Tag: eve online

Posts about a massive multiplayer online game EVE Online by CCP hf.

What’s the difference between a Live Event and a regular Kitchen Sink op?

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games, Role-playing , , ,

Yesterday CCP has run a Live Event. For those who never saw a Live Event before, it is a staged, lore oriented event run in game by the devs. First incursions were such events, and the battle over Caldari Prime (operation Highlander) was another example. Live Events are usually accompanied with the risk of losing ship (in first incursions due to a huge amount of NPCs present on the battlefield, and during operation Highlander – because it  essentially becoma an FFA where Gallente loyalists would duke it out with the Caldari). With that thought in mind, I have picked up a cheap, expandable ship (plated Brutix) and a cheap “combat” clone (didn’t have a blank at the time).

There were two rally points, conventiently placed next to mission hubs: Meves and Sarum Prime. I’ve chosen the first one and have arrived way before the event. I met some friendly faces there, namely Ashterothi from Aideron Robotics and Akrasjel Lanate from Naquatech. Both are experienced PVPers. I have also noticed two CSM 8 members in our group: Mike Azariah and Ali Aras. We have formed a roughly 220 people armor fleet under an FCORD FC known as Super General.

2013.11.07.17.31.21 2013.11.07.17.29.01 2013.11.07.18.36.19
 

Shortly after, a CCP actor has arrived:

[ 2013.11.07 18:34:04 ] Heder Elislar > The Caldari Navy and Imperial Navy will be working independant of our effort.
[ 2013.11.07 18:34:14 ] Heder Elislar > We have no business with them.
[ 2013.11.07 18:39:35 ] Heder Elislar > Well, that's a lot of capsuleers.
[ 2013.11.07 18:40:01 ] Ashterothi > Heder Elislar When the call comes out, Federation loyalists answer
[ 2013.11.07 18:40:18 ] Buppas > glad to be here Heder Elislar, the republic can always count on my assistance
[ 2013.11.07 18:41:56 ] Heder Elislar > YOUR FLEETS MAY ADVANCE TO BOTANE, AND HOLD ON THE OURAPHEH

Jump jump jump, and off we went to Botane.

2013.11.07.18.55.54
 

The Republic general was right, that’s indeed quite a lot of capsuleers. “Enough mass to bend the time” so to speak. But we will get to that.

[ 2013.11.07 18:48:31 ] Heder Elislar > FLEET WILL BE DEPARTING IN THE DIRECTION OF LOW SECURITY PLACID IN 10 MINUTES.

Low sec – good! We will be shooting stuff! But then everybody jumped… and a giant TiDi wave crushed upon us.

2013.11.07.19.00.34
 

Dear CCP! I’d love a screensaver with this TiDi slowed down mid-system jump animation! Pretty please! It’s really lovely (no pun intended).

Unfortunately 10% TiDi quickly led to the fleet being disorganized. Fortunately it didn’t matter much as we were still in high sec.

It took some time to arrive in Stacmon (exactly fourty-two minutes). In the meantime we’ve learned that the next waypoint is…

[19:19:24] Heder Elislar > OUR NEXT RALLY POINT IS THE SYSTEM OF VESTOUVE.

Okay, that’s close to… Syndicate. So we are going to null after all. I smiled to myself, “good that I took a cheap clone with me, too bad I didn’t have a blank”. Flying what you can afford to loose has one big advantage: you are not focused on the fear of losing your bling ship, but on  the combat itself, which means you are less likely to make any mistakes. That’s why many veterans often tell newbies to master frigates first. Of course some people love the adrenaline kick, and that’s where all those multi-billion ISK killmails come from.

Once the fleet started to jump, the TiDi wave came back, and everything again dilated to a slow-mo movie. Once we’ve entered low-sec, Super General started moving the fleet in an orderly fashion (commonly known as blob).

2013.11.07.19.52.29 2013.11.07.19.52.56
 

In the meantime we’ve got the final destination:

[19:26:03] Heder Elislar > copy that, 8V-SJJ is final destination for Fed-Matari forces.

Unfortunately, we were still on the way to Vestouve, surfing a TiDi wave. And then reports started flooding in: Squids hit a heavily bubbled gatecamp, and most of their fleet got destroyed there. And gallente-minmatar have supposedly already lost the battle in 8V-SJJ. The traps were organized by null residents, namely Goonswarm and RAZOR alliance. Well, our 200+ strong fleet was still on its way, so we still had a chance at kicking some random shooting some random Goons before dying in a big ball of fire. Fun to be had!

Before crossing the low-null border, the FC asked if anyone wants to turn around and go back to safety. This was a nice move! Of course no one came. Well, except for the new owner of Poetic Stanziel, who started shooting someone and went GCC.

Once we’ve arrived in 8V-SJJ, there was still a roughly 200 men group of Goonswarm & friends in the system. After I have reviewed the killmails it seems it was at least one armor and one shield fleet, plus a wing of bombers. Our fleet warped to one of the beacons prepared by CCP and started shooting Goons. We’ve managed to catch a Damnation and one or two cruisers.

kill: Maller

kill: Damnation

We’ve also killed a random Drake, who was unluckily caught in the crosshairs of our fleet:

kill: Drake

And then the bombs landed on top of us! Immediately after the first bombs shown on overview, the FC has ordered a regroup at planet II. Most of the fleet survived the bombing, but deep in hull and armor. Piece of advice: never turn your MWD on when bombs are inbound! Even if you have to clear a bubble.

My trusty Brutix survived the first encounter, but it catched some fire on the way!

2013.11.07.20.35.59
 

While friendly logis were patching us up, we’ve killed some stragglers who warped on top of us. Sorry guys! We are NPSI! (a variation of NBSI: Not purple? Shoot it).

kill: Vigilant

A minute later a Megathron pilot in our fleet went AWOX. So we’ve dispatched him, too:

kill: Megathron

Once our logi finished the repairs, we warped back into battle again. This time our FC has brought us to one of the wrecks, away from the main Goon fleet. Goons followed suit, dancing around with us so to speak… and then out of a sudden we have warped close enough to each other, and the fighting began. Unfortunately our nullsec friends had enough logis to keep the primaries alive. First we went after a Proteus, but as much as our 150 men fleet could do was scratch his paintjob. Then we went after tech I ships, which usually have lower resists, so it’s easier to kill them, even with logi support. It was a sound plan and paid us a couple of killmails, for example this one:

kill: another Maller

Unfortunately experienced and well organized doctrine fleet has beaten our kitchen sink (we knew it was going to happen eventually). I went after a Harpy that has been shooting me, and his friends primaried me. My Brutix went up in flames: loss: Brutix. There was a HIC bubble up, but somehow my pod managed to get away from it. I warped to a random moon at 50, and made a safespot on the way. The F-5 gate seemed clear, and there were reports on fleet comms that the other side is clear too. I warped to the gate and jumped on contact. On the other side I follwed suit, warped to a random celestial and made a safespot on the way. Unfortunately the next gate was bubbled and camped. There was an Intaki NPC station in the system, but it was outside of my directional. I made a mistake of warping to it loss: Capsule. Yup, there was a bubble waiting for me there.

All in all, I’ve done 1,4 billion in damage, and lost 200 million, which translates to 86% efficiency. But these numbers don’t show how much fun it really was. I’ve enjoyed it a lot! Kitchen Sink Fleet op success o7

An afterthought

Now as long as PVP goes that evening was fun. TiDi is just a game mechanic designed to keep server responsive even under extreme loads. I can’t blame the servers. The actual fighting saw no TiDi, everything was smooth and fun, just like it should be.

But wait a second, where was lore in all this? It was a regular player battle, inexperienced kitchen sink fleet vs. veterans of nullsec. Where did lore go? What was the story told by this event? All previous live events I took part in were a part of the New Eden storyline. Did someone forget this was supposed to be a lore event in the end?

Many people complained about the lag and TiDi. This could have been thought of and prevented. In my opinion sending a 1000+ people through not reinforced nodes was guaranteed to cause a massive lag. I know CCP didn’t want to hint the nullsec blocks where exactly the event will be, but:

1) it didn’t work anyway, nullseccers got a hint in a public message that was supposed to rally pirate loyalists, and they had enough time to learn of the final destination.

While I don’t know if they actually bridged or not, I would do that if I was them: rally in the general vincinity with a titan bridge at the ready, and then quickly bridge once the final destination was announced.

2) lots of players were stuck in 10% TiDi on a several jump trip

It could have been done better, I’m sure Federation Navy (or even CONCORD) could have lend the high sec fleet an Erebus Titan and simply bridge the entire fleet from Meves. It would give at least a minute or two for the actors to show players the story, before the nullsec fleets arrived.

The problem is, we’ve missed the whole story this time. It was just another Kitchen Sink Fleet op. Ever heard of RvB Ganked Nights? They’re actually better than this event was…

Unless… Unless it was all planned

Unless it was supposed to be a failure. It was staged to end in a disaster. Quoting the trailer: Empires are loosing their grasp on power. They are no match for capsuleer nullsec power blocks. And when we are at it, neither are the high sec capsuleer organizations. This event was a perfect sign of that.

Just one more thought

High sec pilots could have prevented some of this by preparing in advance. We could have tried to set up some doctrine fleets with proper amount of logis, same weapons range and the same tank. We could have get in touch well before the event, use forums, use Twitter. Get organized. And forming a recon/bomber/t3 wing with a black ops bridge wouldn’t be a bad idea either. It would remove the problem of TiDi for sure, not to mention that bombers could actually be quite successful against the enemy fleet.

More reading:

New Item Database on Torchwood Archives (with 3D ship spinning)

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Programming , , , , ,

It’s one of the changes I wanted to do much earlier on, but didn’t have time to properly prepare LMeve for this. Yes, this is the first part of our project that goes public.

Since the day when I learned that CCP has open-sourced their WebGL library, I wanted to use it right away in our little tool. Even though some time has passed since the tech went public, I have only seen it running on one public website: http://www.eohgames.com/labs Back in summer I had a chat with one of the creators of that site, T’Amber (@PaulOosterman). We have discussed the possibilities of CCP webGL and I have shown him my work on it in LMeve Database module. But to show him this one feature I had to create an account and a new role with just this one module allowed. Lots of work to share it with just one person, eh?

So today I would like to share with all of you the “lite” version of LMeve, which replaces the dirty old Static Data Explorer. It is running the same code that powers our closed-beta Industry app, but it has been stripped down to just have this one module. Say hello to LMeve Item Database!

TL;DR

Check out the new Item Database with 3D ship preview (ship spinning works too):

new-item-database

PS. Some things still need work, for example weapons, munitions and structures do not load properly (there is no code that understands that they are not ships and a different loading method should be used). All ships should display properly though.

200.000 visits. One More Thing. And a Navy Mega Ship giveaway!

Lukas Rox EVE Online, Games , ,

About a year ago I was celebrating 100.000 visits to my blog. It took about 1,5 year to get there. This year, even though I had a blogging break in summer due to external factors, my blog has doubled the number of visits in less than a year!

200000-visits

* Yes, I know the counter didn’t reach 200.000 yet, but it will by the end of the day 😉

Thank you guys!

Giveaway is in order

As a thank you I will be giving away 1x Megathron Navy Issue, 1x Rattlesnake and 1x Sacrilege. How do you enter the draw? Simply leave a comment using your in-game character name (this way I will know who to contract the prize to). The giveaway will end on November 18th, 23:59 eve time. After the extended downtime on the 19th, Chribba dice will determine the lucky winners.

[ tickets | chribba dice ] – winners announced in this post

navy-mega rattlesnake sacrilege

Update – One More Thing

When I wrote this post in the morning I had no idea how the day was going to end. I was on a train, and I was bored, so I started up Twitter to see what #tweetfleet is up to. Mornings are usually quiet, because majority of US just went to sleep and EU has just arrived at work. That time around you can only find some Aussies on Twitter. Well, not only. Some Guy, formerly known as Poetic Stanziel was having a chat with Ripard Teg:

twitter-fansites

I did apply as a fansite some time in summer, mainly to reach more people. Unfortunately there was no reply to my application, but I didn’t care much about it. After all I’ve created this blog for others to read, and not for publicity.

Nothing would have happened if CCP Guard didn’t reply that I should file a petition. So I did, but I didn’t hope for an “accept” response – there’s plenty of great Fansites and I don’t think Archives is even half as good. But to my surprise, I got a reply to my petition from CCP Eterne and I was really surprised:

fansite

Thank you, CCP!

I have to deserve my right to be in such a great company, so there will be changes and new things coming to Archives – stay tuned.

One more reason for celebration! Navy Mega gets one more Faction Battleship friend 😉 Plus something cruiser-sized for those, who prefer smaller ships.

LMeve dev blog #2

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

A few months ago I’ve written a post about how the development of LMeve goes, and I feel it’s in order to write another one, because a lot of things have been changed and/or improved since that last post in May.

New Features

In the last post I have outlined what new features we want developed and why. Due to time restrictions I haven’t been able to implement everything from that list, but I have covered quite a sizeable amount.

lmeve-materials-drake First off, the complete materials list and production cost estimation. Every manufacturer in EVE wants to know which items have the best profit margin. Of course prices of resources fluctuate, so the production and pricing strategy has to be revised in regular intervals.

The material data comes from the Static Data Dump and is correctly affected by the ME level set in the fields seen above (in real time!). If user has the correct permissions, it is also possible to save the ME and PE in the database for future reference (why save it? for automatic kit building of course). Prices are being downloaded from eve-central.com using their own API.

lmeve-kitsSecondly, after one of our members put all the ME levels from our BPOs to the app (thanks!) it was possible to implement the Kit Builder. What is it? As you remember, every member has a list of tasks, that have to be completed within a given month. Each member has a bunch of labs assigned to them at one of our POSs, and has to refill them with materials to maintain the production lines busy. Previously everyone had an excel file with the amounts of materials needed to complete tasks for a given month. Excel. File. Why do we have to use Excel, if we already build tools for thisk kind of reference?

Each task has two buttons now: Full kit and Remainder kit respectively. What do they do? If you press the Full kit button, our app will display a list of materials required to make all the jobs under the selected task (enough for an entire month). The “Remainder kit” button will display the amount of materials required to finish the task (entire month minus what has already been done).

lmeve-tasks1Speaking of Tasks, another one of our members requested a feature that shows the jobs currently in progress (and when they finish). This let’s members know when they can log on to cycle their jobs. I think I might want to make two views of it, one summary view (aggregated by typeID and only display the time when the last item of that batch is finished). The current “complete” list of jobs in progress would become the second view.

lmeve-database-drakeNow something else entirely. Ever heard of CCP WebGL? Well, it’s a javascript framework that allows displaying 3D ships and other game assets on a webpage. It’s the same tech that can be seen in the Ship Viewer on the eveonline.com page. Well, I have incorporated it to our Database page. So when you’re away from EVE and would like to spin your ships – feel free to do so. Since the window is rather small, I have decided to give it a “fullscreen” button, for all the ship-spinning pleasure (pressing F11 to first make the browser go full screen makes it look even better).

lmeve-buy-calcIn the previous post I have also mentioned the Buy Calculator. We used to have a gdocs spreadsheet for that. What does it do? Aideron Technologies has a buyback program, which allows corp members to sell minerals, datacores and other materials to corp at Jita buy prices. Saves our corpies going to Jita to sell their goodies, and saves us the trip to buy the materials from Jita. A win-win scenario for everyone. It was only matter of time for the Buy Calc to arrive in LMeve as a web form. It’s worthe mentioning, that it behaves just like the gdocs did, only better. See, spreadsheets have this fun feature of selecting next cell when you press enter. It makes entering a lot of data quicker. Web forms don’t do this by default, so I had to write some javascript to make it behave like spreadsheets do. What gdocs was unable to do, was displaying a summary window that tells you exactly what to put it the in-game contract. Moreover, we save the pricings in the database, and then match it with in-game contracts. This way we don’t even have to manually verify all the prices in game – everything is done automatically! And it works in IGB, too.

Speaking of Market features, we now have a list of Market Orders, too. First, to see what is the best-seller item, secondly, to see which items have been already sold out and need to be produced to satisfy the demand. Unfortunately our market information is classified and there is no screen of this feature.

lmeve-timesheetPreviously I’ve mentioned that our corp members get paid for their hard work. Well, they do! But some players have more than one character involved in production, and would like to see how much they’ve earned in total on all their characters. A very nice feature request, and quite easy one to implement. The Timesheet module now shows the characters of the logged user on top of the table with a nice wrap-up with the sums for all characters owned. Also one of our members have got himself a new nickname: “The King of Alts”.

lmeve-graphs-2-apiHave you noticed the graph by the way? Well, a few Graphs have arrived in LMeve, too. First the one with corp production activity, that shows the number of jobs that have been installed on each day. Next one is the EVE API monitor. It shows how long it took for the poller to refresh all the API feeds. Since some feeds are refreshed less often than others, some poller cycles take longer, because more data needs to be downloaded (and then parsed into the DB). The last graph is the wallet activity, which shows us when goods have been sold (or materials bought).lmeve-graphs-1

The last feature is skins – the app is CSS skinable, and there is a distinct possibility that Aideron members can be very surprised that the screens here look very different to what they are used to. That’s because there are three skins two skins! One is very similar to Aideron Robotics (because our corp is a spin-off from AR), second skin, which looks very much like EVE Online forums (CSS isn’t a direct copy though, it’s only very similar colors). The last one is very simple, and can be considered “work safe”.

lmeve-skins3 lmeve-skins1 lmeve-skins2

The future

Whew! That was a productive five months there, not only because LMeve has several new features now, but because of the tool we were able to break our profit, turnover and production records every month!

There is still one big feature that needs to be coded (I didn’t have the time to do it yet) the Inventory. We have to track the materials and sub-products (like capital parts or Tech II parts). Inventory will show us how much of given type we have, and how much we need to produce (or buy) to keep the stocks full. Maintaining the smallest stocks, that allow uninterrupted production is one of the crucial logistic tasks for every corp. Every time we run out of materials and members can’t cycle their jobs is time when we don’t make profits.

The other ideas mentioned in the previous post are still in the queue to be implemented as well:

  • 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.
  • Linking characters to accounts using EVE API (currently admin has to link characters to account manually)
  • Simple character API reader to run background checks on prospective recruits.

PS. The app is in closed beta (Aideron Technologies only). Open Source release date is still to be determined.
PS.2 As of 23rd of Oct the Aideron skin has been removed and will be no longer available. A new skin will be created in it’s place.

Could games like Valkyrie be released on mobile?

Lukas Rox DUST 514, EVE Online, EVE Valkyrie, Games, Mobile, Tablets , , , , ,

New Eden is already expanding beyond the boundaries of EVE Online, and it’s a fact. Blog Banter #50 touched an important topic of the future of EVE, and expansion to mobile devices is only natural thing to happen. It can already be happening, but we just don’t know it yet…

EVE Valkyrie already has quite a history, even though the game itself haven’t been released yet. It all started as a technological demo for Oculus Rift virtual reality headset presented on Fanfest 2013. A small crew of CCP employees have used existing EVE Online assets, imported them to Unity3D engine and created “EVE VR”. Players who’ve tried it on Fanfest were so amazed, that the going question was “When can we have this?”

It only took a few months for CCP to come up with a business case for that demo, and on August the 21st CCP has confirmed that EVE VR will be released as a full game in 2014. The name “EVE VR” was also extended into “EVE Valkyrie”. The remaining question, deliberately not answered by the devs is what platforms will this game run on.

Some players have already tried answering that question. It’s not a secret that CCP cooperates heavily with Sony, so the first rumour was that Valkyrie might come to PS4 – you can read the entire Abaddon21’s post here.

Recently something else came to my attention. Some time ago toucharcade.com has published this story about CCP planning a mobile release. We’ve already heard of DUST514 companion app called “Neocom” scheduled for release on Playstation Vita, but from the story above we can guess that there is possibly more mobile apps to come from CCP.

Could Valkyrie possibly be one of those apps?

To answer this question, first we need to answer another one: if it’s technically feasible at all.

There’s still very little we know about EVE Valkyrie, but let’s have a look at what we know already:

  • it will be a FPS dogfighter game,
  • it will work on Oculus Rift virtual reality headset,
  • it was created using Unity 3D engine
    • which has a version for 10 platforms, including PC, Mac, Linux, Windows Phone, iOS and Android

But can mobile hardware handle it?

Okay, so Unity 3D is ready and available. But can mobile devices handle a game with visuals like that?

  • First, there is Galaxy on Fire II, which is nothing but an FPS dogfighting shooter for iOS and Android:

20131018-144135.jpg 20131018-144224.jpg Galaxy on Fire 2 HD jump animation Fishlabs-Galaxy-on-Fire-2-Supernova-Stealth-Fighter

  • The same studio (Fishlabs) is now developing another game known as “Galaxy on Fire: Alliances” which is about planet colonization. Gameplay loosely reminds of Planetary Interaction in EVE Online:

20131018-144241.jpg 20131018-144253.jpg

Judging by the above screens, I’m pretty certain that Planetary Interaction could easily be made into a separate tablet game in the world of EVE.

  • Then we have a completely different game, but one that shows what kind of visuals tablets and mobile phones can already provide: Infinity Blade Trilogy

20131018-144302.jpg 20131018-144308.jpg 20111203-160002 20111203-155951

Ok, what about the software?

We’ve mentioned Unity3D, which is a multiplatform 3D game engine that can run on 10 different platforms. The very basic version, which includes mobile device support,  has the advantage of being free. There is already a bunch of games for Android and iOS made with Unity, for example Shadowgun or AngryBots. It’s also worth mentioning that there are some well-known PC games running on Unity, I’m sure you’ve heard of Hearthstone and  Kerbal Space Program? Games built with multi-platform engines can be easily ported to any supported platform without additional development (well, the resources sometimes have to be converted/resized, but that’s all). It’s worth mentioning that Unreal engine used by DUST514 also works on mobile devices (Infinity Blade I, II & III all run on this engine).

And then we have CREST, which is a new read-write API for EVE Online; one that is already used (in-house) by DUST-EVE integration. We could also mention some tech demos, for example the Alliance Tournament CREST endpoint, that provided live telemetry of Alliance Tournament ships. The amount of possibilities these kind of tools give is unprecedented. Not only we will have many new 3rd party apps for EVE and DUST, but it also opens a lot of opportunities for CCP themselves.

As you can see, both the technology and assets to make EVE-themed games for different platforms is already available.

Whether CCP acts based on the above facts or not, remains to be seen. Maybe Valkyrie will become a mobile game after all?

UPDATE: According to this interview with CCP Unifex on Crossing Zebras, EVE Valkyrie will not be coming to mobile devices:
Transcript begins at 7:55

Xander Phoena: So you are now currently leading the fledging Mobile division within CCP and the Valkyrie project. Which is taking most of your time at the moment? As one prioritized?

CCP_Unifex: Yeah absolutely, I mean, right now I’ve had the opportunity to work with Valkyrie so I’m spending the vast majority of my time doing that. And I had some good time, pretty much straight off the Fanfest where I was able to look at CCP strategy around mobile and got some good work done around that, and then Valkyrie kicked off […] But the intention is like I said I’m gonna be handing over, so that I can actually go focus on Mobile.

As you can see, Valkyrie and Mobile are two different projects within CCP. That doesn’t change most of the post below, because it’s about technical possibilities, rather than only about Valkyrie.

PS. Thanks @valkrr for the heads up!

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

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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.