Friday, January 29, 2010

My only post on the Goonswarm thing

Earlier on EVE Radio...

[ 2010.01.29 23:46:36 ] Battleship Bob > so how do you pay bills in eve again?
[ 2010.01.29 23:46:59 ] Cozmik R5 > thru the corp wallet
[ 2010.01.29 23:47:33 ] Cozmik R5 > when you're not Goonswarm you can set it to pay automatically
[ 2010.01.29 23:47:44 ] DJ BlackLight > L O L ! ! ! ! 11111eleven

:))

Fly better than Goons

o7

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Two years in EVE

Yesterday, on January 20th 2010, Cozmik celebrated his two years since his graduation from the Republic Military School. Yep, 2 years already. Damn time flies! It seems only like yesterday that I was playing on a Classic Graphics client, that I had to find a stargate around my screen in order to manually align to it, that interceptors were going 7000+ meters per second without a single implant or faction module, and that Nano-anything ships were "I win" buttons that were extremely difficult to catch unless you had 10 webs on the guy. Oh, and warp scramblers didn't do dick all to MWDs and assault ships in general were barely flown because it was awkward to fit them successfully. And the price of rigs and salvage... one of the things that allowed me to start the PvP lifestyle at such a young age was the ISK made from ratting and salvaging Angels and Sanshas; Alloyed Tritanium Bars were priced around 450000 ISK apiece, and Melted Capacitors around 300000. Rigging my own ships was unthinkable though. One time I did rig my ratting Thrasher with "affordable" shield and projectile rigs (4-5 million each) and of course, me being me, I got cocky enough to go ratting in Low-sec and the inevitable happened. I felt stupid for taking such a chance but in the end there were worse things and I moved on.

At the time I had my sights set on flying a Vagabond but I had no clue as to how I would pay the exhorbitive price for the ship and all its modules and rigs. Today, a scant few million ISK buys you multiple Medium Polycarbon Engine Housing rigs. Around the time of Empyrean Age, there were no different sizes and 60 million ISK was the price of a single Polycarb rig. When Quantum Rise arrived their prices dropped a bit, but they were still more expensive than the average interceptor. That was when assault ships came of age though, and the sized rigs in mid-Apocrypha turned them from good to great.

So here I am, 2 years after diving into EVE for the long haul, and here I am again asking myself the ever present question: what now?

I've done the full-time PvP thing and I found it great fun when done loosely, but too seriously and I lose interest; I'm not a military type guy and if someone barks at me I'm gonna bark right back, 10 times louder, which would make the whole thing suck for everyone.

I've done the wormhole thing which is very up and down in terms of action; combat sites in W-space are more interesting than anything the NPCs can deliver in K-space, intruders have to be hunted down down be they scanning frigs all the way up to a full-on POS bash, but on the flip side when all the combat sites are done and there's only mining to do... that's when EVE gets turned off and I either go fly fast in FS9, beat the shit out of my drums, etc.

I've done the exploration thing once in a while, but I admit I've not been very lucky with the things I scan down, and the amount of travel involved can sometimes play tricks on my short patience fuse. But still I do get lucky once in a blue moon and find something worthwhile.

It would also be worth looking at the things I absolutely refuse to do in EVE before I decide where to aim my ship:

I refuse to mine. Last time I did was because a mission required it to initiate the spawn and I felt dirty doing it.

I refuse to do the industrial production thing. When a game becomes a job people burn out. And I've seen it happen too many times lately. Yes, industry needs to happen in order for me to buy stuff to blow up and get blown up. And yes I have built stuff from time to time, especially in my starting months when I had access to tons of minerals from just casual ratting and I could built Rifters to get blown up in without consequence. But building stuff while following a spreadsheet, and dealing with production costs, profit margins, and so on... Yow! I have enough problems with real-life finances as it is that I don't need a whole new set of finances to melt my brain.

I refuse to play a game with an alarm clock. This is the full-on PvP experience brought to the extreme, and in my book it's over the limit of sanity. I play EVE because I want to, not because I have to.

And finally I refuse blobfests. When I read about people bitching about lag, and how Dominion broke fleet fights, I just shake my head and wonder why the fuck people keep doing it. "Because it's epic" they'd say. Yeah, epic but people bitch about it and not just since Dominion. People have been bitching about lag in fleet fights since the first day I've been in the game (probably more since Day One) and yet people still cram as many people in some far-away system in Querious as they do in Jita, only the bunch in Querious as got drones out, fighters out, missiles and ammo flying, remote-reps going, cap-transfering and more, all in one single spot in space. At least the 1000+ in Jita are docked up and only busy with price mark-ups and scams; I'd love to see what would happen if everyone undocked from Jita 4-4 at the same instant. To read people saying "WAAAAA LAAAG!" is really ironic because the ones bitching about lag are the ones creating it. Good job! This is what blobfests are to me and I will not participate.

So where does this leave me in EVE? Am I about to give away my stuff? Nah, not yet anyway! EVE is really harsh when things go wrong or start sucking a chunk out of real life, but when the stars are aligned and things go right there's simply just no game like it. And no matter how others will try to be like it they will continue to fail for a long time to come I think. And hey, I still need to train a lot stuff, and I better train because I didn't just get a full set of +4 implants for nothing! Yes, it took just short of forever but I finally understood the mechanics of jump clones. Don't ask, I'm just extremely dense :) So I still want to do some solo or smallish-gang PvP, but I also need the flexibility to do my own thing when I want; it doesn't mean that because I'm online I'm automatically available for PvP or a big complex or something. Anyway, we'll see what the future brings. Being in my own little 2-man corp is fun but I'm starting to miss some action once in a while. I've already asked my corpmate how he felt about moving to 0.0 because it's looking very much like this will happen sooner or later, but I don't want to do the move at any price. I've been in here for 2 years and I hope I stay in here for a lot longer.

Fly with your heart

o7

Monday, January 18, 2010

Stuff : Contract to Cozmik R5 plz, kthxbai

As I’m about to go on my lunch hour the universe is hit with its second disaster within one week, making 2010 start in a very rough way. The first one is obvious; my condolences to anyone related in any way to those that were caught in that nasty earthquake in Haiti. Mother Nature couldn’t have chosen the worst part of the planet to vent its wrath, but I hope to God Haiti finally gets the international help to get it out of the miasma it’s been in for far too long.

The second one is nowhere near as serious, nowhere near as shocking, but when you’re a blogger from the EVE blogosphere you can’t help but be stunned by what was just posted at Spectre3353’s EVE Newb blog :

"Yes, you can have my stuff"

...

O_O

I don't know if it's Dominion or something but it seems that a lot of old-timers are going on breaks. Yes, EVE is known to sort of become a second job, not even a sideline, and take a huge chunk out of real life. Yes breaks need to be taken if one is to endure in this cut-throat universe. So I know how Spectre feels.

I'm sure there are entire corporations, if not alliances, who are now jumping with joy at the soon-to-come departure of one of the most notorious of Yarrin' type of player to have come out of Gallente space. Many of these corps' members have had to pay heavy ransom to save their sorry hides from the clutches of this crazy eye-patch-wearin' motherfucker. Many miners have cried tears of blood in Local as their faction-fitted exhumers got blown to smithereens because they didn't have the ISK to pay the price Spectre was asking. And I'm sure that Spectre himself danced around like a 4-year old kid about to get a huge yellow Tonka truck every time this happened.

I myself have never had the opportunity of getting my ass handed to me on a silver platter by Spectre, or anyone in Python for that matter; what I had instead was a nice chat while I was sitting at a safespot in Egglehende, on my way to pick up a Firetail I had left at the AMC HQ, about 30 minutes after giving tons of stuff to BOZO and leaving Curse behind. What I received from Spectre wasn't a volley of projectiles or blasters or missiles. What I got in Local wasn't a demand for ransom. No none of that. What I received was a comforting chat and an open door if I ever wanted to become a Python. I didn't take that opportunity but it was great to know that I could.

Spectre impressed me even more when he tried to run for the CSM. He was going to have all my votes but then CCP decided that there was a limit to which they would harden the fuck up. Their loss. As much as I love EVE the game, CCP has shown time and again that when a player is known to be loud and rambunctious he is muted/gagged/suspended. Well fuck that; I have trouble believing in the CSM now.

So Spectre, I hope your "indefinite period of time" does not equal to "permanently" because EVE needs shit-disturbers of your kind to stay a dark and dangerous place the devs want it to be, and the devs needs to let those shit-disturbers disturb the shit. I hope you'll keep in touch via your blog, or comments on some of our blog posts, and maybe it will even give you an incentive to come back to raping and pillaging.

Spectre3353, you are hereby allowed to disembark and go on your shore leave.

I, Cozmik R5, salute the fuck out of you !!!

o7

Friday, January 8, 2010

New Year, POSes, Weirdos, Hulks, etc.

Yay, 2009 is behind us, let's celebrate! I've been back from the holiday craziness for a while but hadn't had a chance to update the ol' blog, so here goes. I wish all of you a Happy 2010 full of whatever you want, be it kills, ISK, carebear tears, phat 'roids, more carebear tears, more ISK, and so on.

The year started in a special way because my buddies over at AMC had to deal with a trespassing corp in one of their colonized wormhole systems, and the trespassers had anchored one of the most poorly defended POSes in the history of POS warfare. But as sucky as POS bashing is it had to be done, and on January 3rd I kicked off my The PvP Year camping a wormhole linking Hi-sec to the Grotto, in charge of the Combat Space Patrol squadron while Letrange and company were laughing at the pitiful POS. Let already posted on all the details but I'll give a last shout-out to the two kills that occupied the long moments of POS Bash boredom, The ZOMG-Faction-Fit Feilios of the Crying Baby Jesus, and of course the Cannot-ever-Fail Getaway BPO-hauling 1/3-fit Drake. Only two kills during a long evening but man were they worth the LOLZ! We were braced to face some serious defenses, but to have the evening turn out this "relaxing" was acceptable, if a bit anti-climactic. Kudos to everyone over at AMC, and thanks for allowing me to not only fly with you but do a bit of FCing. o7

And while the POS atoms were still floating in W-space, a bunch of PvPers (I use the term loosely) decided to Wardec AMC. At first I thought "cool, I can go help again" but looking at the AMC killboard it's clear that help isn't needed, although I still may join in the fun... we'll see how the week goes :)

This brings us to this weekend's happenings. The event that all the PvPers in New Eden were waiting for with glee, and that every mining carebear out there was either whining about, crying about, or even making a few ISK off of, has finally started: Hulkageddon II is a go! My crazy gaming schedule will probably keep me away from the action, but who knows, maybe I'll get in on it. I wish all the participants to gank all they can gank, and to the I-just-want-to-play-solo carebear gankees, all I have to say is this: Harden The Fuck Up (tm)! You're richer than all the PvPers and all you have to do is go to your favorite market spot and buy spare ships. Oh, and by the way, the phat 'roids will still be there for you to mine on and make yet more precious ISKies. Don't worry, you'll live... it's only a game after all !!!

Fly hard, before CONCORD shows up

o7