Friday Night Video - Malukah strikes again!

This lady goes for hearts, not knees. And her archery skills are pretty damn strong !!!

Enjoy!

o7

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - New Year Edition

To end the year, here's the band from my home town with a tune about the place that started it all for them. Groovy used to practice above a sinister-looking doughnut shop, where according to the song (and probably in reality... I've seen the place!) the doughnuts were fluorescent, and where the choice was wide but the taste was... disturbing!

On the gaming front, I've been on a massive Skyrim binge but I should log back into EVE a bit over the weekend. I still have to find a justification for my staying subscribed. In any case this blog will remain alive even if I decide to go, and even if I do I doubt it would be permanent. Something about EVE's uniqueness and whatnot.

To you all, I wish a very happy 2012 !!!

o7

Christmas Skyrim pictorial, redux

Blogger.com being a complete bitch when you want to add pictures, let's redo this post with the pics I wanted.

Redguard... Minmatar... it's all the same to me!

Having a pretty quiet Christmas time, I was able to put some time into Skyrim and had a blast. Now at level 25, this version of Cozmik can now craft "flawless" armor and weapons, improve enchanted items, and lay pretty powerful enchantments on stuff. And yet these skills pale in comparison to my heavy armor and one-handed weapons skills. See those two Elven blades on the rack? I made better version of 'em because those were only "exquisite". So now with my tough Orcish armor my dragon-fragging tactic is to wait for 'em to land, run up to their snouts, and double-swing like a madman. I come out of those encounters with about 80% health, while the dragon is very very dead. Here's a few more screenies for your viewing pleasure:

My new neighborhood, the city of Markarth

Welcome to my humble abode, Vlindrel Hall!

My home's enchantment lab. On the left are my retired Palpatine and Sauron swords

The master's bedroom. Hey what's in that case on the left?

Spawned it for decoration purposes only. When I DO get a pair of swords though.... >:)

Showing this dragon who the fuck is boss. As I said, I've had tougher challenges :)

Deep beneath Markarth, the coolest dungeon ever, Nchuand-Zel!

And finally, Coz doing what he does best, ruining someone's day. Helmet removed to look more badass :))

And that's it! Merry Christmas to all, party hard, fly harder, and fuk 'em up !!!

o7

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - Christmas 2011 Edition

Holy Night the way it's supposed to be sung. FYI, the guy doing the opera voice is the same as the one doing the Black Metal voice, my hometown's Marc Vaillancourt.

Have a heavy little Christmas ya'll !!!

o7

The Great White North

I know the current blog banter is about reviewing the Crucible expansion but I'm sorry, I don't feel like reviewing yet again a game out of which I like only a very small percentage; at least this small percentage is the most unique gaming experience in all of gaming, all genres mixed. But how about reviewing a game which I absolutely love and in which I've been spending a lot of time lately, bordering on too much! If you guessed "Skyrim" by the title of this post, well you guess right. 

Last week was when I finally got my copy of what is now known as 2011's Game of the Year, and as soon as I had past the opening bits I had seen hundreds of times on YouTube I was in for a treat. I knew all about being a prisoner, the decapitation, the dragon showing up and ultimately saving my ass, and getting safe by following one of the two main factions' soldiers (I followed the Stormcloak dude by the way). I didn't even feel too lost because I have played tons of Morrowind in the past, and even though I skipped Oblivion I felt right at home in this new Elder Scrolls setting. But nothing could have prepared me for how beautiful and vibrant Skyrim is, even on my ageing machine at pretty much the lowest setting. I was ready to live with textures being out of focus and less than realistic water and lighting effects, but sometimes when I'm out in the wild or discovering a new town or dungeon I just stop and look around completely mesmerized! 

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I started a Redguard character I named Cozmiken Arrfimm whose main tactic is basically all offense. My specialties are heavy armor, one-handed weapons (dual-wielding), decent archery for those pesky flying lizards (Skyrim dragons are a lot less annoying than the cliff racers of Morrowind... fuck these lizard-birds to the deepest corner of Hell!), smithing and enchanting to make the stuff I use über, and a bit of alchemy and magic just because it's damn useful sometimes. Anyone who has seen me play basically any game would know that I'm not exactly the greatest at sneaking around and worse at any sort of thievery, but the new lockpicking mechanism is really fun, if a bit tricky on higher level locks, but on those at least you get rewarded for trying which is all good. So my fighting tactic most of the time: make sure the bad guys notice me and come to "do me in", funnel them into a tight corridor, FUS-RO-DAH them in the face and into each other, and then start swinging like the good ol' Frenzy Barb of Diablo II fame as the bad guys are trying to pick themselves up, which makes for some pretty hilarious visuals. Sometimes I have to adjust my technique depending on who and/or what I have to fight, but for most plain minions this tactic is devastating. 

But wait... did you just read about Cozmik having smithing and enchanting skills? For pretty much the first time in all the RPG's I've played, yes! The crafting mechanics are really simple and intuitive so I just couldn't pass it up. Plus, with my guy going for the best offense possible I also have to make sure my armor is up to snuff because I don't carry a shield around. Because your skills get better by actually doing stuff it didn't take long before I was able to either build or improve everything up to Elven equipment. The same goes with enchantment and the mechanic couldn't be simpler: find and enchanted item even if it's not something you want, actually even more so if it's not something you would use, disenchant it at an enchanting table, and boom, you can now enchant an item that is more to your liking, and the better the skills the stronger the enchantment. 

The fun stuff I'm using these days: Wolf armor, gauntlets and boots from my werewolf brothers (yeah, not catching diseases is awesome!), all improved to "superior". The armor has a conjuration magic bonus to allow a lowly Minmatar grunt like me - and by the way, I think of Coz/Skyrim and Coz/EVE as one and the same :) - to conjure the magical buddies called Atronachs. Quite useful those. The gauntlets gives a damage bonus to bows, and my boots have yet to be enchanted but I'll most probably put a fire resist bonus there. I was just waiting for my skills to make the enchantment better. My helmet is something I found in a dungeon near the town of Windhelm. It was worn by a particularly tough draugr boss (think "zombie") but my fight was rewarded with a 50 armor rating, cold resist horned helm of Awesome! It will get even better when I finally unlock the smithing perk for improving enchanted items. 

On the offensive side, my main tools are two Skyforge Steel Swords bumped up to "superior" imbued respectively with fire and lightning damage. When you enchant items you can give them new names so I called my swords Sauron's Fire and Palpatine's Lightning :) A lot of monsters in Skyrim are resistant to cold (gee I wonder why!) so my "EM/Thermal" setup can get pretty nasty. For dragons and other long-range baddies I now have an Elven bow ("superior" of course) with a lightning bonus, which I call The Shocker. I now use Dwarven arrows exclusively and these things HURT! Add a little zap to them and they're even tastier.

Now, my shouts and other dragon related stuff. When I met the first dragon I had to kill I quickly noticed that my trademark "kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out" tactic was not conducive to a long life, but at least the following random ones get easier and easier. I'm at level 18 now and I can almost stand in the middle of the thing's fire or frost breath and say "What the fuck is your problem, bitch?", but even now dragons are always exciting when you see one. On the third or fourth one I got some unexpected help from two mammoths who messed one up really bad; I just sent a few arrows and then looted the beast as fast as possible to make sure I didn't receive any pachyderm love. And a bit earlier this week I told myself it would be a good idea to spent some gold on caravan runs to unlock all the main towns. And on two of those towns some dim-witted dragons thought it would be a good idea to freak out the neighborhood. In the town of Morthal, I helped kill the beast, but in the town of Falkreath the guards popped fuses as soon as I shot an arrow and killed me in record time. When I reloaded the game I decided to just stay out of the dragon's sight and sure enough, the guards brought it down and all I had to do was to suck its soul dry. Yeah, Skyrim is full of funny little moments like that! So far though I have way more dragon souls than I have power words. I did mention FUS-RO-DAH so yes, I unlocked those three from the main quest, as well as the WULD sprint. By questing and/or exploring on the side I found the YOL fire breath shout (amazing against cold-loving beasties) and the LIZ ice form shout, which is the "I freeze you solid" shout. This one is brand new so I haven't tried it yet. And I have 6 spare dragon souls to unlock other words. Things are looking good :)

So now after one week of playing Skyrim it still feels like I'm only starting the game because there is so much stuff I can do. One of the highlights was buying my little house in Whiterun, but I find that it's missing the one piece of furniture I use the most, the enchanting table. Oh, with the house I did also have an "housecarl", but I managed to have poor Lydia killed when I was fighting some particularly nasty mages and vampires. Oh well, maybe I should finish the Companions quests and hook up with steaming hot Aela! But there are other much nicer houses to be bought. One I have set my sights on is on the other side of the map in the old Dwemer ruins of Markarth. This town is all eye-candy by the way; I don't think I've ever seen levels as nice as the ones located in ancient Dwemer ruins. But beware, those are usually full of nasty twisted elves called Falmer, and I have the feeling that there might be some of those humongous looking Dwemer mech/bot/thingies ready to smash you into little pieces! Yeah, fun !!!

So there you go, a short (!) account of my adventures in the Great White North of Tamriel. And the fun is just starting!

o7

Dead brain is dead

So much for Fail Mail posting today... I really, I mean REALLY need this holiday!

Fly hard, kill stuff, etc.

o7

Flight of a Thousand Rifters: Cozmik's AAR

I know my blog post for this is late but oh well... blame Real Life and Skyrim! Last saturday was one of those special occasions that underline the fact that EVE Online is truly unique in the gaming world. Let's summarize the event quickly: capsuleer Marlona Sky had a Moros dreadnought parked in a station. The ship was collecting an insane amount of dust and he decided to sent it to the slaughterhouse in a very special way: Get as many frigates and destroyers on the killmail as possible! And it was done in a very intelligent fashion too: Marlona waited for his constellation to come under the control of Sansha Kuvakei and his hordes of cyber-zombie minions, making it impossible for assclowns like Goonswarm, Pandemic Legion, Test Alliance Please Ignore, and other fat entities toting supercap blobs to crash the party. The fight was also to happen right in the docking ring of the station so anyone firing on anyone who isn't an outlaw was going to get corrected by the station sentries. So plainly, the perfect setting for vast amounts of fun!

I logged in just over an hour before the start of the event, clone-jumped to my PvP base to get into my Mobile HQ Orca, and headed towards Gallente space. I made a stop in Dodixie to pick up a stack of Thrashers with 2 flavors fo fits: one long-range Tremor with a SeBo, and one shorter ranged but harder-hitting with RF EMP and a point; I wanted some Quake S but apparently Dodixie was all out, and flying the fat ship I didn't want to make extra detours. When everything was purchased I set sail for Vlillirier (I can pronounce it... can you?) where the fun was about to happen. No I didn't fly the fat bitch into Low-sec; I stopped in Orvolle where I wanted to set my medical clone anyway.

One of the things I really love about events like this is that there are always new people for whom it's their first experience of The PvP, of Low-sec, or seeing a capital ship. As I was idling in the event channel I tried to help some newer guys as best I could. Another thing that was funny was reading the people freaking out when they found out there were the obscene amount of Sansha rats on the gate. I think some people even died trying to take the rats down. Yeah, incursion Sanshas can be a pain in the ass! But the clocked ticked away and it was finally time to warp to the moon 13 station and kill a sieged dreadnought! And pop it did after 10 minutes of sustained fire, faster than everyone was expecting; apparently Marlona had managed to burn out his repair tank... OOOPS! The final tally was 153 pilots on the killmail and a hair over 200 people in Local. But with the Moros dead the event was far from over... in fact the fun was just starting :)

Seconds after Marlona's pod was squished people started a massive brawl. Those that had come in ships that could tank sentries started popping straggling frigs and destroyers. but with so many people being non-outlaws, as soon as someone turned red the ship was melted in record time, no matter the size. Some people warped to the system's asteroid belts only to die to waiting True Power rats, but most ships strated hopping planets looking for any kill opportunity, which is what I did for the next hour of so. The highlights of my PvP afternoon included participating in the killing of a ridiculously fail-fit SniggWaffe Hurricane with me popping its capsule (tomorrow's Wednesday of Fail for sure; it's Xmas time so I'll treat myself!), and a little 2v1 I had with 2 Coercers versus the wannabe-Vaga Stabber I had brought with me. That was fun! I pointed one of the ships and tore it up pretty fast, but the other stuck around because 2 lazor-fit destroyers versus a tiny shield tank meant they had a fighting chance. Unfortunately I killed the first one really quick and applied my point to the second one in time to score the double kill. My victory dance didn't last long though because I got attacked seconds after :)

The only down side of my afternoon was getting podded twice. With so many people flying fast locking ships this was worse that I thought it would be, even if I had planned on it. And at 13 million ISK per clone upgrade thanks to my 56m skill points I had to cut my little op short because I didn't want to be financially ruined. But all in all it was a good tally for a solo pilot: including the Moros and a n00bship that landed at a planet I was parked in, I killed 9 ships and 2 pods, and got 3 final blows, for the loss of 2 Thrashers and one Stabber. So my usually very quiet killboard suddenly looked all Christmas-y (or SCV-ish for drum corps fans) in its red and green :)

Yep, events like this one make EVE Online worth playing for me; the chaos created by cramming 200+ small ships was some of the most fun I've had in the game all year. I hear that Marlona wants to do it again so obviously I'll be keeping an eye on any future events. And the idea to hold it in incursion space? Simple brilliance! Thank you Marlona for making me believe in EVE again, and congratulations to all the winners!

Fly ganky!

o7

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - 2011/12/16

I'm a huge Zeppelin fan. Hell I even consider John "Bonzo" Bonham to be one of my drum teachers! And I also love Trent Reznor/Nine Inch Nails. Miz the two together and you have this awesome rendition of Zep's Immigrant Song. Plus the "dragon tattoo" movie looks pretty good, I'll definitely have to check it out!

Enjoy!

o7

So many fronts!

This week is turning out to be interesting in all sorts of ways. When I logged in EVE last monday I noticed that not only did CCP had Christmas presents for us, but I also noticed that my wallet was quite a bit fatter than it was the day before. A quick check of the journal showed me that my corpmate si Gong, who had asked me the day before how much ISK I had to get to buy and fit a new Sleipnir, had dumped 150 million in my wallet and ordered me to go shopping. It didn't take much more to convince me and some time later after a trip to Jita where the Slippy was cheapest I was flying in Stinkfoot II :)) I know I use it for carebearing but it did feel nice to be in my favorite cash cow again.

The fun and loud part of the week was yesterday when my buddy Letrange and I went to Montreal's Foufounes Électriques (Electric Buttcheeks XD) to be treated by the Devin Townsend Project with some extremely powerful yet tasteful British Columbia Nerd Metal. The Fouf's is a pretty small venue so the band was really connecting with the crowd, and Devin's humor and showmanship is simply unparalelled. The next time they come to town I hope I won't be as flat-broke as I was yesterday so I can get myself the coolest rock memorabilia ever: the Ziltoid The Omniscient hand puppet! Good job HevyDevy and co. and can't wait for the next show!

And the fun is going on today as not only is it finally my pay day (after the most horrendous 2 weeks ever) but it's also the day where Cozmik's capsule will crash-land on the northern part of the continent of Tamriel. Yes indeed, right after work I'm picking up my copy of TES: Skyrim and try (most probably in vain) to not go to bed too late. The character I want to play will be a Redguard so I'll try my best to match Cozmik's Minmatar Brutor looks. Let's hope the game lets me! I've also thought of a nordic spin on Cozmik's name: in Skyrim he will be known as Cozmiken Arrfimm ("fimm" is icelandic for "five" by the way). The "R" in Cozmik R5 stands for "red" but the icelandic word for red is a bit too complicated to my taste so I went with the pronounciation only. Anyway, questing starts tonight so here's to hoping I don't get an arrow in the knee :))

But does the fun stop there? No-sireee Bob! Tomorrow is my work's Christmas lunch, and because we finish at Noon it should be quite epic. On the menu for me: lamb chops and most probably a St-Emilion red wine. Yeah, it'll rock! But wait, there's more! On Saturday at 1900 evetime will be Marlona Sky's "Flight of a Thousand Rifters", an event where frigs and destroyers are invited to try and take down Intigo, Marlona's Moros dreadnaught. The event being at 1400 Montreal time, I should have no problems making it before... an impromptu EVE meet to end 2011 !!!

So yes, I may not be in game much these days but after the crazy 2 weeks Life is finally throwing all sorts of cool stuff at me.

EOH Poker!

As you may have noticed, Kirith Kodachi is not the only canuck to advertise this fine service to the EVE community. I haven't yet experienced it myself but because I want to know the product which I now advertise I will most probably give it a shot on Sunday to relax after all the fun stuff that's been happening. So by all means, go clickety-click the Rifter banner and tell 'em Cozmik sent you!

Fly fun everyone !!!

o7

Wednesdays of Fail - 2011/12/14

Sick days. They have the advantage of giving a lot of relaxation time except for a small detail: you take sick days because you feel like shit. And what better day to feel like shit? Wednesday of course. I do hope my legs and back feel better tonight because I am NOT missing my Devin Townsend concert! Anywho... welcome to the return installment of the Wednesdays of Fail! This week's entry comes from Afandi of Paradise Delivery. The kill happened in Hi-sec so it was the result of a wardec, a duel, a can-flip... I don't know which because I don't have that detail. Maybe Afandi can give a small AAR in the comments. In any case, his Myrmidon was locked in battle with this Curse, and the Myrm prevailed to reveal this:

[Curse, Jhaelen's Curse]
Armor EM Hardener II
Emergency Damage Control I
Imperial Navy Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane
Medium Inefficient Armor Repair Unit

Balmer Series Tracking Disruptor I
Balmer Series Tracking Disruptor I
Cap Recharger II
Y-S8 Hydrocarbon I Afterburners
ECM - White Noise Generator II
ECM - Phase Inverter II

Medium Unstable Power Fluctuator I
Medium Unstable Power Fluctuator I
Medium Diminishing Power System Drain I
Medium Diminishing Power System Drain I
Drone Link Augmentor I

Hammerhead II x5
Warrior II x10

http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=14415228

Mmm... at first I didn't think there was that much fail about this Curse. The high slots are boasting the best-named cap-sucking equipement, it's not dual tanked... oh but what do I see there? A mix of expensive and uber cheap modules? Come on, this is a recon... splurge a bit! And then there are the T2 ECM modules. WTF is this, a Rook?! The tracking disruptors are both pricey and effective but I'm not sure if two are required. But the big one: no rigs? Seriously? In this day and age where a rig isn't the price of an entire ship anymore?! Dude !!! This is where this Curse failed, trying a little too hard to do a little too much.

Mr. Afandi, for your glorious victory over this interestingly fit Curse you will be receiving 177,633 ISK for the Drone Link Augmentor I. My reason for this is that I've never seen this module fitted on a Curse.

Do you have a funny killmail you would like to share with the community? If so, please evemail the killboard or BattleClinic link to Cozmik R5 in-game, or send it via regular e-mail at r3dfiv3@hotmail.com

Just as WDA and Ga'len have done in the past, the sender of a killmail that has been posted on the blog will receive a small ISK prize, the value of a random module fitted on the ship; dream on if you think I'll pay for Faction, Complex or Officer mods!

Keep your eyes open for Fail, and rid New Eden of these atrocities!

o7

The calm after the storm

Holy shit that was a stupidly crazy two weeks I just spent there, and it's not an experience I want to repeat any time soon, if ever. I don't want to bore people too much with the details of Real Life and my crazy ex/kids relationship, but I want to explain myself for this reason: I want to explain myself because I want to get it out of my system. I need to open the valves and let some steam out. Blogs are made to let one pour his thoughts out right? Right.

So the last weekend of November I was starting my parental duty weekend but this time I would be keeping my boys for the entire week because my ex was having her bathroom completely redone, making her house uninhabitable; when one cannot shower or take a dump, you can't live there. This was supposed to last only the week until December 2nd. My appartment being pretty small I have to couch-surf when the boys are over, and with the weather turning crappy it's easy to start stepping on each other's toes. I realise I will have to move out at some point but not before both guys are in school. But to come back on the subject just before the first weekend of December my ex told me that the work wasn't finished yet and I'd have to keep my boys until at least Wednesday (last Wednesday, the 7th) but I would have a short break in the weekend. Well and good but that makes for a weekend that flies extremely fast. Murphy being the complete bitch he is Wednesday became Thursday and my boys had only one night back at home when they had to come back to my place this past weekend for the "normal" parental weekend. Now this weekend is over, I'm slightly sick of my boys, my boys are slightly sick of me, and everybody needs a goddamn break!

With Christmas falling right on the weekend where I usually have the boys, this time they will spend a longer time with their mom and her family, which is all good because my own family is all over the place, from Arizona to Thailand. This will give me time to recuperate and pick up to mess left by two weeks of having the boys uprooted and transplanted in too small a pot. So in order for the next couple of weeks: back to gaming in a very selfish fashion. This may or may not be in EVE Online because lately I've been feeling out of touch with Internet Spaceships. I have told my few corpmates that I may leave my own little corp and go where there's a bit more action, but at the same time I feel that moving stuff around halfway across the cluster will cause the exact same thing that happened last April, I'll get sick of EVE's tedious bullshit. I'm actually waiting to see if our little Montreal corp project gets off the ground; if it does, good. If it doesn't it may be the Swan Song. Anyway, I have to find a way to make EVE fun again to justify paying for it.

But other interests require my attention: I haven't played a serious deathmatch in a while so I should pay my QLive clanmates a visit and brush off some rust. Yes, I will suck badly! Another thing I haven't done in too long is some sim piloting, either flight, racing or battlemechs. Piloting is very relaxing to me, almost as much as drumming. Another time-killer I'm into is RPG gaming; hell I don't even have the aversion to elves that a lot of people seem to have, though I don't usually play one! While I do play some Dungeons & Dragons Online and Hellgate Global, I mentioned last week that I'd be getting Skyrim this week, and I will. Thanks to the magic of the Internets I have a copy of the 660 page Prima guide to Skyrim and I already have an idea of how I'll build my character: Redguard dual-wielder of sharp and pointy objects, worshipper of the Tasmanian Devil :) I haven't been to Tamriel since Morrowind but from what I hear I'm in for a treat. It did win the Game of the Year award so I don't see how I can lose!

But apart from gaming something will start to take more and more of my time. My next summer vacation will be a bicycle tour and many preparations are needed, starting with the completion of my bike setup, the equipment I need to carry, the itinerary I will take, the mileage I want to achieve, the little things I may forget, etc. The past couple weeks' experience have pointed me towards what will probably be my first important purchase: sleeping accomodations. And what better place to test it than in my own living room! My plan is to leave my place for two full weeks, during which time I may or may not sleep indoors. Not being a millionaire my first bike tour will be a loop starting and finishing at my place, but with two weeks of travel time I have to decide where this loop will take me. My only criteria: this will not be a race. I'm taking the trip to enjoy myself and see my part of the world, not to execute feats of performance. I do plan to do the trip in September so I'll have all spring and summer to warm up. This is my first big bike trip and I want it to be a good experience even if it's hard.

But the main common denominator with all those things: everything in here is something I absolutely love, and nothing is a rush. No I won't try to do everything at the same time. I know I'm a huge dreamer and want to do so much stuff that I usually have to drop three quarters of what I want to do. Oh well, I can't help it! At least now I have time to take a breather. Yes I know it sounds selfish, and that I don't love my kids. But at least I'm man enough to say that I'm not a perfect father. I must stop here before I turn this into a lengthy philosophical post.

Fly happy; that's the only thing I can say

o7

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - 2011/12/09

Yes I have to bug you one more time with Maestro HevyDevy and with good reason. Next Wednesday at 7PM my buddy Letrange and I will go to Montreal's Foufounes Electriques to see and hear the Devin Townsend Project. It should be quite the show!

On the EVE front: finally got a bit of EVE done yesterday! I did a bit of exploration and found a Radar and a Magnetometric site, and then paid a visit to the hellhole known as Jita where I found that the Large Neutrons were the cheapest (!) at 7m ISK so I bought a full set for my upcoming Talos. But in my tiredness I sort of left 'em in the hangar in Jita 4-4 because I wanted to take a good look at this without being hassled:

All banged up!

Yes, this is the result of the bashing you can see in my header (excerpt from this video) Now the big question: should I change my header to reflect the change to the monument or do I leave my header as is to remind CCP that the player base will get angry if pushed?

... More stuff to be written cuz now I gotta leave my place XD

Aight back from work, but completely lost my train of thought. I'm a fail-blogger lately! Call it the pre-holidays syndrome, plus my brain is trying to go 20000 directions at once. And I have an ex to throw me curve balls (flaming ones of course). Oh well... I guess that's why there are first-person shooters :))

Fly hard and kill 'em all!

o7

Wednesday of Fail hiatus

Sorry guys, there won't be a Fail Mail post this week. Real Life is being a complete bitch and she needs a serious whipping.

For once, fly safe.

o7

FUS RO DAH!

Yes, the new internet meme/unrelenting force shout explains perfectly what's been going on in Real Life over the past week and a half, and unfortunately it has absolutely nothing to do with playing Skyrim; more on that later. Because of increased parental duties due to my ex renovating the bathroom of her house, thus making it pretty uninhabitable, my boys have been staying with me in my small appartment. When I have them over every other weekend I couch-surf for 3 nights as they take over my bed, but this time I had to couch-surf for a week, with a little break over the weekend, and again this week hopefully for one last night tonight. Oh and I will have 'em this coming weekend too as we'll be back on the regular duty schedule. All it does nothing to help my already strainded relations with the ex. Oh well, normality should return soon™.

In the short play time that I did get I went on a small gang PvP roam with a fleet consisting of a Vexor, Moa, Crow and my Firetail. Many jumps happened uneventfully, but for half the roam our Moa pilot's experience was marred by his computer's inhability to see his sound card, and the EVE client simply refused to let him on comms. Not fun that. So halfway on the roam we lost our Moa, both because of the comm situation and RL stuff. And we finally got some action at the very end. Our Crow pilot found a Maller and a Navitas in a belt and we decided to tackle the Maller even under the disapproval of Havegun, our Vexor pilot and FC. Soon after we had engaged a Talos arrived on the scene so we quickly switched targets, but a few seconds later a few Against All Authorities guys arrrived in a timely manner and proceeded to fuck us up. We died gloriously and fun was had. Note to Havegun: dude, stop protecting your immense sec status! Being too picky about targets means that too often we don't get any action, or when we do the bad guys are the wrong ones to engage. I also got a bit more action later as I was flying a Stabber from Gallente space to Heimatar the long way through Low-sec (and met Kirith Kodachi in Local on the way!) but my trip went South when I met a wall of BC's supported by a remote sensor-boosting Lachesis. Usually I'm fast enough to fly through gate camps, but not this one as the Lachesis jumped in with me and had me locked and tackled in record time. I did try to take him down with me but the wall of BC popped me too fast. It was still funny though and I gave props to the Lach pilot :)

But as the title implies, I'm starting to have my mind wander into non-Internet-Spaceship related territory. Yes Crucible is good but there's still so much about EVE that to me is just meh. Ever since it came out last month I've been reading and hearing the rave reviews about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and being also a fan of fantasy settings these are not falling on deaf ears. I never do the "ZOMG I'm gonna pre-purchase this game 2 years in advance!" thing for a few reasons: my money is tight, I prefer to let other people find bugs and problems, and by all that is good and mighty I hate following masses. The perfect example of this is that it took me quite a while to get into the Harry Potter series. But for Skyrim, it is now clear that the masses were right; the game met and even exceeded all expectations and is a resounding success. And when I found out from one Carole Pivarnik (does that name ring a bell? It should...) that Skyrim is playable on a slightly aged machine I told myself that maybe I should really look into it. I even started to prepare myself to re-install Morrowind as I waited for the occasion to get the newer game. And then Malukah happened.

An obscene amount of people talk about getting arrows to the knees, but as a gamer, fantasy buff, musician, and hell even as a human male, I took arrows to the heart and soul! I had seen Mintchip's hilarious gameplay videos, and also some great Machinima vids, but Malukah managed to do with one heart-melting tear-extracting song what even Bethesda's own gameplay and cinematic trailers couldn't do. I gotta play Skyrim. Now. No... yesterday! So it's pretty ironic that at about the same time that my EVE subscription comes to renewal I will be joining the masses of Fantasy RPG gamers and diving into a lush universe full of wonder and dangers, and bandits and werewolves and dragons. Oh my! Malukah, thank you for giving me the final push to get me started in Skyrim, and also for the sweet sweet music you gave us. I for one hope you will give us many more tunes, be they covers or originals. The Thu'um is strong in you :)

Fly like huge fire-breathing winged reptilians

o7

Sunday's Electric Lunch Hour - Frank Zappa Special Edition

RIP Frank

o7

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - 2011/12/02

So it's a bit on the early side. I couldn't care less because this week felt like it was never-ending. I'll spare you the details. This Sunday will mark the 18th anniversary of the death of Frank Vincent Zappa, one of the greatest, weirdest, most prolific music composer to have ever graced God's Green Earth. Therefore it's only fitting that I post one of his greatest piece of work. No need for fancy visuals here, just close your eyes and let the music take you to places you never thought possible.

Frank Zappa
1940-1993

Best use of duct tape ever

King of Vert

Here she is, in all her glory. Ain't it awesome to have friends with BPOs and 8 large AC's stashed away for just this occasion? Now to find a way to put all this to the test... Oh, and she should be joined by her other Tier 3 sisters soon >:)

Fly large

o7

Wednesday of Fail - 2011/11/30

The morning after. Usually this means unbelievable amounts of coffee, gallons of Gatorade and crates of Advil to cope with drowsiness, dehydration and searing headaches resulting from the consumption of vast quantities of alcohol. But in our case the morning after means day-dreaming of last night's trip to a revamped New Eden full of nebulas, shiny new ships, and sleek engine trails! And because the morning after happens to fall on a Wednesday... welcome to another installment of the Wednesdays of Fail! This week's entry comes from my good friend and ex-corpmate Havegun Willtravel of Mobile Alcohol Processing Units. Unlike his first entry which was given straight to me to start my Fail Mail bank, this one was submitted in the traditional way and Gun had to wait in line like anybody else, to have his link appear on my pages. Although Gun himself does not show up on the killmail, we do know the perpetrators of the kill quite well so I'm sure they won't mind if it's Gun getting the ISK :) So the Basgerin Pirates were roaming away from their tiny constellation hoping to catch something tasty, and guess what, they did:

[Curse, Orrery Laicism's Curse]
Brokara's Modified Power Diagnostic System
Brokara's Modified Power Diagnostic System
Raysere's Modified Power Diagnostic System
Selynne's Modified Power Diagnostic System

Caldari Navy Large Shield Extender
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Dread Guristas Invulnerability Field
Heat Dissipation Field II
Photon Scattering Field II

Dark Blood Focused Medium Pulse Laser, Imperial Navy Multifrequency M
Dark Blood Focused Medium Pulse Laser, Imperial Navy Multifrequency M
Corpum A-Type Medium Nosferatu
Corpum A-Type Medium Nosferatu
Corpum A-Type Medium Nosferatu

Medium Drone Durability Enhancer II
Medium Drone Speed Augmentor II

Hammerhead I x5
Hornet I x1
Infiltrator I x2
Wasp I x1

http://www.basgerin-pirate.com/kb3/index.php?a=kill_detail&kll_id=11524

People with more ISK than sense... always a great source of hilarity! First of all, let's put this Curse's cost in perspective: with the value as indicated on the Basgerin killboard, this ship could pay for OVER HALF A YEAR of game time. And this thing undock and died. Let's look at it from the ground up. The rigs are... interesting to say the least. I've seen all kinds of Curse fits but none of them with drone rigs, let alone T2 rigs. Next up, Holy Officer Mods Batman !!! Should I tell this guy that 3 PDS II and a Damage Control II would have resulted in a better tank? Nah, I won't tell him because this guy simply can't learn! On to the mids, this is slightly more down to earth (!) but 2 things are clearly lacking: propulsion and tracking disruption. Oh well, it's tanky! But the highs... damn those high slots hurt! Not only are they ridiculously expensive, but I simply don't see how this boat can need so much cap! Oh well, the power of turning GTC's into PLEX at work :))

Havegun Willtravel, for taking a page off of our long time enemies' book, you will be getting (fuck me.... what's the cheapest thing here.....) 85,000 ISK for the full flight of Hammerhead I's that somehow managed to survive this encounter. And props to A Lunchbox for killing this over-priced abomination :))

Do you have a funny killmail you would like to share with the community? If so, please evemail the killboard or BattleClinic link to Cozmik R5 in-game, or send it via regular e-mail at r3dfiv3@hotmail.com

Just as WDA and Ga'len have done in the past, the sender of a killmail that has been posted on the blog will receive a small ISK prize, the value of a random module fitted on the ship; dream on if you think I'll pay for Faction, Complex or Officer mods!

Keep your eyes open for Fail, and rid New Eden of these atrocities!

o7

The morning after

What an evening of Patch Day that was! I spent pretty much all day yesterday thinking about the expansion I would have to download, and all I had to satisfy my urge to play EVE was the blogs that I could read and a text copy of the patch notes. I had done a little testing on Singularity but very little, but only just enough to find out that the Tornado met and even exceeded my expectations. I had only seen the new nebulas around 6-something in Syndicate (whatever happened to FD-MLJ anyway?) and I hadn't even tried the engine trails. Yes, my gaming time sucks these days!

Yesterday I got to leave work a bit earlier; not because of EVE but the timing couldn't have been better. Got home, put supper into the oven, start downloading and hit the EVE-O forums. Ah the forums... this place has more trolls than the entire army of Mordor! "Waaaa new font!". "Waaaa Naga doesn't shoot missiles!". "Waaaa you broke cloaking!". "Waaaa you broke interdictors!". Trolls: please do not feed them, or if you do make sure the food is heavily spiced :)) But I knew that what little I had seen on Sisi and what I had read about in the patch notes was more than satisfying to me. But once I was finally able to log in the tune changed quite drastically as everybody I had in my various channels was singing the praises of this new EVE. For the first time in as long as some of the oldest players could remember, CCP had finally hit a resounding homerun. The only scratch on Crucible's paint would be the missing fuel block BPO's but this should be fixed soon. And for what I think is the first time ever, nothing that was working was badly broken. If there is it's not something that affects me. Haleluia to that!

So my first impressions on a few things:

The engine trails: having not really seen them on Sisi, I never thought I would like them so much. You see, the majority of the time whether it's for PvE or PvP I play with my camera view zoomed way out. It was one of the reasons why I felt the new turrets didn't excite me much. So with my ship being only a few dark pixels in the middle of my screen sometimes it was hard to see where I was in space in relation to other stuff, but now with the trails manual flying has become tons of fun. I spent almost 15 minutes doing "aerobatics" in my Malediction, giggling like a 10 year old boy! It's only a little thing, but damn is it good!

Auto-jump, auto-dock, loot all, etc: CCP Soundwave, you and Team BFF clearly deserve a medal, a bigger Xmas bonus, a holiday, or all of the above! I have always complained about the tediousness of playing EVE, but by making things easier to manage more time can be spent on more important things. As always, there is still the danger of misusing the auto-pilot, and I simply can't wait to read reports of haulers killed within spitting distance of the Jita undock with ungodly amounts of loot. But I'm sure someone heard my prayers of having the fitting browser and the market interact together seemlessly; in case you didn't know (I found out this morning before leaving for work), you can now drag a saved fit to the market window, and this will create a group from which one can buy the needed modules. It's not the 1-button "buy all" I had suggested but it's a step in the right direction. Less time spent buying and fitting means more time out in space. Awesome!

Nebulas, warp tunnel, ship textures, etc: space started to look better (to me at least) around Apocrypha, and then a bit better in Tyrannis. But now, it's simply breathtaking. I'll have to take a long roam to appreciate the differences between systems, constellations and regions, something that will happen this weekend. I read that Letrange found the region jumps to be a bit jarring, but previously you would have a few jumps were you'd go from blue nebulas to red nebulas in the same constellation. I also liked the much cleaner scanning view. The warping effect though... this has never looked this good! Warping to a star or through a planet is something worth seeing! Not dealing with cap ships these days I will be a while before I see the new cyno effect but from what I've seen in videos it must be great to see in-game. I was really impressed with the new ship textures; they make some truly horrible looking ships (ie: Caldari) better to look at, and some ships that were already nice looking really spiff. I was surprised by one ship that wasn't mentioned in the changes, at least that I know of: the Firetail's new dark brown paint job makes it look A LOT meaner :)

And that's about all the time I had for yesterday. I did give quick spin to one of my Taranii by killing a few Angel rats. Hitting for 200+ while afterburning at 1300 m/s is great, but for a real test I'll have to go up against capsuleer-flown ships, both in consensual PvP and in Surprise ClownSeks. You may have noticed I haven't talked about the new battlecruisers. I'm just not one of those rich tards willing to spend 200+ million ISK to be one of the first to own a new T1 ship. I'll let the dust settle a bit and when my T2 large lasers are ready I'll probably buy all 4 at once. I already have BC V so I should have fun :)

And there you go! For the first time since I started playing the game in January 2008 I REALLY want to play EVE, and talk about it, and try to get people to try it, and maybe even get some Bitter Old Vets to come back. Is Crucible good enough to bring back someone like Teadaze? Is it good enough to make a certain Virginia resident regret her decision to give away her well-known character? I can see where these two can be bitter as they spilled blood, sweat and tears over this game at a time when the developers were... what's the term... misguided? But I'm pretty sure that if they came back strictly for the game itself, they would like the brand new New Eden that was delivered to us. I can't wait to have some good quality play time :))

Fly. That's it. Just fly!

o7

Suddenly, the end of Incarna

After surviving some of the worst birth pangs ever suffered by an MMO game since the infamous Star Wars Galaxies NGE debacle (and we all know how well that went), EVE Online's Incarna will now be put to rest. And it will go down as the worst expansion in the game's 8 year history. When a game expansion incites masses to riot, unsubscribe and even quit entirely, something's way wrong. But all this can be left behind now, and we the playerbase can only hope that CCP learned from its numerous mistakes and make good on its promises to make things alright once more.

As I'm writing this in 24 hours people will be making preparations for the massive update that if all goes according to plan will be a major boost for the game. Capital ships will work quite differently (though I believe that still a lot of work needs to be done; supercaps have no business whatsoever in Low-sec for instance), a new class of ships will be born, loads of T2 modules will be appearing, and hopefully hybrid guns will finally work as intended, much to the joy of Gallente and Caldari pilots, and some perfectly skilled Taranis pilots :)

Here's a short list of the things that I'm looking forward to the most:

The new battlecruisers: when I started playing EVE I had asked my friend Letrange what would be a ship that would fit my style of piloting, which is fly fast, hit hard, and GTFO with none the wiser; tank is superfluous. His immediate answer was Vagabond without hesitation, but now I should have a new and cheaper option in the form of the Tornado. It's faster than the Hurricane and the big guns hurt; just make sure you don't let an interceptor, assault frig, or even a lowly Rifter get too close. I have yet to try the Talos, Naga and Oracle; Cozmik just got the ability to fit large T2 blasters, but no T2 railguns yet. And my large lazorz are only trained to a token level III so no T2 guns for a few weeks for the Oracle... just in time for Christmas I'd say. But I really liked what I saw with the Tornado; an AC/nano fit is doable, and the gank fit will simply be hilarious!

The new font and scalable UI: gone will be the days of squarish letters and numbers that look the same. How many people have called me "Cozmik RS" instead of "Cozmik R-FIVE", and how many Null-sec systems have been misread. And of course, the option of scalability will make happy eye balls the world over because the tiny font was tiny.

The new POS mechanics: yes you read right, I, Cozmik R5, am happy about the changes coming to Player-Owned Structures. Please don't choke on your coffee! The simplification of the POS mechanics means one thing: a lazy schmuck like me can now operate and refuel a POS without having to calculate tons of different components in precise quantities to make sure everything works for a precise amount of time. Just fill up the thing will fuel pellets and strontium calthrates and all is cool in the universe! Now why would I be so happy about this? First my noob corpmate is more interested in the industrial side of EVE and at some point we will have to set up a tower somewhere. Second, should I go back to W-space I will be able to help whichever corp I'm with better with POS operations. Hell I may even train up POS guns!

Player-owned customs offices: please don't choke on your coffee some more, I'm not about to start doing some PI. Much too lazy for this (yes, even if it's dead easy and maintenance free). Come on... the things are GANKABLE! I haven't see the HP stats on the offices but I can easily imagine myself and a bunch of friends looking fro trouble out in Low-sec and reinforcing offices for this simple reason: because we can!

That's pretty much it for the Crucible expansion as we should see it tomorrow, but there are still a few things that I hope will be on the drawing board for the summer 2012 expansion:

• The fourth bonus on the Assault Ships: overdue much?
• The fifth subsystems for Strategic Cruisers: they said there would be five... we're still waiting.
• T3 frigates: one of the most requested ship, and yet it remains ignored.
• The bounty system: one of the careers I initially thought I'd be able to pursue, bounty hunting as a viable money-making activity cannot work in the current iteration.
• The Global Criminal Countdown: bring this down to 5 minutes. Non negociable.
• Other stuff I can't think about right now: because I'm sure there is!

I know that there is a good chance that "walking in stations" stuff will have to be expanded upon after so much "flying in space" stuff (God I hate segregating EVE like this) but if CCP learned only one thing, and I sincerely hope that they truly learned their lesson, it's that what happens in space cannot be neglected. Ever. To do so is to neglect the reason why a vast majority of the players are playing the game. I'd say maybe bring down the prices in the NeX store to a sane level (to Hell with your 1000$ jeans Arnar!) and add lots, and I mean LOTS of stuff to buy, for those interested in such stuff. And when you actually expand on Incarna, make sure the players get to go places and interact. This has to be done correctly and not rushed the way Incarna was. And obviously not at the cost of further infuriating the player base. CCP survived the 2011 Summer of Rage, but it might not survive more failure of this magnitude.

In the meantime, all that's left to do now is wait for Crucible to be deployed, and hope that fun returns to New Eden. Incarna is over. Good riddance!

Fly hard

o7

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - 2011/11/25

I got to see Trivium just over a month ago when they were opening for Dream Theater, and I have to say I didn't get enough; an opening band always has lesser audio quality and not enough time to really show their stuff, and they unfortunately had to skip this great tune. This is a fan made video but it's pretty well done, so crank up that volume and enjoy!

o7

Wednesday of Fail - 2011/11/23

You know it's been a shitty day at work when various co-workers get into various scraps with the boss for various reasons, when a co-worker has to meet the HR agent because of the complete ineptitude of yet another co-worker, and when YET ANOTHER co-worker stays barricaded in her office because her ex-boyfriend is a complete and utter douchebag. All this means only one thing, it's a Wednesday. But what better way to turn the shitty tide than with another installment of the Wednesdays of Fail! This week's entry was submitted by Naoru Kozan of The Tuskers. He and his mateys were out in Essence Low-sec space doing their Yarrrin' thing when they found a Gila to tackle who was ratting belts in numerical order; yeah, that's pretty safe right?. Having an ex-corpmate who has an on-going love affair with the Gurista cruiser, I know how nasty and effective this ship can be, except for one thing... I would bet my mom that my buddy Felix does not fit it like this:

[Gila, Socratic's Gila]

Warp Core Stabilizer II

Warp Core Stabilizer II

Warp Core Stabilizer II

Warp Core Stabilizer II

Large Shield Extender II

Large Shield Extender II

Large Shield Extender II

Large Shield Extender II

Heat Dissipation Amplifier II

Magnetic Scattering Amplifier II

Small Diminishing Power System Drain I

Rocket Launcher II, Caldari Navy Gremlin Rocket

Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Torrent Assault Missile

Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Torrent Assault Missile

[empty high slot]

Medium Core Defence Field Purger II

Medium Core Defence Field Purger II

Medium Core Defence Field Purger II

Ogre II x7

Ogre II x4

http://tuskers.killmail.org/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=11108821

And to think I was amazed last week when the victim was sporting a single T2 warp core stabilizer, this guy has to sport 4 of 'em and yet died to 3 frigates. I'm pretty sure that one more and he would've gotten away! But I passed on the rigs... mmm'yeah, the shield recharge rate must be working good, especially at such a ridiculous price. The mids are nice and tanky but apparently they don't do anything else. The high slots... I'm sure something better can be done, but I'm no pro at Gila fitting. But two things tickle me: first is the ton of drones that were left in the ship, but this being a drone boat it was bound to happen. No, the thing that really hits me is that even with the benefit of "All level V" skills, all this doesn't fit on the CPU level, and I mean REALLY doesn't fit: EFT shows 486.75/437.5. Yeah, something had to be offline, and not just the small NOS. Which was superfluous anyway because even before putting it on the fit was 100% cap stable! So all in all, a pretty weird and funky fit all around!

Naoru Kozan, you sir will be receiving 612,960 ISK, your killboard's value for the Small Diminishing Power System Drain I. The reason: I have no fucking clue what it was doing fitted on this ship! Gratz dude and keep terrorizing Hevrice and its surroundings :)

Do you have a funny killmail you would like to share with the community? If so, please evemail the killboard or BattleClinic link to Cozmik R5 in-game, or send it via regular e-mail at r3dfiv3@hotmail.com

Just as WDA and Ga'len have done in the past, the sender of a killmail that has been posted on the blog will receive a small ISK prize, the value of a random module fitted on the ship; dream on if you think I'll pay for Faction, Complex or Officer mods!

Keep your eyes open for Fail, and rid New Eden of these atrocities!

o7

Having fun while losing

Yesterday when I logged on I decided that I had had just about enough of exploration. Sure, finding radar sites and the occasional Domination rat with sweet loot is nice, and the actual scanning mechanics are quite easy now (I do have to practice using combat probes though; never know when that skill will come in handy) but ever since my little trip to Providence and Catch I've been wanting to go back to flying dangerous so after the scanning of my home system and the system next door, which was crammed with anomalies and signatures but nothing came out of it, I decided to give my yet-to-be-blooded Firetail a spin. I knew how effective that ship can be when going for turret equipped targets having fallen victim to it in a Jaguar not too long ago, but hopefully now it would be my turn to do the killing.

My current exploration HQ is in the South-East of the Heimatar region (looking at the Dotlan maps) so from there the hunting grounds are plentiful. My first choice of destination was towards the Eifer system by way of Gusandall, hoping Mr Kane Rizzel was around because I know he's a good sport. But unfortunately he wasn't on and on top of it the area was very quiet. So much for that idea. I then flew towards Metropolis and Evati, but at some point (don't remember which system) I had faction cruisers, BC's and BS's on scan... and these people were active. Right, not such a great idea then. So I backtracked to head towards Molden Heath for what I call the "Tour de MH", with sneak-peeks into Etherium Reach and Great Wildlands. The way to Skarkon and L4X-1V was also quiet with barely a ship flying in space; those I could scan down always ended up being POS'ed up, and L4X was empty, not even a bubble left from a previous camp. But this being xxDeathxx space I didn't want to stick around too long. I then resumed the tour and what did I find? More emptiness. When people say Low-sec is dead, it is no rumor. I then made a beeline for the Egbinger system, and from there Great Wildlands was calling.

I had already roamed a lot at that point and knew that my gaming time was running short so instead of taking a long-ish road in search of stuff I took the straight path between B-VIP9 and 7Q-8Z2. This would take me through 2 of the 3 station systems in the region so if anybody was active, big or small, this is where they were bound to be. Once again, quiet space for a while but in the first station system, M-MD3B, we were 16 in Local. Only some small stuff out in space at the moment I passed by, but I didn't want to stick around long; I know from experience how hungry a bunch of people living in Null-sec can get! I then jumped into E02-IK, and this one was quieter; only 3 in Local and nothing in space. But the closer I get to the 7Q system the more bookmarks I have for safespots, offgrids and tacticals, so it's much easier to take time to see what kind of traffic is flying through. And it was finally in 7Q where I finally saw some possible action.

As I was sitting on a 200km tactical above the Khabi gate in 7Q, which sported a fail-anchored catch bubble, a Hydra Reloaded Dramiel landed, and after waiting a few seconds to see what my immobile Firetail was doing, he burned towards me like only a Dramiel can. I wanted to play some mind games a bit; I was looking positively AFK as he was closing the distance but when he got to around 40km I warped straight to the gate, jumped out, and reapproached the gate. Sure enough, a few seconds later the Dramiel jumped and as soon as he decloaked I jumped back to 7Q. I guess it did have an effect because when he followed me back in I was already at my tactical, and to help matters when he decloaked the rats that were on the gate aggressed him. Yay Angels! He easily out-distanced them and warped out; had he come towards me again I would have started the dance, but he didn't. So much for the Dramiel, or so I thought at the time. A few minutes passed before I saw more traffic and it arrived in the form of a Claw interceptor, from another alliance. Oh goody! Exactly the type of ship I wanted to hunt. When he landed on the gate (I was aligning to the bubble but yeah, it failed) he too started to burn towards me but I had much better confidence against a Claw, so I started the transversal spiral. And sure enough he got too close and I latched onto him with scram and web. Let the feeding begin!

Things were going well as I got rid of the Claw's shields but he was clearly armor-tanked because the armor was going down slower, but he was still going down. And what appears in Local? Mr Hydra Dramiel! Being now NOS'd by 2 ships and the battle taking a bit longer than I expected my capacitor got drained and a few of my mods turned off, but as soon as I regained some and was able to restart my afterburner and NOS it was looking like I may still get to kill the Claw; I don't know if the Dram pilot had pulled his drones or forgot about 'em, but I swear I don't remember seeing drones on me. Quite the fail if that's the case! But just as the Claw was entering structure a Crusader showed up and soon after he landed my cap went out and so did all my cap-eating mods, and finally the Firetail went poof and I was warping my pod first to a planet, and then to a safespot.

Props were given all around as this was a fun little fight. It was hard for me to judge who was flying with who as I had no idea if these guys were friends or foes. The Claw pilot did have a good point: next time have Barrage and get a bit more range instead of going for Rep Fleet EMP in the face. He did give me a comment that I found funny: "Real Men Fly Claws". I would tend to agree as I own quite a few Claws myself and have had much success with them. But do Real Men get on the Bat Phone when it looks like the fight is going the wrong way? That is debatable :) In any case, I had a great time coming back to The PvP even if I was on the losing end. But my point was to try this new Firetail fit, and I must admit that until I got out-numbered 3-to-1 it was working like a charm. I not only replaced it right away, but I also bought a spare. We shall try this again!

Fly dangerous; it's the only way to fly!

o7

Rooks & Kings: Clarion Call 3

I'm utterly speechless...

o7

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - 2011/11/18

Some Nine Inch Nails at 5h30 AM? Of course! It's also a nod to us New Eden residents as we're all in this together. Through good, bad and ugly we have endured!

Enjoy

o7

Rescue in Providence

I didn't have much chance to write about a particular event that happened a little while ago but let's do some catching up. I've waited to post this for obvious reasons; I didn't want to give Test Alliance Please Ignore a free juicy kill! So some time in mid November, I logged on not being quite certain what I would do. Should I do some exploration to make a few more million ISK? Should I roam the near-by Low-sec pipes? Should i just chat it up with some buddies who are on? I don't know, I was kind of blasé that evening. But this turned around rather quickly. I said "hi" to my buddy Havegun in our good ol' MAPU channel and the following convo happened:

Me> o/

Gun> Hey Coz, I'm in a rescue mission in Provi

Me> LOLwut?

Gun> Yeah, one of the Grotto guys...

Me> An attempt at WH-fu that failed?

Gun> Yep!

Me> What system are you guys in?

Gun> D-GTMI

Me> OMFG! XD

Me> Aight, I'm bored anyways... omw to you guys :))

So yeah, long story short, one of the ex-AMC guys got his Orca stuck in a neighboring Class 5 system after escaping Certain Death in the form of a hunting Tengu. The "escaping death" part worked perfectly, but he was now stuck in deep W-space. After some probing he managed to find 3 exits: a wormhole leading to a Class 6 system, another leading to deep Null-sec (don't remember which region but something nuts like Paragon Soul or Omist), and finally the wormhole to D-G. Before I logged on Havegun had managed to reach Providence and scout the path for the wayward Orca, but there was a slight problem: this was right in the middle of TEST's little wardec against a certain player called Chribba. You may have heard of him. The plan was to go park the Orca in a classified station, put it on contracts in the hopes that some 0.0 dweller buys it, and get back to Empire space. So with these guys already in Null-sec, my job was to scout the way into and out of the Providence region.

At first I just did a "set destination" on the D-GTMI linked in chat, but from my current position in Heimatar space I noted a snag: the path was taking me thru the Dital system, making a jump straight from hi-sec into Providence. Huh... yeah, scratch that. With a little help from Dotlan and my previous experience with BOZO and CTA I found a slightly better door: the Assah/G-5EN2 gate. My vehicle of choice for crazy stunts like this was one of my trusty dual-propped Taranis interceptors. The trip to G-5 was entirely uneventful and before I knew it I was back in Sansha-land. I then set my destination to the undisclosed system and the only place where I did see more than 4 people in Local was in 9-UY, but nobody was out in space and no bubbles were on gates. I must once again thank BOZO, CTA and U'K for allowing me to collect tons of bookmarks in this space! Ultimately I got in touch with the guys and helped scouting gates and stations to make sure the Orca would get parked safely, and after it did we all took a much-needed bio.

So part one of the rescue op was done, but now we needed to get back home. Of course now we were much lighter and less expensive, but still, one of us had little in the way of Null-sec experience, and Havegun and I have very different ways of scouting; I find him too defensive and careful, and he finds me too aggressive and reckless :) But at least we've flown together a lot so there's no hard feelings towards each other. The first few jumps towards G-5 were uneventful but Gun scouted a small roaming gang. We were told not to warp but our inexperienced friend was already on his way... scratch one Incursus! Fortunately for him the small gang had no bubbler and he was able to get his pod out to safety. We waited a few minutes for the gang to get bored and move on, which they did much to our relief. The rest of the way out to Assah was very quiet, with only a Malediction which I was tempted to tackle but for once I thought of safety first, and finally we got to Hi-sec in the Bar system. Mission accomplished, at the price of a single T1 ship!

This whole trip made me realise something: I had missed this kind of flying greatly. The heightened sense of lurking danger at every corner, the possibility of The PvP at all times... yeah, I must do this more often! And who knows, if the Orca doesn't sell maybe we'll do another kind of rescue op. The kind with more ships with teeth :)

Fly dangerous

o7

Wednesday of Fail - 2011/11/16

Wednesday. Also known as Hump Day. The day where you're already sick of being at work but you're still far from the weekend. I hate Wednesdays. I've had a lot of bad shit happen to me on Wednesdays, and I even predict that whenever a stray rock, an invasion fleet, a black hole, or a Vogon spaceway builder ship will hit planet Terra, it will be on a Wednesday! But at least now I'm comfortably chilling at home with an awesome Unibroue beer and writing the blog post that makes everyone on the planet forget that Hump Day just happened, and that we're already this little closer to the weekend :) Welcome to this new installment of the Wednesday of Fail! This week's Fail Mail comes from Efraya of Deep-Space Co-op Ltd. They were looking for stuff to shoot at in W-space when they happened upon someone sucking gas clouds. Yes, this is standard industrial shit to do in W-space, except when you do it in this:

[Scorpion Navy Issue, Mentozawr's Scorpion Navy Issue]
Co-Processor II
Damage Control II
Inertia Stabilizers II
Warp Core Stabilizer II

Pithum C-Type Magnetic Scattering Amplifier
Pithum C-Type Kinetic Deflection Amplifier
Pithum A-Type Kinetic Deflection Amplifier
Heat Dissipation Amplifier II
Explosion Dampening Amplifier II
Invulnerability Field II
Invulnerability Field II
Large Shield Extender II

Large Shield Transporter I
Large Remote Armor Repair System I
Gas Cloud Harvester I
Gas Cloud Harvester I
Gas Cloud Harvester I
Gas Cloud Harvester I
[empty high slot]

Large Core Defence Field Purger I
Large Core Defence Field Purger I
Large Core Defence Field Purger I


http://deep.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=11436684

OOOOKAAAAYYYY! First things first: you're using a what to do what?! I know some pretty advanced (read 100m+ SP) players that are gouging their eyes out with rusty spoons right now! But this is only the beginning. The rig slots seem alright, Caldari being shield-regen-happy so Purger seem fine. The fun starts in the lows. Over the years of this blog being active I've been pretty vocal on the uselessness of Warp Core Stabs, but to not only use one but use the TECH TWO ?!?! Yeah this Fail Mail is getting fun! The mid slots now... ridiculous amounts of ISK aside, this is a nasty tank! But yeah, ridiculous ISK is ridiculous. And now moving on to the highs... was this the corp's main repping boat? At a price like this, couldn't they get a carrier in their little hidy-hole?! And even if you can't bring one into the hole, you can build one there. And this very nice ship was being used to suck gas clouds, a job that a Myrmidon can do, and probably better because it can align and GTFO a lot faster than a battleship! So please don't use all that ISK to suck a few gas clouds; buy a Myrm and just send 500m ISK to me :)))

Efraya, for landing on this most awesome Dyson vacuum cleaner prototype, you will be receiving 624,990 ISK, your killboard's value for the Heat Dissipation Amplifier II. The reason: because Mr Mentozawr was very confident in his deadspace shield tank, but it ultimately failed him:)

Do you have a funny killmail you would like to share with the community? If so, please evemail the killboard or BattleClinic link to Cozmik R5 in-game, or send it via regular e-mail at r3dfiv3@hotmail.com

Just as WDA and Ga'len have done in the past, the sender of a killmail that has been posted on the blog will receive a small ISK prize, the value of a random module fitted on the ship; dream on if you think I'll pay for Faction, Complex or Officer mods!

Keep your eyes open for Fail, and rid New Eden of these atrocities!

o7

Blog Banter #30: CCP's Big Massive Test

It is Banter Time once again, and with the winter expansion just around the corner Seismic Stan from the Freebooted blog (and the most awesome "Fever Dream" mini podcast) has this question for us bloggers to banter about:

"With the Winter expansion possibly being named 'Crucible', it certainly is a melting pot of refinements and tweaks aimed at making the EVE experience smoother and more wholesome. If the developers suddenly found themselves some spare resources and approached you for an additional feature to include before release, what single concept would you pitch them and how would you implement it?

For bonus points, the one thing lacking from this "patchwork" of iterations is a cohesive storyline to package "The Crucible" together. How could this expansion be marketed to potential new customers?"

Link to Stan's original post here.

I haven't done any serious testing on Sisi lately so I cannot have a well-defined idea of all the changes and new stuff Crucible will bring, but apart from the Tier 3 Battllecruisers of Gankiness the thing that I find makes EVE a better and more comfortable place to spend quality time in is the simplification of some of the mechanics. I can already hear the Bitter-Old-Vet purists crying out loud "Why are you dumbing down EVE?", "EVE is supposed to be hard!", "HTFU!", "WAAAAA!". I have only one thing to tell those BOV's: shut the fuck up. A game that is hard doesn't necessarily mean that every single action one can undertake needs to be a complete pain in the ass. When I saw the image of an open wreck with a little button that said "Loot all" I was elated. Dragging and dropping could only go so far; this is supposed to be a sci-fi simulator, not a computer operating system. The same goes with the new POS fuel system. Having lived in W-space I knew how our little back-water cabin had to be maintained, and I was really happy that someone else was taking care of this. But now it's been simplified so even an impatient schmuck like me could easily set up a tower and maintain it. I dare any of the "EVE has to be hard" crowd to tell me that this is a bad thing.

And there are other things I would like to see that go along the same line of thought. The "Loot all" button is a step in the right direction, but I've been thinking, now that we can save fittings for various ships, wouldn't it be awesome if on the fitting browser there would be another button next to the "Fit to ship" button: "Buy all". This would only buy modules in the station where a ship is docked of course. I'm sure a computer can tell pretty easily what to buy between a mod that is 750k ISK, one that's 1 million, and a dorky sell order at 7.5 million. Computers today can do it, so I cannot see why they couldn't do so in warp drive/cyno jump society. I'm sure the scammers would cry rivers at the loss of scam revenue, but my message to them would be to never underestimate the stupidity of the human race; just read this very blog every Wednesday!

The announcement of the eventual reduction of the session timer was also some good news; so far it should be only from 30 seconds to 20 seconds, but I'm sure they could put it as low as 5 seconds and maybe even remove the timer completely. And do not get me started on the atrocity that is called the Global Criminal Countdown, CCP's way of saying "You did a dastardly deed, well sorry, you cannot play our game. Oh you tried to dock up? You cannot play our game some more." Pathetic.

What I'm getting at is this: anything that slows down the game to the point where you cannot even play (and I'm not even talking about lag here) is something that needs to be looked at closely to smoothen the gaming experience all-around. EVE is hard and complicated enough as it is, there is no need to have mechanics that only feel like jumping through hoops on fire, while you're on roller skates, juggling 5 Rubik's Cubes that you're also trying to solve, while singing the national anthem of 5 countries in their original languages.

I have to add that I'm turning down any bonus points. The changes that are coming were too long coming, and as I understand it this is the "please fix everything" expansion every EVE player has been wanting for over two years. EVE doesn't need another half-finished storyline spin. That's my opinion and everyone is entitled to have my opinion.

Fly dangerous; flying safe means you're not trying hard enough.

o7