War is over ...

I would love to report that the whole war ended with a huge fight and my ship collection in a matchbox but actually it ended up with them ending the war and the last evening was us camping them at a station and them sending out so much smack talk in local that another PvP corp asked them to try dec'ing them.  Overall probably the worst war we ever had. Oh well, see what happens next, the next war is never to far away.

Workarounds

Well,

I have already discussed a little bit about game mechanics so far with release of the Goonswarm (RIP) guide for ultra deep safes.  I have also played around the the Grid Fu guide, also release by Goonswarm, but I have more recently found some other more annoying / intelligent actions that use the game mechanics in a way that is not entirely as planned.  I have listed a few below and would be interested to know what other ones people use or loath in the game:

CONCORD Pre-Load
Ok, this is the art or act of pre-loading CONCORD into an area; and driod field for example, so hat they can provide you with a greater level of protection.  Achieved by ganking yourself with a noob ship in an asteroid field so that CONCORD relieve your noob of his ship then hang around for a couple of hours.  Provides you with CONCORD on your door step whilst you mine.

Insurance Farming
Quick way of turning all those low value T1 modules and ore that you get into isk.  Reprocess everything, build a BS, insure it and then self-destruct it.  Will see what happens with this with the changes that are appearing on Singularity right now.

Will add to this list as I find more; I have not gone through the whole list of war / combat issues such as station hugging, lofoffski, etc.

War ... again

Well we are at war again.  We got dec'd again about a week ago and though we are no PVP corp we do have a few thirsty souls who enjoy a good roam and fight.  This will be the sixth war I think I have been part of and to date they have never amounted to much; a few roams in the evenings with the odd stand off and fight, but on the whole everyone seems to skirt around each other trying to get some sort of advantage (usually in numbers) at which point the smaller party goes and waits it out in a station.

There are great stories and reports about all the wars that go on in null sec, about the politics and espionage but truly, I wonder how much of this goes on in the rest of space with all the smaller corps warring it out.

We had an instance last night where the war was getting close to ending , various people had talked and agreements had been made but with no agreements on ceasefires or anything else; just left it run it's course and good bye.  Anyway a few of the more excitable members of the alliance had already arranged to wander around and see what happen would happen and to their surprise found a small group of WT nearby all prep'ed and ready in the same way we were.  I would like to point out that the corp that had dec'd us is a PVP corp and aspires to be another Agony Unleashed.  Anyway this small group decides to agress and losses an Onyx in the process.  Polite convo ensues in local and people warp off to lick wounds and prep for the next encounters when the CEO comes online into our public convo complaining bitterly and threatening to continue war, destroy alliance etc.  Now he can do what he wants and that is fine, I have no quarrel at all with that but I do have some questions that I am sure will never be answered; who takes a fully fitted hictor out in hi sec during a war if they are not planning on using or losing it?  Why get upset with a corp doing its best to fight in a war till the end?  We has not exactly come out fighting from the start but certainly had lost a number of ships through the week, so why the bitter response?

All in all I am disappointed again (read last posting ... must be an age thing creeping up on me).  I have been on an Agony course and loved it.  There  is a certain no holds barred, raw feeling to the courses and to take it as it comes.  The thought of a war with something similar or aspiring to that was a little invigorating ... even if we were turned into pulp and handed out wrecks back in a matchbox, we at least would learn something but this has been disappointing.  One thing I did notice as I started to gather the intel prior to the war commencing was some strange behaviour in their killboard and there has been a little more since.  I will talk a little about this in my next post as it is not really anything to do with this war but is more related to the tricks of the trade that people employ in the game to help them along.  Anyway, will see what the next load of diplomacy brings, fly safe.

First Glimpse of Tyrannis

Well if you log into Singularity (Sisi) then you can see the first tasters of what the next release of EVE has in store for you; planetary interaction (dev blog).

Before I go any further I will digress slightly here and talk a little about CCP's last significant release; Dominion.  One of the intents of Dominion was to get more people out in to null sec by making things a little more interesting, which it possibly has done for the large alliances that already had a hold out there.  The reality was though that it was never (ever) going to get new takers due to cost, and capability requires (e.g. freighters in low sec for deploying infrastructure hubs, etc) and the last CSM minutes have confirmed this.  In fact as part of a fairly new alliance that would love to get sovereignty independently (without renting), dominion made it somewhat harder.  The best evidence available to back this up is the recent demise of Goonswarm; if Dominion has made null sec more open then we would of seen a great swathe of new alliances popping up all over the place and we haven't.

So anyway back to Tyrannis and planetary interaction.  The next step sees us now able to install a command module on a planet, build up a network of excavation / harvesting types modules along with processing plants to make nanite paste at present (though I have yet to find anything else but Nitrogen and Aluminium).  For more info on this there is a great EVE university vid up on you tube you can watch (click here to watch).  The set up in general is very simple and requires no additional skills, the planetary command centre is tiny (don't know about cost yet as everything on sisi costs 100isk) but is still no going to meet needs of the budding alliance looking for their own little 0.0 space.  The forum linked to this update (click here) is already alight with calls for skill requirements etc that are all about people protecting their own space rather than opening the game up and I am concerned that yet again there is little opportunity for us players that have been flying internet spaceships for around a year to really develop ourselves.  I would love some of you to correct me in this if I am wrong.

For me though new develops are always good this is definitely a drive towards the implementation of DUST514, and for those alliances that hold good space already this is another income source to bolster yet further their individual spaces.  At first I was rather excited by what I saw but the more I reflect on it I cannot at present see what most of us are going to get out of it.  Maybe that is just Mr Grumpy talking but we will see.