Diary of a Bored Spaceman

My Private War, Part IV

2010-09-04T06:38:00.000-07:00

The following is the fourth part of an ill-conceived story arc chronicling Rolinthor's and the Applied Physics Institute's pathetic misadventures in the Derelik region. Read Part I here, II here, and III here, and check back soon(TM)* for the next episode (you know, if you're empire mining, and you're really, really bored).
______________________________________

The afterlife wasn't at all like the Amarr said it would be.

As Roland Prideaux climbed the ladder of consciousness back to a state more befitting an advanced hominid, his eyes slowly focused on a face. The face belonged not to an angel but to his wife, Xanthippe.

Prime's "Ex", as he liked to call her, was a Sebiestor woman on the verge of crossing that fuzzy boundary into "peasant" country. But perhaps this requires some explanation: Everyone knows, of course, that Sebiestor are graceful and lithe, if a bit on the gaunt and pale side, and that they have a sensual attitude to match their looks. This is why many men throughout the cluster desire to take them for wives. But for those that do, one morning, when the woman reaches somewhen north of 35 years old (and, mind you, only after she's been married off), these husbands wake up to find that they're wedded not to a wild, tribal sex goddess but to a peasant woman with round face, plump figure and child-bearing hips.

In the looks department, Xanthippe was still years from crossing the peasant line, but in mindset she had crossed it long ago, or so Prime thought to himself, somewhat bitterly, as the clone vat emptied itself of pseudo-amniotic fluid and he stepped, dripping with slime, onto the cold linoleum of his family flat. Once he had coughed up the last of the fluid from his lungs, he grabbed the robe Xanthippe was holding out to him--how is it that she makes the simplest gesture seem like a reproach? he thought--and covered himself with it.

"I'm sorry, love, I'm not here for one of my regular visits," Prime said.

"'Regular'?" she said. "I'm sure I don't know what that word even means anymore. You haven't been making 'regular' visits for more than a month, since you and that Rolinthor fellow went off into w-space with that Amber-woman, to do who knows what."

"'Who knows what'? You know exactly what, Ex: making ISK. For us. For our future together." Prime stood up straight, arched his back, and adjusted his robe, gestures intended to restore his capsuleer dignity. His bathrobe trailing behind him, he walked like King Rouvenour himself to the shower.

"But we have enough already love," Ex cooed at him as she watched the blurred form of his body through the frosted glass of the shower door. She peeled off a layer of clothes alluringly. Prime thought for a moment that she looked like an impossibly graceful impressionist painting. The sight only made him feel worse about what he knew he had to do. He bowed his head under the stream of hot water.

"It's not money, love," Prime said softly, his voice halting. "I can't leave Rol right now. I think he needs me."

Prime watched the impressionist painting lose focus, diminish, and disappear just ahead of the sound of the bathroom door closing. He put even odds on Ex still being in the house by the time he got out of the shower.

Settling In

2010-08-30T04:38:00.000-07:00

It's been some time since I've written here on a regular basis. Good times in RL (both work and family editions) tend to line up with blog posting according to the inverse law of the extremes: When life's really going well, or really going poorly, I'm not a "bored spaceman." And life has been really, really kind to me lately.

But I'm beginning to settle back in to something approaching a routine, so expect to see more content here in the coming weeks. Rolinthor, Roland, Amber, and the entire APHID crew have never been far from my mind while I've been away from this space, and in fact their antics are by now almost too numerous to recount in full.

But I'll do my best to tell their stories, starting with the one I left hanging way back in April (that long? really?). Expect weekly updates to that story arc every Saturday at a minimum, as well as occasional vignettes inspired by random bits of flotsam and jetsam I happen across in game. I'll also be breaking character when the mood strikes to follow-up on the story surrounding CCP's minor public relations snafu from earlier this year.

So that's my plan. I hope you'll stop by from time to time to hold me to it.

Battleflag of the Khanid Kingdom

2010-07-15T11:00:00.000-07:00

Cool people will get the historical allusions (in-game and IRL). Otherwise, I think it speaks for itself:

Y'all can go to hell. I'm goin' to Khanid.

Well Said

2010-07-14T09:30:00.000-07:00

This says about everything I tried and failed to say well the other day. It also says something I wish I had said, regarding CCP's apparently flawed approach to measuring success:

Players don't care that "memory usage on the server per user has decreased in the last 12 months". That is as relevant to them as "the brand of coffee in CCP Coffeemachine has been improved".

All that matters to them is the end result -- does the game play better now than it did a year ago?

From my worm's eye view of the situation, at least, the answer to this question is "no." My alliance mates and I have experienced all sorts of problems: increased session changeover times when jumping to another system, failure to dock/undock, client failure to activate/deactivate modules, items/trades that go missing, sov structure weirdness, and, of course, lag. For a while there, it was so bad that our alliance re-named our home station "Eve's Bermuda Triangle", on account of all the crap that just inexplicably vanished or otherwise didn't work right.

I understand that a certain amount of patience is in order with a game as complex as Eve Online, but these days, debilitating or extremely frustrating bugs are an almost nightly occurrence, and I find myself questioning why I log in at all if I can't have any confidence that I won't lose a HAC to belt rats because an armor repper mod refuses to online/offline inside of 20 minutes.

This is where Noob Starship Politician is spot on: CCP needs to keep track of the right metrics. Given that the devs probably don't have the time or inclination to actually play the game too intensively, or explore its ins and outs all that thoroughly, they need to listen intently to the people who are doing those things: the player base.

An Open Letter to CCP: Kick the Bucket!

2010-07-13T14:19:00.000-07:00

When I started this blog, I never intended to do any out-of-character posts. Part of the reason for this was that the vast majority of out-of-character blogs, while they were mostly high-quality, all sounded the same to me. Another part of the reason was that the official CCP literature, including the books and the Chronicles, presented a pretty cramped, game-centric view of New Eden, which I wanted to flesh out. (I don't want to belabor this point, but the first section of an entire Chronicle consisted of a bunch of people sitting in a board room wondering, along with the readers, what the hell was going on. Note to CCP Abraxas: Having your characters exchange pleasantries does not constitute dialogue. Consult David Mamet.) The final reason I started this blog was that I was bored, and I had a lot of free time.

Obviously, I have a lot less free time these days. IRL work and family life are going well, meaning that my free time isn't. I intend to return to writing about the Applied Physics Institute eventually, but for the time being, frankly, I'm having too much fun just playing the game when I'm not enjoying life or working on other projects.

There is, however, an issue of great importance to CCP that's brought me back to the Diary to write this OOC post.

The above graph shows the subscription figures from the latest Quarterly Economic Update. Anyone notice the paradigm shift? A few months ago, you might have been able to chalk it up to other factors, but now, it seems clear that Eve has left behind an era of smooth, continuous growth and entered a more volatile period of oscillating deflation and expansion (pun intended). Figures like the above must be the "data" which CCP claimed in the minutes of the latest CSM summit as proof that quantity (i.e. new features, new releases) sells better than quality (fewer, fully-baked releases). Unfortunately, what CCP seems unaware of is that this strategy locks you into a self-inflating bubble: Subscriptions are down, you say? Then we need a new expansion! But the expansion is half-baked, so after an initial burst, subscriptions go down. Which becomes the impetus for rushing another half-baked expansion out the door. And so on and so forth until the game is so kludged with half-baked features that failure cascade is upon you.

This strategy even works, up to a point. (Part of my day job tangentially touches on the world of publishing and direct-mail marketing; in some ways, CCP's current predicament is eerily reminiscent.) We can analogize this strategy to a leaking boat. While the leak remains small, it's a simple matter for us to get the water out of the boat using a bucket. When the leak grows, however, we have to find a bigger bucket (i.e. a new expansion, with new features). But as a wise man once said, that which can't last, won't. As the size of the bucket approaches the size of the boat, our watery demise becomes inevitable. And the worst part of it is, once we've adopted the "bigger bucket" strategy, the skill-set we would normally use to make the leak smaller begins to atrophy.

I think the graph above suggests very strongly that CCP has adopted the "bucket strategy"; Dust 514/Incarna represent the newer, bigger buckets to bail out the leaking subscriber base. The longer they follow this strategy, the harder it will be for them to beat back bureaucratic inertia and return to a "fix the leaks" strategy.

I hope, for New Eden's sake, that it's not already to late for them to turn back.

This Is New Eden

2010-07-06T14:33:00.000-07:00

A scrimmage in a Border Station

A canter down some dark defile

Two thousand pounds of education

Drops to a ten-rupee jezail.

Congrats on the kill. Wish I'd been there.

A Plasma-scorched City on a Hill

2010-05-30T19:21:00.000-07:00

People of Palas I, I bring you the new city of Asstastica, now producing the finest enriched uranium and consumer electronics products to be found in the cluster (and at a fraction of the going price)!

Gold Rush?

2010-05-29T06:36:00.000-07:00

So I'm stationside in Amarr right now, practicing my remote sensing skills and seeing how the scan results line up with the production trees for resources produced planetside. I'm frankly a bit overwhelmed by the possibilities. Consider this interesting discussion about planetside industry and control-tower fuel; that's just a single dimension of the many-faceted market that will open up to the capsuleer population once the first command center modules come off the production lines.

The big question, to my mind, is what will all this do to the market? Will we see a big gold rush like we did when Sleeper space was discovered and T3 goods started to make their way on the market? Perhaps, but at the moment, I'm inclined to think it won't. Unlike the case with the Sleeper gold rush, there's no "must have" item at the end of the planetary resources production chain--no shiny new sexy toy for capsuleers to satisfy the urges of their mid-life crisis. And for the time being, capsuleers won't have a lock on the planetary resources market: the empire corporations plan to continue offering their POS-fuel wares for now, so they--with significantly larger stocks of goods which they can bring on to the capsuleer market at a moment's notice--will effectively set an upper limit to prices.

I also wonder if the portion of the capsuleer population that is naturally inclined to these sorts of supply chain management puzzles is large enough to sustain the demand for POS-fuel without help from the empire corporations. At the moment, I'm not sure it is, although it certainly could be in the future.

But I admit I'm really just casting about in the dark for predictions. I'm not much of an economic oracle. We'll all see how things shake out in the coming months.

--A. Macx

UPDATE: One of the problems with guessing what's going to happen in New Eden's economy is the lack of transparency in the decision-making processes of Concord and the empire corporations. You can set yourself up for what you think is going to be an efficient operation moving forward, and--yoink!--some corporate bigwigs can render your business model obsolete and ruin your day. Case in point: decisions like this could change everything, or nothing, and you have few ways to protect yourself. Mind you, I'm not really complaining; those are just the rules of the game.

Overheard in Jita

2010-05-03T13:43:00.000-07:00

As if you hadn't figured it out by now, posting has been light (i.e. non-existent) for the past month, as I'm disembarking from the capusle for a few weeks to get married and go an all-too-brief honeymoon in Everyshore.

But so as not to leave you entirely without entertainment, herewith Episode One of "Overheard in Jita", with names redacted to protect the politically incorrect:

Jita Jockey #1: You ever hear what they eat in the Minmatar Republic?

Jita Jockey #2: No, what?

JJ #1: They eat dog.

JJ #2: Really? That's gross. They must be really poor to have to eat dog.

JJ #1: Yup. But not as poor as they are in Heimatar.

JJ #2: Oh yeah? What do they eat there?

JJ #1: In Heimatar, they're too poor to eat dog; they only eat bark. [Rimshot.]

[Crickets chirping.]

Friday Flash Fiction 14: Crielere*

2010-04-13T11:12:00.000-07:00

Friday Flash Fiction is an EVE Flash Fiction initiative hosted by Casiella Truza from Ecliptic Rift. Each Friday a prompt is presented, and the next Tuesday links to all stories are added to the original post. This week's prompt is Crielere.
______________________________________
"Clier—", says Prime, grimacing. "Creelerier—"

He purses his lips and gives it one more try: "Creerlier—"

"Don't worry, old boy," says Rolinthor, appearing suddenly behind Prime and clasping his shoulder roughly with one arm. "You don't have to pronounce it! You just have to make it!"

Prime, in his "autistic engineer" mode, is only faintly annoyed by Rolinthor's outburst, and quickly returns his attention to the readout on his datapad, which is labeled: " Crielere Labs Prototype Cloaking Device - Schematics." With the flick of a few fingers across the screen, he clears that image and brings up another one captioned: "Crielere Labs Covert Ops Cloaking Device II." He flips back and forth between the pages a few more times to get a good sense of both his starting point and the desired endpoint.

"I wouldn't be bothering me, right now, if I were you, Rolinthor. Augmenting a piece of technology with morphite is a tricky business."

"That's something I've never understood," says Rolinthor. "Why do you insist on starting at square one with each job. Why re-invent the wheel?"

"Rol, do me a favor. When I'm hanging around with my engineering friends – you know, the lab coat guys – try and remember not to embarrass me by asking stupid questions like that.

"I've tried explaining this to you before, but I guess I didn't use simple enough terms. Tech-2 invention doesn't work like that. You can spend days at a time devising a morphite-overlay strategy to modify an existing device, only to find that, due to the peculiar pattern of sub-micron fractures running throughout its structure, your clever stratagem will only work for a handful of production runs — or worse, it won't work at all. The damnable thing is, no two sub-micron fracture patterns are alike; every device is unique, like a snowflake. Ergo, no two morphite-overlay jobs are the same."

"But what about those nifty 'Tech-2 Blueprint Originals' I always see on sale in Jita local?"

Prime bolts upright in his chair and turns to face Rolinthor. "You didn't actually buy one of those, did you?"

"Uh, no. But I thought about it, once or twice."

"Don't," says Prime, turning back to his datapad. "They're scams. Oh, sure, I've heard rumors of old-timers with T2 BPOs. So-called 'ISK-printing machines.' But I've never seen one myself. Frankly, I don't think they really even exist. Just a myth us engineers like to tell each other after we've botched one too many morphite-overlays.

"You know, I've even heard rumors of something called a T2 BPO Lottery. Imagine that. A lottery for BPOs. What rubbish. Sometimes people tell the stupidest stories..."

*Ok, ok. More like Fiction Tuesday. So sue me.

My Private War, Part III

2010-04-12T10:52:00.000-07:00

The following is the third part of an ill-conceived story arc chronicling Rolinthor's and the Applied Physics Institute's pathetic misadventures in the Derelik region. Read Part I here and II here, and check back soon(TM)* for the next episode (you know, if you're empire mining, and you're really, really bored).
______________________________________
Roland Prideaux is committing suicide in less than two minutes, and he's beginning to feel anxious.

It's not that he's lost his zest for life; far from it. Nonetheless he's still eager to shuffle off this mortal coil.

Roland is ashamed by these conflicting feelings. He's pure Gallente, the proud son of a society liberated from the backward ways of priests, princes, and tribal potentates. More important, he's a scientist and an empiricist, with degrees in psychology, infomorph psychology, quantum physics, cosmology, and countless other certificates attesting to the fact that he knows there's nothing sacred in the flesh, nothing that can't be represented as a series of ones and zeroes, and flung across the cosmos on quantum-entangled comm bands, and re-assembled in a new body.

Despite all the scholarly degrees, the lack of cultural baggage, despite his absolute scientific certitude that giving up this meat machine doesn't also mean giving up the ghost—despite all these things, he's still terrified by what's going to happen to him in, now, one minute and twenty seconds...one minute and ten seconds...59 seconds...58...57...56—

And yet these feelings of dread co-exist with his desperate need to get away from the Derelik region for awhile: The things he's just heard; he never expected it to go this deep; deep regression hypnotherapy; he wishes he had never uttered the words to Rolinthor. What was he thinking? Now, all he could think about was to escape, to hitch a ride on the Suicide Express and go somewhere else in New Eden. Thirty seconds remaining.

Roland Prideaux's lonely hydrostatic capsule coasts in geosynchronous orbit above the planet Gamis I. It's a small, nearly invisible moon set against the roiling blue/black background of the planet surface. Inside it, a timer counts down to zero, setting into motion a delicate dance of events lasting mere nanoseconds.

In the first nanosecond, hundreds of hypodermic needles originating from within Roland's wire-cap thrust through hair, skin, skull, and brain to disgorge a lethal neurotoxin throughout the cortex. That neurotoxin happens to be an ideal resolving fluid for use with three-dimensional transneural scanners like the one that has already been warming up since T-minus 10 seconds. Now, in the second nanosecond, the transneural scanner pulses an intense, multispectrum burst of electromagnetic radiation. That burst burns away axon, dendrite, and synapse beyond any hope of repair, but it also allows the transneural scanner to resolve a virtually perfect quantum-state snapshot of the brain. This three-dimensional brain map is then digitized and transmitted to a series of pre-programmed coordinates corresponding with the capsuleer's primary approved cloning facility, plus a number of failsafe facilities.

Intellectually, Roland knows that the chances of this process failing and his never waking up again are virtually nil. That doesn't mean he's not terrified as the counter reaches zero and he feels—

—discontinuity—

What a Load of Garbage

2010-04-03T06:08:00.000-07:00

"What a load of garbage!" said Amber, looking at a cargo manifest on her datapad.

She was right. There was, quite literally, a large collection of refuse in the cargohold of the Beekeeper III, an Arbitrator-class cruiser I had just recovered from a Minmatar station near Rens. The Beekeeper and its fetid cargo had been rotting away for more than a year after I had taken a sightseeing cruise around Heimatar, looking for salvage from the garbage dumps strewn across that failing state.

Picking up some of the garbage and hauling it back to station seemed like a good idea at the time... No, really, it did. I had given some thought to going into drug manufacturing, and the unique cocktail of toxic chemicals, rusting metals, and infectious waste one finds at a garbage dump, when mixed with the appropriate quantities of lime mykoserocin gas, produces the precursor of the Synth Frentix Booster, the drug that overachieving parents give their ADHD-afflicted children and capsuleers take when they need to focus on hitting targets at extremely long ranges.

Drug manufacturing seemed like too much hassle for the reward, so I dropped the project and forgot about the Beekeeper and its cargohold of putrid-smelling garbage, until now.

"Ah, the smell," Amber said, holding her nose and retching. "Why did you bring it here, you ass? Did you need something to remind you of home?" She turned and ran from the hangar before I could respond.

It took me a moment before I realized she was right. The smell did remind me of something from home: chou dofu, which translates from the old tongue as "stinky tofu." I have fond childhoood memories of waking up in my parents' urban flat on Khanid Prime I to the pungent vapors of chou dofu. The stench would waft through my windows from the streets below, where vendors sold their wares to hungry workers walking to the Metro for the morning commute.

Non-Khanid typically identify three distinct smells in chou dofu: 1) sun-baked garbage, like you'd find in a dumpster behind a restaurant, 2) three-day old underwear worn by a man suffering from crotch rot, 3) shit. But for any true Khanid, it's a little slice of home.

Now, Roc Wieler is the master chef among us capsuleers, and I wouldn't dream of trying to ape the sheer awesomeness of his recipes on a regular basis, but I'd like to share just this one with you all. So, with apologies to Col. Wieler:

Chou Dofu
(makes 12 pieces)

Ingredients:

1 bucket of pure soy milk
1/8-1/4 cup iodized salt
12 one-inch cubes of firm tofu
1 tbsp hot pepper flakes
1 tbsp sesame or canola oil
1 cup pickled cabbage

Method:

Fill large bucket with pure soy milk. Let sit outside for several weeks, until it changes from pure white to a moldy, gray color. By this point, it should smell pretty bad.
Season to taste with salt.
Place tofu in brine for 3-6 hours. (Note: Do NOT leave in brine for more than six hours.)
Heat oil in wok; add hot pepper flakes to taste.
Fry marinated tofu chunks in oil until golden.
Remove tofu from wok and place on paper towel.
Transfer tofu to plate; garnish with pickled cabbage; serve with soy sauce and hot pepper oil.

Serves 2 hungry Khanid

My Private War, Part II

2010-04-02T10:56:00.000-07:00

The following is the second part of an ill-conceived story arc chronicling Rolinthor's and the Applied Physics Institute's pathetic solo misadventures in the Derelik region. Read Part I here, and check back this Sunday for the next episode (you know, if you're empire mining, and you're really, really bored).
______________________________________

Most people find lying in the coffin-like alcove of an autodoc to be an unnerving experience. They say that, beyond the intimations of death brought on by being surrounded by a long, narrow box, it's just a creepy experience. Moments after you first crawl in and lie down, innumerable sensor ganglia extend from the walls, floor, and ceiling of the box to sweep across the skin in a gentle, undulating rhythm. Here and there, an individual ganglion will pause over the skin and burrow into a particular pore or prana point, to diagnose, to administer medicines, or to inject a few billion tissue-repair nanites. The ganglia punctures are utterly painless. Only for the briefest of moments, before the anti-inflammatory meds kick in, you might feel a series of slight itches or a tickling sensation, but that's it. Still, it just freaks people out.

Personally, seeing a body surrounded by the ghostly translucent filaments of a 'doc reminds me of the tropical fish that hide in the sea anemone back home on KP IV. Maybe that's why being in the 'doc, as I am now, doesn't bother me: I don't draw a bright line between man and machine. We're all God's refuse.

Prime's face appears briefly above me through the 'doc's view-plate. The ganglia recede, and the coffin lid opens.

"So, what did it find?" I say, rising slowly and rubbing the itchy feeling off my bare skin.

"Zippo. Zilch," says Prime. "You're as strong and healthy as you were last time you stepped out of the vats. And before you say it: I checked your implants, too. All functions nominal. Whatever's causing these blackouts is non-biological, as far as I can tell."

"Well, then, what's the next diagnostic level?" I know the answer before he says it.

"Next level?" he says. "You've got to be kidding. You've just been given a once-over by the best healthcare money can buy. There is no 'next level.' We've exhausted all the somatic possibilities. It's time to talk psychosomatic."

"I'll not be lettin' ye muck about in me soul with yer Gallentean witch-doctoring!"

"Why is it you always start talking like your father when you're afraid of something?" says Prime.

"I ain't afeared a nothin' under Heaven," I mutter, but without conviction. Prime's got me pegged. I do sound like the old religious fanatic.

Something inside has known all along that the problem isn't in my body, whether the carbon or silicon parts of it, and I'm not sure I'm ready to hear it. But there's no way out but forward, if I ever want to find out what's causing these blackout rages and get my memory of the past few days back.

"OK, Prime, what do you have in mind?" I ask.

"Rol, can I ask you a favor?" he says in calm, measured tones.

"What? Sure."

"Stop using that nickname, especially when the others are around. It's demeaning. I'm not your clone, slave, or puppet. And I've got a real name: Roland Prideaux."

"Okay, okay. I'm sorry, bud." I genuinely feel like an ass. And also: It wouldn't do to have Prime mad at me when he's about to poke around in my soul with whatever psychobabble procedure he's got in mind. Speaking of which.... "So, Prideaux. What do you have in mind?"

"Three words: Deep Regression Hypnotherapy."

My Private War, Part I

2010-03-22T19:29:00.000-07:00

I feel the embrace of the Universe Entire as a pitch-black swaddling shroud. It's a feeling of incredible power, as if all time and space were one great cynosural field, calling out to me to reach out and go to any point I care to choose in its infinite expanse. A host of long-forgotten names pass through my awareness as potential destinations: Soekheviti, Athra, Epsilon Eridani, the Great Attractor.

There is an infernal paradox to this awareness of omnipresence: In a cosmos in which I can travel anywhere, infinite though it may be, I can go nowhere. To see all that is or can be, as I am now, is to know that choice and action are pointless. There must be more than this, but this strange awareness tells me there is not!

Just before it seems this Holy Boredom will destroy me utterly, it begins to pass. I reach out with my awareness, once again returned to the here and now, to take stock of things. Where am I?

I am presently coasting from stargate to stargate through the Great Wildlands region in Asher, a Pilgrim-class force recon vessel. The covert ops cloaking device is engaged, masking my presence to all observers in the solar system, yet there is no one else in system to see me. In fact, as I become more lucid and some of my memories return, I realize that I haven't seen another soul in many, many jumps.

My Neocom shows eight new messages. Seven of them are from Amber Macx and are permutations of "Where the hell are you?" and "What on earth are you doing?" The eighth is a killmail, recording a recent engagement with a capsuleer-piloted Vagabond. The kill seems somehow familiar, but I have no specific memory of it. Was it a dream? No. Cargo manifests show that the loot from this kill is in my possession.

I'm disturbed that I could have been in a trance during a combat engagement, but I can't say that I'm displeased by the results. From the looks of it, Asher once again proved the two Laws of the Pilgrim: 1) If a Pilgrim uncloaks, its mark will die (now, if the Pilgrim is uncloaked, that's another matter); 2) one-on-one, the Pilgrim can roast virtually any turreted ship in the cluster.

So much for my ship; what's wrong with me? How did I come to be out here, roaming southern New Eden from Querious to Catch to Great Wildlands? I need to retrace my steps, but first, I need to make my way through nullsec back home to Gamis, Derelik. When I'm home, I'll have a check-up with an autodoc.

EVE Blog Banter #16: Past Imperfect

2010-03-18T12:07:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the sixteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

The third Blog Banter of 2010 comes to us from ChainTrap of the Into the unknown with gun and camera EVE Blog. He asks us: “Eve University turns six years old on March 15th; six years spent helping the new pilots of New Eden gain experience and understanding in a supportive environment. Eve is clearly a complicated game, with a ton to learn, so much that you never stop learning. So, the question is; What do you wish that someone had taken the time to tell you when you were first starting out? Or what have you learned in the interim that you’d like to share with the wider Eve community?”

A couple of years ago, when it had been only a few months since I had graduated from the Royal Amarr Institute*, I was facing a bit of a crisis. The hi-sec mining corporation I was a part of had been effectively disbanded as the result of a mini-Haargoth incident, and none of us knew what to do. Most of us were still mining in cruisers and didn't really know enough to run a mining op, much less a corp.

"Hey, I know a guy in Strife Mercenaries," said one guy, Gwendion I think his name was. "They might let us in." He always struck me as a bit noobish, having lost his first battlecruiser less than 24 hours after he bought it, but then again, I sure as hell was no better. And I have to admit, the idea of Concord-sanctioned violence for profit made something stir in my then-carebearish loins. Other corpmates' loins were not so stirred, however. And so half of us merged into Strife Mercenaries, while the other half said their farewells and sought out another mining concern.

I joined just as Strife was wrapping up one war and getting geared up for the next: a campaign against a local corp called BR4INS. The casus belli were appropriately nihilistic: fun and reputation. Mere hours before CONCORD was to sanction the war, the intel was in, and our logistics were in place. Strife's CEO put out the call for Tech-1 ships, insured, and only what we could afford to lose. I wisely docked up my prized Arbitrator, then the most expensive ship I owned and my only source of mining income, and put together an armor-plated Punisher-class frigate.

As the clock finally ticked down and the war went into effect, our Tech-1 fleet mustered and flew off towards Hek to engage the enemy. BR4INS, supposedly on just the other side of the gate we were camping, was supposedly bringing out their big guns: Heavy Assault Cruisers, Battlecruisers, Battleships—hulls I still didn't even know enough to dream about yet. If we scored even a single kill, we would be ahead in the war, judging by ISK kill/loss ratio.

So how was the battle itself, you ask? Looking back on it, pathetic, chaotic, ill-conceived, and a complete waste of time—or to see it from the perspective with which I saw it at the time: the single-most exhilarating event I had ever experienced.

It's hard now to remember exactly how I saw it at the time. I remember the breathtaking beauty of the battlefield, a stargate enveloped by the razor-thin rings of a banded gas-giant. I remember a rainbow-spectrum of laser beams and white-hot tracer rounds radiating into our primary target from all directions. I remember the cool and concise comms calls of our fleet commander telling us exactly what to do, sometimes to "shut up." I remember marveling at the punishment this BR4INS battlecruiser was absorbing from our fire (Note to my past self: That's because it was a Command Ship, you idiot). Eventually, as we attempted to disengage and regroup, I and many others in the fleet met an untimely end.

A few weeks ago, out of curiosity, I looked up that old kill on the public killboards, wondering what kind of ship I had been flying:

2007.03.24 18:55:00

Victim: Rolinthor
Corp: Strife Mercenaries Inc.
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Punisher
System: Uttindar
Security: 0.5
Damage Taken: 0

Involved parties:

Name: Nebecaneczrr (laid the final blow)
Security: -1.9
Corp: Br4ins
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Ship: Ishtar
Weapon: Hobgoblin II
Damage Done:

Name: Kroney Stormhammer
Security: -0.1
Corp: Br4ins
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Ship: #System
Weapon: 75mm Gatling Rail I
Damage Done:

Destroyed items:

Radio S, Qty: 2
Warp Disruptor I
Dual Afocal Light Maser I
Warp Core Stabilizer I
100mm Reinforced Steel Plates I, Qty: 2

Warp core stabilizer? No afterburner/microwarp drive? One gun? By Jamyl's c**t! Wow. Just...wow, is all I can say, really.

So what's the point, Rolinthor? Why you got to go and tell us this tl;dr story about a war dec no one in New Eden gave a damn about even when it happened three years ago, not to mention the single worst frigate fit I've ever had the misfortune of laying eyes on?

The point, dear friend, is this: If I can have the single-best time I've ever had in New Eden while flying that flaming pile of Amarrian turd, then there isn't a damn thing you little nubbins need to be told about being a pod pilot except this: Have fun!

List of Participants

CrazyKinux: The Three Pillars of Wisdom
The Elitist: Helping the new guy/gal
Hands Off, My Loots: Nothing Needed
Rantuket: Blog Banter 16
EVE Opportunist: Nooby Cluey
Into the Unknown With Gun and Camera: EVE University
Zero Kelvin: We’re the young ones!
I am Keith Neilson: Set Your Destination
Prano's Journey: Just Like the Very First Time
A Merry Life and a Short One: No Seriously
Yarrbear Tales: Nublet 101
A Mule In EVE: If I only knew
The Planet Risk Show: Dared to be Bold
Diary of a Space Jockey: WTH did I get myself into?!
EVOGANDA: Why?
A Memoir From Space: 16th Blog Banter
Death’s Sweetest Kiss: Who What When Where Why How??
Freebooted: Beyond the Shortcuts
Learning to Fly: Noobing
Caldari Outcast: My First Blog Banter Post!
Roc's Ramblings: Financial Survival
Diary of a Pod Pilot: Free Knowledge Inside
Nullsec Carebear: I could've been less of an idiot
Facepalm's Ramblings: Something Smells Fishy
Kirith Darkblade: Do you wish to know more?
Autopilot Disabled: I'm still starting...
Finders & Keepers: Relax
Confounded Capsuleer: What have you got to loose?
Clan Oriana: Sixteen
Flashfresh: EVE Blog Banter #16
Rettic's The Chronofile: You Make EVE
More to come soon...

[Delicious Tag: eveblogbanter16]

*Incidentally, I was a transfer student from Hedion University, which I consider my true alma mater. Thanks for asking.

When Success Breeds Failure

2010-03-16T12:00:00.000-07:00

Minigzen at K162space has discovered the trend that has finally pushed the Applied Physics Institute out of the wormhole mining business and back into the tender embrace of hi-sec space for the time being:

After Mr. Wizz-bang-shooty-fun had essentially reduced the sleeper population into little flying bags of ISK with Hadoken beams, Mr. Industrialist perked up his ears at the mentions of ABC. And so the miners who were given a choice between working for peanuts and working for nullsec alliances chose….rapture I mean WH mining. . . .

Unfortunatley, the WH miners, being unable to focus on making ships because of lack of stations, safety, ectera, couldn’t make ships, so they carted their mega and zydrine to Jita and sold it, possibly more than the market could handle . . .

In other words, that noise you've been hearing over the past year is the sound of megacyte and zydrine prices plunging off the cliff of abundance. (Pyerite, meanwhile, has been riding the rocket upward.) When we first started this business several months ago APHID was raking in about 50 million ISK/hour from our twin-barge mining operations. Today those same operations net us only a bit more than 30 million ISK/hour—an unhappy 40% drop in income.

Prices aren't my only concern, however. Lately it seems that this system, J124654, has been getting more interest than even my seemingly limitless paranoia and charm can deal with.

The clincher came a few days ago, when I overheard a transmission in local by one of the guys who tried to smash up AEOS HQ, FitzTavi. It seems that he had been stranded here in w-space in his pod ever since his corporation's attack against us a few weeks ago. He had finally, after all this time, broken radio silence to beg someone to help him find an exit back to known space. I would have been more than happy to escort him back to a cloning tank via the Murder Express, but before I could do so, another capsuleer responded to his pleadings, showing him to a wormhole for a mere 30 million ISK.

This was bad news. Not only was there someone else I hadn't been aware of scanning my system; this same person had just given a proven hostile asshat a known route back to J124654. The hamsters powering my cerebral cortex were spinning up fantastic delusions: FitzTavi & Co. were on their way with a remote-rep battleship fleet to deliver a coup de grace on APHID's still-pathetically fit Gallente Medium Control Tower (Amber and Rol Prime had just spent the past 20 hours repairing in an Osprey and an Exequror, respectively).

So, I did it. I chicked out. Waved the white flag. Tucked my tail between my legs and GTFO—which is how we discovered that taking down a POS ranks a close second to repairing a POS on the Scale of Suck (putting one up ranks third). ~~Fortunately, no low-sec pirates were able to catch us in the middle of the takedown operation.~~ Unfortunately, no low-sec pirates were able to catch us in the middle of the takedown operation, which meant that APHID now had a metric ass-ton of POS gear stuck several low-sec systems deep in (one minute while I check my corporate asset window) the Lonetrek region of Caldari space.

Sure, I guess I should have counted myself lucky. We had just spent the past couple of months mining ABC ore in lawless w-space, made a couple billion ISK, and escaped back to known space without losing any significant assets whatsoever. But the ennui that had seized me when I started out on this little adventure still held me firmly in its grasp. I wasn't ready to re-join humanity.

But as I like to say, if you can't join 'em, beat 'em. If I wasn't ready to return to civilization, then I would at least have the consolation of putting a match to it and watching it burn.

A Sneak Peek at a Planetary Scan

2010-03-12T05:20:00.000-08:00

Last night, an unnamed official from the Directive Enforcement Division's Technology Review Board slipped me a picture that appears to show how the spherical harmonics I alluded to yesterday relate to planetary scans (h/t Anonymous). Here it is:

A planetary scan result, appearing to show the concentrations of argon gas on Tash-Murkon Prime I, a storm world in the Amarr Empire.

I'm sure this image is part of a work-in-progress and may thus be a far cry from the final release. (The scan window, for instance, would seem to be superfluous given that scan results show across the entire planet's surface.) Nevertheless this pic suggests to me a few possibilities:

Scanning skills may directly influence a capsuleer's ability to resolve an accurate planetary scan.
Location, location, location! Where you plop down your extractor PINs will likely determine your rate of resource extraction. And I expect there will be limits on the amount of PINs that can be placed by any capsuleer in a given area.
Temperature, pressure, and surface gravity. These readouts might be important to know for a planetary developer. As we've seen from this Eve University video (h/t Crazy Kinux), launching resources into orbit will incur a cost in ISK. It stands to reason that that cost will be higher for the more massive planets. And temperature and pressure may affect operational costs for planetside facilities.

So that's it. Some tantalizing possibilities for planetary scans but few concrete facts thus far. If you're interested in a closer look at the interface for operating planetside PINs, I recommend you have a look at Crazy Kinux's post linked above, as well as Eve Online Wormholes, which has a rundown of the process in text and pictures.

Planetary Interaction

2010-03-10T08:23:00.000-08:00

The entire Applied Physics crew and I have been following the latest developments in planetary industrial automation with great interest. You'll find the full rundown here, but if you'd rather look at the "tl;dr," bullet-point version, look no further.

The first stage in planetary interaction is, of course, finding something worth extracting from the surface. (Personally, I had always thought that the fuel costs of crawling one's way out from the bottom of a gravity well largely rendered planet-bound resources economically uncompetitive with orbital industries, but then I guess that's why they've got orbital tethers, right? That, and have you ever seen a cattleyard in a space station? Not a pretty sight.) Unfortunately, the above link doesn't have too much information on how this will be done, other than that it will involve something called spherical harmonics:

If you know what the heck this is all about, you get a cookie.

There was significantly more information on the kinds of automated planetside facilities, known tentatively as Planetary Interaction Nodes (PINs), we can expect to see. They look like they'll correspond roughly with existing moon-mining structures, albeit in a sub-orbital context. Here they are:

Planetary Command Center PIN - Pretty much what it sounds like. Your base of operations, as well as your link back to the heavens. Orbital transport capabilities can also be upgraded by a space port PIN and, if we're lucky, a space elevator PIN.
Extractor PIN - Basic resource extractor. Like a moon-mining array.
Storage PIN - What it sounds like. Equivalent of POS silos.
Process PIN - Equivalent of Reactor/Assembly Array. Seems like it will operate according to the BPO/BPC model.
Trade Hub PIN - Allows planetside trading with other facilities, as well as trade treaties to automate complex interactions and allow for greater economies of scale.
Links - Last but not least, you'll want to create connections between all of your planetside facilities. These connections will have varying bandwidths. Equivalent of coupling arrays.

The inveterate gamer in me sees that these "links", with their varying bandwidths, are where skill and finesse will come into play. The person who can create a network that creates the fewest bottlenecks using the fewest links will be better equipped to undercut his neighbor on price. In low-sec or null-sec, where competition over planetary resources will necessarily be more limited, this skill will be less important. In hi-sec space, on the other hand, the most efficient planetary supply-chain managers will quickly rise to the top of what I expect to be, initially, a super-saturated market. But this is all just idle speculation until the PINs (or whatever they end up being called) show up on the markets.

Still, I can't shake the feeling that I've heard of this game before.

The Watchers

2010-03-08T10:38:00.000-08:00

Received: from 126.46.13.600 by EXVBE010-1.exch010.XSN.galnet via ImproTech Exchange Server;

Mon, 8 Mar YC 112 17:19:26 +0000

User-Agent: Clienne Asier

Date: Mon, 08 Mar YC 112 12:20:25 -0500

Subject: Applied Physics Institute surveillance

From: Clienne.Asier

To: <*Masked Recipient*>

Message-ID:

Thread-Topic: Academy of Aggressive Behavior research on capsuleer population of New Eden

Thread-Index: Acq+4X0lu8nmSirUEd+3UF452HGWAVyzCAAAyXeQ=

In-Reply-To: <*Masked Sender*>

Mime-version: 1.0

Content-type: multipart/alternative;

boundary="B_3350895624_111039346"

Dear Sir,

Pursuant to Directorate reconnaissance and surveillance policy, I submit to you the following transcript from a recording made by one of our self-assembling spyweb video units, hidden aboard an Amarrian shuttlecraft in the Applied Physics Institute's Ship Maintenance Array in w-space system J124654:

[Rolinthor enters shuttle, followed by Rol Prime]

Rolinthor (R): What's this all about, Prime? And why do we have to do this in a shuttle? You know my feelings on skullduggery.

Rol Prime: (RP): I understand, sir. It's just that...well, I found something: a spycam, I think.

R: A spy, eh? Ok, ok, I follow you. Best not to let on to the crew we know, and all that. I wouldn't be too concerned about it, though. We've got safeguards against corporate theft.

RP: I'm afraid it's not so simple as that. I was cleaning out some of the hardware in the refinery control room today when I spotted a whole heap of cobwebs on one of the motherboards in the CPU cases. I didn't really think much about it. Just removed it and threw it in the dustbin. And then it hit me: spiders make cobwebs, and ...

R: ...and how the hell would a spider get aboard the refinery? We did a clean "anchor and install" in interstellar vacuum. Total sterility protocols.

RP: Right, which is why I got suspicious too. So I took it into the lab and had a look at it. They're not cobwebs at all. Not even a biologic, or at least not what we would think of as organic. As best I can make out, it's a byproduct of a nanoscale self-assembler of some kind. Highly advanced.

R: Like how "advanced"?

RP: As in none of the four empires could put something like this together.

R: As in Jove?

RP: Bingo. But remember, you said it, not me. And if that news isn't enough to disturb your delicate sense of calm, then get a load of this: It's broadcasting a quantum-band signal that I still can't figure out how to trace.

R: Trace it? Rex's blood! Whatever you do, don't try to trace it!

[Sir, forgive the intrusion, but at this point you may find it interesting to note the changes in vocal and maxillofacial characteristics affecting Rolinthor in the accompanying video and audio file.]

RP: Why not?

R: If the Jovians want to spy on APHID, they can bloody well spy on APHID. It's none of our concern. In fact, just flash-fry all that stuff in the lab, delete the records, and hell, throw out and destroy any storage medium that had any contact whatsoever with those webs.

RP: But sir. I can't be so sure about my analysis. Aren't we being a little paranoid?

R: Stop thinking, Prime. Start doing. Just get it done.

[Rolinthor leaves shuttle. Rol Prime remains silently for a few more moments and then exits the shuttle as well.]

As you can see, sir, we may now find it necessary to accelerate the schedule. Our team stands ready. I await only your orders. I remain as always,

Your Trusted Servant,
Clienne

Received: from 126.46.13.600 by EXVBE010-1.exch010.XSN.galnet via ImproTech Exchange Server;

Mon, 8 Mar YC 112 12:29:26 +0500

User-Agent Hidden

Date: Mon, 08 Mar YC 112 17:30:24 +0000

Subject: Applied Physics Institute surveillance

From: <*Masked Recipient*>

To: Clienne.Asier

Message-ID:

Thread-Topic: Academy of Aggressive Behavior research on capsuleer population of New Eden

Thread-Index: Acq+4X0lu8nmSirUEd+3UF452HGWAVyzCAAAyXeQ=

In-Reply-To: Clienne.Asier

Mime-version: 1.0

Content-type: multipart/alternative;

boundary="B_3350895624_111039346"

My Dear Clienne,

Maintain surveillance. Take no action.

-D

In the Doghouse

2010-03-05T10:51:00.000-08:00

So my little rant from yesterday was the first thing Amber saw when she logged into Galnet today. As you might expect, it didn't go over very well. It also didn't help that she saw from the post's time-stamp that I had both written and filed it during her presentation.

But I never saw it coming. Amber had been all smiles when I dropped by her office for the morning operations briefing, so I thought maybe it had slipped by her. Then, as I was about to leave, she hit me with it.

"Oh, Rol, by the way. I need you to sign off on a few due diligence reports from our Compliance Department," she said.

"I'm sure they're fine. Can't Prime do it?"

"I'm afraid not." She gently shook her head and pursed her lips in mock concern. "We have an obligation to be accountable to our shareholders."

"But I'm the only shareholder."

"Sorry, Rol. It's SCC law. The Chairman of the Board has to sign off. Wouldn't want to become the next EIB, would we?"

"Let me get this straight. I have to be accountable for making sure I'm not stealing my own money?"

"I'm afraid so," she said.

And with that, my datapad chimed to alert me that the file was en route. I couldn't believe my eyes when I glanced at the download. Even with a quantum-entangled Insane-o-band (TM) network, there was a progress bar marching across the screen. Rex's balls! How big was this file?

"Have fun, boss." And with those words, she strolled out of the office to get an early start on the weekend. Well played, Amber.

Ergo, it looks like I'll be too snowed under with work for a few days to post anything interesting. But I wanted to leave you all with a little graphical present—or at any rate something I found fascinating. It's a map of all the places I've been to in New Eden, gathered from the DED information accessible from the "Map" button of any Neocom panel.

I had always been under the impression that my travels were spread more evenly throughout the cluster. What a surprise to find that I'm a "Westerner" at heart.

So where do y'all hail from?

How Not to Fit a POS

2010-03-03T20:16:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting at the middle seat of a long corporate conference table here at AEOS HQ. With me in the board room are the grizzled prospectors of Team APHID. They're a motley mix of races, but they all share one thing in common. Every last one of them looks decidedly out of place in the ergonimically optimized, synthetic-leather executive chairs: They've got dirt under their fingernails and swarth on their skin. Their musk, a weird mix of rosemary and lamb, has now overwhelmed the climate-controlled air of the room.

I don't blame them for fidgeting in their seats like they are. I'm sure they would rather be with the rest of APHID's blue-collar force right now, out there in the void, chewing on a nice, fat arkonor rock. Frankly, so would I. But APHID's CEO, Amber Macx, has called a meeting about last month's attack, and woe betide the man or woman who tries to skip out of Ms. Macx's PowerPoint* Hell.

But wait, you say, I thought you were the boss of APHID. I am and I ain't. I'm primary (and largely silent) shareholder and chairman of the board, but Amber is CEO and calls most of the shots. I chose this unorthodox arrangement because she's a cold-hearted Ni-kunni bitch when it comes to business and because she keeps APHID's purse-strings shut as tight as her...well, you get the idea.

It's times like these that I regret the decision, though. I know from the first PowerPoint slide that this presentation is going to mean death by boredom even for our ice miners: It's a slow dissolve into a title screen sporting neutra face lettering and a clip art photo of a bunch of Caldari corporate goons smiling pleasantly over their quarterly reports. The title of the presentation is: "APHID at the Crossroads: Toward a Synergistic View of Corporate Defense Structures."

By the third slide, Amber's presentation is telling us in so many words not to go on vacation anymore so that we can be on hand 24/7 to defend HQ. She's studiously avoiding making eye contact with me as she makes this point, which is how I know she blames me for the attack. ("Notify: Your Dual Passive-Aggressive Torpedoes strike Rolinthor [APHID] perfectly, wrecking him for L337 damage.")

And with that, I'm done here. I'll sit through the rest of little Miss Hedion University School of Management's presentation. I'll smile and nod and maintain a deeply earnest expression of concern on my brow. But I'll not be devoting another brain cell to a presentation premised on the idea that there's a perfect way to fit a control tower.

Which brings me to the first lesson I've learned about POS-fitting: 1. To paraphrase a famous Khanid groundforce general: Fixed fortifications are a monument to man's stupidity. Mankind has discovered ways to cross oceans, mountain ranges, solar systems, even the very fabric of time and space. Do you seriously think you're going to devise a defensive system that some dedicated pirate won't be able to find a way around?

The best protection - the only protection - is encapsulated in lesson number two: 2. Don't let it all hang out there. Fortunately, we had already intuitively grasped this lesson. Before the attack, I rarely kept more than 100 million isk in ore, minerals, or other assets on site. (All I need to do is get Prime to gin up a big holo sign saying something like "POS-manger keeps less than 200 million isk in the corporate hangar after dark.")

Now that I've removed my tongue from my cheek with those last two lessons, I can offer a few more practical suggestions about the kinds of modules you should use to defend your towers. 3. Anchor (but leave offline) at least as many guns as you have online. That way, when your tower is put into reinforced mode (which, I hasten to add, it will be eventually), you'll be able to online a second set of guns when the strontium clathrate tanks run dry. (NB: Since a tower's mainframe shuts down once it is put into reinforced mode, you don't want to use any weaponry that relies on CPU; hence, leave the cruise missile batteries at home.)

Speaking of strontium, 4. Strontium clathrates are your friend. In order for those asshats from the Last True Socialism to kill AEOS HQ, they had to wait around for more than two days while the tower burned through its full stront tanks. Given that no wormhole lasts longer than 36 hours, that meant they had to hop on the "W-Space Express" along with me, without knowing when or exactly where the static wormhole would let them off again.

One last practical lesson: 5. Keep your guns in two tightly-grouped bunches at antipodal points outside the shields. I had made the mistake of spreading my guns out at six evenly-spaced points. That meant that the asshats only had to incapacitate two paltry small railguns from a safe sniping distance; the other weapons were so far away that their meager damage was easily tanked by two remote-repping battleships.

There's alot more good advice out there in scrips and scraps on Galnet, and I encourage you to seek it out (a good fitting-tool is a must; this browser-based one doesn't even require you to install a new program). But if you keep the above general guidelines in mind and experiment a bit, you'll do just fine - PowerPoint Hell (TM) not required.

--------

*Archaeologists sifting through the rubble of New Eden's ancient civilizations with their Analyzer I modules have uncovered many astounding do-dads: hardware, software, even wetware. Among those discoveries was a program called PowerPoint ∞.0. Who wrote it? The Takhmal? Talocan? Yan Jung?

Who cares? The real mystery is why the archaeologists didn't just delete the insipid piece of crap code and spare us all the misery.

This is the first and only remaining slide of a presentation downloaded from a Yan Jung archaeological dig in 86 YC. In YC 87, a team of researchers from the University of Caille watched the whole presentation in a controlled laboratory setting, whereupon they fell into a terminal coma (except for one, incidentally, who went on to great things in the world of corporate law). After a similar incident ended with an entire CreoDron weapons division R&D team turning into a pack of gibbering loons, the Gallente Federation confiscated all remaining copies of the full presentation and quarantined them at an undisclosed location.

Alone in a Crowd

2010-02-23T08:23:00.000-08:00

Fellow capsuleer Rettic has caught the Wanderlust bug himself, and he asks:

What do you think is the right situation for flying solo, if there is such a thing? Are there times when you prefer it?

This question brought me back to the beginning of my own experiment in dealing with ennui, which I've been attempting to chronicle lo these many (erm, just two or three) months. When I plunged into that first wormhole in Maut, I expected that, whatever happened, it would be a lonely experience. The record shows (and will continue to show as I get around to updating it) that it was not. If Rettic does it right, he can expect a steady stream of chance encounters that will weave a web of new relationships, both friendly and not-so-friendly.

Sure, these connections won't necessarily be as strong as the ones you've formed in a corp. That's why you need to make an effort to keep old friendships alive and create new ones: Join a public channel filled with old corpmates (for me it's Semsopub), or create your own channel, or sign up for one of the many profession-relevant channels out there - like WH Colonists, if wormhole exploration is your game.

The most important advice I can give to a capsuleer looking to go solo is to mix it up, leap before looking, dare to be stupid, etc. Sure, you'll lose some shiny ships, but you'll learn so much more than you will if you just play it safe. This is not an easy lesson; the Lord knows I'm still learning it myself. But the more you exercise your crazypants muscles, the more you'll get out of your pilot's license.

The answer to Rettic's question is that any time is the right time for solo work, if your ennui tank is full. So don't panic: When you've had time to work through these issues and empty that tank, your friends and enemies (and maybe even some new ones) will be waiting for you.

Deliverance

2010-02-19T09:30:00.000-08:00

It seems I spoke too soon the other day about never having the need to hurry on Ahambra. Only a few hours after I wrote the last post, a treacly chime and flashing icon signaled the arrival of a message on my datapad. It was a DED mail: AEOS HQ was under attack by two members of a corporation called The Last True Socialism named Gameboy4ever and FitzTavi. It was pretty obvious from their profiles that these guys were outlaws in the business of preying on unsuspecting wormhole colonists and their facilities.

This turn of events shouldn't have really bothered me that much. I had already made more than a billion and a half in liquid isk for not all that much work. There was nothing of immense value there other than the structures themselves. No ore or minerals in the refinery; no Sleeper salvage in the corporate hangar. And before my vacation, I had unloaded the vessels stored in the ship hangar and re-loaded them into the Orca's ship bays. Amber had then parked the Orca, cloaked, in a deep safe spot.

Nevertheless, I found that I just couldn't let it go. Hour after hour, the Neocom chimed to alert me to the arrival of another DED mail—control tower at 75% shields, now 50%, now 25%, now in reinforced mode. Would they come back in two-and-a-half days when the shield reinforcement generators ran out of strontium clathrates? Somehow, I had a feeling they would.

To hell with it. I wasn't about to let AEOS HQ die, just after we had saved it. I immediately booked passage on an Airship traveling to Khanid Prime IV's orbital launch facility on the other side of the globe. By spaceplane, the trip would have taken no more than 45 minutes. Airships, on the other hand, are built for luxury, so the trip was going to take a little more than two and a half days, possibly longer, if the prevailing winds didn't cooperate.

The winds didn't cooperate, as it happens. The trip was already heading into Day Three when the strontium clathrates ran out and the attack on the tower resumed. Who were these guys? Their two battleships (I presumed) had already been pounding on the POS for more than twelve hours, and they were going to have to keep pounding on it for at least 12 more. Obviously, what they lacked in numbers, decency, and common sense, they more than made up for in their dogged determination to fight through boredom. And so the control tower's armor steadily dropped, while I was drifting along Ahambra's breezes like a plastic bag in the wind, helpless, hopeless.

Until it stopped. For some reason, the DED mails weren't coming in anymore. The last mail reported that the control tower's armor had been pummeled to less than 25% efficiency. I assumed this was because the tower was now nothing more than an expanding cloud of debris. Since the airship had finally docked at KP IV's orbital platform, it was time for me to get back into space and find out. Zipping along in a Pilgrim-class force recon, I took less than half an hour getting back to J124654.

What I saw when I got there brought only one word to mind: deliverance! AEOS HQ was still there, but just barely at less than 20% armor. And more than 100 kilometers away from the tower floated two battleship wrecks, as well as a frozen corpse belonging to Gameboy4ever (what a stupid name, by the way).

Seconds afterwards, the Neocom chimed to alert me to an incoming comms request. I spoke briefly with Chrinoh, who informed me that he and his fellow wormhole colonists from the Arkai Confederation had chanced upon the siege and dispatched it with righteous fury. They even massacred one of the pods, sending its pilot back to the cloning tanks in known space via the murder express. So overjoyed was I at this unexpected turn of events that I wired 50 million isk to Chrinoh and his good samaritan mates, no strings attached.

When they left, I sent out the call to Prime, Amber, and the rest of the APHID crew. We were going to have to put in alot of overtime work to get AEOS HQ up and running again, not to mention figure out how to properly fit a control tower. Tune in next time and I'll fill you in on what we learned.

High Holy Days

2010-02-18T03:06:00.000-08:00

As I write this, I'm lying on the beach, looking out across a wine-dark sea domed by a brilliant pink-orange sky. Way off in the distance, where sea and sky meet to form something that reminds me of a stellar nursery, the last light of Khanid Prime's sun is slowly sinking below the horizon.

Incidentally, the terra firma beneath my ass is anything but. I'm on one of the floating ice islands that form a part of our family estates on Khanid Prime IV (known to us locals as Ahambra). It was one of my forebears who had the brilliant idea to float the first ice islands here on KP IV. About a century ago, he noticed a few things about life in the Khanid Kingdom:

1) High-sec real estate commands a high price.

2) Members of the Royal Khanid Family and noble houses aren't getting any fewer, and their estates aren't getting any bigger.

3) Khanid Prime IV is a oceanic world in high-sec space.

4) When water gets cold, it gets hard. And it floats.

From these points, it was only a simple matter of engineering to get where we are today. Thousands upon thousands of icebergs with refrigeration units at their cores and living quarters fit for a King on their surfaces. Oh, and just enough insulation between the two to push the otherwise sultry Ahambra days to this side of paradise.

It's damn strange I don't come here more often. The combination of Sotiyo-Urbaata Drive technology and Jump Gates means that any of New Eden's tens of thousands of planets and moons is less than an hour away by shuttlecraft. In fact, more than ninety percent of the travel time in almost every trip comes in its first and last stages—namely, getting to and from orbit.

Ah, but there's the rub: On fast-paced planets like those in Amarr Prime, Dodixie, or Jita, there are entire industries devoted to getting passengers from point A to point B, planetside. They've got high-speed maglev trains running through vacuum tubes, sub-orbital spaceplanes, you name it. Here, in sleepy Ahambra, however, luxury is the name of the game, and everyone travels by Airship. Sure, it means a significantly longer wait in order to get around, but hey...you're on Ahambra! Why are you in such a damn hurry anyway?

How to Win Friends and Influence Pod Pilots

2010-02-08T00:00:00.000-08:00

One of the complaints commonly made against us wormhole colonists is that we're unduly antisocial, that we've cocooned ourselves from the rest of New Eden's civilization out of greed and selfishness. It's funny how the people who usually say this have an icon of a flashing red skull next to their name, along with a less-than-friendly relationship with Concord.

They also have a point, or half of one anyway. It's certainly true that the sense of ennui that initially pushed me and the rest of APHID through the wormhole was antisocial in nature. And, to be sure, there are also those who go to great lengths to maroon themselves in w-space. But our experience over the last few weeks in J124654 has been anything but a lonely one.

Excepting occasional dry spells lasting 24 to 48 hours, visitors have shown up in this system about once a day. Most commonly, it's a covert ops frigate from the low-sec static wormhole exit, whose probes are the first things I pick up on scan. Occasionally, a K162 exit pops up from a neighboring w-space system and disgorges a complement of pod pilots seeking to mine this system's Sleeper sites for T3 parts and salvage.

In all of the above cases, APHID follows the same standard procedure:

All mining ops are immediately ceased.
All non-essential personnel immediately disembark from their ships and pods, or warp in their ships to a safe spot and engage a cloaking device.
A designated pod pilot (usually the one with the best scanning skills) endeavors to quickly scan the solar system for new or undetected wormholes.
Said scout then quickly scans down the newcomers and warps to their location at range.
Once we've evaluated the situation tactically, we then have to make a decision: ignore them and hope they go away, or initiate a conversation.

Some would say that a small, three-pod-pilot corporation like APHID should take the former course, hoping that our visitors either don't notice our HQ or don't care about it. After all, if they're not plundering our asteroid belts, then isn't a "live and let live" policy the wisest course?

I see things differently. It's when you're at your weakest that you should seek to convince any possible opponents that you're at your strongest. Which is why my first action upon scanning down intruders is to launch combat scanning probes and leave them out there long enough for them to be noticed. Nothing sets an intruder on edge like knowing that someone is trying to find them with combat scan probes.

If the intruders were previously unaware of you, they'll usually cease all "ratting" or mining operations and switch themselves over to a combat footing. If there are many intruders, one will ostentatiously present himself in a "bait" ship like a Drake or a Tier-3 battleship; no doubt his friends are hiding under cloaks or are waiting in a nearby system to pounce on any force that takes the bait.

At this point, since I'm not about to fall for their trap, I initiate a convo with the bait pilot. The key here is to play it cool, to be friendly, but to give them only as much information as you want them to have. Am I a lone covert ops pilot who randomly wandered into the w-space system from known space? Is my corp the owner of the Gallente Medium Control Tower they've no doubt seen on scan by now? Am I the advance scout for a bunch of pirates spoiling for a fight? Let them continue to guess. For while they're in the dark about your capabilities and intentions, they'll most likely shut down whatever mining or ratting operation they've got going. And if you keep the conversation going—remember, not blustery or boastful—you might actually make some new friends.

In fact, I've found that one of the most effective means of driving off unwelcome w-space colonists is to express interest in joining their operation, if their corporate profile suggests that they're open to new recruits; the last thing anyone wants to do is to antagonize a potential recruit. Needless to say, this strategy doesn't work with just anyone—and particularly not with the more aggressive types.

But I can hardly keep count of the many of pod pilots that I've either spooked or charmed out of J124654 using nothing but a cov ops frigate and a few combat scan probes.