It's all a game to me!

No I'm not dead. Extremely fucking busy but alive and kicking :) I just wanted to announce that after the current CFL season (which also happens to be a complete bust for the Montreal Alouettes) I will be going on a much needed hiatus from the Rockline drumline so I'll be able to concentrate on that other passion of mine, gaming. Yes I will be returning to EVE Online after almost a full year off and I will have my hands full relearning the tools of the trade and getting used to A LOT of new stuff. I will also fly (read blow up) some rockets in Kerbal Space Program, shoot dumbass guards in the knee in the Elder Scrolls universe (either Skyrim or ESO... please Zenimax send me my key !!!), blow up some Inner Sphere surats in Mechwarrior Online (hey Piranha, you know it's 3050, right?) and obviously get reacquainted to the fine art of Rocket Jumping in Quake Live.

The whole drumline experience has been a lot of fun but after almost two years straight I think it's time to step back a little, and maybe play my own drumkit without having to follow 15 other drummers! So the Big Comeback isn't exactly tomorrow but it's there. The leaves have to change colors first!

Hope you enjoyed Compressorhead !!!

Fly loud

o7

Friday's Electric Lunch Hour - Where The F*** Have I Been Edition

This is where I've been, among other places! So yeah, I still live. I still play games here and there. I still play drums with the funnest bunch of drummers. And I'm still patiently (OK, not so patiently) waiting for spring to hopefully maybe perhaps arrive to Montreal; at the time of this writing a mix of freezing rain, sleet and wet crud is falling. and it's beyond depressing out there. I have rarely seen so many Montrealers looking so grim. At least it's NOT because our hockey team sucks this time; on the contrary, the Habs are finally playing back up to their reputation.

Another game I've played a lot lately is TrackMania Nations Forever and the beta of its successor, TrackMania 2 Stadium. This extremely simple yet highly addictive and very popular racing game appeals to the Speed Freak in me. On the world ladder I'm currently #1323169 out of about 7-something million users on the planet, #11203 out of 100000+ in Canada, and #6177 out of 45ish thousand in Quebec. It's also a very exciting eSport to watch.

Last time I checked in I talked about a then-upcoming LAN party, and yes it was quite the success with 14 gamers crammed into Cartboard Box's apartment for the entire weekend, with a slew of epic and unhealthy meals. CB works at Ubisoft and also managed to have some give-away prizes for various mini-competitions thoughout the weekend. Great success all around!

To finish on an EVE note (this started as an EVE blog after all!), pilots Cartboard Box, Ilinane and Letrange will be attending FanFest 2013. Everybody is already preparing their livers for the alcohol assault that will surely happen. At least they don't have to drive anywhere XD

On that note, don't be too good and fly dangerous!

o7

Life on the 31st Century battlefield

I see your Pew, and I raise you a PewPew

Well, at least one of my EVE buddies predicted it would happen a few years ago when the trailer came out, and later when the game actually turned out to be reality and not just vaporware. In the words of Letrange: "When Mechwarrior Online comes out we may very well lose Cozmik to it". It did not happen as soon as it came out because I knew my previous computer was sub-par and that I was going to need a major upgrade, but yes, my account had been created from Day One and I was waiting for just the right moment to jump in. Now equiped with my newer tech and a brand new video card the moment has finally arrived. Reactor online, sensors online, weapons online, all systems nominal!

I was happy to find out that pretty much all the mech controls are exactly the same as in the previous Mechwarrior titles so it didn't take me much time to find my way around them. Because I don't have a Founders account and have yet to buy some Mechwarrior Credits (MC for short) I had to start making C-bills with one of the trial mechs. At the time of my first log-in and of this writing the choices are the Jenner, the Cicada, the Catapult K2 and the Atlas. I've always leaned more towards heavy and assault mechs because of my reckless piloting (some things never change!) but this particular Atlas is clearly the worst of all the available variants. The Cat-K2 on the other hand is one of the mechs I fell in love with in the Mektek version of Mech4:Mercs. Where the standard Catapult is a well-known missile boat, the K2 version is a PPC equiped sniper/brawler. In other words, exactly my play style! The disadvantage is that it is prone to overheating, especially in hot environments like the Caustic Valley map. But looking at the mechs available for purchase it was still one of my favorites so I proceeded to start making C-bills to buy one. The trial mechs are great for money-making but you don't get experience from them. So when I finally reached 6 million C-bills I made my purchase and started looking at my upgrade options. But upgrading meant more C-bills so I kept the original loadout for a while.

Like any Mechwarrior title mech customization is not only a possibility, it is a must. Everybody has a different play style and need different qualities about their mechs. My play style is quite simple... a tad dangerous and sometimes almost suicidal but that's the way I like it. I like to go in fast, hit hard, be able to take a beating, and have the speed to GTFO if fecal matter hits the ventilator. In its standard loadout the Cat-K2 is a decent brawler but the dangerous heat levels mean you have to go easy on the trigger. Also, the regular PPCs work like they do in Classic Battletech: there is a 90 meter minimal range to get full damage. Point blank hits are negligible. So what I ended up doing was this:

Catapult CPLT-K2 a la Cozmik

The first step is to completely strip the mech, including the engine. I then upgraded the mech to use double heat sinks, and upgraded the internal structure to Endosteel; the weapons I wanted to use aren't that big or heavy but I still had plenty of space. It also allowed me to put in a bigger engine, making the mech faster. The medium lasers and machine guns got installed back in, but I replaced the PPCs with shorter-ranged but just as hard-hitting large pulse lasers, which happen to heat up a lot less. I was also able to add an anti-missile system... very handy that! One ton of AMS ammo and another ton feeding both machine guns was plenty enough; I have run out of AMS ammo only once so far, and never ran out of MG ammo. I then filled up all the available slots with double heat sinks and was still able to max out my armor. So all in all I have the same damage output, but because it runs cooler I can fire a lot more often. I'm not fast enough to catch the light mechs or the faster mediums, but I have no trouble getting behind most heavies and assaults to literally backstab them. And the maximum armor makes it tough; I have stood head-to-head with some assault mechs and they ended up on the short end of the stick. I have also been taken out by shots to the head but oh well, that's part of the game :)

Now is this The Perfect Mech for me? Of course not, there's always room for improvement. I have a twin AC10 and 4 medium laser loadout in the works but it requires an XL engine which is too costly for me right now, and also more dangerous because the loss of a side torso means you go boom. Not great for my style of play but the AC10s don't heat up and fire much faster. And then there's all the other mechs I'd love to buy and tweak, and there's new mechs surely on the way. And in-game the year is 3050... guess who should be coming to dinner soon™? One thing that will be pratical is that with today's patch a testing grounds system will be added so it will be possible to test loadouts before going into actual battle. Because finding out a loadout is full of fail in battle can be bad for the entire team. It should be a fun feature.

In an up-coming post I will talk about the maps we play on. Those I love, those I hate, those I'd love to see, etc. I will also talk about the game types, and also those I would like to see implemented. In the meantime, I strongly urge you to give Mechwarrior Online a try, if only because it's free!

Fight hard and check your six!

o7

The Wait begins

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 :)

o7

Back on track

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

o7