Patience...

... is a virtue. Turns out the saying is true. I suppose "Good things come to those who wait" would be applicable here as well.

I log on and find 3 null-sec type data and relic site in our wormhole. Not bad. I could go for some more loot. I do see probes in the system on D-scan though. Hmm, with 4 connecting wormholes today I might want to wait until things cool down a bit before running sites. Then I see an Astero.

Let's see if 3 relic and data sites are enough bait for him. I fly to each site and find him in one of them. I bookmark a nearby asteroid to where he was hacking and bounce out of the site and back in about 15km off of him. I'm in my own Astero but this one fit for PvP rather than exploration. He seems engrossed in hacking so I decloak and spam the lock button while trying to get a bump off. He warps off. Damn that 5 second targeting delay.

15 minutes later...

The Astero is back. I find him at a second site. Bounce off a bookmark and try again. Same result.

30 minutes later....

Once again my friend is paying a visit. This time to the third site. To hell with the 5 second delay. I'm grabbing my Nemesis. I grab the stealth bomber from the POS and decide against staying scannable to refit to rockets and stick with the torpedo load out. I warp to a safe then bouce back to a bookmark inside the site. He's sitting 15 km off of me. Decloak. Lock. Point. Double Paint. Torps away. He melts in one volley. Quick lesson there. Don't sit still while hacking,

Also, don't stick around when someone is trying to kill you. He was patient. I was more so.

Luck or Lack Thereof

Just something I've noticed in my wormhole adventures. If I'm the only one in a WH I find plenty of targets that I can't tackle on my own. However, if I'm with a gang no targets are found.

Today I was finishing off the last site (huffing gas) in our C1. I hear the WH jump noise from the picket I set up and I pull my venture out of the site. Checking the picket I see an Onyx followed by a Loki and an Ishtar. The Onyx bubbles and they sit there. And they wait. I'm sitting about 40km of the hole at this point.

If the rest of the boys were on at the time we might have risked a fight. But I sure wasn't going to send my Stratios in there to die alone. So, They sit there. And I sit there. And we wait. Aboyt 45 minutes pass and they leave back out the static.

But not before sending a Helios in. No probes were ever launched so I suspect the scout is still in here. If they come back around I hope we'll have some more pilots available. The next few days could get interesting.

Hunting the Hunters

Turns out the PI Epithal is not our only house guest. We also have a couple Manticore pilots hanging out in our wormhole as well. They've been in here for 4 days.

A couple days back when running a combat site in my Drake one of them pops up and tries to kill me somehow. Not sure what their plan was as a passive tank Drake can pretty much tank a single stealth bomber all day long. I lock them up and send in my drones and a volley of heavy missiles. They go down to 25% structure before getting out. It's a shame I don't have a point on my site running drake. I may have to fix that in the future.

Anyways, my picket picks them up leaving through the hi-sec static and I thought that was that. But, the next day, I see them briefly on d-scan. I wasn't running sites as I was getting a pile of traffic from the 5 (!) wormhole connections coming into our home. So, I decide to stay cloaked up and see what I could catch.

With a data site available I decide to wait in there and see if one of the scanning ships coming in and out of our system decides to run the site and if that draws out the Manticore.

My plan to use strangers as bait works out. An Imicus and a Magnate run the site and a Manticore decloaks and start firing torps at them. I slowboat to briefly to the Manticore to get inside scram range and decloak my PvP fit Astero. Locked. Scramed. Turn on afterburner, Orbit at 7km. Sic my drones on them. He goes down fast and barely dents my shields. He manages to get his pod away.

So, why are missiles still hitting me? Oh, looks like in my excitement I didn't notice it wasn't just one manticore but two. Get that guy locked up. Scrammed and he joins his friend in a pod. This one did get me into armor but nothing a single cycle of my ancillary repper couldn't solve.

They managed to get their pods back out to high sec before I could track them down.

Sigh.

So, I loot and salvage their wrecks making me about 12 mil richer. Not a terrible payout for 30 seconds of work. I almost felt bad using strangers as bait but I didn't get even a simple thanks for coming to their rescue (albeit for entirely selfish reasons).

Fast forward to later in the night and I briefly see a familiar sight on d-scan. Looks like my Manticore friend is back again.

I guess they want to go to round 3?

A House Guest

We've been in our wormhole for 3 days now and I have noticed something interesting. Two of the customs offices are owned by the same 2 man corporation. The picket on our static found the CEO of the same corporation coming through in an Epithal. I quickly added him to my watchlist and found the Epithal briefly on D-scan. Then he logs offs.

Around the same time the next day my watchlist pings me that he came online. I hurried over to one of the customs offices in hopes that I could catch him. I don't think he made a PI run to the outside world today since I just caught him on d-scan just before he logged again.

So, turns out that we have a long term guest (or are we the guests?) camping in our hole doing PI. It should be fun to see if I can catch him over the coming days.

Blog Banter # 60 - Measuring Success

Blog Banter # 60 - Measuring Success
Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 60th edition! For more details about what the blog banters are visit the Blog Banter page.

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Jakob Anedalle of Jakob's EveChecklist blog asks:

With Phoebe about to land, CSM Minutes now out, and more of CCP Seagull's vision from Eve Vegas it appears CCP has a bold roadmap, is making big changes, and is willing to take a hit in the short term to see it through.

Long term, what do you see as the measurable signs that will tell us that they've succeed?
What do you see as the outcome that we'll see as players?
Is it concurrent player count or something else?

Get writing!

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What is success? That is a tough question for any field much less a recreational game. Do we measure it by fun and enjoyment? Do we measure it by financial success for CCP? Money? Logins? Subscriptions? Or all of the above?

Above all CCP is a business and I think we would be remiss in not looking at the financial side of this first. CCP makes its money from subscriptions and account services. The easy answer is to say their success can be measured by an increase in subscriptions. The cynic in me would say that concurrent logins aren't a concern to CCP as long as the subscriptions keep coming in.

That does ignore the fact that video game developers aren't just business oriented. They are also artists. They care about their creation and want to see people enjoy it. It's a careful balance of getting people to enjoy what you have created and still putting food on the table for their families. So, the basic measure of success is people playing the game and enjoying it. Focus on attracting players and the money will come of its own accord.

So, what brings people to EVE and what keeps them here once they come? In a world with many many MMOs what makes people play EVE instead of WoW, SWTOR, LotRO, Guild Wars 2 or any of the multitudes of other products out there?

The easy answer is because of the sandbox. In EVE you have the freedom to create, explore and destroy however you want. I'd like to go one step further. The biggest draw to EVE are the stories. I don't mean the lore but rather the player driven stories. Sure they're not always written down. They don't have an author or creative team. But they feel very much real because they are created when the dreams and aspirations of real people intersect while flying around in internet spaceships. We regale each other with stories over vent, forums, chats and physical meetups. Stories of what we saw. What we built. What we destroyed. Who we killed and who we got away from. Stories of giant battles and stories of lurking on the edges of space. Politics and Economics.

This is how CCP can succeed. Create more tools. More props. More scenes. Then let the players create their stories. How do we know if they have succeeded? We'll know because we will hear more stories. More buzz. More excitement. More people curious of this crazy game where crazy things happen. Things that just don't happen in any other game.

A New Home

After wandering around Anoikis for a bit over a week I finally found what I had been searching for. An empty C1.

The corp has been planning on doing a camping trip into a wormhole for a while now. We finally got all our ducks in a row and was ready to take that next step. All we needed was a camp site. Well, we found one. It's not the prettiest one but it'll do.

Now to get going and set up a tower. Debating on whether to do it myself or wait until the corpmates get on again. Working with the others would be safer but I'm too excited (impatient) to wait.

When Empty Space Isn't Empty

So, the Corp has decided to do a camping trip this month in a C1 to get used to wormhole life. The upcoming buff to low end wormhole loot and the addition of null-sec data and relic sites should also make this somewhat profitable.

This brings me to last night. I often roam wormholes in my stealth bomber to see if I can jump anyone. In the course of doing so I most often find abandoned wormholes. Now, I'm in my Helios looking for a suitable camping site for the corp and all I find are occupied holes.

Is this bad luck on my part or have people started moving into wormholes again with the announced Phoebe changes?

Either way, I'm 20 hops deep down the rabbit hole in some random C5 hoping to get a connection back down to lower class space.

Fit for ISK: Deep Space Exploration Helios

This is my first try at what will hopefully be a series of fitting posts. The focus is going to be on PvE fittings. How to get your ships to make ISK for you as safely as EVE will allow.

First up is deep space exploration of data and relic sites. Aside from trading and manufacturing the idea of exploring unknown space drew me into this game. The best tool I have found for the job are the Covert Ops exploration frigates. Since this is a ship I use to make ISK with it has to be good at what it does, survivable and relatively cheap. Here is my Helios fit:


Core Probe Launcher I (Core Scanner Probes x8)
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II

Data Analyzer I
Relic Analyzer I
Limited 1MN Microwarpdrive I
Cargo Scanner II
Scan Rangefinding Array I

Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Warp Core Stabilizer I
Warp Core Stabilizer I

Small Emission Scope Sharpener I
Small Memetic Algorithm Bank I

The fit itself is pretty simple.

High Slots: The Core Probe Launcher is to scan down the sites. I am using the basic launcher because for relic and data sites you don't need the combat probes from the expanded launcher. I avoided the Sisters of Eve launcher and probes because frankly they are very expensive and the basic launcher and probes get the job done just fine for our purposes. The Covert Ops cloak is your only "tank". The best way to not get this ship blown up is to never be seen.

Mid Slots: The Data and Relic Analyzers are your money makers. These allow you to engage in the hacking mini-game to get the loot in Data and Relic containers. If you have the skills to get the Tech 2 analyzers then by all means fit them. If you are serious about exploring as a profession then they are excellent investments in skill training and additional costs. The Microwarpdrive is there to quickly move from can to can within the site minimizing the amount of time spent scanable and killable. The next two items are nice but not strictly needed. The Cargo Scanner lets you see what is in the various hackable containers and then prioritize which to hack first. This allows you to get the most valuable loot first in case you have to leave the site. The Scan array is a nice little boost to your scan strength and helps you find sites a bit quicker.

Low Slots: The Warp Core Stabilizers are there to hopefully escape a potential ganker. If they only have a single point or scram fitted you can just warp away. If they have multiple scrams you're likely dead and you can't fit 4 stabs anyways. The nanofiber is there to boost agility and get into warp faster. Another option is to replace the stabs with a full rack of nanofibers and give up the ability to ignore scrams in exchange for faster warp off time. Either is viable. The Helios is a nimble ship and you may be able to outrun and escape many threats if you spot them quickly enough.

Rigs: These two rigs provide extra coherency (health) for your analyzer viruses. This gives you that little bit of boost needed for especially hard hacks and can help reduce the number of failed hacks you suffer. Now many people use the Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrades to boost scan strength. I find that extra scan strength to be unneeded for relic and data sites. If you also plan on using your Covops to scout as well you may want to grab the extra scan strength these rigs provide. The rig slots are very much up to personal preference as I realize that many people use the same ship for multiple roles and rigs can't be swapped out without destroying them.

There you have it. A relitively cheap and non-skill intensive fit capable of doing any relic and data site in the game not protected by sleepers.