Goddamned CCP

How can CCP make mistakes like this?

I genuinely appreciate the 100k extra skill points and the rather cool looking(if hardly functional) gift ship we got. I also understand that CCP is trying to do right by the playerbase. They try to make a game that we like, and try to improve it.

So how, do tell, did they manage to get their heads so very far up their own asses?

On the surface, they seem to be one of the few gaming companies to really get it. "If we want to make the player base happy, we listen to them, and do some of the things they want us to do,"

Solid plan that, until they start saying things like, "Listen, we're far to busy with our own projects to actually do any of the things you asked us to do, so we're really just pretending to listen to you. Even the very reasonable requests you've made, that would require hardly any of our time, yeah we won't do those either,"

Newsflash: We're not some talkative girlfriend who you have to ignore sometimes to be sane... alright that's a bit far, but you can't ignore us all the time. Eventually we're going to notice, and then you ain't getting any anymore.

So when we say things like, "Please for the love of god, make sure there aren't any serious bugs before you release new content," and the very next patch completely breaks the autopilot, we know you're not listening at all.

If the game code is so convoluted that... well whatever the fuck it was you did that broke autopilot can do that, maybe you should have someone devoted to all new content that makes sure it's bug free. The test server only goes so far, and doesn't adequately test much besides basic mechanics. How the hell are we supposed to know that whatever the fuck you changed was connected to the autopilot? How would we know to test that? CCP should goddamned have a guy.

On second thought, why doesn't CCP already HAVE that guy? You'd think there would be at least one dude devoted to finding bugs in new content. If they've got one already, he's not doing a very good damn job.

Put in just a little bit of effort please.

I mean goddamn it, CCP, could you at least stop shitting up your own fucking game?

Mistakes and Downtime

So I meant to delete a comment off my last blog post, and somehow I just deleted the whole thing. Fantastic.

Edit: And thanks to a blog aggregator, I put it back up

Game is down, Mynxee's in Iceland, and I'm engaging in piracy for the first time in a while. Not much of an update, but it should be enough to annoy people who think their vision of how to blog is the best one.

Also: Pretty sick.

Trouble On The Way

Hope you got your things together.
Hope you are quite prepared to die.
Looks like we're in for nasty weather.
One eye is taken for an eye.
Creedance Clearwater Revival - Bad Moon Rising

I was interrupted from a profitable night of carebearing when a Neutral was called out in vent. We did nothing beyond align, and waited for him to pass. The Ishtar pilot came into system, went to each of our anomalies and each time we warped away. For myself, I merely cloaked my Cerb up and watched him come looking for me. He left very shortly thereafter, surely grumbling to himself.

As people warped to the station, they'd begun to reship in combat boats, but by the time we were ready to go, our target had gone away. So I resolved to catch the next one that came through.

Sure enough, half an hour later, a Vagabond from Triple A rolled through. As soon as our scout let us know he was in 2V, we reshipped, myself in a trusty Manticore. We had a mix of Dictor, Hic, Bomber, Curse, a ratting Machariel, a Cynabal, and a Falcon. After he frustrated us a bit, we put a probing alt on him, and camped the outgate to 2v. You don't need a lot to kill a Vagabond really, but you need a lot sometimes to catch one. So it was, Manticore, Phobos, Curse, and Machariel on our side of the gate. We sent a Flycatcher, Falcon, and Cynabal on the other side.

Our Phobos left his bubble down, and we waited.

Soon the Vaga pilot who'd been playing gate games with us all night warped to us(our probing alt was watching him as he did it). As he entered warp, we put up the bubble. Sure enough, he landed at 0 on the gate, and in the center of a Hic bubble.

He immediately jumped through. Of course, the Flycatcher pilot dropped his own bubble as soon as the target jumped, and our Cynabal grabbed a hold of him. The Falcon kept our 'dictor safe, and the Vaga managed to make it back to the gate again.

Round two was similar, only the Vaga's cap got hit hard by the Curse. Our Machariel was failing to track him as he ran back to the gate. We figured we'd just neut him over and over until he couldn't do this anymore, or the Mach got a lucky hit in.

Fortunately that wasn't neccessary, as the Mach's gun cycled at the very moment the Vaga landed on the gate and dropped to 0 speed. In a single volley of large auto-cannon fire, the Vaga went from 20% shields to dead. The folks on the other side of the gate hadn't managed to get onto the mail, but I had us hold off fire until they could jump through and catch the pod. No one mentioned the pod was in jump range(and I didn't realize until later why he'd died so fast), so after 30 seconds he jumped the gate and got the hell out. Good game.

Afterwards, everyone decided they were tired and needed some sleep. So I was left as the last Noir in the pocket. Our scouts reported a 6 man Triple A gang, and a Rapier in 2v. I just cloaked up again, since we no longer had anyone online to fight them with. Then I started up a convo with him, like a polite person would do.

[07:58:15 ] Hallan Turrek > Hey there.
[07:59:55 ] Hallan Turrek > So how's it going?
[08:00:21 ] Guderian3 > nm
[08:00:22 ] Guderian3 > u
[08:00:37 ] Hallan Turrek > Not a whole lot.
[08:00:55 ] Hallan Turrek > Doing a bit of ratting, you know, the usual.
[08:01:09 ] Guderian3 > What belt are you in homes?
[08:01:18 ] Hallan Turrek > Nah, I don't need any help just yet.
[08:01:33 ] Hallan Turrek > Besides, that'd just dilute the bounties.
[08:01:57 ] Guderian3 > Where'd your friends go?
[08:02:01 ] Hallan Turrek > Sorry?
[08:02:09 ] Guderian3 > MAch, phobos, curse.
[08:02:33 ] Hallan Turrek > Someone was ratting in a Phobos and curse?
[08:02:41 ] Hallan Turrek mutters
[08:02:42 ] Guderian3 > No, your friends that killed the vaga.
[08:02:47 ] Guderian3 > Where did they go?
[08:02:50 ] Hallan Turrek > Wait, they killed a vaga?
[08:02:56 ] Guderian3 > Yes, you were on the KM.
[08:03:00 ] Hallan Turrek > When?
[08:03:02 ] Guderian3 > Your idociy gains you no points.
[08:03:45 ] Hallan Turrek > Points are fleeting wayposts, after all.
[08:05:02 ] Tutelary > Hallan!
[08:05:07 ] Tutelary > you chased away the nice man!
[08:05:18 ] Hallan Turrek > Heh.
[08:05:22 ] Tutelary > heheh
[08:05:25 ] Hallan Turrek > I got ratting to do.
[08:05:29 ] Tutelary > uh huh
[08:05:36 ] Hallan Turrek > And all my backup left already.

I had a laugh at the failed revenge attempt, finished my anomaly, and went to bed. Good times.

Planetary Interaction: Not A Bad Way To Make A Living

I'm goin' down to Rose Marie's,
She never does me wrong,
She puts it to me plain as day,
And gives it to me for a song.

It's a wicked lie but what the hell?
Don't everybody got to eat?
And I'm just the same as anyone else,
When it comes to scratching for my meat.

Goin' to Acapulco,
Goin' on the run,
Goin' down to see that girl,
Gonna to have some fun, yeah
Gonna to have some fun.
Bob Dylan - Goin' To Acapulco

Here's some screen shots from 3 of my planets:




I jetted down to HK and set things up as soon as the market was seeded. Each of my planets produces one P3 product, and I can just let it keep stacking up for a long time before I have to come back to pick it up(just have to restart my extractors from wherever I am in eve). The very first Transcranial Microcontrollers came off the line and into my launch pad tonight(Scratch that, Smartfab Units from my Lava World came out first).

For anyone curious as to how this is set up, all of my planets follow the same process(each planet has a different P3 resource it can create without the need to move resources from planet to planet):

Barren Planet:
Tier 3: Transcranial Microcontrollers = Nanites + Biocells
Tier 2: Nanites = Reactive Metals + Bacteria
Tier 2: Biocells = Precious Metals + Biofuels
Tier 1: Reactive Metals = Base Metals(Raw Material)
Tier 1: Bacteria = Micro Organisms(Raw Material)
Tier 1: Precious Metals = Noble Metals(Raw Material)
Tier 1: Biofuels = Carbon Compounds(Raw Material)

All of my planets were small enough(because longer links can limit your ability to build) that I could afford two extractors at the start of the process for all resources.

Some information that I picked up: You cannot route something if the place it is going doesn't use it. That means that it's ideal to place all of your buildings, all of your links, and then start working back from the end of the process to set up your schematics. Send the products forward(with the final product going into the launch pad/storage). Your whole production line will be ready and waiting for raw materials, so you then can just go to each extractor, survey, and route to your first industry buildings. Bam, you're in business.

What skills will you need? I suggest every skill at 3 in the "Planet Management" section except Planetology which will need to be at 4 to get advanced planetology. My command centers are merely "Improved" and they handle this just fine(though on the storm planet, it's really stretching the CPU).

It's actually kind of enjoyable watching the things complete.

Some links you'll find helpful:

Eve Uni's Information.
Eve Uni's Tutorial.
CCP's Tutorial.
Find out what your planets can make.
Check your colony building.
Search for planets.

One last thing: Make sure you're hitting the submit button, it can get frustrating when you realize you've placed 15 buildings but haven't actually built them yet.

Fix It Before You Add More Problems Please.

You want to support this.