An Effing Moron

I'm not going to say I did not see this coming. I accepted it as a possibility. I just thought he'd be smarter about it.

Larkonis Trassler resigned from the CSM because he was doing insider trading with his main. What in the world was he thinking? I can understand when politicians in real life get caught doing dumb things, they don't have the ability to create anonymous alts, or funnel money properly(you know, most of the time).

Would if have been so difficult to go to a trusted, but not especially close friend through out of game communication and let him/her do it for you? Then go play some EVE poker and just have 'em "lose" your share of the money to you. This is off the top of my head you FUCKING MORON. Did you somehow not think they were not watching you? Honestly? Seriously?

Still, this transcends ingame theft and moves into a betrayal of trust. Those that voted for you trusted that you'd remain in office for your entire term, which you would have done had you not been a fucking moron. CCP trusted you with knowledge and asked for your input to improve the game. You took that and turned it into cash. That is not why I voted for you.

I trusted you, you fucking moron.

I know I'm a bit late on this, I haven't really been following the whole CSM thing cause the guy I voted in got elected. I figured he could handle things well enough without me watching him. Turns out he was a fucking moron.

EVE Blog Banter #12: I Don't Own a Working Phone.

EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month's banter comes to us from CrazyKinux himself, who asks the following: First there was the MMO on the PC, and now with the recent announcement of DUST 514, EVE will soon be moving onto consoles. But what about mobile? Allow your imagination to run wild for a second and describe how you would see EVE being ported to mobile devices, whether the iPhone/iPod touch, Blackberrys or Android-based devices. Dream the impossible for us!

I bet this is a good question actually. Sadly, I'm the least qualified blogger to talk about this.

If you're reading this through capsuleer on an iPhone, be advised that I have no idea how the heck you're doing that. Actually... be advised that I don't even know what an iPhone looks like. I actually typed Iphone first before looking it up to see how the thing was spelled.

Let me tell you a little something about me. I've bought two phones in my lifetime. These are phones you buy out of Wal-Mart that you have to buy minutes for or they're useless. I've never bought minutes for either of those two phones. According to the display on my last one, I need to put minutes on it by September 4th 2007, or it's going to need reactivating. Good to know.

The latest phone I bought came with 20 minutes, I used three. Mostly I just hang up on people that call me and then turn the phone off.

I also deleted all applications and games from it as soon as I got it. It's mostly just a paperweight. That said? Read the post beneath this one for actual content. Sorry CK.

List of Participants:

CrazyKinux's Musing - Tying the dots and locking me in!

A Merry Life and a Short One - I Don’t Own a Working Phone

Yarrbear Tales - EVE on Mobile Devices? Eh.

Hands Off, My Loots! - EVE Mobile…Possibility?

Achernar - Trapped on Planet Horror

Rettic’s Log - The Cronofile – Blog Banter: EVE Mobile

A Mule in EVE - EVE Mobility

Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah - EVE Mobile

My Life in EVE - 12th Blog Banter

My God, it’s Full of Stars! - 12th EVE Blog Banter

The Wandering Druid of Tranquility - WOW, look at that ‘micro-Dust’

Adventures in Mission Running - 12th EVE Blog Banter

Ecliptic Rift - EVE Everywhere

Roc’s Ramblings - EVE Mobile

EVE Monkey - EVE on a Mobile Device?

Nashh Kadavr’s EVE Blog - I-pod Capsuleer

Escoce – EVE Trade - Dynamic System Security

Break Vol - EVE Blog Banter 12

Mikeazariah - EVE Mobility

Pods and Pills - The 12th EVE Blog Banter: EVE on the MOVE!

Lords of Space - EVE on my Iphone?

Cle Demaari - Is that EVE in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

Life in Low Sec - Wormholes On the Go

The Elitist - EVE On Mobile Devices

Into the unknown with gun and camera - Blog Banter 12: Glue

Zero Kelvin - A year of banting!

Corrupted Datacore - Blog Banter #12: MyEVE

Noir Contract #4: Immensea

Immensea: 103 kills(3.26 Billion Isk), 18 losses(0.78 Billion Isk). 80.64% Efficiency.

I'm going to lead off with our first kill. It was REALLY nice getting this stuff back to empire. I was moving around a few systems over when it went died.

I came over and as we were waiting for a hauler to come down a Nighthawk got caught in our suck bubble. We tackled him, webbed him and started to fire. He had an EM hole, but unfortunately I was the only one with EM torps hammering him. Myself and the other bomber loaded our remote sensor damps with resolution scripts, and whenever the Falcon missed his jam the time to lock was so long that the Nighthawk eventually gave up completely. He loaded friend or foe missiles that eventually took out our active drones.

I called a strategy of releasing and calling back drones on the recons to help them tank the damage the FoF missiles were dishing out. Normally it wouldn't've been a problem, but given the length of the engagement, the aggregate damage was potentially substantial. It took back up ten jumps, but with other corps members hot on his heels another bomber came down and we finally broke the Nighthawk.

It amazed me how often these guys would just let us kill them. One of our roams even managed to down a macro ratter. We had a t3 cruiser but just didn't have the DPS to finish it. Days after our initial camps haulers still came through the gates. I had a lot of fun with this and hope to do it again.

Cloaking Reloaded

Well, looks like I started a huge conversation and a fad of sorts last week.

Mynxee links me and as always that brings me some traffic.

A Mule in Eve talks about his ideas.

Prometheus, an old Alliance mate discusses it.

Black Claw misses the point completely.

Not only that but it's become something of a cool thing to post up discussion post for ingame mechanics. Ok not cool exactly, I mean Spectre's doing it, but he sucks.

There's also a fellow posting a discussion about Local Chat changes. If you read this regularly get me a link.

It's always nice to see a post of mine making ripples through the community. Thanks guys.

Finding Her

I been one poor correspondent.
I been too, too hard to find
But it doesn't mean you ain't been on my mind
America - Sister Golden Hair

Hallan looked around in wonder as he walked down the street. The sounds and the lights of the crystal boulevard made him smile in a way he hadn't smiled in a while. This was definitely Gallente Prime.

He opened the door to one of the clear buildings and walked inside. The proprietor glanced up at Hallan as though he simple wasn't interested in business and went back to reading off his comm station.

"I'm looking for a way through," Hallan said softly.

"Lots of ways through, or are you just looking?" The man looked up for a moment and squinted.

"I'm always looking," As Hallan spoke the man reached under the counter and flipped a switch. Hallan heard something in the back click loudly.

The man motioned behind him at the door, "They're expecting you,"

__________________

After a fifteen minute elevator ride, Hallan winced at the light as the doors opened. He walked forward and found himself in an office. There were no other doors, and the man behind the desk in the middle of the room motioned for him to sit down. Hallan sat down and looked at the man with a raised eyebrow.

"Do you recognize the face?" The man asked as the screen behind him flashed to life.

"You could say that. That's Sarah." Hallan answered.

"Not exactly, but she is the one who pulled your ass out of the fire on Shiwakusei,"

"I didn't forget. What do you need from me?" Hallan said as he put his feet up on the desk.

"Simple extraction, she's been on a deep cover assignment on Caldari Prime,"

"Woah, that's a bit too much information for someone who's not agreed to anything yet,"

"You'll agree," The man said with a smile, "We've been out of contact with her for three days, we need this extraction done yesterday,"

"She's in danger then?"

"The Caldari have the entire planet occupied and a titan is sitting overhead to ensure it remains that way," The man began before Hallan interrupted him.

"I read the news, I know the situation here in Luminaire,"

"Then why'd you ask a stupid question? She's Gallente Intelligence, of course she's in danger,"

"She struck me as the kind of gal that could handle herself,"

"I'm sure she can, but right now I need your help,"

Cloaking is Broken

If I were the king of the world
Tell you what I'd do
I'd throw away the cars and the bars and the wars
And make sweet love to you
Three Dog Night - Joy to the World

I've given alot of thought to cloaking and it's inherent problems. I specialize in stealth bombers myself, so I feel somewhat qualified to talk on this subject. There are always simple solutions to the most complex of problems. Here's how I'd change cloaking to make it more fun, and more fair for everyone involved.

First, introduce cloaking signatures, which are much weaker signatures than most people are used to dealing with. It'll take an expert prober with very nice skills to track them down, it should require Deep Space Scanner Probes(and therefore astrometrics five). Once a hit is narrowed down, you'll warp on grid with the cloaked ship. You shouldn't warp in near enough to decloak it though.

Next up, a cloaking signature should show up on your directional scanner when you're on grid with a cloaked ship. They should be like probes, in that they won't show up at all on your overview. They shouldn't show up as brackets and should be unfilterable in the directional scanner. They'll be nearly impossible to track mid combat, since you'll have to pick them out of everything else.

What does this mean? It means that as long as you're online and paying attention, no one should be able to catch you if you're safed and cloaked. It means that ratters won't be able to stay safed up indefinitely in 0.0.(Say goodbye to macro ratters, CCP) It means that if you cloak coming off a gate but don't have a cov ops cloak you're going to be caught.

The cloak stops being an easy button.

Discuss.

Anniversary

Come the 24th this blog'll be a year old. Last week I had my 200th post.

So I've got a question, and you can leave an answer in the comments:

What're your favorite posts of mine over the last year?

Celebrity Death Match

I beg to differ, sir. We started a game we never got to finish. "Play for Blood," remember?
Doc Holliday - Tombstone

When Nash contacted me originally for a duel, I had no time to take him up on his offer. This time however I not only had time, I had the inclination to get it done. I opened Eve Fitting Tool, pulled up my Anti-Nash Rifter Fit and headed over to Dodixie to buy it. I told him that we'd be using Tech I frigates, that he had to fit a point, and finally that he was allowed no ECM modules.

He made his way over to me eventually, and we met at the sun in Ethernity. I tend to fly one fitting when using the rifter. Very seldomly do I change my fits around as the basic fit works at hardly any price. One thing I knew about Nash from reading his blog is that he researches the folks he's dueling and tends to fit to fight them. So I decided to throw him a curve ball. I loaded an Arty fit Rifter with a MicroWarp Drive. I tossed a single piece of Barrage in my holds to keep up the charade, and jettisoned it into a can for him to steal from. He did so, almost certainly chuckling to himself, and made a can himself. I took my Barrage back and we flew thirty kilometers away from each other without speed mods.

The battle was not that exciting, he never put a round into my shields or armor, but it was a valiant effort. He gave manual flying a couple of goes, but one of those cost him most of his armor and the remains of his shields as his transversal dropped and my Arties ripped into him. In another thirty seconds he was dead. I grabbed his loot, told him it was a good fight and then took off towards my home base in Gicodel.

Sadly that means I have to retire the Arty Rifter now from all future duels. It took a while, but it did the job so it will be missed.

On the Merc front, we did a small escort contract today and by tomorrow I should be off R&R. I also managed to get 8.03 with the Sisters of Eve during this R&R and fit out alot of Tech II frigates to use.

Good Day.

PS: Nash, turn on comments for your last post.

Just Burning it Up

If you're flying a Taranis and you're not on fire, you're not doing it right.
Hallan Turrek

I've said this a few times to pilots whenever they were discussing Taranis fits.

Here's mine.
[Taranis, 241 DPS]
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Damage Control II

Gistii B-Type 1MN Afterburner
Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor I
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I

Light Ion Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Light Ion Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Light Ion Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
[empty high slot]

Hybrid Burst Aerator I
Hybrid Collision Accelerator I

Hobgoblin II x2

Everything fits with no implants needed. I took this out on a suicide roam last night. I had put it together last week when we were late noticed about the alliance Tournament.

The gang consisted of seven tech two frigates. Five were from Noir, and two were from other corporations. One was another of the fabled female gamers you always hear about. Her name(Laedy), while unimaginative, was very fitting. She was also a very good pilot for as short as the roam was, so I was impressed.

I was playing advance scout. I dropped connection and came back as quickly as I could, but given that it was a suicide op we weren't being as careful as we should've been. We managed to jump the entire gang into a Cerb and Vexor. We began the engagement, first targeting the Vexor, which died extremely fast. Then the focus was on the Cerb. It lasted a bit longer, but soon it exploded as well.

While we began to collect loot, a Vagabond came down on us. It was webbed, scrammed and popped in very short order. We then got a call about some station camping battlecruisers. A Harbinger, Drake, Myrmidon and Caracal waited for us and we nailed the Drake with points. His tank was impressive and his drones were eating me up so I aligned to a planet that was away from the station. He had me pointed, and another volley of his missiles smashed into my hull. I recalled my drones, watched him in the overview and I fell out of his point range. I warped with 28% structure remaining.

The rest of the fleet switched to the Myrmidon as primary, but they only managed to get it to 20% armor before the opposing drones managed to take out enough of our DPS to beat us. I kept trying to warp back in, but the other fleet must've known how close to death I was, because they kept shooting me when I showed back up.

We eventually lost three assault ships before pulling out.

Had a heck of a lot of fun too.

Noir Contract #3: Fountain and Alliance Tournament

You're off the edge of the map, mate. Here there be monsters.
Captain Barbossa - Pirates of the Caribbean

No end of action for a few days here. Alot of fun.

Lets Review:

Fountain: 49 kills(1.84 Billion Isk), 16 losses(1.26 Billion Isk). 59.27% Efficiency.

The natives, specifically Sons of Tangra really brought the heat on this contract. It was thoroughly enjoyable fighting against good players. Our efficiency against Sons of Tangra was just a hair above 50%. The most important kills of the contract would be us losing a Proteus and them losing a Loki. I've seen some serious high dollar items being flown around by my corp mates, and I'm starting to realize first hand how well this work pays if you're smart and don't lose ships. That said, even though we basically traded T3 cruisers, take a look at the drops on each one. We managed to get all that Loki loot into high sec space, it's a solid billion at least.

I had a lot of fun the entire time, and I look forward to the next 0.0 contract. I managed to get on the killmails for four of the contract kills.Three more kills I was present for as scout or was simple unable to get there before the target died. I'm happy with my performance so far.

Alliance Tournament

I'll direct you to this post by my CEO. We lost our first match with two hours notice and won the second. We did not gather enough points to continue, but I'm proud of the showing we made.

I'm gonna get some sleep, look here tomorrow for a post on a nice suicide roam into providence we just made. Oddly enough, I didn't die.

PS: And Nash, I'm on R&R, so hit me up if you see me online. We'll see what we can do.

The Butterfly Effect

Check this out.



It's annoying that it won't resize any smaller, but whatever.

Noir Contract #2: Fear and Loathing/Drekla/LGA

That's not fair. That's not fair at all. There was time now. There was all the time I needed! It's not fair!
Henry Bemis - The Twilight Zone

This contract involved not much killing, given that we had two alliances and a corp war decced for the entire week.

Let's review:

Fear and Loathing in New Eden: 8 kills(290 Million Isk), No Losses(0 Isk). 100% Efficiency.

We killed them. I don't mean we killed their ships either. A day after we declared war, every member corp dropped Alliance, leaving the executor corp. It went from about 90 members to 1. So we went on to declare war on the primary corporation which had about 60 of it's members. That corp now has 3 members left. OmegaCorp is officially closed according to it's description. Win.

The Drekla Consortium: 8 kills(170 Million Isk), No Losses(0 Isk). 100% Efficiency.

Didn't disband, which is something, but stayed docked for the entire contract. Even a hint of our forces nearby was enough to send them into hiding. They've bled some members(about 30) over this, but nothing major. A bit of a disappointment, but we lost nothing and they've been denied ratting and pirating for a bit. They had 19 kills in one day on August 30th. They've only managed 12 kills in the seven days of the war, and none of those were against us. Denied.

Legio Astarte Arcanum: 25 Kills(510 million isk), 4 losses(160 Million isk). 75.57% Efficiency.

Now these guys put up a fight. Kind of. They were butressed by the fact that CVA was on their side. They would retreat into CVA space, forcing us to send in roaming gangs that inevitably pissed CVA off. They would fight us on stations with CVA and random neutrals available to buff up their numbers(and get a little neutral remote repping for themselves). When they weren't assured of backup, they would not undock. We did manage to nail of one of their ratting battleships to the wall before the war ended with a nice covert hot drop. Despite their advantages, we still beat them handily. Shiny.

All in all, alot of fun. I thought I'd mention that I declined a 1v1 with Nash Kadavr, due to myself being to busy to take him up on it. Perhaps the next time I'm on R&R Nash.

Edit: And I highly recommend the Noir. blog: Declarations of War. Also: Noir Podcast.

Peace.

An Orca AFKing in a Wormhole.

Computers have enabled people to make more mistakes faster than almost any invention in history, with the possible exception of tequila and hand guns
Mitch Ratcliffe

Sometimes I'm left wondering what in the hell people are thinking.

During a little break from our current contract, Jimer called a wormhole and said he had a couple of hulks and an Orca on scan. Now I imagined these guys would be smart and get to a POS when they saw probes. I had just got in position when I heard Jimer say that they were indeed mining. He narrowed them down to their site and made a bookmark. He came back out, dropped the bookmark for the Fleet Commander, and we went in and squad warped to the mining operation.

Not much excitement followed, beyond the inevitable "We just killed an Orca," back patting. We nailed two hulks as well and all three pods. I'm nearly certain they were all AFK because they didn't do anything.

Seriously.

At Least He Lived

I found god on the corner of First and Amistad,
Where the west was all but won,
All alone, smoking his last cigarette,
I said where've you been,
He said ask anything
The Fray - You Found Me

"Wait what?" my puzzled voice spat out over the comms.

"Unfueled POS in wormhole space, full of ships. Two of them are manned, an Oneiros and a Raven," Nidia shot back, her voice brimming with pride.

"On my way," I said as I keyed Ruerotta into my Manticore's navigational computer.

"I'm heading out too," NOIR. CEO Alekseyev Karrde said as well, followed by a smattering of replies, all positive.

"Ok," Nidia said after a pause, "I'll be waiting at the wormhole entrance, let me know when you're in warp to me,"

"Already there Nidia," I said as I cleared the Ruerotta gate and began to warp to my fleetmate.

"Alright then, I'll go back through and make sure nothing's changed,"

I waited a few minutes as Nidia got back into position and our fleet assembled on the wormhole.

"Wait a minute, they unanchored a gun," Nidia said with a bit of bewilderment, "He's moving to the tower and it's all that's left anchored,"

"Damn good timing then," Aleks said with a chuckle.

"They... OK the tower is down," Nidia stopped for a second and continued, "Go through and warp to Nidia,"

I passed through the wormhole with a minimal sense of distortion. I didn't get sick, so that's a positive. I began my warp and smiled as I came down cloaked and forty kilometers from both enemy ships.

"Primary is that Oneiros, get a point on the Raven," Aleks called clearly as his ship landed.

The Oneiros died fairly quickly, as he was likely unprepared and we switched fire to the Raven quickly. His damage control crews put up a much better fight, but just as he entered structure he ejected and warped away.

"He's... he got out. The raven's empty!" I said as I shut my torpedo launchers down.

"Cease fire on that Raven!" Aleks said with another laugh.

"What've we got here Nidia?"

"Basilisk, Raven, Itty 4, a Raptor, one gun and a large tower,"

"Sweet. Nidia, you get the tower for spotting it," Aleks began, "Use the Itty 4 to scoop it up, the rest of you grab what you want and get home,"

In the end I managed to bring home a tech two fitted and rigged Raptor for my troubles.

Good Day.

My First Contract With NOIR.: Malum Exuro

I wanted to meet interesting and stimulating people of an ancient culture... and kill them.
Private Joker - Full Metal Jacket

This last week has been a blur. To be honest it's something of a treat to fly with people who're so clearly superior to me in skill and knowledge. What's odd is that despite my best efforts, I didn't get on a single war target kill all week. That doesn't mean I didn't keep busy though. Every day, from the time I logged in, to the time I logged off(reluctantly) there were gangs doing something.

The first few days were mostly uneventful actually, with most of us hopping around wormholes inside the target system to both get kills and waste the war target's time. They managed to stay docked up pretty tight for a while, only hopping out to get a Deimos of ours.

That sucked, but apparently it gave them some nerve, and they finally started to fight us. The very next day saw a huge battle on their station, yielding for them two typhoons and a Bhaalgorn.

At that point we're looking at 0% efficiency and a billion isk faction battleship loss. Needless to say, it was time to buckle down.

What started with a Crow, ended in a landslide. (Note, there was another carrier downed just after that battle belonging to someone's friend)

I've made my own mistakes already, like getting caught in a friendly bubble a thousand meters away from a drake. But as you can see, the folks we were shooting at paid dearly for it.

We'll end the contract with nearly 70% efficiency, and I'm having the time of my life.

Welcome to NOIR.