Media of the Week

Where to start?

Image of the Week.

Leviathan wreckage on Caldari Prime.

When I first saw it I was shocked. Then I was awed.

Its something which really helps hammer home the scale of the ships in eve. However I believe CCP will have a really good quality version of this that they should release in my honest opinion. I may be a Caldari fanboy, but its a damn good piece of work which I would like as my desktop background for a while.

As a further note on images, though not an image per-see CCP has updated the look of their community website and released a dev blog about it. Linky.

Video of the Week.

Clear Skies 3 by Ian Chisholm

Literally if your interested at all in Eve Online and have not seen these your missing out big time.

There are in actual fact three separate Clear Skies movies, 1,2 and 3. The third and last one is possibly the best out of the three. But its necessary to a certain extent to watch the first two to fully understand what's actually going on.

This is the sort of thing I wish we saw more of for many more games, and I wish we saw more of this kind of thing for eve, as Its pretty damn great. It is if anything a testimony to how dedicated and invested the eve community is with the game. I know for a fact that when this was released when I was in Test that nearly everyone began downloading it to watch it as soon as word spread it was available, with most people logging out of game shortly after finishing downloading it to watch it.

Music of the Week.

Something Dark is Coming. - Bear McCeary.

I chose this for this week's piece because it is again one of my many favourite tracks, one which I can listen to on an endless loop without getting bored of it infact.

Bear McCeary did a fantastic job with the Battlestar Galactica soundtracks on a whole. Parts of them are not great in my opinion but others he has shown some true skill in.

The whole feel that this piece is building up to something unknown in the future I think perfectly fits with the nature of the reasonably brief Odyssey announcement. We don't know much, it sounds like it could be epic and it could turn eve into a more dark and dangerous place.

Eve Online Odyssey

Yeah, somewhat interesting news.

The nineteenth expansion for eve online has been announced and it has a launch date as well. (4th of June).
Eve Online Odyssey website 
Pax East 2013 Odyssey presentation. (Linky for the photos of those slides.)

Pax East 2013 What do the next 10 years hold? IGN interview with John Lander.


I'm hopeful about this expansion, I like the words that come out of John Lander's mouth, I'm just playing the wait and see game as to whether he can make CCP do what he talks about wanting to do with Eve.
What's on the list for this expansion;

Discovery Scanner.
Using this new system, more pilots will reveal the hidden secrets of the EVE Universe. Beautiful new visuals, customizable controls and new functionality have been added to encourage the adventurer in everyone. There is now more among the stars, enticing even the most experienced veterans to explore.

I am somewhat confused as to why people think this is going to screw with the existing Directional Scanner. (guessing its because of the D).
To my mind this is actually going to be at least a rework of the base system scanner we all have, but ignore in favour of D-scan for much of the time. But it may also include a revamp or at least making scanning with probes that much better. Currently it feels a little bit faffy and time intensive to me at least, to experienced people its probably relatively quick.
To this and to the following section comes the anomalies, signatures and DED sites. I fully expect we can see all of these massively re-worked at the minimum. I'm going to also say it's likely that mini game/puzzles will be the method of hacking and analysing in the future. I seriously doubt they will do much if anything to salvaging. In my opinion we can expect them to make sure there's a full variety of scaled content in these sites for each faction and going from high to null-sec with them.
If anything I expect there to be a new gold rush much like with Incursions when they first came out to this newly revamped part of the game, where if you put the time in you can make some serious cash.
I will however say I think that CCP will barely touch on those sites within wormholes, maybe a little balancing but that would be it.
However I would love for them to add some new T3 tiers of ships (sub-capital) and build this into the wormhole sites and the industry which revolves around them as well.

A New "Spacescape".
A rebalance of major areas of space from highsec to nullsec include changes in exploration sites, industrial resources, some types of NPC loot and more…

Into this I'm expecting to see the newly revamped and added exploration sites being added.
There has been a little speculation that CCP may be adding some new systems to existing regions or possibly redefining the borders of some regions but I doubt this will be the case.
If anything I'm expecting CCP to add ring mining into all layers of eve, as well as moving around the R64 moons so that not all of the Technetium is situated in the north. I think this will be in an effort to remove the current stranglehold that the combined nullsec powers of the CFC and HBC (inc. PL) currently have upon these. Though it's not going to be enough to force any major changes.

Going out on a complete random limb here but it wouldn't surprise me to see CCP adding lesser style wormhole effects to entire regions of known space with the effects being able to be increased in low-sec possibly and definitely in null-sec. This would be a likely attempt to make more space seem different and add to the value of different regions of space, e.g. if your an alliance which primarily relies on shield doctrines your going to want to move to a region with bonuses to that.

Again people have been speculating that CCP is going to add incursion style events for each pirate faction. I however don't see the point at all. There isn't the lore background for it for the Serpentis nor the Gurista's or even the Blood Raiders. In one of the books the Angel Cartel did actually declare ownership of some Minmatar low-sec system after they got the local populace to all sign up to something or other. But even then I don't see a real reason why the Angel Cartel would.
 One interesting idea that springs from this is the pirate factions having more of a presence in low-sec with maybe gaining ownership of a constellation or two with missions available and so on.

The Little Things.
Continued development towards raising accessibility without removing functionality will bring dozens of changes to player-owned starbases, game UI and beyond.

To this section I'm attributing the new skill and ship tree's that we have seen some leaked screenshots of as well as personal hanger array's for POS's which have been confirmed as to exist on the Chaos test server. I will also guess that a revamp of corporation management and roles will be on the cards, but will be a slow burner item which will be updated on periodically as they untangle this mess and sort it out bit by bit.


The Warmachines.
Forged by the lessons learned from countless combat pilots, the four factions will issue forth with the latest tools of war and re-designs of old favorites - ships as awe-inspiring as they are deadly.

Rebalancing of all faction and navy ships. As well as the introduction of new faction and navy battlecruiser's and if were incredibly lucky some new T3's of some sort. I would also hope to see tier 1 industrials rebalanced as well during this as I doubt it would take much to do. As I think I have stated already on this blog, I completely agree with Jester Trek that these ships need some attention sooner than later.

The Storyline Continued.
The shared EVE Universe storyline continues to evolve following the Battle for Caldari Prime, with participatory events spawning unique player stories in two games at once.

On this I have little to say apart from I hope CCP listens to some of the criticism they received about the Battle for Caldari Prime event. To just quickly re-state the issues which rose from this.

1. There was a predetermined outcome to an event in the One Universe, Sandbox where each of us can supposedly make a difference.
2. System population cap. There shouldn't have been one. Its what I thought reinforced nodes were supposed to deal with, lots of people in a single system.
3. The timing of the event meant that not only were most of the North American playerbase unable to get in on it, but you had to be a quick Brit or Irish etc player to stand a chance of getting home from work to actually participate, (Not to mention most likely being locked out of the system by the population cap.)
4. Commentary on the live stream being at times poor.

However I do hope they release the artwork they produced for the background of the Dust 514 battles with the burning Leviathan wreckage in it.

As a final point I wouldn't put it past them to add in some new nexus stuff in the way of ship skins. With the probable two options being a one off use skin you can purchase or an infinity use ship skin, so you can select to have each and every one of your Drakes or Ravens appear to have the Navy colour scheme or your Oracle's to be dubbed with the rusty red markings of a Blood Raider forever more.

Still only time and fanfest will tell.

Media of the Week

Media of the week is a new little feature that I thought might be fun.
Each week I will be linking a video, image and possibly a music track of some sort, and commenting a little on why I like them. Some may be topical to what's happening at the time, others won't be and some might be a few years old, but pretty good nonetheless.

I'm completely rubbish when it comes to anything creative of this sort, but I absolutely love some of the stuff others create and really do respect them for taking the time to make what they make and sharing it.

So to get started,

Video of the week.

Ghost Festival - Push Eject

I first saw this a couple of years ago. And after watching it the first time had to go back and watch it another couple of times. The cool bits in it for me are the, intro where the image distortion matches up to the music. Then onto the camera following a drone fighter as it flies around and spins. The the short clips of the Caldari frigates flying around in something close to formation (or at least a pack) at high speed as well as some actual small gang fight footage being shown as well. Along with the fast pace of the footage it gives the impression of a fast moving and highly active corporation which is good at what it does. Lastly the shot of the Moros Dreadnought firing its blasters, and the balls of plasma coming straight at the camera are fantastic, and I don't think I've seen this in a video since.
Overall its fast paced, fits with the music and is visceral showing off the beauty of Eve, and the fights that can occur against other players.

its perhaps one of the best corporation recruitment video's out there for Eve Online. (note I didn't say Alliance, I may look at some of those next week.)

Image of the Week

Ship Tree UI

This is actually a series of images from a thread if you can call them that from Reddit, which I sometimes look at.

Here's some more, Linky.

According to the Reddit thread,  this was taken from one of CCP's test servers, and shows a new way of viewing the ship progression tree in Eve. I Like new stuff. I often jump from new thing to new thing, and think "Ohh Shiny". This is this week's Ooh Shiny thing for me.

Anything which makes it easier for new players to visualise and see what paths are available to them is a great improvement. Hopefully this combined with the Skills now showing what they "unlock" at each level they're trained to will make it that little bit easier for those new coming into the game.

And after all the easier it is for people to understand, the quicker they're likely to get somewhere and have fun. This is what eve needs if CCP wants to decrease the turnover of people giving eve a go and quitting because they didn't know or understand it.

But I've also got to wonder how much time and effort has been put into this which could have been spent on something else, which might be seen as more important to the playerbase.

In conclusion it looks good, its going in the right direction, but I also wonder what else they can do with it?

Music/Sound of the Week.

Mediaeval Baebes - Glass Window

If this sounds vaguely familiar to you, you might remember having heard it as the music which accompanied "The Witness" trailer which was first shown at the PlayStation reveal a couple of weeks back. The game itself looks really nice as a puzzle game, in which to lose yourself for a few hours easily, and not feel like time has been wasted. It's also being made by the team behind Braid, which you might have got and played via Steam.

Its certainly something I'm looking forward to playing in the future, lets hope for a PC version.

A quick and dirty newbies guide to Eve.

So here goes, me giving out useful advice. People in the past have told me I'm good at this, I'm not so sure.
It's likely just going to be a collection of links to useful sites and articles and 3rd party programs but I will be starting out with those golden rules of eve which get thrown around constantly, (in reality its just a list of don't do this or that).

The Golden Rules of Eve Online.

1. Have fun.

This is really overlooked compared to number 2 which is said so many times.

2. Don't fly what you can't afford to lose. 

This can't be stated enough. Its no use spending all your money, selling every ship you own for that Tengu Strategic Cruiser and then thinking you will take it for a spin on a low-sec radar sites or a mission or something and the moment you enter low-sec, you end up finding yourself surrounded by pirates who are ripping you to pieces. Seconds later your waking up in a new clone without an ISK to your name and nothing but a rookie ship.

3. Don't fly what you can't afford to lose. - Yes again.

4. Your going to lose ships and you will get podded. Its just part of the game.

It really is. its not personal and the game allows it, even in high-sec. CONCORD is there to take revenge not to protect. The only way to not lose a ship or get podded is to never undock, in which case you might as well not play.
Best thing to do is as soon as you can afford to, take some T1 frigates to low-sec and look for fights. Your going to lose a heck of alot of them and your pod often as well but you will get used to it and not lock up later with fear when your in a more expensive ship or when it matters more.

5. If something sounds too good to be true

Its a trap! People will try to scam you in this game. Keep this in mind. They will often try to come at you sideways.

6. Don't mix your weapons 

If your fitting guns they want to be all exactly the same, same with missile launchers. So no to having a couple 125mm auto cannons on your Hurricane alongside some 720 howitzer artillery cannons.

7. Don't mix missile launchers and guns, unless you know what your doing! And if your a Noob you probably don't. (A few ships used to have split weapon high slots, e.g. Of 6 high slots, 3 could take turrets and 3 could take missile launchers, though I think this has been done away with with the rebalancing.)

8. Don't trust anyone,

They all want to steal your stuff or blow you up. (Possibly an extension of 4, but if so it needs mentioning again.)

 9. You don't need faction, deadspace or officer modules to be good.

In the majority of cases T1, Meta or T2 modules are enough. Its not the ships and items that make you good in Eve is you, the player that makes you good. Sure they help but they won't stop you being surrounded by armed bastards who want you dead and to loot your stuff.
For example.
Did you really need to fit officer guns and a deadspace tank on your Vindicator? just so you can complete the mission a couple of minutes faster? Nice ship, but T2 guns would have been fine, and that tank is just overkill to the extreme. Spending some money on faction mods can be a good idea, like on Federation magnetic stabilizers.

10. Don't bling out a ship unless you know

1. What your doing,
2. It's a ship worth blinging out for a specific role.
Otherwise you end up like the guy in the link, fitting a module which cost a silly amount to a ship which shouldn't need it and doesn't benefit the role in which its used for.

And as with the pirate code these aren't laws, they're more like guidelines.

My Advice.

My advice for starting out as a new pilot would be this.

Do all of the tutorial missions even if your not interested in industry or mining.
Why?
All the tutorials give good rewards in terms of cash and ships, if you know your never going to need that Venture you can sell it on once you have done them, and make a decent profit.
Train for your races T1 frigates first, find a half decent fit somewhere. Ask around, look on the internet, in wiki's and work out what skills you need to fly it well, and what skills you need for each of the modules.
Chances are doing this will concentrate your skill training towards a quick and achievable goal which you can build from with your future training.
The Goons and TEST have it right, a frigate can change everything.

Getting used to losses.

Once you can afford a couple dozen frigates take a few out to low-sec. expect to die, don't get attached to them. Make sure its insured and your clone is up to date. Learning to accept losses early on will make it much easier later on. And remember each time you get podded and wake up in a station,

UPDATE YOUR MEDICAL CLONE! RIGHT GOD DAMN NOW! DON'T UNDOCK TILL YOU HAVE!

It can also be worthwhile to have a look who killed you. They will most likely upload your loss to a website like eve-kill.net It can give you some useful information. Also you can try convo'ing them. They might be complete dicks, they might not be and may take pity on you, a new player and explain where you went wrong, what to do better. Its all a learning experience.

Plan for the future.

Think what you want to do and begin training towards it. Set yourself goals and work towards them.

See a really cool ship fly past and think, "I want to fly one of those" look it up, work out what skills you need and train for it.

Hear a story about a fight somewhere, and think "I want to be part of something like that!" Find out more about it, what ships they were using and what kind of fight it was and come up with a plan yourself as to how to get there.

Want to build ships to sell them on the market? Start looking at your industry skills, what do you need to be able to build whatever, and begin working towards it, do a few trial runs of making small quantities of ships, get the hang of the industry side of the game and get going, and scale up your operation.

Some highly useful links.

Eve University Wikipedia perhaps the most comprehensive eve wiki out there covering allot of the details and with a good bunch of guides thrown in there.

BattleClinic This can be useful for looking for relatively good fits (loadouts). Beware not all of them are, and its worth reading the comments to see what others say about them.

Dotlan Probably the best third party map out there. It can show you pretty much everything in a manner far clearer and easier to understand than the in-game map.

ISK Guide Download it and have a look through, it gives a good overview of many of the different paths you can choose to tread and how best to begin your journey down them.

 Failheap Challenge A community forum site filled with bitter vets with nothing better to do than post all day. They do however offer some excellent suggestions on fits and ships in the "Ship Setup Hanger."

Offical Eve Online Forums. I wasn't too sure whether or not to include this. But you can find people willing to give good advice on there, but also people who will troll and give bad advice, however the latter two are relatively easy to spot.

Some blog's such as Jesters Trek which is linked to the right hand side are also quite good to look at for some information on ship fittings and other parts of eve. For example his definition of a safe undock or kick out station is well worth a read.

This is not an exhaustive list, there's far more out there and in greater detail, it just depends on what you want to do whether its any use to you.

Your experience in eve is in your hands. Put enough effort in and you can with a little luck be anywhere down the line.

Something new.

What has really impressed me so far is the number of little additions to Eve Online, and what a difference they make to my overall enjoyment of the game.

• Waypointed routes showing in space, so you can see where you will be flung by gates between the stars.
• Rounded targeting reticules. A very nice change from the boxes we had before and I guess is along the path of bringing us the interface they show in various trailers. - I can't wait to see if they do more with this.

• Agression Timers. I think this is another fantastic addition, simply being able to see it cycle down and what exactly you have timers for and against is such a big blessing and removes one of the things you have to be constantly thinking about in the back of your mind.

• Safety controls. I actually like this especially when flying in high-sec where in the past I was always so worried about automatically shooting a neutral and getting concorded as a result, just because I've an itchy trigger finger from null where its all NBSI (Not Blue Shoot It). However I've yet to try it out in low and null-sec areas where I'm wondering if it will be a hindrance.

• Info Panels. Nice to see this made far more concise.

• New camera follow, via "C" on selected target. OH MY GOD! This is awesome, there's no other way of describing it.
• New sounds. The new little sounds for all sorts of things like skills finishing, targeting, being targeted, the aggression timers finishing and probably a fair amount more I haven't noticed. Overall, pretty cool and not invasive sounding. They just fit in brilliantly.
• New mining frigate, Venture. It looks pretty damn cool. The colour scheme suits it incredibly well. In a way its a shame that its just a frigate when compared to the looks of the Exhumer's and Mining Barges, which just look shocking in comparison now.

I know there's some new destroyers as well but I've yet to get a hold of one to have a really good look at, though from what I've seen the Minmatar one looks awful in my opinion with its door wedge barbed look, whereas the Caldari one looks like a kick-ass submarine boat, and the Gallente one looks fairly classy with the mini drone bays on the side. The Amarr one I'm least sure of my opinion on, though leaning towards "Meh" its not bad but its not great. I will come to look at them another time.
If you hadn't guessed by now I like cool looking ships and judge them all.

There is one improvement that I would like to see added which perhaps only I would find helpful.
Currently you can view a mini solar system map, constellation, region and universe maps via pressing F11 which brings them up in a series of boxes as a side bar. Region and Universe aren't that helpful in my opinion and neither is constellation exactly great.

What I would propose would be to make it so you can have just the maps you want in seperate boxes you can pull around the screen, e.g. a separate solar system mini map would be invaluable when D-scanning and possibly in wormholes. a mini constellation map, or one which showed you every system within 3-5 jumps would also be helpful. Especially if the format in which they were shown was cleaned up and improved. It could just be me, but that would be a cool little change and have a direct benefit upon my style of play.
However I've no idea how much work this would take. And I do know that some things when it comes to these games which are 10 years old aren't that easy at all, as the dev's now will have to deal with code which hasn't really been touched in years, written in an incredibly outdated fashion and of which there's very little to no notes on.