Wednesday 6 April 2016

YC118.04.06 - Dates for your diary

YC118.04.06 - Dates for your diary


Shameless...
...ly stolen from http://updates.eveonline.com/ but the wheat without the chaff.

CSM11 elections 
YC118.04.21 - Results are announced at Fanfest. See how our bloc candidates fared, then wait a year to see if those valuable moments you spent randomly selecting those with the cutest avatar / best name, even mattered.

EVE Online: Citadel
YC118.04.27 - The big one patches on Wednesday 2016.04.27 and will include, er, Citadels. And capital ships, not that there are any capital ships where I live; I've never even seen one. Except Chribbas Veldnaught. In Amarr. Once. On an alt. Now biomassed.

If however, one might have a capital ship on ones Goonswarm / PL alt, particularly a carrier, it might be prudent to note that by the power of CCP it will automagically become one of the new Force Auxiliary class of capital ships if but a single criteria is met. This criteria is the possession of an assembled carrier with any Triage module fitted.

It will then become a Force Auxiliary of the same race is the carrier you don't have. If no Triage module is fitted, the CCP hamsters will pass it by and it will remain a carrier, but not like the carriers of today. They will have new squadrons of teeny tiny fighters, augmented by the skills Light Fighters and Support Fighters.

The dev blog is here. Note that CCP have deemed the newly seeded racial Force Auxiliary skills a mistake and are not required. CCPls.



Train the new skills Light Fighters and Support Fighters to V for T2, because the T1 are a bit squishy. Advanced Drone Interfacing will become Fighter Hangar Management and will provide a bonus to the size of your fighter hanger. Train it to V for moar fighters. The Fighter Bomber skill has been converted to Heavy Fighters, and now gives a 5% damage bonus to heavy fighters per level, but that's supers stuff and what are supers?

All combat capitals have reduced base Shields/Armor/Hull. There are now capital armor plates and capital shield extenders that you should use to increase the buffer of your capital ship. 

To compensate, capital modules will come in new and different colours, just like the normal sized ones do (T2, Faction, Deadspace) - so train the appropriate skill to IV for T2. Probably.

Real capital ships, like freighters and jump freighters are not affected. Capital Q&A here



Fly big things, but safely and not for ratting, eh?

Caisman o7

https://www.thevolitioncult.com/
https://www.reddit.com/r/voltalliance/

Saturday 26 March 2016

YC118.03.26 - Rebooted

YC118.03.26



Rebooted 
They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and they might just be right. I reached a few IG milestones, did Evesterdam and promptly lost interest in EVE and simply played Skill Queue Online™. The alt factory PI carried on at a much reduced rate and the P1 swapping contracts even expired a few times.

In a parallel to RL, unable to escape the inexorable grip of EVE and finding the spreadsheets still worked, I eventually became bored of being bored, threw some of the alts money around, drove his factory drones harder and started riding the incoming Citadel materiƩl gravy train. I also made a conscious effort to log myself in and interact with the corp.


0.0
Feeling the need to undock in 0.0 again and too rusty / scared for PVP or Logi, I thought about setting up a PI chain involving extractors. Once the hallucinogens had worn off a bit and remembering that I'd rather dip my bollocks in boiling pod goo than manage a full chain again, I thought it might be nice to help someone else out with theirs. 2 planets later and with no extraction balance nightmares to make that clicking noise like that girl off The Ring makes intrude above the tinnitus, I have a reason to undock with reasonable regularity and converse with people once again.

Heresy
While out in null, I noticed a mining barge lurking in my hanger. Yes, a mining barge. Sorry. It did however, in the usual manner of Caisman vs any form of industrial ship, generate some slightly amusing anecdotes.

I glanced at the fit of ‘Procurer, rigged’, undocked and went for some Veld. Everyone needs Trit, right? Shortly after starting the first cycle, those pesky Sansha turned up, no problem for a Procurer’s tank and these Hobgoblin II’s though. The tank went a bit quicker than I seem to remember it going last time and I thought I'd align back to the station and recall the drones. Ah, ok, I'll just leave the drones, warp back for repair, pick them up in a bit and start again. Repaired, I warp back but can't find the drones, there's no Reconnect option on the HUD and the Sansha are still there. Ah fuck it, it's late, I can afford to replace them; warp to station and log.

Idiocy

Checking Dotlan the next day (not from work though, oh no), I find I have 5 drones listed as still in space. WTF? Before logging in that night, I have a look at PYFA to see what went wrong with the tank. Hmm nothing, there's plenty. Back in game and my Procurer has 3 high slots, PYFA’s has one. Eh? Ah, ‘Procurer, rigged’ is not a Procurer, it's a Retriever and probably explains a few things.

Droney Squad

Buying and fitting an actual Procurer, I warp out to the belt and see my drones. Rt click, Reconnect, scoop to drone bay. I thought they disappeared at DT? Clearly not and knowing me, I had probably warped to the wrong belt to find them last night. On the sage advice of our new CEO (I, for one, welcome our new Gallente overlord, and thanks for halving the corp tax rate) who graciously stepped up to cover retirement, and in light of the Boaty McBoatFace lark, I rename the squad to the only thing that makes sense.


Their first engagement was a tense affair, too much Dark Lord and Plague Lord business going on and though I'd clearly forgotten what to do, my shield was holding at 22%. The last rat had moved out of lock range and Droney squad was still hitting, but I had no idea what was happening to the rat. Fortune however, favoured the incompetent and an alliance buddy warped to the belt unbidden and despatched it for me. Asking him later, it appears I had almost got the rat into structure, so Droney squad would probably have finished it eventually.

Legends
The second engagement was a much more clear cut victory for my revered squad. 6 Sansha warped in, the Droneys despatched 4 of them in a more correct range order as my higher cognitive functions had managed to locate the right thing to do lurking somewhere in my cerebellum, and the last 2 bottled it and warped off. Strike 2 to Droney McDroneFace.

So there it is, EVE for idiots rebooted. A blog post about mining. By the eyes of the Empress, I never thought I would / could write such a thing. At least I'm back in the game.

The moral of this story is - fly however and whatever, just fly.

Caisman o7 


https://www.thevolitioncult.com/
https://www.reddit.com/r/voltalliance/