Author: Lukas Rox

Hybrid guns and Gallente ships rebalanced

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , ,

CCP Tallest has released a dev-blog about planned changes to hybrid guns and gallente ships. As far as I like the proposed changes to hybrid turrets, boosting all ships speed/agility is not really a good idea. But first, let’s have a look at the hybrid guns boost:

Lowering CPU requirements, making hybrid guns easier to fit

Boost us, pleeeeaaase CCP

  • XL Turrets: -5 CPU
  • L Turrets: -3 CPU
  • M Turrets: -2 CPU
  • S Turrets: -1 CPU

75mm Railguns will not be changed – they have already very low CPU requirements

Reducing PG requirements, making hybrid guns easier to fit

  • All hybrid turrets: -12% Powergrid usage

Light Electron Blasters, Light Ion Blasters, 125mm Railguns, 75mm Railguns will not be changed – their PG is already very low

Less Capacitor use

  • All hybrid turrets: -30% capacitor use

Tracking Speed Increase:

  • +20% to Blaster Tracking speed

XL Blasters are already in line with other XL guns, so they will not receive any tracking speed boost.

Railguns

  • +10% to Railgun Damage modifier

XL Railguns are already in line with other XL guns, so they will not receive any damage boost.

Tech II Ammo

  • Javelin (all sizes): Removed cap penalty
  • Javelin, Gleam and Quake (all sizes): Removed tracking speed penalty, added 25% tracking speed bonus
  • Hail (all sizes): Removed falloff penalty

The above was expected to be honest. Amarr and lasers got a boost back in 2008, when Gallente and hybrids should have been boosted as well. Hybrids will now be easier to fit (if only that &#^&$% ship had more PG, I could put some Rolled Tungsten on), will have better tracking (2fast4you… to track), and Railguns will finally pack quite a punch.

What I don’t feel necessary is the ship speed  boost proposed in the second part of the blog. Gallente ships are already pretty fast, and there is no reason to bring them in line with minmatar ships. Amarr boats are rather slow, shouldn’t their speed be boosted as well? One of the possible byproducts of boosting  I see is better speedtank on an Ishtar for example, while the decreased inertia modifier will also affect align times besides the ability to orbit the target at a very tight range. I would only change speed and inertia modifier on dedicated blasterboats, leaving all the other Gallente ships the way they are.

CCP: What race should be the next Tier 3 BC? Players: Gallente!

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , ,
Gallente Tier 3 BC
Gallente Tier 3 BC

It seems that Hilmar keeps his word. He promised the playerbase new internet spaceships, so there will be new internet spaceships. Last week the Minmatar Tornado has been announced – a Tier-3 battlecruiser capable of using battleship-sized turrets. Battlecruisers were supposed to fill the gap between cruisers and battleships, and this new breed of BC’s seems to fit between battlecruisers and battleships. With the coming hybrid rebalancing Talos will be most likely a deadly short range blaster boat, sporting Neutron Blaster Cannon II’s.

The Talos has been nicknamed the king of in-your-face-glass-cannons: if one would compare a fleet to a human body, this ship would be its right fist. Bringing together the speed and agility of battlecruiser class with the firepower of a Megathron will make a very interesting twist.

Talos
Talos

This new Gallente battlecruiser is based on yet another player creation: the Seraphim. CCP however claims that the name “Talos” fits better (Talos was a bronze giant who guarded the island of Crete in the greek mythology).

I will not buy this ship on day one. Instead, I will buy the BPO!

I’m back!

Lukas Rox General, Hardware , ,

Important Downtime information between 14th and 25th of October

On 14th of October my old webserver’s hard drive died of old age, bringing the entire machine to its knees. An ext3 filesystem corruption has also occured as a side result, taking part of the mysql datafiles with the dying drive.

Me and my coleagues (who I share this server with) have decided to buy a new webserver. So we bought this little pizza-box (a refurbished IBM eServer x345):

IBM eServer x345
IBM eServer x345

The machine’s core consists of two Intel Xeon 3.2 processors, backed up by 3 gigs of RAM, powered by two redundant PSUs. Data is stored on five 10kRPM SCSI disks, 36GB each. RAID5 makes sure that even if one of the disks should fail, all the data is still safe. Two Gigabit Ethernet ports are connected to the datacenter’s backbone. We are planning to buy some spare hard drives, so the array will be eventually extended with sixth hot-spare hdd, which role is to take over immediately at the time of failure. Such redundancy allows the machine to continue service even if two hard drives should fail.

Unfortunately I was very busy during the last week, so I could not immediately bring my website back. After 11 days we have finally brought the box to the datacenter. It has been online for the past 6 hours and I have already recovered most of the broken datafiles.

What happened is actually very positive. The old server should have been replaced long ago, and this box, even though it’ not entirely new, has four times more juice than the old one. I am not going to mention the redundancy of its core elements.

Trouble with installing iOS 5

Lukas Rox Software, Tablets , , , , , ,

I have always updated my iDevices just after the new firmware was available, and never experienced any problems. Unfortunately, installing iOS 5 was not as smooth ride as I expected it to be.

To my surprise, iTunes has reported errors 3004 and 3200 several times, and my iPad remained stuck in DFU mode. I have quickly googled to check if none has similar issues to mine and read several posts on forums. People suggest to add a manual entry for Apple’s gs.apple.com to the hosts file.

Unless you have jailbroken any of your iDevices, just be patient and keep trying every now and then – it will update at some point. If you did jailbreak any device on your computer, it is possible that the jailbreaking tools has added an entry to the system hosts file.

To check if your computer is affected:

  • Go to C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
  • Remove any entries regarding gs.apple.com

Once done, just keep trying to restore your iDevice every few minutes.

 

Armored Warfare Specialist

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , ,

Most players in EVE Online sooner or later learn about leadership bonuses and why they are important. These very training-time-intensive skills are not to be underestimated: a Fleet Commander with good leadership skills can easily turn the tides in any engagement. In EVE 5% is a lot, and can mean the difference between life and death. In a maxed out configuration a skilled Armored Warfare Specialist can dish out a mind-boggling 25,88% reduction to armor repairers duration and capacitor usage, not to mention a similar bonus to armor resists – just as if you had one more EANM II in low slots.

continue reading >

UPDATED: Hilmar Veigar letter to the EVE community

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , ,

Hilmar Veigar aka CCP Hellmar, the CEO of CCP has published a long and sincere letter for the EVE Online community. My first thoughts about it are very positive, but let me tell you why.

It takes a lot to admit ones mistakes, and to do it in public takes much, much more. I deeply respect that, and I don’t know many people with enough courage to do such thing.

Some will say ‘bullshit, it’s just words’. I tell you, it’s no bullshit. Hilmar Veigar is a real person, a public figure. A respected CEO of big, international gaming company. He can’t give his customers bullshit, or else he is out of business. Simple as that.

Some will say ‘it’s long overdue’. I tell you it’s not. Community needed to calm down first. The knowledge of human psychology is very important, even though we are not consciuously aware of it. If this letter was published during the ‘monoclegate’, many players would discard it immediately without even reading it. Moreover, CCP has acted before they spoke, which backs up what Hilmar says in his letter.

Some will say it’s just PR. So what I say? What difference does it make if this is PR or a personal letter from a businessman to his customers, as long as things get done? I keep my fingers crossed for Hilmar and the CCP.

Second part of the letter points to another dev-blog by Arnar Hrafn aka CCP Zulu. The amount of work to be done is quite extensive, but more less sums up the things that most players asked for:

  • Hybrid weapons balancing /signed, /signed and triple /signed
    as a true Gallente pilot I can’t say otherwise.
  • Factional warfare
  • Assault ships
  • Capital ship balancing /signed
  • New T2 modules
  • Starbase logistics management
  • New EWAR-Drones
  • T2 Rigs manufacturing

Additionally, the list contains four features already mentioned last friday:

  • Ship spinning aka pre-incarna Hangar interface
  • New font
  • More captains quarters
  • Time dilation

And yes, Hilmar also said new ships are coming – more spaceships is probably one of the best news for internet spaceships.

Dear Hilmar,

I really respect you sir, for what you did and said today. I have been watching EVE grow for the past 6 years, and when new CQs and ship spinning were announced on 30th of September I have regained my hopes for EVE. Your words today have reinforced this feeling. I felt it back in 2005 when I started playing EVE: being excited about EVE and unable to wait for what’s coming.

I wish you and your company all the best. Keep up the good work!

iOS 5 goes public on the 12th of October

Lukas Rox Software, Tablets , , , , , , , , , ,

Most Apple fans have mixed feelings after yesterdays press conference, mainly because intead of iPhone 5 Apple will serve a slihgtly updated iPhone 4S. But fear not, iOS 5 and iCloud are coming soon. Scott Forstall did not say much about the new system itself, but we know when it arrives in iDevices: 12 of October. Golden Master release has already been released for developers.

Most important features of the new iOS:

  • Notification Center (non-disruptive notifications)
  • Reminders (time and location based)
  • iMessage (instant messenger for all iDevices)
  • WiFi sync (no need for cables anymore)
  • Newsstand (for those who like reading newspapers on iPad)
  • split keyboards (great for thumb-typing on iPad)
  • AirPlay mirroring for the iPad 2 (and for iPhone 4S too)
  • Siri voice recognition (for iPhone 4S only)
  • Wireless activation (no need for iTunes)
  • OTA iOS updates

iCloud storage will provide a free 5GB (which is now a de facto standard for most personal clouds – same as Windows Live Mesh and Ubuntu One). The most important feature is however automatic push synchronistation between all iDevices.

New Cyno effect on Singularity

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

I know I have missed one very important feature mentioned in this devblog here, which will be coming in the “October patch” for Incarna. I am talking about the: *drumroll here* new cynosural field effect. New stuff has been available on Singularity since last friday, but I wanted to get some screenshots pretty enough to please the public (and do the new cyno justice: it really looks much better than the current one).

Okay, enough reading, let’s see *it*:

Animation is a bit slower than the one in the current effect, and textures’ resolution has been bumped up a few notches. The new capital jump has been improved as well, but I couldn’t get a good screenshot of it: it seems to only look good when animated.

But wait, what about the engine trails? Are they coming back?

According to a very well informed person (CCP_Fallout), the answer is YES. Unfortunately, there is no schedule, so we will just have to wait.

MSE identifies Chrome as malware

Lukas Rox Software , , , ,

I have encountered a problem during an automated update of Chrome today: Microsoft Security Essentials has reported that Chrome browser contains PWS:Win32/Zbot. MSE alert causes the update to fail. Google has already responded to the problem and posted on the official Chrome blog. The solution is to update the definitions of Microsoft Security Essentials to version 1.113.672.0 or above.

UPDATE: Racial Captain Quarters on SiSi

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

Yestarday CCP t0rfifrans has posted a dev-blog about racial Captain Quarters being already available for testing on the Singularity test server. If you can’t wait to see them before your client is patched to the Singularity level by the trusty SiSi Launcher, feel free to watch this youtube movie. All CQ’s reflect their races distinct culture and style: Caldari are cold and “made from steel”, so their quarters have a strong utilitarian look. Gallenteans value freedom and pleasure, so gallente CQ are IMHO the best looking ones at the moment. Amarr, the most religious race, have many statues and other religious accents in their quarters. And of course you already know the Minmatars: rust and duct tape (as if they don’t know how to smelt stainless steel, even though they are able to fly in space. It might have something to do with the legendary strength and durability of Minmatar duct tape).

T0rfi also mentioned that the inital spawn point after docking has been moved, so you can immediately access the ship’s console, rather than having to turn around and walk towards it. Oh, yes, you will now be facing your ship when you dock. And no, it does not work on Singularity yet.

Eve Sans Neue
Eve Sans Neue

One thing not mentioned in the dev-blog is the new font. It looks just like on the screenshots in this dev-blog (or on the screenshot on the right).

And yes, ship spinning is back, too. Just click on your ship in CQ and select “Enter Hangar”. The ship spinning UI is almost the same as it was before Incarna, but it seems not to be the final version: Station Info panel on the right is missing.

I've broken it
I've broken it

Unfortunately I can’t get on to Singularity thanks to this nice red error on the left. This is why I don’t didn’t have the usual bunch of screenshots from the current SiSi build – I am was stuck at accepting EULA. Hopefully CCP has published a few screenshots so I will link them below instead. And I won’t give up trying to get it working.

 

Reinstall of the Sisi client did not help. My guess is, since I’m running polish version of Windows 7, EVE tries to find polish version of EULA. It fails, and cannot load its contents, so it becomes stuck on EULA window. Bug reported #117055. Here is the solution: how to get past the EULA window.

PS. I consider moving from my quiet home system to a new one with a Gallente station. Why? See for yourself.