Check out Jorshan’s very informative screenshots illustrating how he has been setting up his planetary production chains. After spending a good few hours resetting up all of my chains this morning, I landed back on his article only to realize I was still not being smart about it.
To CCP’s credit, as always, I’m realizing, every day, how much more depth there is to these mechanics than I ever imagined there’d be.
Law is for those under the blind notion that the skies have bounds. Lawlessness is for those so lost as to think she has none.
Then there’s us. The honest void between. The black knights of the empire’s rim. The ronin of the borderlands.
We are the independent drifters of low-sec space that ride between skies crowded with ungoverned governments to one side, and unchecked alliance giants on the other. We are not tools for any mega-corporation. We’re a network of soloists, rangers, traders, bounty hunters, explorers, and entrepreneurs bound only by our common will to get by another day—because as long as our skies are free, so are we.
Solo play is often shrugged at in EVE. It’s sometimes seen as going against the grain in a world that was built for social interaction. It’s considered not maximizing your experience, or just proven down right difficult. And from plenty of experience, I can say there’s truth to all of these perceptions.
But I behold myself to a few ideals when flying space ships: solo pilots are the coolest (Mal, Han, Deckard, and Fett), and I have no time for big commitments.
After I left M3 to pursue solo exploration at the beginning of the year, I was approached by Casiella Truza who was going through some difficulties of his own while flying solo. He had an idea for an unofficial community or network for explorers. A place where we could exchange intelligence, plan ops, but remain free of corporate influence and obligation.
Over the past few months we’ve brainstormed, plotted, prepared, and evolved this idea into what we’re calling:
Copernicus Coalition: a network of independent pilots and small corporations working to make low-sec livable for the common player.
This is not an alliance. In fact, aside from an in-game chat channel, it relies on no formal game construct. This is because we want pilots in the Coalition to remain independent by all accounts, while taking advantage of social support, help, ops planning, trade, and general banter among other pilots that share the same love for independence, and low-sec.
Yes, this is an experiment. We are convinced that low security space offers some of the most fun flying in New Eden—the risks are abundant, and the reward is survival. What we aim to do is balance the low-sec equation, to make it just a little more survivable. By supporting each other in our exploration, missioning, mining, bounty hunting, trading, hauling, manufacturing, and planeteering, we can burst the bubble that solo-flight means non-social, and low-sec means unbalanced risk.
To facilitate this, we offer an in-game chat channel and an online forum that will serve as a hub for conversation, exchange of resources, and general intelligence. And the real beauty of this experiment? If you join, there are no formal commitments. Just good company.
Speaking of good company, assisting in its inception along the way, and among its founding members are Casiella Truza of Ecliptic Rift, Jorshan of Industrialisms, Mark726 of EVE Travel, and my friends Nocipe and Denovin Zyrinax.
So if you’re an independent pilot or small corporation that’s intrigued at all, why not apply to the forums? We’ll do a little background check on you, but otherwise, acceptance is now open.
Visit the Copernicus Coalition home site here. Read the full charter here.
NOTE: I’m aware that, for some reason, the forums decided to crash the day after I post this. Figures. I’ll be able to look into it tonight. If you’re interested but can’t get to the forums, just send me an EVE mail @ Rettic.
And they’re back!
A new player-made online magazine called Cosmopewlitan, head up by Riverini for “0.0 pilots, low-sec pirates, and well-seasoned empire dwellers” dropped last week, and its tongue-in-cheek character and mock-pop design are definitely worth a download. I was also pleasantly surprised to see the both the Chronofile and the Sounds for Flying series earned a shout-out, though I regret I’m not really living up to my bargain on the blog posting side of things lately. This should change soon.
But cheers to Riverini, and go give it a look. It’s cool shit like this that give our grey sci-fi world so much color.
So EVE Gate is out. It looks great, runs surprisingly fast, but in the features department, it’s about as plain as vanilla can be—at least at first glance.
I’ve heard a few complaints that some pilots just don’t see the use in it right now, and that’s a fair assessment considering there are only a few things it offers in terms of web-to-game interaction. But even a handful of features can go a long way if taken advantage of.
EVE Gate brings some real improvements on the social experience of EVE that we might not have realized we wanted, or just may have overlooked. Based on my experience playing with it so far, here’s a few tips on maximizing your use of Spacebook Beta:
gate.eveonline.com/Mail/Compose/YourCharacterNameSo, really, not all that useless right? Lets be thankful it works, seems stable, runs fast, and does the few things it does fairly well. The most important part of EVE Gate right now is that it’s a platform for expansion. Take advantage of what it already offers, but lets keep our collective fingers crossed that there’s a lot more to come.
If you have any other EVE Gate Beta tips, leave a comment or feel free to shoot me an EVE-mail. Wink.
In my research on the Ishtar (something I’ve been doing quite a bit of lately) I came across this fantastic post from “Your Money or Your Life”, in which Ka Jolo recounts his experience learning the ship. It perfectly reflects the sentiments I’m hearing a lot: it’s forgiving, often unpredictable, and undoubtedly flexible.
Interesting writeup on a book that archives about 200 ads promoting space exploration in the 50’s. Being a hybrid between my real-life profession and my affair with science fiction, I can’t help but get this one. (Amazon link)
Great short story by Koronakesh in the official fiction forums that made me shudder with claustrophobia. Now I’m going to go imagine myself running in an open field…
I just wanted to post a quick congratulations to the community on apparently doubling CSM4’s voting turnout, for CSM5. We still don’t know who is in the leading positions (CCP to reveal on May 26), but regardless, we should all consider the jump in participation a real accomplishment—for EVE, but ultimately for ourselves.
A lot of people tend to act lax on the importance of the CSM, writing it off as not taken seriously by CCP, therefore it doesn’t deserve serious attention from us. It’s dismissed as a fluffy PR stunt, or a pipe dream, so why try? This is an entirely flawed mentality.
For every vote the CSM gets, every bit of good publicity, every brilliant piece of input and discussion about making positive change happen, I will guarantee you, CCP is only going to take this more seriously. After all, if only an extremely small percentage of the player base were to vote each time, can we really blame CCP for not making their requests high priority? It’d be questionable whether it represents even a fraction of the player base.
But a good turnout is going to get CCP as excited for change as we are. They want this to succeed. They want our input and if huge numbers of players come out voting for new directions, CCP can’t afford not to listen.
This isn’t to say, by any means, that if we all vote, CCP has to make all our requests happen. They’re still in control, and we’re all better off for that. But CCP will only take the CSM seriously if we do first. Not the other way around. It’s our organization, our opinions, and our gameplay. We’re the ones that need to make this work.
So cheers to the community. I think the voting turnout was influenced by the efforts of plenty of bloggers out there asking their readers to vote, all the great discussion and podcast interviews with the candidates, and a lot of buzz on the #tweetfleet.
Good luck to those running, and here’s to hoping the CSM5 continues to revitalize some mentalities about one of the most unique player-run efforts in gaming!
A site featuring some pretty fantastic artwork of space boats. I’m waiting on getting my own Wacom tablet very soon, so I can’t wait to make some of my own attempts at illustrating some of New Eden’s sexy beasts. Of course, it won’t compete with this stuff.
Return? I’m not sure I was aware these ever existed, but I’ve desperately wished, since I started playing EVE, that there was a mechanic for watching historical events play out in the universe. This seems to take it a step further, suggesting that actual CCP devs will pilot “actors” in these events, and players can participate and determine the outcome entirely (!!!).
This is big. This could have been a major platform for Tyrannis, so I’m not sure why they would have waited until now to announce it. I suppose it’s still in early development and may not pick up steam for a while yet.
Either way, it’s a very, very welcome change.
