On Crucibles Of Change

So in a few moments, the universe as we know it will collapse in on itself in a cataclysmic cacophony of conniptions that we will come to call Crucible. There are changes enough for everyone, including everything from lowly munitions all the way up to galaxy spanning goodies. There are new modules/equipment as well as new ships to put them on. There are old types of equipment with new abilities and properties as well as new paint on old ships.

Perhaps more than with other releases I have been keeping an eye on this update. Regular daily Singularity updates and visits have become a part of my routine as much as my morning coffee. Perusing the differences of the new equipments, ships and visuals has become something of a habit. By-and-large, there is little in the changes that will effect my day-to-day routine significantly [with the exception of corporate bookmarks - which still seem only half of a solution]. There is a bit of internal struggle that coincides with all of this change, mostly centered around the question of, “Why do I care so much?” Bear with my introspective, belly-button browsing as I consider how all of this is affecting me so deeply.

In a bit of confession and disclosure, I have toyed with the notion of hanging up my pilot’s license and settling down into a long stasis. Over the last year has seen some interesting flak and change happen in the universe and not all of them have been useful or happy. There were times and days where I could not be arsed to haul my pod into a ship to do much of anything, let alone fly around, shoot, scan, salvage, explore…. So in the midst of all this malaise, comes a rather expected update to the universe with rather unexpected feelings attached to it.

Where there was apathy before, suddenly there is attention. Where before I felt like giving up, I am tending to feel things going up. I look forward to sliding into my ships and launching forth to interact with the others around me. If nothing else, at least there is in Crucible the concern for quality that derides my contempt and compels my attention.  I am ready for change. The world is again before me on a plate of stars waiting to be devoured with the utensils of ships and shots.

I would like to leave you all with a quick Wordle of the patch notes mentioned above. I was singularly impressed with the results and how much it reflects the essence of change.

On Tier 3 Planetary Production – My Current Setup

As I have reviewed what has happened in getting a good sized Planetary Interaction setup organised, several things began to pop up. There was this constant nagging sensation that I was Doing It Wrong™. There also had to be a way to get a better yield and some how make use of the CPU that was not being used. The first idea was to see if would be better to separate extraction and production completely. To do this, I enlisted the help of The Puppet to set up his four planets to extract each of the four P0 needed in the production of Robotics.

First a quick survey of the system gave us a good rundown of what resources were available on each of the planets [or just glancing online somewhere] and in what quantities they are present at each one. This part was something that I felt was important as it allowed me to eliminate some planets in favor of others. From this survey I whipped up a quick and dirty sheet of numbers to help plan out my strategy:

Kename's Ice Planet

The Puppet's Ice Planet

The Puppet planned to just extract the raw materials and export the refined P1 materials and store them in the Corporate Hangar Array for me to haul to the planet where I was building Robotics. He set up on the ice planet to extract Heavy Metals as it had the largest concentration of that resource. I added an extraction set up for the ice planet as well and soon we were pulling in a great volume of Heavy Metals and exporting quite a fair amount of Toxic Metals to put toward Cons. Elect. production later. One of the big benefits of the way the new extractor head system works is the ability to move them around freely to adjust to changing deposits of resources or fix and fiddle with any of them without having to destroy and rebuild a colony every time. Due to the way the CPU/power grid worked out, I was not able to get an additional basic industrial facility as I was short about 50 PG. Since there was copious amounts of CPU available, I opted to add a second Landing pad and put the intermediate P1 there for storage and export.

Kename's Storm Planet

The Puppet's Storm Planet

For his second installation he set up on the storm world to extract Base Metals. This was a deliberate decision based on my previous survey of the system. All but one of the planets in our wormhole has deposits of Base Metals and at fairly high concentrations. The storm planet has the benefits of being the largest quantity by percentage coupled with a fairly low planetary radius to keep link costs down. It also does not have any other resources necessary for production of robotics. The lower CPU and PG needs for links allows for an additional processor instead of the second spaceport of the ice planet. The Base Metals are refined and converted into Reactive Metals for the later production of Mechanical Parts needed to make Robotics.

Kename's Plasma Planet

The Puppet's Plasma Planet

The third move was into toward the plasma planet’s set up. It was initially set up to be both an extraction and production plant. Some conversion was necessary in order for it to fit the new structure of pure extraction instead. The basic industry facilities were retained but in some cases repurposed with new schematics. Additionally the the spaceport for storage and export was kept intact. Production schema were updated and routes modified to match. The radius of the planet is similar to that of the storm and so has a similar number of processors. The Puppet here also set up shop to extract Non-CS Crystals and produce Chiral Structures for later incorporation into Cons. Elect.

Kename's Barren Extraction Planet

The Puppet's Barren Planet

Finally the last extraction planet was one of the Barren Planets. There was not much difference between the two and their relative deposits so The Puppet put up an extractor colony on the first planet and I opted to build my extraction facility on the second one. The idea was to avoid interfering with each other’s setup and thereby maximising the returns. The barren planets both have somewhat mediocre deposits of Noble Metals, but the only other planet with the resource is the plasma planet which is already obligated for Non-CS Crystals.

After all of that, it seemed like the bulk of the work was finished. Eight planets had been set up to extract the four necessary P0 materials and refine it into the four Tier 1 Products used to produce Consumer Electronics and Mechanical Parts for final inclusion of the Robotics.

Making Robots

Backup Production Facility

The last step was supposed to be the most straight forward as it could be set up on any planet and did not require survey. Again, I opted to have this set up on the second barren planet in our home wormhole system that I was not using for Noble Metals [but The Puppet was] as it had the smallest diameter and thus was the most economical in terms of CPU and PG needed for links. This was a fairly complex setup and in hindsight would do a couple of placements differently [for aesthetic reasons mostly]. The lessons learned in previous iterations and attempts at PI were useful in making sure that things went smoothly.

The first installation [after the Command Center] was the Spaceport. Additional Advanced Industrial Facilities [AIFwere placed around the Spaceport in a hexagonal layout while attempting to minimise the distance between them. The result was a tightly packed set of 25 AIF. The next step was to link everything together with the minimum number of links and avoiding any long links. This involved a bit of trial and error and sketching to get it set up with the least number of links without overloading any of them or requiring upgrades if necessary. The final result was 5 branches of 4 AIF connected in a general ‘Y’ or ‘T’ shape and one branch with 5 AIF.

On Colonising and Mining a Planet

In my first foray into Planetary Interaction [PI], there was a mythical 4th Tier [P4] level product that could then be used to potentially build POS arrays and structures. I scoured the ‘show info’ windows and read as much as I could about how it all stacked together [P0->P1->P2->P3->P4], which planets were necessary and even which POS arrays were moving and selling, how much of what it took to make them, which planets were optimal for that, what skills would be needed, et cetera. I briefly [nearly non-existent moment in time] toyed with the idea of building Corporate Hangar Arrays as a lot of them were showing up on tower kills [a few that I happened to be a part of – shooting them that is].  I have seen a lot of other pilots talking about their planetary colonies, how they set them up, what they are producing and what they have found to work well for them. I wanted to share my experience and hopefully offer help for someone else looking to set up their own PI production chain.

As it turns out, this was going to be quite beyond what would be profitable for a single pilot [or even two] to effectively manage with sufficient appreciable return. Perhaps if an entire corporation were committed to producing all of the parts involved it could be a profitable venture. Realising full well that the first ‘M’ in MMO is for multiplayer [the second is for migraine], I still thought there must be something that a single player could do with PI that would be a least somewhat profitable.

I spent a fair amount of time looking at the spreadsheets, making my own, pulling up prices from the late eve-metrics and eve-central and deciding what might be possible. In the end I opted to start with just a couple of little things to help offset POS fuel. Enriched Uranium seemed good as it could all be produced at the plasma planet we already had and then could be used to help fuel the POS we were living out of. Easy, right?

It took a couple of tries [including a full tear down and rebuild of the colony] to get everything situated in some semblance of order. Along the way I learned important lessons about planet size [bigger means longer, more expensive links], production set up [work in reverse – more on this later], and repetitive stress syndrome from the click-a-palooza involved in turning everything on. As I learned I also read more and discovered several great tools for planning:

• EVE-Central
• EVE eye Intergalactic Positioning System
• EVE University Wiki
• 4WARD’s EVE PI Spreadsheet

Additionally I began to become more efficient in planning my colonies to try an squeeze the most out of them. This is a fairly difficult pursuit as the changes made to PI since incursion have affected the ability to do single planet construction.

On Adding, Subtracting and Finding Yourself Happy

Some things are easily quantified and measured. They can be numbered, totalled, divided, analysed and reported. This is basic maths and accounting, in that you know how much of something there is and how much it is worth in time, effort, profit, etc. These are the things that most people aim for and are more than happy pursuing. More and better ships, profit, ore, isk, research, production, flying, etc.

On the other hand, there are the unquantifiables. The things that defy counting and spurn attempts to wrangle them into mathematical formulae. The time spent teaching a new corporation member the way things are done or walking a newbie through basic scanning 101 can be really hard to put a number on/in/by. How do we assign a value to the logistics pilot that kept several millions or even billions of isk on the field longer in a fight? Is there any quantitative measure for the time spent making sure the POS was set up efficiently so that arrays were easily accessed without flying back and forth all over the bubble? How about the amount of energy and resources put into manning a gate camp?

Still another thing to consider is how much isk is enough? The answer ranges from the PVP pilot who like heroin addicts, just wants enough for the next fix, er, ship to the full-on industrialist/trader who needs all of the isk to be satisfied. Most of us fall somewhere in between where we have a comfortable point, varying slightly by our preferred hulls and fittings. We could all use more and could survive on less.

Orakkus recently wrote about what it takes to be a Solid Pilot, and I think it is just as applicable to the discussion of value [and worth a plug as well]. There is a certain value to a pilot that can fully fit a sniper battleship and the one that knows she needs to stick to something else. It is often immeasurably valuable for fleet commanders to know that the the people in the fleet know their roles and can adequately fill them. I am afraid of only two things in EVE: 1) Logging in and finding that my friends have decided to pack it up and move to some other venue; 2) Idiots.

The first is mitigated by the communication channels that friends share in and outside of New Eden but the second is something that shatters dreams in fits of screaming nightmares. This is another item of value that is hard to quantify. How long do you invest in people that seem to be unable to learn or at least very slow to pick things up? Almost every cost/benefit analysis argument generally boils down into either a he-said-she-said situation or becomes so subjective as to be meaningless.

On Being Angry With CCP and/or GMs

I’ve read a lot of rants in my life. Everything from cats eating neighbours’ birds, gimped drone bay on Rokh, dogs leaving their calling cards on the lawn, cans flipped, presidents sleeping with interns, GCC timers, GUI problems [or complete and utter failure at Human Interface Design 101] and letting people talk to Mr. G. Brown. But all in all, I’ve always assumed the majority of them are emotional responses to complex issue that don’t particularly affect me directly. So I smile, nod my head and move on.

Until Now.

Banned Wagon

I’m on the bandwagon. No, wait, I’m on the Banned Wagon. Persona non grata in EVE. I go to log in and I’m greeted with – “Login Data Incorrect” and no explanation. Huh, fair enough, I must have mistyped my passw… nope. 0/2 on login attempts. Quickly check SpaceBook, er, EVE Gate. It’s more informative, “This account has been banned.” To quote a corp-mate, “Bweh?” What is going on here. I quickly double check my email in case I missed something. Nothing I can find. I check the spam folder, nothing there. Check the servers spam que – AHA! A very generic message from a supposed Mr. GM Something or other indicating that my account had been hacked and as a security measure the account had been banned. Ok, fair enough, I’m all for them trying to run a tight ship and protect us from the evil account hackers and keyloggers.

As indicated in the email, I replied and asked for the account to be reset so that I could reset the password and survey the damage. As a corporate director, I was a bit fearful of the damage that could be wreaked on both our corporation’s wallet, our assets and those of our alliance mates. I quickly checked with them as well as the CEO. Interestingly enough, my character had not logged in since my own last activity. Additionally, the millions of isk in the corporate wallet were untouched. This is one very incompetent hacker…

24 hours pass… no reply to petition, no reply to email, no status indication at all. Additional petitions are made from other accounts to try and get some semblance of a response, acknowledgement, update. My last skill training ran out 20 hours ago [which was why I was trying to log in to begin with]. 36 hours. 48 hours, a reply to one of the players petitions, “Your account has been reset as per the email sent in response to your original petition on ….” First things first, reset the password and get to training again while surveying the damage to my personal wallet. Ok, skill set, wallets – Full. In point of fact, there was more isk in my wallet than when I logged off 2 days ago [several large contracts had cleared as well as personal donation from a very dear friend upon the loss of a close personal ship. What? Where's my 0 isk balance? Why are there still assets in my name? Why didn't the evil hackers  strip my assets, post offensive pictures on the eve-o forum, offline all our towers and kick everyone out of the corp?

Hmm. Sure their must have been a reason they Fort Knox'd my account? The sheer paucity information released leads to my rampant speculation wherein I have then two broad scenarios that I can imagine [help me if I'm missing something]:

1. My account was hacked in such a fashion as to easily alert prescient CCP/GMs to it’s compromised status and they reacted so quickly that no damage had been done while incompetent third world sweatshop hackers failed to capitalise on their access and steal the millions, nay, billions in ill-gotten gains from myself and corporation.

OR

2. CCP/GMs are clicking buttons at random over there in New Hawaii and wouldn’t know a hacked account from a large cloud of volcanic dust if it blew up in their back yard.

If scenario one is correct, I encourage everyone to take a moment and give CCP/GMs a little golf clap for their supernatural ability to ferret out RMTs, hacked accounts and macro miners/ratters with ease. I would be momentarily happy to be a part of their Unholy Rage. If you’re right, everyone is happy and the experience gets better.

If scenario two is correct [and I'm more inclined to believe this given that I can just about find macro miners in every system with ice and macro ratters everytime our wormhole exit pops up in null-sec coupled with my own recent experience], then I am just sad. OK, angry and sad. I lost 48 hours of training time for someone else’s mistake? I missed out on 200-500m in revenue and cost my corp-mates the opportunities to do so as well, due to contributing to group activities? If you are wrong, admit you made a mistake and set things right.

On Running Out To High-Sec For Some Groceries

As I slip into my ship, I get an incoming com from one of our pilots. He’s actually the only other pilot right now. He mentions that there’s a four jump exit to high-sec and he’s going out to grab some Quafe as it’s getting dry here at home. I am also rather keen to grab a new book or two to read as I’m nearly finished with the current series I’m reading, Recon. It has been a really good series with lots of fun times and some new information along the way, but by the fifth one in the series, it was getting a bit long winded. I am usually patient about finishing the books I start, but for some reason Recon drug by. The Exhumer series seemed to go much faster and even finishing up reading the Astrometric Rangefinding series rather quickly, though it was published under another title.

New Mini Game?

As the other pilot hit the last system before k-space, he reports back that there is small bubble on the hole but poorly placed. Knowing that he’s intending to bring a ship back through, I volunteer to do some bubble popping. I decide that since it is not absolutely essential that I clear the bubble out quickly [other pilot has several jumps to get his ship picked up] and I do not really want to waste any ammo on the stupid thing [sig-rad is tiny on those things] I opt for a pulse Coercer. For those that maybe know some of the ships I usually fly, this is a fairly wide departure [not because it is Amarr] because I am exceptionally unskilled at laser turrets. This almost seems counter culture to flying ships in space, but the reality is, they just never appealed to me all that much. So I trundle the three jumps to the bubbled hole and jump through. Sure enough, a bubble greets me, but I am immune to its psychological effects and uncloak and lock it up. I start flying with the beams of light and watch as the shields on the bubble start to melt satisfyingly, albeit not too terribly fast.

Suddenly, there is a sound, a flash of light [or darkness], and there is a Tengu sitting 10 km off my stern and beginning to lock my ship. Ack, alas and alack, I am in a destroyer fit with racks of heat sinks and some cap rechargers. This is not going to be a fight, it’s going to be a little blip in the pond. Salvo 1 and the shields are gone. Salvo 2 and I am trying to remember if my clone was up-to-date. Salvo 3 and at 30% shields it dawns on me that I have not moved since I jumped into this system and the wormhole is still right there. I start spamming the jump button hoping that my poor ship [actually someone else's poor ship that I borrowed] will hold together until the session change starts. Lo, there is sound and light again and I’m sitting in a distinctly different location though with about 2% of my armor left and thankfully no structure damage.

Not waiting to see if Mr. Don’t Harsh My Bubble decides to follow for the kill, I immediately start heading back home to rethink my strategy in light of the change in situation. I update the pilot out on his shopping spree and he is easily swayed into agreeing that we should ‘defend’ ourselves [ignoring the fact that we may have, um, started things] and try and catch the sneaky, wormhole camping strategic cruiser.

Strats on the Brain

As a bit of an aside, I have been thinking a lot about the ‘strats’ both from the perspective of picking one up myself as well as their reputation. Though they deserve the kudos they get for being good at a lot of things and their ability to quickly specialise at something extremely well, they are still ships. They can and do die with increasing frequency. From this I have a couple of electrifying bolts of insight:

1. There are a lot of really bad ship fittings in the universe.
2. Everyone and their clone is buying ‘strats’.
3. The sheer number of possible fittings is confusing to say the least.
4. Someone is bound to get it wrong, sometime.

and

5. How much of their reputation is based on fear.

So we decide to ship up in something suitably pointy and head back and ‘defend’ our right to fly through a system they are living in. The ship shopper contacts another pilot and he slips into our well crafted bait ship to draw the Tengu pilot into engaging. In this case it is a Harbinger that we managed to forget to refit before heading out. It has lasers… well, it has lasers. Ship shopper jumps in a Lachesis to get the long range point and damp the Tengu’s range. I waver between using the Pilgrim that I just finished studying up for or something else. In the end, my rather uncommon sense wins out and I opt for a Rook because the Tengu did not have any turrets when he attacked me. We move out, hoping that we can still catch him and that he does not have a scout on our side of his wormhole [we would have] or backup [we are not likely to think about having backup until we see structural damage].

At the wormhole, things seem quiet and so we engage in some tribal war calls and Bait is sent through to begin bubble burning and we sit in quiet contemplation of the swirling colours around us. In a few seconds we get the call, “Tengu uncloaked at 60km and locking,” to which we indecisively wonder if that is within our engagement range. Bait is ordered to try and kite him in the other direction for a few seconds and we prep to jump. As Bait’s shields finally disappear, we jump in and begin racing for the Tengu. He’s closed to within 50 of the hole and Ship Shopper is able to get a point. I’m able to lock but the first round of jams all fail which causes a bit of distress for Bait. About this time a fourth pilot joins us in his Curse. His neutralisers are welcome, but I’m unsure how effective. His drone on the other hand are very good at what they do.

In order to keep this from going too well, Tengu’s tango partner, Dr. Maelstrom lands 100km off an starts pinging at Bait as well. The ECM kicks in on round two and I try one on the Dr., and manage to get off a lucky strike [Caldari racial jammer on a Minmatar ship] which saves Bait who by now is flaming. Tengu has not been able to do anything since Ship Shopper and I got him damped and locked down and we begin to see his shields crumple. At about 10% shields the Maelstrom warps off just as Bait returns from the nearby planet to get in range of the wormhole [which was still bubbled, but remember, poorly]. The rest of the skirmish flashes by as the bubble-baitings, cloaky camping, terrible Tengu shatters in a sparkling shower of light and we fail to get a lock on the pod. Curse, Ship Shopper and I manage to loot the wreck on the way out of the system. Fearing a larger reprisal, we opt to not target the bubble and head back to our own home. Before we jump, the Tengu pilot lets fly with a ‘gf’ in local and we respond by thanking him for sticking the fight. As we’re warping through another system, Curse asks what a ‘Smokescreen’ Covert Ops Cloak is.