Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
The Reverse Butterfly Effect
I think everyone has seen the CCP video called "The Butterfly Effect", so I'm not going to go into it in detail here. What I am going to talk about is something that happened to my corporation that was sort of a reverse Butterfly Effect.
As you know, the butterfly effect is when a seemingly small incident can cause a cascade of knock-on effects that have a major impact on events. There are many examples of the butterfly effect in Eve Online. However, I'd like to recount a little example of a reverse butterfly effect.
As you may know, Goonswarm was at war with BOB (or KenZoku, their new name) for ages. While this war was going on, it kept both alliances busy, leaving small corporations like PPL to get on with their business. Not long ago, because of the boring and painful nature of POS warfare, KenZoku basically gave up and let Goonswarm "win" the war.
Shortly after that, Goonswarm showed up in our low sec systems, with eyes on some moons that we owned. Apparently, with their enormous war over, Goonswarm needed to find something else to do to keep themselves busy, and taking our stuff was one of those activities. We battled valiantly, but when Goonswarm showed up with 60 capitals, it is way more than a little indy corp like ours can handle. You can imagine the results. They put two of our POSs into reinforced mode, then came back later to destroy them when then came back out. In light of our little portion of space suddenly being of interest to Goonswarm, we decided that the better part of valor was to take down the rest of our POSs and vacate the area rather than risk having them destroyed.
Thus, a little bit of reverse butterfly effect: the end of a huge war between two giant alliances resulted in PPL having to tear down all our POSs and move to a different part of the universe.
And that's another thing I love about Eve...
As you know, the butterfly effect is when a seemingly small incident can cause a cascade of knock-on effects that have a major impact on events. There are many examples of the butterfly effect in Eve Online. However, I'd like to recount a little example of a reverse butterfly effect.
As you may know, Goonswarm was at war with BOB (or KenZoku, their new name) for ages. While this war was going on, it kept both alliances busy, leaving small corporations like PPL to get on with their business. Not long ago, because of the boring and painful nature of POS warfare, KenZoku basically gave up and let Goonswarm "win" the war.
Shortly after that, Goonswarm showed up in our low sec systems, with eyes on some moons that we owned. Apparently, with their enormous war over, Goonswarm needed to find something else to do to keep themselves busy, and taking our stuff was one of those activities. We battled valiantly, but when Goonswarm showed up with 60 capitals, it is way more than a little indy corp like ours can handle. You can imagine the results. They put two of our POSs into reinforced mode, then came back later to destroy them when then came back out. In light of our little portion of space suddenly being of interest to Goonswarm, we decided that the better part of valor was to take down the rest of our POSs and vacate the area rather than risk having them destroyed.
Thus, a little bit of reverse butterfly effect: the end of a huge war between two giant alliances resulted in PPL having to tear down all our POSs and move to a different part of the universe.
And that's another thing I love about Eve...
Skills: what's next?
In about 20 hours or so, I will have trained all the skills I need to be qualified by my corporation to fly all Amarr battleships. This is a goal I've had for quite some time as it means I will be able to comfortably run Level 3 missions and be a reasonably useful addition to any wormhole operations that the corp undertakes.
However, the end of one thing is the beginning of another, and now that this I've reached this goal, I have to start thinking about where to go next. The first thing I need to do is get right with my corporation which has mandatory skills that they've let me slide on a bit. I have to finish Anchoring 5 and then Starbase Defense Management 3 to be have all my mandatory skills done. That will take a bit over 2 weeks.
After that, the question is do I get qualified for another ship type or something else (research, production, refining, etc.). As I am in an indy corp, it feels like it is time to "choose my profession". Moving on toward being qualified to fly even larger ships really doesn't help the corporation that much. Therefore, I am going to start focusing on production skills. Our corporation makes its money building and selling, so I want to get firmly into the revenue side of the corporation.
So that's it: starting in about 2 weeks I will be focusing on production skills, first on being able to produce Tech 1 ships and equipment, then moving on to Tech 2. I'm guessing I will deviate a bit from this plan (I'm getting the impression that remote repping and cap transfer is going to be needed for wormhole ops, so I'll probably train that real quick along the way), but in general I will be learning how to build stuff.
Who knows: the next time you buy a destroyer or cruiser, it might have been built by me!
However, the end of one thing is the beginning of another, and now that this I've reached this goal, I have to start thinking about where to go next. The first thing I need to do is get right with my corporation which has mandatory skills that they've let me slide on a bit. I have to finish Anchoring 5 and then Starbase Defense Management 3 to be have all my mandatory skills done. That will take a bit over 2 weeks.
After that, the question is do I get qualified for another ship type or something else (research, production, refining, etc.). As I am in an indy corp, it feels like it is time to "choose my profession". Moving on toward being qualified to fly even larger ships really doesn't help the corporation that much. Therefore, I am going to start focusing on production skills. Our corporation makes its money building and selling, so I want to get firmly into the revenue side of the corporation.
So that's it: starting in about 2 weeks I will be focusing on production skills, first on being able to produce Tech 1 ships and equipment, then moving on to Tech 2. I'm guessing I will deviate a bit from this plan (I'm getting the impression that remote repping and cap transfer is going to be needed for wormhole ops, so I'll probably train that real quick along the way), but in general I will be learning how to build stuff.
Who knows: the next time you buy a destroyer or cruiser, it might have been built by me!
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Alliance Tournament VII Final Day
I've been watching the Alliance Tournament VII since 8:00 this morning and it has not disappointed. There have been some incredible matches, and this is coming from someone who has never really done PvP.
The star of the show so far has been Pandemic Legion who have torn apart two of their opponents today. In one match they smartbombed their opponent into armor within the first 10 seconds of the match starting. That's a hell of a handicap to start off with.
In their semifinal match, they lulled Manifest Destiny into coming with a setup that was targeted to counter PL's previous setup. Unfortunately, PL came in with a setup designed to counter the counter! It was an absolute blood bath.
If you aren't watching the AT7, get over there for the last few matches at http://www.eveonline.com/events/alliances/tournament/t7.
The star of the show so far has been Pandemic Legion who have torn apart two of their opponents today. In one match they smartbombed their opponent into armor within the first 10 seconds of the match starting. That's a hell of a handicap to start off with.
In their semifinal match, they lulled Manifest Destiny into coming with a setup that was targeted to counter PL's previous setup. Unfortunately, PL came in with a setup designed to counter the counter! It was an absolute blood bath.
If you aren't watching the AT7, get over there for the last few matches at http://www.eveonline.com/events/alliances/tournament/t7.
Friday, September 18, 2009
New blood
PPL is on a bit of a recruiting binge, and we've recently had 3 or 4 new members join. I don't know what it is about new members, but it always makes me happy when we get new blood. It was the same in my old guild in WoW. I guess part of it is just more people to chat with in corp chat. It is also nice to have more people available to group with if you need a hand. Corp ops are always more impressive when you have more people involved. Finally, new players joining your corp means it's not stagnating, that it's moving forward.
I don't advocate recruiting anyone and everyone just for the numbers, but I do think that, just like in business, if you aren't growing you are losing, and PPL is growing.
If you are interested in learning more about PPL, check out our web site or get in touch with me in game. My character is Radd Trigon.
I don't advocate recruiting anyone and everyone just for the numbers, but I do think that, just like in business, if you aren't growing you are losing, and PPL is growing.
If you are interested in learning more about PPL, check out our web site or get in touch with me in game. My character is Radd Trigon.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
The worst thing in the world
The worst thing in the world happened to me last weekend. In short, I wasn't training anything for almost 3 full days. I know, you're saying to yourself "How did he let this happen?". Well, let me tell how a bunch of different factors combined to make me do one of the most unforgivable things in Eve: waste training time.
So it all started last Friday when I was contemplating a clone jump back to my corp's primary base of operation. I had jumped a few days before to one of our low sec bases to do some mining with the corp, and was thinking about heading back to high sec to grind some standing.
In preparing for my clone jump, I paused my training queue and left my ship, but then I reconsidered the jump. I contemplated using a shuttle to get back instead, and after a while I just decided to stay where I was. I got out of Eve and did some real life stuff. Notice the step that I left out: unpausing my skill training.
Under normal circumstances, I would have logged in a few hours later and noticed my paused training, but last weekend I was out of town and while I took my laptop, I could not find usable Internet access. Net result: over 2 days wasted training time.
I discovered the problem on Sunday night when I got back home and logged in. I expected to be done with Amarr Cruiser 4, a 5 day training skill, and instead I still had 4 days training left. Ugh...
Anyway, long story short: if you are going to be away from the game for a while, make sure that you are actively training a skill with a long training time. Don't do the worst thing in the world like I did.
So it all started last Friday when I was contemplating a clone jump back to my corp's primary base of operation. I had jumped a few days before to one of our low sec bases to do some mining with the corp, and was thinking about heading back to high sec to grind some standing.
In preparing for my clone jump, I paused my training queue and left my ship, but then I reconsidered the jump. I contemplated using a shuttle to get back instead, and after a while I just decided to stay where I was. I got out of Eve and did some real life stuff. Notice the step that I left out: unpausing my skill training.
Under normal circumstances, I would have logged in a few hours later and noticed my paused training, but last weekend I was out of town and while I took my laptop, I could not find usable Internet access. Net result: over 2 days wasted training time.
I discovered the problem on Sunday night when I got back home and logged in. I expected to be done with Amarr Cruiser 4, a 5 day training skill, and instead I still had 4 days training left. Ugh...
Anyway, long story short: if you are going to be away from the game for a while, make sure that you are actively training a skill with a long training time. Don't do the worst thing in the world like I did.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Non-Eve Weekend
Sorry for not posting over the weekend; I was doing something more important than flying Internet spaceships. Instead, I participated in the Bike MS 150 bike ride in Mt. Vernon, Washington. I rode 160 miles over two days, and helped raise a bunch of money to fight multiple sclerosis.
If you would like to donate, please let me know and I will provide a link.
If you would like to donate, please let me know and I will provide a link.
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