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Oracle of EVE: Resource Exploitation

Sunday, November 22nd, 2009

molten2

 (Enlarged Picture)

At the moment us capsuleers only exploit a few of the resources that exist in New Eden. We strip the asteroid belts of their minerals, farm the bounties on pirates and strip mine moons of all their precious moon goo.  However, this is only a fraction of the resources that exist in the depths of space with many more out there waiting to be exploited by us capsuleers.

There is, travelling through each and every solar system a multitude of comets that contain a wide variety of minerals and gases which can be harvested. Gasses can be collected from the tail and coma of the comet while the brave can close in on the nucleus and harvest the minerals located there. Who knows, these denizens from the outer reaches of space may even have new resources to be exploited.

Planetary rings are also a common occurrence in New Eden. However, us capsuleers have yet to guide our ships through them and harvest the dust and ice that creates these spectacular formations. Dust and ice though are not the only things to be found in planetary rings. There is also the presence of large rocks and boulders that could prove a danger to unwary and potentially a proverbial gold mine for the prepared. Let us not forget moonlets that can exist hidden in these rings that could offer a one time source of moon minerals for those who have the materials and resources to strip them bare.

Then there is the largest and most unused resource of them all; the planets themselves. While the empires may regulate any enterprise undertaken within there sovereign boundaries, who is to stop us from utilising the planets which no one lays claim to. Let us decide if we should our send down our workers to strip the planets mineral wealth, harvest its gasses and take its exotic goods and sell them to fatten our wallets and leave the planet behind as but a shell of what it was. Sure the resources will come back eventually, but till then the planet will be dead, useless to anyone who stumbles across it. Of course those who want a long term investment and continues source of income will utilise a sustainable approach to exploiting the planets resources, but that decision is up to them.

This is the future of New Eden. The location and exploitation of new resources.

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Update on the Upkeep system

Sunday, November 8th, 2009

The Captains Log 8/11

System: E1UU-3; Esoteria

Station: La Fabbrichetta del Papi

 

Continuing on from my last post this post is for all those people who don’t like to make their way through 61 pages of forum threads. CCP has responded to the overwhelming hate coming from the Eve-O forums and released these revised details on the new upkeep system.

  • Basic sov is now going to cost 1 mill/per day (down from 20mill)
  • Sov with a infrastructure hub will now be 5 mill/per day (down from 10mill)
  • They want to attach significant cost for the use of jump bridges and cynojammers

Well these changes will drastically reduce the cost for any alliance wanting to hold sov as you will now effectively be able to hold a system for 30 mill a month. Personally I think this is far too trivial.

CCP has also released a few more details about the switch between the old sov system and new sov system is going to work

We also cover seeding, in the next blog or after where we talk transition between old and new. TCU’s will be seeded automatically within solar systems you are currently sovereign of and your sovereignty times will be backdated to what you have when the servers go down which will adjust the strategic index starting level as a result to effectively what level of sov you have now.

We will then give you a grace period (week or more) to choose what strategic upgrades you want to continue to have in each solar system and install those after which when the grace period has passed, any strategic structures in systems not upgraded will be oflined such as what occurs when sovereignty is lost now.

The hubs and upgrades will currently be available like starbase modules from the NPC market at Concord/DED stations

Well that sounds alright to me. Apparantly a revised blog will come out on Monday or Tuesday concerning the changes the CCP are going to make in regards to player feedback.

prometheus09sigmj5

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DevBlog and the the Upkeep System: It ain’t all bad

Saturday, November 7th, 2009

The Captains Log 7/11

System: E1UU-3; Esoteria

Station: La Fabbrichetta del Papi

 

Solution to sov the problem:.
0.0 alliances need to start griefing the hell out of everyone who lives in empire space until they beg CCP to improve 0.0 enough that we go away. Then we’ll see some worthwhile changes

~ From the Eve-O forums.

— CCP has revised some of the upkeep system which can be found in this post. —

Well that DevBlog a lot of us have being waiting for has being released and it has made a lot of people cry (11 pages on the Eve-O forums so far). So here are the important parts

  • Corporations are going to be paying the fees to hold sov over a system
  • To just hold sov in one system it will cost 600 mill a month
  • To get basic infrastructure it will cost 900 mill a month
  • To get the full set of strategic infrastructure it will cost 2 billion a month
  • You will be able to pay bills automatically

 

A lot of the crying is to do with threee things

  • It costs a lot of ISK to own Sov and it is too high
  • The upgrades are crap as they are improving aspects of the game which are already broken, therefore nothing is being improved.
  • This makes it just as hard for small alliances to get into 0.0

 

Well I have to agree with the fact that the upgrades are not great and that CCP could have done a better job with them. I will also agree with the fact that they could have a done a better job with working out the costs associated with owning space such as a introducing a scaling system of payment (1 systems costs 10 mill/day, owning 2 costs 15 mill/day etc). However, the cost of owning sov is only high if you are looking at as an individualistic effort. It would take 10 people earning 7 mill a day to pay the bills for a fully upgraded system or 3 mill a day for just sov and the infrastructure hub. Additionally, there will still be moon minerals to be mined as only the dysprosium and promethium moons are being nerfed and they will still be worth a lot, just not the cash cows they are now. Also if alliances started to react moon materials instead of just mining and selling them a bit more profit could be made. What it all comes down to is corporations getting their members to actually contribute to helping the corporation exist, effectively forcing corporations to become leaner and meaner in regards to their member base as they only take on players who are willing to contribute the goals of the corporation. In others words Dominion will force people to work together for a collective goal instead of individually (something that goes against the western philosophy of individualism).

Related to this is the claim that the systems can’t support the 50-100 people like CCP wants them to. Well they can. Just not all at once. This number has to be spread over 23 hours of playing time and then you can see how a system can support that many people. Of course this opens up problems for corporations that are based out of one time zone. Also corps that are based over multiple times zone will find it harder to defend their space as their full numbers won’t be available at any given time.

Of course the part I find interesting is how the internal alliance politics are going to work now. As it is now you normally have one corp controlling all the good moons and holding on to the sov of the systems the alliance controls and using the moon goo to pay the expenses of running the towers. Naturally, this corporation will normally be the one in charge of the alliance with the alliance leader being based out of this corporation. This will be changing once Dominion hits as it will be a lot harder for a single corporation to hold sov for a entire alliance due to the costs associated with it and the pain in the arse it would be to get ISK out of the other corporations in the alliance (you have to get the ISK twice, once from the players and then from the corporations). Therefore it makes a lot more sense to give corporations certain systems they control and to look after. Now if you put all this effort into your corporations systems will you want other members from your alliance coming into your corporations systems and sponging off your corps hard work when they have their own systems to use? No you won’t. It will be interesting to see how alliances will deal with this issue. Additionally, I think this will give corporations more power within a alliance so that the smaller corps won’t all be bowing to the largest one as the smaller coprs will be getting their ISK from their own players and not off the corp that controls all the moons. This coupled with the fact that the corporations will be holding sov themselves could give more independence to corporations inside an alliance. Where could corporate independence lead? Rebellion.

If the changes stated in the DevBlog stay as they are, I think we will see three things happening. 1. The space held by alliances will shrink 2. Alliances, and in particular, corporations will shrink in size so that they consist of a highly motivated member base and 3. You will see corporations breaking away from their mother alliances as they grow more independent. This will effectively fragment the current 0.0 alliances and make them smaller. What will this do? Open the way for new alliances into 0.0 that do not currently have the manpower to take space from the major powerblocks. It won’t happen immediately or maybe even the first year. But I think it may be the way of the future.

prometheus09sigmj5

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I Want Your Bounty

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

The Captains Log 20/10

 

Well as I mentioned in my post on Hulkageddon Day I mentioned that I would go into detail on how I got the ISK to buy the ships I utilised during this event. I believe the following mail will explain it:

For your termination of Prometheus09 we have paid you the bounty that was set to his head: 133,000,000.00 ISK

That’s right I had a bounty of 133 mill on my head, which I acquired from my first Hulk killing rampage. I was originally going to leave the bounty alone when it was only 33 mill, however I couldn’t resist 133 mill, especially when I could use it to buy more ships to gank more hulks with. So, thanks to all the Carebares out there who supported me with their donations to kill more Hulks. A lot of people don’t realise how broken the bounty mechanic is and that a bounty does not deter a pirate, they wear it as a symbol of pride. Now my actions here indicate that the bounty mechanic is hopelessly broken and needs fixing, so here are my ideas on this.

 

The ship not the Pod.

The first thing that can be done is to not hand out the full bounty placed on a person’s head. Instead the payout a person gets should be based on the ISK loss of the ship (plus fittings) that the target was flying. This would then prevent the target from using an alt to kill himself to collect the bounty, as he would only be gaining as much bounty as he was destroying. It would also mean that bounty placer knows that the target is going to be hurt to the degree they want. ie they know that if they put a bounty of 133 mill on a person head, the target will lose a 133 mill worth of ships.

 

Kill rights

As we know when a hostile action is performed on an individual, then that individual gets kill rights on the aggressor. However, not everyone can act on these kill rights as they do not have skills necessary to combat the aggressor or the knowledge on how to do so (such as XxBlack PearlxX). Therefore, a person should be able to contract out there kill rights to a Bounty Hunter. Anyone is still able to kill the aggressor and collect the bounty placed on them, however the bounty hunter is able to gain all the benfits of kill rights and they will not have a kill right placed on them when they engage the target. Once one of the targets ships has being destroyed the kill rights are lost, irrespective of the ship destroyed and bounty hunter collects the bounty equivalent to the destroyed ships worth. Naturally, contracts should have set time limits so that if that bounty hunter does not act on it fast enough it can be contracted out to some else who will act on it. Naturally, there should be fee associated with accepting a bounty contract.

I would also like to see a better way of tracking people down other than locator agents, such as homing beacons which can be fired onto a person’s ship.

 

Example

Fishy Night (bounty placer) places losses a Hulk to Prometheus09 (target) so he places a bounty of 170 million ISK on Prometheus09. Fishy Night then contracts his kill right out to Caladan09 (bounty hunter), who pays a small for fee to accept it. Caladan09 then manages to destroy Prometheus09’s Drake in Jita, which fully fitted, was worth 100 million ISK. Caladan09 acquires 100 million ISK and loses the kill rights on Prometheus09. A few days later a random person destroys Prometheus09’s Raven, worth 190 million ISK and gets 70 million ISK in bounty. There is no more bounty on Prometheus09’s head.

I think this would be a simple and eloquent solution to fix bounties.

prometheus09sigmj5

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A new planet

Saturday, October 10th, 2009

The Captains Log 10/10

 

Ever since I first saw that blog about the new planet graphics over at Crazy Kinux’s blog  I have wanted to see them myself.  So to see them myself I jumped on the Test Server and went to my nearest planet, only to bitterly disappointed when I saw that it was only Prime Planets that had the new graphics. So yesterday I gave into the urge again and took a quick visit to New Caldari and took a couple of snap shots.

The old graphics

The old graphics

The new graphics

The new graphics

Big picture

I particuly like what they have done with the Caldari Monument in the new graphics. Im sure the inhabitants of New Caldari appreciate having a large monument sticking ouf the surface of the planet. I personly wish the new planets where the same size as the old ones.

prometheus09sigmj5

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Re: Cloaking Is Broken

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

The Captains Log 23/9

A response to Hallan’s post on cloaking. Also reads Manasi’s post

As a regular cloak user I also agree that cloaking should be modified to allow AFK cloakers to be found. Note if you are not AFK cloaking it should be hard to find you.

Just as Hallaan proposes, I also agree that cloaking signatures should be introduced which can be used to probe down cloakers. However, I don’t think that a ship should always have this signature. The reason for this is becuase I can probe down a person in one cycle if I have an idea of where they are. If I know they are watching a gate camp I put my probes out put them down to the smallest size and get them in one go. Due to this I have my idea.

Instead when a cloak is activated it starts to release a form of radiation, which can be probed down. The longer you have your cloak activated the more radiation that is released into the sounding space making the signature stronger and thus easier to probe down. There is only one way to remove the radiation that is surrounding your ship and is to warp. Once you load a new grid your radiation signature is reset.

Naturally, the different meta levels of cloaks would release the radiation at different rates, thus making it easier to find cloakers using low meta levels. I am of two minds about covert ops cloaking devices though. These ships are meant to be able to cloak so it seems natural that covert ops cloaking devices should not release radiation. However they can still be AFK cloakers. Either way, they would have lowest rate of radiation emission.

I would also like to see the introduction of T2 combat probes, which would be used to probe down cloakers, as well as giving a bonus to normal probing.  Naturally, they would have longer training times then normal probes.

In regards to the directional scanner, I think it should be used to locate the cloaker once you are on the same grid as him. You can not use your directional scanner to locate a cloaker unless your are one same grid as  him, he just wont appear on it unless you are on the grid.

Anyway that is my idea.

prometheus09sigmj5

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Testing… One, Two Three

Sunday, September 20th, 2009

For the last two weeks I have being busy doing uni work, so I have had no time to play Eve. Come Saturday though I got on just to try the new factions ships and in particular, the Gila.

 2009.09.18.21.59.11

I only really tried the one set up and that was a passive tank.

High Slots

3 x Arbalest Heavy Missile Launchers

2 x Empty (didn’t know what to put here)

Medium Slots

3 x Large Shield Extender II

1 x Shield Recharger II

2 x Invulnerability Field II

Low Slots

1 x Power Diagnostic System II

3 x Shield Power Relay II

Rigs

3 x Medium Core Defence Field Purger

16 x Heavy Drones : )

After playing around with it I came to the conclusion it can fit one hell of a passive tank and do a decent amount of damage. However, flying it solo isn’t the way to do it. I ran into one couple (pictured bellow) who were by looks of it using cap transfers, remote shield repers and NOS to take down anyone who attacked them. All in all it is one hell of a nice ship. I think I might buy one for myself (after I get a Dread and then a Proteus).

2009.09.19.00.04.29

I also got to see some of the new fighter bombers in action and they make some very pretty explosions. Once concern is the amount of Lag that his may cause. Also they have a hard time hitting anything that is sub capital ship, which I saw in a Stabber Fleet Issue which was tacking next to no damage from the fighter bombers as he flew around.

2009.09.18.21.30.38

prometheus09sigmj5

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Dominion – Is this how SOV is going to work?

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

The Captains Log 17/9

 

CCP DevBlogs are coming out thick and fast. This one though is more of a public service announcement for and details some dates for Testing of some of Dominions new features.

Here are the dates

The faction ships test will take place on Friday the 18th of September at 18:00

The supercapitals test will take place on Friday the 25th of September at 18:00

And the sovereignty test will take place on the week of the 5th to the 11th of October (subject to change)

 

For the supercapital test everyone will be getting all skills to level 5. So if you want to fly a Titan, here is your chance. Also there was this picture attached to showing how SOV is going to work (though no other details).

 SOV

There is also this information of the forums (which I presume was data mined)

On Sisi right now:

Territorial Claim Marker

This unit contains a large fluid router array. By establishing an alternate data route to CONCORD networks, it grants de-facto administrative control of the system it’s in to its owners.

Once online, it installs defensive protocols into the local data net, which cause targeting systems to consider it an invalid target. The only way to remove this structure once established is to seed override protocols into all stargates in the system simultaneously, using System Restore Hubs.


System Restore unit-

This computing unit will interface with any nearby stargate, and attempt to restore default operating protocols to it. This process takes twelve hours to accomplish, and will only succeed when all stargates in the system have been overriden in this manner.

Once a successful override has been made, any Territorial Control Units in the system will become vulnerable to attack.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v473/W4lly/capture3.png 

This picture indicates that taking out the claim marker isn’t going to involve just shooting it and blowing it up, you are going to have to use disrupter fields to make it vulnerable. The other interesting thing to not is the onlining period of 24 hours for the claim marker and the disrupter field (this is not evident in the picture. The disrupter takes 24 hours to online and then another 12 hours to disrupt the claim module, so 36 hours in total). It is fairly evident that this is the equivalent to stront for current POS warfare. Basically an attacking alliance is going to have to keep their disrupter field/s alive for 36 hours, which presuming they put it up in their prime time, it will be quite vulnerable for the majority of time. They will then have to attack the claim maker, which after that 36 hours will be out of their prime time so in all likly hood they will have to wait longer before they can take it out. If they do get the numbers and take out the claim marker and put up their own, they are going to have to defend it for 24 hours before it becomes invulnerable, giving the defenders plenty of time to take it out and put up their own. From the above information it seems apparent that you are going to have to put up a disrupter unit on every gate, so systems with lots of gates are going to be easier to defend.  

The system does sound alright to me, though I want to see it being tested first. It is going to force alliances to obtain players from multiple time zones or form coalitions with other alliances to make up the numbers they are missing. Also you can see how this may move battles away from blob warfare (some of the time) as alliances are going to have to really on small gang warfare to defend both modules. Though this does not mean that the defending alliance wont blob the units to take them out. Additionally, this going to make SOV more fluid as the whole system is going to be quicker take and hold SOV.

However, people should not get carried away just yet. There has being no other details released yet so there may be other mechanics we don’t know about yet, such as how DUST 514 is got to integrate into this. As for how we could change from the current system to this one, I have one idea. CCP could release a mini patch which that makes the claiming module available to everyone, though they do nothing as yet. People grab them and put them up in systems they control, if you don’t have SOV there at the time you can’t put one up. CCP then puts the full patch onto EVE and SOV changes from the old system to the new one.

Anyway that’s the latest till next time.

prometheus09sigmj5

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Dominion – The Capital Battlefield

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

The Captains Log 16/9

 

Another DevBlog is out, this one deals with upcoming capital and super capital ship changes. Assault frigates are also looking to get a +75% boost to the speed of afterburners as well, though there seems to be a lot of hostility towards it. 

Just a quick run down

Titan – Removal of the AoE doomsday and replaced with a single target super weapon. Their weapons will get a bit of a boost and a hitpoint increase. They will be looking at further developing the Titan. The death ray will have a RoF of 5 minutes, consequently the ship will be immobile for 30 seconds and can’t jump from 5 minutes (Quoted from here, subject to testing). They will have the damage output to one hit a Dread, but not another super cap.

Motherships – Gone. Instead we get Super Carriers (SC) (don’t like the name). They lose a few things that Motherships had but get a hitpoint increase and get Fighter Bombers, a new type of fighter for SC only, that are designed to kill capital ships. The cannot be assigned.

Carriers and Dreads – No real changes but they will still be important in the future.

 

What does this mean?

So what do I think of this? Personally, I would have liked to have seen doomsdays become scripted giving you a choice on what to use (sing target or AoE) as this gives them a bit more versatility. Sub Cap fleets may even become a more important part of large fleet battles as they don’t have to worry about being instapoped by a titan or two. On the other hand capital ships may be more vulnerable. Remember Goonswarm and friends display of power with the 27 Titans killing a Carrier with their doomsdays? Now it is going to be 27 titans killing 27 capitals ships every 5 minutes. I do have to wonder about the Leviathan though. What is its death ray going to look like? As we all know Caldari are missile users; so are they going to get a Torpedo the size of a battleship (or bigger) that travels at 100m/s? I can foresee the Torpedo being primaried by the whole fleet.

On the other hand though, it may be harder for alliances go get titans with the other changes being introduced in Dominion. If CCP’s grand goal is realised and there are multiple small alliances and moons that don’t provide as much ISK as they do now, it may be harder for alliances to gather the funds to build a Titan.

Super Carriers though are a bit of an unknown. We will have to wait until testing on sisi to see how much damage they can put out before any comments can be made about them. However, I do like the general direction they are going towards. I think I’ll have to for train one (Fishy can be in one in 23 days, though I have to get the relevant fitting skills etc).

 

So to finish this off here is a picture of the Amarr super weapon

capital_blog_pic1_t

prometheus09sigmj5

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Update and Pirate Faction ship Changes

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

 The Captains Log 15/9

 

Update

Haven’t had much time to play Eve due a couple of rough weeks at uni so I have had now PvP at all. Skill wise my characters are on long skills at the moment (though I gave Caladan some trading skills) so there has being no change there. The biggest news of the week is that I now have 770 mill in my Dreadnaught fun, the majority of which has come from running some plexs (post coming soon)  and a bit from trading (though I still don’t know how to do it well).

Pirate Faction ship Changes

Go here and have a look at the changes that CCP is going to be making to pirate ships. Most of the changes look quite nice. I am quite happy to see that the Guristas dual weapon bonuses are being removed as they were pretty fail. The Glia (Guristas Cruiser) looks like it could show some promise. It has 400m3 dronebay with 125m3 drone bandwidth allowing it to field a flight a of Heavy Drones plus its three launchers. With the same mid and low slot layout as a Drake (though less CPU and powergrid) it will be interesting to see what kind of passive tank you can get on it. Or maybe you will be able to get a good nano fit on there. Would like to try it out on EveMon.

prometheus09sigmj5

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