A Quick Look at Odyssey on SiSi

This is post two of two for todays special "double header". My usual Fan Fiction Friday entry is posted below this one!

On Wednesday night CCP uploaded a raft of Odyssey changes onto the test server. These are listed below from the Eve-O forum thread. Those tagged with ** are ones I looked at and have blogged about below.

Team Five 0 - Sensor Overlay**, Tags for Security status**, Resource re-balance, POS improvements.

Team Game of Drones - Pirate Rookie Frigates**, Skill Changes to every ship in the game**, If you could fly it before you can fly it now**, Destroyers and Battlecruiser skills were split into 4 racial variants. Users can expect to be in ships for which they do not have all prerequisite skills**, Skill reimbursement will apply in certain specific scenarios**, New Navy Battlecruisers**, Tier 3 Battlecruisers rebalanced (now Attack Battlecruisers), Cruise Missile Changes**, Large Energy Turret Changes, Tier 1 Battleship rebalance

Team Pony Express - System Transitions**, Radial Menu**

Team Superfriends - Seven probes launched at once, Scan Probe Formations, Probe Scanner window changes, Deep Space Probe removal, Survey Probes in their own group & have their own launcher, Salvaging mini profession sites have all been removed, Astrometrics skill changes, Exploration site signature changes, NPC spawns are removed from mini profession sites, New Decryptors in hacking sites, New Capital Rig BPCs in Archaeology sites, Personal Hangar Array

So below is what I sampled in my first go:-

Sensor Overlay
Awesome! Just awesome! As you undock or jump the sensor sweep is conducted in a visual form. Think of it like a 3D radar sweep that visually sweeps around a bubble several hundred kilometres from your ship. Ah feck it, too difficult to describe, here are 4 screenshots in rapid succession to show it!

Warpable objects like faction war plex show up green crosses and scannable objects as yellow. You can still click the scanner button, but now you have a choice of four options on a radial menu.

Top options turns the in-space visuals on or off. The other three buttons are simply the old direction scanner, system scanner and moon survey which used to be one window with tabs. Nice and easy now.

You can mouse-over signatures in space and it gives you further options as well as scan strength if its not warpable

Tags for Sec
Obviously you'll need to collect several of these to be useful. I fitted a Navy Hurricane, more on them in a bit, and undocked and warped to the top belt in my home system. Guess what I found!

Yup first belt and we have one of the new rats in a Gila-ish ship. My Hurricane kerbstomped him as expected and I got the tag.

I then did all connecting systems and found only plain rats. Next day I searched seven low-sec systems and couldn't find any. They are fairly rare currently. I guess I got lucky in my first undock! That means these tags are going to be very expensive unless CCP up the spawn rate.

Edit - However, whilst testing the Navy BC's below I found another one..... in my home system..... in the top belt again! May be CCP set them to only spawn in the top belt. How awesome would that be? Want tags? You need to sit in top belt lol!

Pirate Rookie Ships
Yes they are here. Yes they are rookie ships. No I'm not really interested in them! They look OK though.

Skill Changes and New Skills
Gone are the Destroyer and Battlecruiser skills. The new racial varients are added and I'm jumped a few million skill points and have the new skills! MOAR LVL V L33TN355!

I could fly all destroyers and battlecruisers before, I still can. CCP did what they said on the tin here! But wait, what about the skill changes to other ships like Command Ships.

The Nighthawk now needs level 5 on the link skills which I don't have. My link skills are all 4's! But I could fly a Nighthawk pre-Odyssey.....

.... and I still can even though I don't meet the revised prerequisites!

New Navy BC's
Lovely! We have the old Hurricane back with a new camouflage paint job. But seriously, why have jungle camo in space? Anyway, I'm just happy to have the old pre-nerf Cane back.

Quick play with them (I didn't spend long thinking on fits, I just threw together simple PvP fits) and I found...

Navy Brutix. 1000dps blaster fit (void) with Hamnmerhead T2's. MWD. 64k EHP which jumps to 82k with active explosive hardener.

Navy Drake. 550dps out to 30km. MWD. Found CPU a bit tight. 77k EHP?

Navy Cane. 600dps with artillery and Hobs giving optimal at 17km. AB. 72k EHP.

Navy Harbinger. 720dps with IN Multi Frequency Hammerheads with 8km optimal. Scorch 24km optimal. 88k EHP.

Cruise Missiles
Cruise missiles have always been a PvE weapon with no place in PvP. Slow and easy to avoid very few serious PvP players ever used them. But now? Fast with a massive range and tweaked stats. May be we'll see a new breed of sniper BS? Who knows? 800DPS for a sniper?

System Transitions
For Sci-Fi geeks, this is p0rn! You're ship vanishes into the wormhole as before. Now the screen swings to look down the stargate (V3'd with distortion effects now) as it powers up. Lightning jumps from the gate and it fires you into a warp tunnel with more lighning effects before spitting you out at your destination system. AWESOME! NERD BONER!!!!

Those moaning about motion sickness. HTFU! Capsuleers don't have that problem, ordinary humans do! ;P


Radial Menu's
The radial menus have been improved a lot. A single click in space or on the overview highlights the object. Click and hold brings up the radial menu.

I also notice that the targeted object display flashes as the target is destroyed. Is that new?

So there are the bits I sampled. Like the pics? See the comedy one in there? Well when you try the new stargate transitions I challenge you not to hum the theme tune!

Na-na-na! Naaaaa-naaaaaa! Na-na-na-na-na-na-na 

Two on One

This is post one of two today in a special SC&S double-header. The next post, looking at the new content CCP uploaded to the test server two days ago, will be along in an hour if I can find another one of these special rats!

It's Fiction Friday! Your initial escape pod is here to how the QCats achieve something a little bit special on Eve's 10th birthday!

Still here? Well this story is basically told from the perspective of the crew of one of the two ships that tried to take me down Wednesday evening.


Two on One

The two starships glided through the warp tunnel at speed. Whilst they were both frigate class hulls, they couldn't have looked much different. The first was Caldari. Blue-grey steel in hard lines gave the ship a 'boxy look'. That was the Caldari way, functional. With never having to content with atmospheric flight and therefore air resistance, there was no need for a sleek and aerodynamic look. Some even considered the Hookbill ugly.

Beside it was its exact opposite. Sleek lines on a rusty red hull with wings that curved to the front and ended in wicked points. The Guardian Angels pirate faction had engineered the Daredevil to look menacing, and had succeeded.

The two ships dropped out of warp by the massive stargate. After only a few seconds both vanished into artificial wormholes and reappeared light-years away in a different star system.

"Systems 100% XO. Jump successful!" replied a bridge officer on the bridge of the Hookbill.

The Executive Officer sat in the captains chair on the bridge for the simple fact the captain of this ship would never sit there, ever. The captain was a capsuleer and was suspended in his pod deep within the belly of the ship. With this brain and central nervous system hardwired into the ship he could perform faster and more accurate Capsuleer ships needed less crew and performed better thanks to the Jovian technology of the hydrostatic capsule.

"Noted. I see we have another capsuleer in system. A wanted pirate. I think our captain is scanning for him now."

The Hookbill and the Daredevil sat by the inbound stargate as the ship sensors swept the system narrowing down the position of the pirate.

-o0o-

"There! The egger got a hit on a 30 degree scan. I'll be the pirate is in that Federation complex."

Deep in the engineering bay an older man was pointing to a view-screen A younger technician stared as the old timer explained the subtlies of deep space scanning.

The noise in engineering grew as the warp core came on-line The two ships gently aligned to the beacon and slipped into warp.

"Of course this ain't going to be easy. We've got two frigates, but that pirate, he's in a Thrasher. A Matari destroyer, tough ship designed for taking down frigates."

The young technician continued to listen quietly and watch the view-screen They had switched to the camera drones and could see the two frigates drop out of warp by a massive acceleration gate. The huge structure dwarfed the frigates, arcs of blue electricity ran down the length of the gate.

"Now this is the tricky bit. The Empires tend to set up their military stations in low-sec in deadspace pockets. Bits of space where warp drive doesn't work. Something to do with the subspace field. Whatever, it stops you forming a warp bubble if the destination is anywhere inside the field. You can warp out, you just cannot warp in. This makes defence of the area easier. When we activate that old gate there, it'll grab us and accelerate us to near warp speeds and throw us into the deadspace pocket real deep. Problem is it aims all ships at a beacon and we'll stop two to three 'K' from that beacon. If the egger wants a fight, he'll be set up at optimal range."

The young tech nodded, not taking his eyes off the screen as he saw their Hookbill align towards the heart of the deadspace pocket. A loud hum resonated through the ship as the acceleration gate grabbed the small ship and flung it deep into space.

"Steady lad, now we find out whether our pod jockey had made the right choice going in first."

The Hookbill decelerated fast and the two engineers looked at the overview. The Gallente military outpost was there, protected by a lone destroyer. The pirate stood out on the overview, highlighted bright red due to his security status with CONCORD.

"Great news! He's 50km off and making range. He obviously got us both on scan and decided to move away. Now we have the advantage."

The Daredevil appeared moments behind the Hookbill and immediately took off in pursuit of the Thrasher.

"Now this is the dangerous part lad. See the tactical readout here and the speed readings. That Thrasher has a microwarpdrive fitted. He's going fast, but not as fast as that there Daredevil. He'll close the distance and get a warp scrambler on it and a stasis webifier. That'll slow him down, then we catch up for the kill!"

The young tech took it all in.

"But won't that Thrasher be able to take down the Daredevil before we get there?" he asked.

"Nah, this will be a piece of cake. You see that Thrasher will be armed with autocannons. Our Daredevil will orbit at max scram range and therefore outside the effective range of his AC's." replied the old man.

"How do you know he's fitted with autocannons?" replied the boy.

The old man smiled.

"Experience lad. Look at his speed, we know he's got a micro warp drive fitted. Generally MWD's are used on boats with close range weapons like AC's that need to get in at point-blank range. Secondly, MWD's need a lot of power as do artillary cannons. If he was packing both MWD and top-of-the-line arties he's struggle with powergrid. Look, our Daredevil nearly has him!"

The two watched the tactical read out and saw the Daredevil was only 20km from the Thrasher. They looked on as fire spat from the Thrasher and directly hit the Daredevil. The tactical outputs showed the volley had scratched the Daredevils shields. However it also showed the Thrasher also had engaged him with a warp disruptor.

"Well I'd be! He is artillery and long point fit, what a strange set up with that speed! I would...."

The old man was cut off as the Thrasher fired a second volley. This time the Daredevil was closer and in optimal range of the 250mm guns. The tactical readout on the Hookbill showed the volley took down all of the Daredevils shields and the armour was down to 50%.

"Well sheeeeet." the old man said rubbing his chin.

"What is it?"

"No need to worry lad. That Thrasher has hit the 'devil hard but look here" he pointed to the screen "The Daredevil is now 2 clicks from the Thrasher and has shut his own microwarpdrive off. See those mircowarpdrives give you a great speed boost but the electromagnetic output lights you up like a supernova. The enemy tracking systems can hit you much more accurately when you have your MWD runnin'. Now he's in close and has shut off the Thrashers own MWD with a scrambler and also webbed him so he'll be going under 100 metres per second. Our Daredevil can then orbit tight at speed, where those big-ass arties cannot track and wait for us to catch up."

The young tech nodded as if he agreed but had a strange confused look on his face as the Thrasher fired again. This time it missed the small frigate.

"What is it lad?"

"Well. I understand what you just said, but looking at the tac readings here, that Thrasher hasn't slowed that much."

The old timer looked back at the view-screen in disbelief. He kid was right. The Thrasher had slowed but was still going very fast. In fact it was going faster than the Daredevil. It didn't make sense. The Daredevil had him webbed and scrammed. That Thrasher should have been almost sat still with all that ewar on him.

"Oversized AB?" the kid asked.

"Hur?" the senior was confused.

"I've heard about some eggers fitting cruiser sized afterburners to their destroyers. Particularly the Coercer, but the rumours are the Thrasher works too. They need ancillary current routers to get it to work, but they do fit apparently."

The old timer nodded slowly. It never failed to amaze him how even after all these years the capsuleers could come up with something new like this.

"So what will the plan be?" the kid asked eagerly, enthused as he had contributed technically to the conversation. The old man looked solum.

"Well our friend in the Daredevil now has two choices. He can activate his MWD and try and burn out of range. Other option is to sit there whilst the Thrasher makes range."

"What would you do?" ask the kid.

"If he activates his MWD the signature increase will mean those guns will be able to track him. One more volley and that Daredevil is dead. On the other-hand the Thrasher is now pulling away from the Daredevil. In a few seconds the increased distance will put the Daredevil in optimal range of those guns. One more volley and that Daredevil is dead."

The young tech looked at his senior.

"You mean....?"

Both men sat in silence and watched the tactical readout as the distance between the two ships increased. The Thrashers 250mm 'scout' artilleries roared again and the Daredevil vanished in a bright explosion. The speed of the destroyer fluctuated suddenly. With the destruction of the Daredevil the stasis webifier that was slowing it down stopped and its speed started to increase. Then it dropped suddenly. The Thrasher had been moving away from the Hookbill during the engagement with the Daredevil, now it had turned to face them. It's speed started to increase again.

"Now what?" the young tech asked.

"Well there is 50km between us. Our capsuleer has a number of tactical options in this situation and needs to choose one quick before that Thrasher gets within 24 clicks and points us."

Engineering vibrated as the warpcore spun up.

"And thankfully our captain has chosen the same one as I would have done. Now, we run!"

The Squids are Back in Town!

First off I have entered my personal story of the Amamake PL Titan gank from last year on the Eve True Stories website. Go have a read!

 

Right, now onto the pew-pew!

 

Late last week we got intel that the squids (Caldari Militia) were planning on taking a number of systems including ours. This is not the first time we've got intel like this and its turned out to be nothing. But an increase in squid activity hinted this might be the real deal. The squid PoS being erected in Nisuwa was an even bigger hint.

 

 

After far too long could the squids actually stage a come back? It has been awfully quiet over the last month.

 

'ello 'ello! Yes, yes they could.

 

This weekend saw some intense fighting in Nisuwa.

 

Saturday saw a fleet of 20 squids plexing Nisuwa from before 08:00 Eve Time. The few QCats on tried to engage where possible but the superior numbers of the enemy resulted in loses. Soon the squids had tactical control of the space and were capturing the faction war plexs pretty much uncontested. Those of us online docked up and licked our wounds. I was still 'up' for the day in terms of kills/deaths but it was so close I'd had enough of being outnumbered and charging headfirst into the squids.

 

 

Then the US started to wake up.

 

Whilst still outnumbered, the QCats started fighting back. One thing in our favour is that the squids appeared to be using pre-fit cookie-cutter fleets. This is a common occurance when fleets are trying to capture a system. Usually someone sets up a POS in the target system and then stocks it with fitted frigates, destroyers and cruisers. This allows the fleet to reship appropriately for the novice, small and medium plex' respectively. Therefore the fits are generally cheap, throw-away and all the same.

 

Taking out the lone Griffin ECM frigate tended to disburse the plexing fleet rather quickly even when they still outnumbered us. Soon the QCats were pushing the squids out of the plex's. From a high of 7% contested, Nisuwa started dropping back down as the Gallente Militia captured more and more plex. The Caldari forces started to dwindle through repeated loses and soon we had numerical superiority. By 19:00 Eve Time Nisuwa was stable and the enemy had moved on leaving their POS.

 

 

Props to the Southern Renegades for bringing the fight and at one point locking down Nisuwa.

 

Once kicked out of Nisuwa, the squids plexed Kedama, nextdoor, to vulnerable. They decided to attack the iHub with a bomber fleet supported by both t1 attack and logistic cruisers. Oh and a lone Panther class Black Ops Battleship. At that time QCats were low on active pilots so we took some sniper Harpies and Comorants to try and pick off some bombers. The squids logistics pilots did a good job with only one bomber falling to the ranged sniper fire. I half expected some pilots to come at us, but they held fleet disiplin and stayed together. Boo! 

 

A revised plan was hatched to break the logistics and we returned to Nisuwa to get some different ships. Whilst reshipping to some harder hitting sniper ships and some ECM, a Gallente Militia fleet supported by Gentlemans Agreement hit the squid fleet and destroyed them.

 

On Sunday there was some limited plexing in Nisuwa by the squids, but they were unable to get it above 4% contested before we had the numbers to drive them out and plex it back down again.

 

By Monday things were back to normal with just the odd squid coming in to try and grab a plex or a fight. Since then, it has been fairly quiet in Nisuwa.

 

Saturday was my best day (I work Sundays) and I nearly racked up as many kills that day as I did for the whole month of April!

 

Now Heydilies has fallen to the squids, perhaps they make another attempt at Nisuwa.

She's a Perfect 10....

"...but she wears a 12. Honey save a little two for me."

One decade ago Eve Online went live! Wow, looked a bit different back then.....

In the same year as the game we all know and love was turned on and let loose, we also had....

• The Space Shuttle Columbia makes its last flight, burning up on re-entry.
• The first case of SARS is identified
• The Iraq War begins as allies invade.
• (Bloody cheerful so far isn't it!)
• The Human Genome is mapped.
• Concord made it's last commercial flight.
• Bob Hope and Johnny Cash died.

At the movies you may have seen....

• The original Pirates of the Caribbean
• LoTR - The Two Towers
• The Matrix Reloaded
• Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
• Finding Nemo

You might have been playing...

• Something you bought on Steam which was released in 2003!
• SimCity 4
• Splinter Cell
• Master of Orion III
• Galactic Civilisations
• Final Fantasy XI
• Planetside
• Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne
• Star Wars Galaxies!!!
• Knights of the Old Republic
• Homeworld 2
• Time Crisis 3
• Call of Duty
• Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
• Silent Hill 3

OK we all feeling really old now?

Best hope the servers come back up soon and we can enter a decade plus one day!

Winter 2013 - Into Jove Space?

CCP was massively vague about the plans for Eve post-Odyssey. I blame the POS plans from Fanfest 2012. After giving out so many details, ideas and plans CCP created expectations of awesomeness. Then with deciding not to do it, and the resultant player backlash, I think CCP have a new approach to discussing future Eve plans.

"Don't tell those ****ers ANYTHING!!!"

Whilst the DUST bunnies got lots of cool plans for their future (fighter craft, boarding Titans and stations, rogue drones, lots of new weapons, PvE etc), what did we get? Some vague idea's - colonisation, building stuff including stargates, doing things empires currently do. New space!

Now not sure this is a great idea to start with. Do we need any more space? Isn't our space diluted enough? Notwithstanding this, I have an idea how they might be planning to do this. Jove space!

The next section contains spoilers regarding the background and history so if you don't want to know or are reading Templar One now, go away now!

Still here? Right. First off in the last year and a bit CCP have STRONGLY hinted that the Jove are all dead. I mean dead-parrot dead. The entire race has died out from the Jovian Disease. So there is a lot of empty space and free systems in what remains of the Jovian Empire. The map below shows the extent of the Jovian Empire. There is plenty of space there currently cut off from the rest of Eve for us to play in!

But Drackarn, they are not free and empty, someone already lives there.... CCP! That's where GM's and Devs live and the alliance tournament is held there.

Yes but it would be really easy for them to relocate them to a newly created system(s). That wouldn't be a problem.

But Drackarn, what about all the Jove technology. It would unbalance the game.

It certainly would! First corp to get there and jump in 100 Eidolon battleships found parked up at an abandoned station would be an issue. However, the Jove are not stupid. For hundreds of years they've meddled in the development of the four Empires. So as their race was on their last legs they will have taken action. The Jove will have known that eventually one of the Empires will have found a way into their space so they have, for the last few years, been destroying and hiding their technology. We know they did this with the Terran wreckage near the site of the Eve Gate. Cloaking the ancient advanced technology to ensure one race does not get their hands on it to the detriment of the other races.

Stations may have been crashed into the atmosphere. Ships auto-piloted into suns. Cities been nuked from orbit (it is the only way to be sure). As the last of the Jove died, so did any evidence of their advanced civilisation. However there are some older forgotten sites left to be explored.

This could lead to new exploration and T3 production including the hinted T3 industrial with Orca-like bonuses (not sure if Fozzie was drunk or trolling us on the pub crawl). This works as basically the Jove are the Sleepers..... ish.

Mark726's Eve Lore Guide explains the relationship between the Jove and the Sleepers better than I could:-

The Sleepers were apparently once part of the Jove race. The Jove arrived in New Eden in two parts: most of the citizenry were frozen in cryogenic suspension and connected to each other in a computer program (yes, just like The Matrix); the rest stayed unfrozen, taking care of the ships and the frozen citizens (if any of the ships were named Zion I’m quitting). When the colony ships arrived, many chose to stay in their virtual reality construct, only coming into the real world when necessary. At some point, the Sleepers split off from the Jove, presumably because of their desire to largely stay within the construct. They settled in Ani, and eventually moved on to wormhole space (how they moved there, or why, is not revealed in the book). However, the Sleeper civilization itself is still alive, even if they rarely leave their virtual world. They survive in their VR construct to this day, their bodies kept in hibernation, and only very rarely come out of their hibernation to interact with the real world (real world in the game... you know what I mean).

So basically some 'low-tech' Jovian historical sites could be left to explore and reverse engineer. May be forgot and lost sites are still protected by Jove drones in deadspace pockets. This is pretty much the same as the Sleepers. Same race, almost same tech. Same reverse engineering. The systems are already in place to have some different normal space T3 production on a smaller scale perhaps. It would need to be different to Sleeper tech so wormholers are not shafted. Jovian T3 should be utterly different to Sleeper T3.

As well as T3 production who knows what else lies in Jove space. CCP could do a good job here of exploration and fighting over these new systems. New outposts, perhaps even new stations built by players?

What kind of rats would we find in Jove space? None? Rogue Jovian drones?

What asteroids and minerals could we find in Jove space?

Is there different moon-goo?

Is this where Ring Mining could be implemented?

What else could we discover in this previously unknown area of space?

Yes it is a long shot. Yes I'm taking a wild guess here. But thinking about the above. It might be doable?

Eve Online Fanfest 2013 - The Gallery

A selection of pictures from my week in Iceland. I can seriously recommend Iceland and Fanfest to all. Great week, just need another week to recover! Some of these I've already posted, others are ones that didn't feature in the context of a post. Thought I'd just throw up a selection to give those who didn't make an idea of Fanfest and a reminder of what a great time we had to those that did!