BEYOND SPACE

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - 2012/01/27

2012-01-27T14:19:00.000-05:00

Been wanting to post this for a long time.

Enjoy!

The first big bike tour

2012-01-24T12:34:00.002-05:00

GOOGLE MAPS ITINERARY HERE

As we are approaching the end of January I'm already thinking about the mileage I want to do once the snow melts. The thing is that I'm preparing a special treat for my summer vacation which will be closer to a fall vacation actually. And a first big bike tour does not happen on a whim and now that the holidays are behind us it's time to get ready for what will be my first true bike adventure ride. I skipped a big one last year because of lack of funds but I admit I had zero preparations. But this one... oh man so many things to think about! The plan is to take four weeks of vacation starting at the end of August. The first week will be spent with my youngest son who will be starting school (finally, both guys in one location!) and I after this week is done I want to hit the road for about two weeks. The map says 555 km; I'd say tack on about a hundred because I do want to see stuff. Plus some days may be 100+km days, others 40-ish. At least the last leg of the tour is mostly downhill so it should work. So far I'm doing this solo but who knows, someone may be crazy enough to accompany me! One thing is sure, I don't want this tour to be a race so it shouldn't be too hard on the body. I'll make sure the body is ready beforehand though.

Stay tuned for more tour prep updates!

o7

Edit: I've refined the path for a more pleasant ride visually as well as physically. The bit between Thurso and Tremblant will still be killer I bet!

ZOMG I logged onto EVE!

2012-01-23T18:58:00.001-05:00

Apparently I had to log in a bit tonight because in 12 hours Minmatar Battleship V will be done. This will be followed by Gallente Battleship IV, and then V for a pretty uber Machariel, which I will never own because 1- I don't have the patience to make the obscene amount of ISK required to get one, and 2- I'm not crazy enough to dump real-life money (and quite a bit of it) on a game I don't care much about anymore.

Because I do have to log back in in about 5 days I may scrape up the energy needed to fly out somewhere and lose a ship or five. The important word here is "may".

Aight... back to having fun !!! :))

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - 2012/01/20

2012-01-20T16:28:00.000-05:00

Late lunch hour that is :) I haven't posted some drum corps stuff in a bit so here's an earful. Good luck keeping up with the strokes :))

o7

Pssst, U.S. government...

2012-01-17T22:05:00.000-05:00

I hope you get the fucking message.

That is all.

,,I,,

How to stretch the endgame: Skyrim modding

2012-01-16T12:29:00.005-05:00

As I was mentioning in my last post, despite still having a lot of side quests and miscelaneous quests to find and finish I am slowly getting closer to having seen and discovered everything there is to see and discover in Skyrim. I hit another benchmark yesterday when I finally pushed Enchanting to 100 and applied the perk that enables two enchanments on the same item. Yep, tonight I have to craft the last set of gear from the vanilla game and it will be devastating! But despite being so close to "the end" there is still a lot of fun to be had in Skyrim. After being done with the story of a game, I like to see what makes it tick, as well as finding little things that help my life without going into cheating territory. Let's enter the realm of Skyrim modding, especially the mods I use and plan to use; no, not the nude mods and that damn Macho Man dragon mod, useful stuff.

Quality 3D map with or without roads: Have you ever wished that the map had more flexibility? Or wanted to zoom in a lot closer to see if there is a way up that 80 degree rock face to reach that remote dragon lair? Or do you want the map to look like a proper medieval parchment map? Well look no further! This was the first mod I installed for Skyrim and every time I play the game I thank the guy who made it. It's that good. I strongly recommend you get it.

No More Blocky Faces: While the faces of the people of Tamriel look far better than they used to in Oblivion, they still aren't perfect, especially the humans. To put it simply it looks like they just came out of molds. This small one-file mod changes this easily and suddenly every human looks far better, especially your chosen wife/husband!

Weightless various items: OK, I admit that this is a borderline cheat mod, but one thing is easily noticeable from Day One of playing Skyrim: the ratio between "what you can loot" versus "what you can carry" is simply ridiculous, especially to a heavy armor character like mine. There are commands that put the weight of everything at zero, or that give the player millions of units of carrying space, but the mod I chose is more subtle than this. It does reduce the weight of some items to zero, but regular items in the world keep their weight. The modified items are all potions, books, crafting items (ore, ingots, alchemy ingredients, pelts, leather, Dwemer metal parts and dragon scales and bones) and quest items because sometimes either because of a glitch or because a quest hasn't been started the related item is stuck in the player's inventory. I will still be weighed down if I loot too much stuff, but if I happen to kill three dragons in a row (it does happen) I will NOT have to do a few trips to haul everything. And hauling in any game sucks donkey balls; I wonder what makes me say this...

Home Improvement mods: Move over Tim Taylor, some modders have talent! You wish your house had more storage and you also want to display the fruits of your adventuring, right? Or you want your own crafting corner so you don't have to go to the local blacksmith? We got you covered! My favorite ones come from a modder called Shawk and he's been busy lately. Before noticing his work I had installed a mod for my main house in Solitude (mentioned in my previous post) but his mod for the Riften house had something special: a quest to find it! Actually it's more like a treasure hunt because once the mod is installed you find notes from Shawk in your Whiterun house (you must have this one AND the Riften house with all furniture for the mod to work) pointing you to where your "new" house is located, somewhere West-South-West of the city right on a mountain side, with a quest-giving shack and a dragon lair as neighbors. Technically it's the Riften house but with a few modifications for crafting and display purposes. It's also possible to enter it from its original location in the city, but once you get outside, watch your step! But I may have to uninstall this mod and the one in Solitude because Shawk is working on something bigger (more in the "I plan to use" section). I also installed a completely new castle located on the mountain behind "Drelas' Cottage". After installation you have to travel to this cottage (and discover it if you haven't yet) and it will be right there dominating the view. You then have to climb the rock face which is tricky but doable and when you reach the door the castle is discovered and can now be fast-travelled to. And it's awesomely huge! It has everything you would ever need in one single location, including shrines to the Nine Divines and all the standing stones. It also has a large flat area on top and outdoors that would be the perfect helipad... I like where this is going :) The only downside is that so far you can't have your wife move in with you there. Maybe with the release of the Creation Kit...

Speaking of the Creation Kit (CK for short), it is supposed to come out this January and it will put a serious set of tools in the hands of the modders. This is when a lot of player-made quests and dungeons will start popping up, but there are three mods that I can't wait to see where they'll go once the CK comes out. Here they are:

SkyUI: It's no secret that the stock Skyrim UI can be a bit clunky and feels like it was made for consoles. What SkyUI does is give the power back to the PC gamer. As it is right now it has to be used in concert with a third-party application (found here) but it's getting nothing but rave reviews. I have yet to install the current version but I really like what I've seen.

Shawk's Dovahkiin Hide-out: This is the big project I was talking about earlier, and version 0.1 came out over the past weekend. Instead of modifying every house, the plan is to build one big underground area which is accessible from every player-owned house in Skyrim. It's not necessary to own every house to enter this new basement, but to return to a house, or enter another, one must own the desired house's key. The hide-out is pretty much the Bat Cave: it's kind of like the mountain castle only underground, but I'm not sure if it has the shrines and stones. But the amount of storage is simply insane and there are plans of many (like 20 or so, maybe more) mannequins, mounting plaques, weapon racks, and even mini-mannequins of which there are two in v0.1. All this is awesomely nice but I seriously hope this mod is compatible with the next one...

Tytanis Ultimate Mod: This is literally The Big One. New items, new spells, new shouts, new quests and dungeons, new crafting mechanics and recipes for smithing, alchemy and enchanting, new skills and perks, new and tougher opponents with new loot, the whole shebang! So far the version is 0.52 and the changes to the game are significant. Tired of riding a horse? How about a sabre cat, a cave bear, or even a mammoth! And yes, they do have plans for flyable dragons, and with this I can only imagine that there will be plans for new player-owned houses complete with parking/hangar. But that's not all. The Tytanis project is being worked on by three modding teams who got together with a common goal: Multiplayer Skyrim. No less. And looking at the work they've done so far without even access to Bethesda's tools I'd say the possibilities of one day seeing one form or another of Multiplayer Skyrim is fairly high. One thing is certain, this mod will be worth following at every step of its growth, and I sincerely wish the teams all the luck in the world!

And there you have it. A few ways to make an already awesome game even more awesome, and more reason to show that PC gaming is far greater than console gaming. If you don't believe so, well, too bad. I rest my case.

PS: If you search just a little bit, yes there are mods to shut the NPC's up if you're sick of hearing about every other guard's bum knee condition XD

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - 2012/01/13

2012-01-13T13:48:00.000-05:00

I rarely post videos of cover bands and I usually try to get better quality audio. But in this case I'm making an exception, and hopefully at some point these girls will be recorded in glorious HD :))

Up the irons !!!

\m/ >_< \m/

Skyrim: four weeks and counting

2012-01-10T18:08:00.006-05:00

*** SPOILER ALERT ***

If you haven't played Skyrim and plan to do so, you may want to skip this, but I assure you, mere text does not give justice to this awesome game!

Yes. Mess with me. Please.

This friday will mark four weeks since I've started my adventures in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and like pretty much everybody who plays video games, it blew my mind. Well, that was an easy one to see coming because as a gamer looking for a new drug, and without a fantasy RPG I found quite to my liking previously, I was a fan ripe for the plucking. I did play Dungeons & Dragons Online but I was always limited because I kept my account free-to-play, and compared to the amount of dungeons there is a serious lack of dragons. Skyrim, even though it's a single-player game (for now... more on this in an up-coming post on modding), fixed all those short-comings quite nicely.

During the holidays I posted a pictorial that gave a good idea of where I was in the game. Having had a very quiet and relaxing holiday time I was able to put a lot of rewarding time and effort building my RPG Cozmik character. After almost 130 hours of game time, Cozmiken Arrfimm is now level 44 with 100's in one-handed weapons, heavy armor, smithing, and soon enchanting which is at 95, with perks distributed where they count the most. The only constellation which is completed is the smithing so I can now build and upgrade everything. Because my main weapons and armor cannot help me level up anymore I am now starting to raise some other less used skills like archery at 65, in which I do have a few perks, and sneaking, which I royally suck at even though it's over 50. The lack of perks shows. I've dabbled in magic and alchemy a bit, but now that my level is so high of lot of the enemies I encounter are very resistant; wild animals and regular baddies die easily, but for the tougher ones I have to pull out my twin Daedric swords. Because yeah, I'm in Daedric gear from head to toe :)

So with the main quest and civil war behind me, do you really think I'm done with Skyrim? Oh hell no! You see, an Elder Scrolls game doesn't simply "end". The main game that came out on 11-11-11 may soon be over but I still have an innumerable amount of miscellaneous quests to do, and one of the biggest storyline is still left untouched because I showed a bunch of assassins that they had messed with the wrong guy. Because of this alone I have to do a replay! Here's a little run-down of my achievements so far:

The Companions: This was a no-brainer. As I was reading in preparation to actually starting the game, I knew I was going for a Redguard character not only because he was kinda Minmatar but because he was going to fit my play-style to a Tee. So with the 50% resistance to poison I wanted the 100% resistance to diseases. To blazes with the sleeping bonus! But I never really used my werewolf form; the first time obviously, and once as I was exploring and wanted to check how it was like at level 40 compared to level 15. The higher stamina is cool, but not having access to potions and the inability to loot stuff makes it annoying in the end. But the entire quest line was very fun to play through and I can thank Farkas for the heavy armor training, Aela for archery (she was my companion around level 25, but not the one I married) and Eorlund for smithing.

The Civil War: The first time I entered Windhelm and stayed for a while was basically what made my decision to go Imperial. After talking to many of the non-Nord locals, listening to Jarl Ulfric's spiel and even doing a few jobs for him, I felt more like quashing down the "separatist movement" than helping it. Having had some trouble with the later part of the Companions quest I did a lot of side quests and all my money making before I tackled the war and the main storyline, so I showed up at Imperial HQ around level 30. At first Aela was with me but as she was having a harder time tanking the higher level enemies I had to let her go back to Whiterun. But apart from that Ulfric got seriously plowed, and it was with a great sense of accomplishment that I FUS-RO-DAH'd the Jarl into the wall behind his throne.

The Main Quest: Ulfric's body was still warm when I got back to the main quest, which I had done just enough of to get the famous 3-word shout. By the way, shouting someone or something off a cliff just never gets old :) In any case, by this time in the game I was already a dragon killing machine thanks to my buffed Daedric gear which I had gotten access to just before the end of the war. My first armor was actually given to me by General Tullius... Yay Empire !!! The timing couldn't have been better because I had received the Daedric smithing perk just before, and was already collecting daedra hearts and ebony ingots. Couple all this with some strong enchanting and yeah, I'm a death machine. So the end of the main storyline was pretty easy and Alduin wasn't even a challenge worthy of that name. It was kind of special to walk in Sovngarde and meet some Nords I had fragged including Ulfric Stormcloak, Kodlak of the Companions who had died just as the quest was reaching it's peak, and Ysgramor, hero of all Nords. But the death of Alduin wasn't the highest point of the main storyline...

The Hardest Choice Ever: As I was progressing in the main storyline I was getting closer and closer to the faction called The Blades. To put it simply, Blades hate dragons. I mean REALLY hate them. One of your main helpers so far has been Paarthurnax, the dragon boss of the Greybeards. And when the Blades learn of this they literally pop a fuse and want the old lizard dead. So you can keep him alive and never deal with the Blades again, or kill him and never deal with the Greybeards again. Quite a heart-wrenching choice when you're this far into the story. I went with the Blades but next play-thru I'm keep the old guy alive. Still, I found that this was one of the saddest moments I had ever witnessed in a video game. At least Paarthurnax himself seemed to be cool with my choice because he himself doesn't trust other dragons!

The Dark Brotherhood, aka How to Skip a Storyline: Not being one for sneaking and back-stabbing, and having been attacked by a few Dark Bro lackeys since the start of the game, I didn't feel ready to turn into an assassin. So when I found out I could wipe out the entire faction, I started my evil (well not really... THEY are evil!) plan. I had picked up the "Innocence Lost" quest during my time in Windhelm so it was great that the first Dark Brotherhood quest is actually a good deed. That old bag in Riften had it coming and I fragged her in plain sight, to the joy of everyone but her aide. But later the way the game wrenches you into the questline... quite sudden, enough for me to go "WTF is this shit?!" So this chick Astrid is all up in arms that I owe THEM a life they should've taken and tells me "someone is not getting out of here alive". Well, make that two someones. First I questioned the three tied-up persons, found the obvious criminal, fragged him, and then showed Astrid she chose the wrong Dovahkiin to mess with. Having received the "destroy the Brotherhood" quest, I did. These guys were no push-overs but remember... Daedric killing machine! And that's how you skip a huge chunk of Skyrim!

The Thieves Guild: Having already scrapped a chunk of game-play, I didn't want to cut like half the game so at some point I had not much choice but to go rogue a bit. Well, stealing stuff, shaking a few people up and messing with people's businesses isn't as bad as cold-blooded murder right? Right. So I met up with Brynjolf in Riften and started what was a much more interesting than previously thought quest. I followed it to the letter and was rewarded with the way-cool Nightingale armor, bow and sword, and was named Guild leader. I haven't done much of the side-quests so I have plenty of stuff left to steal, people to rough up, etc.

The College of Winterhold: In case you don't know, this is the mage school. kind of like with the Thieves Guild I simply followed the quest and skipped all the side stuff so I am now Arch-Mage (!) of the College, even though I used magic only in a few places where the quest requires it. The storyline was interesting, but not as much as the Thieves Guild was. At least you get to kill a Thalmor; these high-and-mighty snobbish elves need to be nuked whenever possible!

Houses, and Jarl of This and That: When I posted the pictorial I had just received access to my second house, but smithing wealth meant I wasn't going to stop there. I am now the proud owner of Breezehome in Whiterun, Vlindrel Hall in Markarth, Hjerim in Windhelm, Honeyside in Riften and Proudspire in Solitude. I'm Thane in all those places but Riften. The Solitude house cost a pretty penny, but I got so rich by smithing that it barely put a dent on my wallet. Also, because I got it on the late side means that Jordis the Shield-Maiden, my housecarl, is quite decently leveled up compared to companions you get when you start up. To find out how good she was I gave her my Daedric gear and made myself a new set with better enchanting skills, smithing gloves and smithing potions, and together we are quite the deadly couple. Because yeah, I married her :) I can also count the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary as a house because after destroying the faction I can make their hide-out mine. The wife can't move in like in the regular houses though. I do have another dwelling but that was an added mod so I'll detail it in my modding post. I did get a mod for Proudspire though; it now has plenty of bookshelves, a nicer weapons and armor display room with eight mannequins, and the old housecarl room is replaced with all the smithing tools. And that's cool because the housecarl now shares my bed :))

And that's where I'm at right now. I am trying to become Thane in all the holds, I still have two dragon priest masks to find and I have no clue where they are, and plenty of miscellaneous quests to finish so all those people I avoided talking to during my storyline play, I gotta talk to them all now. Yep, an Elder Scrolls game is quite an adventure!

Coming soon: Skyrim modding!

Just a regular day at the office... :)

PS: look me up on Steam: CozmikR5 (no space) :)

EVE Burn-out

2012-01-09T15:36:00.000-05:00

There it is, written in glowing bold letters. Not quite a week has passed since my incendiary post on incursions and ISK making so I've had a bit of time to cool down and cogitate about my position in EVE Online. I've logged in to make sure the skill queue was filled for a while (large pulse and beam spec, followed by Minnie BS V) but not more than that. But the reality of it is still there: as far as EVE is concerned I've hit rock bottom for now. Yes, to the point of not even wanting to join a new group of pilots and kill stuff in space.

In retrospect, my situation was totally predictable. While I do not try to play every single video game I come across, I am very specific about those I do play and when one game sings a particularly tasteful song I dive into it heart and soul, get acquainted with the people who make it, play it and mod it. And this usually lasts three to four years. Around that time I will have poured so much of myself into the game that it becomes a routine akin to waking up in the morning and going to work. And finally interest fades. It happened in Quake. It happened in Diablo II. It happened in flight sims and race sims. And it's happening right now.

Actually it started happening at the end of last spring just before the Incarna debacle but that wasn't even the cause of it. I took the summer off and I admitted to missing some of the funnest parts of EVE but those fun parts were becoming fewer and farther between. I can't exactly put the finger on what caused the burn-out. Not flying with the right people? Being too hard- and hot-headed? Not being HTFU'd enough? Whatever it was the little [E] icon at the bottom of my screen became less and less tempting. And coming back three months after the Jita and Amarr monuments were figuratively reduced to rubble I logged back to what had become a US TZ wasteland. The numbers have been slightly better since Crucible came out but to me the damage was done, and I'll simply never see EVE the same again. The short break wasn't enough to make me see EVE under a new light, and since I came back in early September the old "blah" was still there. But unlike the games I mentioned before which can be installed and uninstalled at will, EVE requires a subscription, and as it stands right now I simply cannot afford to pay for a service I'm not interested in anymore.

In December I resubbed pretty much out of habit so the account still has until mid March before it runs out, so during this time Cozmik will still be training, and I do still have some friends in there both real-life and virtual; these will be properly thanked and saluted. And though my character doesn't have the wealth of many other 58 million skill point characters, I will most probably be handing out a Rifter here and a Thrasher there. Yes I will make myself a "Can I haz your stuff" list and some people will be very surprised to find themselves on it! But no I will not be throwing away everything because who knows, there may come a time when flying Internet Spaceships may appeal to me again. But this time I'm not holding my breath. As I've mentioned many times before I came to EVE to play a space sim, not a business sim, so now I'm out indifinitely. Naoru Kozan wished for me to find a new game to scratch my spaceship itch, but now I'm so far gone that I feel the need to get as far away from space games as possible.

So starting this week this blog will go back to the purpose I gave it last spring when I renamed it, which was to talk about life "beyond the confines of space". What started as my EVE blog will now return to being my blog about pretty much everything I care about. I never started this only for EVE or for e-Fame; some readers may hate the lack of EVE content or actually miss it (this would have me rupture my spleen in laughter!), but writing a blog is a very selfish affair. And in any case it's an awesome pressure valve! So while Cozmik R5 will not be plying the space lanes of New Eden anymore, I, Benoit Gauthier, will still be alive and playing games and music, travelling by mountain bike, and in general having the best time possible.

Thank you very much EVE Online for this sometimes awesome, sometimes dreadful ride. And I want to thank each and every one of you who in the four years of existence of this blog have taken even the smallest amount of time to read whatever I was writing about. Now if you'll excuse me, this dragon needs fragging... >:)

To Rixx Javix, holder of the mantle of BlogFather: I hereby leave into your hands the decision to remove this blog from the Blog Pack, as the EVE content will slowly dwindle down to near nothingness. It's just something I have to do.

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - 2012/01/06

2012-01-06T07:07:00.000-05:00

The question asks itself.

o7

Incursions, and stuff

2012-01-04T12:45:00.004-05:00

Before I go ranting about EVE Online, I'd like to wish you all a happy 2012, and I hope it brings you happiness, love, sex, money, bacon, ganks, ISK, etc. I'm hoping the same things for myself :)

As you may have noticed, I'm starting to be less and less attracted to Internet Spaceships. My reasons are pretty much the same as they were last April, only since my return I never felt the urge to go back to full activity, and I still have trouble with time constraints so I basically refuse to play on anything but my own schedule. It's not that I hate EVE; it's just that I don't like enough of it. But oh well, enough about me for now. Scram Web's post about the relation between the falling (crashing?) prices of Faction ships and Incursions and my recent experience of showing up almost unannounced at Letrange's place as his fleet was killing True Power zombie after True Power zombie made me realize one thing that's been talked about a lot and I can now agree with: CCP needs to nerf the living daylights out of Sansha Kuvakei.

I've once heard CCP Dr EyjoG say that EVE has too many ISK faucets. Well, Incursions aren't a faucet... they are a blown water main. In the hour and a half I was at Let's place his 11-man gang consisting of 3 Scimitars and 8 WTF-bling battleships (mostly Machariels, with a Nightmare, Bhaalgorn, Vargur and Rokh thrown in for good measure) made about 1.5 billion ISK appear out of thin air. In an hour and a half. And they were at this all day. And do this almost every day. Letrange also showed me the obscene amount of CONCORD LP he had... borderline 7 digits?! And people wonder why the market is doing wonky things. Free money is good, but too much free money is not.

During all this I saw the poor saps who were also trying to run sites, but were getting the grass cut from under their feet from this 20-ish billion ISK rape train. So you know when they say that it takes money to make money? Incursions are proof of this. And frankly, the cut-throat ISK war that makes EVE what it is is getting to me, which is why I'm slowly on my way out. Yes at 57 million skill points I could easily fly in fleets like that but since I have nowhere near the ISK required to buy myself a Faction-fitted Machariel, I'd have to go Logistics, and this raises one of my personal problems: I really don't like having people rely on me for survival. As I told Let, if an FC relies on me to get a tackle and I fumble it, no biggie. But if I would fumble a rep and a multi-billion ISK ship dies because of it it would feel worse than losing such a ship on my own by my own fault.

All this talk of ISK is making me sick of EVE. I subscribed to fly and destroy spaceships, not to become a space businessman. But in EVE Online it is totally impossible to not be both. I have therefore come to the conclusion that despite the little bits that I absolutely love, and unless there are major changes to the game that would make it appeal more to an action player like me, EVE Online is not for me. And so it is that in the middle of March I will let my subscription run out and head for greener pastures. Maybe it was getting back to a game where I can hit "save" and come back to it either an hour or 2 days later. But a 4-month break was clearly not enough to make me see EVE in a new light. Will a year or 2 help? Only time, and CCP, can tell...

PS: some stuff will be given, and some stuff will be kept.

Friday Night Video - Malukah strikes again!

2011-12-30T21:36:00.000-05:00

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

2011-12-30T11:09:00.000-05:00

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

2011-12-24T22:24:00.003-05:00

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

2011-12-23T06:01:00.000-05:00

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

2011-12-22T17:51:00.003-05:00

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!

Dead brain is dead

2011-12-21T21:08:00.000-05:00

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

2011-12-20T11:46:00.007-05:00

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!

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

2011-12-16T15:02:00.001-05:00

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!

2011-12-15T12:46:00.003-05:00

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 !!!

Wednesdays of Fail - 2011/12/14

2011-12-14T10:49:00.001-05:00

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!

The calm after the storm

2011-12-12T12:01:00.002-05:00

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

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

2011-12-09T06:01:00.002-05:00

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

2011-12-07T16:18:00.000-05:00

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!

2011-12-06T11:59:00.001-05:00

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

Sunday's Electric Lunch Hour - Frank Zappa Special Edition

2011-12-04T09:19:00.002-05:00

RIP Frank

o7

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

2011-12-01T21:17:00.001-05:00

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

2011-12-01T07:47:00.000-05:00

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

2011-11-30T18:27:00.002-05:00

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 :))

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

The morning after

2011-11-30T12:49:00.002-05:00

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!

Suddenly, the end of Incarna

2011-11-28T12:15:00.006-05:00

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

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

2011-11-25T05:57:00.000-05:00

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

2011-11-23T18:32:00.002-05:00

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

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

[empty high slot]

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 :)

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

Having fun while losing

2011-11-21T12:07:00.001-05:00

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!

Rooks & Kings: Clarion Call 3

2011-11-20T10:33:00.001-05:00

I'm utterly speechless...

o7

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

2011-11-18T05:40:00.000-05:00

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

2011-11-17T17:28:00.001-05:00

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

Wednesday of Fail - 2011/11/16

2011-11-16T18:26:00.003-05:00

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:)

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

Blog Banter #30: CCP's Big Massive Test

2011-11-14T12:27:00.003-05:00

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.

The Wait begins

2011-11-12T22:59:00.000-05:00

Well it's now official, my future in New Eden suddenly got clouded. Not from lack of interest. Not from lack of funds. And not because hard-headed vikings are hard-headed either. Just over a week ago an announcement was made by a little company called Piranha Games: Mechwarrior Online is in the works. Today the player name "CozmikR5" has been reserved, and now the excruciating waiting period starts. I'm pretty sure I'll have time to upgrade my machine before the game hits the shelves. In the meantime I just have to do stuff like this:

Pew-pew? No. PEW-PEW !!!

Yes, MekTek fills the gap nicely. Though I don't think that MechOnline will be as crazy on the unlimited ammo/no heat servers, and the game system hasn't been revealed yet anyway. But I strongly doubt that I'll be able to build this Uber Supernova (don't let the Mad Cat mkII image fool you). But still, I'm very excited to see the Battletech universe make a come-back to the fore-front of computer gaming, in the spot where it belongs.

So by all means, check out both the Mechwarrior Online and the MekTek websites. Mechs are awesome :)

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

2011-11-11T10:11:00.000-05:00

Last week as I was grieving the loss of a friend, the metal scene also lost a member of its family in the person of GWAR's Flattus Maximus, aka Cory Smoot. So what better way to pay tribute than by playing GWAR's bloody and gory brand of metal!

R.I.P. Cory

o7

Wednesday of Fail - 2011/11/09

2011-11-09T17:58:00.003-05:00

Ah yes, it is finally time to go back to normality, and what says normality better than an institution. A tradition even. Welcome to the next installment of the Wednesdays of Fail! This week is kind of special because for the first time, at least that I've heard of, the person who submitted the Fail Mail made it clear to me that he wish to remain anonymous because the player who lost the ship in this particular piece of hilarity is a member of his own alliance, and apparently also a repeat offender... and after clicking the link I hope and pray that Max1mus Dec1mus will not remain an alliance-mate due to his desecration of one of my favorite ships:

[Hurricane, Max1mus Dec1mus's Cane]
200mm Reinforced Steel Plates II
100mm Reinforced Crystalline Carbonide Plates I
400mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
200mm Reinforced Steel Plates II
Gyrostabilizer I
Gyrostabilizer I

Y-T8 Overcharged Hydrocarbon I Microwarpdrive
Invulnerability Field II
[empty med slot]
[empty med slot]

650mm Artillery Cannon I, EMP M
650mm Artillery Cannon I, EMP M
150mm Railgun I, Antimatter Charge S
150mm Railgun I, Antimatter Charge S
150mm Railgun I, Antimatter Charge S
'Malkuth' Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Torrent Assault Missile
'Malkuth' Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Torrent Assault Missile
'Malkuth' Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Torrent Assault Missile

Hammerhead I x2
Hobgoblin I x2

http://imperiallegion.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10828309

Damnit! It's been a few weeks since this abheration has seared my eyes and now to post this I had to not only click the killboard link again, but I also had to fit the thing in EFT. I need a new appointment with my ophtalmologist now. Fuck! Alright, let's try to be objective about this: here we have someone who clearly has an addiction to armor buffer tanks. In case you didn't know and in the interest of n00blet education, this is not how to do it. Next, a Y-T8 microwarpdrive is fine on a Cane, but a shield hardener on top of the "armor" tank? Huh... no. And the high slots... I've had this Fail Mail for over 3 weeks now and I still don't get what MaxDec was going for. Care to explain bro? Hey this gives me an idea: if anyone sees his/her own killmail posted here and has the balls to go public as to why one would fit a ship like they did, I will match the ISK prize that the submitter got! The more funny stuff, the better :))

Mr Anonymous Fail Mail Sender, for putting your own alliance-mate on the Pedestal of Fail, you will be receiving 200,050 ISK which is the value of one of the 200mm T2 plates; I mean face it, how often do you see anyone fit a T2 plate ?!

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

Back on track

2011-11-07T11:41:00.002-05:00

Well, that was one hell of a week. It's always a pain in the ass when Real Life decides to not only throw you curves balls, but this time it does so like those baseball-chucking machines with names like Pedro Martinez for major league batting practice. So with the end of a parental weekend, Halloween, catching a cold while trick-or-treating with my boys, a childhood friend getting a visit from the Grim Reaper, all the brou-ha-ha that followed this event, and my cold taking advantage of my sleep-deprived body, I basically didn't get anything done in EVE. Oh and let's not forget that in the middle of all this stuff I managed to lose my main money-making boat. Yeah I know, I royally suck at PvE. I had bought a Maelstrom as a replacement but flying a ship that tanks less, has half the top speed, has less DPS, and that takes 2 to 3 times longer to finish L4 missions... no, I don't want to go through that again. It was the reason I trained up the Sleipnir in the first place.

So with hating all forms of money-making chores (I'd rather be poor and happy than a slave to money; I'm like that in real life too) my choices are very few: chain L3 missions and be careful to avoid all the ones against the faction navies, or exploration. The latter being a tad more interesting to me than the former, I fit out a Hurricane and started roaming in the search of stuff in space. Yesterday wasn't too great though as I was only finding wormholes leading to well-defended systems. I'll be trying another corner of our little universe tonight and hopefully my luck will turn. Some people would say I could get some ISK by buying GTC's, especially now that PLEX prices are reaching new heights but I haven't gotten my pre-paid credit card yet. I have to do so before December 17th when my subscription ends and there's a good chance that I will get a GTC at the same time as my next 3 months of play time. But as I said earlier I'm not rich in Real Life either and I have far more interesting hobbies to put my money on so I won't be making a habit of buying GTC's.

And the future in EVE? A lot of it will depend on the winter expansion. Some people may disagree but I still believe that this particular expansion will be a make or break. I mean, just look at the US TZ numbers: last year well over 45000 players were logged in on any given night, with peaks around 55000 on weekends, and this year it's barely 40000 on weekends when both the EU and US time zones overlap, and well below 30000 as the EU's are going to bed. I don't care what the subscriber numbers say, a lot of people are simply refusing to log in. If the winter expansion fails even ever so slightly, these numbers will keep going down. So far it looks like the bleeding has stopped, but the wound is still there and the bandage needs tending. So far the new stuff looks good; I may have gotten rid of the Maelstrom I got but I did keep the guns because of course I will get a Tornado, and Cozmik is currently training Large Hybrid Turrets V, and after the specializations are done I'll do the same for Lazorz. And even though I'm not into the whole sovereignty thing, I sincerely hope that the announced changes to caps, time dilation and other 0.0 goodies will entice people to log in again and breathe new life into New Eden. It needs it badly.

But there are a few things on the horizon that may cause me to take a very lengthy hiatus. On the gaming front there are a few games out there that I will be getting into as soon as my computer has been upgraded. I could say "soon™" but my money has to go on my electronic drums first, and also on the cyclo-touring gear I need for next summer's vacation. Games that would cause me to stop playing EVE, maybe even quit: Rage, Diablo III, ES5 Skyrim, rFactor2, Microsoft Flight, and the big one that's just been announced... MechWarrior Online. Yes, this would cause me to say the proverbial "so long and thanx for all the fish" to New Eden. A Battletech MMO is something that pretty much all BT fans have been asking for since time immemorial, and with so many people that know the BT universe and how it works, the game producer better get this one right, or else. But another thing may put a serious crimp on all this: the possibility of landing a spot on the Wishmaster drumline. I've been practicing my sticking and my reading like a madman lately just in case. I haven't heard anything official yet but there is talk of the band getting back together in 2012. I want to be ready for some eventual auditions if they happen, and not half-way at that; I want to make the snare line BADLY! If I do, kiss goodbye to all gaming time because I will be doing something A LOT more awesome than playing Internet Spaceships or battlemech piloting. The blog would probably survive but it would take a major off-ramp.

In the meantime though, I will still be playing EVE as it is still something unique in the gaming world, and I pray that all the fixes come to fruitition and help heal the game after the deep wounds it received when Incarna was unleashed. So far it appears that CCP has heard my prayer of Coffee Smelling and things seem to be looking up, but we're still some time away from the release of the expansion; we don't have a date, and it still doesn't even have a name. And winter is arriving soon...

Fly the way you want to, not the way you are told to

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - 2011/11/04 - Ode to a friend edition

2011-11-04T05:50:00.000-04:00

Words are not required. Just enjoy!

o7

Wednesday of Fail hiatus

2011-11-02T22:52:00.000-04:00

Due to Real Life being a complete bitch (read the previous blog post), the Fail Mail will take a break this week and come back stronger next week.

I'll be posting a musical salute to my friend on Friday.

Fly hard

o7

Ode to a friend

2011-11-01T20:46:00.000-04:00

Louis Delisle

1970 - 2011

Yesterday night after a wee bit of insomnia I got out of bed and went to the computer, and all of a sudden my little world was rocked. One of my childhood friends grabbed me on Facebook to inform me that another of my childhood buddies, one I have known since kindergarten, had been struck by a heart attack on Sunday and died pretty much on the spot. Needless to say sleep got scrapped, and the rest of my close-knit gang from the town of Longueuil Qc did its best to deal with the sad news.

How does one get a heart attack at 41 years old? By partying like a madman and doing obscene amounts of drugs. But that's not the Louis I want to remember. Before he started hanging out with "the wrong people", my friend Louis was very close to me as we were part of a very tight group of people pushing the limits of what could be done on a BMX bike. We were always together, and we were always pushing each other with new challenges, higher jumps, faster speeds and so on. One was always out-doing the other, and that went on for about 4 years. And where he had gotten me into BMX, I got him into skiing and following world championship races and stuff. There was always an edge to Louis but it was always in a spirit of sportsmanship. Things changed a bit when he started the Rock 'N Roll lifestyle, but he was still respecting that I was sticking to BMX when a lot of guys turn to cars, babes and parties. What I mean is that despite all the bad choices he might have made in his life, I have always considered him a dear friend.

Of course, life being life, I haven't seen him in about 10 years, but now I'm too late and I will not see him again in this universe. It feels weird to say that I will miss someone who had pretty much disappeared from my life but I will miss him.

The moral of my story: if you happen to know someone who is dealing with drug addiction, never ever look down on him or her. Support him/her as best you can through good times and bad times. Take him/her out to do stuff that will keep his/her mind not only occupied but to make him/her realize how awesome life can be. Drugs took the life of one of my best friends; don't let it take the life of yours.

Fly my friend, you're free now...

Vole mon chum, tu es libre maintenant...

o7

J'envoie toutes mes sympathies à ses parents et à son frère. Bon courage.

Pata-flafla

2011-10-31T12:16:00.000-04:00

To anyone who is not a drummer this title will probably sound like my brain has lost its connection to my mouth , or that's I'm trying to imitate the sound of someone falling down a few flights of stairs. It is neither. The Pata-flafla is one of the 40 basic rudiments every good drummer should know, or at least know of. Translated in a sticking pattern (with flams looking like so: r-L,the little letter being the grace note and the big letter the main one, L for left and R for right) a couple bars of Pata-flafla played in basic 4/4 and the main notes being 16ths should look like this:

l-R L R r-L, l-R L R r-L...

Yeah, trickier than it looks especially when trying to play it fast. As with all drum rudiments, start slow and learn to play it clean and comfortably and gradually speed up. And yeah, use a metronome. And why am I all psyched about talking drum shop on this fine Halloween day? If you've been reading my blog you may have heard me talk about getting together with some drum corps drum line people and having a total blast. Enough that for my Friday music video I just HAD to post more drum corps love. And yesterday I got some great news from the Wishmaster drum line: there is rumor that another show is in the works, and this time I want in. And because I want to get on snare line, I have to practice my ass off like I haven't done in a very long time. So far I'm looking at 1 to 2 hours a day with the fat snare sticks, my practice pad and an Android metronome app, more as I get closer to an eventual audition. Not especially exciting in and of itself but the ultimate goal sure is. And if I can't make it on this particular line-up I'll just offer my services as a roadie; God knows I can changes drum heads and carry gear! Here's to hoping I can make an impression and land myself a spot anywhere on that drum line :)

And on to the EVE front now. Last week I've had one of those "what the fuck was I thinking" moments. Now that my buddy si Gong has some decent BC skills I thought we could tackle the epic arc mission I had left hanging for about a year: The Cost of Preservation, 2nd mission from the Brutor Tribe L4 epic agent dude. The mission is pretty simple: kill this one guy, loot the guy and GTFO. Killing the guy isn't too much trouble, but the stuff that spawns when you start shooting... yeah. So si Gong and I warp in and I start approaching Mr Target. He's in a rather tanky cruiser but together we managed to kill him, but as soon as he died all hell broke lose. The new spawn had 4-5 frigs that point and web on sight, and I was literally fucked. because we couldn't kill 'em fast enough. I asked si Gong if he was pointed and with the negative answer, GTFO. So the cost of preservation was one unit of nicely fit Sleipnir. I was later told that another of the Montreal crew, ex-capsuleer Suletsap III, had lost a faction-fit Navythron to one of those epic arc missions... I'm guessing that this is what CCP would call an ISK sink XD. So because my Slippy was nicely fit (5 faction modules) and because I treated myself so nicely before taking my summer break (Absolution and Cynabal). I couldn't replace it right away. But I don't care. I did get a Maelstrom but after flying a command ship for so long a battleship feels like shit. So much for L4's until I can get a replacement Sleipnir, and to Hell with that so-called epic bullshit.

Not that I'm very interested in missions anyway. When my subscription renewal arrives I will not only get my 3 months but will also buy a GTC or two and dump 'em on the market. Grinding sucks too much in this game. I'd rather grind my drum skills, and if I do get that drum line gig, it's drums I'll be playing, not MMO's. We will see what the future holds...

Fly it hard even if it's not cheap

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - 2011/10/28 (Halloween Edition)

2011-10-27T20:07:00.001-04:00

Yeah it's a tad early, we're not Friday yet, etc. I have to be out of my place at 6AM and because this is a parental duty weekend I'll be busy as fuck when I come back from work, even if I finish at Noon. So there, pre-posted ear sex!

This being Halloween weekend, how about a ghost story? So there was this ghost haunting this opera house right? And at some point he went way up into the rafters and called out the secret ingredient in the recipe of the Flaming Homer/Moe... Nah, I suck at story-telling. I'll let the 1989 edition of the Santa Clara Vanguard tell the story the only way they know: with unbelievable amounts of Awesomeness (plus I know of one reader who seems to be more into black and blue... so the only way to fight back is with green and red ^_^). Enjoy what has been voted The Best Drum Corps Show of All Time on a DCI poll... OK, this may have been before Spartacus by the 2008 Phantom Regiment, but still. PR may have killed their drum major, but SCV... watch the video to find out!

As Mr Royer would say, send in the clowns!

Wednesdays of Fail - 2011/10/26

2011-10-26T18:12:00.003-04:00

Finally home. My Internet is free to go where I want it to go. My browser isn't 5 years outdated. And I even have a big-ass steak in front of me. That's right boys and girls, It's finally time to post this week's Wednesday of Fail! This week entry comes from... someone who forgot to give his in-game name, from The Illuminati (please contact me again if you want some ISK!). A corpmate of his was flying around in the depths of Omist and he came across a stealth bomber. I don't know how the bomber failed his cloaking maneuver but he obviously did because ovenproofjet's Vagabond caught it and blew it to bits. But this was far from a regular stealth bomber:

[Manticore, maddeb's Manticore]
Expanded Cargohold II
Beta Reactor Control: Capacitor Power Relay I

1MN MicroWarpdrive I
[empty med slot]
[empty med slot]
[empty med slot]

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]

[empty rig slot]
[empty rig slot]

[obscene amount of BP's in cargo]

http://illuminatii.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10815765

Ain't she a beauty? Even if all those blueprints turned out to be all BPC it would still make me laugh until I spilled my bladder all over my shorts! I have no clue as to what people think when they try to move a crap ton of blueprints in a barely fit ship that's clearly not made for the job. Hell, a T1 frigate fit for uber speed and agility would have done a better job. And if you live in the butt-end of the universe, don't you have access to buddies with jump capable ships? You're in OMIST for crying out! Oh well... not only did you teach yourself a hard lesson, but you also taught it to all my readers :))

Mr. Quincy, once you give me your in-game name you will be receiving some ISK. Because there is no reason for this mod to be fitted, you will be receiving 300,100 ISK which is the value of the Beta Reactor CPR. Make sure you give half of it to your corpmate who caught it :))

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

F***ing Vertical!

2011-10-24T12:10:00.004-04:00

When a certain picture was leaked out last week, of a CCP employee working on the Minmatar design-contest-winning Tornado, I was overjoyed. "About damn time!" I thought right away, and the feeling got amplified when I learned that the Tornado would not only be a Tier 3 battlecruiser (a true battlecruiser in essence; more on this later), but it would also have some company in Gallente, Caldari and Amarr form. It looks like I'll have some gunnery skills to train up because although I'm nicely cross-trained in pretty much all medium weapons, it's only in Large Projectiles that I can use the T2 weapons. I have the start of Large Hybrids but at the moment I only have that skill to III, and missiles I have only trained just enough for a stealth bomber. But the Tornado? I want one as soon as they come out of various ovens. Well, just like when the Noctis came out I will wait a few days for the prices to stabilise because I'm not one of those weirdos who will pay ridiculously bloated prices to be the first to have one.

Now, why did I say that the Tier 3 BCs will be "true" battlecruisers? My buddy Letrange and I had a discussion about this and being the military buff he is he's totally right. The current Tier 1 and Tier 2 battlecruisers in EVE, if we want to compare them to real life navy ships, are in reality heavy cruisers; they have cruiser-sized weapons but sport tougher armor and defences. A battlecruiser carries battleship weapons, but they aren't as armored as the big boys, and they are much faster. The rule of thumb of real life BCs is the following: it can destroy whatever it can catch and can outrun whatever it cannot destroy. I'm not sure if the same will apply to the Tornado and its brothers, but at least they have that "BFG" factor. I'll also be very interested in seeing the Amarr BC, the Oracle*. The thought of a pocket Abaddon appeals to me. All this, coupled with the changes to PI and capital ships, should make New Eden a very interesting place in the near future.

The Clown is BACK!

On a completely different subject now, I was happy to get some news from this little alliance (yes, it is a one-corp alliance) that apparently is re-emerging from its own ashes, and I'm talking about none other than my first ever alliance, Clown Punchers Syndicate. I'm a regular podcast listener so obviously Voices from the Void is high on my playlist, and last week's episode featured BOZO female pilot Jel Malar talking about a recent Listen to the Voices player meet in Austin TX, and also about the rebirth of BOZO. A short recapitulation: Clown Punchers got shut down in April 2010 when the old leaders, Quebnaric Deile and Teister, and director Tolarus, decided they had had enough of EVE and quit permanently. I'm still in contact with them and believe me when I say they don't want to come back! After they left, ownership of the corp/alliance fell to swedish murder machine Rugs and not much happened in the past year. But apparently some old BOZOs are getting back together and reforming in Syndicate. Now, I know the reasons why I left back in October 2009 (damn it's already been that long?!) so before I make any kind of move I'll have to have a long chat with Rugs. I'm pretty sure he will know to avoid what caused the collapse/burn-out over a year ago and lead the BOZOs accordingly. I wish all my former BOZO mates the best in this reboot of one of the best group of people to fly with. If you want more information on BOZO recruiting, join the channel "Sideshow" and hit it up with a recruiter.

Paradiddlus Ad Infinitum

Gimme !!!

Finally, to close this post on a non-EVE related subject, yesterday was a very special day for me because I went to a Drum Corps percussion clinic, so not only did I get to immerse myself once more in the fabulous musical sport of Drum Corps, I got to reconnect with my first ever drum instructor, the one who literally taught me how to hold a pair of sticks. And not only that... it was at the same school where my old corps, Les Éclipses de Longueuil, used to practice. I have never gone to school there so the last time I had set foot in it was 30 years ago as a member of the Éclipse drum line, the best in Québec at the time. I also got to meet some drum line players from back in the day, one of which was a lady I use to be very close to back then because she was on the snare line and I was on the cymbal line so we where like ALWAYS together. I was 11 years old at the time and I was in a corps that was just about to break into the DCI top 25. Yeah, it was rough! But even if I have never really marched after that I was always close to Drum Corps because of my dad and in my teen years the drumming experience came in handy when some buddies of mine got into music and needed a drummer. And so it was that yesterday I got to practice with not only the Wishmaster drum line for a 1-hour mock-up practice session (imagine a Nightwish cover band, but instead of one drummer they have a full-sized drum line.... epic win !!!), but also up close and personal with a few snare guys. I got to try quads for the first time but these are extremely tough. But that got me thinking, now that Quebec has a senior corps (senior means "over 21", not "old age"!), wouldn't it be awesome if I joined 'em, practiced my ass off, and marched my first ever Drum Corps competition on the snare line? I think my dad would cry rivers of joy if I did it :)

Fly yer ass off

o7

*Edit: so the Amarr tier 3 BC is called the Oracle, where I had previously called it "Abomination". I was misled by the name of a contest participant.

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - 2011/10/21

2011-10-20T23:59:00.001-04:00

What do you get when you mix Steampunk and Devin Townsend's Nerd Metal uber geniusness? This. But if you have a heart condition you might want to skip this because of crazy blast beats and insane imagery. By the way, you get bonus points if you recognize Ziltoid The Omniscient in this video :))

On the EVE front: I lost a Jag to an evil-fit Firetail but at least the fight was worthy of this name; too bad the Jag didn't get to do its intended business: W-space hunting! But I think I may have an answer to this Firetail problem.... we shall see >:) Props to Korg Tronix, you were a great sport!

Fly safe? WHY?!

o7

Burning Eden, part Quattro

2011-10-20T12:52:00.001-04:00

When I started my "Burning Eden" series of posts during my summer break I never thought I would have to add to it a few months down the road. But here we are four months after the infamous Jita Riots, and despite some efforts to reconnect with the community after letting it down in a big way with the Incarna/NEX/Greed debacle, CCP once again managed to hit a massive foul ball. 24 hours after bringing back a feature of EVE Online which had been basically a trademark of the game, and getting showered with shouts of relief, CCP announced that basically in order to survive as a company, it had to lay off 114 people. Most of these were working on World of Darkness, but the part that I'm still trying to understand is how they layed off the community team. After folding themselves in 4 saying "Incarna sucked, we're sorry, we'll listen to you a bit more now". If you fire a community team, one that did everything it possibly could to shovel water out of a clearly sinking boat earlier this summer, just how the hell do you think the community will react?

I understand the business part of having to lay off people. It is now clear that the wave of mass unsubs coupled with the way CCP had become over-stretched trying to juggle 4 monsters at once (EVE, Incarna, Dust, WoD) had the effect of the company suddenly not having enough income to keep everybody working. But further alienating the community, this I don't get, and I don't think I'll ever get it.

So, am I unsubbing come the 17th of December? So far, I don't think so. I like EVE enough to believe that CCP will not let crash into the ground if they remember the reason they created this awesome game. I asked myself all the "unsub" questions during my summer break and guess what, I even resubbed in advance of when I thought I would! But after the dust has cleared (no pun intended) I will be anxious to see how CCP directs its energies to make what is already a good game better. If EVE goes back to being the main focus as opposed to a test bed for other games then they might yet have redemption. But after so many foul balls I'm very afraid for the future; one missed swing and it's a strike out. In the meantime the winter expansion is coming soon... let's see what throw the pitcher serves...

PS: Head on over to Rixx Javix's EVEOGANDA and listen to RockCalledSteve aka Moose's one-off podcast. It's worth a listen.

WHAT THE BASTARD SHIT ?!?!

2011-10-19T20:33:00.000-04:00

CCP lays off crap-tons of employees, namely the community team.

My title says it all. I'll write a real post about this tomorrow after I've mulled it over.

Fuck.

>:(

Wednesdays of Fail - 2011/10/19

2011-10-19T18:04:00.000-04:00

At last, here I am, home with a modern (OK, slightly old) computer with an up to date browser, and without the KGB and the Gestapo blocking my every attempt to go on a website about gaming, even if they fail at keeping me from Facebook. Yeah, City of Montreal administration and Technology mix just about as well as EVE and Kids! And yes it's that time of the week, the Wednesday of Fail! This week's entry is quite a looker, coming from Randunip of Steel Talon Initiative corp. I don't know how people cane fail-fit the Hurricane so much, it's such a perfect ship when fit right... anyway, make sure you put down that sandwich you're eating and that you've gulped down that swig of beer before looking at this thing because I don't want to be held responsible for any deaths by suffocation; at least make sure someone is nearby ready to apply the Heimlich Maneuver. Ready? Here goes:

[Hurricane, Krammski's Hurricane]
Muon Coil Bolt Array I
Warp Core Stabilizer I
Cross-Lateral Gyrostabilizer I
Expanded Cargohold II
Small Armor Repairer I
Overdrive Injector System I

Medium Shield Booster II
Warp Scrambler I
10MN MicroWarpdrive I
'Langour' Drive Disruptor I

250mm Light Artillery Cannon I, EMP S
250mm Light Artillery Cannon I, EMP S
'Malkuth' Standard Missile Launcher I, Sabretooth Light Missile
'Malkuth' Standard Missile Launcher I, Sabretooth Light Missile
Salvager I
250mm Light Artillery Cannon I, EMP S
280mm Howitzer Artillery I, EMP S
'Malkuth' Standard Missile Launcher I, Sabretooth Light Missile

Hammerhead I x3

http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=12290722

Told you it would hurt. This thing fails on so many levels I barely know where to start! Let's begin with the location of this kill... ah, W-space! I kind of miss it sometimes, but I digress. Now what is usually commonplace on a ship flying in W-space? A probe launcher of course... but it's kinda hard to use it when it's in the CARGO HOLD! This probe launcher was obviously meant for another, but still. Moving on... Jiminy H. Cricket just look at this entire fit !!! Armor-rep/shield-boost-stabbed-light-weps with not enough drones to hurt a NPC cruiser and he had to put a web and scram on this ?!?! Can somebody pass me the X-acto so I can gouge out my eyes plz? Seriously, I have no clue what this guy was trying or why he was even flying what should be such a nice ship but instead was fitted with..... THIS! Oh well, such is EVE :))

Randunip, you sir need to be rewarded for ridding the New Eden cluster of... whatever you call this. Because they were one of the rare things that could've been useful in W-space, you will receive 350,000 ISK for the Combat Scan Probes which were located in the cargo hold.

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

Old tech FTL

2011-10-19T08:05:00.001-04:00

No, I'm not talking about the revamped EVE client with its return to the good old "ship spinning" hangar. Everything is working as intended; hell I even went to bed a lot too late! But that's my problem. My "old tech" problem isn't related to the fact that my gaming machine is now over 3.5 years old, but with the fact that posting blog entries and reading other people's blogs from work is an issue because the city of Montreal, particularly the LaSalle borrough, uses a 5-year old browser in the form of Internet Explorer 7 (yes, seven!) and slowly I'm losing access to some websites because of the browser's old age, as if having the most restrictive firewall this side of the Great Wall of China wasn't bad enough.

Therefore my lunch hour posting hobby is suffering, and I hates it. I would post stuff before I leave for work but having to get out of the house at 6AM... yeah, I'm not usually in a writing mood at this early hour. So my Wednesday of Fail post will become a Wednesday evening thing. By the way I have a couple of uber goodies to post but new killmails are always welcome so keep 'em coming, either by evemail to Cozmik R5 in-game, or to r3dfiv3@hotmail.com by regular e-mail.

In Dock 94 news, yesterday our pure noob Ricky Boys did the classic noob error of buying a book at the WRONG Pator Tech School, the one in Amamake! At the gate were a small gang of bored Pandemic Legion players so of course he got popped and podded. At least it's not as if he was a total virgin! And later si Gong and I did a few missions that were giving him a few headaches. He doesn't have too much problems tanking, but DPS is an issue. My Sleipnir fixes this nicely! si Gong also had the last part of a storyline L3, The Kidnappers starring Sansha's Nation. For an L3, this mission is pretty damn tough, tougher than most regular L4's even. but the reward was nice.

Aight, that's it for this morning... now I have to find a way to convince the "techs" here to get with the times. This is harder than you might think *sigh*

Fly fun

Goodbye Door!

2011-10-18T17:45:00.002-04:00

I sure as fuck will NOT miss you! You were the symbol of the worst summer in the history of EVE Online. I seriously hope someone at CCP deletes the .bmp file forever.

If you don't fly, at least spin it

o7

Tribute to a speedster

2011-10-16T22:50:00.004-04:00

R.I.P. Dan Wheldon (1978-2011)

o7

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - 2011/10/14

2011-10-14T05:39:00.000-04:00

I don't think Steve Vai ever played his Fire Garden Suite in its entirety but some YouTuber decided to make a collage of all the movements and actually did a pretty good job of it. Brace yourselves because this is a lengthy one.

Enjoy!

o7

Wednesdays of Fail - 2011/10/12

2011-10-12T18:51:00.004-04:00

Ah yes! I am now back home and no longer have to deal with a stupid Nazi firewall and an even stupider IE7 browser (yes... IE7 FFS !!!) so I can finally post the thing that everybody loves to laugh at and/or feel physical pain from. That's right, it's Fail Mail time! This week's entry is kind of special because I received an evemail not too long after I posted a certain Chimera dying horribly to a frigate gang. Well guess what... apparently I had only one side of the story, which is fair. But the evemail contained a bit more than the "yeah, harrdy harr harr I got caught pants down, etc" for the sender was none other than the pilot of the Chimera. And Lo and Behold, he had a sweet sweet link of revenge to show me:

[Blackbird, Jharn Ru's Blackbird]
Signal Amplifier II
Power Diagnostic System I

Large C5-L Emergency Shield Overload I
Large F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction
ECM - Multispectral Jammer II
Medium Capacitor Booster I, Cap Booster 25
10MN Afterburner II
Invulnerability Field II

'Arbalest' Standard Missile Launcher, Sabretooth Light Missile
Prototype Cloaking Device I
Medium 'Vehemence' I Shockwave Charge
[empty high slot]

Medium Core Defence Field Extender I
Medium Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Medium Particle Dispersion Augmentor I

http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=14157866

Excuse my bad french but TA-BAR-NAK !!! What we have here is a prototype Caldari Navy ship tentatively called the Cloaky-Shield/Cap-Boosting-WTFBB. If you can think of a better name for this abomination please inform me. Let's see... let's do it from rigs on up. Usually a Blackbird-type ship (which are the Blackbird, Falcon and Rook if you didn't know) is used for one thing and one thing only: jamming. So obviously the rigs of choice would be a set of those particle thingamabobs, not a mix of jam and tank. Moving up to the low slots: fairly standard here. A signal amp, a PDS... but don't BB pilots usually plate up that thing? Moving on up... yeah, my eyes hurt too! Usually a Blackbird-type ship fits pretty much NOTHING BUT JAMMERS, unless your name is Unzer or Loofaro who are, and I've mentioned this before, Falcon artists. So this mix of active and passive tank, jams and afterburner will get you precisely nowhere fast. And finally the high slots... the only useful thing here is the cloak frankly. The smart bomb can maybe dent some light drones (T1 and badly skilled), and the overpriced frigate-sized missile launcher is frigate sized. Even with the benefit of All Level V skills, this ship's DPS is a hair above a quarter of a standard Rifter fit. I sincerely hope that this fit is not a standard Quantum Horizon fit because I just may have to ask for an ISK prize refund XD j/k.

So WarheadRex, consider your Chimera avenged! When I posted your carrier I awarded the killmail sender ISK for the cloaking device that could've saved you. Guess what... you'll be able to buy a new cloaking device because you will be receiving 1,499,990 ISK!

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

THE PVP !!!!1!!!111

2011-10-12T12:36:00.001-04:00

Since I've started playing EVE Online this is how The PvP has usually happened to me: surprise-sexed and blown to bits, surprise-sexed but put up a good fight or even defeated my attacker, next door to HQ after a huge roam, next door to HQ 5 minutes after leaving for a huge roam (which either goes on if the initial fight is won or started from scratch if it fails - I've seen all PvP activity cancelled after a particularly bad fight), basically never when I either expect or want The PvP to happen. Such is the nature of EVE's sandbox. And this is exactly how The PvP happened yesterday night.

Realizing that spending a lot of time in a mission hub wouldn't be the greatest thing for a newbie miner, I set up a Dock 94 office in a previous BOZO Hi-sec port of call back in the days when one had to be at a corp's office in order to apply to it. It's Hi-sec and close to the market, it's not too populated, there are plenty of asteroid belts, the true security rating of the system is lower, we're two jumps from Low-sec, ideal place for a newbie to sink his teeth in. Hell, it's the area were I myself spent a lot of time ratting up a storm waiting for some key skills to get just a bit higher to better help my BOZO brothers and sisters in my own noob days. It's also the area where I got burnt trying to get the tougher (!) Low-sec rats. So Alakgur is a perfect school system; Hi-sec but close enough to trouble. I wouldn't have it any other way :)

So after anchoring a few cans out in the middle of nowhere and moving some ships into the system, si Gong proceeded to use his Retreiver while I practiced using my D-scan and landing my Taranis at his location. We did this for a bit while shooting the shit, testing the Retreiver's tank, or lack thereof, until I noticed the time and decided to dock up because of my stupidly awful 5H30 AM wake-up call. But as my 'Ranis was approaching the station, si Gong calls out on comms: "There's a Rifter here with me and he just turned red!" Ah ha! Can-flipper alert! I immediately reminded si Gong not to pick up anything from the now-turned can and to GTFO. By this time I was reshipped into my Jaguar and started the old D-scan thing I had just practiced in search of a Rifter. si Gong was nice enough to link the character so I also knew WHO I was hunting, and thankfully the system wasn't a mess of traffic so it didn't take long to notice there was only a single Rifter in space. And here si Gong almost made a big mistake: he was warping back to the belt in his Orca to pick up the 2m ISK worth of rocks... "NEIN!" says I who was already in the belt next to the yellow can, and he remembered the mechanics of can-flipping so he warped back as soon as he landed, and in a timely fashion too because our customer landed right on us. The range was perfect. I threw down my gloves and the fight was on!

And a particularly good one it was. The character was a year or two older than me so this was a maxed out Rifter and a maxed out Jaguar going at it. This was my W-space hunting fit so it didn't have a neut, therefore it was tougher breaking the NOS/armor rep tank, but once in a while my Hail S was digging in just a bit more. It was pretty clear I was gonna get this one with some overheat magic, but to put an end to this dance si Gong arrived in his own Rifter. Our bad guy instantly switched target, which was the right decision for him; si Gong's Rifter isn't maxed out and his fit had some... flaws. But the extra DPS, even if only for a little time, did its job and a few seconds after si Gong's Rifter popped, so did the bad guy's. GF's were shouted in Local as great fun was had, and then I wait to wait the aggro timer in order to dock, even if I had no GCC (damn vikings again...). One part of the fight that kind of scared me was the possibility of this pilot having buddies, especially when a Scythe landed next to us just before my side's Rifter's arrival. But the Scythe was neutral and not corp-aggro red and he decided that this belt was a lot too hot for mining and left!

All in all this was some very good practice in corp operations as small a corp as we are, and it was a great lesson for someone who doesn't have a lot of experience in EVE. It was too bad our pure noob wasn't around to see and hear this as he would've taken notice that "high security space" does not necessarily mean "safe space". si Gong and I will make sure he is promptly debriefed about yesterday's little frig party. Yep, I think we have moved into some interesting space after all!

Fly ready, always

PS: sorry if I'm missing links and my attacker's name and corp. See next post-scriptum.

PPS: the Wednesday of Fail will be posted later tonite when I'm free of a crazy firewall. And Blogger.com couldn't suck more today.

And then they were three

2011-10-11T12:43:00.002-04:00

No, this blog post will have nothing to do with late 70's Genesis when Steve Hackett left the band and Genesis started to suck. This is indeed an EVE Online post. As I had mentioned a little while ago, my corpmate and long-time friend si Gong resubbed and got back into the swing of things. His rust is getting brushed off daily and I didn't have too much to re-teach him, and could easily pick up where we had left off. But he had also told me that one of his buddies was interested in seeing this crazy game about Internet Spaceships, and so it was that on Sunday morning pilot Ricky Boys was born, and a few minutes later strained his neck looking up the Learning Cliff.

The sad part is that I couldn't help much on Sunday because of a slight case of over-indulgence at the previous night's EVE Meet. FYI: beer and korean food don't mix well, at least to me. But at least si Gong wasn't the complete noob he was right after resubbing and was able to help Ricky get started, get him books, ships, mods, etc. I did find a bit of energy to log in and see how the newborn was doing, and apparently he has discovered a taste for mining; to each his own I guess! I did find it quite funny at one point when a couple of Hi-sec Angel rats decided to play with his Navitas. I did give him a break and not let my brand new corpmate die so I undocked my Cynabal and showed those Angels who was boss, much to Ricky's joy. After that just for fun I docked the Cynabal and went back in my Absolution. My goal in doing this: to show him the difference between mining lasers and Heavy Pulse Lazor IIs. This was quite funny by the way. But in my corp, who says noob player says... INITIATION :))

Yesterday I was feeling a lot better and was able to go to si Gong's place - by the way, the two guys played as a LAN the entire time - for some in-the-flesh teaching. The first part was explaining how important it is to have his clone updated at all times in case of podding, but what better example than to experience the real thing? During this time and without him knowing it, I undocked my Comet and started warping to belts, and when I finally found him I told him "this is the sound you don't want to hear" and got a target lock. "Well, I'll just leave" says he. "Sure man, try!" Of course he was scrammed/webbed from hair tip to toe nail so si Gong and I had a good laugh. Reassuring him that we'll just get another Navitas I told him "This is what blowing up feels like", and 3 blaster volleys later his first Navitas was history, but Lo and Behold he wasn't sleeping at the wheel, and instinctly warped his pod out before I could lock it. Yay Ricky! We did another double check on his clone to make sure he'd be respawning in our system, and now without trickery I showed him what getting podded feels like, how the game reacts, what to do after, etc. I even showed him his frozen corpse floating in space before picking it up. So now as a noob he knows three important truths about EVE: 1- fly what he can afford to lose, 2- losing ships happens and isn't the end of the world, and 3- getting podded isn't the end of the world either.

So now Dock 94 is now actually a multi-player corp, something I never thought would happen when I made it. Here's to many successes, be they in PvP, PvE or even Industry!

Don't just hate noobs, teach 'em

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - 2011/10/07

2011-10-07T05:42:00.000-04:00

I was rewatching Vika's Reykjavik show with Brian Viglione and just had to post the powerful closing tunes. So crank it up and get blasted.

Also on the music front, tonight I'm going to see Dream Theater, with Trivium as an opening act. Should be something :)

Fly loud

o7

Blog Banter #29: You think that's air you're breathing?

2011-10-06T10:00:00.003-04:00

OK, enough hockey silliness, time to get serious. The last blog banter was heavily charged with political views, economic views and tons of emotions both positive and negative. But this time the atmosphere should be lighter, especially with yesterday's 1-2 punch from CCP Hellmar and CCP Zulu. Seismic Stan of the Freebooted blog asks this question:

"EVE Online is renowned for its depth. Its backstory, gameplay and social aspects are all qualities that draw players in. What does immersion in EVE Online mean to you?"

Link to Seismic Stan's original post here.

Immersion in any game to me means one thing: for a limited amount of time reality gets suspended and becomes what you experience in the gaming universe. Being a pretty hardcore gamer for a long time now, it doesn't take much for me to get this feeling as I love to play games that are intense and require every bit of concentration and skill to play with some success. When a good game grabs me I can not only forget that a world exists around me, I cannot even see the outline of my computer monitor. This is especially true of very fast first-person shooters, flight sims and race sims, where action is either coming at you from all sides or coming at you with great speed (or both in the case of combat flight sims). But in EVE it's even deeper than that. Not only can there be action around you, but you also have to be aware of action that can be happening many systems away. And this is the part that makes EVE truly unique.

Let's say I start a small gang for a roam. When the fleet assembles in a station everybody is usually comfortable with the ships they are flying, usually have a good idea of where they will be flying, and are usually prepared for the worst. As an FC, I have to start gathering intel about the action near me, along my path, or at my destination. I also have to have good knowledge not only of my fleet's composition but of the pilots flying the ships, of the positions they have in space, and I need the knowledge to make changes wherever possible to maximize my fleet's success. All this with the knowledge that the other sides (plural; in EVE you ALWAYS have more than one enemy) are doing exactly the same thing. This is simply not possible if you haven't immersed yourself in everything EVE has to offer in lore, ship technology, fleet tactics, etc. And when you have immersed yourself to that level it's as if New Eden in its entirety is a living, breathing and active entity. The pixels become real, reality becomes the game, you ARE the ship you're flying. As an FC your scouts become your eyes and ears. Your fleet's guns, missiles, drones and Ewar become your hands, feet and mouth. Your shields and armor become your skin, and your internal structure becomes your bones. When you are successful you feel satisfied as if you have dined on the finest roast and the finest wine. When you fail it feels like you've been stabbed, trampled, beaten and bled dry.

Many video games offer various levels of immersion; some are just pass-times you can go in and out of, while others demand you to be more active within the game and/or within the community that plays it. But the level of immersion offered by EVE Online... damn is this one hard to beat. When people get emotional about a game to the point of rioting within it, you know that despite all that has gone wrong to cause such a reaction, the immersion thing is working as intended.

No, this is not air you are breathing; it is pod goo!

It's on !!!

2011-10-06T08:37:00.000-04:00

Notre Maurice Richard qui est aux cieux,

Que ton nom soit sanctifié...

Que ton règne revienne...

Que ta volonté se réflète sur la Terre comme sur la Sainte-Flanelle...

Donnez-nous aujourd'hui notre gain de ce jour...

Pardonne-nous la saison dernière comme nous avons aussi appris à pardonner à Bob Gainey...

Ne soumet pas Carey Price à la pression...

Et délivre-nous du grand mongol à Zdeno Chara.

Amen... LA COUPE À MONTRÉAL !!!!!

If you're not happy with my prayer, well, too bad. Happy hockey season everyone !!!

Fly with fire in your eyes

Wednesdays of Fail - 2011/10/05

2011-10-05T10:06:00.001-04:00

Sorry for not posting for a few days, but the reason is simple. Precisely nothing has happened to me in either EVE Online or any other game lately, plus I had a Dad Weekend, plus I enjoy doing other stuff while I'm on vacation. I wish it was riding my bike but today is the first day where I can actually consider doing it; it has been a very rainy time for the past week or so in Montreal, it's good to have a change. But hey, can't have a Wednesday without a good ol' Fail Mail, and now that I have a few in the bank it would be stupid of me not to post 'em.

This week's entry comes from Lytia Tranaki of Fission Inc. Not too long ago they were hunting targets in W-space and came across a Rattlesnake that thought it was a Scorpion, kinda like dogs that think there are human:

[Rattlesnake, calspard's Rattler]
True Sansha Power Diagnostic System
True Sansha Power Diagnostic System
True Sansha Power Diagnostic System
Multi Sensor Backup Array II
Multi Sensor Backup Array II
Damage Control II

Pith X-Type Shield Boost Amplifier
Vepas' Modified ECM Multispectral Jammer
Vepas' Modified ECM Multispectral Jammer
Vepas' Modified ECM Multispectral Jammer
Sensor Booster II
Invulnerability Field II
Gist B-Type Large Shield Booster

Corpus X-Type Heavy Nosferatu
Improved Cloaking Device II
'Arbalest' Cruise Launcher I, Wrath Cruise Missile
ZW-4100 Siege Missile Bay, Inferno Torpedo
Caldari Navy Heavy Missile Launcher, Scourge Heavy Missile
Caldari Navy Heavy Missile Launcher, Scourge Heavy Missile

Large Capacitor Control Circuit II
Large Capacitor Control Circuit I
Large Capacitor Control Circuit I

Hammerhead I x11
Light Shield Maintenance Bot I x5

http://coldfusion.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10694179

Holy Mother Mary and Joseph! I see someone has been using daddy's credit card a bit too much! At close to 3 billion ISK this ship would buy the regular player quite a few months of play time, and quite a few nice toys to go pewpew with. OK, let's wipe off the blood from our eyes and let's analyse this... monstrosity. First of all, Mr calspard didn't go light on the rigs, but this being an active tank I'll sorta forgive him. But then he goes and does something weird: half of a complex module tank and half of an Officer jamming setup. Who the hell in his right mind buys Officer jammers?! Whatever man... but the high slots really take the cake. A Nosferatu that's the price of a Vagabond, 4 missile launchers in 3 different flavors, 2 of which are Faction AND the wrong size for the ship; are you having that much trouble hitting frigates son? And the drones.... this is a joke right? With a full flight of Hammerhead I's, and giving the ship the benefit of "All level V skills" on EFT, this ships dishes out a whopping 315 DPS, and tanks 400 something. In comparison, my mission Sleipnir which is about a sixth the price of this Rattler tanks only slightly less and has more than double the firepower, and yeah, 524 m/s speed instead of the fat BS's 29. Yep, the Fail was strong in this one!

Lytia Tranaki, you sir (ma'am?) are about to receive some ISK. To prove to calspard that Real Men Hull Tank™, and only wimps ISK tank, you will be receiving 815000 ISK, which is your killboard's indicated value for the Damage Control II.

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

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - 2011/09/30

2011-09-30T05:25:00.000-04:00

Last Tuesday I received a message from Letrange to contact him ASAP. At first I thought something bad had happened but this was far from the truth. The reason was this: during a trip down South, Letrange's dad met up with Montreal entertainment kingpin Donald K. Donald, and Mr DKD had given him a pair of tickets for the rock opera "Tommy", performed by none other than The Who's Roger Daltrey and his band. Tommy was but half of the show, which lasted over three hours without intermission or encore in true Who tradition. In the spirit of this most awesome show, here is The Who performing Baba O'Riley.

Fly like Keith Moon

o7

Wednesdays of Fail - 2011/09/28

2011-09-28T18:09:00.003-04:00

Institutioned by Winterblink and Urban Mongral of the late Warp Drive Active podcast, carried on by Ga'len the Wandering Druid of Tranquility, it is now my duty to bring to you the one great source of laughter and/or tears of blood from the sheer pain applied to the optic nerves of anyone who gazes at them: The Fail Mail! To me they are one of the big reasons to keep playing even in these present dark times. You never know when you will come across a ship so badly fit that you could probably have killed it with a hard enough pod bump!

Ah yes, the Fail Mails are slowly starting to trickle in. I like this! This week's Fail Mail comes from ex corp and alliance mate Havegun Willtravel of Mobile Alcohol Processing Units. Some time in mid summer as I was taking my break from all things related to Internet Spaceships, Havegun was doing his solo thing in Decon, looking for something tasty to kill or to be killed by. It didn't take him very long and after while he landed on this:

[Cerberus, Zodin Zeldamiere's Cerberus]
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Power Diagnostic System I

10MN Afterburner I
Small Capacitor Booster I, Cap Booster 25
Large Shield Extender I
Invulnerability Field I
Invulnerability Field I

Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Torrent Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Torrent Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Torrent Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Torrent Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Torrent Assault Missile
[empty high slot]

http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=13817241

Hrmmm.... OKAY! Here we have another case of "it doesn't mean that because you can get in the ship that you absolutely have to fly it". Apparently the character was so young that Havegun, being the good sport that he is, actually told him in Local "Dude, I wouldn't do this if I were you". But Zodin was feeling invincible in his brand spankin' new HAC so he charged Gun's FULLY MAXED OUT Vexor head on. Apparently the battle was very short and after seeing the T1 fit Havegun's prophecy was fulfilled. To all new players out there, THIS is exactly what not to do with your training. Before you field a ship, make sure you can fit it correctly. I mean, if you have to fit a small cap booster to support 2 Invuls and an AB, something is very very wrong with your cap skills. Lesson learned I hope!

Havegun Willtravel, you sir are on the receiving end of some ISK. Because it is the only module that's actually worth something to this ship, you will be receiving 799,999 ISK, this being the value of one of the Ballistic Control System II.

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

Dock 94 is alive!

2011-09-26T15:20:00.003-04:00

Last friday during the Montreal EVE meet a few of us were discussing the possibility of joining Maulos' Quebecois only pirate corp, but the next morning somebody showed up in the EVE MTL channel that I wasn't expecting. After building a monster of a computer, my old corpmate and pupil si Gong logged back into EVE Online as we were sipping beer, trading stories, and eyeing Montreal babes. It has already been over a year since he was forced to get out (long story) and he's been busy with real life stuff so he took a lengthier break than he intended to. Now things have calmed down for him and he surprised the Hell out of me as I was having my breakfast in front of my computer screen.

Having just about 6 months of EVE experience and taking a year+ long break did have a negative effect though. Let's say he took a few hundred meter drop off the Learning Cliff and he has to get reacquainted with EVE's awesome and intuitive UI (!), so when I told him I wanted to go visit him anyway he was more than happy to have me over so I could fix the placement of his windows, set up his overview, look over his skill tree, and of course reinstall useful little apps like EVEmon and EFT (both of which he had forgotten then name of XD). Once that was done I had him get out of the NPC corp he was in and rejoin Dock 94 so he could again have access to better agents to make a bit more ISK faster.

So what did si Gong wake up to? Well first he had to customize his Jin Mei character because Incarna happened - by the way I had kept him informed about what was going on in EVE during his absence so he knew about the Jita Riots - and he walked around a bit in his closet... er, captain's quarters! He had a bit less ISK than he remembered but at least he had a good selection of ships: a Drake for missions (tank is good, needs work on missile skills), a few PvP frigs, some Thrashers with one fit for salvaging (he left before the Noctis arrived), and of course the Orca he had won in an EVE Radio contest. And we had done a good job of setting up his skills so to go with the Orca he got himself some decent industry/mining skills, but he didn't neglect his combat skills as he can now T2 fit Gallente AND Minmatar frigates (Rifter maybe?) and some time this week he will be Assault Ship capable, and when he's done with Evasive Maneuvering V Interceptors will be opened up. And all this without neglecting the all-important support skills. The only cruiser skills he has right now are mainly T1 for Gallente, Caldari and Minmatar ships, but he is very close to T2 missiles to complement the decent tank he built for the Drake. So soon he won't need my awesome fire power to deal with L4's quickly when quick ISK is needed. He will be advised not to rush for the T2 cruisers just yet, you can be sure of that!

So I may have been ready to join another corp and go full-on PewPew, but now I'll take some time to be a teacher again. I will probably have him join me on a few exploration ops as there can be much more ISK in that than just missions, plus he actually enjoys mining once in a while. But he also wants to learn The PvP so now that we're in the same corp we can shoot the crap out of each other; I expect many Rifters to die in these little experiments :)) So sorry Maulos, I will not be joining you guys in the near future. si Gong has also told me that a few of his buddies want to make the jump into New Eden so guess what, there may yet be more people to train. Oh, and no worries... podding is part of my curriculum >:)

Fly like a master; hire an apprentice

o7

PS: right-clicking the highlighted names of pilots will NOT bring up a menu XD

One night in Montreal

2011-09-24T09:38:00.003-04:00

Yesterday we had a special Friday night EVE Meet to celebrate German capsuleer Carbon Freezer's vacation in our sweet city. Carbon was living in Montreal up until a year and a half ago and used to be a meet regular. After accepting a job he couldn't refuse he went back to the Fatherland and now lives in Trier.

So beer was consumed, stories were exchanged and even corp application were discussed, all on a perfect night on the Brutopia terrasse. It was a pretty awesome way to start the fall season :)) Here's a short pictorial of what will be remembered as the September 23rd Carbon Meet:

Clockwise from bottom left: Crazy Kinux's horns, Letrange stretching, Carbon Freezer hiding, K'na waving, Havegun Willtravel gunning, Felix Dcat peacing, Uozag doing nothing in particular, and Don Pellegrino barely showing up

From left to right: Felix Dcat, Cartboard Box, Maulos, unkown neighbor getting blobbled, Crazy Kinux's chest.

From left to right: Havegun Willtravel, Don Pellegrino, Uozag, Felix Dcat

The LaSalle borrough players: myself Cozmik R5 and K'na

Members of the old Blog Pack: Blogfather Crazy Kinux and Letrange

Beer haze means I don't remember your name, O Torontoan of Rooks and Kings and girlfriend! On the right is Letrange, and on the bottom Maulos' cranium.

And this is what a Montreal EVE Meet looks like. We do this every two weeks, usually on Saturdays at 7PM, always at Brutopia with their fine in-house brewed cereal juices of awesomeness. We always welcome new EVE players. If you would like to know more, contact us in the EVE MTL in-game channel or post in the thread I maintain in the Events and Gatherings section of the EVE-O forums. I raise my pint of Cask IPA to everyone who came, and here's to many other fine meets!

Fly social

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - 2011/09/23

2011-09-23T00:38:00.001-04:00

On this social networking site with the "F" logo one of my old home town buddies as been posting tunes from the 80's, but new wave and pre-Hip-Hop just doesn't cut it. This does. Enjoy Iron Maiden as its engines were firing up the afterburners !!!

UP THE IRONS !!!!

o7

Wednesdays of Fail - 2011/09/21

2011-09-21T17:47:00.002-04:00

After two weeks of posting my own fail mails from my BOZO past, guess what... I have finally received a Fail Mail! This week's mail was sent in by SuicidalPancake of Quantum Horizons. A bonus is that this is a capital ship killmail, and I've made no secrets of how much I hate capitals. The more dead capitals the better. Oh if anyone has a good supercap killmail, fail or not, please send it in so I can make fun of it XD So without further adieu, let take a look at this slow fat-assed piece of Caldari engineering (sorry Kirith!):

[Chimera, WarheadRex's Chimera]

Co-Processor II

Power Diagnostic System II

Damage Control II

Capital Shield Booster I

Shield Boost Amplifier II

Invulnerability Field II

Caldari Navy Photon Scattering Field

Caldari Navy Heat Dissipation Field

Caldari Navy Ballistic Deflection Field

Drone Control Unit I

Capital Shield Transporter I

Prototype Cloaking Device I

Large Capacitor Control Circuit I

Hammerhead II x10

Hammerhead II x20

Warrior II x9

Heavy Shield Maintenance Bot I x30

Templar x8

Firbolg x7

Heavy Armor Maintenance Bot I x30

Garde II x30

Ogre II x45

Praetor EV-900 x30

http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=14198442

First of all, I'm not going to analyse the actual fit of this thing; if you want to ask someone about various Chimera fits and how one would fail, ask Kirith Kodachi :) The fail in this Chimera's death lies somewhere else. You see, this carrier was killed in a system called SG-75T. This system is a really bad place for a solo carrier to fly in for two reasons: 1- there are no stations, and 2- there are no POSes. So getting safe in the event of blobbage, not that great. Another reason for fail is the apparent cloaking device malfunction. I mean, why fit a cloaker if you don't use it, right? But not only did he apparently not cloak, this Chimera got killed by what? 19 frigates and 2 interdictors. WOW! So my Columbo report on what happened that night in SG-75T: Mr Rex was happily killing anomalies after being cyno'd in by an alt, and because doing PvE in a faction-fit carrier is super easy Mr Rex decided to go grab a beer and watch a bit of TV while his fighters were tearing the Angels a new one. And suddenly a bunch of Fremen came in, decided to posture up to tame Shai-Hulud. With Mr Rex clearly away enjoying his beer, they turned Shai-Hulud into a billion tiny little crysknives !!!

SuicidalPancake, you sir are on the receiving end of some ISK. Because it is the one module that could have made this kill a non-event, you will be receiving 1,259,510 ISK, this being the value of the Prototype Cloaking Device I.

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

Rough schedule

2011-09-21T11:50:00.003-04:00

I am starting to realize that I may have resubbed a tiny bit too fast. No, I'm not suffering from burn-out after only one month. The reason is simple: when you have two boys with an ex-girlfriend and one of them has started school and the other one is still at daycare, expect to be called in to help. While this does nothing to help with the already strained relations with the ex (let's say we've set each other "red"), my boys have to come first. And so it is that I have to get up at stupidly early hours and either ride or walk to my boys' place so the ex can leave early enough not to be late for work - in case you don't know, morning traffic in Montreal is an olympic sport; I'm actually happy I don't have a car anymore - and we each take a boy to his destination for 7AM. Remember when I said EVE and kids don't mix? Well apparently it wasn't just when the kids are present with me *sigh*

And as before I still have my other distractions in which I have just as much interest as I have in EVE, and in some cases much more. The end of summer and fall is upon us and this is my favorite time to be outdoors; the fresher air, the colors, the smells... I need to find a planet that has late-September weather year 'round! With every month that passes my bike is getting better equipped to go farther and farther, and with my fall vacation coming I'm praying for some good riding weather. Next on my bike related shopping list: cycling shorts, pants and boxers (with shammy cushion "where it counts"), handlebar bag, front and rear lights, travel panniers (I do have a trunk bag), fenders, new grips and bar ends. Over the winter I'll start looking into the more serious stuff like the BOB trailer and camping gear. My objective: in summer 2012 I want to take a month long vacation, probably late August to early September, maybe even all of September because it just rocks, and out of that month I want to take two weeks to ride wherever the roads and paths may lead me. I will have to plan out a vague itinerary that will eventually lead back to my house. This should be pretty awesome :)

When I took my EVE break in May it turned out to be not just an EVE break, but a complete gaming break, apart from a few games here and there, mostly when my boys were with me and on crappy rainy days. The break was just long enough that now I really feel like fragging/flying/racing and there are a few games that have either come out or are on the way that I'm interested in. Good examples are: WH40K Space Marines, Hellgate (Tokyo expansion soon!), Rage, Diablo III, Elder Scrolls Skyrim, rFactor2 and Microsoft Flight (aka FS11). But playing rFactor1 this past weekend, not to mention the whole Incarna/CQ debacle, made me notice something: my computer is now 3.5 years old and it's showing its age. At the very least I will need a newer nVidia video card. Yes, I am sold to nVidia ever since the Riva TNT came out. And when you read that a lot of people who have video card issues with games have ATI cards, and with most gaming companies working hand-in-hand (I was think of other body parts) with nVidia when developping their games, take a wild guess what video card is better for gaming! I should also get a memory and OS upgrade though, but I only have so much money to throw around. Real Life being greater than Pixels, I'll have to make some choices because in the midst of all the cycling, camping, and now computer gear I'd like to buy, I have put aside an electronic drum kit that I plan to get around Christmas, maybe a bit after. When the drum kit gets to my place I have the feeling that I'll be turning a big page on my gaming career.

So there you go, a slight update about why there are no sweet kills to post or funny/awesome in-game stories to tell. I will be posting the "Wednesday of Fail" later when I get home not only because of my work's firewall, but also because posting from this old and decrepit version of Internet Explorer is a complete bitch. Trust the Montreal municipal services to be 5 to 10 years behind on technology... jeez !!!

Fly with your heart, not with your head

o7

Edit: [rant] A little rant about something that's bugging the fuck out of me lately in EVE. Lately I keep seeing "FiS" everywhere. I want everyone to know that FiS stands for FÉDÉRATION INTERNATIONALE DE SKI. It has NOTHING to do with space, ships, or both used together. [/rant]

International Talk Like a Pirate Day

2011-09-19T12:16:00.001-04:00

Avast maties !!!

T'day's the day where yon' carebear must walk the plank! I no care if Capt'n Boson is missin' on them there high seas, but the night a gankin' we shall have !!!

Bring on the wenches and let pour the rum, we be celebratin' Talk Like a Pirate the only way that matters: WITH BROADSIDES A'BLASTIN' !!!!!

YARRR!!!

o7

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - 2011/09/16

2011-09-16T06:23:00.001-04:00

This week's tune is a true classic, and a big one. Make sure you have 20 minutes ahead of you :)

In EVE, I've had a pretty quiet week because getting up at 5AM is kicking my ass. When you have two kids and you're separated/divorced, and one kid is in school while the other one is still at daycare, it's a complete bitch. Yep, can't wait for June and it has nothing to do with the end of summer... oh well, back to Pink Floyd so I can relax my senses.

Fly as much as you can, and enjoy every second of it.

o7

New Meme: Your First Ever Loss Mail

2011-09-14T17:24:00.003-04:00

Oh damn, what a doozie !!!

[Thrasher, First loss ever]
Power Diagnostic System I
F-M3 Munition Inertial Suspensor

Monopropellant I Hydrazine Boosters
Small Shield Booster I
[empty med slot]

250mm Light Carbine Howitzer I, EMP S
250mm Light Carbine Howitzer I, EMP S
250mm Light Carbine Howitzer I, EMP S
250mm Light Carbine Howitzer I, EMP S
250mm Light Carbine Howitzer I, EMP S
250mm Light Carbine Howitzer I, EMP S
250mm Light Carbine Howitzer I, EMP S
Salvager I

[empty rig slot]
[empty rig slot]
[empty rig slot]

http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=3075642

The day after I joined Clown College, of course I had this EVE thing down, right?

*insert wrong answer buzzer here*

Just like any n00b out there, I was minding my own business ratting away try to score the highly coveted Alloyed Tritanium Bars which at the time were worth a nice 500k ISK a pop. And feeling full of myself and my climbing skills (a whopping 1.2m SP at the time) I wanted to rat better rats so I went down from 0.7 systems to 0.6, then 0.5, then 0.4 obviously. So I entered Amamake and in a pure n00b moment even ASKED if people minded if I ratted XD. People did leave me alone for a bit; I had come into Amamake with nothing but ammo in my hold so everything showing up meant I had a bit of ratting time. Until Garmon said in Local "Alright, that's it!" and gave me a nice lesson in HTFU 101. As anybody losing the first ship of course I was miffed, but I admit I wasn't exactly clear where Low-sec started. I found out that day :)

But now looking at Garmon's avatar pic I spot a much hated monocle. Mmmmm... maybe I should have a rematch. What say you Garmy? Mano a mano, Ruppy vs Ruppy for old times' sake? I slap thee with my dirty cycling glove and throw it at thine feet...

Fly hard

PS: Hey Garmon, I may have been hating your guts at the time, and I'm sure you were laughing your head off. But seriously, this loss turned out to be an awesome lesson, and with better training at BOZO I came to realize that you had actually done a good thing. For this I must thank you immensely. I'm still waiting for you to pick up that glove though >:)

Wednesdays of Fail - 2011/09/14

2011-09-14T12:33:00.004-04:00

This segment of my blog being still very new, I still haven't received any fail mails from players past or present. So once again I will delve into my past, in this case March 26th 2008 when I had just graduated from Clown College and had been accepted as a full-on BOZO. We had just become Blue to a corp which had been Red to us for a while, namely Appetite 4 Destruction, and we had started doing roams together. And those roams were some of the best times I've had in EVE, especially when coming across something like this, the Cloaky-Nano-Stabbed-Armor-Repping-Zero-Propulsion Armageddon:

[Armageddon, Trail Steven's Armageddon]
Overdrive Injector System II
Damage Control II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Large Armor Repairer II
Warp Core Stabilizer I
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

Cap Recharger I
Fleeting Warp Disruptor I
Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor I

Mega Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I, Multifrequency L
Mega Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I, Multifrequency L
Mega Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I, Multifrequency L
Mega Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I, Multifrequency L
Mega Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I, Multifrequency L
Mega Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I, Multifrequency L
Mega Modulated Pulse Energy Beam I, Multifrequency L
Improved Cloaking Device II

[empty rig slot]
[empty rig slot]
[empty rig slot]

Hammerhead II x10

http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=4343521

One would think that someone who can fit so many T2 modules would know better than to fail so much at fitting a battleship, But EVE is full of odd people doing odd things. Let's analyze this thing a bit. I get the cloaky part; this is obviously a ratting boat living on the border of Catch and Curse. Not exactly the safest place to rat mind you, but I've done worse. The nano, this is where things go South; it may help the battleship be a bit more nimble but only just, and at the price of structure. Now the warp core stabilizer... *sigh* this module examplifies the word "fail" in my book because it rarely does what it is intended to do, and of top of that it messes up targetting, kind of like if a sniper had a beer bottle in front of his scope. The Large Armor Repairer II isn't a bad modul in itself, but in a laser boat that seems to be lacking in capacitor regeneration, not so sure. And finally, who needs a propulsion module anyway? I noticed that the drones died with the ship but I don't remember if we caught this guy AFK or if we killed him so fast he forgot he had 'em. I'll forgive him his lack of rigs because back then there were no such thing as sized rigs and their price was immensely prohibitive. Remember Polycarbs and Trimarks at over 60 million? Man that time sucked for rigs!

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

A slump already?

2011-09-13T12:27:00.001-04:00

I have a confession to make. Ever since I've been back in the game I've done my fair share of solo PvP attempts and my luck has been worse than awful. From dead roams with close to zero traffic in dozens of jumps, to buggy/laggy gameplay playing with visuals and controls, to plain and stupid piloting fail, since my return my kill/death ratio appears stuck in an uncontrolable nose dive. Wanna know how bad? I have no shame so here goes: 1 Punisher killed against 2 Taranii, 2 Rifters, 1 Rupture and 1 Hurricane lost. Yeah... fail, fail, fail, and more fail. Would you like some fail on the side with your fail? Sure, why not!

Part of why I fail is I think I play too much as a gang tackler would. I also think I follow the "real men hull-tank" mentality in a sport where everybody tanks their ships. I don't want to say that most EVE players aren't real men, but it's easy to see that a lot of PvPers fly tanky ships in small gangs to have the slightest advantage. Completely understandable. Another reason for fail is that there is so little traffic these days that I tend to bite off more than I can chew; there are some immensely fail fits out there so course if there is the slightest chance that I can kill say a Hurricane with a Rifter I will take my chance and try it. This has not been ending well lately :)

Another way to end a roam real quick is to fight under your adversary's terms. I learned this from yesterday's experience: don't. I had spotted a Cyclone in Decon and he followed me next door (unpronouncable system, even for a french speaker like me), and as I was in my Hurricane I thought that this could be a good fight. But of course he had buddies flying around in as yet unknown ships. From a safe-ish spot in space I called out the Cyclone for a dual, but instead another player, the corp CEO I think, answered the call. A bit of banter in Local ensued because I obviously wasn't talking to him, but he insisted on giving the fight. I gave up on the banter and said OK, let's meet at Planet 1. Bad decision. We both landed on top of one another and I discovered he was in a Pilgrim. Ending up drained of all cap which shut down my Invul II, DC II, point and MWD. My guns and drones didn't need cap but the Pilgrim had a tough armor tank. I did overheat my guns but in a lag SNAFU only possible with this iteration of the EVE client the overheat button wasn't showing up as being turned on, and yet the red bar of the damaged mods was showing. Seeing this I decided to cut the overheat to preserve my guns for a longer fight, but lo and behold NOW the little button went bright green. I then turned it off, or so I thought. Next thing I knew my guns were all dead. Awesome. It's sad cuz it still took the Pilgrim a while to kill me. Oh and I forgot to mention: no matter how I tried I was stuck with Barrage in my guns. I wanted to switch first to RF EMP to go for the Cyclone, and attempted to switch to RF Plasma when I saw the Pilgrim, but to no avail. I was getting unbelievably stupid messages like "there is no room in your guns" or some shit. Hell I couldn't even simply unload the Barrage! Yes, at some point I was really questioning the reasons for my return.

But you know what? I'm not gonna let the damned stupid buggy-assed game get to me this time. I'll just keep on PvPing, maybe join a group soon. There is a project I have with a fellow Montrealer but if the project takes too long to take off I will simply join someone else who's ready to rock yesterday. I've had a few interesting offers so if my luck doesn't turn I will have to make it turn.

Fly safer than I do... shouldn't be too hard these days!

Where were you when 9/11 happened?

2011-09-11T17:49:00.004-04:00

September 11th 2001 started out as a glorious day. So glorious in fact that I had decided to be a bit lazy and take the morning off. This would allow me to get up later, have a nice breakfast, etc. But as the morning show was ending on the radio the announcer got all serious and said something about a plane crashing into one of the towers of the World Trade Center but the details were very vague as it had just happened. That got me out of bed in a hurry and I went straight to CNN. First expecting that some noob pilot had smashed his Cessna 172 into the building, it was clear that it was something more serious judging by the size of the hole in the building and the amount of smoke coming out. This day was about to get a lot more interesting but at this point I didn't know to what level. Time to make some coffee and keep watching the events unfolding.

As the CNN reporters were describing the scene the unbelievable happened live right in front of my eyes; in a fraction of a second a passenger plane, now known to be United Airlines Flight 175, appeared on the right edge of my TV screen and literally cut the second tower in half. I barely had time to digest what had just happened that I was startled by my ringing phone. It was my then soon-to-be girlfriend who was also a co-worker, frantically telling me "Ben! Do not come to work! All court activities have been stopped and we may even be evacuated!". OK, this shit all of a sudden got very serious. And needless to say, all sorts of Hell broke loose on all TV channels, radio channels, the Internet, etc. And that's when we learned that the planes had been hijacked by terrorists and turned into massive kamikaze bombs. It dawned on me that two planes hijacked in the world's biggest super-power and striking the biggest landmark in one of the world's biggest cities meant one thing: there could be more of those in the air. My fears were realized a few minutes later when the Pentagon, the biggest military seat on the entire planet, got hit. I immediately thought of only one thing: DEFCON 1. World War Three. I immediately went on the web to find out if something else was going on in other countries. I read the reports of buildings being evacuated all over the place, especially the big ones like the Sears Tower, the Petronas towers, even Place Ville-Marie here in Montreal. The two buildings then collapsed and the rest is history on the darkest scale.

It was quite eerie to see the skies completely devoid of aircraft, except for the screeching roar of an F-18 fighter jet once in a while. This may not have been the start of WW3 as I had feared, but it was clear that the world as I had previously known it a day earlier was no more.

Over the years I have met many Americans online through various games, and I know that pretty much all of them were affected in one way or another by those dark events. I've also met a few New Yorkers and even a few years after the events some were still very sensitive around the 9/11 subject. I fully understand this. So here we are, ten years after the world was brought to a grinding halt by a bunch of religious fanatics. But the New Yorkers have picked themselves up and now not only is a new World Trade Center being built, it will be even more grandiose than the previous one, with a special memorial to honor those who have lost their lives on that horrible day that had started out so beautifully.

If you have lost someone who was dear to you, or if you know of someone who knows someone who got caught at the wrong place at the wrong time, my heart goes out to you and I salute your courage.

I very rarely say it but this is the day to say it: Fly Safe.

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

2011-09-09T00:25:00.000-04:00

This video was suggested by Havegun Willtravel of Mobile Alcohol Processing Unit [MAPU]. And I approve every fucking bar of it :)

On the EVE front: I took a solo roam though Black Rise and Placid tonight, and I think that EVE and Low-sec in particular are hurting more than I thought possible. I've seen deep 0.0 space A LOT busier than this. Total shame really. And I couldn't get a fight even if I begged in Local. They must've been scared at the sight of Moi in my uber-skilled Stabber XD Oh well, I will catch something at some point somewhere, before CCP turns off TQ :))

Fly like EVE is dying... it just might revive it !!!

o7

Blog Banter #28: Here's my coffee CCP

2011-09-08T12:51:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the Blog Banter #28. In the light of the recent events regarding EVE, CCP, the CSM and a bleeding player base, blogger Seismic Stan of Freebooted has opened the banter and asks this question:

"In recent months, the relationship between CCP and it's customers has been the subject of some controversy. The player-elected Council of Stellar Management has played a key role in these events, but not for the first time they are finding CCP difficult to deal with. What effect will CCP's recent strategies have on the future of EVE Online and it's player-base? What part can and should the CSM play in shaping that future? How best can EVE Online's continued health and growth be assured?"

Ever since Tyrannis came out, it has become apparent that Crowd Control Productions Inc. has not been treating its flagship game the way a flagship should be treated. They've been treating it as a test bed for an eventual planetary based first-person shooter and its means of communication with EVE (Dust514 with Tyrannis, PI and all that jazz), and also for an eventual vampire MMO (World of Darkness with Incarna, space Barbies, etc.). All this is old news. And now a new name is being given to the part part of EVE Online that is its main purpose in life and it boggles the mind to see a company refusing to name the game that is its bread and butter by the name they gave it. The game is called EVE ONLINE the last time I checked, not FLYING IN SPACE. And because that part of EVE has been neglected for so long because of other pet projects, the player base is now losing patience and a lot of people are leaving for greener pastures. "The 40000 people logged smile at you" or something like that is a comment I have read on the forums lately. And it's a pretty shallow comment when you realise that a year ago that number was more around 50000. Attrition much?

At every FanFest CCP beats its own chest about the number of subscribers. Now tell, how many of you have more than one account? How many have more than five? Hell some people have more than TEN accounts; I seriously doubt that these people have anything remotely ressembling a social life but I digress. I sincerely hope that the number of subscribers is calculated based on mailing adresses and not game accounts because this would only proove that CCP is full of hot air. But people actually logging in and playing, these numbers do not lie. Less people playing despite a very high number means only one thing: interest is waning. And every time CCP does or says something (see what I did there Hilmar?) that upsets player interest, they shoot themselves in the foot. As I write this EVE may not be "dying", but it is hurting. A lot.

Back in June at the height of Incarnageddon, Monoclegate, the Jita Riots or whatever happened on Quebec's St-Jean-Baptiste day, CCP called in the Councill of Stellar Management for an emergency meeting to heal what was a wide-open wound. And now it seems that the paying customers of CCP are being kept in the dark on what was actually said there because of a pesky little thing called the Non Disclosure Agreement. So let me get this straight, we the player elect a council to deal with CCP about some problems, bring some solutions to said problems, and basically making sure the players are happier, therefore more willing to stay on as a customer, but CCP then tells the CSM that it can't inform the players what actually happened? Way to make people trust you CCP! So if the company only listens to what the player-elected council says and does whatever it wants after, then the CSM has failed and has become pointless. Sad to say but there it is.

So the only way to assure EVE's and ultimately CCP's survival is simple: DO NOT ONLY WATCH WHAT WE DO AND LISTEN TO WHAT WE SAY! The players have been repeating some things for years on end now, and the only response we got were things like "18 months", "soon™", "after it is implemented", "soon™ (redux)", etc. All the while releasing the "test bed" material, usually half-finished and broken, which is stuff the majority of the players didn't want or need anyway, and they break something that was working perfectly before. Well I as a player say this: how about adding content that the players actually ask for instead of just improvising stuff that will get ignored. And how about picking up the pieces of the myriad things the players keep telling you don't work as intended. We the players are a major part of the bread that CCP can put on its table. If CCP keeps biting the hand that feeds it, at some point the hand will be a lot more careful before it feeds again.

On a personnal note, I'd like to point out why I came back when I was already on leave even before Incarnageddon started. I've said it many times, there is only a very small percentage of the game that I'm interested in, but I'm interested enough to pay for it. If the part of EVE Online that I love dies, I want to go down with it. As long as there will be people to catch in belts, duals to honor and even ships to lose, I'll be playing. I hope that day is far off and I also hope that CCP smells a really strong batch of player-prepared coffee and adds even a tiny amount of content to the tiny part of EVE I have been into for the past 3.5 years, 4 years this winter.

Fly dangerous

Wednesdays of Fail - 2011/09/07

2011-09-07T10:13:00.006-04:00

Because It hasn't even been a week since I've announced that I would be doing this and haven't yet received killmail links, as promised here is an example of pure Fail I once met in the Mya system where I was expecting to fight some Basgerin Pirates, but instead landed on top of this:

[Vexor, Arbai's Vexor]
Expanded Cargohold I
Expanded Cargohold I
Quantum Co-Processor I
[empty low slot]

1MN MicroWarpdrive I
ML-3 Amphilotite Mining Probe
[empty med slot]

Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
Miner II
[empty high slot]

Mining Drone I x5

http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=12023996

OK, where to start with this one... we have one of the less bad Gallente PvP ships fitted up for mining. This alone tickles my neurons! At least there was an intention of serious mining as the T2 modules attest. Isn't the Exequror a better choice for mining for a young Gallente pilot? Someone industrially minded (ie: Letrange) would know, but this brings me to my next point: the complete lack of any kind of tank. I killed this thing with a Rifter and I will readily admit that some T1 frigates have given me more of a challenge going through their tank. So I suspect that on top of not having any tank modules fitted, the character didn't have much in the way of tank skills... was too important training those Miner II's maybe! My memory failed me with the number of drones but he DID throw a whopping three Warrior I's at me. They're not on the killmail though because they were out in space in a vain attempt to hurt my Rifter. And then there's the MicroWarpdrive... oh damn how did I forget the ONE MEGA-NEWTON module ?!?! The fact that there were so few drones in a ship that gives awesome bonuses to them means only one thing: the pilot wasn't ready for a Vexor. But the last bit, the clincher of The Fail: what in the name of Ronnie James Dio was this ship hoping to achieve in Belt One of a three belt Low-sec system ?!?! I guess he was lucky it was I who turned this vague semblance of a cruiser into space dust; the Basgerins would probably have either ransomed or podded its pilot on top of it!

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

o7

Edit: now that I'm out of the Reich, here's the actual fit and the link to BattleClinic, because the old AMC killboard has since died.

Change of universe

2011-09-05T10:45:00.002-04:00

As much as I'm starting to have more fun in EVE since my return, on this Labor Day weekend I couldn't get much done because of an extended parental duty weekend. I've mentioned my theory on EVE and kids often enough so no need to repeat myself. But at 4.5 and 5.5 years old I can already see the makings of a pair of future gamers. That part of my genetic legacy is impossible to deny! Now the interesting part is to make sure they don't abuse the interest too much, and most importantly nip any negative behavior that may happen in the bud, which ain't always easy. Two guys, one computer... yeah, fun!

So what do kindergarten sons of a hardcore gamer play? You'd be surprised! The obvious one for boys their age is the games on the Hot Wheels website. But of course after seeing dad in action it didn't take long for them to want to try true games. I did show them EVE PvP but face it, EVE is slooooooow! But First Person Shooters? Different story! Of course I'm not talking about FPS games too violent or realistic; they do have a good grasp of what is fantasy and what is reality, so no CoDs, MW2, GTA and etc. I'm not into those anyway. But they love Quake, especially with esports fugly graphics! They haven't started deathmatching yet but they do understand how to move around and switch weapons. But this weekend another game grabbed their interest: Mechwarrior4:Mercenaries!

The fun part about Mech4 for them isn't only the walking around in gigantic "robots" (they aren't calling them mechs yet), it's looking at the mechlab screen! Seriously, they spend more time fitting the mechs than they do on the field, where they usually go all alone or against a single weaponless assault mech I made for them to practice on. Something just grabs them as they try to balance their fits; what weapon type goes where, what can be fitted with 2 tons left, how to free up some tonnage for jump jets, that sort of thing. Some of their fits are pure fail, but others are quite good. To determine this they have me enter a multiplayer game against bots and if I start decimating the competition the fit gets the seal of approval. And the favorites: for Leandre it's the Supernova because he has a thing for high-powered energy weapons (Amarr pilot in the making), and Timothee prefers the Marauder II for its massive railgun... I hope hybrids get fixed before he gets in EVE!

So yeah, having youngsters playing grown-up games is doable, but the most important thing is to make sure that they understand that games are games. And of course I'm writing about this because this has been a truly dismal weekend weather-wise, either too hot and humid or pissing rain; video games are NOT my activity of choice for my tornadoes. OK, is it my turn yet? I WANNA PLAY !!!

Fight hard and get crits!

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - 2011/09/02

2011-09-01T23:00:00.002-04:00

How better to start the first weekend in the blog pack with something truly epic. Here's Ronnie James Dio at his very best.

On the EVE front: things are coming together for the Montreal crew. There is even talk of a corporation being born. Of course we may have to play some really sweet Stradivarius (or some really loud Gibson Explorer) to coax some guys into resubbing and being part of our weasel-like cunning plan, and maybe add a few beer bribes! In any case, our plan sounds fun so here's to hoping it comes to fruitition.

Another thing I've been thinking about... ever since Ga'len, the Wandering Druid of Tranquility, has put tarps on his fine Amarr ships, we have basically been without the educational service called Fail Mail Friday. Well, my Fridays are sort of taken (for example by Black Sabbath here) but there are plenty of days left in the week. Therefore, I would dearly like to reinstate the posting and commenting on that thing which makes eyes bleed in sheer pain, The Fail Mail! The principle will be quite simple because it will be the same as it has been ever since the Fail Mails came to fame in the days of the Warp Drive Active podcast, and then on Ga'len's blog. If you have a funny/stupid/mental/painful killmail you would like to share, please send me the killboard link via evemail to Cozmik R5 (yes it's a FIVE, not an "S"), or by normal e-mail at r3dfiv3@hotmail.com . I will of course be paying out ISK to whoever gets his killmail posted on the blog. It will be the market value of a random mod fitted on the ship, but do not expect to be paid billions for Officer mods! So, sounds like a plan? I'll make Wednesdays my Fail Mail day because to me, Wednesdays are always full of fail. So maybe I can break the curse this way :)) I'll find one of my own doozies to start the festivities.

Fly dangerous, but not in Rocket Drakes or Omni-Repping Hurricanes !!!

I made the pack !!!

2011-09-01T13:05:00.000-04:00

As of yesterday, Beyond Space is now part of the new revamped EVE Blog Pack. Yay moi !!! Of course this will mean a few things that will affect the way I post, although ever so slightly; the powers-that-be at the Blog Pack (ie: Rixx Javixx) know that I'm an unrepentant non-conformist, and I take a lot of pride in doing things my way. But yes, I will conform to a few rules, like linking the individual blogs of the pack (I do have a link to EVEoganda's Blog Pack page), participating in the blog banters, posting regularly, etc. I will also try to ease up on the occasional swearing, but EVE being EVE and CCP being CCP there are sometimes situations where a string of swear words is the only logical response. Besides, I'm not forcing anyone to agree with what I think.

That said, I've received news yesterday that one of my real-life buddies will most probably resubscribe in the near future, and with the same goals I have: blow stuff up. Not for money or ransom, not for grief or revenge, just for the sake of seeing pretty lights! This should make for an interesting autumn :)

Fly dangerous

The elusive return kill

2011-08-30T12:06:00.003-04:00

Ever since coming back to EVE I've had limited time to go out and find something to frag, and now close to two weeks after I've resubbed I'm still looking for that elusive ice-breaking kill. I came pretty close when I had a really good 1v1, Taranis vs Taranis, but it came down to my opponent having a NOS and a small armor repper. It did come down to the very last bits of structure though, but in the end my dual-prop fit didn't tank enough. Gratz to Jan Morgenstern for that great fight! But apart from that it's been jump after jump of dead space, or my Rifter escaping 3-4 man BC gangs. Hell, yesterday I was so desperate to actually engage someone that I went for a Dramiel in Old Man Star with my Rifter, with predictable results.

So my options are simple: fly bigger ships and/or fly with people. Before I do the latter I do want to brush off more PvP rust and of course this means I'll have more ships to replace, thus more carebearing to do to get more ISK... ah, the downsides of EVE! It seems though that some people haven't forgotten me because I have received a few offers to join corporations, and for that I salute everyone who did. I just want to get a slightly better footing before I start on some adventure or other. Being a piss-poor 50 million SP character is kind of hard, but I have to live with it. Because yeah, I passed the 50 million SP barrier about a week ago! I didn't post about it because this time around it didn't coincide with some fancy skill other than Small Blaster Specialization V (yes, uber Taranis or Daredevil!). And now that I can fly pretty much all the ships I want or need I'm just going on a massive support skill buffing spree, as well as finally getting T2 missiles.

Here's to hoping CCP does something to boost interest in small-scale The PvP because it's pretty much the only thing I really love about EVE. Yes, I would probably be more successful if I was flying with a gang, but I want to choose my next corporation very carefully. Once again my rules in corp selection are clear: no over-the-top FC's, the ability to do what I want when I want and zero seriousness! Oh, and if I'm to have -10 sec status by joining a pirate corp, the said corp better have a good logistics train because I don't have a second account to haul ships for me. And no, I don't like EVE enough to reactivate my second account. If you think your corporation fits those criterias please feel free to evemail me or convo me or comment here on the blog. Until then, I'll keep brushing off rust and hopefully get the elusive kill I crave so much!

Fly hungry

o7

Edit #1: w00t!!! I finally broke the ice :)) Just killed this Punisher, but the wreck was still smoking when a Rapier uncloaked and he and his buddies fragged me... ah, life in Old Man Star XD

Edit #2: someone explain to me why the fuck the GCC starts up again when it was clearly over and I undocked... damn 1000$ designer jeans loving, monocle toting vikings.... >:(

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - 2011/08/26

2011-08-26T01:14:00.001-04:00

If this video doesn't give you a hint of what I intend to do in EVE, then I hope I catch you minding your own business as you're munching away on pixel space rocks !!!

Gimme your ultimate cup of coffee >:))

o7

The first tentative roam

2011-08-25T12:51:00.001-04:00

Now that much of my stuff is in place I can finally say I'm back, but unfortunately due to a case of tiredness (coming back from dad duty weekends is always interesting) I haven't logged on more than 1.5 to 2 hours at a time, and if you know the beast that is EVE you know that in that time you simply cannot do much. But yesterday after taking care of my trade alt's business I had only one thing to do with Cozmik: get his ass back into a Rifter and fly dangerous. Because I often fly with ex AMC alliance mates my PvP operations are once again based in Gallente space, with easy access to various Low-sec pipes. So off I went in search of hopefully a likely target, and if I met a blob I hoped I was in something fast enough to GTFO.

The first few systems were basically dead, with the few in Local probably docked up or POSed up. No ships on scan apart from those parked at POSes, no wrecks, I quickly pushed on because I wasn't flying something that can really camp a gate. I got my hopes up in the Mormelot system when I noticed a Slasher on scan, and I don't think it was at a POS. There were some wrecks in various belts so my hopes got even higher. But then I noticed another ship on scan, a Hurricane. And sure enough, the next belt I warped into the 'Cane was right there, not even 4000 meters away from me. Not wanting to bite more than I can chew, I warped off to a planet, and then to my out gate where the 'Cane was once again waiting. But in hindsight maybe I should've engaged him; Having landed in the ship's sweet spot (assuming he had AC's) and him not shooting me as soon as I arrived... I don't know, sounds mighty fail. Oh well, on his second try at the gate he had no hope of catching me so I pushed on a bit farther.

Once again, I had a few systems that had nothing of interest but when I entered Gratesier from the Schoorasana gate I got a bit of an adrenaline rush. Camping there were 2 Hurricanes and Vagabond, with only one 'Cane not red. As I held my cloak I saw them maneuvering so when I selected a planet to warp off to I closed my eyes and hit warp, hoping no one had a sensor booster. Apparently not because I got out unscathed! I could've push farther into Amarr space but I didn't want to stay up too late, something all too easily done in EVE. So I pressed my luck and warped right back to the Schoorasana gate. Sure enough, one 'Cane and the Vaga had jumped to the other side with the second 'Cane waiting for my arrival, but once again I slipped through them like a wet soap bar. The return trip was most uneventful... apparently I wasn't the only one going to bed early!

So all in all this may seem like a short and unsuccessful roam, but I did what I intended to do, which is to brush off some of the PvP rust I have accumulated during my hiatus, fly manually in unfriendly space, and dance in the face of would-be enemies while mooning and flipping them off! I can't wait to do it again with more time available, less sleepiness, and hopefully more unsuspecting victims out in space :)

Fly with guns blazing

And we're off!

2011-08-22T11:56:00.005-04:00

Last week I announced that I had renewed my subscription to EVE Online, but I didn't do much apart from logging in to make sure my training queue was in order, and to gather together various ships I had lying around in places other than my usual hang-outs. Namely, my Orca which was docked up in Berta after my stint in Ushra'Khan, and a Taranis in some other system in Derelik (I probably got it because it was ridiculously cheap... why else buy stuff out there?!). I also got to re-acquire an arty Tempest I had left in a very deep Class 4 wormhole a while back. During my hiatus the AMC alliance has been put in stasis and a few W-space colonies have been vacated, including the deep C4. So while I was away my Tempest was being taken care of by the Black Line corporation, and upon my return a contract was made for me in the dung-hole called Jita. So my first actual log-in was one of hauling. Good that this is out of the way!

You'll probably notice that I've skipped my Incarna experience. Let's say that it was very short. At first I thought I was out of the woods because the computer was behaving itself, there was no lag to speak of, and I even got this nice screenshot of Cozmik standing by his Absolution. This lasted about 15 minutes, when all of a sudden my computer simply shut down. Awesome. So a 2008 3ghz Core2Duo with 2gb of RAM and a 1gb nVidia GF8800 is simply not enough to run Incarna. Sorry but I've got other much more interesting places to dump my money than on computer parts. Well, it's not like I care much about Incarna, so after a slight cool-down period I logged back in but this time turned station environments off, and also turned all graphics way down; as I'd say in Quake3 terms, "r_picmip 5 ftw" :)) Actually, I found that having the now-infamous Door isn't too bad: when you have no ship to actually spin, you lose less time and you can do stuff that actually matters.

Back on the getting-back-in-the-swing-of-things train of thought, I also needed to give my trade alt Cassy Winds a wad of ISK to do the buy low/sell high thing. A few items have been good to me in the past and most of them still were so it wasn't long before all the ISK was locked in buy orders. With nothing else to do with Cassy I went back to Cozmik and checked a few things on the Rens market. I had heard that the EVE market was all over the place but it didn't prepare me to actually witness it. The first weirdness was finding out that there wasn't any Light Ion Blaster IIs in Rens to fit to my Taranis. Okaaay... and on the next day the few that were there were ridiculously over-priced. Good thing that there were some at my missioning hub, so I bought a small stack. And then I checked the ships... 130m for Vagabonds, 140m for Rapiers, 200+ for Broadswords, 250+ for Sleipnirs... GOD DAMN! Did a whole bunch of T2 producers quit and now those things are rare? Then I checked the Cynabal... 190m... I felt like buying three! While I was checking the Angel ships I noticed that the Pirate battleships hadn't changed much, but the Dramiel... 53m... expected nerf much? So yeah, after 4 months, the failest expansion in the game's history, a weekend of riots and a slew of ragequits the EVE market is getting schizophrenic. Speaking of the ragequits, I've heard somewhere (can't remember where) that EVE has about 370 thousand active accounts. But what my numbers said was that at prime time on a Thursday night 28 thousand people were logged in. Summer's almost over, people are getting back online, so we can't say "because of summer" anymore. "EVE is dying™" ? This remains to be seen. I think she's taken a serious hit though.

So now that my parenting weekend is over I'll have more time to get active. I'll be spending a couple nights of ISK grinding but now all the pieces seem to be in place. Fun will be had soon. No, not "tm"! See you out there !!!

Fly with a purpose

o7

Edit: Oh damn! For the first time in this blog's history I've posted more than 100 times in a single year, and there's still over 4 months to go in 2011. Yay me !!! ^_^

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - 2011/08/19

2011-08-18T23:39:00.001-04:00

OK so it's not Friday yet. Sue me. I have a crazy day ahead of me so I'm posting this in advance instead of skipping it. And while I'm at it, how about a crazy version of a well-known tune. I suspect that this is pre Machine Head because Ian Gillan is all over the place in his lyrics! It still has that groovy unmistakable Highway Star feel to it though.

On the EVE front: the cat is out of the bag now, yes I have resubbed, but no I'm not what one would call "active". I haven't even killed a single rat. And yes, Incarna sucks a massive pair of donkey balls. More on this on my first official active post.

On the bike front: I haven't purchased 'em yet but I have found the racks that will go with my disc brake equipped mountain bike, and even some for my suspension forks. The good news, the racks aren't too expensive and can haul tons. The bad news, waterproof panniers are NOT cheap, but they will be required if I want to head for parts unknown. Next year's vacation will be epic :)

Have a nice weekend !!!

o7

Re-installed

2011-08-17T11:39:00.001-04:00

Part One of the preparations for my return has been done. The EVE client is re-installed and up to date as of yesterday night, and I must say that Incarna has given it a terminal case of bloatware. Close to 9gb? Damn! Sign of the times I guess. I know I do have some stuff to clean out of my hard drive cuz at 320gb it's approaching its limit a bit faster than I like. I know what you're all saying: "just get a 1tb drive dude", "get an external to back stuff up", etc. But if I was to make a list of everything I'd like to buy, computer related or not, I'll realize quickly that I need a salary worthy of some high-profile company CEOs. So don't comment about what to buy.

I kept myself from reactivating the account right away for a few reasons. First, by the time I had finished installing the client it was close to 11PM, and I knew that if I logged in I'd get sucked in until 1 or 2AM and I'd be a complete wreck this morning. I'm already a wreck because my brain is still on vacation so let's not worsen the situation. Second, even though I have a PLEX ready to be used for the reactivation I want to time the return just right for when I actually have to pay for the subscription. I've never been good with ISK (or real money for that matter...) so I can forget about using PLEXes to keep me going, unless I get lucky and find some rad complex loot or get a massive donation. Third, this weekend I'm on parent duty so as I've said it before, EVE and kids do not mix. And fourth, I don't want to rush anything, and I know that when I'll get back in I'll have crap-tons of stuff to do, settings to tweak, channels to open, people to talk to, etc. This means I'll need close to an entire day just to get back in. Such is the reality of EVE: everything is massively over-complicated and everything you want to do takes..... a...... lot............. of.......................... time !!!

But I guess I miss catching someone off-guard and tears of disapproval enough to endure everything I hate about EVE yet again. Hey who knows, maybe some viking, fearing that his job is in jeopardy because of his chiefs' stupid decisions, will start listening to some players that have been repeating the same things for years on end and start a revolution. "C'est beau de rêver" as we say in french! But yeah, when I first get on, after the necessary fixes to the UI settings have been done, I have to do what I hate the most and start making ISK. I have the feeling that my first 5 days of game play will have about the same effect on my brain as a Makita power drill. I will have to take some breaks by getting some PvP kills or else I'll just feel like leaving again. During this time I'll think about the various options available to get what I want out of the game. I don't want EVE to be a chore ever again. I want easy-going gangs that don't have FC's who pop fuses every time someone loses a ship or if I smack in Local, because I do like to smack. And most important, if an FC or director or CEO complains about the way I fit a ship while I have a massively positive efficiency (97% last time this happened) I will tell that FC/director/CEO to sit on my raised middle finger and spin. This is a sandbox, and when I am in a sandbox, even though I could be playing with some people, I will still do whatever the hell I want.

So there you go. The client is (almost) ready, and this BOV is almost ready to relieve the bitterness the only way I know: blowing shit up!

Fly like it's the last time; it just might be

The last vacation's AAR, and preps for The Return of Coz

2011-08-16T11:31:00.004-04:00

Even though it was sad and inevitable, Reality came knocking yesterday morning as my vacation was over and I got back to work. It's weird that no matter how long your vacations last it's never long enough. It's just so much fun to do what you want when you want... at least I know I won't get bored or miss my work place when I'll ultimately retire. Unless things change radically this is only in 10 years so I can already start thinking about it!

The vacation started with a bang on my birthday (which is described here) but afterwards things calmed down a lot and I was able to take life easy and slow. OK, it helped that I was pretty much broke most of the time but this actually helped me take time to completely relax and breathe. My main activity was of course riding my bike; in the 2 weeks of my vacation I rode something between 250 and 300 kilometers. It's awesome to have access to some of the nicest bike paths in the country! So I was able to do my relaxing and contemplating life by sitting next to the Lachine rapids for example. And on the days where the weather royally sucked I still took it way easy, so easy that I didn't even get any gaming done. In fact in the entire summer I've limited my gaming time to the point where now I'm actually missing it (any game) and when I'll get back I'll be able to enjoy gaming a lot more than I used to say 4 months ago. One of the things I've said often this summer is "Real > Pixels", and I put my money where my mouth is. So I used my time to get back in touch with some friends I hadn't seen in a while, got to meet some people I didn't know (we still get some newcomers at our EVE meets!), and even got to chat with someone I wouldn't mind getting closer to! Now hold your horses, don't get the rumor mill spinning madly out of control; I'm still single and loving it, and with all the crazy past experiences I've had I'm not about to be tied down. But when you meet someone who actually appreciates and accepts this, well you never know where things could end up. But I'll still follow my two main rules: zero rush and zero pressure.

OK enough of my boring soap opera, let's get to the important part of this post. I know I've said hard things about EVE, CCP, Incarna, and monocle-toting rich carebear fucks, but after three months of cold turkey I admit I'm starting to miss the sound of autocannons and lazorz. I even miss the sweet voice of Aura (as long as it's not to tell me I can't warp off because I'm scrammed!). So I've decided that some time in the near future Cozmik R5 will be thawed, slapped in the face a few times, given coffee ultimate enough to make Ziltoid The Omniscient proud, steeped into his pod and inserted back into his Taranis, Crusader, Vagabond, Cynabal, Sleipnir, Absolution... you get the picture! I'll try to make some ISKies at first because I did buy some nifty toys before entering cryosleep, and I know that if I come back it will be for the following reasons: blow shit up, get my shit blown up, make some people cry, and ultimately have fun. During my vacation I spent a bit of time on #tweetfleet and I've been told I could be welcomed back to Ushra'Khan, but now I know they are much deeper into Null-sec, and while this may be fun at times I admit I'm slightly too hard-headed to take orders, and flying bigger gangs with ship fits set in stone annoys me to no end. So there are really only two options left for me: Wardecs and Piracy. Or both! Knowing how easy it is I will also probably pop random industrials in Hi-sec just for the hell of it, because tears are delicious and in my last few months of playing EVE they have been extremely rare. So yes, I intend to make a comeback as a very very bad person >:)

Now about Incarna and its computer-frying properties: I do have an older computer now so I'll be staring at a door for a while, but it shouldn't affect me too much because I want to spend more time in space than in a station, Also I don't multi-box so this is not a problem to me. I will completely shun the infamous NEX store; hell, if anyone has a way to remove the NEX button tell me about it. When Incarna was announced I had a plan to do something hilarious but apparently it can't work: eventually when other parts of the stations become accessible I wanted to have Cozmik walk around Jita 4-4 in only his trunks, but CCP doesn't allow that. Damn vikings... :)

So there you go, it's been officially announced. I haven't set a date yet but it could be very soon because I do have a PLEX stashed just for this occasion. The first order of business will be to get some good energy emissions related skills (I can already fly the Curse), get my small and medium laser specs to V, and get Minmatar Battleship V. I will probably do the Amarr BS stuff after because I've heard Abaddons hurt a lot :) So if at some point you're mining away, just minding your own business in a peaceful 0.8 system, and you see a Vexor land next to you, smile because you just might appear on Cozmik's Candid Blaster !!!

Dangerous: the only way to fly

PS: I'd like to send my best wishes to CrazyKinux. Thank you for all you did for the EVE blogging community.

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - 2011/08/12

2011-08-12T07:12:00.000-04:00

Part I:

Part II

To end my vacation I decided to go back to some Zappa lovin' with the most requested tune at Zappa Plays Zappa shows. I had the opportunity to see Dweezil and co. twice, and the second time was the best rock show experience of my life as I was sitting in the fifth row and center of a tiny venue, literally within speaking distance of the band. As Sheila says, Mother Mary & Joseph !!!

Enjoy Dweezil, and accept no substitute!

o7