Category: EVE Online

EVE Online, a spaceship based MMO game by CCP Games

A quick glimpse into the Crystal Ball

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , ,

This post is a reply to the Blog Banter #50.

With the Rubicon expansion being announced and the SOMER Blink scandals (or non-scandals depending on your point of view) that have erupted on the community at the same time, it truly feels like an age of EVE has passed and a new one is dawning.

But which direction is it going? This blog banter can be about several different topics:
– where do you think EVE is going? Is it a good or bad vision ahead?
– if you were EVE’s new Executive Producer, where would you take the game?
– What comes (or should come) after Rubicon in terms of the mechanics and ship balancing we’ve seen? (CSM8 not allowed to answer this one!)
– Is there anything in EVE’s ten year past that should be resurrected? Or buried and forgotten?
– What is the future of the community? What should or should not change?

The Banter’s topic is actually a funny one, because I thoroughly enjoy speculating about the future of EVE. Let’s fetch the *Crystall Ball* (mind you, it’s probably useless without skill *Polaris* trained to V).

* /me gazes into the Crystall Ball *

Where do you think it’s going?

During Fanfest and then subsequently during Rubicon presentation CCP Seagull shown us a theme of exploration and space colonization. Remember the famous “Badgers” image? (Yes, I know some of them are Tayras actually)

badgers-build-stargate

I tell you what I saw in the crystall ball. I saw new space: space different from K-Space, and space different from Anoikis (also known as W-space). I saw the EVE gate open again. I saw abandoned planet on the other side of the EVE gate. I saw how legends of Earth come true as capsuleers explore the long forgotten point of humanity’s origin. I saw space without stargates and without local chat. But I also saw Badgers building stargates. I saw gate satellites that report gate activity to the holder of the system (did I mention there was no local chat?). I saw Sisters of EVE digging for Terran artifacts. I saw SoE battleships. I also saw capsuleers owning stations in high sec space and I saw capsuleers running station establishments. One of the barkeep names was strangely familiar, but at the same time out of place: the name was “Quark”… And then the image went all fuzzy and I saw nothing else.

Is it a good vision? I think it is. Back when EVE was still young, the space was often empty. It was out there to explore and for the taking. Even though there was no Exploration feature as we know it today, flying around 0.0 felt like exploring the unknown. You would rarely meet other people. It was even possible to find empty systems in high sec! Now we have almost fully colonized wormholes, we have exploration mechanic and… suddenly it does not feel unknown at all. There is no real notion to fly around and explore. There, see my TCU? This system is mine. But does colonization really mean simply sticking a flag? Or is it about building housing, mines, roads, farms and so on? Even if EVE gate remains as closed as ever, there is still so much we could do with the amount of empty space we have in EVE.

If you were EVE’s new Executive Producer?

Frankly, I’m quite happy that I’m not. This is a very an EXTREMELY responsible position. It takes loads of hard work to gain community’s approval, yet it’s very easy to loose it.

What comes (or should come) after Rubicon?

POS revamp. Current system works, but only because we have nothing else to replace it. The recent changes in Odyssey were step in the right direction (accessing storage from anywhere within the shield is really cool, and I’m sure Personal Hangar is great for WH residents). But setting up a POS, even with reduced timer is counter-intuitive and the UI to do so is still clumsy. A modular POS where you add modules by sticking them to the Control Tower like Lego bricks seems a much better idea.

A S&I GUI revamp. Seriously! CCP Karkur (and CCP Punkturis, when you get back ;-)), S&I needs your love. Lot’s of it!

  1. Selecting labs and production lines (it’s a pain when there is 40 labs to choose from, and you have to scroll-scroll-scroll-click every time you set up a job). Drawing the lists side by side, rather than one on top of another would probably be a good start.
  2. Start multiple jobs by selecting multiple lines. Hell, the current UI already allows you to select multiple lines, but there is no code to actually make sense of that multiple selection.
  3. Remember last invention choice and last decryptor used (if it’s available in hangar). Pretty please!
  4. Some in game tool to plan a production line. Currently we have to write our own third party tools to do that (see LMeve)

More visual feedback would also be fun. For example, ship assembly lines at POS could feature the hulls that are actually being built inside (mind you that would add a lot to immersion factor).

Should something be resurrected? Or buried and forgotten?

Dear CCP, you should never (and I mean it) bring old limited edition ships back. There’s plenty of hulls that the team Trilambda created, but are not available to players. I would really love a Roden Megathron in my collection! Or a Guristas Raven, when we are at it:

2012.10.03.16.49.08

What is the future of the community? What should or should not change?

Less drama is all the community needs, really. Most of us are grown ups, and should behave accordingly.

EVE Online: Rubicon Status Post

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

EVE Online: Rubicon
Expansion name: Rubicon
Release date: November 19th, 2013
Expansion theme: Space Colonization, POCOs in high sec, small gang boost, ship rebalancing
Last update of this post: 15.11.2013
Patch notes: Rubicon

Intro

rubiconOn 26th of September CCP has announced the upcoming winter expansion called Rubicon. The deveplopers of EVE have hinted the general direction back on Fanfest, when CCP Seagull spoke about future EVE where capsuleers are not just inhabitants of New Eden. Players are supposed to colonize space, make it their own. Rubicon is probably the first in a series of expansions with space colonization theme.

While the first and most obvious feature that comes to mind is revamp of the POS system, it will not be happening just yet.

Rubicon has been available on Singularity test server since 7th of October 2013. Source: dev forum post.

New character selection screen

login-screen-v2

Click “Continue Reading” to read the whole post.

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SOMERgate aka T20’13

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , ,

The text below is just my opinion on the matter. I respect the right of others to have a different one.

Scorpion Ishukone Watch (2011)I bet that almost every EVE player has already heard about the recent controversy, which caused the community to literally boil. To make the long story short, a gambling service run by Somerset Mahm (SOMER blink) has been recognized by the CCP and the Blink crew has been rewarded with a limited edition ship, Ishukone Watch Scorpion.

For many, that was plain favouritism: first to sponsor Blink with resurrected limited edition ship prizes (which in response to negative comments have been changed into new limited edition ships) and then to give them a reward of 30 Ishukone Watch Scorpions. Why Blink got the reward and Chribba didn’t? Sindel Pellion runs a charity and she didn’t get one, yet a for-profit organization got as much as 30 IWS! And they sit on an unimaginable pile of ISK anyway! They even make RL money out of it! RMT! Scam! Fraud!

Wait a second. Whose game is it? Is it mine, because I pay a monthly fee?

– No.

First off, comparing it to T20 misconduct is an exaggeration; items were given to more than just one entity, and besides these items could indeed be sold for substantial amount of ISK, it’s a one time sum, rather than ISK printing press that Tech II BPOs represent.

Secondly it’s CCP’s own right to reward anyone as they please, because it’s their game. 102 other pilots have been awarded as well. If instead of complaining people did something for the community, it might be them receiving the next limited edition ships.

For example, does the fact that I have never got any rewards from CCP (and SOMER did) should make me stop blogging about EVE or developing 3rd party software that helps running Industry corporations? Did I start all these endavours with rewards in mind? Or even to get CCP attention? Hell, no. I do it for the players. Players such as you, who would like to read about EVE, perhaps because they can’t play the game at the very moment. Plus, I do it for my corp, so we have a tool to help us plan better and make more ISK.

I can however understand why CCP has chosen to reward Blink. Running this kind of site is a full-time job. More than that, it’s a 23,5/7 operation. People that handle prizes are always there. Servers and load-balancers to handle such amount of traffic don’t grow on trees either. Yet, they are able to make a profit from it, real money profit! Without resorting to RMT, without breaking any rules. Isn’t that an achievement? Maintaining such a site really takes a considerable effort, not to mention the idea to start the thing.

“SOMER Blink does not enrich my EVE experience”. Okay. It might not enrich Your gaming experience, but it does for others. Why? Because if they feel like it, they can go and gamble. If one pays for their EVE subscription with GTCs, there is really no difference for such a person to go buy GTC directly from Markee Dragon, or through Blink. It’s exactly the same amount in USD that one has to pay. Yet in the latter case player gets free Blink credit, that can be turned into ISK. Isn’t that a great service? It’s simply bonus ISK with every GTC you buy.

So it might seem that I am white-knighting for CCP and that they are completely without a fault here. Well, not completely without a fault. While I don’t question motives behind awarding Blink with rewards, I agree that CCP has been giving their prizes in a haphazard way and without a transparent procedure. They should never give rewards such as these in secret. After the T20 incident, CCP has promised players transparency. This transparency requires that every kind of reward from developers to players should be made public. Community has never complained when CCP granted limited edition ships to Alliance Tournament winners, because both the rewards and the winners were always made public.

In the end it saddens me a bit, that because of the outrage this giveaway has stirred in the community, CCP has held giving out more rewards. That means that neither Chribba, nor Sindel, nor anyone else doing the great job of enriching EVE experience of others, is not going to get a limited edition ship for their hard work.

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What would happen if empires were divided by low sec?

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games ,

There is a thread in Features and Ideas Discussion forum by Commander Ted, that suggests that the four high sec empires should be divided by low sec in a similar way Solitude is disconnected from the rest of high-sec.

The original thread is here: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=174097

Initially I have ignored that thread, because the idea seemed silly to me. But the more I thought about the idea, it seemed less and less gamebreaking. The majority of EVE players is smart and resourceful. That means, they adapt quickly to big changes (otherwise they wouldn’t be playing EVE at all). So after the initial spike of prices, they would eventually settle back down. Here’s my cause-and-effect thought experiment:

  • one big change: Jita will loose it’s “primary trade hub” status in favour of local hubs in each empire
  • lots of traders want to make quick buck on the change, so initially prices spike up
  • T1 prices settle back quickly, because:
    • local mineral suppliers will handle the demand
    • nullsec minerals will flow from neighboring nullsecs to local trade hubs
  • T2 prices will see a minor inflation
    • currently Jita is the best market for t2 components
    • ships will be moving those across borders, some of them will be lost
    • manufacturers will add these losses to their cost
  • Jump Freighters will become more common, a price spike will happen initially, then the supply is going to flood the market, thus prices will come back to (or below) their current level
  • there will be more Jump Freighters in game
    • thus, there will be more Jump Freighter kills = FUN for PVPers. More work for Manufacturers. More ISK to change hands (which is good).
  • Transport ships able to use cloaking device will see a similar price spike to Jump Freighters, but most likely less pronounced.
  • Red Frog freight will be divided into 4 racial divisions
  • Black Frog freight will earn much more money and recruit even more couriers
  • PVPers will have more targets to shoot = FUN for them. More ships lost = more work for manufacturers. More ISK to move around.
  • it will be a bit harder for missioners to change faction they run missions for. Most likely ppl will be buying one PVE ship for every racial region, andthen use jump clones to move between them
  • less inter-racial migration means some parts of high-sec space might become crowded (Caldari Online anyone?)
  • “Foreign” ice prices will sharply go up
  • in response, POS operators will switch to racial towers based on the empire they reside in
  • Uedama will loose it’s “gank central” status – no one will be flying through that anymore.

I realize that above analysis of the impact is rather superficial, but I think that the 150% inflation or 50% players rage quitting that some people predict is unlikely to happen. What do you think?

“When you go to Jita, you are scammed by humans”

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , ,

This is not a post about yet-another Jita scam. We are all used to that. Instead, I thought I share a great post I saw recently.

About a year ago, during my 100.000 visits celebration I have asked what keeps you attached to EVE. I’ve got multiple replies, but neither of them were like the one I’ve stumbled upon on Failheap Challenge last night:

2012.07.15.19.09.41When you go to Ogrimmar, the Zeppelin overhead is coded in. The shopkeepers are scripts, and not even smart ones.

When you go to Jita, you sell to humans, you buy from humans, you are scammed by humans. There’s a player flying that mile-long cargoship currently esclipsing the sun, and for that matter [so are] the other 17 giant fucking sci-fi transports dotted around your screen.

It looks like something out of Babylon 5 or a Star Wars ‘crowd shot’, but none of it is staged. Everyone is there for their own reasons, and you might never know what it is.

Also, in EVE, you can claim a moon. I can literally stick my flag in orbit and say “This is mine until one of you cunts takes it”.
A whole fucking moon. With work, you and your buddies can take whole systems, whole constellations, declare yourselves all to be Space Popes. Not much comes up to that elsewhere.

This is one of the best descriptions of EVE Online I’ve seen so far. Unscripted, alive. EVE is real.

It’s one of the reasons I still play the same game after so many years.

Sanctuary Image Contest

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , ,

CCP Eterne has recently posted a dev-blog about an all new kind of Live Events. It turns out to be a competition organized by the Sisters of EVE: you have to visit three groups of sites (with increasing difficulty of finding them and then reaching them). The guaranteed prizes may look not worth the hassle:

  • Tier 1 – Zephyr exploration ship
  • Tier 2 – Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher and a set of 8 Sisters Core Scanner Probes
  • Tier 3 – Low-Grade ‘Virtue’ Alpha implant

But in my opinion it’s the fun of travelling around New Eden, which is the real prize here. As you can see, EVE Online is more than a space shooter – it also offers a living and breathing world for players to explore. Plus, by entering the competition, you also get a chance to win 10 PLEX and have your name forever engraved on a unique landmark in New Eden.

It’s really fun and I really recommend you enter the contest too!

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Odyssey 1.1 brings back the power of NOS

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , , ,

Odyssey 1.1 will bring back some nice changes to PVP (there is something for industrialists as well). Sadly, it will also increase the minimum hardware requirements for EVE.

While the date of the expansion has not been disclosed yet, dev-blog about HW requirements blog mentions July 10th.

So, what is going to change?

  • Nosferatu modules will use actual cap value instead of percentage to determine if it can leech or not. What does this seemingly simple change mean? Small ships with low base cap will be able to leech bigger ships almost forever. You battleships pilots can expect nasty NOS frig gangs.

    Source:
    Forum post
  • Industrial ships are getting tiericide. As a result, two main roles emerge:
    • speed and tank
    • huge cargo

    Some races (Gallente, Minmatar) had more industrials – these will get specialized cargo bays, for example for PI commodities, ores and gases or ammunition. Battle Badger will now be known as HAM Battle Badger btw.

    Source:
    Forum post
    Updated forum post

  • EVE Online system requirements will be increased: minimum system will be NVIDIA GeForce 8600 or AMD X2600 GPU, and a dual core CPU running at 2.0 GHz

    Source:
    dev-blog

Project Rorqual

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

bait-rorqual-burningIt all started back in November 2012. Marcel [Aideron Robotics CEO] asked Aideron Technologies if we can build him a Rorqual. While AR is in FW and not into heavy duty industry, Rorqual can be made into a mobile jump clone station, not to mention it makes a great bait. I have always wanted a Rorqual as well, but since my other capitals have been collecting dust for a long time, I never came down to buying a Rorq. Building it ourselves makes it quite a bit cheaper, so I have decided to finally get one as well.

Aideron Technologies had no Capital blueprints back then: neither for the parts, nor for any capital ships. We had to change that quickly. We have agreed to buy one or two personal capital part BPOs each, and then let the corp use them. Of course corp would research those personal BPOs for free.

Another thing was finding a rather quiet low sec system with factory, where we could build the ship. After some research we found a perfect candidate. Few days of 23,5/7 scouting has confirmed the system is not very active and meets our expectations. Capital Part copies have been made, and in March 2013 we have built our very first Rorqual.

I have started building parts for my Rorqual in May, but because of other tasks (and my absence from EVE) I was unable to finish the ship back then.

2013.05.23.08.53.18

In the background you can notice how LMeve makes it easier to track progress of production tasks 😉 It took a few more days of June to make all required capital parts.

And then came this day

2013.06.19.14.20.19

In about 12 days I will become a proud owner of a Mobile Cloning Station (got modules already prepeared, shy of small gallente ninja-tower and the fuel for it).

PS. Sorry for my absence

The last couple of weeks was a rough ride in RL, to the extent where I was not even able to log on to EVE for several days. I’m still a bit more busy than usual, but you can expect new posts to arrive at my regular rate of 1-2 a week.

On the development front – LMeve dev blog #1

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games, Programming , , , , , , , , ,
Industry Tracker - Login Screen

When I first started this project, I knew it will take more than a day to complete. In fact, I have assumed it will take at least a month (1-2 hours a day) to finish basic features. I was wrong: it took one and a half month. The result however, is better and more functional than the original Specification required.

First I would like to say a big thank you to my corp mates, who are testing LMeve restlessly. Beta test has also raised some excellent improvements and ideas, some of which are implemented already, and some have been added to the drawingboard. Thank you guys!

Features developed since the last post

Tasks is a module, which allows planning and tracking industry jobs over the course of one month. Currently the only person with edit rights is the CEO, so he can plan manufacturing, invention and copying for each corp member. Members can view their own task list, which shows the completion state of their tasks.

LMeve task tracking page
LMeve task tracking page

It looks almost exactly like the Task page on Marcel’s aideronrobotics.com (this was one of the specified requirements). Crysis McNally, one of our members has proposed to add a tooltip over Progress and Success bars, which shows how many jobs have been already done. This way corpies know exactly how many more runs are needed to reach 100%. This is one of the features we’ve missed in the original aideronrobotics.com industry tool.

Database is a module mainly used for planning and reference (and since there is no “Kit Builder” yet, it also tells the amount of materials required for production). It’s also the first module to display price data from eve-central.com (data itself has been downloaded for more than a month). We plan to add a drop-down ME field, which will recalculate required materials, and a setting if we want to get (or stop getting) price data from eve-central.com.

Ah, the beauty of Excel in space ;-)
Ah, the beauty of Excel in space 😉

Wallet has been iterated upon, because previously it would display walletTransactions (market sales) and walletJournal (bounties, contracts, taxes, etc.) separately. Market and contracts are now merged, so we know the actual ISK flow (we are buying minerals from corp members using contracts, and the rest of materials from market).

Tips’n’Tricks for Static Data Dump and EVE API

I have already mentioned it in the first post about LMeve, that EVE API can be tricky at times. So does the Static Data Dump.

As it turns out, telling the correct amount of materials required to build an item is not an easy task, because the data is mixed together: skills and “extra materials” are in the ramtyperequirements table, so you have to tell them apart (hint: join invgroups and use categoryID = 16 to separate skills from materials).

Secondly, the invtypematerials table contains the materials you get when reprocessing the item. It should be the same amount as materials required to build an item, right? Well, it only holds true for Tech 1 items. For Tech II, you have to subtract Tech 1 base item materials from the Tech 2 materials (hint: use recycle column in ramtyperequirements table to find the base item). The weirdest thing however is, that for some items it will give the exact results (for example Improved Cloaking Device II), but for some (like Kronos) you will end up with negative values! Of course the only solution is to hide the negative values from output.

Last but not least, EVE API is having hiccups now and then, throwing 1001: cache is invalid error for wallet transactions, wallet journal and message feeds. The main functionality of LMeve does not depend on these feeds (apart from the Wallet module), but for some people, like Somerset Mahm (and his excellent Blink service) it can be quite a pain. Good luck fixing it @CCP!

Story continues

This is not a formal project, so keeping the scope from growing is not much of an issue (the only budget I have here is time), but there is still plenty of features waiting on the drawing board:

  • Industry Goals (similar to Tasks, but at the corp level). Ideally I would like to draw pretty production lines for Tech II and Capital items with all the intermediate products.
  • Inventory (Material Stocks, Buy Calculator for buying minerals from corp members)
  • Market (Monitoring buy/sell orders, Monitoring market prices for materials and products)
  • Settings (Some values are still not editable without phpMyAdmin right now)
  • EVE API monitoring (to gather API statistics and errors over time, currently I only keep the last value)
  • Linking characters to accounts using EVE API (currently admin has to link characters to account manually)

Want to help us test LMeve?

Would you like to join a friendly group of mature players and get paid for cycling corp manufacturing and invention tasks?

Well, now you have a chance! Apply to Aideron Technologies today! Simply contact our recruiter – Razeu – in game.

PS. Please specify AT in the application form, because we still share forum with Aideron Robotics.

Pay twice – train twice

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , , ,

The recent dev-blog by CCP Quant almost made me jump! I have been playing EVE for nearly 8 years now, and had two accounts for about 6. Alternate characters are damn useful (especially for industry and cynoing around), so there is never enough of them little buggers. Unfortunately, only one char can train per account, which means that you would have to cut the training time from your main at some point to create another alt. Everyone knows that the main should have as many SP as possible (you know, for show off purposes!). This is what makes most people open a second account: so training alts doesn’t stop the main from training.

Guess what? CCP will allow you to train a second character on the same account

Of course it costs PLEX a month, but it is almost exactly as if you had a second account. You can still log only one character per account, so this change won’t help multiboxers.

This is still a very welcome change, because it allows:

  • to keep training your main character at all times
  • train more useful alts on the main account
  • no need to move characters between accounts in order to train

How to enable it?

Simply right click a PLEX and select “Activate Dual Character Training”. The change will come to Tranquility with Odyssey expansion.

What it will not do?

  • Dual Character Training does not affect the game time on account
    • If your sub runs out, the Dual Character Training pauses until your sub is renewed
  • Once Dual character Training runs out, the character with less SP will stop training
  • Dual Character Training does not allow you to login to game with two characters from the same account
  • Dual Character Training does not auto-renew and cannot be stacked
    • You can pay for another term 7 days before the current one expires