BattleClinic has announced the winners to a contest that asked players to rearrange a selection of candy hearts to profess your love for the game. And—random—I’m one of them! Looks like I’ve got a free 14 days in New Eden coming up. If you’re curious what my entry was, it’s here.
/me swoons for EVE.
(thanks to Jorshan for the heads up)
As with most newcomers to New Eden, my initial notions of what spacefaring would be like were pretty far misguided from the truth of EVE. Influenced by space operas like Firefly, I expected to work toward getting that one ship—that imperfect boat that I would learn to love, and it’d learn to love me. It’d be my Serenity, letting me salvage wrecks of fallen starships and fly under the radar of the greater powers in control. It’d be my Millennium Falcon, a barely-held-together-bucket-of-bolts built to out-maneuver the smallest frigates. Or maybe it’d be my Normandy—a slick prototype vessel that I could upgrade over time to be one hell of an all-purpose space tank.
So with all of those ideas in mind, I was initially turned off when I found out that the de-facto play style of EVE meant owning a ship for every situation, each tailored to an extremely specific niche purpose. Most every capsuleer’s hangar is found to be filled with Normandy’s, Fireflies, Falcons, Battlestars, X-Wings, USS Enterprises and Star Destroyers. And granted, owning all of those is nothing to complain about. It didn’t take me long to get over those preconceptions.
Though I have plenty of ships I enjoy flying, the thought of having that one ship to call home is still very appealing to me. I can safely say a multipurpose exploration boat that can probe, activate sites, and fend off rats and haul decent cargo shipments is practically my dream ship.
I never expected to have one ship that would allow me to do absolutely everything. By principle, the more your ship can do, the more spread-thin its skill set is—which is probably more than a few people’s ideas of a “fail fit”. But I can’t help but ask myself why is this always the case? Why is there not value in owning a ship that, sure, it isn’t the best at what it does, but it does a handful of useful things that keep you from returning to your hangar multiple times per run? Truly the main appeal here is exactly the mass appeal of the concept behind the Millennium Falcon or Firefly: the boat is the captain’s home and keeps them flying all the time, not beholden to any planet or station. The classic solo ronin vessel.
Do other pilots out there long for their Serenity too? Do any of you have a single ship you fly a majority of the time? Do you have a custom fitting that lets you do a few different tasks moderately well? Any ideas on fitting my dream multi-tasking exploration boat (I’ve heard HAC’s can get pretty close)?
I’d love to hear some discussion on the validity of flying an all-purpose ship in EVE—arguments for or against—and some feedback on how it could be done well for your solo fly-style of choice, be it exploration, trading, combat, etc.
A chorus of sirens drummed through the corridors of the space station, interrupted by the occasional thunder of another missile breach on its exterior. Rettic sat in a room overlooking one of PAX Incendia Astrum’s many hangars, watching through a fogged green plate window as ships departed by the dozens. The room itself, however, was muffled to near silence.
“You ‘ought to be getting out of here, you know,” spoke the rusty voice of an old Udorian man hunched behind a counter on the other side of the room. Rettic turned to look at the walls of the old consignment shop adorned in planetside relics—old ship scraps, hand-drawn maps charting years-past anomalies of the D-GTMI system, cracked wooden slabs and rock mineral souvenirs of failed planet terraforming attempts—all the keepings of a retired ‘dust merc’.
Rettic wiped the dirt film from a glass bottle, revealing the hull of a toy model Archon carefully preserved inside.
“Goddamn political mess,” said the old man, seemingly talking to himself now. “The ‘powers that be’ get another religious hard-on for expansion and decide to throw a few rocks at the hive in my back yard. And we get the surprise when here come the liberators, comin’ to free their slaves from from Amarrian oppression…”
He either laughed or coughed. Rettic couldn’t tell.
“Misdirected aggression all around,” the old man continued as he lifted his head. “I supposed these U’kies are in for a treat when there ain’t hardly no slave types to liberate in a goddamned Paxton Federation settlement.”
“I gotta say,” Rettic interjected, “I like you better when you aren’t in such a good mood, Sam.”
“Well,” he smiled, “What can I say? It must be the weather.”
A deep clap sounded through the stone-metal walls and ripped through the room, knocking over glass blown lamps and cutting the power from a neon “Samuel’s Found Goods” sign hanging over the counter.
“God—summabitch—” Sam scrambled to keep hold of the tools in his hands and shielded his work area with his arms. His cigar remained balanced at the end of his lips. “Rettic, son, looks like you may get a good discount this time.”
“My offer still stands, Sam,” Rettic spoke with calm sincerity. “You don’t have to stay here.”
“But I gotta stay for the party, Rettic. It’s been too long since I’ve seen fireworks like this.” Sam joked, “Besides, haven’t you heard enough of my ramblings? If I talk a capsuleer’s ear off while he’s steering a ship like I do yours every other day here, I’m gonna get us killed faster than these U’kies and Triple A-hole folk’ll do me in.”
“You have such an elegant way with words, Sam. How could I tire of that?” Rettic grinned.
“Ah, there we go.” The old man lifted a Kolderic model 25 round hand-blaster under the desk lamp. “All cleaned up for you like the day it was made…over, what…two-hundred years ago?”
Rettic looked in quiet awe at the gun’s dull finish in the light, nearly overwhelmed with memories of it gripped in his father’s hands, the smell of the harvest fields and the sound of wind as he followed his footsteps on the farm. Suns soft in the sky. Dirt beneath his feat. “It’s never looked this good, Sam.”
“Yeah, It’s a might prettier now,” he said as he handed it to Rettic, “but like I told you two weeks ago when you brought it in, I can’t do nothing to it that’ll help your shitty aim.”
Rettic holstered the weapon under his overcoat. “What are you going to do with yourself, Sam?”
The man raised his eyebrows with a drawn out sigh. “I’m gonna stay here with the ship, just like you’d do with yours. Another antique among the antiques. Who knows, maybe the Matari’s have a refined taste for keeping artifacts around after all.”
Rettic looked at him with solemn sympathy.
“Oh don’t you pity me, boy. Don’t you do it.” Sam became as serious as Rettic had ever seen him. “You see, the difference between a capsuleer and a mortal man isn’t that you live and I die. It’s that a man learns to accept death. A capsuleer will always have to live it around him.”
Sam saluted Rettic. “But I’ll try to refrain from pitying you, friend.”
Rettic nodded a sincere thanks to the old man and walked to the door, opening to reveal a flood of over-comm alerts drowned by the droning turbines of Titan doomsday weapons charging outside. Station officers shouted to escort the capsuleer off the docking bridge. He looked back as the shop doors slid shut to see Sam loading a shotgun.
Station debris tore through the hulls of docked ships. A Gallentean woman stood crying, shouting in the floor of the hangar as an enslaved Matari man lay bleeding under a stairway. The escorting officer slowly detached his arm from Rettic’s side as he gasped, a hole ripped through his chest. Families of miners and industrialists stood stranded in their dwelling rooms as their capsuleer fathers and wives flew from the hangar.
Rettic boarded Tensegrity, his Catalyst, and undocked to slowly pass the capital ships fully focused on station fire.
Fare well Fire Star.
Rettic’s Log are the accounts of Rettic in-character, his history, and the story of my experiences in New Eden as seen through his eyes. Read all of them here.
This is also a submission to the Eve Monkey’s Fan-Fiction Blogfest no. 2. See other submissions here.
Iambeastx has a resource-worthy list of definitions that would do any new pilot well to get familiarized with. It might have been out there a while, but I just found it. Also, there’s this new thing called slap bracelets. They’re pretty rad.
Well, this was a hell of a weekend to decide to fly again.
As you may have been clued in through numerous accounts by other pilots, the heat has been escalating in Providence and Catch space intensely for the past few weeks. A play was made by certain CVA holders to capture the F9E-KX to HED-GP pipe—which is a main route to empire space for Against All Authorities [-A-]. And expectedly, -A- didn’t exactly approve of this gesture. In the past few days they have been working to take back their systems in the pipe, and as of 1.23.10, they decided to move into D-GTMI—official Paxton Federation space, and home to M3.
By the time I logged in on the morning of 1.23.10, all POS’s were reinforced. All jump bridges were off-lined. It was all the evidence I needed to know we got steamrolled. Details were hazy in the rush to find out what exactly happened, but it was somewhere in the ballpark of this: -A- brought a force of 450 ships, including 4-5 Titans, about 6 Motherships and around 60 Dreads and Carriers. D-GTMI’s defense fleet amounted to about 350 pilots, and fought valiantly for an hour before being forced out of the system. In the aftermath, all it seemed we could do was repair the damage and evacuate as many assets from the area as we could. That is, until -A- decides to return.
Since that morning, they have returned—many times—and I’m getting a suspicious feeling that they aren’t here to simply deliver a message.
I’m going to refrain from commenting on the politics of how the situation came about, but each side has their perspective, and even sides within sides have theirs. Bottom line is the damage is done, and continues to be done—and we’ll have to defend the front line for as long as we’re able. It may yet be long after this is settled before we have true clarity on the situation.
For now, it’s anything M3 can do to keep Providence space liberation-free for a while longer. Good flying to us all.
This will be linked up everywhere, but I need it here for the records. Apparently these were playing on projectors at Fanfest last year, and CCP has released them due to high demand. It’s another great way to be reminded of the brilliance in EVE’s ship designs.
Right now I’m suffering from a phenomenon I deal with once in a while when it comes to gaming. I’ve taken a relatively extended break—first because of the holidays, then a move into a new apartment, and finally the tortuous two-week wait for an internet installation—and only in the past few days am I really able to log into EVE. But, for some reason, I’m not. It’s as if the ‘log in’ button weighs 600 pounds, and I just can’t lift it.
I’ve come to realize that games have weight. It’s a metaphysical weight that is determined by how much responsibility the game carries with it. Peggle, for example, is a featherweight. There is no obligation to play, in a real sense or even in the game narrative. Dragon Age, a single player 80 hrs plus roleplaying game, is a middle weight game. The player is asked to make somewhat tough moral and strategic decisions that demand your full attention most of the time, but when life calls, the world can be paused or exited…no harm done.
You can guess where I’m going with this: MMO’s are the heavyweights. They’re time intensive (see this post on how little can be done in EVE when you only have an hour to spare). You’re communicating, in a real way, with others who depend on your good decisions. There are repercussions to your failed actions. You’re committed to a fight, and you sure as hell can’t can’t pause.
And though these are the very things that make MMO’s beautiful, when stepping away from that world over time, the weight of all these obligations build like a tumbling avalanche. The game world didn’t stop when I did, so I know that there’s a ton of news to catch up on, mails to read, plans to be made, people to say hello to, blogs to devour, tweets to read, jump bridges to mark, skills to evaluate, on, and on, and on—or I can go pop in Battlestar Galactica Season 3, and relax for 40 minutes. Relief.
So that’s where I’m at. Right now, the EVE icon is a treadmill, and I’m a fat ass. But dammit, I’ve got to get back on the horse, because in the end, I miss it (and you all) terribly. It’s just a matter of blocking off a half-day and diving in. Here’s looking to this coming weekend.
The first banter of 2010 comes to us from CrazyKinux himself, who asks the following: As we begin another year in New Eden, ask yourselves, “What Now?” What will I attempt next? What haven’t I done so far in EVE? Was it out of fear, funds, or knowledge? What steps and objectives will I set myself to accomplish in order to reach my ultimate goal for this year? EVE is what you make of it. So, what is it going to be for you?
My experience as a first year New Edener can be more or less summarized as being one long tutorial. I know a pilot never stops learning in EVE, but that’s practically all I was doing for the past 8 months—sometimes at the detriment of simply playing and enjoying the game. I made all the rookie mistakes, had the late satisfaction of my first kills, experienced being podded twice, made ISK, lost ISK, did high-sec, low-sec, and null-sec. On top of that, I’d say over half of my experience with EVE this year was actually spent doing research online. (EVElopedia, I love you.)
For 2010, I just want to actually play the game. Imagine that. My hope is that this will be the year all my research and learning pays off and I finally start putting some knowledge and skill to use—to the benefit of my corp and my own enjoyment of the life as a pilot. More specifically, I want to become a healthy asset in corp PVP ops. This will finally be realized in a few days when frigate V is finished training and I can fly my first Tech 2 ships. I really can’t wait to dig into interceptors and interdictors. I want to know both roles like the back of my hand.
Outside of life in the game, I have plenty of goals and project surrounding the EVE community that I want to see completed this year. Many are design related (one big one that’s in the works right now), a few are blog and writing related, and some are a bit more experimental on my part. I also want to return to completing some of the design favors I owe some of you, so don’t think I’ve forgotten.
That’s about all I’ve got for now. Nothing groundbreaking, but the few things that may be bigger are better left in the dark for now. More on those later.
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, first you must invent the universe.
Deelish.
A collection of digital paintings (or wallpapers, if you prefer) by Orioto that re-imagine iconic images of ’90s gaming. There’s something beautifully nostalgic about seeing them in this light…almost as if they capture, not the graphics of the time, but the feeling the games gave me when I was so young. They didn’t look that great when I played them, but my imagination filled in the rest: the first sense of freedom in StarFox, the vibrant world of Sonic, or the dark loneliness of single handedly saving the world in Zelda. All fantastic stuff.
I swear, we get closer to becoming real capsuleers every day. How about your very own camera drone? Controlled from your iphone? Don’t mind if I do. It’s called the AR.Drone (AR for Augmented Reality). If nothing else, watch this demo video. Stunned.
Fascinating article from a “quantum mechanic and rocket scientist” on the hypothetical physics of real space battles. We need to get this guy in New Eden.
A thing I personally would find very helpful while flying is a cheat sheet by my side with all the easy-to-forget number crunching basics of gameplay. This could include common metric conversions (1,500,000,000 KM = 10 AU), optimal ranges for various hard points, and of course the standard list of NPC damage types. But I’m not sure, with the limited experience I have, I could cover all the bases for other professions, Empire life, etc. on my own.
So I pose this to the community: In the comments, help me out by listing the specific types of information (all numbers included) that would help you most on an all-purpose capuleers’ cheat sheet.
I’ll then take the most detailed and relevant snippets and design a useful, printer friendly, two-sided sheet with as much info as I can cram on it for all to download. And I’m sure I won’t be able to help but give it a little EVE-flavored design flair (it’s gotta look cool, right?).
So what do you think it should cover?
UPDATE: Well if you think it should have been done already in EVE, chances are, it already has. My buddy Jorshan over at Industrialisms (subscribe, it’s a great blog) has already done a great job at assembling such a sheet. PDF version linked here. If you still have other suggestions that aren’t covered in his sheet, feel free to add them in the comments below as I may still take my on hack at this. But for now, check out Industrialisms for the goods.
Every Saturday, if life permits, I spend the morning scouring forums, catching up on longer blog reading, and researching various aspects of EVE while I sip on some coffee and throw down a bagel. Here’s where I share the more interesting findings.
I made a point this week to spend my morning catching up on a certain piece of fan-fiction I’ve been putting off for too long, and as such I’m dedicating this post entirely to Kirith Kodachi’s Fiction Friday series. If you haven’t read it already, its a first-person narrative that seems to be an account of Kirith’s origin story (I say “seems to be” only because the story is still in progress). Each entry is chronological, so in order to grasp it, you have to start from the beginning—but after doing just that this morning, I can say it’s well worth the time.
Aside from the insight we get into Kirith’s character, fiction writing like this truly colors the world of New Eden for me, revealing all the planetary and station-side sights and situations we only imagine while saddled in our pods.
Below are each of the chapters so far. Catch up, and you’ll be as ready to get to next Friday as I am:
If you haven’t yet read EDGE’s recent two-part article epic on DUST 514, do so now. Part one is a primer on the overall concept of the console bridging FPSRTS, giving some interesting details on the “Commander” role and a taste of vehicle gameplay. Part two dives into the bigger picture, with a look at CCP’s future hopes for the game with expansion rollouts, economic implications in connection to EVE, and the value of a “persistent” world in a FPS setting.
