Time flies

Sitting here mining out asteroids in a mission, I realize that I haven't posted much lately. Really, there is not a whole lot to talk about it seems. But I have been running quite a few missions, getting my standings up with Spacelane Patrol, and earning some isk along the way. I've set a personal goal of 15M isk per day. So far, I have been meeting that goal, but I am not doing it the optimal way seeing as it is taking me about 5 hours to obtain that. Running level 3 missions is not as effective as running level 4s.

I have been putting off running level 4s, but I may need to go ahead and make the transition. This week I'll have a full T2 tank on my drake, Sucker, but I think I'll have to switch over to a raven to be effective in level 4 missions. But that means an alteration to my skill plan, and get cruise missile skills up to at least level 4 and Caldari battleship to level 4 as well. I've been putting that off for almost a year now, instead focusing on the cruiser class ships and weapons.

And to top it all off, the raven and it's fittings are going to set me back 100M easily. Wonder how quickly I can get that back? A week, maybe 2?

On top of these happenings, it seems my corp is preparing to rip at the seams. There has been a lack of participation during alliance ops that has been noticed, and only the few regulars doing corp logistics as well. I for one am guilty of this, PvP and 0.0 wars just don't seem to be my thing. I am still unsure of what direction I will take, and how soon, but I may be flying solo here shortly. Whether I'm kicked before I make up my mind and drop myself will remain to be seen.

In more news, the test server, Sisi, will be getting another update this week, so I will probably be hopping on later this week to see what kind of changes were made.

More Sisi

Well, I've been playing around with Planetary Interaction on the test server. After a lot of forum reading, spreadsheet viewing, pin dropping, I can say that I am thoroughly disappointed.

It seems that the round circles are in fact the graphic for these Planetary Command Centers, Extractors, Processors and Storage facilities. Yeah, you can click on them and up pops a nice floating view of whatever you happen to be working with, but overall it is meh. Linking these circles (pins) are dotted lines that, once routes are set up, move in the direction the route is going.

Hold me down, I'm getting blown away!..........or not.

I guess an argument could be made that we are still too far away to view the planet surface that close up, but still.

On top of this, the UI went from fairly straight forward to pretty damn complicated. Right click is no longer your friend (even though Eve is almost entirely based on this one mouse button!), and menu selections are hidden from the obvious place to look. Eve gets quite a bit of flack about their poor UI, but this is not a step in the right direction at all.

One more annoying feature is the dreaded time delay for everything. Like changing ships in station, if you want to do anything quickly, it will not happen while managing your colony. Currently, there is no session change timer indicating the amount of delay left, so you find yourself spamming the submit button (which is still poorly placed!) to see how long it will be before you can continue on building, scanning, linking, and routing.

Speaking of the submit button, why the hell do we have to confirm all of our actions? Sure, some actions would be nice to confirm, like pin placement, but linking, routing, really?

I don't think that I will participate in PI when it goes live. It is dull and tedious. I am just not interested in more tedium. It isn't even fun to look at. Being promoted as something akin to SimCity, it falls flat. Tyrannis? The only tyranny here is the fact that CCP is forcing someone to partake in this because it is going to replace the NPC seeded items that are necessary for many other tasks in Eve.

On a brighter note, the new Scorpion model is beautiful, and hopefully Eve Gate will deliver it's promise to be an efficient communication tool outside of the client.

Eve Gate Alpha Test

Eve Gate, formerly known as COSMOS, is now in the alpha test phase. Not all features are implemented, and the settings aren't yet active, but you can log in look around for yourself. The devblog here gives more information. They pretty much want as many people as possible to log in to help stress test it. Log in, try it out!

P.S. If your account wasn't active when the most recent Sisi mirror was taken, 11 of March, you will not be able to test it.

More on PI

So not many changes have been put up on Sisi, but they did add silos since the first time I messed about with it. Last night I started some more testing, and from what I can tell, it seems to be coming along nicely. Here are some screenshots of what you can do. Take note, it will be more complex then what I have done, but this is the basic setup, no sense in cluttering up the screen until they seed more resources.

This is the first thing you see when entering the Planetary Interaction UI:

Using the right click, here I am placing an Ore Extraction facility to obtain aluminum, which will be sent back to my control center, and on to the processer:

Here is a more complete setup, the blue icons are extractors, both for ore and vapour, the red icon is the control center, green is the processor where the nitrogen and aluminum combine to make aluminum nitrate, and the new orange icon is the storage silo, where I have the processor dumping the finished product into it:

Here is a zoomed out view, showing that you can place extractors on the other side of the planet if need be:


The lines connecting all the facilities are links, and it is with these that you establish routes and their directions. You can also limit their bandwidth, but I haven't really determined why you'd want to do such a thing. Isn't the goal to get as much out as possible, to make the most product, to bring the most isk in? It seems the deposits are time limited as well as quantity limited, so I have yet to figure out what the purpose would be to limit the routes total volume.

Well, this is just a quick rundown, hopefully they will be posting more content sooner then the 3 weeks they said, so I will keep you updated as more comes onto Sisi!

More Sisi(ness)

Just as I am typing this, I realize why CCP have nicknamed the test server, Singularity, Sisi. It is a place where you can go and test setups, POS deployment, ect.. without risking anything. There is a no combat rule in effect everywhere except the systems with a FFA beacon, even in low and null sec. The test server is a safe haven where you can play around, learn, arrange 1v1, 1v1+ without fear of loss or of being set up and ganked. Everything costs 100 isk except faction items, so there is no real loss. In effect, a place for sissies (myself included!) to learn new skills.

So that is just what I did. I learned about the new planetary interaction expansion that will be coming here shortly, and messed about with several people that technically are my enemies. All in all, good fun. But I also took the opportunity to try ships in null sec that I wouldn't risk without knowing how sound they were otherwise. I fit an arty hurricane to test against the higher bounty rats, and also a Sacrilege heavy assault cruiser. The Sac is a fantastic PvP ship, or so I've heard, but I've yet to play around with it as my missile skills are generally not up to par. Mostly all my skills are in the level 2-3 range, with a few at lvl 4 or 5. Namely, the ones my character started with upon creation at level 5. Out of 18M skill points, 950k are in missiles. Fairly weak I'd say. So this is the fit I tried out:

Ballistic Control System II x2
Medium Armor Repairer II x2
Damage Control II

10MN MicroWarpdrive II
Warp Disruptor II
Stasis Webifier II
Medium Capacitor Booster II, Cap Booster 400

'Malkuth' Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Hellfire Assault Missile x5
Small Nosferatu II

Medium Anti-Thermic Pump I
Medium Trimark Armor Pump I

Hobgoblin II x3

I have been perusing several fits online, and most pilots tank it more in the lows with resists and use the rigs for missile rigs, something I am going to try when I log back in. But the above fit I used against Serpentis rats to great effect. Mind you, this is not a ratting fit. But I never even got to try out the armour tank, as I never went below 50% shields. The only time I took damage was on approach, even against cruiser and BC rats. 1M+ battleship rats went down quickly, and if they ever did score a hit, it was just a scratch. This thing spews missiles like no other ship I have flown. I burned through 5k of them in just 30 minutes of ratting. Granted, it probably took that many because my skills are poor, but in a 10km orbit, I had a second volley on it's way before the first hit their target.

Needless to say, I am hooked! Here is a pic of the Sac at a Lava planet that was in system. Enjoy!

Tyrannis on SiSi

Some quick thoughts on what has been put on the test server, Sisi, so far. Planetary Interaction is awesome! The UI was a bit of a mystery at first, but I was able to figure out what was needed, and how to operate it after about 1-2 hours of fiddling around. Since only silver, gold, nitrogen, and aluminum are seeded for resources, so far the only reaction you can produce is between aluminum and nitrogen for aluminum nitrate. Once water, silicon and carbon are seeded, you will be able to start reacting for nanites and eventually nanite paste. I was impressed with the interface so far. I am glad I was able to spend some time with it though, because in typical Eve fashion, it wasn't something that you can just plop down and get working efficiently the first go. I will post some screenies once I get back on tomorrow and play with it some more.

This was my first time on Sisi, but I will be back. I was able to play around with PI, ship setups, and feel like I accomplished something all at the same time. If you haven't already, set up your Sisi client by following this forum, Test Server Feedback, and start playing around with it!