 9UY4-H
Tertiary: Roam all of Providence and have fun with CVA, also fucking around in Catch

What to do now
Start posting on Eve-O about how we are going to shit all over Chribba.
Get excited, as Montolio will be FCing some wulfpax and RPing as a Nazi u-boat commander.

Get your Alphafleet and Welpfleet ships bought and fitted up in 6VDT and await for further orders, it won't be long.

It doesn't matter that since this declaration of war that HurrDurrHurr finally contacted CCP and discovered that his ban was only 3 days and will end tomorrow.  The war is on.

Chribba responded in the thread on the Eve-O forums created to spread fear and loathing in the carebear player base:

Looks interesting, I welcome all pilots to the Cottage for coffee and kladdkaka, TEST pilots and regular. I'm sure you'll like it and hopefully you will find it as good that you want to continue to serve the goodies after you take over managment as well

Regardless if the system and outpost get new owners I am honored to have been your host there for over a year, it's been wonderful. It is a goal completed, being an outpost manager. I wish I would be there to pew pew you (not really since I don't pvp) but I am probably busy 3rd partying the supers you buy to attack me

But I for one look forward to see what happens, go sandbox go!

PS. More role playing posts

*bows*

/c

Yes, responding with the old "I didn't want this system anyway" defense.  However, since Chribba doesn't lie, he possibly is looking for a new challenge.  I wonder if he's interested in the Arek'Jaalan project?

Tech 4 News: Following The Arek'Jaalan Project

Every so often I check out the latest listings of the Eve Pod Pack and last night I started listening to Tech 4 News.  Tech 4 News features an all-star cast of New Eden podcasters getting together to bring the news from the non-capsuleer standpoint.  Or, as the in-character description on the site states:

"Tech Four is an independent broadcast dedicated to bringing news of capsuleer activity to the general population of New Eden.  By utilizing a network of discretely placed operatives, the Tech Four Media Group has been able to access the capsuleer NEOCOM network bringing cluster-wide broadcasting to the masses.

"The capsuleer-run megacorporations maintain a stranglehold on all interplanetary communications and ensure that the service remains prohibitively expensive to the majority. This excludes the ordinary station and planet-dwellers from learning the truth about events across the New Eden cluster. Tech Four aims to bypass this intergalactic gag by whatever means necessary in order to inform the general population of critical and key capsuleer activity.

"Our team of dedicated and passionate professionals will broadcast from undisclosed locations as frequently as possible, bringing the whole truth straight to the ears of the ordinary citizen."

Tech 4 News is featuring the Arek'Jaalan Project, a live event run by CCP Dropbear as the Caldari scientist Dr. Hilen Tukoss, the head of the Arek'Jaalan Project.  I've only listened to the first full newscast that featured an interview with Mark726, the writer of the Eve Travel blog.  He is currently working on Project Compass, an effort to understand the relationship between known space (k-space) and wormhole space (w-space).  He issued a preliminary report of his findings that are actually quite fascinating.  He had two conclusions that bear consideration.

1. Based on spectroscopic and parallax data analysis, Anoikis is located in a halo surrounding the New Eden cluster. This conclusion is based off of the fact that a star cluster, nicknamed "Orion" for simplicity's sake, has been identified both in Anoikis skymap captures and in New Eden skymap captures.
   
   
2. Anoikis and New Eden are both located in an elliptical or irregular galactic system. To my knowledge, this has never before been postulated by the Capsuleer community (though I welcome any evidence to the contrary). This conclusion is based on the uniform and homogenous distribution of stars across the entirety of the sky, with none of the banding that might be expected in, say, a spiral structure.

As I was listening to the interview with Mark726, I was watching him discuss his next line of research concerning Project Compass in the Arek'Jaalan chat channel.  Apparently the function that allows player-owned stations to measure distances for the creation of jump bridge networks accurately measures the distances between POS located between k-space and w-space.  From what I gathered reading the chat, he plans to set up POS in w-space and k-space and do measurements.  His only problem is that he doesn't have the status to anchor POS in Empire space and was looking for help.  I'm really looking forward to what he finds.

I'm also looking forward to what Tech 4 News publishes in the future.  If I were still in the podcast review business, I would rate this as a must follow effort, especially for those who might want to enter the world of New Eden.  Not only is it an introduction to Eve Online (and DUST 514), but it is pretty good science-fiction as well.