I like youtube.
Hey folks,
What with WordPress MU being integrated seamlessly into the WordPress 3.0 features, I have decided to take all of my blogs and combine them into my own blogging network.
Thus, I am moving Drone Mutiny over there so I don’t have to keep track of all these blogs all over the place.
From now on, please feel free to follow my blog at: http://ribbing-adam.com/dronemutiny/
Happy trails.
Wow… Wow.
So apparently I’ve been living under a rock these last 5 years because seeing Eve as it should be seen was a breath-taking experience.
Getting frustrated with my main PC’s bulk, whirring fans and what felt like extremely slow load times between systems, I’ve been shopping around for a new system. Originally I was going to get the new Alienware M11x gaming netbook since Dell had taken over Alienware and my last PC was a Dell. I figured that it was a good choice for me, considering that I enjoyed the format of netbooks in general. They feel truly portable.
However the little system was pretty pricey by today’s standards coming in at around $1,300 after taxes and a couple of minor upgrades. My girlfriend had been complaining about the kind of offensively obvious PC for a while; our apartment is pretty tiny and the pc takes up a bit of room.
Anyhow, all of this to say that I’d managed to find a laptop that fit the bill for almost half of what I was going to get the Alienware system for. In the end I managed to get a Gateway NV59 with one of the new i3 self-managing overclock systems.
I was astounded with this little sucker’s performance. It sports a 15.6″ Hi-Def display and runs Eve Online like a breeze. Load times are incredible and the additional features in the graphics of the game up until this point weren’t evident to me because I’d been playing on a dated system until now.
I haven’t been able to test what kind of FPS I get in Eve but when I ran tests on World of Warcraft I was rating in the 60fps category whereas before I was scoring somewhere in the 15-20s on my old PC system. The increased FPS coupled with the HD display means that that object rendering in both games take on a more tangible feel. In Eve it almost feels as if I could reach into the screen and touch the ships’ hulls.
So the new little system has opened up a world of possibility in terms of gaming, which I LOVE. I’ve been revisiting old games that I really enjoyed but didn’t get much of a chance to explore because of the limited processing capabilities of my old systems. I’ve also been playing this game with a buddy of mine called Alien Swarm on the Steam network. It’s awesome. A free game, it’s got a 3rd person top-down perspective.
The point of the game is simple. You are one of 4 special ops folks somewhere in the future who have to go into off-world complexes and colonies because you have lost contact with them. Pretty soon into the encounters you come across swarms of aliens intent upon slicing and dicing you in a whole host of ways.
Sound familiar? The movie Aliens is one of my all-time favourite movies. Just the whole concept of creepy crawlies lunging out at you from dark corners gets me revved. The whole thing where you are fighting something that is on an evolutionary scale designed to be a predator and you are outmatched, I think, is totally wicked. The concept that it is man’s technology that will get him out of a jam in those situations is something that I’ve loved. Mechanical technology will always be at odds to a certain extent with humans because we are biological beings. The only way that we’d be able to meet an alien of that nature head-on is if we had bio-technology. Biological suits that would function as an extension of our body, would heal, etc. Even a mechanical exosuit that could self-repair is prone to some form of weakness.
Anyhow, I digress. The game is fucking fun. Check it out. It’s basic principle is easy (blow shit up… weld doors, put out flames…) but it’s the squad’s composition and the equipment they take that will widely vary what the playstyle is… And it’s not an easy game. You have to think about what you are doing.
Anyhow, good times. For sure.
I’ve had a nice little run of invention attempts lately. The last 4 invention attempts have turned out 3 blueprints, very nice. 
Which means that I’m now sitting on 5 blueprint copies, enough to start some production. Now that Hulkageddon is done I’ll likely send the Orca to Jita to get some construction parts and outfit a new probing ship as well as a BC of some form for Nhi’Khuna to do some low sector exploration with.
I’ve been having fun with the Industrial thing but I’m also looking forward to getting back into some combat ships and having a go at some exploration content. I’m sure that my flashy security status will mean that Nhi’Khuna will see her fair share of pvp attempts too as people will likely be looking to get a piece of action and take her down.
There has been a fairly negative reaction to PI on the forums as of late. Folks complaining that it is far too click intensive. I can’t help but feel that these are folks who are running with alt accounts and have multiple toons who are running PI on nearly max planet settings. I run 4 planets at the moment and it’s not arduous considering that it’s basically free income once you invest in the infrastructure. And to be honest, the investment is minimal when compared to other things such as the t2 invention infrastructure that I’ve got set up, or getting into moon mining or reactions or even research.
To get into just about anything industrial requires a substancial investment in training time as well as money.
PI requires only a nominal investment of both and can give very decent returns for the savy user.
I’m quite enjoying it, from a one-man production perspective, in that it allows me a further avenue of independence. I know that CCP wants to foster a cooperative approach to the game, but I enjoy being a lone wolf. I like creative self-contained efficient systems that allow me to do a little of everything. Which is why I love worm-holes so much.
Anyhow, I’m about 3 weeks into my resubscription and I’m quite happy with toodling about.
I might be out of Eve for the next couple of days. I decided to upgrade my computer and combine my desktop PC and my little netbook into 1 much more powerful laptop.
It’ll take me a little while to get everything installed and in running order on the new system. Looking forward to seeing better graphics!
Well, I got a successful invention attempt on my third try which for T2 Frigates is about average. I’m sitting on a nice bank of blueprint copies, ready to roll. Until Hulkageddon is over though I’m just going to stockpile the T2 BPCs, once they’re done I’ll go purchase my construction parts and start producing to take to market. I think I’ll definitely need a trading alt just as soon as my main toons are done their current schemes.
I tried to get 3 ships out of Teonusude with Nhi’Khuna last night. The Proteus got out just fine, however both the Anathema AND the Stealth Bomber were blown up by CONCORD. Blah… Fortunately I was just heading to market with a freshly made Anathema so I quickly turned around and brought it back so that Nhi’Khuna would have an exploration vessel. Sidaris has one already but from my days in wormhole space I’ve gotten used to both characters having one available. Having a covert ops ship handy is very useful in many situations.
Though I do find that Sidaris spends more time in the Prorator more than anything else and it IS a covert ship of a sorts, just with transport capabilities.
PI needs a little tweaking. I find my Lava planet which has the final production chain for Robotics keeps running out of mechanical parts despite the fact that I have 3 facilities producing them… I’ll have to address that shortly.
I’ll need to outfit a PVE ship for Khuna as well. I’d like her to start doing some exploration in low sec to get some free encryption chips… Working on her security status couldn’t hurt either… Lord.
Spent my entire Friday night finalizing what I’ve come to think of as ‘phase one’ of the t2 ship building process.
Phase one is all about setting up the infrastructure.
So last night I found myself running to and fro from Jita in the Prorator (I love cloaking transports) getting final supplies, tweaking my POS fuel PI network (oh, I’ve got it SO down to a science now!) and scoped out a nice little system to set up my little research pos.
So at around 10pm local time I decided to start setting up the pos. I forgot what a strangely hair-raising and at the same time BORING procedure that was! The pos represents the bulk of my personal savings in Eve and to lose it to pirates while it was being set up would have likely resulted in a bit of a rage-quit scenario.
But we got everything up in good order. By 2am I was onlining the last of the ECM arrays and the advanced mobile lab was happily crunching away at making blueprint copies of my ship BPOs.
This morning saw a bunch of BPCs ready for inventing with and my PI network had been running the majority of Friday night on 3o minute rotations which meant I was sitting on a fat supply of new fuels for the POS.
There will be a minor amount of tweaking of the network and then I’m off to start collecting materials to start building the ships. So after 1 week of having activated I’ve got myself quite a nice little small t2 production chain set to start.
My friend Mushi has restarted Eve with an industrial toon that he’s pretty stoked about. Looks like when his skills are up and running he’d be interested in actually building the ships that way I can move on to other research endeavors.
Well, Hulkageddon officially started today and their killboard has shown that folks are pretty eager to get out there and kill industrials. As I’m writing this I’m making a trip to Jita in my Prorator treating the route as if it were 0.0. No chat in local, cloak up immediately upon warping.
It’s pretty easy really, you have about as much chance of catching a blockade runner transport as you do a covert ops frigate: virtually none. In fact, I’d argue that you have even less of a chance of catching the ship because anything that you’d have that can make an infinipoint or bubble either can’t in hi-sec or isn’t worth losing to a gank that you are going to get CONCORDokaned by.
Anyhow, all of this to say, I don’t imagine that Hulkageddon is going to affect my operations much over the next week. While I am making runs to Jita it’s all stuff that is small enough that my Prorator can carry it so I don’t need the Orca.
There has been a lot of chatter in the local channels this morning about it though. Lots of folks seem to want to bag an Orca; that strikes me as a pretty large undertaking considering CONCORD’s response. It would have to be a large suicide-gank fleet to take out one in time I think. But I’d rather not test the theory.
Good job to those who got the headstart… already 20 hulk kills this morning. Wow!
If it effective enough the event could actually be pretty nice for the economy. All those hulks not mining could drain the low end mineral stockpiles some which would at least help some things for the poor miners. The increased industrial sales wouldn’t hurt either.
Wish I had my infrastructure in place to build some of those.
EDIT: Yeah, so I’m an idiot and can’t real a killboard apparently. Those 20 kills happened in less than 20 minutes! There have been over 20 pages of kills since Hulkageddon has started! OMG!
Well, a great deal of experimentation went into the original networks on my POS fuel producing planets. I’m happy to say though that once Nhi’Sidaris learned Command Centre Upgrades 4 I took her back to the Barren, Lava and Storm planet I’d scoped out in Molden Heath and replaced the networks with upgraded ones associated with the Advanced Command Centres. It was also a good opportunity to build better structure topology and from what I can tell, looking at how the interactions were this morning, the networks seem to be set up properly from an infrastructure point of view. Now it’s just about tweaking with the extractor versus production facilities levels to make sure I’m getting a constant flow of raw resources to keep up with demand.
I’m noticing that despite the initial projects on resource amounts requires at a p0 level I am putting down a LOT more extractors than I initially thought I would be because of the slowdowns in production. I’ll be playing with this rigorously tonight to tweak my levels.
In other news I’ve moved Nhi’Sidaris to training research skills for Minmatar t2 Frigate production. It’s not arduous by any means, the thing I’m loving about it is because I’ve already trained Amarr and Caldari t2 invention skills it’s an easy translation because all of the secondary and tertiary skills are in place.
JUST squeaked moving my pos materials and supplies from Jita to Teonusude this morning via the Orca… From the forum traffic it is ALL industrial ships that get targeted during Hulkageddon. I use my Orca more than almost any other ship (does that make me a carebear?) so to lose it now would be a really big blow to my infrastructure. Fortunately I don’t need her for anything else in the near future. If I do have to run any logistics I’ll just treat high sec as if it was low and use my cloaking transport ship. It’s invaluable as well.
Depending on how ambitious I feel tonight I might look to set up the pos. Likely on the weekend though as I still need to get the research end of the t2 production line going.
In the meantime I’m building and selling Sentinels on the market from some left over blueprints. I’ll build another couple of those likely tonight to help offset some of the startup costs in getting my network up and running.
Lots of fun!
If you’ve been in Eve for any length of time than the likelihood is that you’ve heard of the event called Hulkageddon that has industrialists running for the hills.
The premise of Hulkageddon is simple: Attack mining ships anywhere, anytime, as often as possible. This means engaging them in 0.0 and lowsec, of course, but especially suicide ganking them in high sec space.
The coverage for Hulkageddon in it’s last two incarnations has been huge. With an unprecedented amount of hulks and mining ships destroyed in high sector space, there is no other comparison of high sec gankings of this magnitude in the history of Eve.
Suicide gangs are often comprised of Catalyst destoyers because they offer the best damage potential of the destroyer class, are cheap and can be decently tanked given that they are Gallente. But they are mostly used because of the damage per cost ratio. A team of destroyers can take out a hulk before Concord arrives, and they WILL arrive and annihilates the fleet.
But the fact that collectively a group of 10 destroyers would be worth but a fraction of a 160mil hulk is pretty impressive.
For me it doesn’t impact my logistics TOO hugely, I have my doubts that a suicide squad would try to take out my Orca, or could, but just to be safe I’ll limit her useage from July 9th – 18th. I’ll also fit her out to maximize her tanking capabilities.
It has occurred to me that the savvy player with a mind towards making some money could produce and sell Hulks on the marketplace. I’m sure that demand will increase in July given that this event is set to come out in but two day’s time. I also think that this event might be organized with exactly that in mind. Someone high up in the event organization likely has a Hulk BPO that they are sitting on in anticipation of stimulating the economy. Shrewd, very shrewd.
