Author: Morphisat

A Forgotten Milestone

Oops, somewhere in the past month or so, I hit the 50 million skill point mark. Yes yes I know, not that great for a character from late 2005 (oh I got my eve birthday coming up), but I had a few breaks here and there and mostly I have been using +3 implants, because I am cheap.

Here you can see how my points are distributed. A lot also in gunnery, Morph can now use all T2 guns, except for the Amarr ones (got Bela for that).

skill_chart_morph

What else is there to train ? I am not interested in capitals, as I got no use for them. Maybe a few more drone skills, and perhaps some others to V instead of IV.

Dominion and T2 production

Unless you have a crystall ball, these is no way to tell how the supply of T2 components will turn out. CCP have stated that they want to end the moon mining madness. And that will make T2 production cheaper and hopefully more profitable ? Well at least more accessible ;).

They are also tweaking the BPC/BPOs. Take a look at a Jaguar invented –4/-4 one run BPC as it is now.

jag_now

And this is the same BPC on the test server.

jag_testserver

Especially a lot less Nuclear Reactor Units ! And those are usually the most expensive items, along with the Shield Emitters.

We probably won’t see a lot of T2 production in november, as everything will change once Dominion comes in December !

The Fleet Finder

Most of the attention for the upcoming Eve expansion ‘Dominion’ will be directed to the sovereignty changes. 0.0 space is about to be revamped ! But there is more to Dominion than just that.

One of the neat new additions is the Fleet Finder. I took a series of screenshots to show you how it works.

First you open up the fleet window with a new icon on the left hand bar, which then brings up a welcome screen.

finder1 finder2

In this case we pick to form a new fleet, and that’s what you get, a regular fleet like it was before. But the fleet screen has an extra tab with fleet finder options.

finder3 finder4

As you can see, here you can set what the restrictions are for people to join. You can add a description of what you’re doing. This is changed from what it was earlier on the test server. There were a few categories you could pick and it was only open for alliance / corporation. Now you can just type your own description.

I am not sure it’ll be a good idea to open your fleet up for anybody with a decent sec status. Maybe I am being paranoid (and you should be in Eve), but there are plenty of asshats about who will try to ruin your day.

finder5

And there you go, I checked on another character and the above screen comes up in the fleet finder when you pick ‘join a fleet’. You can join from here, no need to x up, ask where the fleet is etc.

A very welcome edition, especially if your corp. maybe has a mining and a missioning fleet. Or you’re in 0.0 and there is a pvp scout op and a mining op. Straight from logging in, you can see what’s happening and join right off the bat !

Cruiser Action

These picture were taken during last week’s cruiser even we had in corp. Bela entered in a Arbitrator, and did pretty well in the Free For All event. Armed with an armor repper and a cargo hold filled with cap boosters, she lasted pretty long. Got our CEO Ruffio into structure, but unfortunately it wasn’t enough ;).

rupture1

Here you can see said CEO chasing down Khana, usually these two and James end up as the last survivors in these events.

rup2

The Hidden Agenda corp has grown quite a bit over the past few months. A nice mix of new players and veterans. We were wardecced two weeks ago, by some corp who pretended to be mercs. They however hardly showed up :(. I guess doing a corp conga with about 20 outside their HQ didn’t help making them come out. Anyway we had some cruiser leftovers as none got blown up in the war, so the cruiser event was born ;).

I don’t really get these corps that wardec and don’t do anything but sit in a station. They really need to do their homework before doing a wardec and make sure they can actually fight against the corp you dec !

Cosmos and the new browser

On the test server amongst a lot of other new goodies, you can preview the new in game browser.

new_browser

As you can see, it actually displays this blog exactly like it should :). I assume they took some rendering engine like webkit and used that to pull it off. The new blog on cosmos is interesting. Cosmos doesn’t interest me all that much, but the new email client will be such a blessing. The current one is so horrible, it’s not even funny any more ;).

UPDATE : Link to technical devblog on the new browser.

UPDATE2: The new browser presentation @ fanfest : EveOnlineFan Blog

AT7 – Congratulations Pandemic Legion

The last weekend of Alliance Tournament 7 was very enjoyable. I was sitting in a few chat channels discussing the games, and watching Eve TV. The commentary was excellent (except for one match ahum) and the studio guests were interesting.

Pandemic Legion basically wiped the floor, with their stealth bomber, double rook setup, with the competiotion. In the semi final, which lasted a mere 4 minutes, though, they fielded a totally different team. A speed minmatar based DPS heavy team and blew the shield tanked Manifest Destiny to space dust. It was my favorite of the weekend.

The first day had a few too many total helldeath games, not making it too exciting, except for the last two matches of the day. Make sure to check those out on http://www.youtube.com/ccpgames. Most of the second day matches were close and interesting to watch. The final was a bit predictable but executed almost to perfection by PL. Congrats to them !

Update: A writeup by the PL Team on the forum, describing their setups and choices for each match.

AT7 – A mixed bag

Although plagued by some server issues (caused by elephants in the CCP office apparently), the seventh alliance tournament was a big success so far. We saw a mixed bag of awesomeness with a touch of failsauce the past two weekends.

Shield tanked Sins and Megathrons, hero tengus, nighthawks, a lot of destroyers, bombers that failed and bombers that succeeded and drakes slowly dieing. A lot of ISK turning into spacedust.

I followed the matches through new eden radio and their ingame chat channel, and had a lot of fun. People cracking jokes, commenting on the matches, predicting outcome of the games etc. Well done new eden radio team !

elephant_soundwave

Here is a list of some of my favorite matches:

Laconian Syndicate vs The Important Internet Spaceship League

My absolute favorite from this weekend, and maybe of the tournament so far. A real nailbiter ! Kanagawa in his Hero Tengu takes on 4 battlecruisers.

Pandemic Legion vs Indecisive Certainty

When the PL setup was announced against 2 nightmares, I thought they’d be pulverised. But PL showed their piloting skills by locking down the opposition with two rooks and let two manticores and brutixes pound on the nightmares. Very well skilled match

RED. Overlord vs Goonswarm

A very close match, 2 Kronos and a damnation vs. 5 T3 ships plus an Oneiros.

Dead Terrorists  vs Cry Havoc

Two Rattlesnakes beating up a bunch of marauders

The Fourth District vs Agony Empire

A battlecruiser show down. This one shows why battlecruisers were so successful in this tournament so far.

SOLAR FLEET vs Banzai Boys

A very exciting match, showing the power assault frigs can have in capable hands

And that’s it. Check out CCP’s youtube channel at http://www.youtube.com/ccpgames. Very much looking forward to next week’s final.

Market Square Heroes

So you trained up your industrial skill, got that production efficiency to 4 or even 5 and bought a few nice BPOs or BPC for your hard earned isk. Or maybe you’re going into the invention field and picked up some datacores from your agents. Now you’ll have to sell your goods otherwise all your efforts would have been futile. And that’s when the time comes that you have to study the market.

Actually the ‘buying the bpos’ might have been a bit too early. You might want to study the market for a niche you can fill before that time.

So far in EVE I have distinguished a few different type of markets. There are the trade hubs, mission hubs and ‘off markets’. Those aren’t really hubs of any kind, but more for people that happen to be in system, or live near that system.

The hubs tend to have slimmer margins but higher volume. Even the difference between two close by hubs can be significant though. For example Rens and Hek and only a few jumps from each other. Yet Hek tends to have higher prices. Also there are more 0.01 market warriors out in Rens. When you put up ammo there, don’t be surprised to find some one else undercutting you by 0.01 within an hour. Jita is the ultimate 0.01 undercutters paradise, unless you want to do daytrading, I wouldn’t go there, unless you want to sell your goods very fast and dump them there on the market.

market1

Pvp gear tends to shift quickly near low sec areas / hubs. I assume these are pirates or Factional Warfare soldiers picking up the goods, like 220mm cannons, T2 ammo, warp disruptors II, warriors II etc. Of course if you’re really gutsy, you can bring your goods to low sec and sell there for higher profits. Fit your industrial with warp stabbers, or buy a blockade runner, and don’t forget to scout for gatecamps ahead ;).

What this all comes down to, is where do you want to sell your goods ? If you’re making a high volume of products, you might want to settle for lower margins and try to sell your stuff at hubs. If your gear is mission oriented, like T2 shield hardeners, ravens, cruise missile launcher II, or ammo, you can settle for lesser volume, but higher margins at a mission hub.

Or you can find an area that doesn’t have a lot of your particular product and try and sell it there for higher margins, and less volume. Or spread your goods around and make a trip in your industrial or freighter ! It all comes down to a good study of the numbers, especially the screen above, will tell you a lot about prices and the volumes that are being sold in your region.