Our EvE » learning

Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto

Kename Fin — Sat, 07 May 2011 06:40:00 +0000

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:

Planet	Aq Liq	Base Mtl	Carbon Cmpds	Micro Org	Noble Mtl	Hvy Mtl	Non-CS Crys	Susp Plas	Ionic Sol.	Noble Gas	Reac Gas	Plank Col.
I	25	75	75	75	33	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
II	25	75	75	75	25	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
III	0	40	0	0	80	40	50	5	0	0	0	0
IV	60	80	0	0	0	0	0	60	50	60	0	0
V	50	75	0	0	0	0	0	0	55	75	25	0
VI	50	75	0	0	0	0	0	0	60	75	33	0
VII	50	75	0	0	0	0	0	0	60	75	25	0
VIII	50	75	0	0	0	0	0	0	60	75	20	0
IX	100	0	0	50	0	100	0	0	0	33	0	50

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.

Once Upon A Planetary Interaction

Kename Fin — Sun, 01 May 2011 06:40:43 +0000

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:

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.

School’s Out

Penny Ibramovic — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 16:13:11 +0000

On Not Learning Anything Any Longer

Learning is for sleepers.

[Due to a publishing issue, this was originally posted by the wrong author. That has been corrected. Sorry Penny. Ed.] There is some griping and much discussion about the disappearance of the learning skills. Most of the distress is not in making the game easier for newbie—indeed, this is seen as a positive move by the same people—but that the investment in the learning skills is now going to waste. That is almost understandable, as the raw skill points injected in to the learning skills, and that will be refunded, do not translate directly to the gains those skills will give a character. But this is also the very point that renders the complaint ineffective.

‘I chose to invest time’, writes the typical veteran, ‘and now I am getting nothing from that investment’. Sort of. Your advantage of training in the learning skills will be negated, but the effect is not gone. Far from it, as the training you invested in the learning skills helped you get in to the shinier ships with bigger guns faster than if you hadn’t learnt those skills. There is simply no way that effect can be removed from your character. The time you spent waiting patiently for the learning skills to complete has helped you gain skills faster than any short-sighted or impatient capsuleer who didn’t plan similarly, and has done so for however many years it has been since you trained them.

Get it working

If I were to offer any pilot the opportunity to go back in time and train from scratch, knowing that this deletion of these skills was coming one, two, or six years down the line, I daresay no one would choose to eschew training the learning skills. It would not be seen as optimal to put those couple of million skill points elsewhere, knowing that that’s where they would be put eventually once the refund was given, as the overall rate of skill point accumulation would still not be as great. After all, the whole point of planning ahead and investing the time in the learning skills was to eventually gain more skill points than would otherwise be possible. The accelerated training rate would mean you would recoup the skill points invested in the learning skills after a period of a year or so, and only continue to reap the benefits after that.

Indeed, the clever capsuleer is taking last-minute advantage of the imminent learning skill refund, dumping more points in to a learning skill using her favoured attribute, with a view to refunding the points in a skill of her unfavoured attribute. Such cunning, using learning skills to gain skill points faster than normal right until they are taken away. But that’s what the learning skills were there for, and any pilot that took time to invest in their training has either gained the obvious benefits for a long time, or will see the skill points refunded for no loss. And as the learning skills are themselves affected and accelerated by the attributes they increase, any training in them will still have created more skill points to be refunded than a new pilot would have gained normally.

We all start somewhere

I don’t see any reason for veteran pilots to be frustrated by the removal of the learning skills. To claim they now have no advantage over new players is absurd. A new player will not gain ninety million skill points overnight, because of this change or otherwise. And the very existence of the learning skills means that every pilot must invest in them in order not to fall behind, which just puts everyone in the same boat. Rather than having new players have to find the ISK to buy the expensive, second-tier learning skill books, then themselves get frustrated as they spend a couple of weeks learning with no immediate gain to their character skill, we now all train at the same rate.

That is, we all train at the same rate except when using the expensive implants that only veteran players can really afford, after training the cybernetic skill. As for the time investment, neural remaps have made available even longer-term skill training plans, for pilots who like to think in years instead of months. Removing a pointless part of the already fierce learning curve can only be a good change, which is what deleting the learning skills achieves.

The Tipping Point

Kename Fin — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 08:22:23 +0000

On Reaching A Point Of Change

There are sadly, times when your world changes. While changes are fresh and often refreshing, the are also all about things being different and even the most positive of changes still carries with it a high level of stress. Take for instance some of the most stressful events available to humanity: slipping into your first pod; getting married; plugging in +5 implants; flying your first interceptor; having children; upgrading your medical clone. These are all positive events with great rewards attached to them. We learn, grow and become more than we were through them. And still they give us stress and often force us to re-evaluate our position.

This eustress as it were is a cumulative process in the body and pod pilots are not immune. It is a function of our terrestrial origins and comes ‘part and parcel’ with the biological fleshy sack of bones that we stuff into our pods. This is for the most part a good thing. However – like all stress it needs an outlet. Some people find their relief in mining, other from running missions for various corporations and still others from trying to stop other pilots from completing the first two.

What We Saw From Outside

So to has been the move to a new home in a higher class wormhole. We came into the new home with isk in our eyes and the sun aft. There was great excitement, motivation, participation and preparation. The transition from a class 3 to a class 4 wormhole carried with it an added set of challenges that required adaptation, innovation and adjustments in how we perceived and pursued the profits around us. So too does the shift from a class 4 to a class 5. Here also is the need for adaptation, innovation and adjustment. The rewards are potentially much greater, but also the dangers. There is the ever-looming threat of better pilots with bigger toys coming to visit. The concentrations of enemies and the requirements to face them are both higher. If there is one other thing that remains constant in moving from class to class, it is the progression of difficulty.

What We See From Inside

As we have set up our operations and began to prepare for the future, several things have become apparent.

Change generates a lot of excitement and activity that is not necessarily reflective of ongoing reality.
Perceptions are based in reality but do not always reflect the whole picture.
The progression of difficulty is not linear and iterations on a theme are less likely to be as effective.
While loss can be a motivator and tool for education, it can also and often is disheartening.
Losses are always painful. Even the small ones.
Sometimes you can simply be unlucky. Other times it is sheer luck that makes things go great.

So in the end we are having to wrestle with our own perceptions and expectations of what we want out of the whole experience. We are each coming to terms with how we will cope and for some it means more changes. Some have decided that the best way to deal with it is to move on to something else. It is not unlike the earliest of starts when we learned how to die very well and what to watch out for. While we are no longer the idiots in the neighbourhood, we still have a lot of learning to do.

Forward Ho!

Kename Fin — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 04:21:33 +0000

On Making Decisions

In the life cycles of corporations and alliances, there are decisions that have to made and choices that have to be faced. There are often as many or more choices and decisions that need to be ignored and left to wither and die in the desert of inattention. Member pilots are all [or were] human and as such have opinions, ideas and speculations that they feel is necessary to share and express with the leadership. Sometimes these are viable options that need to be considered in the light of the ever changing space-scape, while others are valuable tools and nuggets for future use. Some things that they share are sadly just simple thoughts that they opine at every possible moment. To both groups I say thank you. It helps to know that you care enough to at least speak up and often to put actions to words and make things happen.

There are other decisions that fall into the “Critical” category. These include things like setting standings/treaties, war declarations and responses, recruiting, moving and policies. If the CEO or executor manages to screw a decision like this up, the results can and often are disastrous to the rank and file, the corporation/alliance and can even have a fallout affect on other seemingly unrelated entities. As CCP tries to present in their Butterfly Effect and Causality videos, there can be far reaching consequences to all the choices made in New Eden.

Now is the point where WHEN and GREAT are facing decisions about the future. We have been enjoying our time in the class four wormhole that we call Home. Home is where you anchor your POS, as they say. But lately some of the challenge has been leeched away as anomalies become routine, cosmic signatures are done without concern and – hold on to your hats – combat pilots are even mining and harvesting gas for diversions. Thus we contemplate a shift to a class five wormhole to create more opportunities and potentially more conflict. We are scanning around for systems and will settle on one in the near future. We have some competent pilots and I think personally think we are up to the challenge.

Mad Rant

Kename Fin — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 04:27:44 +0000

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]:

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.

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.

Don’t Forget…

Kename Fin — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 03:22:24 +0000

On Remembering Everything You Should Be Doing

So you are out roaming with your friend(s) hoping to find some juicy targets to jump on and clone them back home. What all do you need? Too many things pop into my head – match-up evaluation, situational awareness, environmental factors, meta-game factors, relationships, insurance, cost-benefit analysis [just say no]… and it all makes my head hurt. We’re primarily carebears, so our version of PVP usually involves something along the lines of [edit - fictional conversation following, names have been changed to protect the idiots and events have been altered for greater emphasis on the often humorous way we approach life in general]:

: I got a on d-scan in the C two holes out.
: At a tower?
: Checking… Nope, want I should scan him down.
: Reshipping to something pointy.
: Get a warp-in and we’re on our way.
: kk – can do.
: ok, I got my Pilgrim – what are we doing again?
: hunting wabbits – and get something more pointy as is a tough nut to crack
: Huh? I thought we were going after a tower?
: How about my Onyx?
: How’s it fit?
: HAMs and triple extenders, single WDFG.
: Meh, won’t be much good against the tower.
: oooh, you got a tower to shoot? I’m coming back to get the pulse ‘geddon.
: I thought you had a tower to shoot?
: I have an Imicus scrammed at our hole!
: no, I was looking at a , but it’s unmanned at the tower.
: Oh – I see, well time to go pick up the significant other at the airport, good luck with the killing.
: no no no, omg, no – I’m dying to an imicus!
: huh, you’re in an Onyx, how?
: No, went back to the Pilgrim but forgot to online all my modules.
: Gah – new implants for me… goodnight, see you all later.
: Grah – newbs.
: o/ Hello Pilot 1, how goes it.
: you just missed 2 get waxed by an Imicus in his Pilgrim.
: *snap*, anything else up?
: got a couple of barges at a grav in c3, 2 jumps out, bms in the can, I’m manoeuvring in for a warp in.
: cool – omw, HIC ok?
: great. WH is off dscan so jump in and hold for warp in.

This doesn’t actually reflect any given conversation per se, but the contents are indicative of the great B-film classic, When Carebears Attack as seen somewhere dark and seedy, I am sure. We tend to do a lot of things to excess – too much discussion, too much consideration, too much talking, too much DPS or too much tank, too much flying around in circles, too much laughter and way too much fun. We tend to lack a good sense of: when to engage, when to run away, when to call it quits, what to fly at any given moment, what kind of wine goes good with the cafeteria’s mystery meat and how we managed to get along as well as we have without being utterly wiped out of the wormholes we live.

Mad props to our friends who help us along the way. Kudos to the people who are scanning stuff down faster than we can process them all. Congratulation to those pilots who’ve only managed to lose a couple of ships recently and even more to the ones who’ve taken their opponents down first.

Initially when we moved out into wormhole space, it was to explore, tap some of the untold riches and just see if we could survive. We managed to survive, so then we started practising getting better at “running away” and “not dying” as much. Lately we’ve moved from the running away [though we still do on occasion] to initiating conflict [sometimes at an alarming rate] and learning some lessons about how to actually have more ships than the enemy at the end of combat. At then end of the day, we’re happy when we live, resigned to the losses we incur and determined to carebear our way right through the next fleet we see.

The Little Things

Kename Fin — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 05:44:47 +0000

My corporate compadres, denizens of Domnion, wanton wormhole wanna-be’s are relentlessly reminding me that it has been ~~a week~~ ~~two weeks~~ nearly three weeks since I posted any information. I’ve been sorely remiss in spending much time posting information here, as I’ve been busy trying to live life in a pod out in the wilds of Apocrypha. Dominion brought some changes, but nothing overly significant to the capsuleers who fly here the wormhole. So then the question I need to answer to myself is, “What has happened?”

We’re still in the same system and we’ve managed to pick up another regular engineer. He really seems to be settling into the opportunities that exist out here in the unknown and is always eager to learn more. He laughs at our attempts to explain that living out of one or more metal boxes powered by a large metal candy cane is a “Lifestyle Choice,” but is excited about the future. We’ll have to revisit the idealism when he’s been ganked a coupled of times, podded and otherwise thrown under the bus [bus being a euphemism for Tech 2 ships with overwhelming firepower and numbers.]

The ability to run sites has picked up some as well with a fairly balanced effort at participation from all involved. We have tried [and been fairly successful] in making everything a concerted group effort, though the industrial side of things is still a bit of a struggle. The new guy has been very giddy about not only mining Arkonor, Bistot and Crokite, but being able to be compensated for it without having to worry about the market, hauling, refining, et cetra. We’re excited about his excitement too. Along the way we’ve become very adroit at operating together as a unit and understanding each others’ strengths and weaknesses. In many ways our efficiency is finally picking up and coming together.

The flip side of this situation is that we are also beginning to realize just how isolated we are. Our jargon and vocabulary has shifted significantly and we communicate in seeming nonsense to some of our corp-mates. We haul our “bloot” to market, we talk about our gases and our pre-warps, we know that “@#$@” and “aoliv89#*&” mean someone is about to die. We have reached the point where we know within a few million isk how much a particular site is worth. We can judge approximate time frames for running those sites. We have become fairly comfortable with suggesting fittings and I would go as far as to say know what should work. We have established procedures for scanning, scouting, bookmarking, mining, fighting, etc that aren’t really written down in electrons anywhere.

This is all to say that as we add new people to our endeavor out in the uncharted realms of otherwhen, we’ll be struggling not only to bring them up-to-speed, but also even just communicate.

Technorati Tags: old players, new players

How To Fail

Kename Fin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:21:34 +0000

Hip, hip, horrific are the words we sing
Hip, hip, horrific is our thing -(TMBG)

As I look around and back at the posts I’ve written for the last year or so, I am reminded how well things have gone, but also how spectacularly I’ve managed to fail. If you are looking for pitfalls to avoid – you’ve found them. If you want to see how not to train for something; look no further. If you would rather have less isk at the end of the day, then this is your lucky blog!

Seriously, the posts that inhabit these pages are filled with the heartache and misery of a pilot bashing her head against the same asteroid day after day after day. At the end of the day there is a hangar full of veldspar and tritanium, some trash modules and a ship that desperately needs a tune up. Along the way the pilot has learned that you shouldn’t trust another pilot but you have to trust the other pilots until they fail you. You can’t put 4000 m3 in a GSC and there’s no way to get a station container out of a station. Overheating missiles is not so effective and skilling up adequately for boosters is going to be very expensive.

There are a few bright spots along the way. Namely, the ships and modules that have been opened up through a varied training programme that includes tech 2 mining equipment, logistics cruisers and some command ships. This is easily countered by the fail combat skills that barely allow for named heavy missiles on a Drake and some lame, unsupported rails on a Moa. It’s rather comical sometimes to be able to fit a full Tech 2 tank on every ship in the game, but then realize you still only have the equivalent of light weapons for armaments. Fear the fail firepower of 150mm rails on a Ferox! My heavy missile Drake of Dewm causes fits of laughter when people can safely orbit at 55 km and pick off my drones and then me.

Other suggest that I should be proud of the fact that I can invent nearly anything possible on the market, but even that seems to fall flat. I have consistently managed to lose money or break even on Tech 2 invention and production. My volume approach is low and slow, so as to be moving backwards in appearance. I can train people to use the towers, labs, production facilities, but seem to fail in doing so myself. What was I thinking! Science is for smart people. Production is for people who are actually motivated.

So what have we learned from all of this:

Train all the skills you possibly can [let's start with 231]
Train a wide variety of skills to level 5 [53 is a good number]
Science skills help you store lot’s of SP [9.6 million and counting]
Collect ships [So you can collect dust]
Every 3-4 months spend everything you have on one ship setup and then poke a pirate.

And I think I’ve rambled on enough for all of us today. And that is how to fail.

Guardian of the Week

Kename Fin — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 11:59:59 +0000

32 feathers in my brand-new Indian headdress
32 new moons shining in 32 skies -(TMBG)

So finally I finish the long walk to Amarr Cruiser level V. It’s been a rather arduous journey toward a predefined goal that I set for myself and managed to talk another into. The completion of AC-V represents one of the milestone events that we discussed as being a relevant stepping stone along the heavily wooded path. It allowed for a bit of shiny in the midst of an otherwise long journey. Hopefully the last 10-15 days of training will fly by in comparison.

The upshot of AC-V is that it opens up the line of Tech 2 cruisers from the Empire for exploration and exploitation. Now I can fit and fly Her Highness‘ [no real devotion mind you - she just owns the flim-flamming Empire of Squirrels] logistics ships and can fly the Amarrian recons, but only with a Tech 1 fit. It seems rather pointless to fly a T2 ship with T1 gear. It’s rather analogous to giving special forces commandos Nerf® battle gear [That's another post!]. The T2 remote armor repairers and energy transfers will find a use, and only become more so as soon as I wrap up training for Logistics IV.

So I hit the shops and find a sweet deal on a Guardian that someone was trying to dump in Lonetrek [Amarr ships are cheaper in the State?] and flitted over to pick it up. After picking up the ship, I used some fairly ugly, low-meta, named, mission looted, gear to fit a tank on it for transport to my main hangar. I flew it quickly as I could from gate to gate, desperately hoping that anyone looking to bite into a yummy T2 cruiser would prefer ganking a Hulk to my new shiny. The trip was uneventful and I was able to even snap a couple of touristy images from the camera drones.

The whole exercise might be one in pointless futility unless I can settle on a more tanky fit that I think will allow for WH survival. Maybe the dual Guardian-lock could survive incoming Sleeper fire given the higher resists. If any of you have used Guardians in fleets against the wormhole denizens, I would be interested in your thoughts about what to slap on it.