Lords of Space

Well I didn’t get to go to fanfest but I have heard a few things so just wanted to recap what i’ve heard so far.

First looks as the boys at CCP are planning  a new type of site, namely comets that can be found via CCP, these will be a new form of exploration based mining, designed to offset the dependency on lowsec moon mining. Basically a smaller style of moon mining, no word on if this is lowsec only or will be surveyable in highsec as well but definitely tickles my fancy.

Next is the word that CCP is working on Tech 3 Frigates! Yes bringing all the wonderful tech 3 modularity we’ve seen but down to the frigate sizes… Personally i’d have loved a destroyer t3 but oh well still sounds awesome, and hopefully this will mean we will see eventually more and more t3 ships (battleship t3 anyone?), They’ve already said that Tech 3 frigates will be substantially cheaper than the strategic cruisers, but just how much cheaper is anyones guess and will depend on alot of factors, personally i just really hope the skill requirements aren’t too difficult for me to get No word on when the t3 frigates will see the light of day yet though.

Another big thing with tech 3 is the news that CCP will start to seed Tech 3 Loot drops to the mix of things which should be great for just about everyone.

Treaties apparently missed the Dominion time frame but will eventually make it into the game early in 2010.

Planetary Interactions are also on the upcoming plan, It’s not going to be based on planet ownership but more of planet development and policies and politics, apparently not much like simcity but a darker more eve centered development style, i personally wonder if this ties into the fact we’re getting the new planet graphics

We all heard that Walking In Stations has become Incarna, well it looks as COSMOS the social network and tools for eve has also gotten a new name “New Eden”.

Also formations were apparently mentioned again but they haven’t confirmed or really gone in depth as to what they will benefit or how they will be controlled or implemented yet which is kind of a bummer.

They’ve also confirmed that Dust514 atleast initially launching on “consoles” will not be a subscription based MMO, and will mostly be financed by microtransactions where players can purchase “thousands of blueprints”. CCP says that Dust will have one of the widest variety of weapons and vehicle customizations ever seen in a FPS.

What a bad night we had last night, the corp finally decided to get together for a L4 mission together, the first one went great, we got through with it in 30 minutes and had most of corp flip to salvagers and sucked the area dry in another 2 minutes. It was late 10pm my time so i was getting ready to head off for some family time, when some corp mates suggested to do one more real quick l4 with them… On the way to regroup, somehow our CEO got disconnected so we were down 1 man, but decided to press on anyway considering most of us can solo L4’s ourselves.

So we entered the first deadspace with my Megathron fully fit with Mega Neutron Blasters (12m a piece when i bought em but ohh so powerful 2500volley no matter resistance on the rats is just too nice.), Our new Wing Leader Robert (great guy) he was in a really nice amarr battleship, the really expensive 150m one, and Nakiti in a drake (he doesn’t really pvp or pve, mostly industrial but he wanted to hang out with us so he came along and helped out we just kept most of the agro away from him)…

Anyway first room went great, second room cleared out in about 5 minutes, and then a guy in a cormorant showed up he must have combat probed us out to find us. It was a ninja salvager that Robert had scared off a previous day apparently… since he had been chased off before, rob and me opened fire and the guy buggered off quite quickly.

Now I don’t know if it was that it was late and I wasn’t really paying attention or what, but when the name appeared back I didn’t check the show info or character age or anything, i started firing, set my AB and approach to get into gun range, and all 3 of us opened fire to get rid of him. Only as I approached and he scrambled me did I realize he wasn’t in a t1 or t2 battleship as i had expected. Only when my friends Amarr battleship disappeared from the watch list did i realize that this f*cker was in a Tengu and a well fit one at that. His radial velocity was well beyond that of my Blasters tracking range as he turned his caldari navy missles at me, he shreaded my shields in a matter of seconds and withing 4-5 volleys my armor was gone, i was truely strucken in astonishment as i realized that with 10 drones (t2 and t1 mediums) all attacking, my neutrons barely scratching him, and nakiti’s missles smashing into the pirates shields, he had only lost 30% of his shields! And at this point had destroyed Rob’s BS and mine was falling apart, I called for Naki to withdraw but he was scrambled, i realized i wasnt scrambled any longer and tried to warp away, but before my ship could enter warp it disappeared with a flash!

Naki managed to get the only real damage on the tengu pilot, as my large blasters and the large amarr lasers just couldn’t keep up with the tengu’s speed fit… before Naki could break the scramble his ship was gone as well. We all managed to keep our clones and dock up safely but the day had come to a horrible conclusion.

Robert was really depressed after loosing what was nearly a 300M ISK ship and fit, and well my 180-200M had me down as well, Nakiti shrugged it off alot easier considering the cost of the drake and he hadn’t really had it fit with any named weapons etc. Robert apologized for what he felt was a lack in leadership to have us not evac immediately back to base to wait out the agro, but truly their was no way it was his fault, none of us could believe how ineffective our ships were against a single Tengu, the fact is we did loose a lot of cash but it’s only a few days of L4ing to get back into our ships, or even 1 really good day So live and learn, the night was truely an awakener  to pay more attention to which ninja pirates your deciding to attack, especially the reminder to check the fact the guy is a 2007 player, and the fact he was  a “AntiPirate Corp” didn’t seem to matter

I eventually messaged the pirate that had popped us, and told him it was a good yet unbelievable defeat but all the best to him, i wanted to be a good sport. He was very courteous and actually explained that with the size of our guns, and the fact he had his Tengu speed-fit the only things that actually were hitting him were the drones and Nakiti’s drake missles, he agreed we should have aligned and warped out faster, and the fact that i had forgot to align early enough really did piss me off but as i said every lost ship is a learning experience, just wish it hadn’t been such an expensive one

Either way I’d rather loose a ship to a well played offensive from a player that respects his victims than to some moron that sits in local boasting about it.

So I can’t remember his name specifically (its buddied though, with a bit of negative standing to keep us wary of him and his corp), tecal31 I believe was his name but I’ll have to check it out later.

Lesson of the Day, Check Employment history, and stay aligned for gods sake!
Lesson #2 of the day, a few wrecks isn’t worth risking a fleet of expensive mission fit battleships