FC Lessons: Jumping the Gun

Friday night, I noticed that no one had pinged for a fleet yet, so I imported some Comets and Merlins right in the middle of Black Rise and sent out a ping. 7 people showed up – honestly not bad considering no one could plan their schedules around it and NC. had fleets earlier in the day that saw a lot of people clone jump to alliance staging.

I’m sure the ship selection probably raised a few eyebrows. My initial plan was to fly only the armor Comets, but I had space in my Occator’s hold and decided to fill it with some ships I might use solo or on another fleet. The Comets were MWD fit and the Merlins were AB fit, but in most cases we were fighting on the button of FW plexes anyways, right in scram range.

This was one of those pre-planning mistakes you can make that dramatically affects the success of a fleet. I didn’t expect to go through as many ships as we did during the night, but I should have planned better for the possibility by sticking to one – either MWD or AB – in case we got into a mixed fleet situation.

Suffice to say, it wasn’t the only mistake that happened that night.

Regional Local

This week during Eve Vegas, CCP expressed their long-held displeasure with local as an intel tool, but that they weren’t ready to launch a comprehensive change to the mechanics.

At the core of the problem is a need to communicate with people in the same system that doesn’t also announce the presence of new pilots entering that system. Some players simply advocate wormhole local, in which players don’t show up until they speak, but CCP has been resistant to this in the past for all areas of space, and I tend to think this would take something special away from wormhole space.

At the same time, CCP expressed a general dissatisfaction with the ease of null ratting isk generation and the speed of level 5 mission blitzing. In both cases, a new pilot entering local is a cause for concern, albeit much more so for null ratting. I don’t think the payouts are the problem as much as the early warning detection local provides; when you feel incredibly safe, it’s very easy to earn isk in null, perhaps too easy.

So, let’s kill two birds with one stone: Regional Local.

FC Lessons: My First Roam, Gallente-Strong

A few weeks ago, I ran my first full, pre-planned corp fleet with a defined doctrine. Compared to my first roam, this was a wholly different kettle of fish. In the first place, we had about three times the number of pilots, but beyond that, we weren’t doing a kitchen sink fleet.

Instead, we were flying armor Comets with Navitas logi. It took me a long time to come up with exactly the right doctrine to use. I knew I wanted to keep our options open, and a lot of our Friday night roams involved novice FW complexes. It wouldn’t due to fly anything but T1 frigates; a mixed fleet would work for nullsec, but we’d more often than not find ourselves unable to field our full strength and be easily prone to being split up.

But, my ships needed some survivability. A Comet is ideally suited to hull-tanking, but one of my corpmates shared a nice armor fit that benefited from logi. So, I quickly added a logi to the doctrine. The Navitas could field a decent tank for a T1 frigate logi. Gotta love those Gallente for survivability.

At first, I considered bringing a tackler ship as well, but quickly discarded the idea. Any T1 tackle ship I considered performed less effectively at the task than the Comets. Why overcomplicate things?

It ended up being a good decision, and a good night.

Ascension Delayed

The Ascension expansion – there’s so much in this update that it certainly deserves the title, compared to “update” – as been delayed by a week to November 15. From those who have been testing out some of the new features on Sisi, it sounds like there are still plenty of bugs to work out, but I’m not certain which yet.

So, alpha clones won’t hit for an extra week. An extra week for corporations to prepare, PLEX prices to rise, the injector market to get ready for a sudden increase in demand, and CCP marketing to fret over the level of success they can expect.

Will alpha clones cause an influx of players? Even two weeks before launch, I still can’t say. To read Reddit, a lot of players are intrigued by the possibilities. Will that translate into an actual increase of players in game? And if so, how many?

When Should You Let Your Kids Play Eve?

I try to stay connected with Eve when I travel and can’t actually log in. I’ll check my alliance forums, our corp Discord, update Evenova, read through Reddit, and check zkill for activity. We all have a few minutes here or there to stay informed, and when you’re unable to log in, those snippets of info are like water to a man in the desert.

This week, I read a comment on Reddit about how a man and his son would use Eve lingo in the real world. That got me thinking about the background of that kind of situation.

At first, I thought about how very few people are really suited to playing Eve. It’s an unforgiving game that doesn’t protect you either from the wickedness of other people or the consequences of your actions. Rather, it rubs your face in both. Most people aren’t made with stern enough stuff to endure that for entertainment. On the one hand, I’d deem it a sign of good parenting that his son enjoys Eve enough to not only play it, but internalize the lingo. To me, that reflects well on his parenting.

On the other hand, he lets his son play Eve. That’s just not right on so many levels. This really is a twisted game, with the full display of humanity on display.

So, is he a great or a terrible dad? At what age is it okay to let your kids play Eve?

Searching for Salvation in All The Wrong Places

I am an American. This background influences my perspective on events. This is going to be important later on, so I wanted to lay this fact down right from the get-go.

You see, a lot of things need to be said regarding some of the very concerning commentary emerging out of the Eve casino ban. Frankly, I’m somewhat disgusted by some of the attitudes I’m seeing.

I debated on whether I should post this article, but in the end, I decided I had to, because it isn’t as much about an American perspective as it is about how we perceive Eve. And that most assuredly relates to the game we all love.

There are two kind of people in the world: those who meet resistance and choose to strengthen themselves, and those who run to others to save them.

Meet and Greet with Rixx Javix

There are no Eve players who live near me. My brother-in-law played just long enough to spark my interest in the game, but he quit quite a few years ago, leaving me all on my own. I keep tossing out "o/" and "stay frosty" on the chance that someone might recognize it, but so far, I haven't had anyone bite.

I don't enjoy work travel, but when my schedule does require it, I always try to see if I'm heading somewhere with Eve friends to meet up. So far, I've been able to do this once, with Aetius and kamaroune from RP. Good fun was had by all, and the bar owners had to kick us out at the end of the night.

I really want to make my way to Fanfest or Eve Vegas, though, as soon as my girls are old enough to endure us being potentially stuck several hours (or another country) away and unable to come home immediately. But regional meet-ups are definitely a possibility.

Earlier this year, Rixx and his wife hosted Steel City Eve in Pittsburgh, my old hometown. I wasn't able to swing it, and I was really disappointed. This weekend, we were in for some family visits, and Rixx and I met up over drinks last night.

It's easy for Eve players to assume a certain persona when they play. For many, Eve is an escape from real life.l I've known more than one player who expressed that while real life forces him to be polite, he can release it all in Eve. The vast majority of Eve players - even the scammers, pirates, and awoxers - are completely normal, well-adjusted people. The reverse can also be true - seemingly normal folks can be downright frightening in person.

It's always interesting to meet another writer. Our material is text, and generally speaking, a person's writing style and speaking style differ quite a bit. I, for instance, tend to think in a cloud, not a straight line, so I tend to be all over the place as I talk. But when I sit down and write, it's much more linear (most of the time).

Yet, I'm happy to report that not only are Rixx Javix and his wife completely normal people, but they seem to be exactly as their online personas suggest. Quite the pair of genuine, friendly people! At the end of a long, tiring day, they were good people to spend some time with having drinks.

Suffice it to say, I encourage you folks to try to meet as many fellow players as possible. It's always interesting to see that these other players aren't just real people with real personalities, but also pretty cool people to hang out with. I think I'm going to try to do this again.

And, I'm looking forward to Steel City Eve last year.

Rixx Javix and Talvorian Dex