Urbanus proteus

I’ve wanted a strategic cruiser for some time, but held off from training Racial Cruiser V because I didn’t have tech II projectiles (for a Loki) or missiles (for a Tengu). Then I realized, hmm, I do have skills for tech II drones (light and medium) and decent drone skills overall, plus pretty good armor tanking.

So here’s the Proteus fit I think I’ll use for lowsec and nullsec exploration, primarily for radar (hacking) sites. The targeting delay introduced by the cloaking device won’t matter so much to a more-or-less focused drone boat; the railguns mostly help grab aggro and add a bit of DPS. The philosophy grows from my exploration Myrmidon, and you may want to replace one of the rigs with a gravity capacitor.

According to PyFA, with this setup and my skills (plus Gallente Strategic Cruiser and Subsystems all to IV), you’ll end up with something like 27k EHP against a uniform distribution. I tuned this particular setup against Sansha rats, but of course you’ll want to adjust to your region. In particular, note that it won’t be as strong against Angels due to the Proteus’s natural weakness to explosive damage. I can tank 484 HP/s, which should really do just fine in most cases. I might end up tweaking that down, actually, if needed, so I can improve capacitor stability (this ship’s primary weakness).

I welcome additional thoughts and suggestions.


[Proteus, Exploration]

Salvager I
Improved Cloaking Device II
250mm Railgun I, Antimatter Charge M
250mm Railgun I, Antimatter Charge M
250mm Railgun I, Antimatter Charge M
Expanded Probe Launcher I

Codebreaker I
Omnidirectional Tracking Link I
Drone Navigation Computer I
10MN MicroWarpdrive I

Medium Armor Repairer II
Medium Armor Repairer II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Energized Reflective Membrane II
Energized Thermic Membrane II

Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Medium Auxiliary Thrusters I

Proteus Defensive - Adaptive Augmenter
Proteus Electronics - Emergent Locus Analyzer
Proteus Engineering - Capacitor Regeneration Matrix
Proteus Offensive - Drone Synthesis Projector
Proteus Propulsion - Interdiction Nullifier

Valkyrie II x5

Exploration Proteus originally appeared on Ecliptic Rift on 2010-03-10.

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1. Exploration Myrmidon
2. Exploration Journal 111.03.11
3. T3 Production Planning

I love English, although it’s not the only language I speak and certainly not the only language I’ve studied. I love the dual origins (Germanic and Latinate) and the different emotional impact that words from each origin can have, even if they actually have the same definition. I love the propensity for puns and the way the language makes rhyming both challenging and interesting. I love alliteration and wordplay. I love the traditions of the great writers and the many flavors and accents in the language, including the accents of those who do not speak it as their native tongue. They bring an enjoyable spice to our communications, and that doesn’t even start to address how much I enjoy having an international perspective among my family, friends, and colleagues. I have no doubt that other languages have their own lovable aspects, some shared with English and some unique.

Recently, I told one of my co-workers that reading particularly poorly-written written communication causes me physical pain — not referring to simple typos, which have more to do with the physical act of using a keyboard, or even to the occasional slip-up, but to emails or fiction (or even news copy, these days) in which the author clearly didn’t reread his words or apply basic rules of grammar and usage. And I’m the sort of “word nerd” to keep Strunk & White on his desk and refer frequently during the day to a thesaurus, even though I have a very technical job.

The long-standing rule for me: if the writer won’t put time and effort into writing it, I won’t put time and effort into reading it.

I could spend all night listing things that bother me about my own writing and speaking. Self-editing really matters to me, even in quick notes at work or on the Internet. But to list a few, and in no particular order:

• Overuse of the passive voice. I now try to avoid it completely.
• Ending a sentence with a preposition. This frequently comes as a symptom of the previous problem.
• Using the word “I” too much. Though this particular post violates this badly, heh!
• Lack of clarity between subject, object, and predicate. Compound constructions have this result from time to time.
• Word whiskers (e.g. “ummm,” “uhhh,” etc.)
• Frequent mannerisms. For example, repeating “y’know?” after nearly every sentence.
• Ending a statement with a lilt or on a high note, so that it sounds more like a question.
• Using parentheses too often.
• Starting too many sentences, especially to begin an answer, with “So…”
• Misusing “e.g.” or “i.e.”, or directly replacing “for example” with “e.g.”

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. I suppose I drug this out far too long at any rate, but to paraphrase Mark Twain, “I was going to make this shorter, but I didn’t have time.”

*** Bonus: how does one pronounce the word “ghoti”?

Why I love English originally appeared on Ecliptic Rift on 2010-03-09.

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1. NaNoWriMo pledge

Lyncyne leans into the spanner as she fastens two panels together. Small conduits to protect control lines and transport coolant run across the engine she has started to cover. The roar of impulse engines firing up echo through the hangar as hefty Brutors wrestle machinery into place, but the noise doesn’t appear to distract her in the slightest. The capsuleer who flew this Claw had quietly explained the goals of his next sortie, and so the mechanic felt she owed it to him to ensure that the polycarbon engine housing didn’t come apart during maneuvers.

That had happened to somebody else in their wing last week, actually, when an overheated microwarp drive had come apart on the pilot. A Wolf assault frigate in the same squadron had managed to finish off the enemy Retribution from the 24th Imperial Crusade before it could take full advantage of the mishap. The mechanic responsible took a very long walk out the airlock the next day, and everybody else in the maintenance hangar worked well into the next shift in order to check and double-check the equipment.

Of course, Lyncyne hates the hours and feels like she’ll never get the grease completely off her hands. But she has listened to the pilots or space traffic controllers as they told ale-fueled stories of Amarrian industrial transports and starbase reactors exploding. She knows of the Crusade pilots and commanders introduced to their vengeful god earlier than they’d anticipated. Every day, at mess, she sees the dull eyes of the Starkmanir busboys and cooks working in the cafeteria as part of the Tribal Republic’s re-integration program. Sometimes at night, she thinks back to the girl in her second-year mechanics class who’d taken an assignment to an agricultural world somewhere in the low-security Hed constellation. Her transport never arrived, and while the Tribal Liberation Force had little to say about it, everyone assumed that one of the raiding parties had destroyed it — or, worse, captured it.

So now, in the hangar, perched on the cowling of a pod-pilot’s interceptor, she focuses tightly on rigging the bolts, the housing, and the conduits. Everyone does their part.

Everyone does their part originally appeared on Ecliptic Rift on 2010-03-06.

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1. Friday Flash Fiction 9: Polycarbon Engine Housing
2. Someone Else’s Terms (part 1)
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“No.”

“Again?”

“I don’t like it. What else do you have?”

The TLF agent slammed the table. “I have had it with you. Get out of my office.”

Casiella arched an eyebrow, stretching a facial tattoo slightly. “Perhaps you don’t remember who I am…”

“I know damn well who you are. Now move your ass out of here. If I can still see you in thirty seconds, Security will fix that. One.”

“You just haven’t given me an assignm–”

“Two.”

“–ent that works for me.”

“Twenty-one.”

“What about, you know, three?”

“I counted fast. Get out.”

The diminutive Sebiestor pulled herself up with what dignity she could muster and ripped the patch off her flight suit, throwing it in the agent’s face.

“I’m damn tired of fighting on someone else’s terms. You can keep your fake little war.”

The agent’s face turned red and he began to spout obscure obscenities that even Casiella hadn’t heard before. So, instead, she just smirked and turned to leave. As she exited through the door, she heard something whistling through the air and ducked slightly. An ancient Lustrevik vase shattered on the door frame next to her head.

The militia didn’t really suit somebody like her. Which meant that her handlers in the RSS — and, worse, her attaché Jorunn — turned out to have been right.

She hated it when things worked out like that.

to be continued…

Someone Else’s Terms (part 2) originally appeared on Ecliptic Rift on 2010-03-06.

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1. Someone Else’s Terms (part 1)
2. Brotherhood of the Khumaak
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This week’s prompt: Polycarbon Engine Housing. “This ship modification is designed to increase ship’s velocity and maneuverability at the expense of armor amount.”

So what’s your story? A mechanic jury-rigging a ship? Race pilots swapping tales? Materials scientists planning an advance that will make billions of ISK for their megacorp? Whatever it is, write it on your blog and link it here in a comment!

Friday Flash Fiction 9: Polycarbon Engine Housing originally appeared on Ecliptic Rift on 2010-03-06.

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2. Friday Flash Fiction 4: “You did what?!”
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So CCP T0rfi gave an interview in which he discussed the summer 2010 expansion, Tyrannis, in somewhat greater detail. You should probably read it before pressing on with my thoughts… And note that I’ve intentionally avoided any discussion about DUST 514, mostly because the idea still frustrates me.

You can build infrastructure and interact with almost every planet in the game, regardless of whether someone has something there, already.

I sort of hope that the capital planets (Matar, Caldari Prime, etc.) remain off-limits. That just seems odd to me.

The problem is that the planets are going to have limited resources. So if too many people are harvesting a planet at the same time, there will be diminishing returns. So what you will find is that it will be much more enriching to travel to the more remote planets in the more remote systems, for planets which haven’t got infrastructure built up, yet. But of course that takes you away from the key trade hubs to which you want to deliver your manufacturables.

Now we can talk turkey… Planetary output seems to have a fixed cap, and so as the number of pilots exploiting it increases, the share of resources they get from it will decrease. I suspect they’ll use a lot system similar to the economic system in Pirates of the Burning Sea, where you have ten lots available to you and must decide how (and where) to allocate them: vertically integrate for an entire production chain? Specialize in a given resource or particular process, and thus increase your risk? Not too dissimilar from the current design allowing up to 11 research and 11 manufacturing jobs simultaneously, depending on your skill training. This implies lots of strategic choices for players, and I have every confidence that CCP can surpass the design that PotBS implemented.

And of course there are over 65,000 planets in the game. And you can interact with each and every one of them. Including those that are in wormhole space, which can actually be quite challenging.

This intrigues me to no end, both from a gameplay perspective (more profits in W-space and more activities out there for the residents) as well as from a “prime fiction” (canon lore) perspective. Do these planets have residents? If not, will we learn more about the automation and technology in EVE? This could potentially imply resources for tech III frigates as well. Back here in K-space, we should get much more information about who lives in low-sec and null-sec, and of course some areas could have potentially unique interest (e.g. COSMOS constellations or systems like Intaki).

We’re making really interesting manufacturing and resource trees here, right now. Going over ‘what materials are you extracting from gas giants, what are you getting from planets which are pretty much just molten magma. You will actually be able to put down facilities, arcologies, and cloud cities, or really tough units that you can place on very hostile worlds, to extract and manufacture from them. And then rocket the stuff off of them, or move it out with a space elevator. In general, of course, with more risk comes more reward.

This really grabs my attention, both for the gameplay as well as the fiction. What will we make? Will it be awesomely cool? And the fiction possibilities multiply exponentially here. Generally, when new resources become available, we get new end products as well, so even those folks not interested in the industrial gameplay benefit (cf. tech III strategic cruiser production).

Your ability to master a planet, to manufacture, build up, and manage it, will be bound by skills.

Guess I’ll sit on that neural remap until we know more about this. Industrial and exploration gameplay that results in passive income, with tons of fiction possibilities? I really want to immerse myself in this, and so I intend to focus largely on the new gameplay as I’ve done with other science & industry skills. But until we at least know whether they’ll largely focus on intelligence and memory (my current estimate) or even include charisma in some way, I don’t want to put myself in a position where I’ll have trouble keeping up.

One of our goals with planetary interaction is to phase out these NPC created commodities, because we want to put the power into the hands of the players and make EVE even more sandbox-y than it is.

There are elements of EVE which we feel can use some iteration based on the experiences that we have learned, running EVE for seven years. The NPC market is definitely one of them. It’s been with us for a long time. It hasn’t changed much. We want to take these commodities and move them into the hands of the players.

We are not giving out publicly yet which commodities these are. Even once we put it on the public test server, you will not be able to see what these final commodities are going to be.

I hope hope HOPE this includes implants (or meta 1-4 modules) and not just commodities like robotics and oxygen and trade goods. That said, I applaud this sort of thing, as it allows for continued emergent gameplay. The implications will have such a major impact on the economy that reserving more information on that until Tyrannis goes onto the production cluster really becomes a de rigeur decision.

Not that CCP made a bad decision by initially bootstrapping the economy with NPC-provided goods, as the game launched with a very small user base and has defied the typical MMORPG growth curves since then.

In 0.0 systems, we are expecting you to need sovereignty over that system for your infrastructure to function on a planet. So that you can’t have your enemy using or being in your garden, so to speak, or using your planets despite you having sovereignty over it. Taking sovereignty really disrupts industry and messes things up. The gameplay in high-sec will generally be more cooperative. The goal is that people will actually be working together on the planets, benefitting from each other. One player will not be able to serve in all roles, or specialize in all roles in the entire manufacturing and mining sector.

This has the potential to really revitalize factional warfare: occupancy can finally mean something, if CCP makes the right choices here and implements the philosophy of FW serving as sort of a training ground for nullsec. Cooperative gameplay in highsec sounds interesting but that could prove difficult. And even if we can’t attack infrastructures directly, a corporation could influence its competitors through wardecs in space…

[The first day of Tyrannis] will have people flying all over space, deploying satellites and scanning for resources. Also launching command centers and building infrastructure. And also starting to train the skills needed for it, of course. Some discoveries will be made, too. Some people will definitely be striking it rich by discovering huge deposits of valuable minerals in remote locations, and trying to keep these a secret for as long as they can.

Satellite deployment sounds a lot like survey probes for moon minerals… and I will probably take a day or two off of work when this launches.

And now, for T0rfi to have the last (and exciting!) word:

The goal is to have it out on the test server in little more than a week.

Tyrannis interview by T0rfi: Planetary industrial domination originally appeared on Ecliptic Rift on 2010-03-05.

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1. Torfi interview at TenTonHammer
2. Preparing for an industrial roam
3. Blog Banter 11: Strategic Industrial Ships

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