Blog Banter | The Wandering Druid of Tranquility

Happy Friday!

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Whew!  What a week.  I’ve been sick with a lovely sinus/bronchitis thing.  Got to love my third language, “phlegm-ish”.  Makes my voice sound very, VERY deep.  Yes, the wife is getting tired of my Barry White impersonations.

Anyway, since I was very busy with the holidays and having been sick, It’s been a while since I’ve done my Friday post.  There was a lot of cool stuff that wanted to share!

See you out there!

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Weekly Highlights January 15th 2010

“…It’s another episode of Design Star: EVE Style…”

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Welcome to the 13th edition 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!

Design my own EVE mission?  Hmm….this could be interesting. Mission design is like story telling.  It’s an art form and not to be taken lightly.  You need to be able to write an engaging story and be able to utilize the game mechanics as they exist.  To my knowledge, the EVE mission engine is a trigger based engine, where different ‘events’ lead to the next part in the story progressing.  Such triggers are things like upon warping into a spawn point, killing a specific rat in a mission, etc…

That being said, I would like to see some changes to the mission engine that do not require triggers as they exist today to allow for a mission story to progress.  The best stories we have in EVE are the actual interactions with the other players, so why not take that to the next level.  Why don’t we create some in game tools for player created missions.  Players are the best resource for ideas in a game and CCP has made it a point to draw much inspiration from our collective contributions.

How about the player created training mission?  You could hire several “NPC pirates” to provide a combat simulation for your new corp members with varying degrees of difficulty.  I would bet that EVE University would use that one a lot.  You could select the kind of NPC’s for the encounter, provide the isk for the NPC bounties and let slip the dogs of war.  This could be used in all kinds of combat training, such as a mission where you have to maintain your shield tank at 50 percent for 5 minutes or a group mission to train you on how to focus fire in a gang where everyone has to put damage on a target before it can be destroyed.  The possibilities for this sort of mission type are endless and could be useful in a number of ways.

Another concept in a player created mission has already been done in game with the scavenger hunts.  Chribba had a fun game going with the various loot cans spread throughout New Eden with all kinds of juicy stuff inside.  What about creating an in game mechanic for that as well.  The scavenge hunt mission, where you would provide the isk and loot for the hunt.  After creating the mission, Concord “hiders” would run around New Eden and place the loot canisters all over and the hunt for juicy stuff would begin.

In EVE Online, we already have mercenaries that execute contracts for a variety of services.  Why not make this a working game mechanic as a player created mission.  You could create a mercenary mission where you would front the war dec fees, set a kills threshold for quantity and ship types (with back end checking, not fair to create a mission to kill a Titan when the target may not have one), set a payout scale for the desired number of kills and a time frame for completion of the mercenary mission.  Of course there would have to be additional checks and balances in there, say only allow one mercenary mission against a corp/alliance at a time and only if they don’t have say 3 active war decs against them already.  I can see how such a system  could be abused but it could add so much more to the game.

I know, the banter was about what kind of mission I would create, so, from the list of possible player created mission types, I would create a lovely training mission where the objective was to maintain a warp scramble tackle on a target for at least 5 minutes using a T1 frigate.  Your target would be a frigate as well, however, you would be dealing with multiple ECM cruisers that are trying to stop you.

Well, no one said we could not be evil with our missions…

I am still waiting on CK’s delicious bookmark link for the other banter.  For now, you can read them on my Google shared items for Blog Banter 13 at http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user%2F03749674846786948488%2Flabel%2FBlogBanter13

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EVE Blog Banter October 27th 2009

“WOW, look at that ‘micro-Dust’…”

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Welcome to the twelfth 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 on Delicsious at crazykinux’s eveblogbanter12 Bookmarks.

This month’s banter comes to us from CrazyKinux himself, who asks the following: First there was the MMO on the PC, and now with the recent announcement of DUST 514, EVE will soon be moving onto consoles. But what about mobile? Allow your imagination to run wild for a second and describe how you would see EVE being ported to mobile devices, whether the iPhone/iPod touch, Blackberrys or Android-based devices. Dream the impossible for us!

Well, some time a while back, I remember seeing a video by Chribba of how he was using a remote desktop control program to connect his blackberry to his desktop computer to mine veldspar.  It looked cool,  but the screen was just too small to look at for a long period of time.

EVE running on mobile devices has been something that has been toyed with for several years now.  EVE Online in it’s current form is simply too complex to fit on an such devices due to available processing power, screen size and of course, bandwith for these applications to communicate.

However, there are certain aspects that could be easily put onto a mobile device.  An great example of such applications is the current evolution of the Capsuleer (http://capsuleer.evesuite.com) for the iPhone/iPod Touch.  For those of you who are not aware, it’s a wonderful application that lets you keep track of your characters and which skills they are training.  it also allows you to read the EVE Blog Pack as well as current CCP news and dev blogs.  I would have to say it’s the best EVE application for a mobile device yet.

Would we see PvP on a mobile device or other space flight activities?  Would we want to?  I don’t think so.  Such screen are very small and making game play almost painful.  Imagine being in a fleet fight and trying to target lock someone.  Just trying to read all that information on such a small screen is simply not realistic to say nothing of the bandwidth issues.  Imagine trying to use voice communications and play EVE on an iPhone.  There is simply not enough speed there to handle all that information in a timely manner.

No, I see mobile devices filling the real life role of the rendering of a personal datapad as demonstrated in the many pieces of EVE Online fiction from CCP and many others.  It would be a mobile device that interfaces with the EVE Online world in almost every way except for actually flying your ship.

  • Imagine being able to sit on the train while commuting to work and testing out ship fittings with a mobile version of EFT, then save that fitting to your personal library/corporate ship fittings library in game from the mobile device.
  • Mapping out your next roam with a mobile version of the universe map, save the planned route, send it out to your corp/alliance mates for review.
  • Check fuel levels for your deployed POS’s, selecting a check box that automatically alerts everyone in the corp with refuling roles that POS xyz is in need of fuel or create a courier contract on the fly for fuel delivery and add it to a corp/alliance “task list”.
  • My favorite one, a corp member needs something out of the corp hanger, you can contract the item to them while sitting the back yard, eating that cheeseburger fresh off the grill.  No running into the house, logging on and doing that one thing.
  • Reading corp/alliance mails.
  • Mobile chat clients.
  • EVE Online CCG game, mobile version.
  • Play the in station games from the Walking in Stations demos.
  • Read the latest battle reports from your corp/alliance and/or your Dust514 Merc teams.
  • Mobile market orders control.

Yeah, I think it would be cool and fun and I can see it as yet another hook for our obsession with EVE Online.  Bring it on!!!

All the other EVE Blog Banter posts can be found on Delicious, crazykinux’s eveblogbanter12 Bookmarks

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EVE Blog Banter September 29th 2009

“Wow, that new thing is so shiny!!!”

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Welcome to the eight edition 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 topic comes to us from Ga’len at The Wandering Druid of Tranquility.  He asks: “What new game mechanic or mechanics would you like to see created and brought into the EVE Online universe and how would this be incorporated into the current game universe?  Be specific and give details, this is not meant to be a ‘nerf this, boost my game play’ post like we see on the EVE forums.”

We all see things in game that need to be enhanced or ‘fixed’.  We all see the many things that need to be tweaked and I know that we all talk about them.  But that’s not the question here.  What new thing would we like to see brought in to the EVE Online game?  Hmm…

Hackable Sentry Guns

All low sec pirates have to deal with the fact that engaging in piracy on a stargate will result in the sentry guns firing on you.  Well, what about those guns suddenly going offline?  In many PvE missions, you need to use a ‘hacking module’ to be able to access a container, why not add hackable sentry guns to the mix?

This is how it would work.  Hacking sentries would only apply to the sentries at stargates in a .4 or lower security system as they are unmanned structures and there is no Concord nor faction police patrolling the stargate.  Attempting to hack a sentry gun in a .5 or higher security system would result  in the same response as if you had shot at a sentry gun.  Hacking the Concord Billboard would not be possible as Concord maintains an active data link with the billboards, sentries are automatic and unmaned.  Hacking sentries at stations would also not be possible as they are remote controlled by the station.

You would need the same skills that are needed to operate a codebreaker module and operate POS guns.  You would use new codebreaking modules that are only available from Deadspace complexes.  There would be two code breaker modules, a pirate module and a police module.  The pirate module would require a pilot security status of -5.0 or lower greater (you would have to had that -5.0 status for at least 1 in game month as well) to operate.  The  police module would require a +5.0 security status or higher (you would have to had that +5.0 status for at least 1 in game month as well) to operate.

You would have to engage in a separate hacking attempt for every gun on a stargate.  Simply hacking one of the guns will not work as they work in unison.  You can only hack them if all of the guns are not currently firing on a ship as the guns can not be hacked and offlined while you or anyone on the stargate has an active aggression timer.  If you are in the middle of hacking a sentry gun and aggression occurs where the guns should start firing, your hacking attempt will be interrupted and you will have to start all over again.

If you attempted and failed to hack any one of the guns, all of the guns would go on high alert and would not be hackable by anyone for the next 7 hours.  You would immediately would be fired upon by the sentries as tampering with sentries is an act of aggression and you specifically could not jump through that specific stargate for the next 60 minutes.

If you were successful, all the guns would not open fire on aggression at that stargate for the next 4 hours regardless of who engaged in an act of aggression.   The Concord billboard would be still active and able to fire on anyone who commits an act of aggression, but it’s rate of fire would be reduced by half as it would be actively trying to online the sentry guns again.

While any of the sentry guns are offline, the security status indication would change on the info screen for that system as well as on the screen of everyone currently in the system.  Say a system was a .4 system, it would now show up as a .35.  A .3 system would show up as a .25, a .2 as a .15 and a .1 as a .05.  This change in security status may or may not have an affect on the type of NPC rats in the asteroid belts.

Sentry guns would come back online once the four hour timer expires Once they come back online, they would go into a high alert mode that would not allow them to be hacked again for the next 3 hours.  The security status for that system would also return to it’s original state.

Now you many ask, what is the purpose of the police codebreaking module?  This is a fun one.  It allows a person to fill the role of a vigilante and online the guns after they have been offlined.

You have to online each gun in the same fashion that the pirate module was used to offline the guns, however, if you fail your hacking attempt, nothing happens.

If you are successful in bringing all the guns back online, you will then have an aggression timer with those sentries for tampering and you will not be able to jump through that stargate for the next 60 minutes. You would have the same security status drop as if you engaged in aggression around the sentries.

Before you cry foul remember, you are still tampering with the sentry guns and only the police are allowed to do that.  You are risking being shot by the sentries to receive the reward of stopping the pirates from being able to gate camp without sentry guns shooting them.

Please do read these other fine posts on this month’s Blog Banter!!!

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EVE Blog Banter May 26th 2009

“One, Two, Three…three things….hahahahaha”

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Welcome to the seventh 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 topic comes to us from ,

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EVE Blog Banter April 30th 2009
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