On Keeping and Disseminating Information

One of the things that I suggested in a previous post was a dedicated list of wormhole blogs. So without further commentary from yours truly, I present the WHole-Pack, a list of informative and experiential blogs about pilots living in wormholes. This list is also available via Google Reader.

This isn’t a static list nor exclusive. If you think your blog should be here [i.e. you post about wormholes], the let me know.

On Reaching 100 Posts

It had to come sooner or later. I always thought it would be later. I can remember back when I first started and thinking that I would probably never see 100 posts. I’ve never been that faithful at keeping a digital journal and have multiple different abortive attempts saved on various backups through out the house and online. Journals on paper have always been easier for me. Now that I’m here I find I’m at a bit of a loss on what to say. I have several different things that I have been reticent to post about for fear of touching off dry tender or annoying people overly much. Additionally, I so wanted people to see the hundredth post and think, “This is 100 material.”

So, without further ado, I am celebrating 100 posts with the proclamation that Our Eve has been included in CrazyKinux’s BlogPack.

Now that you’ve glimpsed my vanity, let me celebrate by making announcements.

1. The pilots of Dark Star Galactic Engineers [DSGE]- Wormhole Engineers Division have formally split off into a separate, wormhole focused corporation, Wormhole Engineers [WHEN.]. Not new information per se but leading up to #2.
2. As a focused wormhole corporation, we will be foregoing most all high/low/null-sec activities [excepting support logistics].
3. Many of the mission/pvp-minded pilots in DSGE have moved to our sister corporation, Fearless Bandits.
4. Industrial pilots will be remaining in DSGE or with an as yet unannounced industrial corporation.
5. In approximately three weeks, these focused corporations will be joining into an general support alliance built from the ground up to offer mutual support while maintaining individual corporate focus.

All this will allow us to do several things more efficiently. Those who are interested in missions and pvp will be able to do so without the burden of worrying about corp-mates living out in a wormhole. Those who are living out in the wormhole won’t be feeling bad if “so-and-so” isn’t fulfilled living out of a tin can in the wilderness. And the burden of maintaining high-sec research facilities is removed from both of them while still keeping those resources available to them. All this coupled with a fresher set of leadership that is flatter [not so top-down in style] and committed from the ground up to inter-corp co-operation and movement as necessary. At the core of each is a group that get their jollies doing the very thing the corporations are dedicated to. Thus they could also be considered “core”-porations.

And Happy 100 Posts!

On Living And Lasting In Wormholes

In a recent article Star Defender ponders the longevity of wormhole occupants and the preponderance of persons heading back into known space. This is increasingly true, I will agree. One of the other things we have noticed is that even within a corporation, we’ve found that some people who loved the wormhole when they first moved in, decided that it wasn’t really a long term option for them.

After doing this for almost a year, we’ve learned that it is, as much as anything, a lifestyle issue. Some people are looking for isk and have decided that missions or tending their rock gardens in high sec is more to their liking. Others miss the constant flow of traffic and capsuleers that they can shoot at. We look for people who like smaller ops, closer knit groups and slightly neurotic. The people who end up doing the best are the ones who don’t like crowds, love making things work [especially without the right tools], and are used to living on the fringes of society.

In many ways, Letrange’s post on Alliances as they relate to wormhole life is indicative of the issues involved in long term wormhole residency. If you haven’t read it, let me take the liberty of paraphrasing him, “1st, go read Letrange’s Blog Entry. Back. Good.” Basically as it relates to wormhole life, alliances are different. Both alliances and corporations need to start thinking approaching life differently from their counterparts in high-sec, low-sec and null-sec. There are aspects of all of them that apply, but there some things that need to be thought through differently.

The first to be addressed is living out of what amounts to a caravan parked on the Gaza border. You desperately need fuel, supplies and food; however, parties on both sides of you are armed and should be considered dangerous to your well-being. You have to find ways to be self-sufficient while sharing with those also in your RV. One hopes that everyone living in the same place is courteous, thinks exactly alike and doesn’t have any body odour. If you solve this in a manner that keeps everyone happy, let me know.

Other issue that exists after a short amount of time is resource availability. CCP stated that they never intended wormholes to be a long-term residential solution. They’ve set it up so all your fuel and possibly everything else you use up will come from beyond the confines of your home. Couple this with the simple fact that wormholes tend to ‘dry up’ with usage and soon there are a plethora of people and paucity of provender for them. This is the main issue for people that otherwise have the correct state of mind to survive in a hostile environment making ends meet with their own wits. They just need more ‘content’ to be content.

As a corollary to this, the more pilots that you have in a given system, the better equipped the corporation will be to deal with any of the situations that happen to come upon it. Besieged by battleships, bring it. Perplexed by pirates, pulp ‘em. Stymied by Sleepers, sic ‘em. But as above, it takes a lot of resources to provide a lot of resources and all of them chew through it rather quickly.

So we’re left with the phrase, “Lifestyle Choice” that I really think best captures what it means to be a wormhole resident. Things aren’t often grand out here, nor does it all happen with clockwork efficiency. Fleets are often best described as ad hoc and would make most dedicated FC’s cry. Logistics are always a bit of strain and a large percentage of time is dedicated to just making sure everything doesn’t come crashing down. I think it is ok to say that those of us who tend to stay out here in the wormholes are different. There’s a niche out here that we honestly feel blessed to be able to fill and wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

For the more observant readers [both of you], this is no surprise. For the rest of you, this wonderful piece of elocution is a wonderful guest post from a frequent partner in Sleeper related homicides and other nefarious asteroid related crimes. Please welcome and read, Penny Ibramovic, author of the wonderful Tiger Ears –Kename Fin

I sit docked at a station, keeping an eye on business. I open up the market interface to see how my orders are selling. I check if stations have received new deliveries and I am being undercut, modifying my prices if necessary and sustainable. Based on the market information, I instruct my production facilities to install new manufacturing runs, hoping that my mineral stocks allow it. If not, I hit the market again to buy more processed rocks. During all of this, my Crane floats serenely in the hangar as I conduct all my affairs through interfaces connecting directly in to my pod.

My thoughts naturally drift to wondering what it will be like when Walking in Station (WiS) becomes a reality, when I am flushed out of my pod goo and set free to explore stations beyond their hangars. Instead of staring at my admittedly beautiful ship behind several windows of information, I could be watching people, probably other capsuleers, from a table in a café, sipping on a cappuccino, albeit still from behind several windows of information. It would make quite the difference to see capsuleers come and go. Individual privateers will get new mission briefs to be completed, or groups of pilots all leave the area at once, boisterously heading off for a scheduled mining operation, or maybe quietly sneaking away to roam local low-sec systems for easy prey. Still daydreaming about the possibilities, I check my current station to see who also is currently docked.

Space is big, and not just the parts with nothing in it. There are thousands of stars, hundreds under the umbrella of Concord in high-sec. Each system has several planetary bodies, many of them have stations in orbit, and a few planets more than one. Even if a system looks busy, with maybe twenty capsuleers present, the choice of place to dock means you are unlikely to find more than five or so capsuleers in the same station at any one time. Some of them may probably be shaking off a clone jump, or worse, and not feel in the mood to be seen in public. WiS sounds like an interesting idea, until you realise how lonely it is out in space.

Even the wretched hive of scum and villainy that is Jita probably won’t be interesting more than a couple of times, after dodging scams and pushing through crowds to finally get served or find someone you know. And unless you dock in the navy station at Jita IV, moon 4 you still may struggle to find others to talk to. If it weren’t for intricate communication relays, allowing for real-time conversations across the galaxy, many capsuleers could go days without speaking to another person. But maybe that’s the problem, the universality of some channels meaning there is little need to gather in specific stations, so capsuleers don’t. It’s a slim hope, but maybe when it becomes possible to meet outside of our pods more capsuleers will be more likely to dock somewhere specific.

Capsuleers getting drunk before Angel Extravaganza

It’s a slim hope to expect pilots to congregate, if only because navigating systems can get tedious. Jumping across several systems is seen as a necessary means to an end for most tasks, but it is yet to be seen how many capsuleers are willing to jump five, six, or maybe a dozen systems to meet face-to-face, for a corporation meeting or a simple chat about ship fittings, when a simple communication channel could be opened instead. Indeed, it needs to be seen how WiS communications are handled before this can be properly gauged. Speech bubbles floating above capsuleers’ heads could make the air crowded quickly, and whilst the ephemeral nature of the conversation may appeal to some shady characters, the necessity of continually having to repeat yourself will annoy others. If WiS relies on the same communication window as other channels, I am sure many pilots will question the wisdom of spending half-an-hour flying to a station only to monitor a chat channel that would be identical ten systems away.

None of this is to say WiS can’t, or won’t, bring new aspects of capsuleer life to New Eden. Personally, a change of background whilst in a station will be welcome, even if it is only me and the waiter in the VIP room. I won’t get so desperate as to mingle with my crew or other civilians. And there is definitely one feature that would make docking in a particular station enticing: PvP. It would really add to the atmosphere of a station and lead to more interesting social dynamics if it were possible to spike a rival’s drink, start a bar fight, or stab a dastardly pirate. And I think this is the real purpose behind Dust 514. It may begin with ground battles for planets and moons, but Dust 514 must surely soon be revealed as the prototype system for WiS. You can leave your pod behind, but don’t forget your weapon.

In a recent meme-sharing, eve-blog-wide, map-a-thon sharing session, many of us who post articles about their lives in the pilot’s pod, gave account of the places they’ve visited via the NeoCom map computer’s tracking of “Systems I’ve Visited“. For one reason or another, I skipped that part of my map and never managed to actually post anything about it. If you are interested in that still, you can look at the SIV link above and see the ground I’ve covered.

In an unrelated post, but similar theme, Godless Wanderer, recently posted a look at his skill training allocation in a graphical chart. This strikes me as a very similar meme. What are the skill breakdowns by size? Have you been spending your time in missiles or guns? Do you have support skills or just skimming along by the skin of your teeth? Where have you been?

“]

Where I've Been [Training

Regardless of what I managed to get trained, there is always something else I want to do and no less than 4-5 new skills [plus several that need raising] to get it. I only wish EVE gave you more choices on what to train!

So feel free to jump on the bandwagon and share some of your skill distributions. I would guess that most of you probably aren’t so wildly disproportionate in your skill sets, but I could be wrong.

It’s been a fairly long time since I have managed to communicate anything even remotely resembling a post. I apologize to those of you dropped by earlier, expecting to find something new, only to find the same old missives from before. In the hiatus, I had the great affliction of watching my laptop die a horrible death to multiple internal system failure [hard drive sector errors, screen backlight and cable, inverter board, graphics card, DVD drive failures].

Then at approximately the same time, my 3G modem decided to start acting up. This killed any thoughts of actually seeing the internet from home and abroad as well as piloting any spaceships. I was able to eventually get one of the office computers configured to run EVE, but couldn’t do much more than check orders and run Science/Industry jobs.

It’s become painfully apparent that I was entirely too dependant upon my laptop for getting any of my day-to-day tasks completed. I felt awash in the ocean of reality with out a life-perserver to keep me afloat. Information that I could normally file away and utilise was piling up, flowing through cracks and threatening to break down the dam of consciousness.

Maybe, just maybe I’ll be able to get back to something more approximating a regular schedule. Though, I must forewarn, there is a job change and a move to a new place on the immediate horizon [end of the month].

The Musings
Some pilots may be a big overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information available to them in this day and age. By New Eden 105, systems have all been settled, contested and resettled, some of them many times over. The standard, accepted methods and mechanics for doing just about everything have been codified, argued, bugged, nerfed and buffed [not necessarily in that order]. Guides, opinions, thoughts and aphorisms abound on every conceivable subject.

Through most of that, one particular pilot has posted his thoughts and the thoughts of others on his own personal information portal. Most of us would have to be crazy to generate the amount of connections and keep up with them all that he does. Which actually goes a long way toward explaining the name. Crazy Kinux, or CK for short, goes the extra mile to keep a whole lot of information, people and reviews connected. By way of analogy, think of CK’s site as an autopilot for the New Eden Pilots’ Blogerati Class ships. But even with one person collating all that data, it’s easy to get lost in the deluge. “What To Do?” Let me be of assistance.

EVE Blog Pack
The first thing to catch is the Blog Pack. This is a collection of thirty generally EVE related blogs that are regularly updated. This has become what might be called the central core of EVE related information. For the most part it’s a good place to start when looking at other pilots’ thoughts and presentations. Regulars here post information about their PVP exploits, pirating, fleet operations and industrial shenanigans. Having said all of that, I do think it’s growing a bit long in the tooth and could use some love and care. There are some members of the Blog Pack that for one reason or another aren’t as useful. Generally these fall into one or more of three different categories:

• 1. For one reason or another they aren’t able to post about EVE.
• 2. The EVE related posts are highly infrequent.
• 3. They’ve moved on to other places/times/universes and no longer fly in New Eden.

This doesn’t mean they don’t have good information, and as a resource are still good. Just like in EVE, caveat emptor and take the older data with a grain of salt. I personally keep a random selection of 10 recent posts from this list on the right hand side. They rotate among the most recent posting from any given author in the list.

EVE Blogroll
The second point is the EVE Blogroll list of over 110 EVE related blogs. This is where the sheer size & force of EVE’s impact is most evident. Pilots are putting their thoughts out there for everyone in a manner unseen before. There are Arkanor, Bistot and Crokite in these belts of blogs and I never cease to be amazed at what I can learn from perusing this list. It is overwhelming to go through them all at once or even in a week. I would suggest picking a few out from the list [start at the bottom] and take note of the ones you like as you move through. If you use an aggregator [like Google Reader] add them in so you can easily track them later. Again, these are the hidden gems of the EVE data stream.

Speedlinking
Haven’t got time for a full on search of what’s new this week? Look no further than this fourth item: Speedlinking. CK does another wonderful service for the Pod Pilot Profession by cataloguing his travels through the New Eden Information Universe and presenting them for us all to devour. If you’ve been busy mining, missioning and murdering [or even missing-in-action] all week, you can quickly get caught back up with a good perusal of the Speedlinking posts for that week. This alone is worth the price of admission. You did pay right?

EVE Podcasts
The EVE community is full of not only great pilots pouring their hearts into postings about their professions, pundits prognosticating the impending doom of New Eden and players pirating poor plebes. It is also an environment rich in multimedia information presentations as well. The list of podcasts available keeps increasing and the quality has thus far been impressive. The citizens of EVE are nothing if not prolific. Speaking of multimedia, perhaps there could be a collection of links to some of the best video and screen captures?

The Links, Guides, Ship Setups, EON Mags, Alliances & Corporations
These are all short cuts to earlier articles that CK has written or collected about various topics. It is worth of search if you are looking for particular information and as a starting point. A quick note about information, it’s only as good as the last time it was updated. Some of the links are starting to show their age as a dynamic environment like EVE constantly changes and forces older information and links out the door with a swift kick to the seat of the pants.

Now to be fair, CK also has a great little video of his site and how to get around. But if I just started you off there, I wouldn’t have been able to entertain you with my own commentary about his information and presentation now would I. To quote Maximus Decimus Meridius, “Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained? Is this not why you are here?”

I wanted to take a quick look at some of the connections that are being made around the EVE universe. It is wonderful that a lot of pilots have been getting their thoughts together and putting them down in type for the rest of us to learn from. For just a small sampling, we’ve added a list of them on the right under the heading “EVE Blogs”. It is exciting to see all of the people with varied feelings and experiences about flying in New Eden.

Speaking of connections, the first outside connections have been made to my own experience logs here at Our EvE. Thanks and kudos out to CrazyKinux for speed linking us this week as an addition to the EVE blogosphere. The number of blogs is daunting and trying to keep up with even a portion of them can be overwhelming. It is great that we have someone like CK keeping them all under his watchful eye.

We’re still a young communique and don’t have much in the way of readership yet. But we are beginning to link in to others in the hopes that the greater EVE community is served by it. I know we’ve all learned something from reading about someone else’s experiences in flying around the universe.