Author: Lukas Rox

PVP flag changes in EVE Inferno unveiled at Fanfest

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , , ,

As usual, CCP releases a lot of information regarding the next expansion for EVE Online at Fanfest: the big annual event in Iceland, where players can meet devs in person.

Those of you who actually managed to go to the Fanfest, know the information below already. Those who are not so lucky (including myself) might want to read this post about changes to criminal mechanics. Bear in mind that nothing is “set in stone” and is subject to change. To sum up the proposed flag changes:

  • Players will see all aggro timers and will know when it’s safe to log off
  • Remote assisting will now give 60 second no jump/no dock timer. It will keep resetting until assist is stopped.
  • Reduce performance issues

New “suspect” flag

  • Minor crimes. Anyone can shoot you without penalty.
  • Flipping a can for example
  • Anyone assisting a suspect becomes a suspect

Criminal Flag

  •  Just like current GCC
  • Killing someone makes you a criminal
  • Concord will now instantly destroy your ship instead of spawning multiple CONCORD vessels
  • CCP has not yet considered delays of CONCORD response in high sec related to security status
  • CCP is considering warp scrambling the offender first, then instant destruction of the ship after X seconds

Sec Status

  • Security status for ship killing will only bring character to -5
  • Pod killing will bring ss further down to -10
  • Killing someone with positive ss will decrease your ss
  • Killing someone with a negative ss will give bonus to your ss
  • Possible to trade in criminal tags to CONCORD for ss increase.
  • It will be possible to kill a -5 character without penalty in low sec

Killmails

  • Adding more information to battle reports including remote assistance
  • More data in the EVE API
  • Killmails for self destructing
  • Killmails for reinforcing structures

DUST – EVE link

Yesterday CCP has also presented a keynote about DUST 514. One of the important things is the ability to make orbital strikes by EVE Online players, which will affect DUST players. DUST bunnies are not defenseless though, there will be surface batteries capable of blowing up ships in orbit as well.

Feel free to visit the forum thread about DUST 514 keynote, which has been started by CCP Navigator. Before you do, however, I really recommend you these two videos:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF4diq-KlXI]

and here you can watch the keynote itself:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDW-HrzBo7s]

PS. Real time SD stream from Fanfest is available here: http://fanfest.eveonline.com/en/stream/free. You can also buy a HD stream access for as much as 1 PLEX. This will grant you two Quafe 2012 t-shirts for your avatars and a limited edition ship: Iteron Mark IV Quafe Edition.

Back to the roots: a tale of Planetary Interaction.

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , ,

Back in Tyrannis I have started my adventure with Planetary Interaction the moment it was introduced on the test server, way before it was released to Tranquility. Even though PI in its initial version was a clickfest (one had to manually set each extractor on each planet), I have started off with a Tier 4 product: the Wetware Mainframe.

Some time has passed and I have switched from actively playing EVE to my current semi-AFK mode. I have decided that moving stuff between colonies takes too much time, and scrapped everything on my planets. I have started making the POS fuel products instead, namely Coolant, Mechanical Parts and Robotics. The income wasn’t bad, so I’ve sticked with that for a while.

Wetware Mainframe however sells for more than it used to when I was making it. Gratned, the costs of PI have increased (unless you have the ability to put your own Customs Office up – and defend it), but the profit margin still looks healthy.

Say hello to my new setup:

The drawing is not the most beautiful piece of art on the internet, but it clearly explains all the connections between each planet. This is still far from optimized though; extraction of multiple materials from the same planet and processing them on site results in a reduced output, but it’s the drawback of having an end-to-end product line. With maxed skills player can only have up to six colonies, which forces either an end-to-end approach, or optimized one-stage process, that requires a lot of maintenance, produces more goods in the same timeframe, but relies on market supply. It is also possible for several people to team up and make one type of t1/t2 products which another player/character converts into t3 and t4 products.

Optimization of end-to-end approach

When you look at the diagram above, you will notice 7 arrows. Each of them represents a type of material that needs to be moved from one planet to the next. Each export and each import of materials also means that taxes need to be paid. Crucible brought the player-owned Customs Offices and dramatically increased taxes on NPC CO. To minimize the amount of ISK venting through this sink, we need to optimize the process.

The simplest possible optimization is to divide colonies to extractors and processor: 5 colonies extract materials and make tier 1 products, which are then exported and moved to the sixth colony with processors, that makes all intermediate t2 and t3 products required by the t4 process. This reduces the diagram to 5 “arrows”:

 This approach reduces the amount of trips made between planets. I am not entirely convinced, that this is the best approach, because t2 and t3 materials “compress” their ingredients. Less m3 of course means less taxes as well.

Of course it is possible to set up all six planets like the last one, but as I have written above – this causes dependency on market supplies.

The results are in!

Three days of production yield the following amount of ISK:

13 Wetware Mainframes, selling for 1 400 000 ISK each make a total of 18 200 000 ISK

We have to subtract 6 647 850 ISK in PI taxes (hi-sec), which gives a net profit of 11 552 150 ISK. This translates to about 115M ISK monthly. This amount increaes greatly (at least to 180M ISK a month) when using own Customs Offices in low sec or nullsec (and WH space), not to mention greater abundance of resources in the latter. Right now Wormhole Space looks most promising for players interested in Planetary Interaction.

New iPad prices in Poland

Lukas Rox Hardware, Mobile, Tablets , , ,
new iPad iPad 2 (last year) iPad 2 (now)
16 GB WiFi 2099 PLN 2049 PLN 1699 PLN
32 GB WiFi 2499 PLN 2469 PLN —
64 GB WiFi 2899 PLN 2899 PLN —
16 GB WiFi/3G 2599 PLN 2549 PLN 2199 PLN
32 GB WiFi/3G 2999 PLN 2979 PLN —
64 GB WiFi/3G 3399 PLN 3399 PLN —

All prices include 23% VAT.

Source: store.apple.com/pl and myapple.pl

New iPad and polish LTE networks

Lukas Rox Hardware, Mobile, Tablets , , , ,

EDIT: This post is about 3rd gen iPad (“The New iPad”). For information about 4th gen iPad (“iPad with Retina”) please check this post.

In just three days Apple will begin selling their newest iPad in Poland. If you were looking forward to the LTE feature however, you will probably be disappointed. Fear not; the new iPad has still much better mobile baseband than it’s predecessor.

Let’s have a look at the details.

The new iPad baseband specs

According to the new iPad Tech Specs on apple.com, it’s baseband (the 4G built in modem) is capable of using the following networks:

  • GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)
  • UMTS/HSPA/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz)
  • 4G LTE (700, 2100 MHz)

As you can see, the new iPad can use 2G and 3G networks just like iPad 2, but there is one small detail, which makes the new iPad better: the DC-HSDPA (it’s sometimes called HSPA+ DC). This is a dual carrier HSDPA network, which allows transfers of up to 42Mbit/s. This is definitely better than “normal” HSDPA, which only offers 7,2 MBit/s.

But wait, there is LTE in Poland, isn’t there?

The answer is yes, there is LTE. Unfortunately right now all the carriers, who rolled out LTE network in Poland use the 1800 MHz band. This is not good for the new iPad, because it can only operate in 700MHz and 2100 MHz bands.

Polish carriers are unlikely to use either of these bands for LTE in foreseeable future, because the 2100 MHz band is currently occupied by the fast HSPA+ DC 3G networks. These networks are rather new, so the probability that any carrier swaps them with LTE soon is rather slim.

Current HSPA+ networks in Poland:

 

Share your Windows printers using AirPrint

Lukas Rox Mobile, Tablets , , , , , , , , ,

When AirPrint was first introduced in iOS 4.2, I have spent some time trying to share my Windows printer to my iPad. Of course a free solution was already there, one that involved installing Apple Bonjour Service with CUPS Lite for Windows. So I’ve quickly found that solution on Google and downloaded the necessary tools, namely Bonjour Print Services for Windows and Airprint.zip, which contains the CUPS service.

Making it work was quite easy. You need to unzip the Airprint.zip file to C:\Program Files\AirPrint (on a 32-bit Windows), or to C:\Program Files (x86)\Airprint on 64-bit Windows.

The next step is registering the service: log in as a user with admin rights, click “Start”, “Run”, enter “cmd” and press “OK”.

In the console, enter the following commands:

sc.exe create AirPrint binPath= "C:\Program Files\AirPrint\airprint.exe -s" depend= "Bonjour Service" start= auto
sc.exe start AirPrint

IMPORTANT: If you use 64-bit Windows, use the appropriate Program Files (x86) directory instead.

It worked! …until iOS 5. So I’ve run the Wireshark to see if Apple changed anything to the AirPrint protocol. It was not a surprise that they did:

Luckily, CUPS Lite has several command line switches and it can be adapted to the change.

To make Airprint.exe compatible with iOS 5 and above, run the following commands from the command prompt:

sc.exe stop Airprint
sc.exe delete Airprint
sc.exe create AirPrint binPath= "C:\Program Files\AirPrint\airprint.exe -R _ipp._tcp,_universal -s" depend= "Bonjour Service" start= auto
sc.exe start Airprint

IMPORTANT: Remember to use the right Program Files or Program Files (x86) directory.

Since you’ve seen the picture and the modified entry for Airprint service, you might already have guessed that -R binds CUPS Lite to a slightly different service name (the one which my iPad was looking for). This allows the iOS 5.x devices to be able to find shared printers again.

Make sure airprint.exe is allowed through in Windows Firewall. Some tutorials will tell you to disable Windows Firewall alltogether – don’t do that, it’s a security risk!

Some tutorials will tell you to enable guest account for the sharing to work. Don’t do that, it’s a security risk. If someone accesses your network (for example cracks or guesses your WiFi key), he will be able to print anything on your printer. Use one of the user accounts on Windows instead, and when you order iOS device to print something, iOS will automatically ask you for username and password.

The above has been tested with iPhone and iPad, both running iOS 8.1.2.

PS. If you are running Linux it is still possible to use CUPS and avahi daemon to share a Linux printer to AirPrint enabled devices.

The new iPad announced; iPad 2 price down to 1699 PLN

Lukas Rox Hardware, Mobile, Tablets , , , , ,

Yesterday Apple has announced a “Resolutionary” device: “The new iPad”. I’m sure you have already read about the official list of features, but in case you didn’t, here’s a list:

  • 2G/3G/4G (LTE) modem capable of:
    • HSDPA (7.2 Mbit/s)
    • HSUPA (7.2 Mbit/s download and 2 Mbit/s upload)
    • HSPA+ (21 Mbit/s)
    • HSPA+ DC (42 Mbit/s)
    • LTE (72 Mbit/s)
  • WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n (2.4 GHz & 5.0 GHz)
  • 2048 x 1536 resolution Retina display
  • Apple A5X SoC with 4 graphical cores
  • works 9 hours on battery (LTE mode) or 10 hours in WiFi mode
  • 5MP iSight camera with five-element f/2.4 lens

Pricing didn’t change and the new iPad costs just as much as the old one did. But here is one more thing: as usual, Apple has lowered the price of the now-old iPad 2. The cheapest iPad 2 (WiFi 16GB) now sells for 1699 PLN!

You can order yours on polish Apple Store.

PS. iOS 5.1 is now available both through iTunes and as Over-the-air update.

iPad 2 16GB WiFi 1699 PLN
iPad 2 16GB WiFi+3G 2199 PLN

Crucible 1.5 on its way – to be deployed on March 13th

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , ,
  • Rookie Ships remodeled – new models along with V3 shaders to give the new players even more carrot eyecandy.
       
  • 50 new Blood Raider, Sansha and Serpentis DED exploration complexes with an array of new high end deadspace modules.
  • Hovering mouse over enemy Shield, Armor and Hull bars now displays remaining percentage tooltip.
  • A search filter has been added to the Science and Industry Panel.
  • Watchlist updates:
    • Clear Watch List Button
    • Watch List Drag and Drop
    • Appearance changes provide better visibility and usability
  • Character Creator
    • Portrait snapshots now retain background, pose, and lighting settings
    • You can use F1-F4 to switch between them
    • UI for tucking shirts, pants and shoes has been made more visible
  • EVE Market
    • Color coding of market orders allows you to see if the item is located along your current route
    • Modify order window now has a button to show market details
    • You can now drag-and-drop modules from your inventory to Market Quickbar
    • You can now Shift drag-and-drop blueprints to Market Quickbar to create shopping lists for industry jobs

It seems that at least a few features I have noticed on SiSi will be coming even before Inferno – especially the rookie ships. Crucible brought lots of UI improvements already, and these few added to the list in Crucible 1.5 are not the last we’ve seen from CCP.

Quick Review of Windows 8 Consumer Preview

Lukas Rox Software , , , , ,

Yesterday Microsoft has released the second public beta-version of the new Windows 8. I have downloaded both the 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Windows 8 Consumer Preview for testing – you can download them for free from Microsoft’s website: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/iso

VMware Server 2.0.2 installation

INCOMPATIBLE

Unfortunately, Consumer Preview behaves just the same way as Developer Preview did – the adventure with 32 bit version ends pretty quickly with a BSOD immediately after booting the virtual machine (error message shows HAL_INITIALIZATION_FAILED). Since I have no 64 bit host available, there was no point in testing the 64 bit guest.

I will try VMware Player 4 and Oracle Virtualbox 4 later on, so feel free to bookmark this page and come back later.

VMware Player 4.0.2

COMPATIBLE

There was no issues with installing Windows 8 on VMware Player 4. I have tried both 32 and 64-bit versions, both install without a problem. It is worth mentioning that in VMware Player 4 the seamless mouse integration works without installing VMware Tools in the guest operating system. The performance of the virtual machine is surprisingly good – animations are nearly fluent.

VirtualBox 4.1.8

COMPATIBLE

Windows 8 install works just fine – I have installed and tested the 32-bit flavour. I have also noticed, that using your Windows Live! ID on more than one computer will synchronize the look and feel of Windows between these computers. If you click a confirmation link in an e-mail, which comes shortly after the installation, you will be able to use this computer to recover your Live! ID password. Similar to VMware Player, both the mouse integrations and machine performance work very well without installing VirtualBox Guest Additions.

Bare Metal installation – Desktop PC

I have tried to install the 64 bit version first on the following machine:

  • Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2.4 GHz)
  • 4 GB DDR2 RAM (OCZ)
  • DFI Blood Infinity P35
  • nVidia GTX 550Ti 1024MB GDDR5

Unfortunately the installer failed at 21%, throwing a “Cannot copy windows files” error. At this point I have no way of telling if this is a problem with the download or the ISO itself.

I had more luck with the 32 bit version. Since my PC is already 4 years old, it’s not a surprise that Windows 8 did not ask me for any drivers. This is what I saw after booting the installed system and logging in with my Windows Live! ID account:

Besides a different background it looks almost the same way as the Developer Preview did. Let’s have a look at the desktop then, maybe we spot some differences there:

No kidding! Menu Start is indeed, history. How do I get back to the Metro Start page? I have quickly found out, that you just need to move the cursor to the lower left corner. Click. That’s it! Simple, isn’t it? Maybe other corners hide some features as well?

Both my inner geek and my inner explorer were quite excited at this point.

So, both corners on the right side of the screen trigger the “settings” sidebar (those sidebars are called “Charms“).

The first icon is desktop Search: it will look for a file or program with the specified name, but also for programs available in the Store. “Share” allows to share files with other users. “Start” will bring you back to the Metro Start Page. “Devices” allows to safely remove hardware such as USB sticks or hard drives. “Settings” is app sensitive. It will allow you to shut down or reboot your Windows, reach the Control Panel (it’s Metro counterpart is just called “Settings”) or access app-specific settings. Some apps, like Internet Explorer 10, have two more Charms: bottom and top (for address bar and navigation icons).

But where do one gets apps from? And this is another new feature of the Windows Consumer Preview: from the Store:

Yes, this is the well known “Cut the Rope” game, now also available for your Windows 8. All apps available right now are free and Metro-enabled. The new UI is more like what we are used to on tablets and mobile phones. For example, the Weather app looks like this:

Here you can also see the app-sensitive settings available from the top.

 Let’s get back to the Desktop and see if any features known from Windows 7 are still there. It seems, that customization options are very similar – almost the same. It is possible to change the Aero color, desktop background or show/hide My Computer, My Documents and Network icons:


Gadgets are also available, so if you liked them in Windows 7, it is still possible to use them in Windows 8:

As you have probably noticed this far, everything in Windows 8 is shaped as a perfect rectangles. Microsoft left all the rounded corners for Apple and made a very distinct look and feel. Surprisingly, it feels very natural – Metro UI is quite useful. The small app tiles on the Start Page will display information once the corresponding app is started, so information like weather or recent tweets are visible right away, without the need to open the app. Old programs run seamlessly in the desktop mode, while the new ones run in Metro mode.

Internet Explorer 102

The default internet browser now comes in two flavours: Metro and Desktop. And no, this isn’t just two UIs for the same program. These are two different applications with separate settings , bookmarks and cookies. Log on to a website with the Desktop one, you will have to login again if you switched to the Metro IE. IMHO this should be unified before releasing Windows. Otherwise how would you synchronize a Windows 8 tablet with a PC, if it’s impossible to sync the two browsers on the same PC?

I have three distinct feelings after an hour with Windows 8:

  • I have almost an urge to mash the ESC key to exit a Metro app back to Start Page – I don’t know why it feels this way, but I’d see one key to exit back to Start Page. It feels so natural!
  • There is no way to quickly kill all running apps. You have to use the Task Manager. A screen with all running apps would be great. So far we only have the alt-tab:
  • If I had a Windows 8 tablet, Windows Phone powered mobile, an XBOX 360 console and Windows 8 on my desktop, the experience would be very much like iOS, Mac OS X and iCloud. Good job on catching up, Microsoft!

Overall impression

Microsoft managed to get all of us excited – something usually reserved for Apple. In comparison to Windows 8, Mountain Lion looks a bit pale: Windows 8 is a new experience, a revolution similar to Windows 95, while new Mac OS X only brings some cosmetic changes.

One more thing that came to my mind is Unity interface introduced (and iterated upon) in Ubuntu 11.04. It seems that every major OS brings its own distinct look and feel, breaking the “windows-like” trend observed after the release of Windows 95.

One more thing: EVE Online

I would not be a dedicated EVE Online player if I haven’t tested the compatibility of our favourite game with the new Windows. So I have started EVE, and… I saw the Splash, and then it crashed.

…FAIL!

Unfortunately I didn’t have much time to debug it and find what the issue is. Will try again after installing nVidia display drivers instead of Microsoft’s ones.

INCOMPATIBLE?

The EVE Launcher is almost ready

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , ,

Remember when CCP mentioned the new EVE Launcher before releasing Crucible? So here they mentioned it again. It seems that the Launcher is almost ready – it is now part of the Singularity client, so it is possible to give it a go.

What does it do?

  • It shows a handy collection of EVE related links: Account Management, PLEX services and Buddy Program.
  • It shows the current news from the game
  • It checks that EVE Online client is up to date and patches it automatically if it isn’t
  • It can repair the client in case it’s broken
  • No need to restart the client when there is new patch to download
  • Works on Windows and Mac OS X

To the contrary of what CCP is saying, the EVE Launcher is not something new. The original EVE Second Genesis client also featured a launcher, although it was not this powerful. The original Launcher did not feature anything useful, so it has been removed at some point.

If you do not have/do not want to install the Singularity client, here is a screenshot from the most current version:

And here is the forementioned original launcher dating back to 2003:

 What happens next?

CCP Topknot has mentioned three things

  • peer-to-peer technology for downloads instead of current CCP content delivery network
  • limited gameplay (corporate forum access, chat channel interfaces, etc.) while patching
  • more smaller patches instead of big staged releases

One impression I can’t get out of my mind is that some other colourful, fluffy singleplayer MMO have such p2p-based autopatching launcher already implemented for a while… Is CCP learning from Blizzard?

Do Black Ops really need a fix? (edited)

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , , , , , , , ,

Players have been voicing their concerns about Black Ops ships being underpowered for quite a while (almost for as long as Black Ops are in game). People complain, that BO are weaker than their Tech I counterparts, have limited jump range and so on. When CCP run the crowdsourcing poll to see what areas of the game need improvement, Black Ops were quite high on the list.

One might wonder, did CCP really just overlook this group in Crucible, or was this intentional? Are Black Ops ships really this ineffective?

The answer is: Not really.

Black Ops are Tech II battleships, which cost as much as a carrier, have on-board jump drive, no targeting delay after decloaking and can bridge other ships into the fray. They are already quite powerful, and the reason why they are not so commonly used is only their price rather than their capabilities. A skilled team of pilots can destroy almost any target by dropping a gang of BO, recons and T3s.

The voice of concerns claim that Black Ops jump range is too short. I say it’s ok. Give them more range, and people begin hot dropping to anywhere in New Eden straight from Jita. Do we really need an unstoppable gang of battleships that are able to deploy instantly almost anywhere in the game?

Others ask for T2 resists, because the ship is too expensive to be paper thin. Au contraire, mes amis: repelling a BO hot drop is already quite hard as it is, and when done properly, no Black Ops losses should happen at all in a fight. In my opinion, the EHP and resists are just fine.

Some players claim, that the DPS is not high enough. Then I ask you this: since when 700 DPS is low for a Battleship? Mind that a covert hot drop might also have some tiny, cloaky, ultra-mobile DPS called Stealth Bombers. Having the element of surprise on your side, you don’t really need a lot of DPS.

The list of complaints contains one more issue: fuel bay capacity. As it is right now, fuel bay capacity is sufficient for ship’s own jump drives, but when it comes to bridging other ships, fuel runs out pretty quickly. IMHO this is the only valid concern and should be looked into. With the current fuel constraints, bridging one recon to the furthest reach of the Black Ops range (4.5 ly) takes as much as a third of the total fuel. Players of EVE are a resourceful bunch, when it comes to adapting, so they just take a Blockade Runner full of isotopes with them just to remedy this issue. In my eyes this should not however be necessary. Either the fuel bay should be increased in capacity, or the amount of fuel required for bridging should be reduced.

And one more thing: if you think the points above are not valid, please see Burn Eden’s killboard. This group has mastered the art of using Black Ops (and other jump capable ships) to perfection.

Edit 1

I will be answering here to let others see my replies as well:

@RockCalledSteve: 700 /is/ low for a battleship. It is, however, perfect for a stealth ship. Also, we don’t want massive range, just 2 extra AU.

Well, 700 dps indeed is not a lot, my Talos can fling about 700 dps over 40km while travelling at 700 m/s. But 700 dps with the element of surprise is… Well, a very nasty surprise.

2 extra lightyears after the Jump Drive Calibration skill is applied, or before? I would vote after the skill, because 6.5 ly gives BO almost regional range. Please mind that Black Ops can be safely deployed from high sec, and capital ships cannot. Increasing jump range makes them even safer to deploy, but yes, this would also allow more tactics.

I know that Sin is the weakest BO, but it was the first one I had the skills for when they were introduced (this is why there is Sin on the screenshots). Nowadays I’m flying a Panther instead.

Edit 2

The reason I have picked up this topic is because I am concerned. This is similar to what happened to Motherships (which are now known as Supercarriers). Players were not using them, because of their pricetag and only slightly better stats than normal Carriers. Community was complaining and CCP listened to these complaints. Result of the buff made Supercarriers the biggest solo pwnmobiles in EVE to the date. Of course, other part of the EVE Community began complaining about SCs being overpowered. Black Ops are very specific flavour of ships and it is very easy to make them too powerful. This in turn will result in nerfbat hitting them sooner or later…

What do You think? Should CCP buff the BO or leave them be? Comments are welcome.