Crucible

(Photo is of the new shaded Drake, thanks to my fellow corp mate and pilot Death for allowing me to photograph)

(Photo of Elizabeth flying a harbinger.)

Two words.

This is...

I'll let you fill in the last word on the new details of the newest eve online expansion to be released. Thus far, only an hour or two into the patch, and the details and patch notes speak for themselves- This is not your momma's expansion. Thus far what i've seen is mind blowing. I'll highlight the chances and drawbacks that thus far I've noticed to be mentionable.

Positives/Advantages
First up is mining lasers- specifically, strip miners. They now have accurate sounds that I think match the style of the ship and the 3D turret animations on our ships. Also included with the strip miners is the new sound effect that goes along with the laser actually hitting the rock. It sounds like it's being buffeted, and a green glow surrounds the site that's being hit. I won't lie, i'm biased for industrialists and it's about time they are getting a little love that they deserve for all their time and effort.

Loot all- FINALLY. It only took CCP a few years to put in a button that cuts down on the clicking that people who endlessly salvage have to do. It will make it faster, more convient, and makes the time requirements to salvage decrease significantly. It made flying by an enemy wreck in space looting take 2 seconds and 2 clicks, one to open the wreck, one to press the button (Loot All). I see this being one of the most used features of this expansion.

The return of the old weapon icons! This makes it easy to be able to identify weapons based on their picture and not have to right click -> get info all the time. So railguns actually look different from blasters and not the visually unimpressive pixelated versions. Hello artwork, we love you <3 Speaking of artwork, they have revamped a lot of the ship's colors to bring them up to par with the new graphics. Also, nebulaes. They are unique per system, and shift slightly when you move to a new system. And to top that off, the gates now face the direction they will send you catapulting through space, and the destination star is quite bright in system.

Last but not least- the new tier three battle cruisers. These bad boys can fit battleship sized weapons while still having the mobility and speed of a battlecruiser. Of the ones introduced, the Talos, Oracle, Tornado, and the Naga, I personally like the visually stunning appeal of the Oracle, with it's golden shimmering hull and smooth curved oblong hull. With some battleship sized weaponry, I forsee these new ships being fast mobile sniper gangs fielded en masse to just tear apart capitals ships, I also see them as close in blaster ships that move fast, shoot fast, and hit harder. With logistics (since these guys can't pack a massive tank) I forsee these fleets becoming a mainstay in alliance and large scale PvP.

Corp Bookmarks- Now we can finally share bookmarks amongst the people of a corp. So now jumpbridges can be shared with the corp and one person can keep track of all of them and modify them as needed. Oh yeah.

Disadvantages/Negatives:
Pinning Windows- Appearently the feature is gone. Forum crying/threadnaughts have been started as thousands attempt to bring the feature back, as appearently it's used by a lot of people. I personally don't use the feature and won't when it gets back, but then again, I'm for the people, and the people cry MOAR PINNIN'!

Supercapital Nerfs- This is by far the biggest debatable item. Many see this is a positive and negative, mostly negative by the large alliances who use massive amounts of capitals as their fighting force. They removed drone bays in dreads and titans, and nerfed the size of the drone bays on supercapitals. Also, they made it so that supercapitals and carriers can only launch fighters. This is all in an effort to increase the use of subcapitals to counter capital fleets. But I think the new tier 3 BC's are the counter we've been looking for. We'll see how it turns out.

New Font- Some hate it, some love it, most don't have an opinion. However, I'll label this as a drawback. The old font was good, and yes there were a few inconsistencies that made it hard to read, and maybe it's just the newness of this font, but the new font seems more cartoony, doesn't scale well with the -a and +A options in the chat windows, and is extremely hard to find a middle ground on size that is neither too big nor too small to fit in certain window sizes. That, and of all the things in the game, the font seems out of place. I'll label it is a negative for now until I either grow use to it, or I still hate it in a month.

For now though, these are just an overview of all the new features and options available to players in EvE. Come check them out and fly with us.

 Until I see you on the battlefield, or in the asteriod belts though, fly safe!

Slippery Slope

Ok guys, exciting news from the homefront, short post but it will have to do, not much to say in it.

I officially love stupid supercap pilots that allow themselves to be found.
I officially hate said supercap pilot for being smart and getting away.

Yup. That about sums up part of my night as me and a fleet wound up trying to chase down a solo Nyx that came a wee bit too close. Unfortunately, bad timing screwed me (and us) over and it slipped our grasp by a second or two. Too bad, as our bubbler was so ready, along with the fleet.

Anyways, yeah fun night for all! I'm going to toss some mad props to the people who fleeted up in record time and rolled with me, and to the valiant cyno pilot who lost his ship and his pod to a random ass fleet that jumped in.

Until then, we shall be on the prowl.
Fly safe!
-Tassemet

-Tassemet

CCP Live Event Hot-dropped

In the afternoon hours (evening for some), a CCP fleet leaving Polaris arrived in Tama, where they were stationed for a while camping a gate. Hilarity ensued, as well as lag as hundreds swarmed to take a shot at their favorite Dev. Approx 600+ were in local (according to my laggy local chat) and things went swimmingly for about an hour, to ninety minutes- players attacked devs, and they attacked back, fielding mainly amarr apocs with what appeared to be blaster megathrons, with guardians for logistics support.

Then... they were all hot-dropped.

Pandemic Legion, deciding they wanted all the wrecks (loot/drones) for themselves, hotdropped in approximately 6-8 titans (numbers were unconfirmable) and a dozen supercarriers as well as carriers for triage. They then proceeded to clear the field with whoever remained straggling (including myself), where I don't have anything solid past that.

However, a pirate group sat camping the only station in the system, getting kill after kill as people attempted to loot the field (including myself), and looting it for themselves. All I know is, this event seems to have been a success, until Pandemic Legion showed up. Lag reduced towards the end when the capital fleet jumped in... however, I fully expect to see a fight on that gate as other alliances take advantage and jump in capitals of their own and attempt to take on the PL fleet, however, as I am not on grid, I cannot confirm that that is what will happen.

Rest assured, someone (ahem PL ahem) will be making off with a handsome profit of loot, ammo, drones, salvage, and whatever other goodies that CCP has decided to have stored in their cargo bays. I had fun- mainly because it was the first time I have seen titans on a grid, let alone more then one. I hope everyone else had fun too! It certainly was a way to start the Thaknsgiving Weekend!

Some Photos from the Event:

This is not Minecraft... It's SteamCraft, or SteamPunk-Craft!

Hey readers!

So I have some cool shots to show you that come from my cheaters world where I use the mod TMI (Too Many Items!) In it is some cool things. Hold on, you'll see.

As you can see to my left, there's a cool photo. in it is the beginning of a steam plant I built. It uses steam engines (the grey blocks with the blue tops) to create electricity with each cycle. The electricity is moved through conduction pipes (a la wires) to a block that does work, such as a quarry, or a pump, or a refinery. The whole thing is powered with coal, which I place in chests on the first floor. There, redstone engines (powered by redstone switches) move the coal through pipes (the grey ones) to engines. If the engine is full, the coal won't go to it, but if it needs it, the coal is moved to the engine, and consumed. Each engine can hold a stack of 64 coal each, so saturating the system (aka turning on the coal pumps) before actually turning on the machines themselves primes the system for long use. Each coal lasts a minute or two, so each engine can run for an hour to 90 minutes without actualy needing filled.

 Here is two floors of the steam plant, which is still being worked on. As you can see, coal delivery is highly efficient, and I can fuel multiple floors all from the first floor without actually having to go to each individual floor! Makes it simple just to spawn coal using TMI, load the chests, and then go monitor the pumps on the first floor, or occasionally walk the floors to check for overheating. Overheating is bad, because in engines more powerful then redstone, they explode. And seeing as how the building is all engines... it's like a TNT factory waiting to happen if done wrong. But thus far, I have tried my hardest to have them overheat and I can't get them to run past blue (cool) which is fine. In this build, my goal is to have 6-8 floors of these engines running, and maybe have only the top 2 floors there as spare/auxillary back up systems. We'll see though, as I need ot get a new laptop before actually completing this build. As it stands, it lags. Badly.

Until then though, you have my BlogCraft World. So now, back to your regularly not regularly scheduled blog posts!

Night 2 through... Shoot. Creeper.

Ok, well, it's been a few nights in the game and before I go off to sleep in real life, I'm going to give you a quick summary:

1. Creepers suck.
2. Creepers suck.
3. Creepers suck.
... You get the picture.

But for real pictures:

 Yes. A creeper. Hate those buggers.

In the top photo, is the mountian i'm slowly shearing off. As I found it, it's only accessable by a waterfall, which means I can work through the night up there and not worry about mobs. Yay. Also in the top photo are the trees I'm growing to cut down so I can stay up there almost indefinitely. All I need is wood and a chest to store the blocks.

Well, i'm saving the world, and i'll continue my adventures tomorrow! The goal? Get some minecart track laid down!

Until then, may your houssssssssssse be sssssssssssssafe from creeperssssssssssss!

An Inconvienient Creeper

Ok. yeah. As you can see. This is how my first night went... -_-

A creeper managed to blow apart the outside of my temporary structure, which is positioned at the foot of a massive mountain, which I plan to level. However, not all was lost! I managed to pick up a few arrows and gunpowder, and some bones. Here's to night 2.

Squares are for Mining!

Hey blog readers!

So, it's official! The release of the full minecraft has happened! And while I don't have it yet, I plan to get it soon, but for now, I have Beta 1.8.1 since all my mods are installed and working on it.

I have decided though, to commence in a new world and take screenshots and FRAPS (if I ever get it and figure out how to work it) of my world. Now, I do have the mod Too Many Items installed, but I don't plan to use it (at least in this world), however, I do have Buildcraft installed, and will make use of that through the recipies and crafting bench!

If I don't remember a recipie, I will use a tool called Minecraft Canary, or Minecraft Wiki, or Buildcraft Wiki. Othe rthen that. I'm gonna go squares to the wall and get started!

Opening world photo.... yup. Trees...

I like Big Belts And Long Blog Posts and...

Greetings to my fellow readers!

Today's blog post will be following some stuff on planetary interaction, more 0.0 living issues, how to avoid being a target, and how to have fun safely in nullsec while still being in danger. Oh, and skill updates. Heck yes.

Ok, so let's start with planetary interaction. So far, i have been extracting on my planets nonstop making mechanical parts and consumer electronics just stockpiling as much as my planets can produce. Thus far, if I started robotics production, i'd easily get about 100 robotic units. That totals out to about 4-6 million isk, just resetting the extractors and exporting the P2 goods. Right now, I'm running a barren planet and a lava planet, and both are just extracting away and processing...

While moving about in friendly space in fragile ships with neutrals and hostiles about, there's a few important things to know. One important one is to use your intel channel. No doubt, this thing has saved my life on numberous occasions. It has also screwed me over, since intel reported is usually old 30 seconds later. In 0.0, the distance between populated systems is also great, so sometimes a fleet might be 13 jumps away, then 2 jumps because there was nobody between the two points to report anything. It happens though, that if they make it into your system, and a fight is imminent, or they are trying to scan you down, that you have a tool that gives you an idea how much time you have left. It's called Directional Scan, or D-Scan for short. It allows you to see what is in space (not necesaily how far away it is), which allows you to see fi there are probes dropped in space, or even ship types of your enemies. This is limited though, to a certain scan range, so you may see probes on scan, but if the ship is outside your scan range (due to large solar systems) you may not see the owner.

Now, you may think that this is all a lot of risk in nullsec for a small gain. Well, let me tell you, it's a large gain. If you are a miner, and your system has an infrastructure hub, you can get gravimetric sites which allow you to mine in hidden asteriod belts. Now, the rats that spawn will be battleships and below, and sometimes there are 1-3 battleships a spawn, but this varies. For best results, it is easiest and safest to mine with a buddy, or in cases like mine, have one account tank the spawn and allow the other account to mine away peacefully. When it comes time to haul, take one of your characters and kill the spawn, and haul the ore. Then, repeat the process. Out here, one rock can net you 60 million isk alone. One rock! Worth it if you ask me.

Finally to do the skill updates.

Tassemet is progressing quickly towards tech 2 sentry drones. Only last night he finished drone interfacing V, which allows me to do another 20% damage with my drones. Right after that, he started training sentry drone I, II, and III. III finishes later tonight, and IV starts right after. Then, he'll be forced to wait approximately 25 days to finish sentry drone V. What a pain. It seems Tassemet is powering through some of the worst time length skills ever. But, it will be worth it when he flies a carrier, or when he flies a Dominix and powers his way through Hordes and Sanctums.

Elizabeth is still working on Amarr Industrial V. It finishes in a little less then a week. After that, I have nailed down the final draft of her skill plan, which will have her flying a harbinger that can tank rat spawns. She may not be able to kill them, but tanking for now will be enough. While she serves a useful purpose of keeping dornes off Tassemet while he mines, she will be training her support skills to be able to fit the Harbinger better, and it will eventually culminate in her having the skills necessary to be fully tech 2 fit and battle ready.

For now though, Elizabeth is hauling ore and Tassemet is mining with a buddy. And speaking of rats... here come some now for me to kill...

The Fledglings Rise Against!

Well!

It's been one of those days where after taking care of all the things I need to go about my day are done that I once again settle into flying spaceships! Today, I decided to answer questions in the Rookie Help channel. Now, despite the fact that I can't stand people begging for isk constantly, there are some very bright and intelligent rookies in the up-and-comings. Despite the fact that I thought my eyes would bleed, somehow explaining to a new person why it is better to fly around in a shuttle then just a bare pod brought me to realize a few things. One- my memory of this game and playing it for the past six years is amazing. Two- it reminded me of the basics of PvE and PvP. And last but not least, 3- it reminded me how fun it is to be a new person flying around the wonders that veteran players take for granted.

Today, i've been mining a lot and looking over the things that I would love for Elizabeth to fly, and I think that I will be training her support skills and get her working towards a completely tech 2 fit Harbinger. This will allow her to realize the potential of being a support character and will allow her to make isk ratting and since she is finishing up Amarr Industrial V in a few days, she will be able to haul with the ability to move to a Providence within a week or two.

Plans for this upcoming week include more mining and maybe seeing if i can get a ship or two built, as well as finishing up Tassemet's training of Drone Interfacing V. From there, I plan to expand on sentry drones, since they will provide me immediate usage (versus something like Jump Drive Operation V which is only good once I have the capital ship), and from there, we'll see.

For now though, Elizabeth will haul, Tassemet will mine, and I will blog of our adventures and plans!

Just Like Good Times.

Well, it has been a few months since I last set myselfto the task of making a blog post. My sincerest appologizes to any of my readers who suddenly found their evening reading material gone. Consider it back now.

So, what i've been up to in the last few months. Well, a lot has happened. I've gotten more sleep, gotten better grades, and played more eve now that schooling is for all intents and purposes, done. Since the last blog post, I have moved corps once, made a few friends, and then moved back to 0.0 with my friends Southern Comfort Armaments. Coming back to their space, a lot has changed. They now have allies, and an outpost, which makes asset handling and corp hangar access better and more efficient. And, I also have a friend I play with, she hauls for me now, and I'm putting her into a freighter as fast and as soon as possible to help facilitate the movement of raw goods, either alloys or ore, to a refining station. And seeing as how Arkonor, Bistot, and Crokite are heavy, dense ores (approx. 16m3 per unit) being able to move a large volume of ore becomes an absolute necessity.

As for me, Tassemet, I have finished a few amazing skills and started new ones. The big one that I am most satisfied with thus far is Gallente Battleship V. Thus far, it has proven to be useful not only for moving over to carriers, but to augment the current battleships I currently fly. A few other skills are minor and have helped in small ways, but also move me towards a larger goal. One of those skills was Drone Interfacing, of which I currently have a 16 day train left on it. This will allow me to use fighters and progress ultimately towards my goal of flying a carrier in null security space.

Other things that have happened is my mass amount of mining I have done. I have run a lot of lasers and hybrid guns to get ore and alloys. I have refined the alloys and will use them to build ships to sell out here at this station, and the ore I will sell to my corp to avoid the hassle of moving it for now. I will admit, it is a wonderful feeling of having my local chat pulled out of the chat window to keep an eye on local. I missed that about highsec. it was too safe, and not very profitable. While I was there though, i did get a lot of veldspar mining in, and coincidentally, that is what we mine for out here in nullsec. Aquiring highend minerals is easy, but we don't use very many. However, tritanium is not so easy to come by. Everyone mines the high ends to profit as much as possible and trit and veldspar are all but forgotten in most cases. But that is one thing i like about being out in nullsec... I get all the minerals I need where ever I so look.

Until next time I post though, I shall be mining and having this arkonor and bistot hauled for me...