Archive for October, 2009

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October in Review

Saturday, October 31st, 2009

The Captains Log 31/10

System: E1UU-3; Esoteria

Station: La Fabbrichetta del Papi

 

Skills

Over the last month Prometheus09 has trained up Anchoring 5, allowing me to deploy large T2 warp bubbles and then train up Starbase Defence Management so I can now use POS guns. Caladan09 Has finished training Minmitar Cruiser 5 giving him access to a lot of the Minmitar T2 cruisers and in particular the Rapier. However, he doesn’t have the gunnery skills to use T2 projectile weapons yet. Fishy Night is progressing down the Carrier skill path. He can now use fighters and the Capital Shield Rep.

 

ISK/Standings.

Until Goons showed up I had being ratting away quite happily so I had about 450 million ISK. However this ISK has been spent on some implants and skill books so now I only have 280 million. The little bit of ratting I did got Prometheus09’s sec status up -3.91 so I can now enter some High sec systems. Caldan09 has being running missions to get his standing up for the Emperor Family, which now at 5.58 (need it at about 6.7).

 

Combat

The big news for this month was the invasion of Esoteria by GoonSwarm. This war was over in one week with GoonSwarm pulling out of Esoteria after our allies got involved. Prior to that was the Hulkagedon Weekend which involved the slaughter of close to 100 hulks by a 14 corporations, of which I.M.M was one. Hulkageddon also make it into the in Game news along with I.M.M.

 

Blog

As you can all see I have acquired my own blog and have left PodLogs. The desire to move the blog arose because I wanted to customaries it a bit more, which I could not do on PodLogs. Also I have also being getting some fan mail over the last month or so, most of it in regards to killing Macro Miners and the Hulkageddon Weekend (Shout outs to RED84, Rafferius Isilyium, Saaren Karnasis). I also had one person write an entire blog post about my Hulk killing actions. You should read his post as it is well written and gives some good advice on how to survive a suicide gank. Apparently I hate sand castles as well, which is totally wrong. I love sand castles so long as they are mine.

 

The Future

Skill wise Prometheus09 now has a bit of direction as I’m going to get him into a fleet fit Apocalypse, which will take about 70 days as I have to train up T2 Tachyon Beam Lasers. Caladan09 is training up scrap metal processing as it is going to be need in my new trading plan so I can make ISK. Once that is done he will be training to use T2 projectile weapons to go on the Minmitar ships he will be using. Fishy Night will continue on with his carrier training, which is nearly done. ISK wise ill continue ratting and will be putting my new trading plan into action soon. 

prometheus09sigmj5

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Welcome to the New Captains Log

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

Welcome the new site for the Captains Log. As you can see there is a new and improved theme, which I hope you like. I also have added in some new Plugins to help the site run that little bit better.

prometheus09sigmj5

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From the Viewport # 2: Pictures from the Front

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

The Captains Log 28/10

 

A collection of pictures taken during GoonSwarms failed invasion of Esoteria. Further pictures can found on Snalibes Eve-Forums thread. Additionally, there is YouTube video about, which was very enjoyable to watch.

 

Quake. The POS shields trembled as the rounds from this GoonSwarm Naglfar slammed into it.

 

Revelation: Another GoonSwarm capital attacking our POS.

 

Surprise: An allied Titan sitting on Jump Bridge waiting to Dooms Day a GoonSwarm Fleet

 

Wait for it: A Systematic-Chaos carrier fleet regroups at a friendly POS

 

Wall of Metal. We have all seen fleet warps, but when there is so many capitals and battleships it’s a whole different thing.

 

Against the Wall. Lots ships, lots of ammunition, I stayed cloaked.

 

POS: An undefended GoonSwarm POS….

 

 

Light: That is melted down to scrap metal.

 prometheus09sigmj5

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Blog Banter #13: More Missions Please

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

The Captains Log 27/10

 

Welcome to the thirteenth 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 here. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

The first banter of this 2nd year of EVE Blog Banters comes to us fromZargyl from A Sebiestor Scholar, who asked the following: On the EVE Fanfest 2009 page are pictures of prizes for the Silent Auction that was held during the event. One of these photos was entitled “Design your own EVE mission”. My question now would be what kind of mission would you write if you got that prize? What would the mission be about? Would it be one using the new system of epic mission arks? What would be the story told by it? Feel free to expand upon his questions and put together your very own mission!

 

Before designing my own mission there would be several things I would do to improve missions in themselves. Currently, who pays attention to the story line? All missions come down to is grinding for ISK or standing. To fix this there would be several things I would like to do

1. Better Objectives and NPC AI

2. More immersion

3. More teamwork

Currently the objectives for missions revolve around one thing – blow up the enemy and if your really lucky bring something back. To make this even better the NPC AI is predicable allowing the player to run the mission without any critical thought.  Therefore it is necessary to introduce new objectives into missions and introduce the Sleeper AI into normal NPC’s.

Missions also need to be more immersive not just the current grab the mission (with out reading the story), blow up the rats, grab the loot and hand the mission in. So how can we make it more immersive? By having the agent open a chat with you during the mission and introducing new objectives that you need to complete before handing the mission in.

Further immersion can be obtained by introducing more teamwork into the mission so that players can fly them with other players.

 

So let’s put all this together into an example of a mission.

Mission: Medical Assistance

Background: Recent natural disasters in Ashab required immediate medical assistance so we sent out a medical transport to help with civilian injuries. However, en route it was ambushed by pirates. From the last transmission we received the transports escort was trying to get it out so we need you to go out and protect the medical transport ship.

 

Warping to the last known location of the transport ship will bring you to some pirates orbiting around some wreaks. Your agent then informs you to destroy the pirates and loot their wreaks to find a navigational log indicating where the medical transport went. You do this and find the log and warp the next location.

Once you land at location indicated by the log you see the medical transport is under fire with only a few of its escort left. If the medical transport dies you will fail the mission.

So you now have a few choices. You can try and destroy all the pirates before they destroy the ship. You could focus your fire on the pirates that have the transport pointed and hope you can kill them before the pirates doing the heavy DPS will destroy the transport. Or maybe if you have some friends along they can hop into a logistics ships and repair the damage being inflicted to the transport ship. Alternately those friends can all hop in combat ships and help you destroy the pirates.  Or maybe you want to utilise EWAR and jam the pirate ships that have the transport pointed. Bonus objectives could even be offered by your agent for destroying ships in a particular order. However, the actions you choose will influence what the tactics are employed by the pirates to destroy the ship. Bring in logistics ships will get them to agro the logistics ships and destroy them if they feel the transport is not dieing. Utilizing EWAR would get them to focus on the EWAR ships, thus needing you to use logistics to repair your EWAR ships. Furthermore, the pirates won’t devote all their firepower to one ship. If they see that they only need 10 ships to blow you up they will use 10 and have the rest concentrate on another target.

 

I thinking by adding these three things missions could be improved.

 

Other Blog Banters:

prometheus09sigmj5

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Combat Log: Week 43

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

The Captains Log 27/10

 

Kills

This week’s kills come from the Esoteria defence against GoonSwarm over a couple of battles.

Apocalypse

Megathron

Megathron

Megathron

Megathron

Tempest

POS – This POS had just about the coalition on it (350 people). Dropped like a rock.

POS – A small Battle ship fleet took this one out. About 45 minutes of constant shooting.

POS  - Same with this one.

 

Losses

I tried to lose my Rokh but failed. Damn Goons didn’t primary me.

prometheus09sigmj5

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Esoteria War Update: The End of the War.

Monday, October 26th, 2009

The Captains Log 26/10

 

Well since my last post the war between GoonSwarm and Systematic Chaos has come to an end. Goon directors have informed their members to pull out of Esoteria and regroup in Zenith Affinity space to defend against Leguinae Romania (Sys-k allies) who were applying pressure on Zenith Affinity’s home space during the short war.  Goons blame this loss on a bad FC, Zenith Affinity not performing to the task on hand, their allies in the east not putting pressure on AAA or Atlas and finally failed logistics. I personally think they severely underestimated the amount of help that the rest of the Southern Coalition would offer to us which prevented GoonSwarm from gaining the foothold they were trying to achieve in Esoteria.

So this leads to the question of what happens next. There is really two course of action that can be taken 1) Invade Periods basis and remove Zenith Affinity from that region or 2) Consolidate Esoteria. I personally argue for option two as the alliance has to get ready for Dominion. We need to start hoarding the ISK acquired from the moon goo and invest it into infrastructure in our own region. Once that is done and our space is secure we should start thinking about making moves into Period Basis.   

Well since my last post the war between GoonSwarm and Systematic Chaos has come to an end. Goon directors have informed their members to pull out of Esoteria and regroup in Zenith Affinity space to defend against Leguinae Romania (Sys-k allies) who were applying pressure on Zenith Affinity’s home space during the short war.  Goons blame this loss on a bad FC, Zenith Affinity not performing to the task on hand, their allies in the east not putting pressure on AAA or Atlas and finally failed logistics. I personally think they severely underestimated the amount of help that the rest of the Southern Coalition would offer to us which prevented GoonSwarm from gaining the foothold they were trying to achieve in Esoteria.

So this leads to the question of what happens next. There is really two course of action that can be taken 1) Invade Periods basis and remove Zenith Affinity from that region or 2) Consolidate Esoteria. I personally argue for option two as the alliance has to get ready for Dominion. We need to start hoarding the ISK acquired from the moon goo and invest it into infrastructure in our own region. Once that is done and our space is secure we should start thinking about making moves into Period Basis.  

 

Releated Posts

Manasi’s Post

prometheus09sigmj5

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Esoteria War Update

Monday, October 26th, 2009

The Captains Log 26/10

 

The last week has seen the steady grind of POS warfare on both sides of the fight. Goonswarm would put our POS’s into reinforced, we would then rep them and then put some Goon POS’s into reinforced only for Goons to rep them. So far this has only taken place in two systems, A1-AUH the chokepoint for Esoteria as it divides the region into four parts (North, East, West and South) and G-YZUX, which is one of the station systems allowing for SOV 4 to exist. There is little actual fighting going on between us due the time zone differences between the alliance (Goons US and Sys-k Euro), despite this there have being a few battles when the play time of both the alliances overlap, with Goonswarm putting Stealth Bomber fleets to good use when attack the Sys-k battleship fleets.

The start of the war also saw the start of a new propaganda war with the Mittani releasing chat logs of a Simmering Rebellion taking place in Systematic-Chaos, in which the CEO and a Director of I.M.M and a i.NET director were talking with Zapawork about siding with Goonswarm in the coming war. Liam Freeman (the Sys-k leader) passed this off as a joke of which he was fully aware of. The fact that these chat logs have being released to me indicates that any deal that may have been made has fallen through otherwise the Goons would not be releasing this information and giving away their hand. Furthermore, as a member if I.M.M I can say that there is a lot of anti-goon feelings in the rank and file and that any pro-Goon decision made by the leadership would not sit well with them and probably lead to a insurrection in the corp ranks.

The biggest battle to take place so far occurred on the weekend when 16 Goonswarm POS where coming out of reinforced, which lead to a 500+ strong allied fleet turning up for the fight giving them the numerical advantage. The battle resulted in a large number of Goonswarm capitals being destroyed along with the majority of the POS’s that were coming out of reinforced. Goons claim the capitals lost were a suicide fleet as their insurance was about to expire.

While this loss may have not bothered the Goons much the loss of their Titan in a separate battle with Red Overlord probably did. Apparently a Goon mining POS placed in ROL space came under attack so Goons jumped in a Titan without support which was promptly tackled and engaged. So Goons launched a rescue mission with another Titan, which successfully allowed the original Titan to escape only for the second one to be caught and destroyed.

 

So the big question is why is Goonswarm invading Systematic-Chaos space? Well the first and the simplest answer is to give their members something to do. As a PvP alliance they have to keep their members active otherwise they may just disappear forever. However, the possible strategic reasons for the invasion offers further insights, which can be seen in the Goon post here. Basically the objective of this war is not about territorial conquest but to induce a failure cascade in Sys-k as they are the alliance the fields a lot the sub-capital support in the Stainwagon coalition. Be removing Sys-k from the equation the Stainwagon coalition will have a large cap fleet but limited sub-capital support, thus removing the whole coalitions as threat for awhile. Furthermore there had being rumours going through the alliance that Sys-k would soon be invading the space formally occupied by KIA and now Zenith Affinity. Invading Esoteria therefore is a pro-active from of defence.

So how long is this war going to go for? Well providing that Sys-k doesn’t failcascade I don’t foresee this war going on past Dominion (depending on how Sov is going to work) as with the release of the new Sov system all the major alliances are going to have to pull back and consolidate what they currently hold. Also from what CCP has released so far it does not seem that interregional wars are going to be the norm now, instead there is going to be more intraregional wars. Even if Goons mange to obtain the space occupied by Sys-k they will most likely not be able to hold it very easily post Dominion (again depending on how Sov works) thereby allowing Sys-k, or whatever it is afterwards, to reclaim it. So all Sys-k has to do win is hold the fort for one month. If we can do that we have won the war.

prometheus09sigmj5

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From the Viewport # 1

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

The Captains Log 22/10

 

When I fly throughout New Eden I like to look out the viewport and admire my surroundings. Some of these sights are of extraordinary beauty will some are strange and others a show of power. Instead of keeping these sights private I have decided to share them with you. If you have a image you want the Cluster to see, send it to me and ill upload it with full credit to you.

 

 2009.10.02.06.57.50

Shooting Stars. While raiding a Sansha Fortress, the defenders attempted to overcome my fleet mates tank buy co-ordinating their firing times, resulting in this.

 

 2009.10.02.06.02.48

Ruins. While exploring some of the local space I came across this ruined station. There was indication of what had happened here, had everyone left fleeing a disaster or had pirates raided that station looking for slaves?

 

 2009.09.04.12.21.02

Cloaking Stations. After a hard day’s work I returned to the station, only for it to be invisible. Turns out the station wasn’t cloaked and it was just a malfunction of my camera drones.

prometheus09sigmj5

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Combat Log: Week 42

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

The Captains Log 22/10

Kills

Oorukai – Hulk

VeePrime – Hulk

To Mar – Hulk

Olvi III – Hulk

Cindy Miner – Hulk

Sponti – Hulk

Api – Hulk

Hatecorner – Hulk

 

Losses

Catalysts. Lots of them.

prometheus09sigmj5

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War Has Come

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

The Captains Log 21/10

 

A few days ago a Sys-k fleet headed into the old KIA alliance space and proceeded to capture a station that had being left undefended. Naturally GoonSwarm didn’t like this and decided to bring out their capital fleet and hot drop the Sys-k fleet (they also had the threat of Titans behind them). Some good FCing on our part though, got our fleet out of KIA space without any heavy losses. Of course we did not expect to be able to hold station, but it was a bit of fun.

GoonSwarm though has decided to escalate things and has proceeded to invade our space along with Zenith Affinity. So the time for war has come. Many people thought that no major battles would be fought until after dominion but this action as turned that assumption on its head. So things are going to be heating up in Esoteria with GoonSwarm no doubt calling in their allies while Sys-k is definitely going to be bring in theirs, some of which have already arrived.

 

Personally, I like the idea of war. If only it didn’t clash with real life; at the moment I’m coming into the exam period at uni. Additionally, the ship I am currently flying is a ratting Raven and I have a Goon fleet between me and my PvP ships, so I am going to have get my Raven out and then get my Pod to my PvP ships somehow. Now if only I had the ISK I needed to fit my Phoenix, which will be needed soon. 

prometheus09sigmj5

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