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

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 :)

• Setting up your overview - part 1
• Setting up your overview - part 2

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

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

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

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

Chimera Guide

I just bought a space limo. Its huge!

This baby is fully decked out. It has an 870 m3 cargo bay, drone Capacity of
80000 m3, 10000 m3 corporate hangar capacity and finally a square kilometer sized ship maintenance array. That's right your like a personal fitting service for my corp mates.



I have been researching the chimera and decided to write a bit of a guide about what i have found out about it since i just purchased one. enjoy :D

Cargo

Although 1000000 m3 sounds big, its not. end of story. You can only fit ships in there if they are assembled which meens they are going to take up a whole lot of space.
Lets take a look at some other ship sizes quickly.

• Merlin (frigate class) - volume 16500 m. Ok that's cool you can fit 60 frigates 
• Caracal (cruiser class) - volume 92000 m3. your going to be able to fit 10 of these.
• Drake (battle cruiser class - volume 252000 m. This is where it gets limited. you can only fit 3 battle cruisers.
• Raven (battleship class) - volume 486000 m. and you can only fit 2 battleships. 

OK, you can fit 60 frigates / 10 cruisers / 3 battlecruisers or 2 battleships. So your not going to be making your eve living taking ships to 0.0 outposts because of the jump fuel cost but it doesn't mean you cant help out your corp mates out or take a few ships to cover the fuel costs.

So the ship array is pretty small but it fulfills its role for me, saving a whole lot of time. There is no need to find a wormhole to empire if we get in trouble because i can easily jump my hulk and equipment to safety and the same with getting it out there. As well as my hulk, each trip i make to 0.0 ill be filling the 10000m3 corporate hangar with modules that can be sold to corp / alliance members and perhaps buy cheap fuel for the corp pos.

Cost

The ship itself was actually a decent price. You have the ship which is around 600mill, drones around 200mill (the fighter drones cost from 10-15 mill in high sec depending on the race of drones you buy), capital modules (shield booster, energy transfer, shield / armor repairers) cost around 50mill each. If your buying drone control units they are about 40mill each, 3x large CCC rigs (always fit capacitor control circuit rigs, you want a fast recharge time because jumping uses around 70% of your capacitor) which are 10mill each. So your at around 900mill for a simple t2 fit.

Drones

Drones. Without them your nothing. Firstly you will want the fighters skill at 4 (5 if you have 52 days to spare) and your racial carrier skill (caldari carrier in my case) at 4/5. With fighters 4, caldari carrier 4 and advanced drone interfacing (enables you to use the drone control unit, one extra per level) 3 i can use the initial 5 drones that you can use with drones 5, 4 drones from the caldari carrier skill and and 3 extra drones by putting 3 drone control units in the highs.
Below you can see the basic information for each of the fighters. 

	Name	EM	Th	K	Ex	Damage Mod	Tracking Speed	Rate of Fire	Optimal Range	Accuracy Falloff	Max Velocity	Shield	Armor
	Templar	50	25	0	0	4.0x	.075	6 sec	4.5 km	2.5 km	2.125 km/s	2250 HP	3750 HP
	Firbolg	0	50	25	0	3.5x	.1	5.25 sec	1.5 km	3.5 km	2.25 km/s	2500 HP	3000 HP
	Dragonfly	0	25	50	0	4.25x	.0625	6.38 sec	5.0 km	3.5 km	2.0 km/s	3000 HP	2750 HP
	Einherji	0	0	25	50	2.5x	.125	3.75 sec	1.0 km	5.0 km	2.5 km/s	2750 HP	3250 HP

Fitting

This brings us to fittings. like any ship the fitting changes depending what you are going to be doing with it. Everybody has a different opinion of how to fit them but ill link a few acceptable options.  Just remember its your toy so fit it however will be best in your situation.

• how to fit for fleets, link.
• If you were going to PVE in it i would use something like this perhaps put a sensor booster instead of the second cap recharger, link
• I would advise against soloing as they are more of a fleet tool (unless its PVE solo, thats ok)

alternatively you could use something like this for PVE:

Highs: 3x drone control units, 2x smart bomb

Meds: capital shield booster, shield boost amplifier, 2x invulnerability field, photon scattering field, cap recharger and a sensor booster with the targeting range and scan resolution scripts.

Lows: 4x capacitor flux coil

Rigs: 3x capacitor control circuit

drones: 20x light scout drones, 20x medium scout drones and 12x fighters.

Getting around

Now theres the problem of getting around. The alliance has POS's along the way to jump to but what about at each end where manual cyno fields must be generated? I don't want to be dependent on my alliance or corp. what if the people able to create the cynosural fields were offline? So last night i created a new character on my alt's account. With this cyno alt you can create the cynosural field yourself.

To know what system to generate the cyno in so that it will be in range of the chimera's jump drive i would suggest  you use a this website. You can also use the iphone app "iclone" which has an in built jump planner very similar to the websites.

It would be a good idea to get the skill "jump drive calibration" to 4 or 5. this will increase your maximum jump distance from 6.5 light years to around 13. Another skill you will want is "jump fuel conservation" reducing the isotopes needed for jumping.

A couple of things to be aware of when using your cyno alt. firstly the chimera (or any capital ship) is very slow and clumsy and if you generate the cyno field too close to an object (for example a station) you could find the chimera has bounced off the station and is a long way from the docking point. This could be disastrous. One way to get around this is to undock and and travel straight forward. continue as far as you can with your distance from the station staying at 0m.  secondly your alt will be unable to move for the duration of the cynosural activation and as soon as you activate it everybody in local will see the cyno field on there overview as a warpable object. This is why a cheap frigate is recommended, so as to reduce cost if you have to replace it.

Generating the cynosural field

what you will need:

• a friend or alt
• a cheap ship with enough cargo space to hold the liquid ozone
• enough liquid ozone for one cynosural generation (500 units, less if you train cynosural field theory)
• one cynosural field generator module

If you are jumping to a station remember to be far enough away from it. If you are jumping to a POS be far enough away from the force field in case your ship doesn't have the password for it and it forcefully rejects your ship. 5km seems to work fine although one time my carrier ended up 4km away from my alt in + the 5km to the station. That was the scariest 9km ive traveled.

Before you generate the field make sure you and your alt (or friend) are in the same fleet. Now go ahead and generate it. Now right click your ship, go down to jump and select the system that the cyno has been made in

===

check out just how huge the ships are in eve. this video here compares the lengths of the ships.

hope you found my guide useful. ill add more as i learn more about it.

for now, fly safe
serenity one

chaos descends - part 2

large POS, two Orca's, over one million square meters of minerals, same with ship equipment. six hulks, three battleships, over fifteen PVP ships, and yes, we got every single thing out to high sec or sold it and all within two days :)

Southern cross coalition, the corp i am in is getting good at these moves. the first move to o.o we did was with the alliance Immotalis Militis Invictus, into scalding pass. we suffered quite a few losses and there were always red fleets roaming around or camping our systems. The alliance had no structure, so we packed up and left.

We moved an orca with a pos in it across four regions to our next home in insmother. This is where we join Consortium. We don't do too badly in insmother actually. i made a couple of billion isk from ratting and plexing. It was also in insmother that i got my first kill since i started playing again. while it wasn't amazing, it was a start.

		Victim:	Zerohost
		Corp:	FW Scuad
		Alliance:	E C L I P S E
Ship:		Ishtar (Heavy assault)
Location:		CL-IRS (0.0)
Date:		2010-07-09 04:04:00
Total ISK Loss:		152,712,000
Total Damage Taken:		9,451

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My alt was sort of forgotten for a while. i safed her up in our home system in her hulk and just hoped my corp mates still out there would find a wormhole. They did. I was asleep.The next day i find out everyone in my corp is out of o.o, that was a frightening moment. I really thought i was going to have to make the 19 jump trip down to n-rael and i would certainly die if i did. The hulk has a max speed of 80m/second for gods sake, my battleship can align faster!

But lucky for me our corp had made good friends with M.I.A, a corp in our alliance. One of their members "joey2cool" gave me a set of bookmarks and told me to go through the wormholes to empire. I have been so lucky lately. I didnt lose anything, not one single thing in this scramble back to high sec!

Fly safe, Serenity one

Chaos descends... Atlas fails...

A week ago C-J6MT was under siege. There was around 2000 pilots all up in local, mostly mother ships, dreadnoughts and Carriers with various support ships. So what happened your asking? Well, according to CCP, the battle came to an end due to "spacial disturbances", yeah right CCP, its called LAG!
Atlas takes it back the next day and at this point im thinking we might stay out here. until...

All hell breaks loose. C-J, EUU and SN9 were been hit by the reds with a cap fleet of over 17 mother ships. All our SBU's in the area are down, and guess what. this all happened between 10pm when i logged off and 10am the next day when i logged in. Yes, Consortium and atlas and Recon all manage to fail their asses off in the space of 12 hours.

When i log in this message is here to greet me:

*URGENT* Effective Immediately!!!! Evacuation
Consortium. Members,
Atlas is stuck defending C-J,  RECON is stuck in EUU, and now we have reds dropping SBUs all in our space..... this space will fall.... SO, move what you can out... Dont let this shit get you down.. This is part of EvE and living in 00.. Its always changing.. Well get a new home and very possibly come out better because of it...

"this space will fall...."
Real positive. your not even going to try?

"we will get a new home and very possibly come out better because of it..."
Very promising guys!

"Atlas is stuck defending C-J,  RECON is stuck in EUU, and now we have reds dropping SBUs"
Well done Atlas! hope you had fun twiddling your thumbs while all your systems were stolen :)

===

Its action time. i jump into my raven and gather my most prized possessions into my cargo hold. Before the hold doors slam shut my main thrusters are roaring.
I quickly Convo my online corp mates, "im leaving in five, join me at 5c if you want to get your ships out".
I have confirmation from everyone within a few seconds,
"OMW, bringing a badger" Poisyn replies.
"ill come" Aurelilio puts in.
"im bringing a neutralizing  pvp domi" says Auliliae as he logs in and sees the the eve mails i just read.

now more people are logging on and its taking longer to get everyone to 5c as more people are joining my fleet. I'm tempted to leave now and get myself safe but i couldn't leave my corp mates stranded out here.

finally we are all here, except Auliliae who is in the next system trying to get eyes on a red.
 "align CR2",
"ok warp CR2, a friendly fleet is scaring the red down the pipe" i add after a few seconds conversation with the fleet FC.

Its a wonderful sight, seeing all the ships engage there warp drives and power away, blue flame thrusting them through the universe. we land on the gate and all jump through, rippling the space where our ships had been. On the other side there is the red. just sitting there!

"stay cloaked, do not move!"
The red was in a vagabond, the minmatar heavy assault ship. He could kill Poisyn's badger in one shot if he uncloaked. we were pushing the limits, any second and our ships would be visible. All of a sudden he warps off. I let out a sigh of relief.
"From now i will warp us as a fleet" i say, then add "Aulil, meet us at the next gate".

In the next system we can see the same red in local but he is not in sight. "align outgate, warping.. also guys jump on contact, i want to outrun this red" i tell my fleet as our warp drives slow and we approach the gate the last few meters before once again jumping to the next system. 

the trip was a total of 19 jumps. we had 2 left when something went wrong. the last few gates i had warped us to planets to get out of line with any drag bubbles that could be on the gates but this gate had bubbles situated behind it so there was no escape and as we warped into the gate there was that sickening lurch as we traveled an extra 60km past the gate and into the bubble with two drakes waiting!

i jumped into action. "approach the gate.  the two drakes are attacking me but i can outrun them"

"sir i have a bookmark 200km above the gate" says morde
"ok, guys just keep calm. morde warp up there when your out of the bubble. everyone else warp to morde when he he gets there". My shields are on 50% but the drakes are just out of warp scrambling range.
"warp to me" morde says as he reaches his bookmark.
i quickly select him and warp the fleet. My raven is taking to long to align! i don't think im going to make it. And just as the drakes come into range to scram me my warp drive engages with a roar. We are now all sitting 200km above the gate with the drakes below us. i warp us as a fleet down to the gate and we all spam
 the jump button as the drakes try and nudge us off gate. Today is our lucky day. the space behind us ripples and the drakes are left alone as we jump to safety and warp away.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 hope you enjoyed the read :)

Fly safe,
Serenity One

The planetary mission

My name is Captain Serenity One. I was the force behind the project Tyrannis, to occupy the planets and send in millions of miners to strip them bare of minerals.

Looking out the barred window to where the sun spills over the horizon like the yolk of an egg i think about the day i came here. I was sent by the Caldari state almost a year ago to study this planet in the far reaches of space. I was told to scan every square millimeter of and send back my report.

To whoever is reading this now, this is my report and also my recount -

No one, since we arrived in new Eden for the first time thought there could be others here. We commanded this universe, we were mighty in our ships, ships that could fly from solar system to solar system in the blink of an eye. who would dare hide from us?

Yesterday we found out who this was. They were an ugly race, they called themselves human. I am getting ahead of myself though so ill tell you how it all happened.

We had not thought it possible for others to dwell on these planets as we move freely from place to place many thousand light years across the universe, but on March 21 2010 I was captured by natives living on this planet. Luckily I had finished scanning. The reports however are lost now but the important information I remember. All I need to tell you is, there is enough ore we could construct four or five titans and it would merely scratch the surface of this planets resources.
We are on the brink of war and need these resources harvested as soon as possible so send in Tyrannis. We will need everyone who can help harvest these planets so I repeat, send in Tyrannis now!

===

just found this as a draft. I wrote it when Tyrranis was about to be deployed.

fly safe
serenity one

Delving deeper - part one

The first rays of light shone out over the solar system as i shot forward, afterburners blazing. I found a suitable location to launch the deep space probe that i was carrying on board my buzzard, covert operations ship and deactivated the engines and afterburner coming in slowly. The other crew were already at work at the rear of the ship opening the probe launcher doors and loading it with an observation probe, getting ready for my launch order.
The order came soon after. the crew were highly qualified, trained in the eve university and were payed a fortune but the difference between living and dieing is having a crew you could count on, under pressure. The probe slid in. the doors were slammed shut and i hit the button. a hissing emanated from within the very walls of the ship as power was diverted to the probe launcher and the probe slowly slid into space, spinning a few times before the remotely controlled engines were fired up and it stabilized.
The round blob of iridium coated electronics and receivers that was the probe sat there unmoving. The engines keeping it still while it pulsed a scan through the whole system. This was the most advanced probing technology on the market. Able to pick up structures, wormholes and ships any where in the solar system in just a few seconds.

The scan data flashed onto the screen in front of me and i could see a few signatures but one signature at 50% signal strength stood out. Now using the joystick i moved the probe around, making its scan distance smaller and the signal strength stronger until finally it showed 100%. I quickly recalled the probe and it slides into the launching chamber, the doors shutting after it.

The ships main thrusters start up, propelling us forward towards the signature. we are about to find out whats inside.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
i learned how to probe off this ---> video tutorial

Hope you enjoyed part one of delving deeper check back soon for part two.

Fly safe,
Serenity One

drawing the ships of eve.

When i was browsing the EVE Online forums today I came across a post in the ships and modules category. "drawing the ships of eve".
It was raining outside and there were reds camping our systems so i decided to try drawing a ship myself. It ended up being harder than i thought at first but after about an hour i came up with what you see to the left. This is my first attempt and i will try and get better :)

Fly safe,
Serenity One