Tuesday, December 9, 2014

An open message for Etherium Reach

(To be read in a southern black baptist preachers voice)

Gentlemen a crusade pushes into our homes. They claim a pure and honorable religion based on creating free ports that threatening our very way of life. We are the gatekeepers of Etherium reach and are determined to hold the space at whatever costs. This shadow has been cast as they ride on our families and friends disrupting the life and liberty we have established here in null. We must cast out the Crusaders and purge the darkness exposing the greed of their leaders begging for more and more isk and fattening their own wallets.

They try and cast us as the evil when we only seek to protect our way of life. They ride on us and claim we attacked first when they siege and entered our homes. They have the nerve to call our lands their home.

We gave them a warning Wednesday of the power of the Iron Clad Fleet The thunder of our guns shook them to their core. We rang out in a single united voice that we will not surrender quietly into the night. We will prevail. In doing so we gave them an option to leave peacefully and yet again they claim it to be their home. 

We have lived here for years in one form or another we have weathered many wars and many tyrants but no one can take this from us, our blood has been spilled, our friends have been lost, and our lands have been torched but no, this is our home. We will never give it up nor will we ever surrender.  We have and will always defend our lands.

Now we muster every pilot and every citizen of our lands and proclaim our sovereign right to our homes. We will purge the crusaders like the religious Zealots that they are. We will call on the Golden fleet to purge the filth with the light of 10,000 beams and cast them from our homes.  CT8K-0 will burn and the crusaders will be forced out. 

Monday, November 24, 2014

How to get started in Eve

To start odds are you are in the Trial right now. First and foremost Pay for 1 Plex to get you started. do not sell it on the market use it for in game time. The number 1 mistake for people playing eve is thinking I can make enough isk to plex my account every month. I own 3 accounts and spend almost all of my expendable income on ships. Plex is a luxury unless you stumble onto a Tech moon. There are ways to make billions and billions of isk but its good to remember the more skills you have the more expensive items get. for instance replacing a T1 meta 4 fit Atron is like 4 million isk total. Compared to losing a faction fit Paladin and needing to spend another 1.6 billion isk means having some money sitting around is a good thing.

The Best mindset in Eve Never Undock in anything you are not able to replace. A Ship in Harbor is Safe but then again that is not what ships are for. There will be wars there will be fights and there will be ganks. Don't expect to never die just because you live in high sec.

So lets talk about skills. What to train early and why. I focus armor because well armor is better than shield. Here is why. Armor is slow and meant to hold the field where as Shield is meant for speed and kiting damage as more of a harassment fleet. I'm also a huge Amarr Fan and enjoy flying the golden fleet so here is how to get started but the philosophy is basically the same for all 4 races.

Hull upgrades 4 Unlocks the best module in the game Damage control 2 Giving added resists to all types and putting a flat 60% resist on your hull. This can save your ship in so many ways. just don't forget to turn it on.

Repair systems 3 this will get you the t2 small armor repper  and allow you to tank better in your starting ships.

Power Grid management 5 Max this out to help you have the fitting room to decently fit your ships.

CPU management 5 Max this out to help you have the fitting room to decently fit your ships.

Drones 5 Drones are effective dps in all scenarios having the option to deploy 5 is really important to survival

Weapons upgrades 5 lowers fitting costs to fit guns allowing for better fit ships.

For ship types At first you want to decide what race you want to go through. Id recommend training through battleship 2 on each race in an order like this. Because Each Race has a specific gun type its important to do them in order.

Amarr Frigate 3 Amarr Destroyer 3 Amarr Cruiser 3 Amarr battle-cruiser 3 Amarr Battleship 2 Then supporting gun skills to go with it.

Small energy turret 3 Medium energy turret 3 Large energy turret 3 Then supporting gunnery skills to 3 or 4 each.

This will take time so What to do in the meantime? If your focus is pvp/pve run security missions level 1 then level 2 and as you skill up eventually run level 4 security missions in a battleship or t3 cruiser. before then make sure you skill into all the t2 gear you can. 

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

HEIST: Kaddan

2014.05.20 13:26:02 Sub--Zero directorship received an email as we all slept. Our European director, long term PVP mentor, and close friend emptied the corp wallet and the corp hangers in two stations.The corp wallet read two transactions taking roughly 7 billion isk in total. His total take included a large pos, some meta dread guns, ice products, and about a half a billion in mission gear adding about 3 billion in assets to the losses. Estimated total losses is roughly 10 billion isk





Kaddan was a close friend and left with no warning stating only he was returning to a life of piracy and solo play. 

Sub Zero is not pursuing Kaddan in any way but does issue this warning him and his alts listed below are considered high risk recruits assume that they are intent on corporate theft or espionage.

Kaddan (NPC corp)
Wong Wing (NPC corp)
COSMIC Girl (Minmatar Faction Warfare)
Derrick'DelBoy'Tr0tter  (Brave Newbies)
Dread Pirate Infinity (Break a Wish Project)
Buck Nero (Tear Harvesters)

The worst loss in this scenario is almost 2 years of flying together and mentoring broken by one moment of temptation. Isk can be replaced assets rebuilt or purchased. The loss of a Friend cannot be replaced. Let this be a lesson to everyone else even those closest to you will take the opportunity to rob you blind for the right price. 

Commander Aze 'Frost'

The Art of Fitting Part 1: Frigates PVP

Eve online can consistently make you feel like a moron. This is because it does not openly tell you that fitting is more an art than it is a science. This doesn’t mean its not worth learning. I’m going to try and make this as newbie friendly as possible so below is a key for all acronyms and such. Ill openly say I’m not an expert but I have a few kills and no where near as many deaths. I enjoy small gang play with logistics in play so I prefer high resists buffer tanks over active tanks but but they both have a place. I wont list mods as options because of the variety of choices I’m bound to miss one. Please if you have questions ask in the comments below.

Key for acronyms
CCP = Game Devs that make the game
Tank = The difficult part of the ship to break through in order to kill it. (the line that generally takes the longest to disappear in a fight.)
MWD= Micro Warp drive
AB= After burner
EHP= Effective hit points. the actual amount of total damage you can take as an alpha strike total your ship.
ECCM= Electronic Counter Countermeasures Defensive raise your ability against ECM.
ECM= Electronic Countermeasures Offensive generally meant to break locks and jam a player form targeting for a short time.
Damps= Sensor Dampeners used to either reduce scan resolution or lock range.
Scan resolution= the higher the number means the faster you can lock smaller targets.
Cap= Capacitor
PVP= player VS player
PVE player VS environment (NPCs)
Logi= logistics ships designed to repair other ships in combat
DC= Damage Control (add a 2 for Damage control 2 if you realy want to.) Train hull upgrades 4 to unlock DC2 Best mod in the game seriously.
CCP’s Damage application formula For any serious math nerds that want to see how this all applies when whipping around orbiting something to shoot it.
ChanceToHit = 0.5 ^ ((((Transversal speed/(Range to target * Turret Tracking))*(Turret Signature Resolution / Target Signature Radius))^2) + ((max(0, Range To Target – Turret Optimal Range))/Turret Falloff)^2)
Tanks
So there are a few different schools of thought in ship fitting for tanks. These are based on the ship itself some are natural armor some are natural shield and some because CCP likes to make things challenging and unpredictable for pvp. Only because it needs to be said Do not dual tank a ship (For the record Damage control is the exception due to its added resists to hull armor and shield). So lets dive in to the basics.
Lets talk math for a minute. Specifically resistances and how they work. Having 99% resists in one damage type does you nothing if the other 3 are being shot at you. so its best to try and level the resists out at around 60 to 70 percent. For frigates its likely to have a resistance hole as you cant fill all the resistances with the amount of slots available. generally try and have this be EM as only one race uses EM damage constantly.  So the math part. lets say I deal perfect damage every time I fire my guns and I am doing 100 DPS. my frigate has resists at 60% on all damage types the damage incoming is now only 40dps of which my local rep will have a much easier time repping. if we add this in to the formula for tracking and optimal range for guns by managing speed and transversal velocity we can eliminate more and more dps from the equation making it easier to tank the incoming dps.
Speed
Knowledge of the mechanics for tracking and dps application is vital for small gang or solo pvp. This being said Sig size and speed are huge factors.  To throw everyone for a loop there are cases of ships that fit no tank. However Their tank comes from playing with the tracking and dps application formula. Speed is key here. Nanofiber in the lows dual prop setups (those with micro warps and afterburners) generally these fit with rigs to max out speed with out adding any dead weight. Great examples of these are interceptors and ships like the imperial navy slicer.
Active Tanks Basics
First rule of active tanks STOP CARING ABOUT CAP STABLE. pulsing equipment changes the cap use over time gaining time in a fight. In a frig 1 on one fight if it last for more than a minute one if not both of you are either awful at pvp or are still waiting for ancillary charge based tanks to empty. Ancillary based boosters or reps will fail over time only engage if you think you can win before your reps give out. Normal reps is where things get tricky. they run cap dry quick but can be used with good success. Especially if you have a NOS or cap booster to recharge cap. If you have more than a minute of cap you don’t have a problem.  If you have 10 seconds of cap you do have a problem unless you have multiple prop mods. So What is better Ancillary or normal reps with cap boosters? Depends on the ship. Sadly I cant give you that answer. I can say if you can off size an ancillary rep For instance fit a medium over a small then you might be on to something for that specific ship.
Passive Tank BasicsPassive tanks are about EHP and dps. you want to tank the incoming dps with high enough resists that you can break their tank first. Alternatively you want to make it easier for friendly logistics to rep you. put the largest plate you can fit on the ship and get the best resists. Train Hull upgrades 5 to be good at this. 4 minimum so you can unlock DC2
Armor Passive
Alright lets put this out there as a baseline, Armor is Fat and heavy. Picture a knight in full plate armor slow moving but can hit like a truck at close range. Generally this means slower to align and slower speeds. This isn’t all the bad though.  It just means your engagements will be different as far as what range you want to engage and what you want to take on. When armor passive works best with high resists and the more and more Actual Armor hit points. EHP wins fights. IF you have less and they hit harder than you then you loose. It works especially well with logistics but more on that later.
Note There is an urge to faction fit to get better resists. If you enjoy frig fights you will run out of money very rapidly if you use faction or dead-space equipment. For the flamboyantly rich please leave names and where I can find you in comments.
Armor ActiveArmor fitting for active tanks on frigs is hard. most times you get 3 slots and 1 of them is a damage control allows for your local rep to keep you low armor without instantly popping when you dip into structure. A damage control has saved my ship and my LC’s life many times.  There are times you can fit an off sized Ancillary rep to gain a wicked good tank but your fitting skills need to be perfect and often need a few implants to get the necessary power grid and CPU.
Shield PassiveLike that of armor the name of the game is EHP. High resists and a shield extender. The benefit of shields is open low power slots for DPS mods.
Shield Active
Active shields is a bit more tricky. Active tanking with limited slots can be difficult for new players as they might feel they are over exposed with lower resists but also forced to put on points and webs that drain cap as bad as the shield booster itself. This makes ancillary a good choice in some cases. others it is not needed.
Signature tank
alright because this wasn’t hard enough to pick from our last tank revolves on a modification of the speed tank. Although there are many ways to do this the primary concern is moving quickly without the use of a micro warp drive. This can be seen especially with ships like the kitsune and logistics frigates. 1mn afterburner is not enough to do this with at least not well. What you are going to try and do with this in order to do it best is fit an off sized afterburner on the frig. Meaning Fit a 10mn AB on a frigate instead of a 1mn. This will give you micro warp drive speeds but no signature penalty for an active micro warp drive.
Ship Piloting Requirements: Picking Weapons.Almost every ship has bonuses to a specific weapons group. In each group there are long and short range variants of frig sized weapon systems. The short range weapons require a brawler type setup likely with a warp scram to keep them from getting away. Short range generally has higher DPS but puts you at risk as far as engagement range to compensate for that. Long range weapons systems are designed to keep you out away from brawlers and kite damage. Using long range guns or missiles means speed is your friend. Speed tanks or kiting fits use long range.
Hybrids
Short range: Blasters
Long range: Rails
Projectiles
Short range: Auto cannons
Long range: Artillery
Lasers
Short range: Pulse
long range: beams
Missiles (No I didn’t forget)
Short range: Rockets
Long range: Light missiles
Ranging Your Engagement
You have your weapons you have your tank now its time for the other stuff. Ill do this part in a few common questions.
MWD or afterburner?
MWD if your planning on being outside of 15km the entire fight. Afterburners for brawling gives you the speed edge in brawler vs brawler.
long point or scram?
Match your point to your weapons systems range. Long range guns means long point. Short range means short point. Speed tank can fit both if they really want to.
Tracking computer or Tracking disruption?
if you have long range guns vs another long range gun ship then disruption, to force them to stay near you.  if against brawlers then tracking computers as they will move quickly.
To ECCM or not to ECCM?
Its a frigate. outside of EAS (Electronic attack ships) fits ECCM hold almost no purpose.  Even with those fits if they are getting jammed out then clearly there is a problem.
Damps or ECM?
Damps are 100% effective all the time. If you think you are going to be entering and exiting their lock range with a damp running then use damps. if ecm is your only hope of beating them, your probably dead already.
Drones, ECM or DPS?
For frigs this is easy DPS 100% of the time. fighting other frigs warrior 2s will hands down get you a win over ecm drones. Cruisers and higher this changes significantly.
Implants
OK this can be tricky. Are they worth it for frigs? depends on if your in high/low sec or null… instant point on pods is rare but possible. so be prepped to loose them. if in low or high sec you should be able to warp away provided you are jamming warp to as you ship dies. I generally fly with CA-1, CA-2 and EG-603 giving me a boost to the CPU and powergrid of every ship I fly. This means I can get bigger better gear on my ship than someone without these implants.
 Logistics Frigates
Logi frigs are fun to fly. If you fly logi you are a friend of mine. Logistics job is to keep the fleet alive with remote repairs to shields or armor. Hull tanking not supported by boosts yet. There are 4 frigs with bonuses to logistics and they are all pretty epic. Any Fleet commander in eve that denies logistics to enter a fleet probably doesn’t plan on flying his ship home. the team with logi generally wins over those without. WE are all patently awaiting t2 logistics frigs….Till then these do great.
TLDR
Remember this. match your weapons range to your point range and microwarp for kiting not for brawling and always make sure to fit with resists.
Your turn
Please reply with some of your fits so people can critique and see if they can get them to work.
Commander Aze ‘Frost’

How to curb the voting issues for CSM

Dramatic drop in Voting from CSM8 to CSM9. 49,702 for CSM8 to 31,294 for CSM9. Clearly the player base is not falling behind the CSM as a concept. 18408 people apparently fell of the CSM bandwagon in less than 1 years time. In that same time we see no significant drop in player base to account for that drop.

So Assuming 37% of the player base didn’t quit the game what happened?
During my own campaign I came across 3 specific issues. Distrust, motivations in the wrong place, and general lack of knowledge
Distrust
There are a few parts to this and They do not come from me directly I spent my campaign working with The Ditanian Fleet on their coms and in their fleets. These are responses about the CSM Direct from members of those fleets. I don’t wish to target specific CSM members current or passed.
Distrust part 1 Systematic (Single transferable vote)
“ITS RIGGED anyways” Despite Efforts from CCP to release voting data very promptly people don’t trust the data. This is the problem. The single transferable vote is a complex system and people do not understand how to vote in it. Here is the problem. Most people do not have background in electoral systems so immediately scream rigged when their candidate doesn’t win. There is no fighting this there are always people that will say thing just hopefully they don’t say it convincing others not to vote.
Distrust part 2 Candidates from large coalitions
“Inherently I don’t trust goons and would not vote for them however 11,000 members would.” But a voting issue doesn’t come from this directly.  Voters are turned away when their is no hope of their candidate winning. lets do some quick math. 31,000 votes – 11,000 members of a single alliance. That is slightly more than 1/3 of the voting populous if they all voted. Likely they didn’t but enough to win did. Its rare and this is in fact backed by the candidates affiliations for CSM9 to have a average Joe win. I’m not complaining that is politics and I understood my chances from the start. This is on why people didn’t vote. 100% of the time goon swarm will have a representative if they run.  That is a population based democracy at work. But it causes people who would vote for lesser known candidates not to vote at all. I received 200+ votes after it was all said and done and I don’t have that many accounts. Basically people are turned off because size = power and literally a way to whisper in a devs ear. But there are thousands of alliances that do not get to be heard.
Motivations in the Wrong Place
motivations in the wrong place part 1
“CSM is an advisory committee with little to no power in making any real changes to the game. Its power comes form direct talks and being able to convince Devs something needs work or not.” However The number 1 complaint when asking for a vote was the benefit. A trip to Iceland to sit and chat with Devs. Who in this game wouldn’t sell their soul to the devil for that opportunity. Its a huge upside and people immediately because in EVE online its drilled into you Assume the worst until you convince them otherwise. Considering it is free to run there is no down side of not running.
Motivations in the Wrong place part 2
“In order to get elected people will say anything, or do anything.” This is politics 101. There is a reason congressional approval rating is at a staggering 7%. for instance more people approve of Furries than Congress. IT works the same in Eve. There are some on the CSM that are there for the right reason to them thank you.
Lack of Knowledge 
Lack of Knowledge Part 1
“What is the CSM?” I can not tell you how many times I answered that question. I would be willing to bet the CSM as a concept is only known by 15% or so of the eve population an at least a portion of them do not understand what the CSM does.
Lack of Knowledge Part 2
“There is an Election?” Bittervets assume CCP just goes to large alliances and picks them. (if you see the list the uneducated person might make that assumption too.) NEwer players just don’t know.
Lack of Knowledge Part 3
“Oh thats what the prompt does…” CCP did little to nothing to promote the election this year. on Login there was a prompt otherwise you have to be an avid forums follower or know what you are looking for. What can CCP do to make it more well known that the CSM election is running?
So turn to you guys how do we change the voting trend?
How do we get the CSM trusted again?
And How do we want to promote the CSM election for next year to get a better turnout?

Why the CSM is Failing (Council of Stellar Management)

The CSM is failing.(Council of Stellar Management as a body not as individuals)

By its definition the CSM is an advisory committee for CCP to make judgment calls on what the future of the game should be. Allowing a playtest of concepts before dealing with mass response from forum posts.
Insert trolls here. I won’t respond unless I feel you actually are trying to make a valid point on the topic.
To quell the inevitable; No I am not butt hurt about losing the CSM9 vote, I’m broke, unemployed, and recently out of an engagement. Trust me the CSM9 vote was not and is not the biggest deal in my life. Simply put I will run again.
Here is a concise list of my issues with the CSM as it stands now. Future posts will take a more narrative point of view but this is technical so this list format is most suitable for the content.
  1. 1. Permanent attendees. I guess I’m not sure what to think about an elected council with 2 members from larger power blocs in the game. I can say I disapprove of unlimited terms in office as eventually you no longer have new ideas and are just gaining the benefits of the job not having to put in as much. I am not attacking those characters directly just stating a comparison to what happens in US politics. (Of which a Degree in Political science and Public administration I am qualified to make that comparison.)
  2. 2. Dramatic drop in Voting from CSM8 to CSM9. 49,702 for CSM8 to 31,294 for CSM9. Clearly the player base is not falling behind the CSM as a concept.
    1. a.Why? During my own campaign I targeted incursion groups. Specifically The Ditanian Fleet reminding people to vote for csm9 even if it wasn’t for me. Many times the response was the following.
    2. a i.      The vote is rigged anyways (why are there permanent attendees if not for favoritism?)
    3. aii.      The CSM is powerless to do anything other than be a sounding block of the large power blocks.
    4. aiii.      The CSM does nothing.
  3. 3. I was listening to a podcast that included my idols in this game, Rooks and kings  Lord Maldoror talking with the Declarations of War host On the topic of The Assembly Hall forum area.  The points made where that no one reads that section of the forums except the trolls. Of which begs the question why does it exist? Also stated was that the CSM does not read that section either. A few points on why this is bad and how it relates to the CSM9 vote.
    1.   i.      CSM members appear to be disconnected with the player base. This is the fundamental purpose of the Assembly hall forum. Communication between CSM and the player base.
    2.  ii.      The fact A CSM member open says they won’t read it in lue of having their own opinions on things to fix in the game. Keep in mind I am an avid listener of this particular CSM candidate’s podcast.
      1. 1.Let us role this politically USA host elections where candidate A Says I don’t Care what you say I have my own agenda to see though and I don’t care about your opinion. This is a fundamental Flaw in US politics mainly due to money but in eve’s case power is the catalyst. Yes You are allowed to have priorities and your own views however disregarding the players trying to contact the CSM only pushes voters away.
      2. 2.Power Blocks have the advantage coalitions, the natural progression of political diplomacy past alliances, can send out mass emails generating a vote of several thousand in only a few days’ time. This is without matching to candidates’ views and only pursuant to further the issue of alienation of smaller groups for CSM. This is the natural progression of politics. In the US we have super pacs basically massive groups of smaller groups to create a coalition and support a specific cause. Resulting in the worst and most misleading campaign ads in history. But it works for both sides.  This isn’t a problem because it’s a sandbox. However politically It is a problem in fact it is a huge problem because it results in the individual perceiving an inevitable winner regardless of quality of other winners.
      3. 3.Candidate Overload. In the US as an example again local elections often are written off to party lines voting due to a general disregard for caring about that positions actual value to the local area. For instance if you said in April there are elections people would be more likely to say no those are in the fall. Often not able to give the normal month for fall cycle elections. Less than 15% of the US votes for local elections and less than 2% of them can correctly identify candidate’s views on their position.
      4. 4.A single transferable vote system is complex. I have actual training in electoral systems and I can tell you that this is a complex system that most people do not understand. Here is why.
        1. 1.People will vote for either a selection of candidates starting to pick randomly to fill out the form to its completion.
        2. 2.People will only vote for 1 to x candidates that they want to see win.
        3. 3.If you need to site a Wiki on the system and the wiki is several print pages it is complex.
        4. 4.NO ONE WILL READ HOW THE SYSTEM WORKS ANYWAYS
  4. 4.The EVE-CSM website is likely the best thing to happen to the vote but was entirely underutilized and under promoted by CCP.
    1.  i.  CCP wants the Best and most like the actual player base to be the representatives for the CSM What better way than promoting a system like this to match players to candidates that share their priorities.
  5. 5.The CSM are hard to contact and likely only responsive during election cycles.
    1.   i.     Rare posts on forums except for inevitable First posts to dev release of information on changes and rare follow up responses. With exception of election cycle topics.
  6. 6.Lastly The CSM has not done enough publicly to earn its respect.
    1.   i.      Meeting notes more than 6 months late.
    2.  ii.      Meeting notes 2 months late
    3.   iii.      No response in most cases to requests.
    4.  iv.      No publicity other than a single video showing little potential action being made.
    5. For those that do not keep up with 14 different blogs or podcast every week information on candidates is hard to get
  7. 7.The CSM is trying to fill the role of an elected committee and a private sector Advisory Board.
    1. 1.Literally Between a rock and a hard place so choosing to go nowhere.
      1. a. How Does CCP fix this? It is an inevitable problem they think in terms on programming and logic, but politics is not logic based far from it in most cases.
        1. i.Pride Power and and the flow is isk all warp the system
        2. ii.Candidates are not professionals they have other jobs so they will never  embody of perfection the community thinks they should be.
        3. iii.Make more CSM posts and create a CSM blog area on the community page. to discuss the issues and provide a place that the player base can hear the candidates speak that they don’t have to scourer the web to find them
        4. iv.More public support for the CSM and showing what they do. for instance videoing the entire summit and releasing that video so the player base can judge more than just the minutes. Allowing for deeper context and understanding of the process and abilities of the CSM.
        5. v.More transparency. The Non disclosure agreement aside CCP needs to be less secretive allowing minutes to be released within weeks of the summer not half a year later because they contain undisclosed information.
          1. 1. This will not alienate the player base it will engage them more.
          2. 2. Showing the process allows for the players to understand why decisions were made not just have to accept a decision was made.
            1. ai. This does mean open to public scrutiny and is understandably a tough line to draw under how open it should be.
To sum this all up In the Eyes of a Political scientist and Public administrator creating a better more open and visible CSM will create a better system for altering the future for the game we all sometimes take more seriously than real life. Maintaining a passion for the game throughout the player base is vital to the success of the second decade.