Eve Blog Banter #14: To Dream of the Future

Welcome to the fourteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

The first banter of 2010 comes to us from the EVE Blog Father, CrazyKinux himself, who asks the following: As we begin another year in New Eden, ask yourselves “What Now?” What will I attempt next? What haven’t I done so far in EVE? Was it out fear, funds, or knowledge? Have I always wanted to start my own corporation, but have never dared doing so? Is there a fledgling mercenary waiting to come out of its shell? Or maybe an Industrialist? What steps and objectives will I set myself to accomplish in order to reach my ultimate goal for this year? EVE is what you make of it. So, what is it going to be for you?

Over the last three years I have pretty much dabbled in everything, but I have really spent 95% of my time living in Null sec and I don’t see that changing any time soon as I don’t like empire for PvP (unless it is POS’s) and I don’t like Low sec PvP (to many restrictions). So that just leaves a life in 0.0 or wormholes space. For me there are two big things I want to do 1) Get more involved in PvP and 2) Make lots of ISK to support number 1.

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Blog Banter #13: More Missions Please

The Captains Log 27/10

Welcome to the thirteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

The first banter of this 2nd year of EVE Blog Banters comes to us fromZargyl from A Sebiestor Scholar, who asked the following: On the EVE Fanfest 2009 page are pictures of prizes for the Silent Auction that was held during the event. One of these photos was entitled “Design your own EVE mission”. My question now would be what kind of mission would you write if you got that prize? What would the mission be about? Would it be one using the new system of epic mission arks? What would be the story told by it? Feel free to expand upon his questions and put together your very own mission!

 

Before designing my own mission there would be several things I would do to improve missions in themselves. Currently, who pays attention to the story line? All missions come down to is grinding for ISK or standing. To fix this there would be several things I would like to do

1. Better Objectives and NPC AI

2. More immersion

3. More teamwork

Currently the objectives for missions revolve around one thing – blow up the enemy and if your really lucky bring something back. To make this even better the NPC AI is predicable allowing the player to run the mission without any critical thought.  Therefore it is necessary to introduce new objectives into missions and introduce the Sleeper AI into normal NPC’s.

Missions also need to be more immersive not just the current grab the mission (with out reading the story), blow up the rats, grab the loot and hand the mission in. So how can we make it more immersive? By having the agent open a chat with you during the mission and introducing new objectives that you need to complete before handing the mission in.

Further immersion can be obtained by introducing more teamwork into the mission so that players can fly them with other players.

So let’s put all this together into an example of a mission.

Mission: Medical Assistance

Background: Recent natural disasters in Ashab required immediate medical assistance so we sent out a medical transport to help with civilian injuries. However, en route it was ambushed by pirates. From the last transmission we received the transports escort was trying to get it out so we need you to go out and protect the medical transport ship.

Warping to the last known location of the transport ship will bring you to some pirates orbiting around some wreaks. Your agent then informs you to destroy the pirates and loot their wreaks to find a navigational log indicating where the medical transport went. You do this and find the log and warp the next location.

Once you land at location indicated by the log you see the medical transport is under fire with only a few of its escort left. If the medical transport dies you will fail the mission.

So you now have a few choices. You can try and destroy all the pirates before they destroy the ship. You could focus your fire on the pirates that have the transport pointed and hope you can kill them before the pirates doing the heavy DPS will destroy the transport. Or maybe if you have some friends along they can hop into a logistics ships and repair the damage being inflicted to the transport ship. Alternately those friends can all hop in combat ships and help you destroy the pirates.  Or maybe you want to utilise EWAR and jam the pirate ships that have the transport pointed. Bonus objectives could even be offered by your agent for destroying ships in a particular order. However, the actions you choose will influence what the tactics are employed by the pirates to destroy the ship. Bring in logistics ships will get them to agro the logistics ships and destroy them if they feel the transport is not dieing. Utilizing EWAR would get them to focus on the EWAR ships, thus needing you to use logistics to repair your EWAR ships. Furthermore, the pirates won’t devote all their firepower to one ship. If they see that they only need 10 ships to blow you up they will use 10 and have the rest concentrate on another target.

I thinking by adding these three things missions could be improved.

Other Blog Banters:

• Aether – Teach a man to fish…
• The Captain’s Log – More Missions Please
• Nukes Thoughts – Untitled
• Roc’s Ramblings – The Cave of Time
• The Wandering Druid of Tranquility –  It’s another episode of Design Star: EVE Style
• A merry life and a short one – Fatal Rabbit
• The Elitist – Guristas Invasion
• Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah – Mission: Tangled Webs
• Eve Trader – Missions with Player Adversaries
• A Starry Eyed Pod-Pusher – Wormhole EXTREAME

Blog Banter 11: Increasing our knowledge of the universe

The Captains Log 1/9

Welcome to the eleventh installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month’s banter comes to us from Joe Brusati a long time reader of CrazyKinux’s Musing, who asks the following: CCP states that T3 Strategic Cruisers are just the start for the T3 line-up. In future Eve expansions what would you like to see as the next T3 ship type. Please be specific on details about what role this ship would play, cost of manufacturing, and the different modules that would be available for it, and of course you must give your T3 ship a name!

Well Manasi wants battleships while Kirith wants Capitals. I guess they both think bigger is better. Well not me; I want to see T3 Scientific Vessels. These ships would focus on the salvaging (Minmitar), mining/gas harvesting (Gallante), hacking (Caldari) or archology (Amarr) professions. They would utilise the Battle cruiser hull class. The ships would have the same subsystems as T3 cruisers, though the offensive subsystem would be replaced by the Scientific Subsystems, which would give a bonus to salvaging, hacking, mining or analysing. I would imagine there price range to be around 300mill. The bonuses they get to scientific module would, I hope, make them a standard part of any exploratory operation.

Name

Amarr – Inquisition: ‘Exploring the ruins of civilisation and removing all traces of heresy’

Caldari – Minerva: ‘Acquiring the knowledge of our enemies’

Gallante – Extractor: ‘Building a path to a better future’

Minmitar – Pillager: ‘Salvaging the hopes of our nation’

 (All numbers are examples and are just there for show)

Defensive Subsystems – A scientific vessels needs to be well defended as you never know what might be around the next corner. Would have the usual resistance buffs or increased buffer tank. I also think that under this category there should be a subsystem for weapon disruption and jamming (as this increases the ships survivability)

Eg.

Subsystem 1: 5% bonus to all resits

Subsystem 2: 5% bonus to armour or shield hitpoints

Subsystem 3: 5% to rep amount

Subsystem 4: A mix between the above

Electronic Subsystems – Resources are tight on scientific expeditions so you have to decide how to utilise its CPU or even it ability to perform its job. These Subsystems would deal with how well the ship utilises its CPU or give a little bonus to the ships professions. So in regards to CPU ship can have increased CPU either for the whole ships or just the scientific modules its uses. Alternatively the ships can have a bonus to scanning, for salvaging a bonus to tractor beams or for mining a bonus to survey scanners.

            Eg.

Subsystem 1: 5% bonus to CPU.

Subsystem 2: Scientific modules use 15% less CPU.

Subsystem 3: 10% bonus to scanning

Subsystem 4: Secondary modules get a bonus (10% to tractor beams, survey scanners etc)

Engineering Subsystems - Again the ship has to decide how it wants to utilise its energy. Does the whole ship get a bonus to the amount of cap it has, the rate of recharge or increased power grid or should the scientific modules get a bonus to cap use or a bonus to power grid?

Eg.

Subsystem 1: 5% bonus to Power grid

Subsystem 2: 5% bonus to CPU recharge rate

Subsystem 3: Scientific modules use 15% less Power grid

Subsystem 4: Scientific modules use 15% less cap

Propulsion Subsystem – Doest the pilot want the expedition to get where it is going fast? Or should the ship be able to escape from enemy forces? Basically these subsystems would offer the ship a bonus to microwarpdrive/afterburner use, either better cap use or speed, to the ships agility, interdiction nullifiers or built in warp strength like transport ships.

Eg.

Subsystem 1: 5% bonus to microwarpdrive/afterburner speed

Subsystem 2: -5% bonus to microwarpdrive/afterburner cap use

Subsystem 3: 5% bonus to agility

Subsystem 4: +2 warp strength

Subsystem 5: Interdiction Nullifier

Scientific Subsystems – The basic module of a scientific vessel. These subsystems would offer bonus the ships scientific arrays (Strip miners, gas harvesters, hackers, analysers or salvagers). The bonus they get could be range, activation time, chance of success, the amount of loot acquired or acquiring better loot. However, a ship needs some offensive weapons so maybe you want cut down on the bonus your scientific modules get and give your weapons a boost in firepower.  

Eg.

Subsystem 1: 5% bonus to range and -5 bonus to activation time on scientific modules

Subsystem 2: 5% more loot when using scientific modules

Subsystem 3: A chance of getting better loot when using scientific modules

Subsystem 4: 5% bonus to range or -5 bonus to activation time on scientific modules and 5% bonus to weapons rate of fire or damage

Anyway that’s my idea.

A Mule in EvE – ‘Thor’ the Minmatar T3 ~ Banter #11
One Man and His Spaceship – Blog Banter 11 – The many heads of the Hydra
Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah – Strategic Capitals
Achernar – Strategic Battlecruisers: the Spiders
Kyle Langdon’s Journey in EVE – Strategic…. EVE Blog Banter #11
The Captain’s Log – Blog Banter 11: Increasing our knowledge of the universe
Deaf Plasma’s EVE Musings – Eve Blog Banter #11 – a ship called Starfury
More to come…

Blog Banter #10

The Captains Log 28/7

Welcome to the tenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month’s banter leans a little, OK a lot, on the academic side. It comes to us from xiphos83 of A Misguided Adventurer, who asks the following: ” Victor Davis Hanson argues that western culture, comprising of ideals such as freedom, debate, capitalism, and consensual government, are what make western society so successful at waging war. These ideologies create a warrior who’s direct participation in government, ability to think freely, and desire to remain free, fights harder and is willing to suffer more than his conscripted foe. Though a military must remain a structured oligarchy to fight a war effectively, why in a world where military conflict is as familiar as breathing are there so few alliances that embrace these ideologies when governing their members?”

Well I have a can of coke, a bag chips and I’m sitting on top of my favourite Goonswarm POS waiting for a juicy hauler to come through, so ill bash out a response to this while I wait.

The Perfect Solider

Firstly, I find the whole premise of solider that comes from a country whose government is based on liberal ideals fights better then a solider from a different political structure is wrong. A soldier who fights for the ideals that his culture believes in (and that he believes in), whether they are liberal, socialist or religious will fight just as hard the other as these soldiers are all fighting to protect their homes, their families and their way of life from the enemy. An example of this is the Peloponnesian War between Athens, a true democracy (even though women and slaves could not vote), and Sparta, a militaristic oligarchy. (Any quotes from 300 will result in the beheading of the offender) Both nations fought long and hard but in the end it was Sparta that prevailed (thanks in part to Athens putting a lot of its military leaders on trial), only to be conquered latter on by Macedonia (definitely not democratic). In Eve though you have the extra layer of people wanting to fight ‘because it is fun’ and they will continue to fight no matter what the political ideology of their alliance or corp is. Also often what makes a military strong is not the ideology of the nation but the experience, numbers, resources and technology that that nation has. Again this is in Eve. A well equipped and experienced theocratic alliance will overcome the poorly equipped and unexperienced democratic alliance, no matter their ideals.

A true democracy?

 So that leaves the second part of the question, why are there no/very few democratic alliance or corps in eve? Ga’len and Manasi disagree with this and believe that a lot of alliances (or what they have seen) are democratic as the corps and alliances they have been part of or observed have been fairly democratic. I have to disagree with them, mainly as I believe what they describe are no democracies. *Disclaimer: I am not part of those alliance so forgive if I do not know all the internal workings of them.* Just because a alliance allows for free speech does not make them democratic, free speech is a part of democracy but is not democracy itself.  Any alliance that ignores the comments of its members is soon going to find that it has no members, so it is prudent for all alliances to allow free speech no matter its organisational structure. Also just because an alliance has a council in which the leaders of various corps discuss what the alliance is going to do does not make it a democracy. That is an oligarchy. Unless the members are directly voting on proposals for the alliance, or voting in representatives who make these decision for them (along with allowing free speech, freedom for members to what they want and grow) they are not a democracy.

So now we come to the question of why are there so few democracies in Eve. Firstly, because I think it is a hell of a lot easier to run a dictatorship or an oligarchy so long as the member base is willing to follow their leadership and the leadership is willing to listen to the concerns of the members. This is particularly true in the last alliance I was part of. We had a good experienced leader who knew how to run an alliance, but as the membership grew older and wanted to branch into new things the leader refused to change the alliances policy to suit the needs of its members. This resulted in a lot of people leaving the alliance (including my whole corp) and forming a new one. Secondly, you have the problem of participation. You can’t really have a democracy if only a quarter of the people vote. In today’s society there is a lot of apathy towards politics and government and people don’t really vote (unless you’re like me and live in Australia, which has compulsory voting), which I think is carried somewhat into Eve. We have this problem in my corp. We try to run it as democracy, with lots of discussion and votes, but it is always the same 20-30 people who participate (out of 142 say around 60-70 not including alts). The others people in the corp don’t really care what happens so long as they can build, rat, mine or shoot. Even though we allow people to vote on polices and discuss new policies the leaders of our corp and the alliance are chosen by the current leaders and I suspect this is true of most corps and alliances.

Anyway I’ll quit rambling now and go back to hunting Goons.

Blog Banter # 9: Cloaks and Missiles