reflection « Our EvE

Sadness Falls From Skies

I don’t know where to begin. It seems the universe is going to change radically in the next couple of days. The faithful, foolproof capsuleer mnemonic skill training system is going under a radical frameshift resulting in a cessation of training when you capsuleer membership dues aren’t paid. It seems that even though the system was unintentionally created this way and has operated this way without fail for the last 5 years, it has now become a necessity.

The sadness comes from the loss of many good capsuleers. It seems times are getting lean and the inability to keep your dues paid is nothing new. However, now without being able to continue to learn, it is likely that a lot of players won’t be interested in coming back. They’ll likely pick up jobs planetside or maybe just fly off the radar somewhere….

For myself, I don’t think I would have still been playing if this had been in effect from the beginning.

Finding Beauty

Keeping up with all the goings on this week has been a trial in and of itself. And what has been going on that needs so much energy? Well – nothing! That is I just have gotten back from some much needed R & R in Kamio. I was getting a little burned out with all of the missioning I was having to do to get my standings up for refining and really needed a break. I love the Kami system with it’s grand cloud sweep and the way the colors play back and forth across your display as you warp around. It’s one of those systems I pass through quite a bit on the way to and from The Forge and I always think to myself, “This would be a cool place to live.”

I have several of these systems, but Kamio was the first. to really drive home the beauty of the omniverse that we all fly in. I’m not Amarrian, but I’m almost tempted to support their nonsense of some divine action in it’s formation. It evokes some of the images captured in the Gallente heritage museum data streams.

What systems do you love to look at? Where did you fall in love with the beauty of our EVE omniverse?

Freedom!

While continuing to learn how to reprocess modules more efficiently, I’m back in the Lou Ferrigno for several more sessions with my favorite space rocks. I like to think of my self as a Asteroid Psychologist taking rough rocks and releasing their inner potential. What was once merely a rock in a limited and captive environment, being stifled by the gravity of a local celestial body is given purpose and passion. Who knows how far they can go.

They could end up in your next shield extender, afterburner or rifter. They have almost unlimited potential. And to think so many people want to put a stop to it. All the time I hear, “Don’t mine.”, “It’s not worth it.”, and “In defense of these poor rocks we are declaring open season on you and your hulk.” It’s enough to make me almost want to cry. Why would people be so completely ignorant of the untapped promise locked in these modest, unassuming rocks.

Mining for Players

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

Startling Training Realization

Like Robin Williams in “Hook” I have finally found my Happy Thought. I had just docked the Lou Ferrigno and was finishing up some post belt ripping administrivia when the coms lit up. It was the director and our POS was looking to be in need of some fuel soon. He was moving a freighter out to the ice system and was going to need to mine some to insure he came back with a full load. I checked my flight time and saw that I still had a few hours left before my biological support systems crashed so decided I could lend a hand.

I enjoy icing a great deal and helping out the corp even more, so it was only natural. The last time we had needed fuel, I had went shopping and come up with a Mackinaw, and fit it out with Ice Harvester II’s and Ice Harvester Upgrade II’s and left it in the system where we generally go icing. All of this as a lead-in for the fact that I decided this was the perfect opportunity to put the old Jump Clone to use.

It had been several months since I had body hopped and can’t really recommend the experience. But the benefits far outweigh any temporary queasiness from transcribing your consciousness into a data stream and waking up light-years away. The first order of business was to get a clone out to the same system where the corporate icing runs. I wasn’t quite ready to trust the jump clone manufacturer’s recent announcement that their system supported same-station jumps. I flew to the station next door and pulled up the jump clone interface. As it had been awhile, it took a few seconds for the information I was seeing make sense. I pulled up the menu on the clone I wanted next door and jumped.

Well, almost. The system screamed and spit out errors. I had forgotten to offline the current mnemonic skill training regimen before the jump. I quickly jumped over to the skill interface and paused my Mining Laser Upgrades learning and then bounced back to the jump menu and jumped. Huh, what happened? Where am I? Oh, wait, that’s right. Clone jump. Different system/station. I quickly onlined my skill training and charted a course to the ice field system. I flew out and fired up the autopilot (it was a high sec route) and went about reviewing my market orders and research projects. There was something I was supposed to think about remembering to think about but it just wouldn’t solidify into a coherent thought. I finally got to the destination and loaded the Bobby Drake into the station dock and began checking the systems. Everything checked out and I was soon out of the station on my way to the top of the ice field, but there was something giving me a nagging sensation in my newly formatted brain. I tried to shake it off and just convince myself it was the jump that had me rattled.

I arrived at the bookmarked navigation point and locked the nearest ice cube. I cycled the harvesters on, sat back and tried to reconcile whatever it was that was bothering me. After a couple of trips back to the station to store my ice I realized that it was my skill training that was bothering me. By jumping into this clone I had added another 24 hours to my skill training. Sheesh!

This is when it hit me, what is it that I enjoy more than ghosting rats, stripping roid belts, out witting pirates? Training skills. My greatest joy comes when I hear, “Skill training complete” come over the coms. Floating out in the ice field I pulled up the market list and quickly grabbed a set of +1 implants. They aren’t great, but they’ll have to do for now until I manage to get some cash after buying the Bobby Drake and still owing for the Lou Ferrigno.

Isk Per m3

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