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Taking what is needed

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December 10, 2023

Karen and Abby were on a bit of downtime between Corporation builds . They had just heard word from Ekloke that the final Mackinaw had sold in 1DQ for a whopping 400million. That was grounds for a celebration! Later they would go to 1DQ to have a good night out.

For now the plans were already in motion for the next Corporation Project.

“More Macks!”

Just to finish were a few more Occators for the second build. They might also start a few personal projects on the side too. There was a few components short much to Karen’s exaporation. It always happened. You need a few chiral structures here and a few loads of enriched uranium there. But this time the build had been especially frustrating, just running out of items that needed a frantic call to Ekloke to fetch stuff from 1DQ. Not a lot, but enough to be frustrated. But the build was on its final legs when they got the good news from Ekloke.

Abby had been working on invention and managed to secure several Nighthawk BPC’s two were sold to corp mates and the rest held in case the corp wanted to go for the build. In the meantime they decided to pop out and grab some ice in 39P.

They brought two Endurances, the fit they had used down in low sec near Eldjaerin to get hold of heavy water. Eldjaerin seemed like a world away now. That was even before the FI.RE days. They had been half way across New Eden and back since then. Karen was happy settling in, working on the Dread builds had been a lot of fun, especially when she saw Mori’s face when he saw the contract. He had been training to fly the thing for months now.

The Endurance was perfect for some casual mining. It was a low cost easy to fly option. Quite hard to catch and whilst it did not maximise income it was relaxing to fly because it was cheap and easy to get away. They had both escaped several attempts to catch them in Tabbetzur and had managed to keep the fleets fuelled with heavy water. The cloaking device meant they could both warp to a safe spot and go to sleep if necessary. They could also scan down gas clouds, refit and go out whenever the opportunity arose.

If Karen was being honest there was very little point in the survey scanner, but then there wasn’t much else would fit on the hull anyway. She always brought extra Warrior II’s although Acolyte’s would be better in Delve.

They were out on the belt, casually mining with the local Brave Collective members. It has been quiet. A few incidents with Blood Raider locals. Local was busy. So much so that Karen had switched her local to small icons. Karen would have been very nervous normally but not today. This was just a bit of casual mining. It was a few hours in when a neutral appeared.

One of them edgy types that likes to sound all threatening. Karen warped her and Abby to a structure, pinging Local as well as the security channel. The ships eased into warp easily and nestled into tether on the nearby Fortizar. From their location they could watch local.

It wasn’t long until he left and the expedition could get started again. They would be leaving soon with enough harvested for the next builds. Time to find some ore and get back to mining. Sometimes it makes sense to just take what you need, let others get stressed about having it all!

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The Ashimmu Build.

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November 4, 2023

The Ashimmu Manifest was complete and in the hangar the next stage of the build was to start the intermediate composite reactions. Along with this there was a series of composite reactions to build. Most of this wouldn’t take very long and built didn’t look too complicated to her. The end result however was an interesting ship. A hybrid. The bonuses it had, depending on skills of course, were:

20% bonus to Stasis Webifier range

15% bonus to Energy Nosferatu and Energy Neutralizer drain amount

100% bonus to Medium Energy Turret damage

This would be a handy ship for ESS defence or on some of the home defence fleets.

She needed to get in place Carbon polymers, sulphuric acid, Oxy-organic solvents, carbon fibre, and thermosetting polymers. Most of this would only take a small part of the day. At the same time she could start pressurised oxidisers and the reinforced carbon fibre reactions. Again these would not take very long. Then there were the hypnagogic neural link enhancers, the ultradian cycling neuro link stabilisers, the sense-heuristic neuro link enhancers and finally goal-orienting neuro link stabilisers.

All of these materials were needed before the advanced components could be built. She looked at the blueprints most of the materials were self-explanatory, I mean most of these ships utilised carbon polymers and various solvents along with carbon fibre. What she found particularly interesting is the biochem materials in particular. Take the Hypnagogic Neurolink Enhancers these bad boys typically used by the Imperial Navy enabled the capsuleer to more quickly link to the ship systems. This is the stuff that makes the capsuleer godlike.

Looking at these builds it was incredible just how much they enhanced the pod pilot. Extending awareness to ship components, speeding up reactions and enabling the extensive use of multimodal processing. No wonder pod pilots outperformed conventional ships controlled only by a crew and single mode commands from a captain. By the time commands had relayed from a ships systems to a captain and then commands relayed back it would delay ship systems responses by minutes. A pod pilot could initiate the most important subroutines much more quickly. As a consequence crew were only needed for very peripheral maintenance, often referred to as passive jobs, and jobs that were not central to a ships core sub routines.

To build just one unit, and most ships needed dozens. You needed helium fuel blocks, lime mykoserocin along with malachite mykoserocin which was quite hard to locate. This is why someone like Ekloke was so useful. He had a network of agents running throughout New Eden able to locate anything that was required for one of her builds. Nothing could be built without spending a lot of time sourcing materials and moving them around. You could source everything yourself but that would take far too long, besides other pod pilots had specialised in the gathering, sourcing and trade of everything you needed. The time spent looking for stuff you were not well equipped to source would be wasted time.

Karen entered her pod, travelled through the station’s inner core and down to her Deep Space Transport Capernaum. She instructed the AI systems in the station to load the reaction materials into the fleet hangar and undocked. The reactions station was a short hop across the Goonswarms Economic Zone (GEZ). The ship entered warp smoothly and arrived within minutes. The materials were unloaded and she accessed the reaction formulas from the corporation hangar and set everything to build. The longest was going to be less than a day so she remained in place while the reactions completed. Picked up the newly composed materials and flew them over to where she could assemble them into advanced components. These included:

U-C Trigger Neurolink Conduit Blueprint x 4

G-O Trigger Neurolink Conduit Blueprint x 4

Auto-Integrity Preservation Seal Blueprint x 19

Life Support Backup Unit Blueprint x 10

Two days later and the final build was delivered to Xanden in 1DQ. It was a thing of beauty.

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The Ashimmu Manifest.

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October 28, 2023

Karen caught a shuttle across PS-94K to the Reactions structure to see what else was needed for the build. Looking at the manifest she pinged Abby that they needed:

10 Malachite Cytoserocin
10 Lime Cytoserocin
10 Vermillion Cytoserocin
24 Viral Agent
10 Azure Cytoserocin and some 24 Supertensile Plastics. She located a load of preservation seals in 1DQ as well and pinged them over to Abby on contract.

“Do you mind picking these up for me please?”

“Sure.” Pinged back the reply.

Abby got up from her desk, initiated Goonswarm security channels for Delve and initiated her SMT map overlay. The map sprung into life. All of the systems in delve were mapped out in two dimensions with links between each system where the gates were connected. She could see that there were plenty of alerts already for the time of day. She was heading to 1DQ which was only three jumps but still risky enough. This is why she was using her deep space transport ‘Othrunda’.

She went down to the bay where the ship is located and quickly checked that everything was okay. Once the checks were complete the ship slowly left the docking bay and exited the station. PS- 94K was fairly quiet in local. She aligned the ship to 39P checked the map alerts, everything seemed fine, nothing within 7 jumps. She hit warp.

The trick with a deep space transport, everyone knows, is to align and cloak simultaneously whilst waiting for the ship to gather speed from the Microwarpdrive pulse. In this instance Abby aligned to the anti-Plex that connected 39P to MO-G and hit warp just as the micro warp drive cycle was about to finish. The ship hit warp immediately just as it de-cloaked. Learning this had been a fundamental skill for living in 0.0 space. This and the combination of intel along with the SMT tool reduced the risk of running into gate camps significantly. It wasn’t completely safe but the risk was greatly reduced. Using this method Abby was able to get to 1DQ with relative ease.

Everything in 1DQ seemed to go well until it became obvious that the market was out of Vermillion Cytoserocin and Azure Cytoserocin. Such is the way. Abby settled in to wait at the station, she was going to be here for some time. She pinged Ekloke.

“1DQ out of Vermillion and Azure Cytoserocin, could be an opportunity for you?”

As she was heading towards a favourite restaurant in the keep star she received a ping back.

“Okay let me get in touch with my associate, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.” Such is the way.

Builds always require time. The golden rule of building ships is never to be in a hurry. If you hurry you can lose billions of ISK. You will not do the necessary scouting, or you will undock at a hub with too much cargo and get ganked. Never rush! This was a relatively easy acquisition, in the past the team had to face all sorts of difficulties just to build a few mining barges in 0.0. They were yet to lose anything significant but it had not been easy. There were times when the blockade runners had almost been destroyed.

Ekloke looked at the market data coming out of high sec. The market in Domain was not much more expensive than The Forge for both those gasses he pinged ‘The Associate’.

“Pick us up Vermillion and Azure Cytoserocin from Domain if you could please. I will rendezvous at the usual location.” He sent through an order for some further items and got up from his desk. He needed to go on a short trip. He boarded ‘Orlana’ in the dock, did a quick systems check and undocked. He opened up then map and initiated his SMT overlay. Then he initialised each of the relevant security channels. He set the ship to align to the out gate and watched the channels and the map for any activity. Once he was sure he had as clear a path as he could expect he hit warp and was gone.

In high sec The Associate was already on the way to their destination. This was going to be a quick job for their friend. New Eden works like this. Most of the economy operates on a patronage system. Capsuleer’s trade ships for favours and frequently provide material to each other for free in the understanding that the favour will be repaired at a later date. Ekloke had provided The Associate with the use of a very expensive ship and in exchange they were available for him whenever he called. They went to the trade hub, scooped up the gas for a reasonable price and headed to the rendezvous point.

Meanwhile Ekloke was leaving Delve on his way to high sec. as he travelled the security channels buzzed in the map led up around him. There were no neutrals in local and nothing seemed to get in his way as he travelled. It did not take very long to get to the rendezvous point. When he arrived in the station he settled in to the local coffee shop waiting for The Associate to arrive.

He had an excellent view outside of the station and watched as her blockade runner uncloaked at the docking point before she docked. He waited for the associate to come to the coffee room. She smiled cheerfully.

“Hey! How have you been?”

“Good!” He smiled. “Trade is good, and we are much more secure than Immensea.”

“That’s good.” She had been helping supply the team in their efforts to resupply the FI.RE coalition and that had been a tough ask. Getting stuff in and out of that area of null was a logistical nightmare. This was however a piece of cake.

“How have you been?”

“I’m good, high sec remains as crazy as ever. There is a lot of activity on the pipe right now.” The Associate operated a very patient approach to trade between Jita and Amarr. Takeing the back routes, avoiding Gankers and making ISK in the process. Ekloke had operated the same route before moving to Null. “I have paused trading. You know how it is these Gankers eventually get bored, you just have to be patient and give them no ‘content’.”

He smiled. Ekloke had prided himself in always being able to deliver courier contracts on time as well as having never lost a Freighter. Mostly because he was careful, very methodical. The Associate had adopted a similar approach and together they now had a trade route that extended from Period Basis to Jita. These Journey’s were, of course organised around their ‘couplings’. They liked to enjoy each other as much as the ISK from the trade. They left the coffee shop arm in arm and went to The Associate’s quarters for some fun.

———

The journey back had been uneventful until Ekloke got into YQX-7U when his local channels suddenly lit up with war targets and neutrals. He immediately checked his surroundings. He had come through an ‘AnsiPlex gate’, he could see on scan warp disruptor bubbles. He knew instinctively to avoid warping to his out gate. Instead, he scanned towards the nearest station and immediately hit warp in that direction whilst cloaking ‘Orlana’ there was no time for the Sabre he could see towards his out gate to react. He landed a hundred off the station fully cloaked and immediately warped towards the out gate at 70 km. At this point he changed the direction of the cloaked ship and started to keep eyes on the gate.

He reported to the Intel channels what he could see, in turn setting the map alight with reports of different ships jumping in and out hunting his allies. The intel was crucial, it allowed his allies to form a response fleet and for those travelling to avoid the area. He sat in space for over an hour reporting the movements of the enemy. This is why you never rush in New Eden. The buzzed through to Abby. “Could you pop along to YQX-7U and scout me home please?”

“On my way.”

Jumping through gate blind was always one way can get your heart racing but when you have a deadline to meet and some important cargo it is better to take your time and be sure that you can make it. There is no point feeding the sharks that like to circle looking for easy kills. Any ecosystem has it’s bottom feeders, and gate campers are just that.

It wasn’t long before Abby came through the gate in her shuttle. “It’s clear, don’t waste your time there is probably a cloaked Sabre on the other side. There are definitely two enemies and local and a further three neutrals. Proceed with caution.”

Ekloke was already aligned, he hit warp and ‘Orlana’ took off at warp speed. The ship landed and initiated the jump smoothly. Before long he was on the other side without waiting for any reaction he immediately hit warp to a station in a random direction away from the gate. He cloaked ‘Orlana’ at the same time and was warping within 3.5 seconds. Behind him a Sabre uncloaked and bubbled the gate. But they were both too late and the bubble was in the wrong place.

“I’m through.” Ekloke said calmly as ‘Orlana’ warped off to the station.

Meanwhile, in YQX-7U, Abby was returning to the gate she jumped through in the shuttle. The bubble was quite poorly placed, and on the gate was Don Hubba and the Sabre pilot W1star were at the gate. The shuttle was gone before they could react. Both Abby and Ekloke jumped through the AnsiPlex gate into one 1DQ. They delivered the package so the build could continue.

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The Ashimmu.

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October 14, 2023

Mori was sitting across the table from Karen. He hadn’t seen her for at least three months since his deployment to D06. She looked stressed, then almost always she looked stressed.

“How have you been?”

“Okay, suppose.” She was looking down at her hands.

He didn’t like it when she was like this. Introverted, perplexed, it always meant she was thinking too much.

“How are you finding Pegasus?”

“It’s great.” She looked up at him and smiled. They had moved into a new Fortizar set down by the corp their new home since the eviction from Immensea. Even stranger perhaps, was the fact they were now in Goonswarm Federation. The very group who had attacked them when they first moved out To Immensea. Such is the way in capsuleer culture, alliances were fickle and sometimes associations very short lived. Mori had found himself once more on the front lines of an alliance. Only this time he had moved into logistics operations. Karen’s pacifist tendencies must be having some influence.

“What have you been up to?”

“Oh this and that. We built a load of mining ships for the alliance market in 1DQ. Those sold really well. The market is much more heavily regulated out here, if I’m honest it is much better looked after than it was in Immensea. We’ve also built three dreadnoughts for members of the Corporation and a further two we’ve been trying to sell on the market. Building dreadnoughts was a bit of a mission.” She smiled her eyes brightening up.

“How do you mean?”

“Well the materials are hard to come by. We’ve had to source gas from all over new Eden. It needed lots of planetary materials and loads of minerals from high security space. It took months to source everything and assemble it.”

He’d been aware that she had been working with Ekloke and Abby on this. But he wasn’t quite sure what it all involved. He didn’t really have the attention span for this kind of operation.

“If I told you that a wetware mainframe essential to the building of a Phoenix that probably wouldn’t surprise you. What might surprise you is that part of the materials come from livestock. Don’t you think thats odd?”

He laughed. “That is a bit weird what on earth does livestock add to a wetware mainframe?”

“Ekloke tells me they are essential for producing biotech research reports. That some construction blocks and nanites are all added together somehow in a production facility and we end up with these biotech research reports. I can’t quite understand it. It’s either some sort of strange trade he’s involved in, you know how he is? Or there is some weird thing going on in that facility in PS-94K.” She looked across the bar and glanced up at the monitor screen playing back advertisements on Quafe. “Anyway did you bring the BPC?”

“Yes I have it here.” He handed the package across the table. Then rested back in his seat drinking from his cocktail.

She looked excited in that childish kind of way that she did when she first started building cruisers for the corporation over in Immensea. “So we finally get to look at a Tech three BPC!” She glanced through the materials and smiled. “This is fairly straightforward we have most of this already I’m pretty sure I could build this within a few days.”

“It’s an interesting hybrid ship isn’t it?”

“Yeah, stasis webifier range looks very useful along with those energy drains and neutraliser’s.” You gonna build this for the corp mate we talked about aren’t you?”

“Xanden?”

“Yeah.”

“Of course it is his blueprint and up to him whether he wants to use the ship are not.” It should be fun to see this being produced. I haven’t built anything for a while I spent most of my time preparing the Rorqual for krabbing.”

“Oh really? So you’re becoming less pacifist?”

“Those blood raiders owe me a ship, and it seems like an honourable thing to do for the alliance.” She looked at him intently.

“Yeah, they’ve been good to us since the eviction.” Mori had been impressed with the Goonswarm Federation. Their organisation was astounding was so much happening in their space it took them months to figure out where to make their contribution. They were always constantly at war and there was plenty to do. The downside of this was he saw a lot less of Karen, Abby and Ekloke.

“They certainly have, I’ve learned so much about shipbuilding in such a short time that I can barely remember what we were trying to do in Immensea. Such is the way.”

“Yeah, I’ve learned a lot to about how the null blocs operate.” Mori was deployed in DO6 to support Brave Collective and what was left of their old alliance the FiRE Coalition. The Goonswarm Federation had offered them safe passage through their space. Cosmos Collective had been recruited alongside this operation into Goonswarm Federation. This move had been a very wise decision by the CEO Dan Dingle and leadership. It had given the corporation some breathing room after the constant wars.

“Yeah same here. I still think the whole idea of content and having to be at war is a bit juvenile. Such is the way.”

“Don’t be silly, everything will be so boring otherwise. Besides you can’t just let these bullies push everyone around. I’m glad we are fighting to defend free space, even if it is in the name of a large power bloc.”

“Whatever.” She looked sideways, bored.

“Okay so how does the manifest look?”

“I’m going to have to pop to 1DQ to pick up some of these materials. I definitely have the auto- integrity preservation sales and I think I have some of those life-support backup unit somewhere. The rest I can build quite quickly.” She started to get up.

“What are you up to later?” He asked hopefully.

“I expect I will be in one 1DQ if you want to join me?”

“That would be nice and pop along after the Corp operation.” He smiled as he got up and left the table.And

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Pliction – an explanation

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February 10, 2022

What does the term ‘pliction’ refer to?

Pliction is the narration of a player’s experience in a game in the form of a story. It differs from fiction in that fiction is more or less story telling for the pure joy of story telling, usually around non-real events and designed to fill out a world or perspective on the world. Fiction is the picture from the inside. Pliction on the other hand fiction focused on the interaction between social worlds. The internal world of the game and the player experience.

Now of course fiction can be based on real events but often the intention is to more or less change facts and adjust these to build a great story focused on a fantasy world or series of events based in the real world. Pliction contrasts with this kind of storytelling because it is much more realist. It is a way of directly exploring the content and meaning of one’s own interaction with the medium of the game. It is designed to take one’s own experience and turn it into a narrative and ‘ground’ this experience in the game as a game. Pliction therefore crosses mixes creative writing with the game content and the player experience. It is effectively a form of autoethnography with added creative writing.

What does this mean? Autoethnography is effectively the use of one’s own experience to critically explore aspects of daily life and experience. You write from your own point of view and critically evaluate it that experience from various different perspectives. For example, you can write about free swimming or jazz music from your own experience as someone who takes part in these social worlds. What is a social world?

A social world is described as a unit of social organisation that is meaningfully important for those who interact in it. It is composed of the things they say, the activities they engage in as well as the technologies and routines they become involved with (1). As a concept it covers the social arrangements that are studied by symbolic interactionists – effectively social organisations that are not formal bureaucracies but which we can discern fairly easily by looking at everyday life. Eve is one such social world. Dog walking is another, as is cycling and running. All of these are effectively social worlds.

Pliction is basically turning your interaction with the social world into a story, engaging with your in game experiences through creative writing. It gives you time to reflect on what the game is about, how it works and most of all what its key dynamics are. In my last few posts, for example, I was able to reflect on my experience as an old player returning to the game after 9 years away. You can see I noticed through the writing that there is an awful lot of ‘mansplaining’ in Eve. I only noticed that when narrating the interaction between Karen and Moriarity, I didn’t intend that really to happen. It just did and it seemed appropriate at the time.

I didn’t intend initially to do pliction when I started this blog, the blog is after all a bit of fun. But I do think it is working to help me see something new about the game I did not anticipate when I had started at first. I don’t even think pliction as an idea is that new either. I have played MMO’s since they first hit the universe (Dark Age of Camelot, World of Warcraft and many many others). There has been plenty of this this kind of narration before. But sometimes it is better to give something a name. Then people will know what you are about eh! I remember lots of fictional stories based on gameplay in Dark Age of Camelot and World of Warcraft (though I never quite got into the story of the latter). I think many of the roleplaying fraternity are very familiar with this kind of thing. But I am not entirely sure they really care about the idea as a form of social criticism or exploration.

Let’s see where it leads.

References

(1) Unruh, D. 1979. Characteristics and Types of Participation in Social Worlds. Symbolic Interaction, 2, 115-130.

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Adapting to the ‘New Order’

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January 23, 2022

I am going to have a look at what changed in Eve to see if I can piece together some history around why mining became so misaligned by a section of the player base. Although to be fair, I know before I start, in many respects that question is already wrong. You should be wary of any assumptions (or prejudices) you have before you start concocting a wrong headed questions and answers. 

A lot of MMO players struggle with Eve Online because it strikes them as terrifyingly ‘open ended’. Nothing is obvious to a new player when you start playing. The game gives very few hints. Up until relatively recently CCP has not really helped new players that much. This has been left up to the community . Whilst there is an incredibly dedicated community in Eve they certainly have had their work cut out for them. Thankfully this has now changed dramatically with CCPs recent updates. The game is now much more new player friendly than it has ever been.   

My first challenge was to skill Karen into a proper tank and to develop some decent drone skills. I knew this was probably going to take a while but as long as I stayed alert I would probably be able to survive long enough to have something that was going to make a solo Ganker think twice. I also aimed to be able to stop NPCs from being any kind of threat. This is what it means to go down the rabbit hole of Eve. You start with a problem or even a positive goal, set out your plan to get to your goal and off you go.

This is an eve fit It covers the modules required for a Tanky Retriever. High Power 2 x Modulated Strip Miner II Medium Power 1 x Small Shield Extender II 1 x Explosive Shield Hardener II Low Power 1 x Damage Control II 1 x Reinforced Bulkheads II 1 x Mining Laser Upgrade II Rig Slot 3 x Medium Transverse Bulkhead II Drones 5x Acolyte I
Tanky Retriever Fit.

I wasn’t expecting this part of the game to become such fun!  CCP had completely revamped ship builds with a new in game fitting management tool whilst I had been away. And like Wow! To the right of this text (hopefully) is the build I was aiming for. This can be assembled in game and you can see where your skills are lacking, you can adjust your fit with relevant modules and tweak a fit to your own style of play. You can see that the goal for me was to get a better shield. I knew from playing on Mori that the damage ‘type’ the Non-Player Characters (NPC’s) pump out is important. From the Eve University Wiki I could see that The Angel Cartel Pump out 60% Explosive Damage, so Explosive Resists would be handy, I also added a Damage Control II as well as Reinforced Bulk Heads for added tank. Again Eve University have this covered in a beautifully written page on Tanking.

By the time I had all of the skills into the training queue it was going to be around two full weeks whilst Karen skilled into these modules. Also notice how I only had Acolyte I Drones which only deal 20 EM HP damage – this is of course the wrong type of damage for Angel Cartel rats.  Again showing just how complex the game can be.  I would later need to reskill into Valkyrie II drones after finding this important fact out! Once again you can look at the Eve University Wiki page on Drones for more information. But as always this is the game. It is about problem solving, setting goals and cracking on with doing what you need to do.

The problem though is that I was vulnerable and very aware that this was the case. It was back to some skills I had learned when playing Mori in Low Sec, a really handy tip I learned from an EZStreet member and of course scouting out Gankers from Zkillboard’s Ganked page.

DScan is your friend!

The simplest solution to having no tank is to watch local very closely and just not be there when Gankers appear. This was going to be a bit of an inconvenience but really it wasn’t that big an issue.  I would later learn that this routine is essential to be able to effectively play other parts of the game and it really is so basic it should be developed by everyone.  I got into the habit of watching local, when the number changed I would right click and look at who had arrived.  Characters with a minus security rating, new characters and anyone with mediocre ratings deserved special attention. I would often also look up characters on Zkillboard to see if they were into ganking. I was especially careful when any kind of destroyer came onto DScan especially at low range. I found myself developing a habit of warping at the first sign of anything untoward. I would also just log off for the day if the system looked suspicious or sometimes roll over to Moriarity if I felt like PvP.

Control + A on Local Chat

A second really handy tip was to left click on any character in local chat and hit <Control + A>. This has the effect of highlighting all characters currently in the system.  Anyone new to the system is not highlighted and can be checked out fairly quickly.  These were simple methods I developed over the next week to stay safe. As time went on I was starting to enjoy mining more than running around in factional warfare. This became especially true as the time I spent with Karen in COSMOS developed. This was especially the case when I was introduced to the all ‘new’ moon mining by COSMOS CEO Dan Dingle.

On these ops we would often find ourselves in systems that were at a cross-roads, by this I mean these systems were ‘on the way’ to somewhere. Local was constantly changing and it could get very stressful to figure out who was new to the system. Hitting Control-A and highlighting who I knew was there made it much easier to see who was new. I could use one character to highlight all and another to check the security status of those coming through and D-Scan for new ships.

COSMOS CEO Dan Dingle

Warning signs on D-Scan included any Catalysts or Thrshers. In fact post Gank if I saw any of these in local I would just dock up. My best defence was not to be there when the gankers arrived. Certainly until I had the right skills and ship fit. The interesting thing is that over the next few weeks I got this so well practiced that I became a little complacent.

During one of our ops someone appeared in local annoced themselves as our ‘Ganker for this evening’. I docked immediately and waited, but then they left local. We got back to mining. It was a corp op and we were enjoying chat on vopice comms and before we knew it the ganker was on grid shooting. I panicked thinking quick quick. Found it difficult to get all of the drones in on time and the ore over to Karen’s hold. Honestly if they had landed beside me I was definitely going to lose my ship. Too slow! Too Slow!

There were just no guarantees really other than staying completely alert. This was before CCP decided to update mining of course!

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The first days in COSMOS

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January 7, 2022

I joined COSMOS with Karen Sokarad two days after the gank in Alakgur. The day after the gank by Gay Pride Boooom a second Gank attempt happened. I received the recruitment email almost right after this second Gank attempt. It wasn’t long until I was in a recruitment channel with Karen chatting to Chase Smackem about the corporation. The first thing he said to me in chat was that they were a mature bunch of players and real life comes first. This was a fundamental condition for me as I can get overloaded in real life with work. The last thing I need is a game starting to feel like a job!

The image is of the left half of a male face. His right eye has a monocle.
Chase Smackem, COSMOS Collective.

In all honesty I was looking for more from the game and COSMOS had a really nice infrastructure to get into. At this stage I wasn’t 100% sure I would extend my subs and was thinking I might not actually keep playing the game, ganking seemed to mean that it the game wasn’t going to be played that casually and there was a lot of hostility on the forums to miners. But Eve is a Sandbox and my sense was that it was worth trying COSMOS out. Chase did say they were in a relatively quiet part space and that ganking rarely happened. I thought “What the hell! What could possibly go wrong?”

I think it was practically within 12 hours that I had moved Karen to Eldjaerin the home of COSMOS. The whole thing was very complicated to my brain at the time. The chat logs show that I had no idea about Player Owned Structures in empire and so it took me a while to figure out where the Athanor was located. But once that was sorted I was up and running. I immediately got back out in a new Retriever and started mining. I still had little or no idea about the way different mining ships had changed, no idea that CCP had adjusted the roles and even less of an idea about the variations in tanking ability. Even worse – I knew nothing about other changes CCP had made to the game. The most important of these was the generation of new PVE content and the Forward Operating Base in particular.

The image displays the tall elongated structure of a Blood Raiders Forward Operating base. It has a rustic look and sit forlorn against the background of space.
Forward Operating Base.

I was merrily mining away and blogging on this site when some rats appeared. It took Karen a while to pop them – she basically had zero tanking ability and her drone skills were poor. Like anyone playing eve as a miner I had sacrificed tank and defence over mining yield. After all that is why she was there – to make ISK as reliably as possible!

So anyway I popped a few belt rats and unbeknownst to me a Blood Raider Forward Operating base had appeared in local. I wasn’t using D-Scan (I was mining after all!) just playing the game on one screen and writing on the other. Within a few minutes of killing the belt rats a load of NPC ships appeared, webbed scrambled and Ganked the Retriever. You can see some of my surprise at this in the following chat log from back then.

> Cannot believe that – a second retriever lost in two days – this time to some weird NPC Gank squad. I think I need a proper tank for this ship.
> Is there a FOB in system?
> What is that?
> Forward operating base for npc,s. sends out tougher npcs than u normally get
> Ahhh there is one at distance…. I think….. heading back now. It was brutal – webbed scrambled and basically killed really quickly. …..Ahh well you live and learn 🙂
> We try.
> Yeh, I wouldn’t mine if theres a FOB in system u will die all the time.
> Yeah – will move system – does it depop or does it have to be killed?
> Needs to be killed I think.
> OK thanks for the info 🙂

It’s weird isn’t it – Even the NPCs hate miners! Basically this was a second shock to the system in two days and the effect it had was quite profound. I started having a chat in Corp about this ‘new’ problem and it was apparent that this was by design. In other words it is what CCP wanted, I just had missed the memo!

> Rats are getting more deadly in Erl. was one that had 57,000 bounty that was taking out my Mining Drone II’s. Good thing I was watching or may have lost them and my Retriever.
Karen Sokarad > I was ganked in Eld earlier by Blood Raiders. Skilling up for a proper tank now. Does anyone have a decent tank fit for a Retriever?
> Not sure you can have a Retriever tanked much. Procurer is much better tank but less ore hold.
Karen Sokarad > I can’t seem to get much on with the CPU. Only small modules.
> Desk11 is mine. not much of a tank. I always watch when mining with this. Only afk when absolutely need to.
> https://www.eveworkbench.com/fitting/search?q= can search on there.
Karen Sokarad > ty
> welcome
Karen Sokarad > Tanky Retriever. Karen Sokarad …Really an anti solo gank but hey
> Not bad
Karen Sokarad > The lack of a scanner can be a bit of a pain but I do think the security is an improvement on where I am right now (Smiles).
> Yeah….. Scanner is nice when your using mining crystals so you don’t waste them on small rocks.
Karen Sokarad > Definitely.
> Speaking of scanner, I think I will go and get Survey Scanner II this one later.
Karen Sokarad > Very handy I bought the wrong one when I replaced this ship earlier (face palm moment) 🙂

If anything this conversation demonstrated the importance of getting into a Corporation in Eve, finding people who can help. But most of all it demonstrated to me at the time that I really should not be getting frustrated at losing ships. I still had a decent amount of ISK available and whilst losing two Retrievers was a blow, it was not the end of the world. The point of Eve is that it is as much about the Journey you are on than anything else. It is not about ‘winning the game’. The whole point of this blog from the outset was to write about that Journey.

The initial days in COSMOS were a revelation, there was so much I had forgotten and even more I had to learn. The game had changed beyond recognition. It was more complicated, yes. But so many changes made it so much more fun. I will come to those in future posts. After all I was still playing with Moriarity in factional warfare. But right now I started to enjoy the challenge in front of me – I had been mining and not realising that the ship was extremely vulnerable. Now both Gay Pride Boooom and CCP had taught me a lesson. Even an industrial character needed some means for self defence and really ought to be paying attention to they were doing or more losses would follow.

So, first things first. I needed to do a few things. Pay more attention in local whilst using D-Scan for mining. I also needed to drop that survey scanner if I was going to be using the Retriever, either that or get a Procurer with it’s tiny cargo hold. You can imagine that the latter wasn’t really an option for me, I prefer to stay on the belt for as long as possible and hate too much ‘piddling around’ unloading. It is just a choice I made at the time. One thing I resolved, was that I wasn’t going to lose another ship anytime soon. So I started training towards a better tank on Karen.

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The question of an alt

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December 13, 2021

Up to now I had spent a lot of time on my main character playing in low security space learning a lot about PvP and doing what I could to survive. But that style of playing Eve is very demanding. You need to be fully alert and focused 100% of the time and lets be honest. There are times when low sec can be very quiet with not a lot happening. I found myself wandering around some evenings seeing nothing and certainly not being able to engage in a lot of fights because I just did not have the tools at hand to do so.  I started Sisters of Eve missions in low sec which was fun and helped make a little bit of ISK on the side and living out of one ship eventually became my focus.  I could not afford to throw ships away too much and whilst I could make enough ISK to stay afloat I had to be careful. Eventually I began to think about starting an ALT.

Now when I am talking about an ALT we are not talking about something that was going to make the game a job. I have always felt that far too many people play Eve like it is a second job. I wanted to start and ALT and play the game in a very different way.  Something that was almost the diagrammatical opposite of what I was used to playing. So I started a mining ALT.

Just to clarify, this ALT was started back in 2012. Back then mining was just as legitimate as any other profession in Eve. Since then, in my time away from the game, something has changed.  I had no idea mining would become something that was hated by a section of the player base. I still have no idea why this happened but back then I just wanted to experience another aspect of the ‘sandbox’ that is Eve.

Since that time a small but very vocal section of the player base, seems to have grown to really dislike mining. Although I am not entirely sure that is even true. But nonetheless if you like to read a lot like me then you would be forgiven, if you follow the forum hype alongside some of the stuff that you see on the internet (You Tube etc.). Reading all of that stuff you might be forgiven for thinking that mining is at the bottom of some sort of food chain. That it should be discouraged at all costs.

KarenSo I rolled another Minmatar character of the name Karen Sokarad and started training mining barges with a major focus on lasers and eventually crystals. First up at that time the big choice was choosing a barge that suited my style of play.  I was working on this blog and so I wanted something I could play on one screen whilst composing my posts. The obvious choice at the time was the Retriever with the larger ore hold. I did not want to have to do fiddly stuff with a hauler. Don’t forget Moriarity was in low sec and to be frank I needed downtime from worrying about always paying attention to the game.

I settled on skilling into a Retriever and found a home called Alakgur which is where I started mining. Back then everything was simpler, you could skill into a Barge like the Retriever relatively easily. Within a few days I would be out on the belts mining, blogging and reading about eve. The eventual changes to mining barges were released and I thought this was a great change to the game. Allowing more choice as well as freedom. This was before I decided to quit Eve because of real life. orefrigate6

It was when I got back – everything had changed. Miners seemed to be some sort of hated figure for sections of the player base. Something to be frowned at and looked down on. I had no idea what exactly had happened. That could be a good topic for another post maybe.

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Where to Restart?

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May 30, 2021

So I was off out into New Eden. Where was the best place to start? I thought I might as well go back to low sec. I still had a small bounty on my head because of that over excited ‘podding’ all of those years ago. I headed back through Ammamake in my ‘Susan Black’s Thrasher’. I had that rush that you get when you anticipate a gate camp. But when I landed it was quiet. Eerily quiet. I had not really seen it this quiet before. After this I zipped about in low sec for about half an hour. Still not sure exactly how everything worked but growing back into the game. I noticed a lot of Tribal Liberation around.

“Good Factional Warfare is still going strong.”

It dawned on me the best way forward was to go back to Rens and sign up. I zipped back through low sec into Rens and re-joined the TLF. This brought me back into several chat channels all flashing from time to time with various stuff. OK this is good I have interaction again. For the first time in years I had other players to interact with. A few hours alter and I was back to figuring out how the faction warfare was running. Amarr were pushing hard at the moment and there was plenty to do.

I spent time looking at the fit I had setup 9 years previously. It seemed to work OK and so well. ‘What the hell. What could possibly go wrong right?”

The fit is as follows:

[Thrasher, Moriarity Kanenald’s Thrasher]
Gyrostabilizer II
Reactor Control Unit II

5MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive
J5 Enduring Warp Disruptor
Medium Shield Extender II

250mm Light Artillery Cannon II,Republic Fleet EMP S
250mm Light Artillery Cannon II,Republic Fleet EMP S
250mm Light Artillery Cannon II,Republic Fleet EMP S
250mm Light Artillery Cannon II,Republic Fleet EMP S
250mm Light Artillery Cannon II,Republic Fleet EMP S
250mm Light Artillery Cannon II,Republic Fleet EMP S
250mm Light Artillery Cannon II,Republic Fleet EMP S

Small Auxiliary Thrusters I
Small Core Defense Field Extender I
Small EM Shield Reinforcer I

It had served me well in the final days of my previous stint in eve so it was a case of ‘hey ho!’ I headed back to low sec. The whole thing so unfamiliar to me. Warping through system after system. Then I remembered about plexes and that is where the action might be. It took me around 30mins to locate the directional scanner and another 15 to get it working. I went into Floseswin warped to the Small Outpost and as I was sitting on the gate a Worm landed. Within seconds I was tangled up in the gate, trying to align out, no stuck on the gate quite literally rolling along voer the top of it like some sort of lost slug. By now my shields had gone and I was deep into armour I started to load some ammo and boom! Gone.

“GF” in Local.

“Yeah, right.”

I was right back into eve and as it had been doing previously it was handing me a new one!

https://zkillboard.com/kill/92667842/

I only wish I could have fired back at least! I was going to need a bit of support to relearn the game – otherwise this wasn’t going to go so well!

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The Evolution of Eve Online

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May 28, 2021

Coming back to Eve has been a good decision. The game has evolved to the point where it is now a pleasure to play. Gone are all of the old gripes I had about the game and there have been a host of developments that really just make this such a nice game to play for new people.

The first thing I noticed when logging in was this mad busy ‘The Agency’ Screen listing a whole range of things to do from Agents and Missions, Encounters (New!), Exploration, Resource harvesting, Fleet up and a help section (this virtually did not exist before). Its got stuff I knew about and a load of new stuff I knew absolutely nothing about. Immediately it was just a sense that things were so much better than before.

This is the image of the Agency showing each of the features including Agents and Missions, Encounters (New!), Exploration, Resource harvesting, Fleet up and a help section.

You click on the encounters section and ping there is sitting in front of you a whole range of things to do. The Encounters tab opens to Show the various kinds of agents and encounters you might want to do. Click on Mission agents and you are taken to a really straight forward screen where all of the types of mission are sitting waiting to be completed (Security, Distribution, Mining, R&D and Locator Agents).

This image summarises the various missions one can do from Agents through to Epic Arcs, Storyline agents and Career Agents.

Encounters Opens up a new window that includes the Stargate Trailblazers, Incursions, Faction Warfare, Pirate Strongholds and Abyssal Deadspace. I had no idea what half of these were. Mori was sitting in Rens in a Thrasher along with his negative sec status. I couldn’t remember what that meant. I could not locate how to fit the ship and I had no idea what stuff was worth anymore! But it felt good to be back. The last nine years I have tinkered with a few MMO’s but mostly just played solo offline games. All of which has been great – but I have really missed the interaction that comes with a great MMO and Eve Online is a truly great MMO.

Sure I have kept up with the history. I knew there had been a few great wars along with the game hitting global news from time to time over the last nine years. I had missed it and it was good to be back – even if I had no idea how anything worked anymore. The first thing I did was undock to have a look around. Rens was how I had remembered it. Busy with ships coming and going. The usual local spam but for stuff that made no sense to me anymore. My “Susan Black’s Thrasher” drifted along for a bit. I got excited but stuck “How do I fly this thing?”

I double clicked. OK good the ship responded. Flew around the station and then OK how to I go to a gate? I docked up, looked on YouTube and before I knew it I was able to hit the gate jump through and poof I was gone. Back into New Eden.

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