15/05/11 08:39 AM
| Arkonor | 285 |
| Bistot | 217 |
| Mercoxit | 192 |
| Crokite | 187 |
| Hedbergite | 171 |
| Hemorphite | 168 |
| Jaspet | 152 |
| Dark Ochre | 147 |
| Pyroxeres | 118 |
| Kernite | 106 |
| Veldspar | 99 |
| Scordite | 93 |
| Gneiss | 90 |
| Plagioclase | 88 |
| Spodumain | 82 |
| Omber | 81 |
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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 Getting Bigger, Better or Bagged
There is a natural tendency towards entropy. Universally, stars die, systems decay and heat dissipates. It is the order of things to become less ordered. Therefore, it takes energy to even just maintain things, let alone change something. This is also true for players, corporations, alliances and coalitions. They do not tend toward activity, progress or profit without work and energy being put into them. As I mentioned in Brass Tacks, WHEN relies heavily on its directors to maintain these levels of activity, progress & profit. It is not a pretty job [at least if you look at Riyu or Mick], but they do it well. In WHEN we face entropy on several different vectors and often at the same time.
 A base-level of entropy is found in the POS tower that we live out of. Without a regular infusion of fuel, it has a natural tendency to burp and die very quickly. This takes a certain amount of effort on the part of various pilots to insure that there is fuel in the tower, spare fuel in the wormhole system and ongoing procurement for fuel from various sources [markets, players/corporations, private planetary interaction]. It is not a significant level of activity, but it does exist and is a posteriori to our continued existence.
[caption id="attachment_936" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Downward Trends"]  [/caption]
Another item of concern that need to be kept up with include pilot attrition. While I would like to claim that 100% of WHEN pilots are online and in ships every day or even week, that would be a bit of a stretch. We do try to keep our active membership roles current and in any given week, close to 80% of member pilots are online and actually doing stuff [With Others - Kirith Kodachi]. Part of this has been that WHEN was a small family corporation that worked together on everything and the core active members were also the only members. As we have grown, it has been encouraging to see a high level of member interaction on a regular basis. We still have a few that are more occasional in their activity levels and we are very accommodating of their situations if they let us know.
Recruiting is another answer that we have applied to attrition and recognise as a sword that can cut both ways. While it is necessary on the one hand to have new pilots in the corporation in order to grow [and by extension do more things with more people], it can also introduce additional issues to deal with. Things like training/explaining, ship/supply logistics, storage space and organisation all become more complex as additional wetware is added to the mix. As Penny so eloquently wrote in Applicant Security last week, it is also necessary to be ever mindful of players that want to join/infiltrate the corporation with an intent towards nefarious purposes. Be it theft, sabotage, espionage or just drama, a new corporate member can make it difficult for everyone involved to enjoy their time in their ships.
In the discussion of entropic entities with corporate effects, there is also perhaps the most devastating: Complacency. What do you do when you have reached your goals and become everything that you intended? Or perhaps you are still working on the first steps and things are going very smoothly. You need to be prepared to have the next step in mind and be willing to cast the vision necessary to keep things moving forward and keep pilots engaged and excited about what is happening around them. There will come a time when success is also the very thing that can bring you down and start to erode the corporation more than just natural loss.
On Being Gone Without Leaving
Some of you may have noticed that I have been slightly less textually productive as of late. The reason stems from a decision to fly down to the surface and spend some time overseeing the latest colony action from the box seats. I chose one of my planets in the wormhole and got down to the surface to get a real hands on feel for working on a plasma farm.
With the exception of the environmental systems [which are a complete pain at the best of times], the time was a fruitful exploration of what is going on at the root level of the colony that I had set up on the planet’s surface. I worked at all the different levels that I had set up, from extracting raw ingredients to processing them as tier one materials and finally combining those into still newer tier two products. I learned a lot about what goes into keeping the colony running as well as being efficient with the use of materials, layout of facilities, storage logistics and import/export excises [can anyone explain how CONCORD is collecting the isk I pay to import/export from way out in the wormhole?].
The net result of all of this: I was pretty well distracted for the last couple of months and managed to let everything here slide. Things like alliance and corporate operations were delegated, payments and diplomacy were put on hold or handed off, other income and revenue streams were throttled back and general amount of time in a pod was only the barest minimum to cover my ongoing capsuleer licensure. I am especially grateful to the men and women of WHEN who stepped up and carried a lot of extra responsibility during my absence.
On Getting To Know The Author
Somewhat in response to Freebooted‘s post about introductions, I came up with the following:
[caption id="attachment_678" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Vestigial Heritage"]  [/caption]
I’m an old Caldari pilot who has managed to fly a lot of ships, visit a lot of systems and learned some of the most spectacular ways to die. I believe in working very hard to be the best pilot that you can. To that end, I spend a lot of my skill points on getting my skills to level 5. This also means I don’t have a lot of skills. I love my Drake and I don’t mind trying to use it in a lot of different situations.
I am that bane of banes for MMOs, the carebears’ carebear. I like mining. I like manufacturing. I like killing rats and Sleepers, setting up towers, plugging different numbers in spreadsheets and seeing what comes out. I like flying with a group of friends more than I realised when I started and I miss them when they are gone. I used to mine Veldspar in high-sec before I started exploring and mining Kernite in exploration sites. I would run missions for extra ore when the macro-miners would strip out whole systems.
I have a whole lot of blueprints and end up using them on occasion. I have been in one fail cascade, one very successful corporation and have most recently started out again on my own with a new venture. We endeavour to focus on solely on wormholes and utilising them for fun and profit.
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.
- 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.
- As a focused wormhole corporation, we will be foregoing most all high/low/null-sec activities [excepting support logistics].
- Many of the mission/pvp-minded pilots in DSGE have moved to our sister corporation, Fearless Bandits.
- Industrial pilots will be remaining in DSGE or with an as yet unannounced industrial corporation.
- 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!
As you might have noticed [or not if this is your first time tuning in], the site has been undergoing some minor, um, “tweakage”. I’d like to say that this is all part of the on-going effort to provide consistent quality in a relevant format that is changed and modified to meet the needs of the readers. It is not.
I have been however thinking for sometime to give it a bit of refresh. And in that vein, saw that the original theme had gone through several iterations and point updates. I decided to pursue that as a first line means to freshen up the whole site. It has been an interesting couple of days to say the least and I thought I’d share some of the highs and low points along the way.
 Backups were made. This is something that I can’t stress enough and regularly fail to mention. Backups save lives people! We buy clones so we don’t lose our Skill Points. We insure our ships and only fly the ones that we have the isk to replace. Quite to the contrary of my feelings, I regularly fail to make backups, don’t copy files to my server, forget to leave a copy of my flight itinerary with my husband, lose the copy of my passport and notice my clone is out of date two weeks after it lost skill points from being podded. Don’t be that way. FTP was fired up and the entire site was packed into an archive and downloaded. Inside of WordPress the whole thing was also backed up from the Tools menu. Finally, a screen grab of the theme settings was made, “Just In Case.”
 Now it was time to update the theme, which conveniently could been done within the WordPress engine. Links were clicked, scripts were run and messages were displayed. Eventually all was in readiness and a trip to ‘Visit Site’ was made. The results were beyond description. Words fail to adequately express how bad all of my layout decisions were when everything in the theme was returned to its default setting. Text was unreadable, headings were off, carefully designed alignments were destroyed, pictures were suddenly missing or in one case pointing to the wrong image. Calamity!
Enter the backups. I briefly toyed with the idea of just reloading everything from the back up and giving up on any sprucing up of the site. But something, somewhere, deep down inside of me wouldn’t let the php win. I was in control. I am the mistress of this domain. I will…. scream and start using the aforementioned screen cap of the theme settings to begin to squeeze things into shape. After about 15 minutes or so, I had something that at least resembled the previous theme and was mildly functional. I decided to head off for bed and think about it at a later point. After coming back I managed to make a few more changes, wrangle some of the CSS back into place and even begin some of the ‘tweakage’ that I had desired all along.
Here’s hoping that it doesn’t just offend all those concerned.
Ok, I admit it. I am in awe, struck dumb by the sheer enormity of what has transpired. In case any of you missed it:
Dominion has come.
And it is good. At least every little bit that I have seen from with in our little part of the unknown space we live in. With all the little things that have happened in the client, it really does feel a lot like EVE 3.0 instead of just an expansion. The marketers missed the opportunity to really push this as a major update to many of the parts that make EVE feel like EVE. With all of the updates to the UI as well as the actual graphics used for the systems, it is much more apparent that things have changed. And after one measly day in, I think it’s wonderful.
I’m sure there are a lot of little things going on around 0.0 involving sovereignty changes and support/logistics for them. There are some nitpicks, glitches and annoyances [hide windows?], but on the whole, I think it is a great update.
And finally – I can easily update this from inside my pod. Beware.
Posted from J130554, deep in the heart of nowhere and using the browser in EVE.
Now listen all you swingers, don’t you try to tag along
I know monkey see, but monkey’s dead, for you it would be wrong
Put a dime in my jukebox, you’ll only hear this song
And it won’t be fun for long -(TMBG)
The end is nigh!
The end has passed and off into the night we continue swimming past planets, moon and stars. Wormholes open and close and wars and rumors of wars are left in our wake. All and all, everything continues on as it did before, so what is different?
Training for the Damnation has been completed. Mostly. Sort of. There are few days left to fit the armored warfare links, but everything else is fit and fine. I should be jumping for joy, holding parties in low-sec pirate filled dens of iniquity and generally announcing it to every stray passer-by I meet. Instead I’m merely looking at the next couple of weeks of training and thinking, “Now What?”
The whole trip to Damnation has been a grand adventure. It marks the third, major, long training plan I’ve completed. The first plan was learning skills, which can be debated ad nauseam both on the forums and in various other postings. They were long, arduous and imminently debatable, however I have never once regretted doing it. The second was maximizing my asteroid warfare potential, including a few weeks on Exhumer V, Cybernetics V, and a host of ore specific refining skills to level IV for tech 2 crystals. Again, there were parts of it that I probably could have cut corners on, but I haven’t regretted being able to field a really sweet Hulk, that can mine about 27 m3 of ore per second without being in a gang and significantly more with a good Orca pilot boosting.
Finally, the trip to the Damnation, which has been a slightly longer journey than the others. Over all it was uneventful and all the skills that I have picked up in the interim have been useful across the board. In the beginning it started with the look for a decent armor tanked missile ship to swim alongside my remote armor repairing corp-mates. The Sacrilege was an option, but wasn’t really able to fit a decent remote rep fitting. The Damnation could do that, had enough tank to be able to use ballistic computer systems without sacrificing tank and could still theoretically fit a RR with it’s missiles. The DPS worked out to a similar end as the Drake with the added benefits of helping the whole fleet’s tank.
Now that I’ve reached the Damnation, I have to admit I’m feeling rather blasé about the whole thing. I love flying it. It corners like an Orca, tanks like a very large plated battleship and hits about like a Drake, but from slightly farther away. This is all well and good, but my eyes were taken by something else shiny that had cropped up along the way.
Somewhere along the way I realized that in and amongst the skills for a Damnation, was hidden the skills for a Guardian logistics ship. So on a whim I began to research them, ask questions and look at fittings for them. I got to looking at just how the efficiency of remote repair modules compared to their ‘local’ counterparts. What did it take to use them and or abuse them. Since the Guardian is also bonused for energy transfers, I threw that into the mix as well, looking at how that could be used to the best advantage. I began to develop a real sense of respect for 0.0 fleet logistics pilots and the work they do. Flying a logistics ship well takes a fair amount of capacitor savvy, shrewd targeting and really tight fittings. Tried and true skills like weapons upgrades and advanced weapons upgrades have no effect on RR’s and Xfers, so it’s down to rigs, reactors, PDU’s and CPUs to make it work.
[Editorial Aside]:
I tend to scoff when I see CPUs, PDUs and Reactors on a lot of fits. They are mostly used to compensate for a severe lack of real fitting skills or to ‘tide one over’ until their skills catch up to their hulls. [I still maintain it would be an interesting study to compare the number of killmails between the pilots having 'helper' modules like CPUs/PDUs/Reactors versus their opponents.] I fully understand that even given max skills and an expensive implant, occasionally you still run into a fit that just won’t. I myself have used these modules to great success in the past and will continue to do so in the future and even recommend some fittings that do so.
All of this to say, “Congratulations logistics pilots for making it all fit. Large remote modules on a cruiser hull with a tank that survives and makes things so much easier for the other pilots to just shoot things.”
Words fail
Buildings tumble
The ground opens wide
Light beams down from heaven
She stands before my eyes
– (TMGB)
Because I’m always a bit distracted and doing 20-30 different things at once, it often means that I hit things hard and hope I get enough to keep the project afloat until I get back around to it again. One of those projects is the ongoing Orca development project that manages to be purely theoretical in nature. All this means, I don’t actually produce Orcas, but I come back and look at their production costs in relation to the current ore/mineral prices. In update to a post of long ago [Orca Production Calculations], the following changes have been made:
An Orca can currently be broken down into its component pieces and then sub-costed into their mineral components. The overall picture doesn’t include any of the manufacturing costs and assumes NO Material Efficiency research. I am putting the picture of the calculations in this post, but I’ll try to summarise the numbers for brevity as well.
To produce an Orca requires 7 component blueprint and one ship blueprint that all average around 1.1 billion each to purchase from the market. Each of the seven components will cost approximately 4 million in minerals on average [3.2 million - 5.5 million]. Combined with the total number of each component, the cost to produce an Orca is currently approximately 310 million. Since I’m not selling Orcas, I feel comfortable in suggesting that market prices ought to be around 350m allowing for profit margins, research costs and capital paybacks.
If mineral costs continue to fall, Orca prices could stabilize as low as 325 million. Adding rigs to them will still push them up over 400 million. The cargohold optimization rigs are still running over 30 million each. The addition of the ore hold has drastically improved the Orca’s flexibility and original role performance.
I know, I know, I said that I would quit
All right, I promise, no more after this
You don’t know how I’ve tried
To forget what it was like – (TMGB)
So things have been busy and I’m at a bit of a loss where to start. Who knew that managing a bunch of raving lunatics with delusions of insecurity could be so much like running a corporation. All that time at the asylum is finally paying off. [Warning, excessive use of <sarcasm> makes my hands overly tired so just apply liberally where you feel it's appropriate to make it interesting for you to read.]
Towers: Apparently you have to keep putting fuel in them. Otherwise minor details like shields, guns, labs all go offline.
Labs: Mostly full of jobs, except for when something happens to a tower.
Wormholes: Much fun. I hope to stop running errands and get back in them.
Combat: I think I remember fitting a ship with something other than cargo expanders once upon a time. It was cool. I died.
Skills: Battlecruiser V was cool and the implications are still settling in. Though it’s nice to be able to jump in all the racial BCs, albeit without being able to weaponise them currently. I can fit a whopper tank to them all, but not so much DPS. I blame the ferrets.
Corporation: Growing. Leaps and Bounds. More people means more annoying opinions opportunities, but also more things to manage. Need to train Delegation [5% workload reduction per level] to level 4 and start handing off some of this stuff.
Organisation: What? Hmm? I filed that here in the stack of papers on my desk back in the tower that went offline. I’ll get back to you January 4th. Some year.
Mining: See combat. [I think I warped to a belt in a NOS Drake. Sadness.]
Invention: Lot’s of invention going on. Need to get some of it finished.
So a little bit everything goes a long way toward getting nothing accomplished. Happy times! 
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