On Saying The Same Thing

A lot of the questions that we get both from new pilots in our organisation — as well as other pilots that we fly with — regard the terminology we use to describe our environment. I realised that the last post would fall into this category as well. It basically describes something that some of use regularly and others of us will use more often. Our resident information super-goddess has compiled quite a list of terms that we use internally and posted them for all to share and learn from. It is a great resource and reference for our pilots and we all hope you enjoy them as well.

Moar Bloot

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.

Ouch! I usually add a title after I’ve written something up. It stems from a long habit of writing without titles and basing them off of either the content that has been produced or some obscure, arcane reference made in the article that is only tenuously tied to the rest of the content and thus only understood by my psyche and perhaps the asteroids that I spend so much time talking to [apologies to the gas clouds, I've just been busy lately]. However I thought that perhaps I ought to stop and take stock of the last month or so of output and see what I can learn and where we’re headed as well. Back to the title; I thought perhaps after adding it that it might appear like I only manage to post information monthly, but upon review realize that it only seems like that because I’m sad that I just don’t get more up there for you. Thus, I will mix in some information you might be interested in about my activities along with some information that you might be interested in about the statistics related to my postings.

Visits

I had been trying to get the WordPress Stats plug-in to work for several months, but managed to repeatedly get results of zero visits a day [sorry Mom, I know you were reading!] and once I even had -4. I’m not sure what happened, but as of September 13th, the whole contraption started reporting visits as well as the other reference information. I wouldn’t have even noticed that, but for a mis-click on “Blog Stats” instead of “Dashboard”. So I started perusing the results and checking back from time to time. There were several surprising things that I just wasn’t expecting when I started looking back at the visits, searches, references and onward traffic. I printed the daily views graph all to include in the post and quite by accident the median daily post number was highlighted.

It seems that for the half of September that I was able to get statistics for I managed to get 674 visits. I have to admit a certain amount of joy in this. I fully expect that half of that was Mom trying to see if I had finished training for a Command Ship yet. The average number of visitors was 39 and the median was 32. If those just seem like random numbers to you, let me put it into perspective. I didn’t know of more than four people who had visited the site and to find out that nearly 8 times as many visits had occurred as shiny [please help me with the illusion and don't mention unique page views, etc].

Another odd number I’d like to point out is the number 1. Apparently that is how many of the same search results led to my page being located and served. At no point in the last 17 or so days did people search for same terms to find my page. Again, the number doesn’t mean anything. I just like things that are different.

Posting about fittings and ore prices appeared to be my niche, without really trying to hit anything in particular. I have no intention of trying to replicate something you can find somewhere else like the fittings of BattleClinic or Scrapheap. They do fittings better to a certain degree, but they also aren’t the one in my ship and have little to lose by suggesting an alternative that may or may not work. I appreciate their feedback, but also like the fact that my fittings are my own.

For the postings ore prices, I have noticed that they have been steadily coming down across the board as I update the page. I don’t have enough meta-data to extrapolate anything as interesting as causality [a slippery, dangerous area to tread into with the best of information], but I really am kind of surprised. I don’t rely on ore as the primary means for my income as much as I once did and only sell a Charon-load or so a month of tritanium these days.

Finally, as I realise this post is nearly as long as my skill plan for a carrier, I’ll wrap up with some training thoughts.

• Learning skills suck, but boy am I glad I have them. For now I’ll lump them in the same category as whiny pvp pirates who can’t handle changing mechanics, I’d rather not deal with them, but I’m glad they are there to provide more depths and aspects to the universe I love to swim in. Train them well and they will change your world.
• Support skills does not mean the ability to fly an industrial ship full of capacitor charges. Train electronics, engineering, WU/AWU [I hate you too!], science, mechanics, navigation. Just because there isn’t another module or battleship attached to the skill doesn’t make it worthless. I know none of the readers would fly without having these trained, but share with your new corp-mates.

• Training for a command ship has actually been a really gratifying long wait. It is a destination that becomes so much more along the journey. By the time I finish up the training for the command ships I will also have gained the ability to fly logistics and heavy assault ships along the way. In point of fact, after the first command ship, it will only take about 3 weeks to fly any other race’s set of logistics, HACs and command ships. I will still need to cross-train for the weapons systems, but the broad, hit-or-miss, seemingly random training to this point is actually paying off at this point.

• I believe in doing things well if I can. Training something to level V is not a sign of weakness or stupidity. Ok, it’s not always a sign of an idiot, the author might well fall in those categories.

Ok, I’m done till next month. [Ok, really I'll probably try to post something tomorrow but will fail miserably, feel bad about it, mope for two days and then rinse and repeat until next month rolls around.]

In the process of dreaming about my future and while staring at the picture posted in my pod, I have already started fantasizing about potential fits and what not for my Damnation field command ship, Al Abd. Come on, admit it. You have all tried fits for ships you can’t yet fly. It’s the dirty little secret/Pandora’s Box that EFT and EVEHQ when they become prevalent. Armchair capital pilots everywhere are fitting out their supercaps to do battle in their minds eye. So skipping the reverie and amorphous thoughts about what might have been, I managed to cobble together the following [mind the Tool Tips].

• [Low Slots]
  • Damage Control II
    
  • Armor Thermic Hardener II
    
  • Armor EM Hardener II
    
  • Armor Kinetic Hardener II
    
  • Ballistic Control System II
    
  • Ballistic Control System II
    
• [Mid Slots]
  • Cap Recharger II
    
  • Cap Recharger II
    
  • Cap Recharger II
    
  • Cap Recharger II
    
• [High Slots]
  • XT-2800 Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Fulmination Assault Missile
    
  • XT-2800 Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Fulmination Assault Missile
    
  • XT-2800 Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Fulmination Assault Missile
    
  • XT-2800 Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Fulmination Assault Missile
    
  • XT-2800 Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Fulmination Assault Missile
    
  • Large ‘Solace’ I Remote Bulwark Reconstruction
    
  • Armored Warfare Link – Damage Control
    
• [Rigs]
  • Medium Hydraulic Bay Thrusters I
    
  • Medium Rocket Fuel Cache Partition I
    
• [Drones]
  • Hobgoblin I x5
    
• [Statistics] Using Level V Skills For Comparison
  • Effective HP: 85,934
    
  • Tank Ability: 20.56 DPS
    
  • Damage Profile – <Omni-Damage> (EM: 25.00%, Ex: 25.00%, Ki: 25.00%, Th: 25.00%)
    
  • Shield Resists - EM: 12.50%, Ex: 89.06%, Ki: 73.75%, Th: 30.00%
    
  • Armor Resists – EM: 85.66%, Ex: 87.25%, Ki: 89.24%, Th: 81.35%
  • Capacitor: Stable
  • Volley Damage: 1,121.98
    
  • DPS: 269.28

Bah – this whole post too long to format. Nearly twice as long as dreaming up the fitting that I am sure I will iterate through at least another thirty times. Are you not entertained? Ten million to the first comment that collects all the eggs.

Something I have been meaning to do for awhile now is get some of the links around the blog updated as well as do some general housekeeping. It seems I never have enough time to fly my ship, train my skills, chat with my friends, write a new post and also update the way things are displayed. I am proud that I’ve been able to keep the jetcan prices updated on a weekly basis and managed to get a post out every now and again.

On the side I’ve added a list of women who play EVE and also post their thoughts about it. For now I’ve titled it EVE is a Woman’s World, although I might rethink and or redesign that. I fully reserve the right to change my mind about anything, including whether or not I will change my mind. The current roster of Pod Pilotess Posters includes:

• Mynxee
• Jhez
• Lady Bri
• Shae Tian
• Ghankis Khan
• Karjan Amajel

I’ve linked them all on the right as well as their most recent post. At some point I’ll work it up into a stand alone page as well. If I’ve missed your wonderful woman’s perspective [open call for the women of EVE to blog], please let me know. I think there is a lot of potential that isn’t being tapped. Perhaps we need our own PPPP [Pod Pilotess Poster Pak] to compliment CrazyKinux’s EVE BlogPack. It’s something to think about.

The header now sports rotating images of various faction flags as well as some EVE screenshots. Many thanks to Dmian and his great work on the racial/faction flags.

Finally, looking forward, I am working on collating some of the information and links that I’ve collected about flying around New Eden. I’ll try to categorize it by profession and comment on the veracity of each item. Keep Flying.

This last week we got our first concrete look at part of what is coming down the pipe in the near future. In a combined announcement from Outer Rim Excavations and Deep Core Mining, the new Orca was presented to the universe. It has the news wires all in a tizzy about it’s various aspects and roles it can perform. As with any new product, there are both fans and detractors. I tend to remain pessimistic about improvements until I actually see them, but I also have to admit that this really has me excited. It is at the core, a Mining Command Ship.

From the released information the specs are impressive. It will still likely have some tweaks before we see it in production, but the possibilities are phenomenal. I’m not privy to all of ORE’s and DMC’s research and test data, but what I have seen is a good start. The ship is laid out with the following information:
Ship Bonuses

• 250% bonus to tractor beam range [70km means you'll need long range targeting]
• 100% bonus to tractor beam velocity [1km/sec means just over a minute to drag from range]
• 500% bonus to survey scanner range [125km means you can tell what people are mining?]
• 99% reduction in the use of gang mods
• Multiple gang mods can be fit without command processors

Skill Bonuses

• 3% increase in mining foreman links per level
• 5% increase in cargo capacity per level [meaning w/ T1 rigs will hold just over 90,000 m3]

The announcement mentions a material cost of approximately 400 million and a BPO cost of 1 billion. The initial BPO specs could change, but they indicate a total cost to own all part BPOs of around 7 billion. I would expect that the ship initially debuts for about 800 million to 1 billion and eventually will settle down closer to 600 million.

The specs also list a cargo capacity of 30,000 m3 + 30,000 m3 corporate hanger + 400,000 m3 ship maintenance array. It can effectively haul two rigged Hulks, but not a battleship.

The press release has been met with a lot of discussion ranging from cargo space adjustments, the need to buff this and that aspect of the ship and the general “it’s a crap ship that doesn’t meet my needs” opinions.

The ability to fly the ship is based on a new skill called Industrial Command Ships which means going back to school to fly it. Most of the rest of the skills I’ve studied before. If they change the skill requirements, I’ll probably have to get back to hitting the books hard.

This is a topic that I’ll probably come back to at some point. Apparently at somepoint in my career, I made the following statement to a good friend. “I am that most dreaded of MMO players, the care bear.” I tend to upset the natural order of things by needlessly throwing resources at things that could be better put use wiping the virulent infection of my fellow humans from the universe. I constantly waste isk, time and other things to put people that I hardly know into new ships, get them started training new skills, help them get set-up for mining/research/learning/pvp/pve/et cetra.

Case in point: Today I happened across a young Caldari pilot fresh into the SAK and had an overwhelming desire to just throw help at him. He really didn’t seem to know a PDS from an SPR but that only further spurred me to fill his wallet with my isk. To top it all off, he was genuinely interested in learning the game and getting over the learning curve. I almost couldn’t contain my enthusiasm at finding someone so ready to play the game and learn the ins-and-outs of a complex system like EVE.

We talked a length about skill training, mining, missioning and the general accumulation of wealth and power. In the end, I gave him over half of my net isk worth in new skills and equipment that would have taken him a couple of weeks to obtain on his own. I pointed him toward such perennial favorites as EveMon and EFT so that he could begin planning for his own future and make educated decisions [or at least ask educated questions]. By downtime I had made a new friend, had helped a new player and lost over half my isk. Sheesh, what was I thinking

I was looking around at all of the wonderful resources out there for pod pilots. Not a week goes by that I don’t stumble across something new or a new way of looking at the world that we fly in. Everything from training, ship loadouts, and missions to philosophy of play, background stories and general thoughts on pilots progress. I probably fall into the last category more than others.

I was looking at CrazyKinux’s wonderful blog site and even wanted to link in, but couldn’t get the captcha for his comments to work. I’m sure it’s something on my end but it’s frustrating. I’d like to see this blog used more and shared more. It will have to go on the agenda I suppose.