Famine or Feast?

PvP in Eve can really be feast or famine in terms of success. One night you could be on the ball and get several kills. The next night you might get blown up at every turn, or even worse find nothing to shoot at. Streaks of sessions with no kills whatsoever are not uncommon either.

But when you have a schedule like mine and you only get one good PvP session a week, a small string of two or three bad nights can stretch over weeks or a month. It can be depressing. I haven't had a kill since Jan 31st and lost four ships since then up to last night.

DAMMIT! Who let Kirith pilot again!?

Well, at least last week I didn't lose any ships, right?

I logged in last night hoping my luck would turn around. Goinard was empty of blues for a change, but a number of neutrals in local. "Curious," I thought, "what's going on?" I undocked in my trusty Hawk assault ship and immediately saw on the d-scan three Drakes, Harbinger, Hurricane, and a Zealot. A quick drop by the Raeghoscon gate saw them camping it. How dare they!

THIS IS SHADOW CARTEL COUNTRY!

I reported the interlopers on comms and asked if anyone wanted to go get these guys. A gang formed and I was asked if I could provide a bait ship like a Drake with a cyno for a hot drop from a Titan. No Drake in my hanger (wait, what?) but a couple of Hurricanes were there and I grabbed an old one and got ready.

The enemy fleet moved into Raeghoscon to camp in there and I jumped into them. I made it look like I was trying to crash the gate to escape so they would aggress me and then lit the cyno.

Stolen from Jump n' Warp blog

I targeted the Zealot in an effort to prevent it from warping off but my terribly fit Hurricane died (only excuse: it was the first 'cane I ever fit up and I never revisited it later to fix it *shame*) and the Zealot escaped. However, the five enemy battlecruisers were not so fortunate so I don't feel so bad.

With the hostiles dead or dispersed, I reshipped to my Hawk and went for a roam, visiting Tama again but not lingering there as there are a fair number of bad guys with big ships looking to gang up on innocent souls like mine. Alliance mates reported a 4 day old pilot in a Catalyst destroyer hanging around Lisbaetanne so I set course for there to check it out, racing against another alliance mate in a Daredevil looking to do the same.

We got there almost the same time but the target had docked. Darn. But then he undocked. And looked for a fight with other alliance mates hanging around in a Loki and Stilletto. As we raced to the station to engage they lowered the boom and killed the ship, but I arrived in time to snag the pod.

We waited out GCC timers and just as it ended, another newer player arrived in system, this time in a Caracal. Once again he decided to try and fight outside the station and this time I arrived in time to get on a ship killmail, as well as the pod. And check it out, he had the Hardwiring - Genolution Core Augmentation CA-2 implant installed.

Overall Tally: lost one battlecruiser, helped kill 5 battlecruisers, one cruiser, and 2 pods. That's the feast I was looking for.

Sorry 'Bout That

So yeah, my post last Friday has been raked over the coals on twitter and in comments and for good reason. I should have stopped at my ranting about how I didn't like war declarations but I felt the need to be constructive as well as critical and threw in some not-thought-out suggestions for changing war decs. Mea Culpa.

Over 6 years and 2000+ posts, a few of them will be stinkers.

I still stand by my position that  war declarations are stupid but I realize the game needs a resource contention mechanic for high sec. But I'll let more prepared people hash out how that balances out.

In far less important news, if you actually come to the website you will see this in your browser of choice's tab:

Instead of the typical Blogger favicon, I made my own. Its supposed to look vaguely like a Wyvern because a Chimera has a less distinctive profile outline.

I feel all special now.

Radical Idea: War Decs Are Stupid

One of the things getting looked at in Inferno is CONCORD sanction wars, more commonly known as war declarations or war decs. The background story is that one alliance/corporation bribes CONCORD to look the other way as they perform criminal acts on a target alliance/corporation, the upshot is that CONCORD also ignores criminal acts going the other way.

When  the two entities in question are willing to fight, the mechanic works fine. See Red Versus Blue. When the target is large enough or powerful to ignore the aggressor in most cases, the mechanic is not overly harmful to the game. See war decs on null sec alliances or Eve University. When the target is vulnerable and unwilling to fight but the aggressor is one or two guys looking for easy kills or ransoms, its not the worst thing in the world. But when the target is weak and the aggressor is strong, the target corporation usually tries to avoid the war dec by docking up or hopping to a new corp that is not at war. This tactic leaves neither the target (who has to change corps and reset up shop when all he wants to do is play the game in a non-pvp manner) nor the aggressor (who has to watch his target melt away like snow in the hot sun and thus gets no kills nor ISK out of the effort) happy. Any effort to make war decs easier or harder to launch or avoid is going to piss off the other party.

And let's be frank: war decs are stupid in any internally consistent world.

In a logical world the empires would look at the violence, destruction, economic impact, and chaos caused by high sec war decs and then look accusingly at CONCORD and ask "what the hell are you doing?" It would be as if crime families in major cities could pay the police to look the other way as they blew up buildings and shot at each other in the streets. Sooner or later the military would come in to restore order and sack the entire police force.

Now, I acknowledge that using real world examples to apply to an internet spaceship game where we supposedly play immortal god-like beings of cast wealth and power and are dealing with what amounts to essentially a independent police force free from government interference is a stretch. I'm a big fan of making storyline fit good game design and not making poor game design to fit with storyline.

And I also acknowledge that we need some method of allowing non-consensual PvP in high sec beyond market shenanigans and suicide ganks/can flipping. But at the same time, I think we need a mechanic for players not looking for PvP to have some assistance in dealing with unwanted aggression.

So, here is my proposals (flame as you will):

1) Reduce the time and effort it takes to declare a war. The 24 hour voting and then24 hour to war start is too much.

2) Allow the war dec'ed corp to pay to CONCORD to end the war dec, but make the cost high and make it so the aggressive entity gets it costs back. Once done, war cannot be declared on that corp for at least 24 hours.

3) CONCORD will no respond to hostilities in high sec, but faction navies will and they will engage anyone involved who does a criminal action. This will not be enough to give non-PvPers a complete pass but might be enough support to give them a fighting chance. Nothing changes in terms of low sec though.

4) Do not allow pilots to leave or join a corp in an active war declaration (either target or aggressor).

* * * * *

I know I'm not a war declaration expert and this idea may have holes or issues large enough to drive a Megathron through. Mostly I wanted to write a post pointing out how stupid war decs are.

Eve Online: Inferno

New Dev blog today announces that the big summer expansion will be called Inferno:

Let's cut to the chase and pull out the only relevant facts:

The next few months will be spent reinvigorating Concord-sanctioned warfare, giving tools and a framework to groups who wish to take advantage of these conflicts both directly and indirectly. We are also looking to introduce many new things which will mix up all forms of combat in a way not seen for a long time. Factional Warfare will also be seeing changes to make it much more relevant and fun by giving real reasons to fight for your faction.
As we continue development there will also be smaller changes, improvements and usability fixes, and we will not forsake our game performance focus. We will be making some changes and additions to our avatar technology and many other parts of the game. The websites will continue their metamorphoses and there may even be sight of more developer events on TQ.
Finally, we will revealing more concrete steps in the link between EVE and DUST 514, bringing an unprecedented level of collaboration, conflict and purpose to both games living in the same EVE Universe.

Translated:
- New war declaration mechanics
- New modules and/or ships
- More Faction Warfare rewards and/or bonuses
- Code improvements
- More tattoos and clothes (mohawk plz?)
- website changes
- more Dev fleet roams
- finally find our how Dust mercs are going to screw with null sec alliances and vice versa.

Now I want details! Especially on the first three.

They Still Don't Get It

The Nosy Gamer blog is an awesome one to have in the blog reader because he periodically digs into topics more than your average writer. Case in point: he uses Xfire member numbers to create rankings of the top 12 MMORPGs and updates them weekly to see trends. For example:

Why the overall decline in hours played from last week?  Last week was a down week for the hours played in the twelve most popular MMORPGs on Xfire.  The overall decline of 5.6% was lead by four games that saw over a 10% drop in playtime from the previous week: Star Trek Online (-20.7%), Star Wars: The Old Republic (-14.4%), Maple Story (-12.5%) and Aion (-10.9%).  Those 4 games accounted for 82% of the overall decrease in time played.  Why?

He goes on to talk about possible reasons for the decline and I want to jump on the point for SWTOR:

The fourth pillar is crumbling - I can explain what is occurring in the first three games fairly easily, but what can I say about Star Wars: The Old Republic?  This week's 14.4% decline in time played is just part of a larger decline of 49.1% in time played since 15 January.  15 January is a significant date as it is the last date that everyone who had purchased SW:TOR counted as a subscriber.  Starting on 20 January people could decline to subscribe.  If the Xfire numbers are representative of the entire player base, EA and Bioware are in danger of not having the 1 million subscribers they feel they need to be successful. 

I've been preaching for years that end game content that is fixed and scripted will fail to keep players engaged for any long term period because ultimately, players need freedom in order to stay committed. Freedom to choose how they play, how they succeed (or fail), and how they interact. The vaunted "fourth pillar" could be more accurately described as a fourth wall of a jail cell. Ultimately, once players have pounded through your content (no matter how well described and voice acted) once or twice, they quickly realize its the same tropes in various guises and lose interest.

Yet Eve Online, "a terrible terrible game" with some of the worst PvE content in the genre, has players hooked for years at a time. Why? How? Simple: the best end game content is other players. Bar none. There is no story as glorious and as fulfilling as the one you write yourself. Sure, maybe its not as pretty and maybe the voice acting is terrible, but it is real, dynamic, unexpected, filled with twists and turns, failures, successes, and underdog and villains.

Don't build a game with four "pillars", build a world with no rules.

Fiction Friday: Series 4 - Part 18

Previously:
Prologue Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13
Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 Part 17
 
* * * * *

"Break break!" Grey ordered over comms. "Orakkus, what have you got?"

"Cyno is up, looks like on Impro station. Warping in now..." We waited in silence while a few systems over our scout's force recon ship, a Minmatar Rapier cruiser, to drop out of warp. "OK, I've got visual. The cyno is being generated by a new capsuleer out of Hedion University right on the station, and there is an Archon carrier moving into dock position. Pilot is one Chrystina Elira Blodel of Katana Securities Corporation."

Blodel? I thought incredulously to myself. What the hell is she doing here?

"Hell, Its just Katana using Tesh again," Max grumped. Teshkat had a connection to patrolled high security space and was within jump range of most of Providence region, and a well trained pilot could jump as far as Catch of Querious. And as well it had a good position for jumping to most of the low security space in the Amarr Empire. As such, it was a popular crossroads.

"You've dealt with them before?" I asked Max and Grey as the fleet stood down.

"Yeah, Katana carriers come through here sometimes when they are heading back towards Querious and Delve after messing up CVA in Provi," Grey explained. "Sometimes they hang out in Tesh for a while and tease the locals looking for easy kills with their carriers on stations."

"We tried to catch them like we got a Nidhoggur once," Max chimed in, "by keeping the fighters tackled with a few bait ships and bringing in the fleet after the carrier pilot aborts dock to save the fighters? But Katana pilots, especially that Blodel chick, don't give a shit about the fighter jockeys and leave them to die."

"I see," I said, "well can't say I'm surprised."

"Why's that?"

"Well, its a long story. Got time to dock up and go for a beer?"

Skill Training - The Road To 100 Million

My upgrading of Mechanical skills is complete and I'm now working on miscellaneous skills to continue the march to 100 million skill points.

My skills that I'm going to upgrade in the following months are as follows in no particular order:

Multitasking IV
Signature Focusing IV
Turret Destabilization IV
Afterburner V
Fuel Conservation V
Neurotoxin Recovery I
Neurotoxin Recovery II
Neurotoxin Recovery III
Neurotoxin Recovery IV
Jump Portal Generation III
Jump Portal Generation IV
Hacking II
Hacking III
Hacking IV
Archaeology I
Archaeology II
Archaeology III
Archaeology IV
Assault Ships V
Recon Ships V

Only skill I have to purchase is Archaeology.

Its Time - Delayed Local In Null Sec

Local chat is a leftover artifact of a previous design philosophy, one that said that people play MMORPGs to socialize with other players and that its the game's responsibility to provide an easy avenue to communicate. Thus room/zone/local chat was introduced and propagated to this day in all games of the genre.

However, Eve's evolution has strayed a lot from most (if not all other) MMOs. I've argued in the past that Eve is a simulation rather than a game and due to that higher level of complexity the Local chat channel has evolved from a socialization tool to anything but. I can count on two hands that in 5 years the Local channel was something I used for spontaneous interaction. Alliance/Corp channels, public channels, voice comms, forums, IRC/Jabber all replace the need for Local chat for socialization purposes.

So what?

The Problem


Well, Local chat in Eve is primarily an intelligence gathering tool. Whenever someone is in a system with you, regardless of the millions of positions he could be at, you know his name, corp, alliance, employment history, and standings all at the click of a mouse on 'Show Info'. Its as if you are in a 50 story office building on the 35th floor and know all the relevant facts about someone entering the building from any entrance except for the clothes they are wearing.

So a pilot in Eve knows when someone has entered system with him without ever putting eyes on him. This is an equal tool for sure, available to all and sundry, but the issue is that provides an extremely easy and effective warning system and thus limits opportunities for PvP. However, the funny part of it all is that it also acts as an effective hunting tool for PvPers looking for targets that are not as vigilant of the local channel.

The end result is that small groups/individuals who can't watch all the nearby local channels like a hawk are more easily hunted while larger groups and bot software that can observe local 24/7 are more easily protected. 


In other words, Local chat channel intelligence is a tool that helps the people that need it / deserve it the least. This is a contributing factor why low sec is a barren wasteland filled mostly with people simply shooting each other and industry a mostly forgotten playstyle, and its a contributing factor to why small alliances can't make headway into null sec (i.e. there is no way to hide). It also, in my ever so humble opinion, makes warfare in Eve less exciting as surprising your opponents is very difficult since any alt can peek into the nearby systems and look at local to see hostile fleets, thus leading to the cyno hot drop as the most effective surprise attack weapon.

The Solution

Its time to put delayed local into play in null sec. For those not aware, delayed mode in a chat channel is the state where you don't appear in the list as soon as you join the channel. Instead, you only appear once you say something in that channel. This is the mode used by various channels you can join and is the mode used by local channel in wormhole space.

PvP in wormhole space is fraught with excitement and danger as you never know if someone is hunting you or if the target you've locked has four buddies ready to warp in and assist them. Now imagine that suspense without the vagaries of random wormholes and mass limitations; two large fleets moving to engage when suddenly another unexpected fleet warps in? Delicious.

Also, the delayed local would allow small groups to more easily infiltrate large alliance space as scouts will have to have eyes on gates instead of cloaked at a safe spot, and tracking an enemy fleet will require actually following them and using scan probes. It would allow small groups wishing to exploit resources in deep space to more easily hide their numbers and even existence from the local overlords, forcing large power blocks to patrol their space more judiciously.

Finally, it will make it harder on bots to protect themselves. Instead of watching local for new contacts, additional accounts will be needed to sit on the gates to watch for hostiles, seriously cutting into profitability of the mechanical monsters. Or they continue to use one account and directional scanner but are more vulnerable to cloaked hunters.

Force alliances to work to hold their space while making it harder for bots and easier for small groups to enter null sec and perhaps make a living? And more exciting combat scenarios?

Sounds like a win-win-win to me.

Its time: make null sec use delayed local chat channels.

Podcasting Will Resume Normal Operations!

As you may or may not know, my podcast ran afoul of issues with Audacity in that random recording sessions would come through choppy, as if I was speaking through a high speed fan. It was sometimes rare, other times happened every time I tried to record a piece for a podcast, and I'd never know until playback. You quickly lose enthusiasm if you record the same thing five times over.

I tried to debug what was the cause but with nothing running and no identifiable source for interference, it was still random. So the podcast suffered.

I could have tries setting up Audacity on my old computer but wanted a more high tech solution instead. So I did some research and added to my Christmas list the recommended Olmypus VB-8100PC digital portable recorder. This tool will allow me to record the podcast with clear audio separate from any software / hardware configuration and conflict issues, and then import the audio file into Audacity for production.

Now all I need is 30 minutes to record. Going to try tonight so see you in the Ninveah channel!

A Night Of Traps

So far February is not shaping up well for me. Last week I lost two Rifters in two engagements and now this week my fail continues.

I logged in and decided to retrieve a jump clone way out in Caldari space. As I was zipping in an Ibis to base, I got reports of a fleet moving to jump on a group of pilots running a mission in Aeschee which was 6 jumps from my base. I moved as quickly as I could and jumped in a fast Dramiel to try and get there in time but was too late. It turns out the "mission runner" was a bait Drake from Tuskers and our fleet ran full tilt into their fleet, loosing a couple ships in the process (and not even getting the Drake). I arrived in system just as the action died down. Dammit.

Seeing the fleet was stood down, I went back to base and decided to roam in a Thrasher. I heard Tama was busy lately ("TAMA! IS! SAFE!") so set a course for Black Rise region, looking for targets as I went. I arrived in the notorious system and spotted a Cormorant in a Faction Warfare site on scan. I warp in and see the Caldari destroyer 60 km off. I start burning towards him figuring he'll make a run for it... but he doesn't. Instead he starts moving away from me... Hmmm, either confident or noob. I assume the former and start making plans to run. We're both MWD fitted but my speed is 500 km/s faster than his, not enough to close the gap before his weapons chew through my shields.

Then a Caracal warps in through the gate. I'm not too worried about it since its many klicks behind me but its obvious that this is a trap so I align and warp to the sun.

Now kids, listen to Uncle Kirith: if you warp to a celestial, they will see which one you warped to. So don't sit there and admire the scenery when you come out of warp.

There was some wrecks at the sun so I was curious and moused over them to check them out... when my friends land on top of me (along with some battlecruisers) and I'm quickly slag. So stupid.

I'm a long way from home so I dock up and decide to try and fit out a ship to head back in. I buy a Jaguar and some basic fittings, just enough to threaten any foolish haulers or whatever I run into on the way back. I undock... and see hostiles sitting on the undock. Of a kick out station. Yeah, shit.

Embarrassed, I flew home in my pod.

Tama, you bitch, I'll be back. Hopefully smarter and more on the ball, but I'll be back regardless.

Stricken Down

A cold has made its way through the family this week and hence I've been away from the keyboard a lot, hence no blog post today or tomorrow. I expect posting to resume on Monday.

This is all Ripard Teg's fault. (I don't know how, I'll think of something...)

Redesign Eagle Contest - Results

Going through the 7 entries was not easy.

Judging the mechanic proposals required looking at not only how well they make the Eagle better, but how they fit in with the larger game, how easy they would be to implement, and if there were any unintended pitfalls. On top of all that was whether I liked the idea or not. Judging the aesthetic design changes was easier since only three of the entries made any effort at all to change the design, and only one actually included visual aids for me to look at.

I gave a score out of ten for the mechanics proposals, and a score out of ten for the aesthetic design, and thus everyone had a score out of twenty.

3rd Place Winner - 1 x Pirate Frigate (list) ==> Ripard Teg of Jester's Trek blog

I liked his entry for keeping the Eagle as a nominal sniper, but deducted points for his suggestion of creating 280mm railguns which I think is an unlikely extreme that CCP would go to for fixing this ship. His entry didn't have any pictures for changing the design of the hull but at least made some minor proposals in that regard.


2nd Place Winner - 1 x Pirate Cruiser (list) ==> Logan Fyreite of Eve Opportunist blog

This entry was solid on the mechanics and the one entry which I felt had a the best chance of being implemented, very much in line with what I would have proposed for myself. On the graphic changes his entry was weak but at least he offered some pictures of birds to assuage my wrath.

1st Place Winner - 1 x Pirate Battleship (list) ==> aidenmourn of the Finders & Keepers blog

I'll be honest: I was not a big fan of his proposals on mechanic changes. I think that giving a HAC (and a Caldari one at that) a big bonus to warp disruptor range and more damage to effectively turn the Eagle into a Diemos (but better) is not the way to go. However, he more than made up for that by having a thought out proposal and he made a real effort to show a new design for the hull to make it less toaster-oven-ish. So by a slim one point margin he takes first place.


* * * * *
Winners, could you please evemail me the choice of ship you would like and the character name to contract it to?

Sponsor

Thanks for everyone who submitted an entry, and special thanks to Eve News 24 for adding to the prize pool!

Endorsing Alekseyev Karrde for CSM 7

A Face You Can Trust. No, seriously.

For what its worth, I'm throwing my votes and support behind Alekseyev Karrde of Noir Mercenary Group for a seat on CSM 7.

I feel that the CCP and the players are best served by a CSM with a broad experience in their background and that more support for null sec candidates is unnecessary. Aleks, as leader of Noir., has seen the game from null sec to high sec, wormholes to low sec, all over the cluster and is well situated to talk about things that pure null sec candidates would not be as prepared to discuss intelligently. In addition, as a well known player by all those sectors he has electability potential that others with similar backgrounds would lack. Name recognition and respect counts for a lot in these things.

CCP and The Just-Don't-Get-It File

On January 27th in a dev blog discussing community events at Fanfest (still so mad I can't go) CCP Navigator gave this piece of news when talking about the prizes for the poker tournament:

The first in-game Ishukone Scorpion skin will be awarded to the overall winner as well as having their name added to the in-game description of this ship.

 Excellent! I've been waiting for any vanity ship customizations since Incarna was on the drawing board. Then he had to ruin my excitement with the next paragraph (emphasis mine):

This leads on to another question, does this mean we will be seeing ship skins for sale in the NeX store or by some other method? That is currently not the plan and is not in development so the short answer is no. The Ishukone Scorpion was already created as the first prototype and Game Design plan to release it to everyone at some stage. The winner of this event will just be granted the first one, before anyone else has ever owned it, along with the bragging rights of having their name in the lore.

 The one bright spot about the NeX store for most pilots in Eve was the thought of being able to spruce up the hanger with various different ship skins. The technology is there, the NeX store is there, this is a no-brainer to push the cart over the finish line and at least get some useful mileage out of the debacle that was Incarna and you are not going to do it?

Sirs, I am disappointed.

Seriously, disappointed.

Fiction Friday: Series 4 - Part 17

Previously:
Prologue Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13
Part 14 Part 15 Part 16
 
* * * * *

"In position on Nase gate," I reported to the fleet. The big Rokh battleship eased to a stop only 1500 meters from the stargate that would fling me to the Nasesharafa system at my command. Other ships in the fleet came to a stop around me, mostly cruisers and battlecruisers.

"Roger," fleet commander Greyhound67 acknowledged. "Hold until we see what this guy is going to do."

Flying with m3 Corp was a very different experience from my time with Strife Mercenaries. For one thing, its not that the raw skill of the pilots was better or worse, but the discipline was much higher and m3 Corp's fleet commanders had a higher expectation of pilot performance. For another thing, m3 Corp had a lot of friends from other nearby corporations and alliances whereas Strife was always more of a lone wolf corporation.

I joined the corp after talking to Max (and a thorough background check) and quickly started to rebuild my bank account and hanger contents. I started working for a Chemal Tech agent in Naseharafa (helped along by good reccomendations from agents I used to work for in Republic Fleet) and by working with other m3 pilots I soon got solidly back on my feet. A few weeks of hard work and I was able to purchase a brand new Rokh battleship as well as several other smaller vessels including a nice used Falcon recon cruiser that I had trained up for.

In between the constant battle against the hordes of desperate Sansha Nation drones there were occasional battles against capsuleer forces, usually roaming pirates / anarchists with time and ISK to burn. Sometimes they got the better of us, but usually our cooperation and numbers carried the day.

Thus how I came to be in a fleet on a gate waiting for instructions. The fleet was over half made up of pilots from m3 Corp, lead by one of our directors called Greyhound67, aka Grey. The other 5 ships of the 11 in fleet belonged to two other corporations that made their home in the Sukanan constellation. The fleet was hastily assembled when a Vexor entered through the gate system of Teshkat and scouts reported him as having a CONCORD sec status of -5.6. Just our type of target.

Grey was in a Falcon with covert ops cloak in Nase surreptitiously shadowing the Vexor. He was checking the asteroid belts and planets for targets to engage, hopefully unaware of the fleet that scrambled in his wake.

"He's warping to Tirbam gate, get ready to jump." Tirbam was a dead end system; if he jumped in there we could trap him. Tension rose but the comms remained quiet. Suddenly Grey ordered, "Jump! Warp to Tirbam gate and hold!" As one the fleet activated the gate and spun through the artificially generated wormhole to the target system. As my consciousness cleared in Nase I directed my ship to align and begin warp ramp up towards the Tirbam gate. Around me the other 9 ships did the same.

"He saw me jump in, he's approaching the gate, get ready," Grey said. My ship was slower than the smaller vessels but still arrived in time. The gate fired and seconds later my sensors picked up the hostile cruiser, followed almost immediately by targeting calculations. "Point," Max intoned. The fleet began fire as my lock resolved and I saw the shields of the target dip. I sent a mental signal to my 16 neutron blaster cannons and eight of them with firing arcs on the target erupted in super-excited particle explosions. The hyper charged magnetically coupled balls of electrons and neutrons ejected from the cannons at the speed of light and smashed into the Vexor, bending the very subspace structure of the atoms that made up its hull and armour. Vast swathes of metal composite disintegrated and the energy released blew massive chunks off the rest. One salvo and the Vexor has lost the rest of its shields and half its armour.

I detected the flurry of reconstruction nanobots trying to stem the damage to the crippled ship but the fleet's combined firepower was quickly overcoming it. Another salvo blasted from my weapons the the Vexor simply flew apart in every direction. The pirate capsuleer, obviously disoriented by the assault, was quickly locked and destroyed and woke up in some distant cloning facility somewhere.

"Good work, fleet," Grey congratulated us over comms.

A pilot who was acting as a scout for us back in Teshkat jumped into our channel. "Cyno in Tesh."

Redesign the Eagle Contest - Judging In Progress

Just and update: the Redesign the Eagle contest is closed to entries and I am in the process of evaluating the submissions. I will post who the winners are next week. I wanted to be able to do this today but I've been especially busy.

From The Shadows We Strike!

As of today the Kadavr Black Guard is officially a member of the Shadow Cartel alliance.

If you are interested in joining us, join the "Kadavr Public" and speak to Nashh Kadavr or Anabaric or anyone else you spy in there from the corp. :)

Curse You Twitter!

This morning on twitter our resident statistics lord pumped out this little tidbit:

Well, I've now got full Jan stats, so new drone totals! Most built, 935,857 Hobgoblin I. #2 471,937 Hammerhead I. 

I responded with:

Those drone totals only highlight the utter lack of desirability for any other drone other than the highest damage ones.

Now I was going to add "(except the fast Minmatar ones)" but I was three characters off the 140 character limit for a tweet so I hit enter anyways and was going to follow it up but got distracted. I come back a minute later to see Cobalt_Valkryie saying:

I disagree. Most people I know use warriors in pvp because they're fastest.

Gah! Alright, I quickly respond:

Yes, I was going to inlucde the exception for the Minnie drones but curse twitter and 140 characters. :P

But its too late. I'll forever now be know as the guy who doesn't think Mimatar drones are useful.

To set the record straight, yes, Warrior IIs and even Valkyries IIhave uses due to their high speed for intercepting and engaging faster targets. But the use case for Berserkers and all Amarr and Caldari combat drones is very limited and, in general, you are better off going with the bigger damage Gallente drones rather than the others.