Always Lessons to be Learnt...

I'm one to make silly mistakes, and probably tonight is a shining example of making mistakes whilst under pressure. 

Recently I have been giving the title of Commander: Flight Squadron. Basically i'm the FC for our corp. To those that have never been given the role of FC… believe me its hard… especially with the few leadership skills that I have (to which I'm learning currently). 

Tonight I decided to lead a few corp mates through a roam around New Eden. I decided that I wanted to have at least Cruiser size and up. Are Cee would be the tackle in his Stabber, with Salvadia being in his Megathron. Myself? I decided that I would go ECCM/EWAR with the Scorpion. 

[High Slots]

1x Large EMP Smartbomb I

1x Large Remote Armor Repair System II

4x XT-900 Cruise Launcher

[Medium Slots]

1x Sensor Booster II

1x ECM - Ion Field Projector II

2x ECM - Multispectral Jammer II 

1x ECM - Spatial Destabilizer II 

1x ECM - White Noise Generator II 

1x 100mn MicroWarpdrive I

1x ECM - Phase Inverter II

[Low Slots] 

1x Damage Control II 

1x 1600mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I

2x Signal Distortion Amplifier II

[Rig Slots]

1x Large Particle Dispersion Augmentor I

1x Large Particle Dispersion Projector I 

[Drones]

5x Hammerhead

[Ammo]

Caldarri Paradise Cruise Missile

I have been looking at this fit for a while. It may not give the DPS like a Megathron, but it can help the field by jamming the enemy. EWAR is something that I would look to use more often, and I have a plan currently set up for a rook and a falcon with Black Ops. 

I decided that I would go for this fit, and hope that myself and Salvadia could spider tank each other with the RR's.

Going through systems near placid, we ran into a few people but we could not find a single player that wanted to play with us. Maybe its true what they say about Low-Sec; its dead, and nobody wants to play… with many people taking to alliance battles in null. 

Anyway after dragging the two around some of the systems near Placid, I decided to head near Lonetrek. A place that was familiar to DFND. Torrinos, a system within the region leads to Pure Blind region held by FCON and the NC, to which we were a part of. 

Still nothing was around, and I decided to head into Nikishina in the Citadel Region. 

Two were in local. I gave the order to check the belts. Curse on scan. The race was on. 

Took me a few minutes of tracking this guy down, and warping to different parts of the system checking on belts and planets. Eventually I managed to find him off the gate leading into our next system on route. The guy was a pirate, and had a sec of -9.9. I got the fleet to warp in, and the decision to engage was sent out. He must of been AFK, and didn't think anyone would be foolish enough to try it with the gate guns. 

I instantly jammed him to make sure that he wouldn't fire when he got back. And we popped him within less than a minute. The call then went out to get the pod, and in the next few seconds he was no longer. One more pirate safely out of harms way for a while. And I bagged the Corpse… I felt I deserved it for being the FC ;) 

http://killboard.dsgaming.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=146

http://killboard.dsgaming.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=147

I would love to end this blog by saying that the 130mill was the only casualty, or that more had lost out to our hands. But sadly no… And guess who got the bullet…

Yup myself… but believe me I would rather put myself on the line, then lose a ship. 

A jump out on our way to our next destination, we were being followed by two pirates. And they seemed keen on taking us on. The two were using a Typhoon and a Loki respectively. The Loki instantly engaged Sal, with the Typhoon trying to lock me. Me and Are Cee managed to get out, with Sal following us not long after. 

With the Loki not being able to jump for acts of aggression; I decided to take on the Typhoon in the next system. I locked on, and instantly jammed the bastard. I called for Sal to armor rep me, as I knew the Loki would come to the Typhoon's aid. And sure enough he jumped through, and instantly locked onto me as primary.

You would think with one Multispectral Jammer on the Typhoon, I could target the Loki, and try using a racial jammer. It would have helped… but me and my ego, decided to try and burn the Typhoon first, and deal with the Loki later. Remembering later it was Tech III. Duuuh!

And as soon as he (the typhoon) was down to half armor, I got the sound I didn't want to hear. I was going into structure. I had moments left. At that point, I could have still tried to target the Loki, to give me a few seconds to get out… but I was more concerned trying to spam warp out. Boom! 

Mistakes… I guess we all make them. And in this case it cost me 65mill. I managed to get the pod out, and both Are Cee and Salvadia came out with both of their ships intact. I couldn't care myself. I can afford the ISK. 

http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=11627109

Well at least I know for next time, what to do and what not to do. But the good news is that in terms of ISK. The ratio of what we Damaged to what we lost… or I lost. Still favored us. And I think that is something good to take away from this… that I can lead a fleet capable of damaging ships of high calibre like a curse. And that from a simple mistake, I know what to do next time in that kind of situation. 

Hopefully next time, I will be posting more fleet ops with greater success :) 

Fly Dangerous New Eden… 

Fun and Games with CCP...

Tirelessly sitting through the Extended-Downtime period...

In the past 10-11 months of playing the game, I have seen a few things. I have see titans take battle in 0.0 in a bid to see which alliance can claim Sovereignty. Epic battles that have resulted not only in my eventual podding, but have claimed a couple of nice KM's on the way.  However...

CCPers Podded at LXQ

But when I saw this from my corp mate (Baruchiev), we both laughed, and I thought how impressive some of the developers are at CCP. I believe that this is truly special... 

Contradiction to what I have said in my previous blog questioning about why there seems to be a lack of stringent testing in Tyrannis 1.1. Its fantastic to see how much CCP cares about the game. They are even willing to risk their own ships and skills to take part in an epic battle, all in the name of testing the load of the server (or one particular node). To which it eventually led to two employees being podded.

For those that don't know, Northern Coalition headed by the formidable RAZOR and R.A.G.E & co., have been attacking the Russians over in the Drone Regions, especially Legion of xXDEATHXx. And LXQ2 is where it has all been happening.

So when testing the epic amount of over 3,000 pilots in local, it was great to know that they can use the data to test for Incursion coming out soon! And hopefully get rid of this pesky problem of Lag during big fleet battles.

Something that when out in Null-Sec with the FCON Alliance and Northern Coalition, I felt a big problem. Everyone in EVE knows that the bigger the fleet, the more lag it can produce. Personally a huge annoyance, and one that I hope Incursion can help reduce. 

Oh and the impressive fact of this related news: one of the employees name CCP Atlas who got podded; had his corpse sold on the market for an impressive 5bill ISK. Now that would be a fantastic corpse to have in the trophy case. I envy the bastard that has that.

Somethings that are... small can surprise us all :)

Jannear 

Extended DT and Patches...

Now being an Englishman in New Zealand, I tend to get teased for always complaining. But in life I find that we have to complain; put it simply… its human nature. 

Everyone complains, it doesn't matter who you are! And in New Eden, capsuleers should be no different. Although EVE Online is a great game to play; its simply human nature to complain.

As I write this, most of EVE's players are waiting for 1.2 of Tyrannis to be released into the system, so we can carry on our endless ganking of pilots, to reach the pinnacle of the Killboards. 

A reminder: CCP Spitfire wrote (29.10.2010): 

EVE Online: Tyrannis 1.2 will be deployed this Tuesday, November 2, 2010. Tyrannis 1.2 features the transition to 64-bit inventory system, updates to the API system and a number of fixes to the user interface.

The deployment process will begin at 05:00 UTC and is expected to be completed at 16:30 UTC.

But as I read this over and over again; I can't help recall the past few months since Tyrannis has been released, and think: "Its about bloody time!!!" Sorry for informality of that sentence. But when you think about it, its not far from the truth to most pilots hearts. 

In the past month or so we have seen 6 additional "optional" patches to the fabled 1.1 Tyrannis patch. And in terms of epic fails, I can put this one up there at the top. Its harsh but true, but bear with me. 

The patches have seen our User Interface being butchered, making it harder to PvP or Mine. Reports from one IT Alliance FC, mentions how he couldn't de-cloak, bubble and approach with his Sabre like he used to. En-masse pilots have endlessly complained, and its a firm belief that something needed to be done earlier, not whilst we sit here now.

I note, the usual joke on the EVE forums of: "Setting Gallente Titan V to the skill queue" are quite common still now. 

Although I have mentioned it as an Epic Fail (which true), at least CCP is out there to fix it. And it shows how dedicated they are to the pilots of New Eden, pilots who drive to achieve the best in the game. In the end of the day the game is not perfect; if it was, we wouldn't have to sit through patches, and everyone would be playing. 

I will still enjoy the game regardless of what the patch turns out like. Because in the end of the day, EVE Online is a fantastic game, that extends the intelligence beyond the Hackers seen in Modern Warfare II. Or the immaturity of little kids playing Bad Company 2. 

But an obvious question still has to be asked? Why has it taken 6 "optional" patches to eventually culminate to this night/day (depending on where you are) of Extended DT? Speaking as a University Student studying Information Systems, it is poor programming. Whatever angle you look at, these patches have been pretty much fix one problem, create 10 others. And whats worse is that two of those were emergency patches, and one patch failed. In what universe can this be deemed appropriate for  a game rated highly as EVE. Something should have been done sooner... 

Surely CCP testing involves stringent processes of crossing every "t" and dotting every "i"? Yet we all sit here wondering why it takes CCP hours to revert basically back to where it was before 1.1, plus or a minus a few new bits, that may cause new problems. 

I can't help think that this could be a little bit of desperation to make the pilots happy before Incursion arrives in less than a month. Something that must be in the back of CCP's head; a sense of worry possibly? 

Again as I said before some of these fixes in the patch could not of come sooner. I personally haven't been a fan of logging into my client often, to have to instantly sort out my Overview or my chat windows that have been disorganized. As well as some of my modules not being online whilst in space or even weapons ungrouped.

And so ends my rant on this.

I will say something before I end it quite there… I know that not everything is perfect. I know that I myself aren't. But sometimes you have to complain to get things of your chest. Believe me when I say that I will still support CCP and EVE and paying my Subs regardless... I just feel that this needed to be said. 

Discussions and Comments? Believe me, I can ensure that all of New Eden has something to say about this! Had I not want to bore most of the readers further; I could of gone further on in my discussion. But to be honest, I rather hear the opinions of others. 

First time blog! And hopefully this DT won't over extend... again... Possibility of free SP from CCP as compensation?

Jannear - Defenders of Sovereignty