Friday 31 December 2010

Fortnightly Photo #6 - Tengu: Dawn of an Era

Click to make biga
Its the holidays, for some that means more time for eve but for me it means more time with family, friends and most importantly the beach. So for this fortnightly photo I just created a simple background incorporating my favorite eve ship, the tengu.

If you dont like it, give me a better idea :) I can only come up with so many ideas, so fast and sometimes they just dont come when i need them to. So leave a comment below with a fortnightly photo you would like me to create. It can be any type of image you like.

Fly safe,
serenity one

Friday 24 December 2010

The experiment

Firstly let me start off by wishing everyone a merry Christmas or just a good holiday if you don't do it. I hope it all goes to plan and everyone has an awesome one. Oh and also have a happy new year :) I personally am looking forward to Christmas because out of my stocking i will be getting a brand new gaming pc :D

Right now that thats out of the way lets get into my little experiment. Basically I was in a great little corp called southern cross coalition that had around 40 players and was a real blast. Unfortunately the CEO stopped playing as much so i moved on to Metalworks which had about 450 players when i got their. I did have a bit of fun to start with but definitely not as much. So what I am doing is going to another small corp to check out the differences and see which i like the most.

The corp I have chosen is called United federations, which is a small Australian mission running corp which has about 40 players. I have moved all my gear from 0.0 already because all i had to do was stuff it in my carrier and make a jump to low sec :) Also my roles were dropped yesterday so i should be in the new corp within the next 24 hours.

Now i thought i would right up the positives and negatives of large and small corps which i will update after a month or two in the new corp.

Small corp                                                   

Pro's:
  • You feel needed for the corp to succeed.
  • People care and will usually help you out.
  • Get to know people better because there aren't hundreds of them
  • more to come!
Con's:

  • Not always people on to talk to
  • Not always people on to do stuff with
  • more to come!


Large corp

pro's:
  • Always someone to talk to
  • so many players there's bound to be like minded ones.
  • huge fleet fights (could also be a con)
  • More to come!
Con's
  •  Too many people talking at once
  • Too many people doing the stuff you like so you miss out.
  • Your treated like a porn in an army
  • more to come!
If you have any pro's / con's to add please leave a comment.

Fly safe,
Captain Serenity

    Sunday 19 December 2010

    Fortnightly Photo #5 - Minmatar desktop BG

    Click for a bigger version


    Here is the last desktop backgorund of the series. Next will be some other art inspired by eve. Sorry about not actually posting this on Friday, i forgot, what with the holidays and me not being at home and all that but here it is now. I hope my Minmatar friends like it.

    I actually like this one the best out of all four of them, In my opinion the colours contrast each other well and the simple design with rough edges brings out the true sticky tape and glue feeling of minmatar ships. hope you like it too.

    If you have any ideas for future Fortnightly photo's please comment below. If you would like to see the other backgrounds or some other art, use the following links.

    All artwork

    Caldari Desktop Background
    Gallente Desktop Background
    Amarr Desktop Background

    Fly safe,
    Serenity one

    Friday 17 December 2010

    Update #7 - Facelift

    The Neocom is finally having a face lift. Its about bloody time!

    As soon as i saw the above picture i thought, "rip off". Its exactly like windows 7! not that thats actually a bad thing, windows 7 looks pretty cool. I just thought it thats all... :)

    The thing i dont like about what they are doing is, their releasing a beta version straight to TQ. yes a BETA verison! They said it will be easier to test when you are actually playing. Lets just hope there arent any huge bugs like all their other releases.

    In other news as you probably know if you have been reading this blog for any length of time, my alt is training exhumers 5 so i can sell her as an uber hulk pilot. So the night before the patch to take away learning skills it has 20 days 16 hours to go. Guess what it has after the patch? yes... 4 days! That means i will be able to train every ore skill to 5, round out the mining drone skills and maybe even get some production skills, or scrap metal processing.

    Also on my main i trained a bunch of engineering (energy skills) to 5 so I have a lot of cap stability now :) That also knocked over 20days of my tengu plan. The one where im maxing all the related skills. Im pretty damn close now :D

    Thursday 16 December 2010

    Eve blog banter #23 - Force Fed


    Welcome to the twenty-third installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week or so to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check for other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

    With Incursion giving us glimpses of what Incarna will have to offer (the the Character Creator), this month's topic, by @Minerpewpew, comes just at the right time. He asks "What are your thoughts on how Incarna will effect the current EVE Online social dynamic?" I'd like to see this questioning go a bit further. How will this affect EVE's player base? Who will Incarna attract? New players to the genre? Seduce old players back into the game? Will we see new players come in that will never leave their station? Please explore to the best of your abilities!


    Im going to talk a bit about the two upcoming expansions. Lets start.

    In eve you dont have to do stuff you dont want to. You can be a miner and ignore combat because sitting there stroking rocks turns you one so much more. Or perhaps that bores you to the point of tears and you rather the fast paced world of small gang warfare. Whatever your play style, whether you play in a frigate or a titan you dont have to play the other parts of the game that you dont like. This is actually one of the main reasons i like eve so much. There are (almost) endless possibilities of what you can do so you can pick the stuff you like and discard the rest.

    So with incursion it seems to me like it is being forced down our throats like broccoli when your a kid, no ones likes it. Seriously what was ccp thinking? As a PVE player I do like the concept of the sansha invasions but when they take over your system you will have to drop everything and fight them off, otherwise there will be negative impacts. Lets hope that there aren't to many of these incursions in o.o because it could be a real pain in the ass for alliances already fighting each other for sov and now sansha is coming to stur it up a bit as well.

    Now for incarna. I think it will make people more attached to there character because instead of it just being a round blob of metal which you cant really relate to, you can relate to a humanoid character. This could be the pink fluffy expansion that gets more females into the game as they can spend time created stunning characters. Incarna may also attract some more WOW'ish player that like that play style of running around depending what sort of things you can do in the station.

    For people who already play the game, the hardcore players if you will it will affect in a different way. Incarna could just turn into a more sophisticated version of spinning ships in station for theses guys. There are definitely possibilities for some good station content but the main game is out in space. So I guess im saying it could be a bit of a waste of development hours that could have been spent doing something truly awesome to reward the longtime users.


    Thats my view and im sticking to it.

    Participants List:



    Fly safe,
    Serenity one.

    Wednesday 15 December 2010

    Trading: its fun :)



    you know i never really got into trading in the past but right now i dont feel like scanning for plexes or anything because its hot weather and im always at the beach. So instead i spend a few minutes a day doing some trading and in about one day i made 23mill :) Yes its not the big bucks but its actually fun.

    Im still way new too this but so far its going well. One thing ive learnt is buy low sell high. So keeping this in mind i went out and bought 4 drakes for 26 999 999. The next lowest sell order was 29 980 000. I then turned straight back around and put my own sell order up at 29 900 000! Now sprinkle with magic dust, bake at 180 degrees for a couple of hours and you've made 5.8mill.

    Someone else had then made a lower sell order than mine over night of 29 899 999. I thought 1 isk wars only happened in jita! No sweat though I just changed my sell order to 29 800 000 so they would think twice about going lower than me again and wait another couple of hours and bam! you got around 11mill.

    This is really beginner stuff but it was a bit of a gamble spending 108mill on the ships in the first place. Now that it worked im going to look into some other items see where else i can make some isk.

    If you have any tips for a wannabe trader, please let me know in the comments section. Otherwise ill just keep stumbling forwards and hopefully find my way to the pot of gold under the rainbow.

    Till that happens,
    Fly Safe,
    Serneity one

    Friday 10 December 2010

    Gooder eve: Ingame fitting tool

    Another response (or addition) to evoganda's "Gooder eve" series.

    So in game we have to fit modules to a ship to see the exact stats because there are so many factors affecting them its hard to calculate manually. This can be very costly if you get the wrong items or the ship doesnt have enough cpu for them all and it would save a lot of time being able to make up ship fittings and see exact values for dps, tank and speed ect. and show you the numbers like they will be when your in the ship.

    You may be saying, why not just jump onto EFT or EVE HQ and test a few fitts. Well heres the answer. they are not accurate. there i said it. If you have ever used both tools and compared the info it spits back out to you, well its just not all the same. Dont get me wrong, they are both very good tools and I am so grateful for the ppl that made them, an in game fitting planner would just be so much better :)

    We already have the ability to save fittings and share them with others and it tells us if we can use all the items in the fitting, So it shouldn't be that hard to make it pull the pilots info and show the stats for the ship and mods fitted. It would be really handy when sharing and making ship fittings with others too because all the stats would be right in front of you as you swap items in and out and you wouldnt have to export the fitting then import it to EFT to see your own stats.

    This in game fittings planner would also help people playing on mac computers. This is a concern to me because roughly half my play time, i play on a mac and it seriously pisses me off that i cant do a simple think like plan ship fittings. I have to get a corp mate to do it or just wait till i can jump back on a pc.

    Some features that would make it a breeze to use would be things like drag and drop for instance. Simply drag an item from the market or from inside your hangar onto the fitting planner and the stats pop up. (comment below with any other ideas like this)

     So pretty much i think it would benefit the game by if a ship fitting planner was added and i would like to hear your opinions.

    Fly smart,
    Serenity one.

    Sunday 5 December 2010

    Free ISK, Free Ships, Free Beer!

    FREEEE ISK!


    Im a long time member of Evebowl forums where they hold many lotto's,  competitions and  have many great guides (its the forum for the eve guides website). There are lotto's ranging from free 10mill ones happening every single day to ones with huge prize pools such as the carrier / freighter lotto.

    Now just the other day they added a feature that i really love. Its called Evebowl cash and it works like this. Every time you reply to a thread you will receive 1 point. Every time you start a thread you will receive 3 points. the points are worth 2.5 * less than 1mill isk, for example 10 points / 2.5 = 4mill isk. How sweet is that! you get payed to enter free lotto's and chat with me in the forums!

    The points can be spent in the Evebowl store on ships or you can convert them into isk by sending the points to me with a comment cashout and the character name eg. CASHOUT: SERENITY ONE. I will take 10% out of this then send the isk to that character.

    You think you want to try this out? Its simple. Follow the steps below to get setup and i will even send you two free points!

    1. Go here and register for an account. 
    2. Enter one free lotto here
    3. Make a new thread here with your name as the title and tell everyone a little about yourself (doesnt have to be long)
    4. And finally leave a comment in my thread here, saying that i invited you to Evebowl and i will send you some points.

    Hope to see you there,
    Serenity one

      Friday 3 December 2010

      Fortnightly Photo #4 - Amarr BG

      And now for the 3rd in the background series, Amarr! The previous ones in the series are, Caldari and Gallente.

      Click for a BIG version!


      I hope you amarrians like this, if not screw ya! No but seriously if you dont like it or you have some tips or anything like that just leave a comment. Also leave a comment if you do like it :D

      I am nearing the end of this series (just the minmatar one to do) so leave a comment if you want me to make something specific otherwise i will just go back to random eve inspired artwork till i think of another series i can do.

      Till next time,
      Serenity one

      Wednesday 1 December 2010

      Tengu Tactics

      Click to make HUGE-MUNGOUS


      So Ive had my wonderful Tengu for about 2 weeks now. I went and bought myself a buzzard to complement it so i could scan down plex's to run. With just about maxed skills It takes me around 6 minutes to fully scan down a plex so if I pick the right signature to scan down it is quick cash.

      Unfortunately It is not that easy to find plex's. In those two weeks I have scanned 12 systems everyday and only found three plex's, The first was a Guristas troop re-invigoration camp (6/10). From this one you get a 19th overseas personal effects (I think) worth 50mill + you have a chance of getting some pithi type loot. I was pumped, i thought i could make a bill and pay back my tengu in one or two plex's. Oh how wrong I was lol. All i got from that was the personal effects. Still 50mill for 40minutes of plexing + however long it took me to scan all the systems before i got there is pretty decent.

      My second plex was an 8/10 (Piths penal complex). This one would be harder than the first and would have a definite drop of some personal effects worth 80mill. The 8/10 doesn't have as good drops as the 6/10 can but you could still get lucky. Which I was not... Yep again all i get is the personal effects.

      The Last plex i scanned down (yesterday) I bookmarked it and quickly drove over to where my tengu was parked. When i came back there was some bloody people in it! They had been in system when I was scanning so I guess they probably were already doing the plex before i even got there. This sucked a bit. Well a lot because i had got really excited when i finally found one after a week of nothing.

      Next time there are people in system when i find a plex i will cloak up so they cant see im in a scanning ship and ask in local if they are ratting. that way if they say yes, they are ratting i can go get my tengu and i should be able to get the plex. If however, they say they are plexing I can warp to the plex and check out the first room to see if they really are doing it. If they are really doing it I will hang my head and continue on my way.

      EDIT: I just found my fourth plex :) got a 19th overseas personal effects and a dread guristas large shield booster. All up worth 80 - 90mill which im happy with (although a pithi booster would have been nicer.

      TACTICS:

      6/10
      With a cheap (1bill) fit like mine you warp into the first room and sit there, killing the couple of cruisers. The 2nd and 3rd rooms you can do the same, just move around if you start taking to much damage (which you wont unless you suck at fitting them). The 4th room is the only one where you may see a light spattering of red on your shields that will quickly dissipate if you drop a jet can and orbit it at around 10km.

      For this purpose i carry with me 100 tungsten charges that I found in a wreck i looted. drag the charges to an empty spot in your cargo while pressing shift. you can then select how many items you want to separate from the stack. Type in one and hit enter. You can then create a jet can simply by right clicking on the single tungsten charge and selecting jettison. To make orbiting easier so you dont have to right click and select orbit then the distance every time, you can select the can in space and on your overview controls, right click the orbit button and select the default distance you would like (mines 10km). Now when you jettison a can just select it then hit the orbit button and you will orbit at 10km! whoa that's sweet right!

      Once the update comes out where you can map a command to any key you could easily make orbit me "O" so all you have to do is select the jet can and hit "o" to start orbiting.

      8/10
      In the 8/10 it is very similar (warp in -> drop can -> orbit can -> kill shit!). One difference however will be your priority killing list. Just to make it clear if you are webbed you are dead. Speed is your tank (as well as those nice shield boosters :D). When you warp in your priority will be to kill things that are webbing / Neuting you. If web / neut towers have you red boxed kill them, otherwise if they are not attacking you, you wont need to quite yet (if at all). Next will obviously be frigs (Webbing frigs -> scramming frigs -> other frigs), then onto cruisers, battlecruisers, battleships and finally any bosses.

      In the final room there are too many enemies for this tactic so fly directly away from the groups of enemies till your about 80km from them all the while killing of frigs. once at this distance maneuver around them in a big circle by double clicking a few degrees towards the enemies when there distance starts increasing. If you use a fit similar to mine you will have no trouble finishing them off like this.     

      Hope you enjoyed this post or it helped you out in someway. Once i find a 9/10 i will report if i can do it solo and how to do it. A quick not: you cannot solo the last room of the maze (10/10) in the tengu.

      Sunday 28 November 2010

      Update #6 - Right on time



      After a bit of a rant last time about losing tonnes of isk from my mining alt this awesome DevBlog comes along to cheer me up :)

      Finally, oh finally learning skills are going the way of the white rhino (sorry I just learned today that they are going extinct). This is so sweet, all the time i spent on learning skills for my main will get reinvested into some other areas that will actually do something useful! and also on my alt i will be able to use these skill points and wont have to buy that extra plex i was talking about.

      By cutting out some of the less useful ore processing skills from the plan i have now got it down to around 75 days. The account currently has 72 days left so I will be able to spend the learning SP on exhumers 5 and get the plan to around 72 days (hopefully). Im not sure how much time the extra attributes will cut off the plan but the extra points will up all my attributes by over 50% which is considerable and I may even be able to put those ore processing skills back in!

      Wednesday 24 November 2010

      Types of Carebears

      I am a carebear, yes. I like making lots of isk so i can buy even better tools to make lots that "lots of isk" faster. I will probably hit a dead end sometime but I enjoy playing like this so bugger off if you have a problem with it.

      If you have read this blog for long you will know it doesn't apply to me:

      In the MMORPG Eve-Online (www.eve-online.com) a Carebear is a character who stays in Concord (police) controlled space and never ventures into unsecured "0.0" space.

      Well that's just not true now is it! I think there can be many different types of carebears, from highsec mining guru's to the sanctum farmers in null sec. So heres my definition:

      A Carebear is a player who does not participate in PVP activities (very often) or does but prefers not to.

      As i have said before my Main carebearing activity is null sec ratting. Now a while back all the guys in my corp where could fly mining barges or had a alt that could so i thought i would join the craze. I trained up a character from scratch using this for guidance. At this point i have had my alt for 5 months. She can fly a hulk, tank any bs spawn in 0.0, mine and refine all ores with t2 crystals and little waste. BUT! I hate it. It bores me to the point of tears. Seriously one time i was mining for a couple of hours, I did make about 70mill but All i did was sit there clicking a couple of buttons each time a rock became a spec of dust in space from repetitive laser penetration.

      You might think its a bit slow me figuring out that i hate mining now after 5 months but not really. For the first few months i didn't use the character so it was only recently that i figured it out. Now that i have though, I want to max her skills out and get rid of her by the time my subscription turns over (70 odd days from now). If i get all ore reproduction skills to 4 i will have plenty of time to spare as that will only take about 40 days. However if I train exhumers to 5 as well, it will take 90 days. will that one skill gain me enough extra isk when i sell the character to be worthy of buying the plex needed for that extended skill plan?

      It will have been 9 months by the time i get around to selling it if i do buy the extra plex so lets work a few things out. Im not sure if i should include the 3 months i bought via credit card but for this i just put them in and said they cost what the current plex price is in jita.

      9 * 317mill (average plex price over the months) = 2.86 bill (2 860 000 000)

      Then theres the price of the character transfer which is $29. Keeping in mind that you can get 2 * plex for $34 which is around $1 for 23mill isk. So 23mill * 29 = 667mill


      That means I will have spent 3.527 bill on her excluding books and imps. Imps cost 100mill and books about another 100mill so 3.727 billion. Crap i will really be hard pressed to get that from a sale wont I?

      So if anyone has any pointers it would be great. The minimum i will train though will be to t2 crystals for every ore type.

      Fly safe,
      Serenity one

      Friday 19 November 2010

      Fortnightly Photo #3 - Gallente BG

      Yes folks its that time of month... wait no, not that time. I'm a guy!

      Today i present you with The Gallente Desktop Background as promised a couple of weeks ago. I reused the background that i made for the Caldari Version because i want to create a series of these simple BG's, one for each of the races. (how many times did i just say background lol)

      Click To enlarge
      I actually included another version of the same background because i liked both of them :)
      Click to enlarge



      So, i hope you enjoy this one. Sorry if its not the best quality though because i can only get pictures of the logo that are so big.

      Cya next time,
      Serenity One

      Thursday 11 November 2010

      Ship crew's

      A while back there was much talk about ship crews and eves mortal inhabitants. One post i read was about bringing ship crews into the game where you had to take care of them, feed them ect. Personally i think that having to take care if your crew would be pretty terrible addition. sort of how PI is at the moment. Sure it could be added to, fixed up and all that but i think eve should leave all the diaper changing for the sims :)

      Right your probably wondering where this post is going. I am going to share with you an idea I came up after reading some of Evoganda's "gooder Eve" posts so it is a sort of response or addition to his gooder eve collection. Now on with the creativity!

      My idea is that when you buy a ship, it comes with a crew. This crew has different skills that cant just be trained like a skill book. these are actual skills like in real life when you practice something a lot your "skill" goes up. Also sort of like 0.0 solar systems how when you rat a lot your combat level goes up and you can get static anomalies, crew skills could give you small bonuses. ill give you an example:

      You buy a hulk. you go out mining for a few hours and your crew's mining skill goes up. As this level go's up you could get a bonus to mining yield or perhaps get faster cycle times. The hulk has gone up in value and you could sell it to someone who doesn't want to train their own crew or keep it and use these bonuses to your advantage, making more isk. One day however your hulk is blown up and your crew with it. You now have to buy another hulk and train your new crew from scratch. 

      I think this would be a really cool addition to the game, that could be uses all areas of eve. Pvp, mining, ratting, they could all benefit from crews. Right no if you do missions or rat for hours all you get is a bit of isk but you never actually get better. sure you may get better at chaining the rats or what not but day after day it will always be the same. With ship crews introduced you will be able to work towards something when you are doing monotonous tasks. Plus think of the bragging rights!

      Ship crews could really benefit people wanting an extra kick out of their already maxed ships. Just say you have have a Tengu (caldari strategic cruiser) with maxed skills. With crews added you could squeeze the last bit of DPS out of those deadly missile launchers once you train them in fast reloading and patch any holes in you tank. Or imagine your wanting to get the maximum accuracy out of those rail guns. Crews will give you that too. With a bit of time they will be top marksmen.

      This would add the ability to grind skills like other games but it would only be for that ship.
      If you have any questions, ideas or additions to my idea feel free to a comment below.

      Fly safe,
      Serenity One

      Wednesday 10 November 2010

      Udate #5 - Fanfest Incoming



      So the latest CCP blog banter is out, once again talking about lag. It gives you some information about what exactly server side lag is and what is causing it along with a pretty graph :) The disappointing thing is, it gives us no information as to how they are going to fix it, what they are doing ect. pretty useless really if you ask me.

      The next mass test on the Singularity test server will be on Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 20:00 UTC and is scheduled to last for 1.5 hours. The test will focus on handling of ship deaths and general performance improvements. We would like to see between 400-600 players participating in this test. All participants of the test will receive 2 million skill points on Singularity.

      In other news the Eve Fanfest is incoming! The website is up over here, so stay tuned and grab your tickets when they come out soon. It is taking place on March 24 through March 26, 2011 at the Laugardalshöll Convention Center in Reykjavik, Iceland.

      Friday 5 November 2010

      Fortnightly Photo #2 - Caldari BG

      Ladies and gentlemen, guess what day it is today. Friday, meaning you get another piece of artwork! I got this idea from someone called "john" on the artwork page of my blog. he requested a simple caldari desktop background and that is what i have delivered. I hope you like it :)

      Click to enlarge!


      If you would like an alteration of this image, such as a different colour in the symbol and writing it will cost you 5mill isk. Otherwise if you like it how it is, click it to enlarge then download it. Please do not use this for anything other than personal use without written permission from me.

      The next Fortnightly Photo will be a simple Gallente background. If you would like a different races background made first, just leave a comment below.

      Till then, fly safe,
      Serenity one

      Tuesday 2 November 2010

      Fun factor

      Problem:
      So for the last couple of months i haven't been having so much fun in game. This was mainly because of having to pay for all my accounts with plex which took the fun factor out and it was mostly a grind to get the isk for the plex each month.

      Solution:
      Fairly simple solution. I bought 3 months game time on each account with my credit card so there is not sure much pressure to get the isk and i can save up for some toys :) I also set a goal for each of my characters. The first, for serenity is to have all tengu related skills maxed, and then buy one of course! currently my plan in evemon is 90 days long so i better start reading those books! The next for my alt is to faction fit her hulk and be able to tank any bs spawn. The other characters on these two accounts are all going to be planetary interaction / hauling characters with the exception of one scanner / cyno char. so far i have 3 characters doing it so just need to get another 2 up and running.

      Now with more time to do more fun stuff I find making money is much less of a grind and i can enjoy running sanctums or mining (or both, dont you love dual boxing) because the isk is going towards something truly awesome!

      Thursday 28 October 2010

      Update #4 - Gadget curiosity

      I just read the eve online newsletter vol.48 and there is a new survey! Sorry, I just love doing surveys for some reason :) This survey is obviously (I think) in response to the uproar from us pod pilots about capsuleer's death. They say "Smartphones, iPads, PSPs, netbooks... do people still use PDAs? We're interested in what kind of games and gadgets EVE players use, so the latest survey is on exactly that." So head on over and give CCP a piece of your mind!

      Also if you were thinking of getting another account now is the time to do so. $50 for 6 months is as cheap as it gets, seriously its a great deal! Check your Eve online account management page for full details on the power for two.

      The sixth optional patch is out on the 28th of October. wow seriously there is a test server for a reason CCP!!

      Oh and in other news how awesome is the samsung galaxy s! yes i now own one :D

      Thats all for today. Fly safe,
      Serenity

      Tuesday 26 October 2010

      Blog banter #22 - Loyalty?



      Welcome to the twenty-second installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week or so to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check for other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

      This month topic is brought to us by L'Dene Bean of Nitpickin's who asks: Why, and how did you pick your corporation? Is your loyalty solid or just until a better placed organization "recruits" you. The shorter version:  Who holds your Unshakable Fealty and why?



      I thought i was there till the end. There were things to do and fun people to do those things with. I wanted to see this corp become mighty. Then one day, it all changed, with many things conspiring against us all at once. Atlas fell, our alliance who was renting from them fell, we evacuated to high sec then our CEO went away for over a week. log ins dropped, high sec was boring, our alliance had made several plans to make a new 0.0 home and each time the op came around it was canceled.

      This is about the time i started looking for a Australian time zone corp that could provide safety and perhaps be a little larger. Just a little! I went from a 40 man corp with peak log ins at around 15 people to a 450 man corp with peak log ins well over that of my whole previous corp!

      Why, and how did you pick your corporation?

      I picked my current corp for many reasons, the main ones at the time being safety and more people to do stuff with.

      Is your loyalty solid or just until a better placed organization "recruits" you.

      I think the "better placed organization" did already recruit me, this being the corp i am in right now. I think my loyalty is pretty high with my current corp, though not completely solid because i may one day move. The only move i can see myself make though, would be back to my old corp if i found sufficient reason, because i just had so much fun flying with those guys. Although who know what could happen? I thought i would never leave my old corp and yet i did, so lets just wait and see.

      Who holds your Unshakable Fealty and why?

      So to answer the questions posed, serenity one holds my unshakable fealty and nobody else. yes i am very loyal to my corp, except i always want to have my options open so i can do whats best for my character (s)

      Fly safe,
      Serenity one.

      Friday 22 October 2010

      Fortnightly Photo #1 - Tropica

      Today marks the first day of my new blog series, fortnightly photo's. In this series if blog posts i will post a piece of artwork that i have created, either from scratch like the one below, a screen shot from in game or a combination of both, every second Friday (thus "fortnightly" photo) . I have created a new page called Artwork, where all my fortnightly photo's and any other artwork can be found.





      To make the above picture i first made the picture below then added a stary sky to the background using a brush on 90% opacity and 70% flow. I painted on the stars then used Gaussian blur, and painted on the stars again. 




      Both images in this post were created using Adobe Photoshop CS5 and a Bamboo Wacom, drawing tablet.

      Fly safe,
      Serenity One

      Thursday 21 October 2010

      Eve video's

      Just Through together a quick post of some of the great eve vids i have enjoyed watching, in response to crazykinux's post "The top ten eve videos of all time!". Some of these are supposes to be funny (i laughed, you can if you like) and others are serious battles. enjoy.






















      Fly safe,
      serenity one

      Tuesday 19 October 2010

      Update #3 - Incursion

      OK enough raging, time for an update!

      I am actually extremely excited about the upcoming expansion. revamped shortcuts, planetary interaction changes, new character creator and a few items getting revamped are just some of the things it will bring.























      Planetary interaction is looking down the barrel of some major changes. These include, new extraction scheduling interface which will allow players to create extraction programs that span anything from an hour to 14 days! (great for going away) Upgradable Command Centers will allow players to increase and decrease the CPU/Power capabilities of their colony without having to tear it all down (existing undeployed command centers will be migrated to the new system). Extractors can now be moved when in program creation mode which is great if you train scanning skills later on.

      The items being improved are t2 ammo getting some negative effects removed, rockets gaining a bonus to explosion velocity and the Hawk, caldari assault ship, gets some extra missile damage and a little extra power grid to work with. I think i might have to buy one now :)

      The war on lag rages on. Fighter bombers will now shoot "fake missiles". Instead of each fighter bomber shooting a torpedo and the server having to track them these fake missiles remove the need for this and will reduce CPU and memory usage dramatically in large capital ship fights. 

      And last but by far, not the least, the new Character creator. Here I am demonstrating making a female Gallente and trying to make it look like one of my alts. It turned out pretty well for spending just 5 minutes on it. Of course i will spend hours doing my main on TQ though :)





      Monday 18 October 2010

      OMG! WTF! RAGE!

      Ok so i have been away for a week. got a real life neural remap sort of thing for two grand. You can check it out here. I dont think it worked because right now i am fucking pissed off. Ok ill slow down and tell you what happened.

      I get home and turn on my computer.
      it turns on.
      I click start then the eve shortcut.
      Eve opens.
      Its the singularity server.
      I go back and look at the shortcut i clicked.
      Its not what its usually called.
      I go my eve install and open up the ccp folder where the EVE folder should reside, planning on just making a new shortcut.

      Ok are you ready? read on...

      THE WHOLE FUCKING EVE FOLDER HAS BEEN EATEN BY A MAGICAL MOUSE THAT CAN NIBBLE THE FUCK OUT OF SHIT ON MY PC. I HAVE BEEN AWAY FOR TWO WEEKS AN THIS HAPPENS SERIOUSLY WTF! OMG! RAGE!

      Wow i feel heeps better after raging in caps, lol.
      I take a deep breath, its going to be ok.
      I go to the Eve website and download the down loader.
      I open it up.

      what? WHAT? WHAT?!

      seriously the download is going to take around 10 hours. ahhh. Before i went away i put skills on that would finish exactly when i got back. Too exactly in fact, because now i cant get on to change them.

      In the mean time i will be playing World of tanks. After playing it for a month now it is really a lot of fun. I drive an artillery tank which i use to one shot people. Happy days :) check out my original post about it here.

      Fly safe,
      serenity one

      Wednesday 29 September 2010

      Eve blog banter #21 - Low Sec, The Forgotten Part of Eve






      Update #2 - Finally!

      More API changes. Pretty much what CCP are doing is changing all the item ID's from 32bit integers to 64bit, type ID's from 16 bit to 32 bit and flag ID's from 8 to 16 bit. This will give them more room to move in the future when more items are created and need a unique ID.
      In the devblog by CCP prism x, he says "this is all done to future proof Eve Online for all the incoming awesomeness..." [because] "For years now we've been teetering on the brink of running out of unique ID's and it has put a lot of stress on maintenance... as well as development constraints on new features. To see what this affects and find out what it all means, read the devblog here.

      As stated in another post of mine, the "incursion" expansion set for winter 2010 (simmer in Australia) will bring in a replacement for the static 10/10 complexes that were taken out of eve due to corporations and alliances farming them. The replacement complexes are aimed at group PVE. I personally cant wait to try these out because u find any PVE activity is exactly 6.5 X better in a group!

      Theres an eve store sale ending in 3 days (on sept. 30). Popular ship models are down to $99 and you could grab a tee for as little as $15!

      Also on September 30 there will be an extended downtime (roughly 3 hours) while Tyrannis 1.1 is deployed. Changes will include back end changes to the user interface and planetary interaction and best of all several mac client issues have been resolved, finally! (Half the time i play on a mac and some of the bugs are really irritating). The mac fixes include client crash issues, mailer cache error and the one affecting me, font rendering in the in game browser. That picture at the above is what my in game browser looks like at the moment lol.

      Fly safe,
      Serenity one

      Monday 27 September 2010

      Drone comparison

      I have been using more and more ships with drones, such as the Chimera, Raven and Ishkur. Every time i need to check something like what drone does the most damage or what one has the highest velocity i have to go into the market, look at all the drones little info windows and try and compare them, which takes a long time. That is why i spend an hour today gathering information from in game and also off the Eve Online Wiki's item database [link] to create this table so i can quickly see what drone is best for what situation.

      How to:

      • Show the drones for a specific race:
        click the drop down menu underneath the "Faction" heading then click the desired race.
      • Show a specific drone:
        Click on the drop down menu underneath the "drone" heading then select the desired drone.
      • Show all drones in a specific class:
        Click the drop down menu beneath the "Drone Class" heading and select the class of drones you want to see.
      • You can also sort by damage type, following a similar method.



      This and many more guides can be found on my Guides page
      I hope this can help some people because it sure helps me :)

      Fly safe,
      Serenity One

      Friday 24 September 2010

      My Great Escape



      This is a response to "what's your greatest escape story?" by "A Merry Life and a Short One". The original post can be found here.

      I'm sitting on the gate, aligned to the pos and killing some high bounty rats in my drake. The gate fires and a red pops up in local. Instead of doing the logical thing and warping straight to the pos, what do I do? Yea greed takes over an I say to myself "screw the red, I have time for one more rat" The red has now decloaked in their Phobos (Gallante heavy interdictor) and is burning for me. At that time I didn't know a HIC was able to scram at extreme range. I was over confident an thought I could warp away before he could get a scram on me seeing as he was 35km's away. I'm almost done with the rat and the reds still ages away (33km). Now all of a sudden he yellow boxes. Then red boxes. Then that little symbol that I've always dreaded appears next to his ship in the overview, "what. The. Fuck. He has me scrammed from 30km!"
      I get a cold chill as local Spikes with 3 more reds an the gate flashes 3 times in quick succession.

      I'll quickly add, we had just made the trip out to 0.0 escorting our corp's orca with our pos in it so we were all in bs / bc's an we were all fitted with ECM drones in case we hit a red fleet so the orca could get out.

      Ok now on with the story.

      The Three reds that jumped through were all in drakes an decloaked on the other side of the gate, about 40km away. They all red box instantly and there heavy missiles hurt.

      *Warning bells go off reminding me that my shields are almost gone.*

      I launch my ECM drones at the Phobos hoping to throw off its lock. The drakes almost immediately go from red to yellow and my drones start taking damage. I am forced to recall them when two go pop. Damn, I thought ECM drones would work.

      *Again the warning siren sounds as i go into low armour.*

      there's nothing I can do. My drones don't work and all my Corp mates are busy. There's just a couple of alliance guys coming from 10 jumps out.

      *I'm in structure now and it's disappearing. Fast!*

      Holy fuck this is my last chance! I launch the last three ECM drones and I'm yelling all sorts of shit to get them to jam the Phobos. Come on, come. On!

      *Half structure*

      Come on... Then bam! The phobos's lock drops, and I'm away. Warping to the pos an letting out a huge sigh of relief.

      ===

      Fly smart, (don't be a retart)
      Serenity one

      P.s sorry to the 5 ECM drones that died to save me. It was for the greater good I swear!

      Thursday 23 September 2010

      Hardcore Gaming: check these two out


      FireFall

      This game looks really fun although i have not been given a beta key yet so haven't tried it yet. You can sign up for the beta here.



      From Firefall:
      FIREFALL is a team-based action shooter. Join your friends in an epic online campaign across a vast open world to stop the Melding and fight for the survival of humanity against the army of the Chosen. Advance your army and character through technological upgrades. Level up different character classes. Compete for supremacy in various multiplayer game types. Push back the Melding. SAVE EARTH!

      World of tanks

      WOT is a massively multiplayer online action game in which your objective is to capture the enemies base or massacre all of their tanks. you start out with a two light tanks and you are able to get straight into the action which I really like. WOT is an epic game and I really recommend you try it out (its free). Get your free world of tanks beta code here then sign up over here



      From WOT:

      World of Tanks
      is a team-based massively multiplayer online action game dedicated to armored warfare. Throw yourself into the epic tank battles of World War II with other steel cowboys all over the world. Your arsenal includes more than 150 armored vehicles from America, Germany, and the Soviet Union, carefully detailed with historical accuracy.

      enjoy,
      Serenity one

      Tuesday 21 September 2010

      Update #1 - Api Improvements

      CCP Prismx, CCP Stillman and the operations team have been busy for the last month or so improving the overall performance of the API. On one of the reserved API servers an application was causing long response time from the API. After they removed this the average response time dropped dramatically. They also moved the API onto a brand new set of disc arrays again reducing response time. On Monday, September 27th all existing API logs will be deleted so download any that you need. The logs are being deleted because a more efficient table to record the logs in has been made and it would take roughly 4 hours to copy the exiting logs across. From that point only logs for the previous 7 days will be kept. read the full story here

      The next mass test taking place on the singularity test server will be on Saturday, September 25 at 20:00 UTC and will run for approximately 1.5 hours. read more about it here

      In other news my corporation [Metalworks] just finished their huge construction project and onlined the "powered by vegemight" station. Yes, we are Australians :D

      Sunday 19 September 2010

      Reassesing Goals

      one quick announcement before i get into this post:

      I am going to start posting once a week with fiction / random post ect. and at least once a week i will post an update of all the stuff that is happening to do with eve whether it be competitions you need to enter or a dev blog worth reading (although you can check the side bar to the right, under "devblogs" where all the latest dev blogs are listed).



      and now the post:

      So i was thinking, what are my goals in eve? And I realised that i don't actually have any! When I started playing eve my goal was to fly one of the big ships, like a carrier. i looked up at those mighty hulls and thought they would be bring me joy. So now i am at that point, i bought myself a chimera (you can see my guide about them here) and it isnt everything i thought it would be. Don't get me wrong, i love it! it is my favorite ship that i have flown in the game so far and i love how the wallet blinks every 10mill but that alone doesnt make me want to log in because i dont have anything i am really working towards.

      The chimera just hasn't quenched my hunger (or is that thirst? i don't even know if pod pilots eat food! but we definitely drink vodka) and i am still looking for bigger and better things. Or is it? and thats when i realised, in going straight for the big guns i have missed out a lot of the smaller ships. I "can" fly them, just never done it. So my next step in the wild world of Eve is going to be small ship pvp and i have bought a one just for the occasion.

      Yep the onyx. Man that is a sweet ass hunk a' metal! its got around 120k effective hit points, a warp disruption field generator and! crap thats all i can think of right now lol. Since i got the onyx i have flown it in 2 gangs but didn't get any kills and i have done 2 gate camps and guess what? no kills... I think its because pvp is much more time consuming than PVE. If I'm doing a sanctum its east to just recall my drones and warp to a pos when i need to take a break. In pvp you don't really have such luxuries. A pvp roam (well one that you actually get kill in) can take 3 hours and you might be deep in enemy territory so you cant just up and leave. I am still going to try and get in as many fleets as i can and i am going to join a gate camp as we speak (wish me luck).

      Oh BTW check out this standard buffer tanked onyx for fleets: Fleet onyx with buffer


      Fly safe,
      serenity one

      Wednesday 15 September 2010

      Importing Overview Settings

      If you are wanting to know how to set up your overview for yourself rather than import someone elses settings you check out these Massively.com guides. Otherwise continue reading :)


      It is important (very useful) to have sets of overview settings loaded into different tabs in your overview. I have a whole lot of them, ranging from pvp to planets and moons which i can quickly switch between depending on what i need to see. I know it takes quite a long time to create all these sets so that's why i am going to show you how to import a set into your Eve client that someone else has made.


      On a PC:

      1. Download A good set here
      2. Unzip the file
      3. Copy the file to your User -> Documents -> EVE -> Overview folder
      4. If the "Overview" folder doesn't exist, create one: "Overview" (capital O)
      5. In game go to Overview Settings on your overview window, and select the last option "Import Overview Settings"
      6. Select the file you just copied and check all the presets you would like to install
      7. Press Import

      On a Mac:

      1. Download the latest version here
      2. Unzip the file
      3. Copy the file to your User -> library -> Preferences -> Eve online preferences -> p_drive -> My Documents -> EVE -> Overview folder
      4. If the "Overview" folder doesn't exist, create a new one called "Overview" (with a capital O)
      5. In game go to Overview Settings on your overview window, and select the last option "Import Overview Settings"
      6. Select the file you just copied and check all the presets you would like to install
      7. Press Import

      hope this can help some people.

      Fly safe,
      Serenity one

      Monday 13 September 2010

      Carbon


      CCP have been busy. they have been testing character technology for incarna and have been blogging about the Carbon framework they use with all there games and what they will most likely use for the characters in incarna.
      Here is a preview of the carbon character technology. It is short but it looks pretty damn good.



      Theres also another video showing off the physically simulated clothing using NVIDIA APEX which can be seen here.



      CCP have blogged about it the carbon framework and the different teams within CCP lately and its a good read (if your into that kinda stuff). Also the main carbon page on the CCP website if you want to read more about it could be found here if you clicked.
       
      Also dont forget to check out the Incarna trailer (i am sure everybody has seen it but for some reason i hadn't till now) which can be found round about here. Eve has really come long way. Here is "this is eve" and "this is eve II" by loxyrider. personally i think they are the a couple of the best eve video's.

      That be all for now.

      fly safe,
      Serenity One

      Friday 10 September 2010

      Prizes an Stuff



      Take at look at this guys review of eve online (WARNING: British accent)
      http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/208-Eve-Online
      i love Eve an this guy sort of pissed me off, but i do have to admit he is damn funny in some of his other game reviews, well maybe not funny but he tells it how it is (which is funny).

      To take my mind off that i entered the Eve Online universal glory sweepstakes and I'm going to have a crack at the deviant art design a ship contest. If you think you can draw and wanna go in the contest for a chance to win a year subscription to deviant art and an apple ipad, you can check out the rules and enter here or if you want a chance at cool prizes including a free year eve subscription and a new PC click here!



      Fly safe,
      Serenity one

      Friday 27 August 2010

      Eve blog banter #20 - My Thoughts as a Carebear


      Welcome to the twentieth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

      With the recent completion of the 3rd installment of the Hulkageddon last month, @CyberinEVE, author of Hands Off, My Loots!, asks: "Griefing is a very big part of EVE.  Ninja Salvaging, Suicide Ganking, Trolling, and Scamming are all a very large part of the game.  What do you think about all these things?  You can talk about one, or all...but just let us know your overall opinion on Griefing, and any recommendations you may have to change it if you think it's needed."



       ===




       I looked up a couple of definitions for trolling.
      1.
      Being a prick on the internet because you can. Typically unleashing one or more cynical or sarcastic remarks on an innocent by-stander, because it's the internet and, hey, you can.

      Just because your on the internet doesn't mean you should be a twat. Didn't you learn in primary school, "do un to others as you would have them do un to you"? or maybe that was the bible....?

      2.


      Trolling is the act of purposefully antagonizing other people on the internet, generally on message boards

      Don't bother arguing with trolls though, it will just fuel the fire. I find ignoring them to be the best medicine. It makes them stop or go elsewhere because they aren't  finding the fight they were looking for. In real life i wouldn't put up with people like this but on the internet there is nothing really to be done (except blow up there spaceships)

      Ninja Salvaging

      There is nothing wrong with ninja salvaging and taking peoples loot. If they are too slow to get it while they are going or haven't got somebody else to pick it up along the way behind them and you have taken the time to scan them down in their mission it is rightfully yours :) Obviously from the missioners perspective it is a different matter. if they were going to come back later in their salvaging ship then all i can say is too bad, you took too long. One game mechanic to do with this i do not agree with though is the ability to refresh the aggro timer. If you have stolen somebodies loot and then they start shooting you, you can shoot them back for the duration of the aggression timer. however if you are going to run out of aggression time you can go and loot more of there wrecks and it will refresh the timer and start it again (note this may not always happen. it is also unclear if this is an intentional game mechanic). I disagree with this as you were the person to start the "tussle" so to speak and i think the missioner should be the only one able to restart the timer by shooting at you in this aggression time.

      Scamming

      As another blogger said, the real world has many scams so why shouldn't Eve (well something like that). Not much to say on this one just read everything twice. Whenever i accept a contract i read it over many times or might get someone else to check it for me as well if i am unsure.

      Suicide Ganking

      I think this is a fair tactic. By using a high dps / low cost ship and blowing up haulers and freighters on gates in high sec is a good tactic to make money. A good ship for this is a t1 battleship as you can get almost all the money back from insurance (you will die every time) and then all you have to worry about is getting a good enough drop from the freighter to cover the 25mill or so not covered already by insurance and anything else is profit. This is a fair tactic because the "ganker" will have to trade off a ship and a decent amount of security status each time they kill so its not just kill and get the loot, there are consequences too. 

      and that is how i feel as a carebear (although this hasnt ever happened to me because ive lived in 0.0 for most of my eve life and so im always careful)

      oh btw this was my first blog banter :)

      Fly safe,
      Serenity One

      ===

      EVE Online is like a sand box with land mines. Deal with it!

      Crazykinux's Musing: http://www.crazykinux.com
      EVE Blog Pack: http://tinyurl.com/eveblogpack
      EVE Blog Banter: http://tinyurl.com/evebanters