Counter proposal; battle barge is a go!

So I wanted to write a more in-depth response to Riptard's proposal over on his blog Jester's Trek. If you haven't already, follow the link and read it. Its a good proposal and could work, its main flaw of limited access could be solved by having more access points or by having the access points be more mobile (IE; you access Jove space through wormholes). I'll also straight up say that my main objection to his idea basically boils down to a very nerdy "BUT TEH LORE!" reaction to opening up Jove space. Whatever other objections I can pull up to his idea can with a bit of thought be solved fairly elegantly, so instead of having a whine about it I remembered something my teacher used to say; 'if you cant say something constructive, say nothing at all'. Jester's proposal is good, but it would have a lot of long term implications that would be difficult to predict and plan for. In addition while Jove space would be a fine expansion for EVE I think we need to remember that CCP will have two mouths to feed from the one bowl soon. Thus I would like to make a counter proposal.

I make my proposal assuming that the following are generaly excepted and common knowledge.

1. CCP has a lotriding on the succsess of Dust 514
2. Super Capitals are becoming a big n+1 problem
3. Super Capitals do not die offten

With my cards on the table; It's time to introduce ship crews.

Ships in EVE have up to 5 "slots" in which you put stuff; High slot, Mid slow, Low slot, Rig slot, and if you're a T3 ship Sub systems. Crews would add in  a 6th slot; Crew slot. This crew slot would function a lot like a rig slot but with a small twist which I will get to in a moment. Ships would have up to 4 crew slots on their ship, tech 1 ships would have 3 crew slots, tech 2 ships would have 2 crew slots, and tech 3 ships would have 4. Ships could then fill these slots with crew, of which there would be 3 variety's in types.

• Specialist: a special type of crewman hired from LP stores, liberated from complexes or looted from faction mobs. In general found in pretty much every form of PVE. Specialists would confer a small bonus to ship attributes  such as tank, dps, agility, speed and so forth. However in order to receive the specialists bonus you must have one of the other types of crew listed bellow. Think of these guys as implants for your ship. One special other attribute worth mentioning about these guys; specialists will always survive the destruction of their ship. I will explain why latter.
• Automated Crew: this type of crew represents a drone crew or a small skeletal crew supplemented by heavy automation. The main reason to use this crew is because it is cheep, probably produced from some combination of PI goods, say camera drones and robotics. It would confer a very small bonus to specialist bonuses, on the range of 0 - 2.5% depending on meta quality. But it would be cheep enough to use with T1 frigates. 
• Human Crew: this type of crew represents a flesh and blood crew complement for a ship. It would be more expensive than an automated crew but would also confer a larger bonus to the specialist, 1 - 5% depending on meta quality. I have no idea what you would use to produce these, probably more PI goods, but either way it would probably be too expensive to use on anything cheaper than a T1 battleship especially when automated crew is also reasonably good.

Ship's would not change with the inclusion of crew. You would still be able to undock and fight the same as you do now. Crew compliments would work a little bit like rigs, with small, medium, and large for the different ship sizes. All they would allow for anything smaller than a mothership is a neat little bonus to whatever stat is desired though the use of the specialist. However unlike rigs, crew would have a chance to drop from a ships wreck, like any other module.

In addition the tech level of the ship also determines the base specialist bonus. Tech 2 ships would receive a 20% bonus from the specialist while tech 1 ships would at base receive a 10% bonus. Tech 3 ships would only receive a 5% bonus since they are able to use 3 specialist. As for the specialists themselves they would be able to provide a bonus to anything implants already bonus.

How does this then tie in with dust? With 5 new ships!!

New T2 Destroyers

Based off the new destroyer hulls this variant of destroyer would feature a covert ops cloak, marauder-like bonus for 8 effective turrets and a reduced T2 resist bonus like the other interdictors. Unlike the present interdictors we use though these would not not launch interdiction probes, but rather spawn point beacons for Dust players. These beacon probes would launch from a probe launcher (either a interdiction probe launcher or a regular probe launcher) and home in on the target ship just like a regular missile. At first beacon probes would only be able to target super capital ships such as titans and mother ships, but depending on how well such feature is received and how well it works I see no reason not extend the target range of beacon probes to include carriers, dreadnoughts and perhaps even battleships. Once embedded in the target ships hull two things happen, first, the ship can be boarded in EVE from twice the normal distance ( the usual 6.5km would be increased to13km) and Dust players would be able to spawn on the capital ship for a period of time (2min?). From there they are able to assault the various ship sub systems. Assaulting engineering might inhibit capacitor recharge, electronics might disrupt sensor strength or targeting speed. Defence systems would reduce resistances, assaulting propulsion would reduce the ships agility or max speed, and attacking offensive systems would reduce damage output. In addition to attacking these sub systems the dust bunnies will also be able to attack and kill specialists assigned to these areas. For example a specialist who provides a bonus to shield recharge would be found in the defence systems area of the ship and would be a valid target for hostile boarding parties to attack and kill.

If the dust bunnies can assault and control all 5 sub systems then something very special happens. They may assault the bridge. Control of the bridge would allow the dust bunnies both abort self destruct timers and to eject the capsulers pod from the ship; with the side effect of prevent that player from re-boarding the ship for 60 seconds. Effectively this would allow motherships and titans to be boarded and stolen in combat.

PS: Why a covert ops cloak? I could rattle off reasons like being able to take covert ops portals for hotdrop operations but really its so I can fly a Corax hull with a covert ops cloak while listening to the silent hunter 2 theme. Don't judge me.

Battle Barge

This ship would aesthetically resemble the orca industrial command ship. A large battleship sized vessel this ship would serve one function and one function only; a mobile spawn point for dust bunnies. Boasting a very impressive tank this ship would move and behave like a battleship without guns. Instead the battle barge would be able to fit a covert ops cloak and a Dust 514 clone facility, allowing dust players to spawn on the barge. From there they would be able to assault planets but also make use of the boarding beacon as the beacon would require a barge to be on-grid in order for dust bunnies to actually board a super capital. The covert ops cloak would allow the battle barge to stay off-grid until needed and then safely warp in at a safe distance. Since the clone facility could not be operated while cloaked this would allow for some interesting maneuvers to try and take out the offending barge before it becomes a problem. It would also allow the ship to travel by covert jump portal, allowing for some sweet hotdrops.

I feel I should also point out that the battle barge can be used both offensively and defensively. If a super capital is boarded by hostile forces then you can use one of the new interdictors to launch your own boarding beacon onto the effected ship and launch a counter op to prevent the disruption and potential theft of the ship.

Here is where that twist I mentioned earlier comes into play. For motherships and titans, crews become very important. Having a crew, automated or otherwise will make your ship harder to board with an NPC defender pool based on these crew guide lines. That is to say that the dust bunnies will have to fight bots even if the opposing force is unable to effectively mount a counter insertion on the boarded ship. As you can see from the crew guide lines motherships and titans have a base crew of thousands and a capacity of tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands, so while the NPC defenders have limited numbers they are not small numbers, even if only 5% - 10% of those numbers are guards; more likely all crew members would resist boarding parties. Pity the titan pilot who does not read the patch notes.


And there you have it, my counter proposal to opening up Jove space.

Making money in unknown-space

So some of my friends have been saying to me "Kel, that wormhole thing sounds interesting, but how do you make any money out of it?".
So I figured it was time I pull a finger out and try to explain to everyone how we make ISK in a wormhole.

First let me point out that around 80% of all your ISK will come from T3 ship and sub-system production. Even if you personally do not make or build any T3 ships or ship parts you will be gathering the materials to make them as part of your PvE activity's. The only income you won't make from T3 ship production is the tags dropped from sleepers.

That leads me to Sleepers. The advanced, ancient drones of a long long civilisation, still tending the derelicts of their masters. These drones are paradoxically more advanced than our ships, and less advanced. They do not posses shielding technology, but are equal or superior to neweaden technology in just about every other way.
It is from Sleepers that you will gather the 2 main income sources for the wormhole explorer. Tags and salvage; tags are drops given by all Sleeper ships, they come in the form of data banks, AI nexus, and ancient coordinates databases. These items can then be sold to NPC's in known space, usualy research corporations who put up buy orders for these items.
The salvage comes in too many flavours to mention and I can only assume they are all used in T3 production at some point, however the most valuable and coveted are the Nano Ribbons. Nano ribbons are worth several million isk just for 1 unit, so 95% of your haul is determined by how many nano ribbons you managed to find. Nano ribbons are completely random by the way. If you salvage 10 sleeper wrecks you might get 1 nano ribbon, or you might get 30, its all up to the loot fairy at that point.

So lets talk about gas. I had some spicy burritos from Mad Mex the other day and let me tell you! I know gas. Gas comes in the form of LADAR sites scanned down in wormholes. Unlike knownspace where gas is harvested to make boosters, in WH-Space gas is used to make polymers, polymers are in turn used to make T3 ships. Gas comes in all sorts of flavours and I haven't really stuck my nose into gas harvesting because gas harvesting requires the skill - gas harvesting. That said, I am told that C320 and C540 are the more valuable fullerite clouds to harvest.
Unlike other forms of mining all one needs to harvest gas is the required skill and a gas harvester. If you plan to move into a wormhole at any point in the future you should invest in gas harvesting level 5. This will allow you to not only fit the max allowable number of gas harvesters (5) but also allow you to use tech 2 gas harvesters which are apparently almost twice as effective as T1 gas harvesters.



So those are how to make the money, but its not the full picture. See, if you're doing anything in a wormhole, chances are you probably don't want to be doing it alone. This goes double for people living in class 5 and 6 wormholes, the most dangerous unknown space you can find. These wormholes cannot be soloed. You will need more than 1 ship, which means you need a fair system for distribution of wealth.

Other people may have different methods but here's how we at Lycosa have been doing it.
For showing up, you get 1 share. For every alt you bring, you get a half share. The fleet commander is eligible for a bonus share, but other than that, everyone gets a single share in the profits, plus a bonus half share for every alt that they can bring.
The system isn't perfect, but its close enough that everybody seems happy with it. At the end of the night the loot value is calculated and then spreadsheets tell us how much everyone should get. Usually the corp will then pay everyone out (effectively buying the loot from us) or we wait a few days and get paid out then. Sometimes it wont be the corp to pay us out but a T3 producer or some other philanthropist, it doesn't much matter to me, we get paid a fair wage either way and considering that most of our T3 producers are corp leaders anyway its more or less the same thing anyway.

So that covers it! How I make money in the wormhole.

The Line

I started this blog to talk about my adventures in EVE, Id like to branch off into other games I play. Today Id like to talk about Spec Ops: the line.
Fair warning, this blog post will contain unmarked spoilers, if you haven't yet played Spec ops: the line and think you might like to, stop reading this blog and go acquire the game. Rent it if you have a console, the games not that long, you can finish it in a day or two and I highly recommend it. It is the best game I have played in years. Only those who have played it will thus understand why I then say; I never want to play it ever again.

This is a game that has been getting a closer look by the Extra Credits team, formerly of The Escapist, presently on PA:TV, and for good reason. I'd originally passed over it when I first saw it, I brushed it off as another "gritty modern shooter" and while it is another gritty modern war shooter, I was wrong in my initial first impressions. If you've not yet heard of this game then allow me to give you a brief summery, it is a third person, tactical modern war shooter set in the fictional wasteland of Dubai after a massive sandstorm ravages the city.You play as Delta Team, a 3 man spec-ops team sent in after the fact to find out what has happened to the 33rd, an army battalion sent into the city to evacuate the citizens. The main story is based on The Heart of Darkness. If your familiar with that story then you can probably already guess much of the rest of the story.

Scratch the surface however and you'll find yourself playing not the game I first described, but rather a parody of the modern war shooter. Spec Ops: The Line is a game about post traumatic stress disorder shell shock, and how it effects those that  live  survive with it. The game toys with your expectations to begin with - you look at the cover art, the generic battle-worn soilder walking away from some sort of devastation and you think you know exactly what sort of game your going to be playing; a 5 - 10 hour long gun wank. To be sure, that's what I first thought, even after several reviews of the game. The opening sequence is a fast pased hell-ride on a helicopter, using a mini-gun to shoot down the enemy choppers chasing you. The first hour was more or less the samey cover based shooting.

Then the game introduces its first twist, the "insurgents" your fighting are rebels, armed and organised by CIA operatives, and the 33rd has gone rouge. As I progressed I found evidence of their handywork; mass graves, shanty towns, mass kidnappings, civilians being shot in the streets. Dubai it seems, has gone to hell in a hand-basket. I started progressing through the game with grim determination, a kind of rightious anger driving me on. This culminates when in one section me and my squad witness the 33rd using white phosphorus on a group of retreating rebels.

White phosphorus is a chemical element used in military smoke grenades, tracer rounds and incendiary munitions. When used in a mortar shell it can set fire to a very wide area, burning whole swaths of ground. It burns very hot and is its own fuel sources. Once ignited, it cannot be extinguished, it must burn itself out. As a weapon, its highly effective, highly demoralising, and highly unethical. To its credit, the game did not shy away from this.

In video games there are only 2 types of enemy's you can kill with impunity, 2 types of enemy's you can slaughter endlessly and never have to feel bad about. Nazi's and Zombies. After the white phosphorus incident, I had a third, the 33rd Battalion. In my eyes I was justified in whatever action needed to take to progress. Incidentally it wasn't long after that I was given the opportunity to use this weapon of terror against the 33rd.
The CIA operative we had been working with had been killed, but we had recovered a map indicating the goal of his plan, the reason he, and by proxy we, had thrown so many militia under the bus. The Gate. However when we reached that location we found what looked like half a damn army between us and the gate. Since ammo was scares in post-apocalyptic Dubai (the militia were melting silver into bullets) trying to blast our way through wasn't an option. Conveniently though there was a mortar nearby complete with WP ammo. When my heavy weapons guy pointed it out I was all for it, after watching the 33rd use WP on the defeated militia it seemed almost poetic to return the favour.
So I did.

Once the obligatory white thermal camera moment had passed we repelled down and made our way towards the gate. Dying soldiers cried out for mercy killings as we walked past. I ignored them, ammo was scares in Dubai and they deserved it.
When we reached the bridge to the gate one last solider awaited us, laying on his back, his face burnt beyond recognition. As the squad gathered round him he asked one simple question: "why?". Walker, the player character, echoed my own thoughts perfectly: "You brought this on yourselves.".
"We were helping them".
Walkers words echo my thoughts once more: "What?"

Walker, and the camera turned to face the horrible truth: Its ok, I'll understand if you don't want to look. I know I didn't, and yet, I could not look away. The camera would not shift, the game wanted me to see this, the creators wanted me to understand exactly what I had done. In the background my heavy weapons guy and my sniper argued. Like I cared, like they were saying anything I didn't already realise myself.

...to an AI, there is no such thing as the real world. How is a machine to know that the real world is not just another simulation designed to test it? In the back of my mind a part of me tried to remind myself that this wasn't real, that it was just a game. It didn't matter, the point of a simulation is to learn something about yourself, to teach yourself something about yourself that you could not have found out otherwise. This is why I play games, because I want to learn. To feel my mind figure out these impossible situations. This was the first time I can remember having frozen.

This mind has performed and illegal operation and must restart

Walker, the player-character was the one to snap me out of it. "We have to keep moving". The words were spoken to the squad, but the camera angle meant he was facing me directly when he said it. Slowly it clicked in my head, the only way out, was forward. Finish the game and perhaps you can redeem yourself in the process. Walker seemed to be thinking the same thing, throughout the rest of the game, the goal was saving the civilians, stop the 33rd. Yet as I crawl out of the mass grave that I created, I hear a shout; "murderer". More 33rd shooting at me. Or are they? I don't know any more, I'm not sure I even care. As I push through the game things seem so surreal, the same shooter mechanics that earlier made the game seem like just another shooter juxtapose the grimdark story I am descending into. The game seems to reinforce this, always we go down. I hadn't noticed at first, but its become hard to miss. Every other checkpoint we seem to rappel down, or use a zip-line to move ever downwards. The ground itself seems to swallow me up constantly.

It was here that I had to retire to my bed. I had booted the game up after an evening of sleeper ops with the corp and alliance in EVE, so it was late at night when I finally got around to playing the game. I had intended to play for an hour or two, but an hour or two was all the time the game needed to hook me in. When I finaly when to bed, it was the early hours of the morning. Sleep did not come easy to me. I kept thinking back to the WP friendly fire incident. I'd felt so justified in what I was doing at the time, to find out the truth of my actions had been just pulled the rug out from under me.

When I awoke the next day I knew I was going to finish the game, yet oddly, strangely, I was not looking forward to this. Normally when I'm playing a great game, a game I just cant put down, its because the game is so engaging and fun. Spec ops is not fun. Engaging, yes, but fun? Not by the usual definition.
I usually define fun as; learning and enjoying. Well I was definitely learning, but I was not enjoying. Yet, as much as I might have liked too, I couldn't turn back. Not yet, not with a story untold. Not while Commander Konrad was still alive. The man in charge of the damned 33rd. The man responsible for all I had seen. Like Walker, he was becoming all I could see.
When I reached him, I found no satisfaction. Only the explanation to it all. To quote the loading screen; "You cannot understand, nor do you want to" 
I think I understand now. What the game was trying to tell me, to show me. I'm not a hero, even though I might wish to play as one in video games. Im just an over-weight, stereo-type gamer living in his parents back room. I do not understand what it is like to be a 'hero' nor do I want to any more. Coming this close to true understanding was more painful than I would like to admit.
To the developers; you bastards. Thank-you.

"Lucky you. You get to go home"

Lucky me. Now if you'll excuse me, Id like to go cry by myself for a little bit and remind myself that it was just a game. In the end, I'm glad I decided to play this game over another night of Guild Wars 2.

How to bookmark: a monograph by The Boss

Hey you! Yes you.
Do you know how to properly bookmark shit?

...neither did I. But then I read an illustrated monograph by my alliance Boss! Now I know what sort of crap I need to include in a bookmark.
"But Kel!" I hear you say "I have not viewed this monograph like you have. How can I too glean its knowledge?!"
Rest easy my friend, for I shall publish the very same monograph here for you to read. Now you to can learn how to bookmark like a boss.

People are still here? What do you mean people are still here? Oh, they need more? Fine! Here's my other set of notes on how to bookmark. Courtesy of a corp-mate.

The basic format for wormholes is as followed  < (Where it is) - [first 3 letters of scan signature] - [where it goes] - [additional details] >

So for example: "(Home) YAJ - C5a - rout to hs"

Now anyone else can look at that and know that this bookmark is located in the home system, its signature ID starts with YAJ, it leads to a class 5 wormhole, and is on a rout to highsec.
See? easy. If you dont know where it leads or are missing information on it, bookmark the sig anyway and edit the details in latter as needed.

For example: "(Home) XAJ - *** - static, unresolved"

Now anyone looking at that knows that this is the home systems static, but it is unresolved, meaning that it is untouched and unopened. Latter on we would edit this to something like: "(Home) XAJ - C5b - hostile". Now someone looking at that knows that it leads to a class 5 wormhole, but that the wormhole is likely camped, bubbled or both.

Bookmarking sites is just as easy. < (Where it is) - [first 3 letters] - [what sig type] - [what site type] >

so for example: (C5a) - BBJ - GR - UCD

This would translate to a site in the C5a, sig ID BBJ, its a gravimetric site (rocks) and is a Unusual Core Deposit, or an average C5 asteroid field. There are only 4 types of site signatures so its pritty easy to work out if its a Radar (RA), Ladar (LA) Gravimetric (GR), or Magnetometric (MA). In any case, these primarily serve to standardise how bookmarks are made, which is important when you need to share those bookmarks with your corp an alliance. Detail and brevity are the key factors here. People need to be able to look at a bookmark and quickly work out what it is and what it does.

...and now you too know how to bookmark like a boss!

K162: not a submarine movie.

Holy crap guys, wormholes are complicated!
So I've been in here with the alliance about a week or two now and it has been a rush of new information for me. For instance, I learned today what a K162 is and why it's important.

Wormholes come in several variety's, but in unknown space they can be broken down into 2 main categories. Inbound and outbound wormholes.
Wormhole systems will always have at least 1 "static" wormhole, that is a wormhole leading to a consistent location. The first thing that this "static" means is that you can in theory never be totally lost in wormhole space. As long as you have a probe launcher and at least 1 set of core scanning probes, you can slowly map your way back to known space. Class 1 and 2 wormholes typically lead back to high-security space, while class 3 to 6 usually lead to more wormholes. While its not a hard and fast rule, the lower the wormhole class the closer to safer space you are.
A side effect of this though is the K162. A static wormhole needs to lead out of a system and connect with another, be that in known space or wormhole space. However, until someone warps to the static entrance the exit will not form. That exit is a K162.
A K162 in your system means that someone has found a wormhole, warped to it, and possibly gone through it, all in the last 24 hours. If your in high-sec this might means that the wormhole your thinking of going through is probably inhabited. In a wormhole system it means you might have invaders! This is a problem since without a local channel to tell you who is in the system with you its impossible to know if you have an afk-cloaker in your home. Why is that a problem? Because there is no practical way to say, remove a covert-ops frigate if you don't know that they are there. You can look for evidence, but even if you know that someone has parked a cov-ops alt in your home there's still no way to remove them.
So finding a K162 in your wormhole is like having your doctor tell you:

"Hey! Its probably nothing, just a chest cold.
[beat]
...could also be cancer though."

So I have a blog now...

So I now have a blog. Yay me. Now that I have officially left highsec behind me I figured I might have some interesting things to talk about. Don't get me wrong, highsec is a nice place, nice enough to live in, but its nice in the same way a gated neighbourhood is nice to live in. Its nice because not a whole lot happens.

Wormholes on the other hand are like living in a post apocalyptic city. Its nice because you found some sweet loot the other day and a zombie didn't eat your face. Its interesting, its exciting, its an adventure.

So yes, in-case you didn't catch that, I joined a wormhole corp. Id love to talk about that more, but at the moment there is a kind of NDA on releasing information about our activity's so I cant. So yeah, the CAD comic is pretty damn accurate when it comes to wormhole corps. I wouldn't have it any other way now that I've joined though, knowing others had to jump through the same hoops makes me feel a little bit safer in here.

I've been stuck for something to write about however. While I would like to write about the events that have transpired since I joined there's been a general information blackout imposed for security reasons. Im not sure how much I should say even on that so I'll instead comment that even with security as good as it is now, it can always be better.