I Came Here To Be Podkilled, Dammit, Not Hacked

I've taken to logging into EVE in the mornings and doing my PI then. I started doing this when I decided to do two 5-hour cycles per day rather than one 23 hour. (more stuff is extracted that way, and I wanted a cushion.) My evenings are more flexible that way.

So yesterday morning I logged in, cycled all my extractors (23-hour cycles, I have my cushion now) and then clone jumped to Empire. Finally all the wardecs against us had expired, and I needed some skill books. Got the book, started my training and logged out and went to work.

This morning I attempted to login but could not. Some poking about on the CCP website revealed that my account had been banned. Say what?

In my email this morning, now that I'm at work.

2010.11.23 10:52:00 GM Nova
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Hi,

This mail is sent to inform you that your EVE Online account, has been closed as the account security is compromised.

It appears that hackers have gained access to your account and have in all likelihood robbed it of ISK. Please reply to this email in order to open the account again and make sure to clean your PC of keyloggers and trojans before accessing the account again.

Regards,
GM Nova
Senior Game Master
EVE Online Customer Support

Best I can figure is that they got the userid/password from a forum somewhere.

Ghosting Through Venal

Last night I conducted a survey through the region known as Venal. My CEO, Eperor, asked me to look for a moon producing a particular raw material that was unoccupied. So I spent several hours flying around cloaked, looking at said moons, and pondering the state of the economy in EVE.

Venal is NPC space. The Guristas Pirates hold sovereignty in every system. Which means that basically, its up for grabs. My survey shows that it is mostly populated by blues, and has a fairly vibrant marketplace, with significant quantities of goods, at least raw materials up for sale.

I visited 30 moons which, according to the database at DOTLAN, provided the desired material. Every single one of them were already being worked. All but about 5 by the same alliance, all save about 10 by the same corp within that alliance.

One of my first reactions was, "Good Lord, there's a lot of work going into servicing all those POSes". You see, with the Planetary Interaction feature that started about six weeks ago, all the fuel to power those stations is made by players. It's somewhat time-consuming, too.

The first reaction of most corps that have POSes was to sign up a few, or maybe several players to provide the fuel for the corp's POSes. This has led to burnout, and complaints about "clickiness". These complaints typically come from people who have 8 characters each running 5 planets, and resetting extractors daily. I run 5 planets with one character, resetting extractors takes about 10-15 mins. However, the goods must be hauled somewhere as well, and so the owning character must visit the planets where the goods are being produced to gain access to them. So there's more time.

I get it. I wouldn't think that doing this times 8 every day would be much fun, either. There's a simple alternative, though. The fuels can be bought on the market from other players, decentralizing the economy.

But apparently, human beings come with a built-in desire to not do this. "That's not the way we do things" is a phrase I've heard when I bring this up. Vertical monopolies may have worked well for Andrew Carnegie, but I don't think they do all that well in general. There's too much diffusion of effort, lack of specialization.

That corp that has 25 moon-mining stations in Venal does not produce fuel for those stations itself. Guaranteed. Those POSes produce an enormous amount of value, at least, if they are mining the valuable thing at the moon, and not some junk. And now, some of that value is going to go to other players, to pay for the fuel that runs the poses that mine it.

Furthermore, those other players aren't necessarily the rich and powerful senior members of EVE. No, it takes maybe two weeks to train up the skills for a fairly robust operation - five planets with advanced command centers. So the lowliest carebear can run a planetary operation and make some cash. Given where prices are, it's a decent bit of cash. And it's clear that many of the wealthier, more senior players of EVE don't like it.

Control of their own destiny has been taken out of their hands and put into something called "the economy". Apparently trusting in the marketplace is a hard thing to do.

****

CCP is on record as saying things like "we want to see more people in 0.0", and "we will be seeking to provide alternate pathways into 0.0". The space where my alliance has Sov, in Deklein, is reasonably well populated, but nothing like the major high-sec systems. The space I flew through in Venal was very sparsely populated. I flew into one cul-de-sac where the entrance was bubbled off and a few people were in there, presumably mining the highest-value ore. It may be "NPC" space, but it's their llittle private dominion, just the same. There is a great deal of value there. Large value divided by small population equals great riches for a few people. That's something worth fighting over.

And CCP of course wants to give people something to fight about. The question is then, why aren't these POSes attacked more? Most of them were small, it wouldn't take that long, or that much effort to put several of them in reinforced mode in one night. However, the mobility that titan bridges provide make the defense able to mount a mobile response. Hence, it's all about who can field the biggest fleet at any given time.

Now there's something very EVE about the rich getting richer. However, nobody should be getting a free ride, and nothing should be safe. I applaud CCP's efforts to spread the wealth around. PI certainly does that, and I'm looking for more.

Lucky in Love, Unlucky in PVP

My mom always used to say, whenever I would lose at a family board game or card game, "Unlucky at cards, lucky at love". Which was supposed to comfort me or something. But I wanted to WIN, dammit!

I've been very lucky at love. I've been married to the same woman for 22 years, most of them have been wonderful. And I'm not too bad at card games and board games.

All my bad karma seems to be coming out in EVE pvp.

A couple weeks ago, my corp, SKYFORGER, put up a pos in or near enemy territory, in a bit of a freelance pvp move. Well, it got found, and put into reinforced mode. So we had a call-to-arms (CTA) to defend it and try to repair it when it came out of reinforced. We had a few friends of the corp, but when the time came, we didn't have enough. Our Fleet Commander (FC) Flaming Ogre said, "The POS is already gone, we're just hoping to get some kills". I brought a couple of Incursus, to tackle for the group.

We were early and camped a station in a nearby system for a while. I blew the first tackle because I was confused about which end of the station was the exit. Miraculously, the guy who got away came back, and we got him that time.



Then we went on to the POS. The timer expired and we started trying to repair stuff. A few reds were in the system, but there was no sign of the enemy around the POS. Once the shield of the pos is back up to 50 percent, it comes back online and operational, the POS can't be destroyed this cycle, but must be put into reinforced mode again. So naturally, they waited until it was at about 45 percent, then showed up with a fleet that outgunned us. Some of us fired back with POS guns or their battleships. I couldn't think of much to do. I was popped, and when the order came to scatter, I jumped to a celestial and logged out. Or so I thought.

When I logged back in later, I found that I had been podded, 15 minutes or so after my Incursus was exploded. I'm still not sure how that happened. Did they scan me that fast? As it happens, it was no big deal for me as I was using my PVP clone, it cost me the price of a clone upgrade, and gave me free transport back to my base in Deklein.

On to yesterday's fleet action in the war between NC and IT. One of my corpmates, Ginta had been showing me the very impressive killmails he'd been getting in on from fleet actions in and around X-70MU. Each of them had multiple capital kills, both dreadnaughts and carriers. And many other ships.

I've been wanting to be more involved, but I seem to have a time-zone problem. The larger part of the NC seems to be based in Europe (There are some Aussies and Kiwis in my alliance, but that isn't really any better), 8 hours ahead of me. So my play time is their sleep time. And their play time is my work time. Except for weekends.

Sunday was my shot. I got into a fleet with a newly tricked-out Brutix. I have four of them now, so I was willing to risk one. I learned two things in that fleet: I suck at this fleet game, and my luck isn't too great either.

My Brutix seems to have been fitted all wrong. I had short range guns, long range would have been better. I have a hard time looking at fleets in the finder and figuring out which one to be in. I'd like to feel useful after all. I was camping a gate while the battleships were pounding at a POS, a couple of reds came through, but I was still locking them when they exploded. So I'm not feeling useful.

Then at some point the FC decided to drop what we were doing and go on a mad race through several systems where we finally jumped through into a gate camp and got massacred. Or so it seemed to me. The FC loaded the grid first, called one target, then was popped. The next FC calling targets was popped before I managed to load the grid. The 3rd FC didn't have much left to work with. I couldn't find the targets, let alone lock them. I have an overview window that shows only enemy ships, but it kept wanting to reset to the top of the list whenever I'd scroll it down to look for a target. I think I can set it so that the closest ships are at the top, I'll do that next time.

Someone called for us to warp to him, I did so, or so I thought, and ended up at a planet alone. I warped back to someone, and was maybe 50km from the nearest anything. Except a drone, that shot at me. I killed it. Eventually, they turned their attention to me and popped me. I logged off.

I still have no idea why we rushed off to jump into a gate camp with well-positioned, and evidently superior forces. That's the unlucky part. But really, I suck at PVP.

The good news is that losing a ship is no longer a big emotional hit. It's really more of a "business as usual" thing now. I've got plenty of cash to make up the loss, and lessons learned. They are:

1. Fit long range guns unless told specifically otherwise.


2. Rearrange your pvp window to have CLOSEST ships at the top, not FURTHEST.

D-Day

When I logged on to EVE Online this morning, I had mail from my alliance leadership declaring today to be "D-Day", the day we show maximum strength in our war with Tri and allies.

When I logged on, there was some confusion about where the coalition fleets were and whether it was possible to join them. So I started on a plex, only to find out that the confusion was minor. So I finished the plex and jumped to my pvp clone in ROIR. Without too much effort, I found a fleet and joined up with it in a gate camp in the J-CIJV.

The two hours I spent with this fleet were mostly uneventful, but still highly interesting. "Gate camp" isn't really a good word for it, more like a "gate horde".



The prize for the day were two stations in the region which were currently owned by Tri, which were coming out of reinforcement. The Northern Coalition had a reported 300 capital ships working on this: Shoot at a station enough and it changes over to your side, it seems.

However, they didn't want any more ships on that grid, as they were worried about crashing the server. So the rest of us spread out in support fleets, trying to shut down any counter forces. Reports had 1000 NC pilots in the field, and there were screenshots of some 40 Titans attacking the station.

We got involved in one engagement that went something like this: An enemy carrier engaged friendly forces outside a station. Two friendly Titans (both Erebus) uncloaked (!) and fry said enemy carrier, while we warp in and clean up the minor crap.

After that, I had to log.

Blue Fail

One of the reasons I switched corps to Skyforger was that I wanted to see some of what goes on with 0.0 and with large fleet actions. I've got my wish.

Skyforger is part of the Tactical Narcotics Team (ticker TNT) alliance. This is, in turn, part of the Northern Coalition (NC). Some of the other alliances in NC are Mostly Harmless (ticker "-42-", which I love, by the way), and the Tau Ceti Federation (TCF), who are our landlords. Also are Morsus Mihi, Majesta Empire, RAZOR Alliance, Stella Polaris, and Wildly Inappropriate.

According to Evelopedia (linked above),

The Northern Coalition is non-expansionist, as it does not generally seek to capture territory outside the North. It's member alliances operate independently on a day to day basis, coming together only for large conflicts especially in defence of the north.

What we are currently engaged in is exactly that. There have been incursions by Triumvirate (TRI) into Pure Blind. SOV markers dropped, POS's anchored, and so on. We are trying to boot them out.

The political structure seems very loose and weak to me. On top of that we have been under a Call To Arms continuously for the last two weeks, and will continue to be so. This is somewhat exhausting.

The other night I logged in and an a couple of POS-bashing operations were scheduled. Considering that I wanted to see more of this kind of thing, I grabbed one of the Incursus tacklers I'd fitted and came along.

NC fleets accomplished all objectives that night. Two POS's which came out of reinforced mode were destroyed. A Tri fleet that attempted to raid the ROIR-Y system was repelled in a very protracted fleet battle.

This kind of protracted campaign puts a lot of pressure on members, alliances, and coalitions. A lot of cracks were showing, both for the blues and for the reds.

On the red side, there was a Titan in a POS in Roir that we used to generate a jump bridge for all the non-capital ships in our fleet. However, the Tritan pilot was refusing to hand out the password for the POS force field. Instead he maneuvered the Titan close enough to the edge of the force field to allow ships to approach within the necessary 2000m. Some fleet members were unhappy about this lack of trust, the Titan pilot retorted, and not especially calmly, that he was tired of being bumped, which slows the whole process down by minutes.

During this and other friction points our FC chanted his mantra, "Don't stress, don't stress", and urged us to "help each other, guys". In general, he was good, if a bit irritable himself. Besides his tactical competence, the best other policy was his determination to keep sniping off of Teamspeak. "Don't spam my TS, don't spam my coms!" was a repeated call. And I appreciated it. When there are that many people involved (somewhere between 100 and 200), you need to just shut up and do what you're told, and if you can't do what you're told, find a way around the obstacle.

At another moment, when our fleet was picking up the loot/salvage from the fleet one battle, one pilot called another out for being a greedy salvager/looter. The reply was, "I'm docking up, you emo". Since I had been exploded and was only seeing coms, I'm not sure what happened, but I think shots were fired. We were under instructions to loot all, then dock up and contract stuff to people who had lost ships. I didn't x up as having lost a ship, since my loss, a frigate with no T2 gear, was insignificant, and easily covered by insurance.

The Red side had their fractures as well. But first, the fight itself. We had intel that a fleet of roughly 20 Tri battleships was headed our way, so we formed up at our side of the gate they would use to come into ROIR. And come they did.

FC gave the order "jump to G95 gate at optimal". "Jump to optimal" means pick the range that best suits your firing setup. As the red force hit the opposite side of the gate, the order came "bubble the gate". Then the gate fire came.

At that point there is the delicious suspension of time while the enemy fleet remains cloaked to load the grid, get everyone in, and pick the first targets before they uncloak. And uncloak they did. I just picked a target and tackled it. I lasted for maybe 2 or three minutes, I think a smartbomb was what did me in. But the fight went on for much longer. (I didn't get podded because people were way too busy to target capsules).

I didn't have second ship so I watched fleet chat and listened on teamspeak. At one point our FC got exploded, and passed off target calling to someone else. One fun quote was, "Switch off of X, he's being repped, oh, never mind, he's dead". The battle lasted for perhaps 10 to 15 minutes. Serious action. And I missed most of it.

In the end, we held the field. They were tough though, and killed more ships, I believe. And they sent in a few stealth bombers to try and destroy the loot and cause general mayhem afterwards.

One way to tell that the fight is over is the flood of "gf" (good fight) in local chat. However, just after the first or second "gf" was posted, their presumed commander, SuperTwinky posted in local the words "blue fail". Further chatter revealed that he was disappointed in the performance of allied non-TRI pilots. So the stress is getting to them, too, perhaps more significantly than for NC.

I've heard people say, "Hey, it's just a game, it's just pixels on the screen." Mostly they say that to justify ruining your day by ganking or scamming or whatever. It's clear that the game means a lot to the people who play it. Emotions can run high. In a sense, this is what attracts me. I recognize the importance of keeping your head in battle, but it's not an easy thing to do. It requires practice, mindful practice. Which Eve PvP will provide.

I'd like to be more involved in these actions, and I'd like to feel like I was a bit more useful. Maybe I orbited too closely (I used 500m). Maybe I just got unlucky to pick a target with a smart bomb. When the fight started, tackling was maybe a bit irrelevant, as they had come to fight us. Maybe I should hang back until the enemy maybe actually wants to run away. It's hard to say. But most of all, I need to keep my head.

Wish Fulfillment

Last night I got my wish. I was part of a fleet action, and notched some kills.

Earlier, I had gone to a largely deserted system with my ratting-fitted Brutix. I found a belt with two Gurista battleships and three ships called "Gurista Hauler". I start firing. The first battleship is nearly down, when my family comes into the room with plans to go out to dinner. Right now.

I tell them I'm going to be a little bit, so they start playing Rock Band, but I have 5 songs. I finish the battleships. It takes extra long, because my gank is still pretty poor, even though my tank is good, and one battleship, with half its hull gone, engages a microwarp drive or something and speeds back to the belt that I've chased it away from. I have to slowboat back and finish killing him. I have one song left.

So I target one of the Gurista Haulers and work him over. When he pops, I go over to take a look at the loot. There is over 8000 zydrine in the wreck, making it worth perhaps as much as 12 million ISK. OMG, I've hit the mother-lode!

However it's time to go. I go to a nearby moon and log off, hoping that the haulers will be there when I get back. Maybe even respawn.

****

However, that was not to be. When I come back, there is nothing in that belt, and not much in the other belts in system. I can't manage most anomalies out here yet, so now I need a plan.

I check the intel channels and alliance chat. Too Ducky has posted a fleet invitation with an inscrutable, to me, title. Something about Logistics. Too Ducky had recently bought a lot of the ammo I had put up for sale (I sell for more than you can get in Empire, but a lot less than anybody else out here), so I'm feeling quite positive about him. I had nothing better to do, so I joined. I was thinking the "Logistics" in the fleet posting meant this was some sort of escort fleet or something.

I was wrong.

It meant that we had an organized fleet with Logistics ships included. These ships are the "healers" of Eve, and they have other capabilities as well. We also have some very serious EW (Electronic Warfare) ships. I go to the meeting point, stopping to drop off the zydrine, which will mostly pay for the Brutix should I lose it.

Unfortunately, I'm not on the correct Teamspeak channel, and the fleet jumps through a jump bridge without me. I follow, but I'm too late to warp to the next bridge under the fleet's command. I have a map however, provided by my alliance, so I know where to find it.

Unfortunately, the location on the map is rough. I jump there and find I'm 100km away from the jump bridge. I slowly waddle over there, listening to my fleetmates kill a ship. I managed to get the the jump bridge about the time the Fleet Commander (FC), Too Ducky, calls a return. Sigh. I start heading back to our own territory. This was all in the Deklein region.

Compounding matters, the jump bridges that the rest of the fleet is trying to use have run out of fuel. Eventually we all gather back at a jump bridge and a new direction is decide upon. We will take on the campers in EC-P8R.



I've marked EC and Jita on the above map which shows part of the Lonetrek region. (Click the image for a better look). Any route from Jita, a major, perhaps the major trade hub in EVE, to the Pure Blind region (and hence to Deklein, where Skyforger and our allies reside must go through the systems circled. There are two routes, one through a long series of lowsec systems, including Aunenen, a notorious pirate camp. Or you can fly through Torrinos and then EC-P8R.

The system is constantly contested and camped. Last night, there were a total of perhaps 18-20 red flags (enemies of our alliance) and war targets (basically a mercenary corp that has been hired to help try to squeeze our alliance.)

We hold just outside EWOK. There is an enemy gate camp at the gate between EC-P8R and EWOK. We have some scouts in the system, but it looks tough. We could have a very hard time if we have to take them all on at once. Too Ducky switches to a covops so he can have a look for himself.

He looks things over and comes up with a plan. The enemy is somewhat spread out. There are some at each other gate in EWOK. There is a sling bubble off of the EC gate.

***
Eve has a rich and colorful set of jargon. In two months plus, I still haven't learned it all. A sling bubble is a bubble, a warp interdiction sphere. If you pass through it while you are warping, you will drop out of warp, and be unable to warp until you move out of it, using normal propulsion. Perfect for trapping and killing. If one of these bubbles is placed a ways off of a gate, along the line from another gate, it is known as a sling bubble. A classic gate camping technique.
***

However, the bubble means that Red's forces are further split. There are some at each gate, some at the bubble, and some in EC. FC tells our scouts EC to jump to the EWOK gate and sit there at zero (distance from gate) until they are aggressed upon.

This is similar to what happened in an earlier, small-gang lowsec action I was involved in. At zero to the gate, you can jump through the gate at any time. There is no technology in the game that can stop you from doing so. To get kill the ship sitting at zero you must either pop them before they can click the button, or try to catch them at the far side.

It's a tense moment. The scouts are locked, but not fired upon. A few more ships appear to jump through from EWOK to EC, they are going to try the one-volley technique.

This is what FC (Too Ducky) was waiting for. He calls that we are to jump into EWOK and warp immediately to the EC gate. We will hit a bubble. We will engage the bubble campers. He calls as first targets some of the tech 2 ships.

At this moment, I can imagine what's going on in the heads of the red fleet. Suddenly their system local is showing a massive influx of enemies, and they realize they've been baited. The enemy fleet scatters. We only manage to catch two ships at the bubble, another was nearly dead when it got away. I manage to target and fire on one enemy, adding my pathetic dps to my allies. We've split them, they have no way to form up and hit us with a concerted counter attack. Some poor slob in a drake warps to the gate in a Drake (Caldari battleship) and is popped by us. I get some shots off at it, too.

After catching our breath, we call it a day and leave the system. I have a fleet engagement under my belt and two "kills" to my name. My dps contribution is about one-sixth of the top dpsers on the two kills, so I have a lot of work to do.

In about 4 days, I'll be done with my armor tanking training, at which point it will be quite solid. I can already fit all T2 armor-tanking modules, I'm training Repair Systems V for that last extra kick to reppers. Not terribly useful in pvp, but handy for ratting.

Then I'll be turning to training up my gank. Getting to T2 guns on cruisers/battlecruisers is a tall order, it will take me perhaps 90 days. Battleships will take more, including the time to be able to actually fly a battleship. But in EVE, as with all MMORPG's, more DPS is always useful.

Raven Incoming, Red Tag

You might think that the photo above is of a very unusual atmospheric phenomenon that occured over Norway yesterday, and is thought to be due to the malfunction of a Russian ICBM during a test firing, but no....

Really, it's what my (brand new) Brutix looked like when it exploded last night.

We were gate camping in lowsec. I was hoping to get a few more licks in some sort of metaphorical revenge for last nights ignominy. The area, I was assured was thick with pirates and ne'er do-wells.

Every pilot in EVE has a security rating which is increased by doing "socially beneficial" things like killing NPC pirates, or player pirates who are known villains. Security rating is decreased by attacking people with no provocation, and decreased a lot if you podkill them. All of this is boiled down to a color coding on your HUD. Ships piloted by someone with a low enough security rating are color coded red. Those with a questionable rating are colored yellow. There's more tied to this, but that's enough for now.

We are sitting at a gate and suddenly a red tag appears. Dutifully, I control clicked the tag in my over view to lock the target and commence firing. Then three other red tags showed up almost immediately. The order was given to bug out, we'd been baited.

I had already aligned, or so I thought, and gave the command, but I was caught already in a warp scrambler, and was quickly torn to pieces (creating the photo above, really, I mean it!). At the time I thought I was just unlucky to be singled out. Perhaps I had started locking first, which meant that the automatic counterlocking sequence of the enemy ship had targeted me.

Whenever you go through a jump gate (which is where we were), you are automatically cloaked for a bit after the jump. I think the origin of this is to smooth out any difficulties due to server handoff during the session change, but it is now part of the EVE cat and mouse game.

So, I think they were sitting there cloaked and picked me as the first target. I was the newest player in the group, for instance. I didn't have the weakest ship in the group, but they might have thought that Tipa's Vexor was no threat.

I flew back to Teonosude in my pod, figuring that my night was over. At Teonosude I docked and got my rookie ship. I asked if there was anything I could do to help the fleet. "Well, you could spot for us on the far side of the gate." I can do that, I thought. "Like I care about losing a ship that is free."

So I went back, we set up, and I went to the far side of the gate, and sat there within the gate, watching for incoming ships.

I can't say that I really know why, but my heart was pounding away. I'm in a ship that is free, and I'm told that most pirates in this area usually don't podkill. So very little more is at stake for me. Except my pride, that is.

All was quiet for several minutes, but there was tension on the other side of the gate. It seems someone in a Vexor (a generic Gallente cruiser) was sitting in the gate on the far side, and baiting our camp group. Locking them, saying things in local chat, offering challenges. Here's the thing. If the Vexor is attacked, since he is yellow tagged, the gate guns will join the battle on his side, as will all NPC station and gate guns for the next 15 minutes. This is known as Global Criminal Countdown. The Vexor was trying to ensnare us in it.

Hearing about this over voice chat did not exactly soothe my nerves. Steady on, focus, breathe...

Then my overview lit up. A Raven, a popular Caldari battleship, bearing a red tag! I called it out and jumped through the gate. Once through, I warped away, not being combat capable. Then something very curious happened. Nothing at all.

The Vexor continues baiting and taunting. Nothing comes through the gate. After a couple of minutes, I go back through the gate. I can see that the Raven is sitting there at about 1000m off the gate, and a yellow tagged destroyer is there, too. As it turns out, when you jump through a gate, you come out cloaked, about 10km from the gate. Which is well out of range to use it to jump back. So there's no groundhogging possible. But you do come out cloaked, so if you can align and warp out quickly, they won't have a chance to lock and scramble you. In theory.

That's what I do. It works. I check local chat and see two names in system. One is Raven RedTag, the other I can't positively ID as the yellow-tag destroyer I saw at the gate. Still nothing has come through the gate. After a few minutes I warp back and jump through the gate. The pair is still there. They don't have the same corp tag, and the vexor on the other side is from a third corp. But it seems clear that the two are together, and maybe the vexor too.

The die is cast. I warp out and dock at a station to listen to the rest of the combat. We decide to take out the Vexor. Once we start firing the Raven jumps through. Game on. The Vexor is popped, but it's done its job and engaged the gate guns on the enemies side. The Raven has a powerful shield tank, which we aren't really able to break, and all our ships are exploded. Final tally: We killed one cruiser, they got two battlecruisers, a cruiser and a heavy interdictor.

On the plus side, nobody is podded, and we go home with some valuable pvp experience under our belts.

We lost the combat because we blinked first. It was a mexican standoff, the Raven can't beat us without the help of the gate guns, we can't beat it when it has them on it's side. I could have sat on their side of the gate, and taunted them exactly as the Vexor taunted us. And known what they were doing.

Also, we need more gank. DPS was poor, and could be a lot better. Sigh. I can't train everything.

This is a completely different kind of contest than the pvp arena battles I'm used to. Far more strategic, with rich tactics and baiting.

Update: One other thing. I really, really need to get myself into a covert-ops cloak-capable ship. But the training for the required Gallente Frigate V is two weeks!

Another Lesson Learned

"I'm going to have to stop giving you these lessons for free."
-Crash Davis, Bull Durham

Did you want to hear the story of how I lost my first Brutix? You do? We could call it a lesson in lowsec security procedures, provided free of charge by your local lowsec ganker.

Well, I was killing Blood Raiders at an ungated site in Alai, a lowsec system in Genesis. I'll talk more later about why I was doing that. In any case, local had shown only me in system.

Somewhere during the second wave I noticed that there was now another person in the system. Uhoh, I thought, and aligned to an object for a fast getaway. It wasn't enough, though it might have saved a podkill.

My first hint that someone was there with me was a red flag flying across my view. There was no lock alarm. I presume he used a passive targeting system, but probably I just mistook it for one of the Blood Raiders. I was scrambled, and there were drones all about me. (I had a moment of thinking, "what are those funny X's?"). For some reason I thought that the drones were scrambling me, but I'm not sure why. One of my drones (Warrior I) was already dead by the time I locked him and sent them at him.

Once he was locked and weapons pointed at him, I checked his info. An Ishkur, an assault ship. I had no idea at the time what that was, but it's a souped-up frigate, which can carry lots of drones. I knew I was probably overmatched, on the theory of "If I don't know what that ship is, it must be badder than me", but maybe I can hurt him.

I shot at him, but it was ineffectual since I had railguns equipped, and he was orbiting me at very close range. My brand new Tech 2 armor repairer was not going to keep up, and my brand new afterburner wasn't going to get me away.

As soon as he got into hull, I self-destructed and warped away in my pod immediately. There was no saving it.

The key to escaping this encounter was ECM. I didn't have any. It's hard to fit one with my current skills. I have 3 Capacitor Recharger II's fitted to those slots, and I am not quite capacitor stable with everything going. I have decided that I'm going to train up to ECM drones immediately, and start carrying a few whenever I might see combat. If I'd thrown ECM jammer drones at him, I think the lock would probably break pretty fast, and I'd be gone. That's the first lesson.

The second lesson is that I should have left the site when I first noticed him in system. Don't just align, warp out. Maybe leave the system, see what develops. Running a site, you will have tunnel vision on.

The guy who blew up my ship is Sethony, member of a corp named Assault Armaments. In his player info, he describes himself as a professional scientist and inventor. The random ganking part isn't mentioned.

Actually, I find this odd. Players who are random gankers generally brag about it. They like to impress you with how badass they are, but not so Sethony. So what's up with him? I have a sort of guess, but I'm going to first tell you why I was in Alai last night after midnight.

If you look at the dotlan stats for Alai, you will notice that there was pretty much nothing going on in Alai, and hadn't been for several hours.

I want to be an explorer. I've trained up my scanning skills, and I got the ability to use Codebreakers and Analyzers just last Thursday or so. So I want to make use of them. However, everything that was working for me in my three months of play so far pretty much stopped working, roughly last Thursday.

My sales have fallen off the table. Hordes of sellers have come out of the woodwork and are dumping large volumes. It took them a while to catch up with my scanner probe business, but it's now flooded, too.

Since the time I scanned the wormhole that Tipa described mining in, I've found basically no useful signatures whatsoever. Perhaps the introduction of tutorials on scanning has had an influence. It's certainly killed my core scanner probe business, since players get one for free, and usually send it down the buy hole afterwards.

Last week, I was beaten to the punch twice at these sites. At one, I found a salvaging site, salvaged the first can when a frigate came in and grabbed all the rest right from under my nose. At another, I warped in to a radar site to find someone was already there and had killed most of the rats. I was too far away to try to steal the cans, and that's not really my style anyway. That may be changing, though.

Anyway, I can find anomalies, but in highsec, these are (ahem, were) a pitiful undermatch for Sundiver, my Brutix. Seriously, I scanned probably two dozen systems with very little to show for it. The best wormhole I found was a class 2 with a carrier inside. Not actually suitable for me to see if I can tank sleepers yet.

So, it's now late at night on the West Coast on a weeknight. And I'm feeling pretty frustrated with my career choice. I figure I will slip into a lowsec system with low traffic and look for something a bit more interesting. I'd really like to find a hacking or analyzing site, but I settle for a Blood Raider site that has lots of cruisers, and maybe a battlecruiser to finish.

This of course, is where Sethony enters the picture.

So what was he doing there? Here's my guess. He and his buddies have "claimed" that lowsec constellation (it's called Mih, and includes the system Assez) as their harvesting grounds and kill anyone they find lingering there with scanning equipment. I am told that respawn of sites stays within a constellation. There are four lowsec systems and four highsec in Mih. It's next door to the notorious Vecamia, but that system is in a different constellation.

Or maybe he just likes killing people, I don't know.

Every time I get exploded lately, it's been by someone who is grossly overmatched. Kind of like having sand kicked in your face by the proverbial bully. And there's no Charles Atlas available to turn me into Mr. Universe overnight with dynamic tension.

I could learn to fly an Ishkur relatively easily. Mostly, I'd have to train Gallente Frigates V, which I also need to fly covert ops. I'd also need Engineering V and Mechanic V, but I want those for invention anyway. But would it be useful for anything other than as a hunter? Could I handle sites with it? I don't really know.

Time to look at battleclinic, I guess. Because there's no more sleep for me tonight.

Wormhole Chronicles

In addition to being hunted while helping Tipa with her mission in Evaulon, I've been doing a lot of wormhole diving.


In one hole, I found not only a pos and some ships, but a capital construction array and a carrier. In a class 2 wormhole. Clearly it was built there. Also there was some sort of cyno equipment as well. Seems to me that I found secret carrier construction base. And no, I didn't fly over there to eyeball it. I left in a very big hurry, there were ships, too. I was flying my "ghetto cloaked" Imicus. That's "ghetto cloaked" meaning "Don't make eye contact and you'll be fine."

In another, I went in one that corpmate Kzaara had found. On my way over, a Covert Ops cruiser entered the hole, and Kza bounced out in a hurry. We went back in, and saw nobody scanning, so proceeded to scan and clear some sites, including my first Analyzing site! Then a covops entered and began scanning. Kind of heart pounding to think you are being hunted. Like that time in Evaulon...

Currently, I'm logged off in another hole. I found this one and guided corpmate Vahz to some mining after popping the rats at the belt. However the hole got smaller when we came through, starting to destabilize, but not critical. He filled his hold Arkonor and Bistot. His miner and his hauler made it back out but then the hole closed, leaving me there. This was as planned, since I had scanning equipment. This has happened before, so I just scanned for the new hole I knew would open.

The new hole is in nullsec. Deep in nullsec. In territory claimed by sovereign powers. I've scanned several systems for a new wormhole, but so far no dice. I'm camping inside the wh hoping that the exit will change while I'm offline.

These are genuine adventures. Unknown territories, unknown opponents.

Fun times.

Conversation at the Darkwater Household

Mrs. Darkwater: "Say, what's that those guys are doing?"

Darkwater, Jr: "It looks like they are shooting that big rock with lasers."

Me: "They are mining, and that's a big chunk of ice, actually. I'm running security because, well, Toldain just can't be a miner."

Mrs. Darkwater: "Of course he can't be a miner, he's 3000 years old!"

Me: (groans)

Mrs. Darkwater: (giggles)

Me: "Actually, in EVE, I'm more like 3 million years old, but whatever. I'm totally putting this conversation in my blog."

Multiple Contacts on Scanners, Captain

I've been getting into scanning in EVE Online. I have a definite Explorer streak to me, but that's not the only reason. I've read where in addition to hidden complexes with lots of NPC pirates that can be blown up for fun and profit, there are sites that are the keys to advanced technologies, and also wormholes. Lots of stuff that you would never see if you didn't scan for them.

Scanning has turned out to be very engaging, and profitable.



Above shows me positioning my scan probes. I'm using five of them, which is not strictly necessary, but is still handy. The process is I position my scanners around the system, and set their scanning range. The larger the scanning range, the weaker the contacts will be, so this means that there is a process of zeroing in on a signal, known as scanning down.

There's a great video showing the process called "Zen and the Art of Scanning" that's well worth a watch if you're interested. In the shot above, I'm currently trying to scan down the red dot, which you can see (at least if you look at the screen shot in full resolution, has been labeled LFA-335 in the scan window on the lower right).

Ok, once you position your probes, which you launched from a special launcher fitted to your ship, you activate scanning and some nice graphics come up, as seen here:



With reasonably good skills trained, you will get a track on the signal from four probes, which is enough to pin it down to one point. It seems the probes do not have directionality, only distance. And with weak signals, there is a fairly large error in location. So you move the probes closer, reduce the range, and scan again.

Sometimes things don't go well, and you lose the signal, or get it only a few probes, which gives you two dots, a circle or a sphere as the signals location. And this is in 3 dimensional space, so your real-world geometry has some applicability.

Apart from the basic Astrometric skill, which enables the use and manipulation of probes, there are 3 or 4 other skills that may be trained, and they improve such things as accuracy or scanning speed. As always in EVE, whether you train them or not is an interesting choice.

*******

The designers of Eve have taken something which might have been a very simple thing, (Hit the scan button, get results), and turned it into an entire sub-game. I haven't mentioned the fact that there are multiple probe types, some of which are used to track other ships. Scanning can be very important in certain types of PVP ops.

Furthermore, this attention to detail results in powerful verisimilitude. Whenever I do this I feel like I'm Spock leaning over the console, with the green lights across his face from the radar-like screen.

Add to this the fact that I have now been able to find stuff that has resulted in serious financial and technological gain to me and my partners, and you see why I'm totally addicted.

I Came Here to be Podkilled

I was podkilled in EVE for the first time about a week ago. Since my ship was destroyed about 2 hours ago, and the station I fled to camped, I figured I'd write about it.

I was doing something stupid. I was flying my big, slow, clumsy industrial Iteron through lowsec. It was very late, I was on autopilot.

Everyone who plays EVE knows just how dumb that was. But for those readers who don't, let me explain.

One travels through systems by alternately jumping through a jump gate and then warping across a solarsystem to the next jump gate in your path. If you are actively piloting a ship, you can jump to right on top of the jump gate, and very likely be able to jump through the gate before any bad guys camping the gate can lock on to you, even in a slow ship. Unless they put up a Warp Interdiction Bubble, in which case you are screwed, since it drops you out of warp early, about 10k away from the gate, which gives them plenty of time to disassemble you into valuable and easily accessible minerals and parts.

On autopilot though, you don't warp directly to a jump gate, you warp to 10k away and use normal propulsion to close the distance. That give bad guys plenty of time to deal their dirt.

I remember thinking, "what's that flashing? Is that a laser?" I only barely had time to wonder whether I could crawl to the gate in time when pop. When your ship goes boom, you eject in your capsule, which is also warp capable, though has no weapons or armor. However, in less time than it takes for me to write this, that too was destroyed, and I woke up in a medlab far away, or rather, my clone did. Podkilled.

In a strange way, I was happy about it. EVE had seemed safer than it ought to be, I hadn't really seen any bad guys or bad stuff happening. This reassured me, they were there all right. And what I had lost wasn't all that valuable.

Tonight was a little different. I docked in a lowsec system. She was waiting for me when I came out in a Dominix, a Gallente battleship. My Vexor, a cruiser, was no match for it. Locked, webbed (slows my speed), and scrambled (to prevent warp) and crushed. But then something odd happened. My pod was not locked. It was not popped. I went back in the station eventually, watching the station shoot at the criminals. Ineffectually.

So there I was back in the station. With local showing all manner of red-tags outside. Why did I dock here? Why did I ever think it was something I could get away with? And how am I ever going to serve up some payback? I couldn't play any more, because it was clearly unsafe to go outside and try to go back to my base, get a new ship and keep going. I could afford the loss, and the ship was insured, so I can get on with earning more money. But I can't play the game right now, since sitting in a foreign station is boring.

I find myself wondering how a company can survive when its paying customers have experiences like this. I'm not going to quit over this, it's true. But is that true of many people?

In fact, I burn for revenge. The thing is, I have no idea how to manage it. It seems as though players with a five year lead on you have an unconquerable lead, both in money and in skills. But I'm keeping a list.

I still have my goals, and I'm still going to work for them. I want to . I don't want to do stupid, rash things, like docking/undocking with anyone unknown in local. But I don't want to let those fears grow too large either. This mishap has cost me perhaps a million ISK, and some time. I can still work on my goals, I just have to make sure that what I earn from doing dangerous things is enough to cover the costs on those times when it all goes elliptical.

Maybe that's how it works for CCP. People like me who will get back in the game, which makes their commitment to playing even stronger, since they have suffered for it.
I know mine is.

After all, I came here to be podkilled.

Accounting for EVE

I spent some time looking over EVE business/manufacturing tools, and came up with a few interesting items.

• EVE Income Analyzer is a free download Windows desktop app that downloads your wallet and produces lots of interesting reports on sales and trade. It has nothing useful for manufacturing other than sales reports.
  


• Manufacturers might do well to start with the Manufacturing Profit tool at EVE Industry, and a forum thread about it is here. This seems a really good tool to figure out "how much is training skill x to skill y going to be worth?" How much is broker relations or better standing at the station worth? And how much is manufacturing research going to be worth?
  


• For automatic import of data, Dedaf's Production Spreadsheet can import both character skill data and Eve Central price data. If you are running Excel 2003 or later. Probably a later version is better, Excel 2003 xml support is still shaky.
  


• EVE-Online Multiuse Economic Efficiency Planner, or EVE-MEEP will download and store your wallet data, price data from a variety of places (Eve-metrics and Eve-Central). You can do filters on your wallet transactions, I only wish it would then perform a summary. It has tools to help planning production efficiency, scheduling, research probability, skills, even a reprocessing calculator. I've tried it and it has a few bumps, but worth a look. Windows only.


• EVE Central data is a little bit like Wikipedia. Full of lots of interesting and useful data, but maybe not completely reliable. So an ingame corp named Arcelor Capital publishes both a manufacturing cost tool, and regular price data updates. It isn't free, it costs 10m ISK. In the forum thread introducing it, lots of people say they are signing up.

Nowhere did I find the tool that I really wanted. I want to be able to be able to figure out not how much money do I think I will make, but how much money *did* I make with product X. Because I want to know whether it was worth my time or not. Unfortunately, there isn't quite enough data in the cash journal xml to let this be automated. It's hard to match up sales, tax payments and broker fees. That's accounting.

So here I am, a game blogger writing about accounting, which to many is the spokesperson for boring. The truly beautiful thing about EVE is that if you don't like this kind of thing, you can pretty much ignore it and fly around doing something else, like pirating, or running missions. There's such a rich ecology in EVE, there's a niche for you. Maybe you become a contract hauler, a researcher, an explorer. Whatever. And you're never locked in to that job, you can always learn some new skills and do something else.

Big aside: I understand now why some capsuleers are reluctant to leave their station. As Tipa documents, we just got wardecced by a corp that appears to typically blockade an important hub world, Dodixie, for money. Several corps seem to be on their list. So if you want to do business there, you need to contract with someone else to do your shipping. It's dangerous out there in space.

On the other hand, those who do like this stuff engage in conversations about what the right way to do accounting for EVE is, and what are the tools that are needed, and whether banks are smart or dumb to ask for the kind of data they ask for.

READ THIS ONLY IF YOU ARE A FINANCE/ACCOUNTING GEEK
The discussion in the above mentioned thread has a lot of energy over whether to use LIFO, average cost or item selection. I find myself firmly on the side of LIFO, with the addition that if raw material prices drop significantly, I would be inclined to take a charge off, and revalue my raw material inventory lower. Take the bad news up front, that's how I feel. Otherwise, you are living in denial.

This stuff is incredibly engaging.

UPDATE: Added reference to EVE-MEEP

Nullsec Sociology

The dev team of EVE Online is really going where no dev team has gone before.

In this post, developer Grayscale outlines the rationale for changes to some game mechanics upcoming in EVE's upcoming expansion Dominion. First, he talks about the problems they see: [I've translated some EVE-centric jargon into my own words to make this more readable for a general audience]

So anyway, here we are today. Nullsec is largely the domain of large, 2-3000 member PvP alliances, grouped up into inevitable coalitions and engaged in not-quite-impossibly large wars. Costs are mosty covered at the alliance level by a combination of old money and high-value moon minerals. The latter continue to rise in price due to ever-increasing demand from invention, and [the fallout from an exploit last year]. Most of the space that's up for grabs is owned by a clone army of ideologically-distinct but functionally-similar alliances, making the entire political landscape depressingly homogeneous. The state of the military art is not much better - [fleets of little ships] are wheeled out for [highly specialized actions] and then packed away before they can fall victim to [multiple giant little-ship-killers], leaving huge capital fleets to park themselves in front of a never-ending procession of starbases. And the smaller groups, the newer organizations hoping to gain a foothold in the Great Game, are left begging for crumbs around the edges. Who's going to let security-risk nobodies into their back yard when they'll never be able to compete pay as much as a single [high value mining] moon?

The notion that most of nullsec is closed is fascinating, and mirrors what human beings often do. Japan closed themselves for nearly 300 years. China's emperors forbade trade. Jared Diamond describes how New Guinea tribal societies were so closed that literally thousands of languages developed in one large (and unknown to the West until the 1930's) interior valley.

Next, Grayscale says what he thinks is important about nullsec:

Nullsec is cool and different and awesome because of emergence. It's not the most populous area of the game, sure (and more on this shortly), but it provides one of EVE's most compelling and unique experiences. It does this because, by and large, we let you the players call the shots. [...]

By giving players and player organizations tactical and strategic freedom, we allow a situation to arise where each challenge is different from the last, because every time there are different people involved making different decisions which result in different outcomes. [...]

[...] The more decisions that players can make, the more emergence you get, and the more interesting the experience is. Therefore, a primary development goal in nullsec is to enable players to make decisions, which can be boiled down to two directives.

First, try to give players tools. [...]

Second, try to avoid telling players what to do or how to do it.

This is pretty interesting stuff, and nobody else is even trying this. So, what are the EVE devs going to do about the current situation. First, let's talk about the "sovereignty system". For non-EVE players, this is a head-scratcher. EVE has several NPC governments, which do or don't get along with each other, and this drives story and some interaction in the areas where there are NPC cops (known as CONCORD). This space is known as highsec. The sovereignty system among other things, describes which government is sovereign over each system. It's displayed on your screen prominently in every system you are in in high- (and med-) sec.

So, in the upcoming expansion:

• There will be a sovereignty system which will aim to describe who is sovereign in an area, rather than prescribing a particular method of conquest.
• There will be a way to increase the resource intensity of a system that is somewhat labor intensive. (This would be farming on planetside.)
• The value of minerals mined from moons will be reduced.
• Territory held will incur upkeep costs.

There are also some revisions to the way that stations are conquered, but that seems a bit more technical.

They are hoping that this will encourage nullsec alliances to allow settlers, since the settlers will increase the value of the territory, and more revenue will be needed to finance (through taxes) upkeep costs.

The hope is that differentiated strategies will emerge, because there will be more people making decisions, giving a greater chance for differentiation. I see difficulties here.

There are powerful forces for convergence of strategies. Internet forums and other outgame communications permit players to find out when one strategy seems to be working better than another. Divergence, of languages for instance, is dependent on isolation. There isn't much here.

Human beings are huge copycats. The phrase "monkey see, monkey do" would be better as "human see, human do" since homo sapiens is the biggest imitator in existence. And we tend to copy those who are powerful, even if the behavior copied has no bearing on what made them powerful. In game terms, if alliance A with strategy X were to defeat alliance B with strategy Y, you can count on all the observers saying how dominant strategy X is, and to start copying it. This is what human beings do.

I think asymmetric strategies must be based on asymmetric terrain. Europe and China were both repeatedly conquered by "barbarians" emerging from the Central Asian steppes who usually had developed new technology centered around the horse. This is because they terrain well suited to the horse, whereas China (and Europe) had terrain suited to agriculture.

This differentiation exists in Eve, but the agriculture terrain is highsec. So I think the hope for asymmetric conflict in nullsec depends on highsec corps deciding they want to colonize nullsec systems, and coming up with the wherewithal to hold them. The nullsec natives will object to this colonization, of course. And that will be good, at least from the EVE design viewpoint.

EVE: The First 24 Hours

I've now spent my first 24 hours in EVE Online, and I think I'm solidly hooked. My score so far is 12 missions completed, about half a million ISK in the bank, and three ships, a Velator (my starter ship), a Navitas (pictured above warping to a jump gate), and my brand-new Intaki, which is slow but has a big cargo hold. I've splattered about half a dozen Serpentis, and got myself agression-flagged for it, that was kind of a surprise.

I've been a shameless coward, warping away from a few fights that it looked like I couldn't win, and hiding in a dock waiting for my aggression timer to expire. At one point I visited an asteroid field with several wrecks that were marked as "Serpentis Scout" or "Serpentis Initiate" I assumed these were NPC's, but when I opened one up and started to loot it, the game told me I was going to steal from XXX, did I really want to do that. At the same time a Serpentis Spy showed up on scans and started shooting at me, and some odd things happened with my aggression timer, in spite of the fact I decided not to loot.

After about 5 shots it developed that my weapons could not harm the Spy in the slightest, so I ran. Fast, if not hard. I didn't have enough energy to make it to my warp target so I came to a dead stop in interplanetary space, breathing hard. Eventually I made it home. Fun times.

The tutorial line I decided to follow was the merchant line. It had me doing spy-type work, breaking codes and taking salvage, as well as shopping and buying things, transporting them to where they needed to be. My final mission was to make some Antimatter Charge S, and thus learn how manufacturing works. I gathered my materials, hired the assembly line and then had the following (virtual) conversation:

"Here's the stuff you wanted."

"Sorry, that's not nearly enough."

"Wait, you said you wanted five thousand units, not five hundred? Hey, it's just one little zero, how important can it be? Umm, I'll get back to you."

Since there was a bonus payment for finishing the mission within a time limit, I decided to stay up until it finished so I could make the delivery. However, 5000 units takes a lot longer to manufacture than 500. Thus it was that my contract finally delivered at about 0300 local time. I killed the intervening time with mining ops. The intro to the merchant path said that you'd be hiring other people to do this kind of thing for you. I hope that happens soon. Though it was profitable.

One strangeness: An agent at a different College site sent me an email (or maybe more than one, I'm a bit hazy) saying she liked what she heard about me and wanted to offer me more work. But when I went over there (while waiting for my manufacturing run), she said she had no work for me. Thanks for nuthin' babe! Luv ya, buh-bye! Maybe my skills aren't right? But then why send me the email. Sigh, I'm probably being noobish.

When I told Phritz that I was interested in playing Eve, he said, "I heard you need a spreadsheet to play that game". My reaction, having played now, is "Yes, isn't it cool?". I have a spreadsheet. I used it to figure out whether to refine before selling. Answer: No. Also, to figure out which ammo types were profitable to make for immediate sale. Of course, I have no idea of the relative effectiveness of each, but I'll figure that out eventually, I'm sure.

I haven't yet gone to any game guides. I haven't been this clueless playing an MMO since Everquest, and I kind of like it. Playing with stuff, trying stuff out, and discovering things, that's part of the fun. Eventually, I'll join a corp (hint, hint), and word of mouth is an acceptable way to learn tidbits. Eventually, I'll probably break down and look at guides, but right now, I'm having too much fun splashing around in the puddles.

All About EVE

One of the first things I do when I play a new character-based game is ask myself, "How do I make Toldain in this system?" Yes, I know, I'm stuck in a rut, but I'm 3000 years old, what do you expect? In EVE, I was faced with some interesting possibilities. It seems Gallente was going to be my race, since they were the most friendly seeming. Which matches up well. I ended up being forced to choose between the best background and skills (Intaki Artist), the best stat profile or the best appearance. I chose to go with Intaki Diplomat, seeing as how the EQ1 version of Toldain was extremely charming.

By the way, that picture up there is Bette Davis from the 1950 Oscar-winner All About Eve. If you haven't seen it, stop that mining this instant and go rent it and give it a watch. It has few explosions except for most of Bette Davis' lines, but still worth two hours, assuming your skills are queued up.



Anyway, here's what Toldain looks like. Not as pretty as he might be, but somewhat elfin, and with fabulous red hair, for sure. And as a capsuleer, he is immortal. I think his eyes are so sunken because he was up really late last night waiting for a manufacturing run to finish so I could get the speed completion bonus to the mission...never mind, I'll talk about that in another post.

I'm not sure there is such a thing as a mezzer in EVE, maybe some kind of ECM that I'm way too much a noob to do anything with? I look forward to finding out about all this kind of stuff.

In any case, Tipa has inspired me to give EVE Online at least a 14-day trial.

So, I'll be letting you know what's happening. Coming soon, spreadsheets and