BB69 - Nitpick about lore or delve into core philosophy?

Blog Banter 69 - Because of Space-Magic

Because of Space-Magic


CCP sometimes get stuck between a veldspar 'roid and a hard place when they try to blend realism with sensible game mechanics in our sci-fi simulator. Sometimes they create a scientific answer such as 4th dimensional drag to explain our 'submarines in space'. Other times, not so much. When a null-sec Citadel is destroyed players 'stuffz' is to be magicked to another station. Why should a citadel be different to a titan? Should CCP ensure that 'space magic' always has a plausible explanation or do we need just to say "Well, its only a game!" and engage the willing suspension of disbelief? How should it work when a citadel goes boom, how do we balance risk with reward, and how should any "space-magic" be explained?


TL;DR I'm not too concerned about the lore.  I am troubled by the philosophy and can only answer that it depends...


At its core I am not certain whether this months banter is about lore or about the risk reward philosophy in EVE (specifically citadels cited here).

The lore part I find fairly easy.  At its heart EVE is a fantasy space ship game and as such not realistic from a current scientific frame of mind.  I like the lore, and the lore makes the story, but once you accept that it is a video game with certain amount of fantasy you accept that you have to make some allowances towards mechanics that may seem fantastic.  I am ok with that.  

If one wanted to, there are a lot of holes to be poked into the lore - everything from the fluid mechanic model of our flight, the shooting (and warping) through structures.  The crew of our ship (btw are they all in pods too?).  

But ultimately this type of thing makes me think of the video below on how the Lord of the Rings should have ended:

No mess no fuss, logic and straight forward right?  

Right.  And no story either.  So it is with EVE - logic and straight forward as far as possible, but rigid logic would leave us only with things that are currently possible - like lets say Call of Duty, or some kind of flights sim, with the caveat that once you get shot, or crashed that is it.  You are dead, no more - because that is reality.

So I can let it go.  Yes lore is nice.  Lore is the story.  And please lets explain everything with lore as far as possible.  Citadels and your stuff is easy - some smuggling corp smuggled your stuff out for a 10% fee.  Many explanations will do.  Consistent if possible, but if not for the sake of the story I can let it go.


Where the philosophy is concerned I have to admit that I am stumped.  When a citadel goes pop do you or do you not keep your stuff.  Should you or should you not.  

Yes I'd like to keep my stuff.  Heck who wouldn't.  But I have had stuff trapped in stations that I did not have access to.  Annoying as heck.  I have taken part in fights where my coalition deadzoned some other poor guy's station.  Satisfying as heck.  Wormholers lose their stuff all the time (no rewards for guessing where these guys' votes go!).  

In some risky situations I had to pull stuff out.  Logistical nightmares.  Some situations I only took what I really needed. Fair?  Unfair?  Nice?  Not nice?  Or is that just EVE?

Does the possibility of losing your stuff make you fight harder?  Does the possibility of losing your stuff stop you from entering into a venture?

I don't know.  I like the idea of a safe haven where I can extract to, but at the same time I also like that everywhere is not safe.  Safe havens are essential (to me!) for when real life forces lengthy absences or prolonged periods of little possible activity.  

Unsafe space is essential to me because otherwise we might as well just have highsec.  

In the end I will go smack bang in the middle - a cop out if you will.  Should you lose your stuff when a citadel is destroyed?  

It depends on where it is.

BB68 - Show me yours and I'll show you mine

Eve Blog Banter 68 - This is My Rig.

This is my Rig, There are Many Like it...

What do you play Eve on? I'll show you mine if you show me yours! Are you pew-pewing on a laptop? Plotting universal domination on a 12 monitor set up? Mining away on a 50" TV? Is your set up located where your other half can speak to you or do you lock yourself away for hours in your Eve themed shed? How do you play your important internet spaceships?

TL; DR; The executive summary-pictures will save you a thousand words:

Obsolescence cycles of PC hardware dictates a functional but sane mid range type build summarized to the left.

Not much to add here - not shown is the Gigabyte Z97N Wifi Mini ITX motherboard and 2 x 1 terabyte spinning disks (non raid).

Went with Kubuntu 14.04 here for the LTS - my first Debian based installation at home - favoured Red Hat based up until now.

I still run Fedora 21 on the laptop, but will probably also reinstall this soon.

The graphics card is the only somewhat above average item in the build (or was at the time of purchase).

At that stage there was a possibility that we might have to explore GPU processing at work and I used that as an excuse to convince the wife.

GPU processing didn't pan out but the graphics card stays.

When I travel I "play" on a laptop.

An older 15.6 inch ASUS K53S machine set up for work, not gaming.

Intel i7-2670QM CPU @ 2.2 GHz running Fedora 21.

8GiB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GT520MX (1GB) graphics completes the package.










The side-on view of  the techni-coloured mini ITX case with some of the paraphernalia exposed if you are into that sort of thing.

800 Watt PSU because at peak the GeForce GTX 780 draws 42 Amp and resulted in brownouts when I only had a 600 Watt PSU.










In normal EVE sessions I play on two 23 inch Samsung SyncMaster S23B300 monitors running 1920 x 1080 resolution @ 60Hz.


Cheap Logitech K120 keyboard and matching mouse.

It is just the wife and I in our household despite me being in my early forties and my wife in her middle-late thirties.

In our previous house my "office" was set up in a spare room but this meant that we were often separated when I was working late or playing EVE.

In our new abode, the computer workstations are set up in the open plan living space.  The laptop on the left and the Swiss ball are hers not mine.  When things get really serious and I need another screen/client I will squeeze my laptop into the space where the coffee mugs are in the picture.  

The boss is a sports scientist and does not play eve.  Calls us nerds.

She does understand a fair bit about the game though.  In addition, she can see and hear everything that goes on on my side.  Boy did I cop an earful when I went ganking the other day...

Need to Feed

Whilst the title sounds evocatively EVE-esque (and we get to that) I have to lead with real life.

Your author has to work to eat.  He doesn't qualify for any meaningful social safety net and the recent groundswell of calls for a universal basic income has not as yet materialised into something tangible.

Until such a time as it does (if indeed it is even practical) your author works. As it happens, he is snowed under.

Your author plays the systems game.  His current gig is electricity.  More specifically payments, metering, monitoring and control of residential electricity.

Now I am aware that you don't tune into this blog to while away the sands of your time on the days of your authors' life - so without more ado I will tie this little trivia to two points very much related to the post.

The first is the nature of the service provided and the customers the system is serving.  Electricity happens to be an important commodity and our system provides that to tens of thousands of residents. In addition indigent citizens get Free Basic Electricity allocated on the first day of the month.  This in a country where service delivery protests frequently end up like this (or any of these).

When you make substantial changes to said system and the first of November is looming those images serve as a grim reminder of the possible consequences of your actions.

Now in all honesty your author does not work at the coal face any more - in fact for the time being he resides on another continent. He himself would not be in any physical danger, but he is cognisant of the fact someone, somewhere, just might be.  Nothing like actual real life violence and death in the literal sense, to really focus your attention to the job at hand.

Extra time has to be allocated to this pursuit, and the very nature of time is such that is finite - in order to allocate more time to one pursuit it has to be cannibalised from another.  In your authors' life EVE related pursuits is always the first victim.  Always.  The sacrificial lamb to be slaughtered.

Thus ends my first point and pathetic excuse apology for the radio silence on this blog.

The second point relates to the systems game, the basic income grant and related strategies like free basic electricity that is already a widespread reality in at least one country.

Technology is making more and more people obsolete.  What's more systems perform better than the now obsolete humans ever did.  The onslaught is relentless and more and more people will eventually share this fate.  If this guy is to be believed even software and systems will be obsolete in about 15 years:

I see coding shrinking as a widespread profession. Not because software is going away, but because the way we build software will fundamentally change. Technology for software creation without code is already edging toward mainstream use. Visual content creation tools such as Scratch, DWNLD and Telerik will continue to improve until all functionality required to build apps is available to consumers — without having to write a line of code.

~ CRUNCH NETWORKCoding Academies Are Nonsense

I had never really liked social security and welfare.  In retrospect it stems from the vantage of the "have" vs the "have not".  For the "haves" social security is just an expense.  Money showered on the undeserving lazy.

Of course when one is confronted with the idea of obsolescence yourself new respect is given to the view of the "have nots". What would one have social security look like if one was one of them?

Even if obsolescence was not an issue - what if the basic income grant (BIG) ever came to be?  Is it practical?  Is it even possible? Would I still hold my stressful job or would I quit and go on the long holiday?  What would you do?  Will you while away your hours with EVE?

Of course all that is just speculation, ifs, butt's and maybe's.  Much more practical to concern ourselves with the here and the now.  In the absence of a BIG, we are left to use what we've got.

Due to circumstances I have struggled to play.  Things are however looking up.  I have access to my desktop computer again. I can scan.  I can run two clients simultaneously. Final (work!) systems testing will happen today or tomorrow.

I am not totally out of the woods yet.  The SO might feel a little bit neglected and someone has to mow the lawn, but I am getting there!

Just like real life one's EVE existence needs a bit of sustenance.  There is no BIG in EVE and precious little charity.  The Lai Dai Corporation is not unionised. Except for rookie ships nothing is free.

My lengthy spate of neglect have brought about significant rot and decay.  I have survived by cannibalising assets.  Selling stuff.  I have drawn down my balance sheet and ISK to the point where a vigorous injection of ISK is needed for me to have fun in the game.

This unfortunately means some sort of PVE grind is in order.

I still have a 3 billion ISK incursions vindicator to my name (I'm not that poor yet ;-)).  Of course the only character that can fly that now has kill rights against him, so park that idea (for another 15 days at least!).

Instead I have decided to take a look at the COSMOS missions.  I heard about some lucrative implants to be had...

In addition I am looking into higher end wormholes.  Wormholes is an area that I have never really explored - only been in and out, never lived in one.  Heard good things about C5/C6 cap escalations as well.  Of course dependent on finding a good wh corp to join and the result of the COSMOS missions as per above - this requires some expensive hardware!

I am also aware I still owe readers some info regarding ganking avoidance.  In this context I have skilled (well semi skilled up - takes a long time) up a character for mining, and hope to get to this sooner rather than later.

Always the humble servant, I will endeavour to report on my findings - all in good time.  Until then - happy feeding!

Never the twain shall meet

This just by way of a quick follow up on the previous post where your author went ganking...

I promised Agent Liek DarZ I would run the post by him for comment.  I convo'd him in game and asked him to take a look at the preview.  Unfortunately he was a bit busy and did not get around to it until the post went live (unintended - I played around with schedules and failed...).  There goes all my professional journalistic integrity...

I screwed up and seeing that he paid me the courtesy of replying to my email with the important things he considers omitted, I feel it is only right that I post them - even if he insists that I do not have to:

"Found it went live anyway already ;-), but just my short impression:
almost looks flattering, kind of, as it is often about me, but that is probably because of the close, personal perspective. 

Something I would not consider an omission, as we did not talk about it, but you mentioned it yourself - the treatment of gankees/other players (even before being ganked). There is no need for you to add it, as, like I said, it did not come up really during our conversation, but just to state it towards you:

I never dig for tears, and will gladly explain all the mechanics of ganking (and thus also how to avoid them) to whoever is interested. Especially new players often are open to that part - as they are still learning and probably do not take "This is mine" as a given. 

Yet, of course once people start to threaten me with non-consensual intercourse into inappropriate orifices of mine, they lose all of my sympathy, and yes, I start collecting their rage then. If they make a choice of (mis)treating an individual (me) like that, they are in it by themselves. 

OTOH, in the rare cases I kill true newbies, I will gladly throw some millions their way and tell them to pick a Procurer, for the saviour's sake. It is all about what they WANT to learn, or if they rather insist on getting a safe theme park game where EVE is not designed that way.  

Take away from me personally - I have developed a routine, and I do not have any sympathy when being raged on, but I am not a cold-hearted killer ;-) As you saw, I explained everything to you that may have interested you. 

All the best, and have a nice EVE, 

Liek.

Now personally I find I am too much of a softie to be a successful ganker.  My conscience bothers me.  So I have to confess that my sympathies probably slant towards the "gankees"

As Turamarth Elrandir pointed out in the comments section yesterday - miners and industrialists have a point. He clearly doesn't care much for the narrative of CODE, or gankers in general.

His is very much a live and let live mentality viz a viz the philosophy of playing EVE.  Playing the way you want to, and NOT being forced to play according to another players' vision or imposition.

Have a look at the blog roll to the left - CODE is listed under role playing and as far as I can tell that is accurate.  This is an important point to remember - EVE is a game.

Liek in this respect raised some valid points of his own - one theme is that gankers are people too.  Most of them happen to be nice guys.  Threats of real life violence, comments about one's mother and so on are just not on - even if you were ganked.

What is clear though is that ganking is a very sensitive subject - emotions stir up in a way I have rarely seen - just have a look at the comments section of any post on the Miner Bumping site.

Even guys like Turamarth who as far as I can tell, are very inclusive (and has not been a victim of CODE to my knowledge) get plenty riled up:

"Well, anyone with guns, knives and bats can beat the piss out of anyone who is unarmed and cannot fight back... and as your friend said, ...He ship scans his targets beforehand to ensure that he brings enough dps to guarantee a kill... So yeah, not something I'd ever do and feel even a trace of pride in."

In the end I have no solution as to what is right and what is wrong - and in truth this debate has raged longer than your author cares to remember.  The cases of both sides presented by people far smarter than himself.

In the end one can only change what you yourself do within the game as it is.

Despite misgivings by Turamarth likening my action to tilting at the windmills - in an ill considered attempt to "...bring justice to the world, under the name Don Quixote." - I will take up Liek DarZ' offer and do a follow up on some advice on how to avoid a gank - inclusive of your authors' own dastardly twists on it, that probably does more harm than good....

Gone off the reservation

Another day, another dollar, another whiner in local.  If you don't know what I am on about read this first.

In order to judge whether ganking is as easy as they say it is, I joined forces with the resident CODE agent around Osmon - Agent Liek DarZ.  Yes in a moment of miner whiner driven insanity, your author went rogue.

One quick email to agent DarZ and a little while later I am on my way to a gank.  Now in truth, this is not the first time your author went ganking.  But seldom as slick as this.

Get your ass to xx station.  Trade window goes up as I dock.  Accept T1 destroyer.  Get in ship.  Message to undock at count of 0.  2... 1... 0... undock.  Take fleet warp to gate with instructions to jump on contact.  Take fleet warp to another gate, jump on contact.  Take fleet warp.  Message to overheat and activate guns. Targets name gets posted in fleet.  Land at optimal, lock... and the rest happens automatically.  I was slow, so I get the kill mail.  Also I am too slow to target the pod.  Warp to station.  Undock in rookie ship to "pull concord".  Dock again and wait out aggression timer. While we wait I chat to Agent DarZ.  He has been at this for a very long time. Look at his kill board.  No seriously, go and take a look.  Way more losses than kills (you get shot by CONCORD twice for every gank - once with the gank, and once when you undock your rookie ship per above).  ISK efficiency of course the inverse.  The asymmetrical nature of that stat of course the chief bone of contention.

Name redacted to protect the guilty

I ask if I may post my observations in this blog and offer to run it by him first.  Sure he says - I can do that, but he doesn't care to censor me in any way.  There is nothing secret about what he does.  Too true. Every step we took in our gank is documented.  Everything from basic catalyst training and fitting, to advanced catalyst, thrasher and vexors.  There is even a nice section on "managing" CONCORD.

We chat about the philosophy of CODE.  The complacency of care-bears.  Anti tanking.  Whether or not he thinks ganking is too easy or not.

The way he does it, certainly makes it seems ridiculously easy, but your author has been around the block enough times to know that is not the case.

What we have here is an individual that has put an enormous amount of time and effort into perfecting his technique.  Intimate knowledge of his environment as well as his targets.  In short, a player that has done the hard work, put in the time and should be rewarded for his efforts.  Whatever your opinion about the philosophy of ganking - at least lets have respect for that.

In Agent Darz' case he runs 4 clients.  Most of his targets are identified with D-Scan (he only rarely uses probes).  He has perches for most of the systems around Osmon and can scan any system easily.  He ship scans his targets beforehand to ensure that he brings enough dps to guarantee a kill, and get gets the warp in pretty much spot on every time.

When the gank goes down he normally controls 2 dps characters - and snags the pod in the vast majority of the cases.  In addition he usually scoops the loot with a 3rd.  For the uninitiated - this requires a certain amount of coordination across multiple screens - something your dimwitted and slow deliberate author has trouble pulling off.

If that still seems all to easy, well then the below is posted especially for you...

Agents of CODE are cowardly you say and only in it for the easy prey they care not about the ISK dishonourably they enter the fray. In PVP, not so easy the fight will go in a tournament they might not even show In miner space grief they sow always land the final blow Regarded as the most dastardly clan in all the realms of the LAN If ganking is your plan an agent from CODE is your man

Where CODE is concerned most of the targets happens to be industrials or miners, but as Agent Darz points out - a target can be anything - he links a Caracal kill as an example of a "moving" target of opportunity, although those happen less often.  In passing he mentions that he doesn't really care about the ISK.

He has been ganking for a long long time - I ask him what keeps you coming back and not getting bored?  "Some people actually start to be cautious, so there is challenge. But there is also new ones all the time" he says.  He continues that he just needs a target : "The harder to kill, the better"

Of course the ganker is but one side of the story.  Your author is only too well aware of the ostential reason for his roguishness - miner whining.  Well in this case not a peep.

In fact when I tried to contact marian64 Sukarala the convo gets rejected.  A second try sees me permanently banned from contacting him.  A pity as I really would have appreciated his perspective. I take a cursory look at his and his corporations' kill boards - as far as the corporation goes, not too bad (lots of losses but at least a good number in low/null/wormhole space).  As far as marian64 himself goes - could be a noob with a good couple of highsec losses.

This is the point your author realises he will never be CODE agent worth a damn - his conscience gets the better of him and he refunds marian64's 30 million ISK loss







Forgive me Agent DarZ for I have sinned...




As part of my redemption I send an email to his CEO - with an apology and an offer to sacrifice a tanked ship to marian64 and the rest of the corp in highsec if they so choose (gets rid of the kill right too).  In truth I'm struggling to figure out what the character of the corp is - no idea whether that would appeal or insult.

So does this mean your author has turned around and slunk back to the care-bear den from which he came?  Not quite.  With kill rights against him waiting to be activated PVE is out of the question - who knows what he will get up to!

Oh, for crying in a bucket!

Your author has lamented his real life situation before.  He is relegated to high sec for the moment.  Bouts of skill queue online and lvl4 missions to keep the ISK ticking over.

This is how he came to spend a lot of time in business with Lozdod Pousel, the Sisters of Eve agent in the Osmon system.  Now Osmon is a special place.  Close to Jita, a lvl 4 SOE agent, and it spawns ice anomalies.  What's not to like?  All this attracts miners, mission runners, and CODE.

Now your author has nothing especially against miners/mission runners (care-bears from now on).  Or CODE.  He does however wish he could have one loyalty point for every time a care-bear whines about a gank in local - he would not have to run another mission. Ever.

Please note that I am not anti care-bearing here - for the time being, I am one.  Well sort of.  Maybe.  More about that soon...

If you are the kind of care-bear that takes losses in stride - move along, there's nothing to see here.  If however you are the other kind please for your own and your authors' sanity listen up.

There is no point in whining about a gank in local.  It hurts my ears.  You get no sympathy - on the contrary - it just ticks people off.  We've heard it all before, and we are sick of it.

You are outraged.  You lost an expensive ship.  It hurts.  Ganking is too easy.  Bla bla bla.

You have a number of valid points. We get it.  But, here's the thing:  The rules of engagement are what they are.  Ganking is a fact of life.  It is up to us to deal with it.

Ganking, like mining or missioning is a legitimate play style.  Last time I checked these guys also paid for subscriptions.

The sooner we get to this realisation, the better of we will be.

Neck on the block and skin in the game

A comment on an earlier post got me thinking about opinions and criticising of others's opinions. There is an asymmetry in the situation.  I for instance find writing a blog post a lot more challenging than merely commenting on a point in the blog of another writer.

The same holds for actions.  Pertinent to this blog, the actions of CCP developers and the criticism thereof by players and bloggers.

Criticism I find is easy - being the originator of a semi coherent and even vaguely interesting topic/game feature is much more taxing.

That is not to say that we should not be criticised for what we write (or the game feature's we implement). On the contrary.  Your author is all too well aware of the need for criticism - he is wrong more often than not. Until his wife recently (and lovingly!) pointed his short comings out to him, he was totally oblivious to the true state of affairs.  Who knows, had she not done so, he could have been blissfully unaware of his foolishness for many more years!

This is why criticism should be welcomed - in the words of Scot Adams (the creator of Dilbert cartoons):

"Realistically, most people have poor filters for sorting truth from fiction, and there’s no objective way to know if you’re particularly good at it or not. Consider the people who routinely disagree with you. See how confident they look while being dead wrong? That’s exactly how you look to them."

I am a big fan of comments. In the (anonymous) comment a lot of value can be gotten. It is within this distant relationship or the safety of anonymity that the real truth often emerges. This more than anything is why I would like to keep the comments section on this blog open and anonymous. *

Besides that, criticism should be allowed for the entertainment value. Whether it is in the comments section - or one blogger responding to another.

I found the recent interchange between Talvorian Dex and Gevlon totally fascinating. Not to say who is wrong and who is right but fabulous entertainment - especially when digging into the respective comments sections as well.  Both Tal and Gevlon are very active in interacting in their comments section - good on you both sirs!

Another slightly more tongue in cheek exchange was that by Neville Smith trolling ok, it was a troll with Rixx Javix regarding warp core stabilisers.  If I had enough energy for trolling the good fight I would counter Rixx with a campaign to remove warp scramblers/disrupter's if he wants to remove warp core stabilisers ;-)

Of course this can be used for good and for bad - an example of good use is that of Sugar Kyle in her recent blog series starting with taboo-questions - dealing with highsec and changes people want to see.  What a wonderful initiative - kudo's to her and all the responders (94 comments!) alike!  Double kudo's to her for doing the extremely hard work of distilling all that information into something useful.

Which brings me to the real point of this bog post.

Criticising is good when you believe someone is making a mistake. Trolling is good when you do it in a nice way for entertainment (of all a la Neville above).  Being constructive is best of all, but also happens to be infinitely harder to do. This is what puts your neck on the block and your skin in the game.  This opens your up your efforts, to scrutiny for all to tear apart or praise.

If you happen to fall in the last category - for whatever it is worth, respect to you from this humble author - whilst he is not bright enough to achieve much himself, he likes to think that he is (just) bright enough to appreciate constructive achievements when he sees it.





* Open and anonymous comments can be abused - where this blog is concerned all I can say is so far so good.  Only a handful of very pleasant comments were posted. Maybe I am naive and it is merely because this blog is not that widely read, but I hope it keeps.