Closing shop

It's been an age since my last post, and not much has changed.

Well, a ton has changed, but the underlying sentiment from February 2015 -- that real life is displacing any time for meaningful Eve interaction -- has calcified. This week I logged in for the first time in months to reallocate attribute points and to update the skill queue, but I won't renew my subscription when it lapses in about five weeks.

I'd like to think that if I had more time, I'd be incredibly keen on jumping into World War Bee against the Imperium. Much as I enjoy TheMittani.com, my brief spell in an Imperium-affiliated corporation was repulsive. The median age of Eve's players is ~32 (more data here), but I would have guessed otherwise based on the wretched (i.e. racist, misogynist, homophobic) language scattered all over the Imperium's web presence. It's not just an Eve thing; take a loot at the gaming community's other sporadic descents into madness, e.g. "gamergate." But, for a game that so notoriously requires a bunch of smarts to master, it's a shame it doesn't always bring social graces. Or just kindness.

(Surely there are lots of very nice people on Eve: I've been one of them, and I've written before about a couple of others I encountered. I suppose this is another instance of a mindset having a loud mouth disproportionate to its adherents.)

Then again, I was an active player for a year-ish, and PvP never really caught my passion. Even before my daughter arrived, there was just so much other real-world content to latch onto.

All that said: I'm not liquidating my assets, and if circumstances change and allow me to make a subscription meaningful again, I'll jump right back in my Ishtar (or Kronos or ... something else) and happily putter around.

Playing the long game

My daughter was born a couple of weeks ago. There's a lame joke to be made about a frigate-sized baby requiring many years of real-world skill training to pilot. But, the more apt observation is that this noob is handily piloting a pair of Titan-sized tenders.

February 15, 2014, was my first day with Eve. Since then, my family has moved, we've had a baby, and my dog has doubled in size. In the game, I've churned through five characters, whittled down to three. (Yesterday, I briefly regretted getting rid of my stripminer, Rosy: picking at asteroids seems an easy, casual way to do something in the game while doing a 3:00 a.m. bottle feeding. But, then I remembered: I'd much rather sit in our nice corner rocking chair than this creaky desk chair. So, no sweat.) In that span, I've flown over a dozen types of ships, racing up to cruisers and battlecruisers, plateauing for a spell with a battleship, clawing my way into a marauder ... only to look around and wish for the speed and energy of a frigate. It's all been very exciting.

I wrote before about trying to squeeze in as much Eve as possible before baby's arrival, but alas that didn't happen. Spent more time playing X-Wing Alliance, plus a bit of Grim Fandango. All other things being equal -- or, unchanged -- I'd be jumping headlong back into Eve. While X-Wing games have been fun, their nostalgia and neo-novelty value is waning, but Eve is always fresh, and I have plenty of goals I've barely crawled toward. But: baby!

Soon after leaving graduate school, I made one of my first Adult Decisions: I took $100 and put it in a Certificate of Deposit. A year later, I'd made $6 interest! Well, Eve is about to become my next CD, with a minimum one-year term: no-touch (much), but with higher value when it comes out of the oven. And that's due to a big change in the game in November: CCP removed the requirement that all queued skills begin training within 24 hours, and players now can queue up to 50 skills regardless of when training starts.

Well, Eemiv has 50 skills lined up, training time to complete in about a year. (Technically, a bit sooner: in April, I'll realign Eemiv's core attributes to accelerate training.) Eemiv's core ship-fitting skills are pretty well maxed out; a year hence, he'll be maxed out in additional gunnery, maneuver, and ship types. Dengar's parallel queue isn't as long, only about 60 days: I've tightly trained her up for frigates and cruisers (around which she's well maxed out) and, more recently, logistics. In about a month, her parallel training (which costs extra money) will end; when Eemiv's queue is done, Dengar's remaining 30 days will wrap up. I'll continue to update Eemiv's skill planning spreadsheet as things tick off -- thank you, Eve Droid, for keeping me posted on these developments without me needing to log in or fire up Evemon in bootcamp. My final character, Talon, has a few market orders ending in about a week: I'll need to renew them, and that's kind of a blessing because it also means I can consolidate a few of them.

As I've thought about the changes that come with having a baby, I've realized that as much as I love games, I enjoy reading and writing more. Those two things are more compatible with being interrupted by an unpredictable child. (And, when there is time for games, titles kike Grim Fandango are a better fit than Eve in my current circumstances.) Still, I plan to continue to write about Eve -- I have a few draft entries begun -- but this may be coupled with a few other topics. I've given some thought to consolidating this blog with my blog on model-building, and perhaps just broaden it to be "a place to write about stuff" (such as the books I'm reading: I just finished Leviathan Wakes, which was pretty amazing). We will see.

o7, everyone.

Mumble mumble

Alas, I didn't meet any of the goals I laid out below. Work and prep-time for an incoming baby simply trumped sitting down with Eve. What spare gameplay time I've had I've spent returning to a galaxy far, far away with Good Ol' Games' release of X-Wing and TIE Fighter -- especially the latter. Long live the Empire!

I did last night, though, jump into RvB's frigatus weekend event with Dengar. Frigatus is a frigates-only free-for-all, with a cap on how many folks can band together to join fleets. The highlight for me was the Eve client crashing: when the game crashes, it automatically warps your ship a long distance into deep space; when you log back in, it jumps you back. The problem is, with the client crash I was also booted from the fleet I was in. Logging back in, my former fleet-mates were still around ... and, from their point-of-view, another frigate not in their fleet had just jumped in, or perhaps just de-cloaked They blew me up pretty quickly.

Alas, it was my own fault: RvB uses Mumble for in-game voice communication, but Mumble isn't playing nice with my computer's mic; if I'd taken time to configure it all properly, I couldn't hollered for them to back off.

Ultimately, we all got a good laugh of it: as soon as I jumped in, I heard my attackers planning my demise. I suppose I could've tapped a hurried message into the Mumble text chat window ... but, nah. I could afford to lose the ship. I explained things in text afterward and we all had a good chuckle.

Goals update update

NB my mid-September note updating some gameplay goals -- or the short, short version below:

• Train up to use tech 2 modules on Eemiv's main mission-running ship
• Clone Eemiv and stick one copy amid the dangers of low-security space
• With Dengar, participate in two RvB weekend events
• Stretch goal, not time-bound: train Eemiv up for flying logistics (i.e., essentially, medic)

I gave myself a two-month window and should've added a fifth goal, to wit: post an update two months later so that I'd have at least one post in November.

I'm giving myself a 60% success rate on these. Here's the breakdown:

• Modules: done and on time. When I began Eve, I decided to wring myself an early advantage by cashing in (rather, ISKing in) Plex to buy more-powerful (than even T2) but easier-to-fit faction modules. However, faction and higher level modules just aren't worth the real or potential expense: the real cost being the much higher price tag without that much more power, and the potential cost coming from carrying around all that bling to become a target for gankers. (There's really no such thing as "solo" play; even if I'm content to shoot NPCs, anyone else can scan my Kronos, do a cost-benefit analysis, and decide to blow me up while compatriots raid my corpse.) Anyhow, I've sold back the faction modules, and it's nice to have back some of that ISK with which to play the market.



Typical jump clones
From Sony Movie Channel

• Clone: I modified the goal a bit and it's still in progress. The biggest hang-up here is that I just didn't invest the time to wrap my head around jump clone mechanics. I had an errant (mis)understanding that jumping between clones requires both the current and target clones to be at stations with medical bays. I was having a devil of time (indeed, utterly failing) at finding a good home base for Eemiv: a station with whose owners Eemiv had good standing, access to level 4 missions, and close to a trade hub to get loot onto market. But, just yesterday I carefully read up on jump cloning and got my facts straight: medical bay only required to create the jump clone; afterward, jumping can happen from non-medbay stations. Eemiv now has a jump clone with a ship -- but, rather than winnowing in on low- or null-security space broadly, I'm going to send him into a wormhole again pretty soon, hopefully better trained and equipped than last time. I like the exploration component of Eve. So, goal amended and delayed, and work continues. As an aside, I like the clone changes coming this week and am curious about the additional clone mechanic shifts CCP has alluded to.
• RvB weekend events: I tried. I logged in for a cruiser event, decked out in a Thorax, but there were no fleets. I bounced between three jump gates in the neighborhood and saw maybe one ship, neither friend nor foe, who promptly jumped out. Weird. I didn't log in for a second weekend event because they were generally free-for-alls, and those just don't interest me right now. Goal not met.
• Logistics: kinda sorta, in that I shifted it from Eemiv to Dengar. I initially envisioned Eemiv as a bit of a free agent, tacking onto missions in local chat as people requested. But, I figure this would be more useful if I did it with Dengar, where logistics piloting for a group can more readily be useful. Dengar is trained up to fly a tech 2 Oneiros logistics cruiser, but I'll try experimenting initially with a less expensive tech 1 Exequror. I definitely need to further investigate good fits for these hulls.

So, what now? By the end of the month, I plan to

• Have Eemiv run a hacking, relic or data site in wormhole, low-sec, or null-sec space.
• Have Dengar fly logistics in an RvB fleet once
• Train Eemiv to fly assault and covert ops frigate
• Assess Eemiv's skill training plan to identify when best to remap his attribute points, thereby adjusting the rate at which certain skills train. The character will be able (but is not compelled) to remap his attribute points come February.
• Report back to the blog my progress on the above!

And the stretch goal: have Eemiv or Dengar join a new corporation. I would like to be more engaged with other plays in blowing up internet spaceships, and I'm starting to feel the confidence now to do that. 

My initial anxiety at doing this was in-game, i.e. not being able to afford to get blown up a lot as I learned the ropes. Frankly, my anxiety about trying to get more involved now involves the real word: I'm going to be a father in February, and I hesitate to jump into a group I soon won't be able to do much for. But, there are large groups out there that I'm sure can absorb "real life" just fine. And, besides, there's only so long as I can go without kicking myself for coming up with reasons not to do something. If fatherhood is going to mean less time for flying around, well darnit I better get in as much flying and pewpew! as I can now.

New tool

Just sharing: the Oceanus release brought some tools to ease exporting/importing ship fits between the game client and third-party programs. The developer post mentioned to tools specifically: EFT (short for "Eve Fitting Tools") and pyfa. EFT has been running on my bootcamp partition since development on EveHQ halted, but I'd never heard of pyfa before. So I tried it.

Awesome!

It has a friendly UI and, thank goodness, is a native Mac application. Now that my characters' skill planning is pretty well set for the near and even long terms, I'm spending more time fiddling with fits and ship hulls; discovering this program came at just the right time.

I've jumped back into Vitality for skill-planning -- there's a pre-alpha out there that fixes some of my interface qualms and, though clearly still plenty buggy, is functional enough.

Nerd alert!

Everything is normal here

My first thought seeing Google's post about adding linear optimization tools to Google Sheets was to apply them toward skill training. Specifically, prioritizing my characters' skill plans based on skill-points-per-hour and the times in a few months when I can re-distribute core attributes; NB an April post about skill training in general. This mechanic is one of the most enticing aspects of the game for me, although I also agree with some ideas about revamping the system.

Anyhow, I have a distinguished history of being branded a "nerd" by my wife when I talk about Eve stuff (really, most things); hopefully, this post and my enthusiasm for the new tools will set a new high bar for spousal mockery.

Goals update

In March, I laid out goals that I ended up accomplishing two months later. Along the way, an underlying goal for myself was to figure out what gameplay styles I liked and to identify what, if anything, I'm playing for. Time, I think, to lay out some new goals now that I'm more attuned to the game. Within two months, I want to

• Equip and operate Eemiv's Kronos Marauder with tech 2 equipment. Tech 2 modules have a performance edge over basic "tech 1" modules, but they require higher levels of skill training. For example, to mount 425mm Prototype Gauss Guns on the Kronos, Eemiv needed to train the Large Hybrid Turret skill to level I. To equip the tech 2 425mm Railgun IIs, Eemiv needs Large Hybird Turret to level V and Sharpshooter to level V (about four weeks' additional training time) ...  and when that's done, he needs to train Large Railgun Specialization to level I (just an hour -- but, several more weeks if I decide to bump that up Level V, too). Not all tech 2 modules have such steep requirements; the ship already mostly has tech 2, but there are some holdouts. Tech 2 modules also generally require higher resources from the ship -- power supply, computing power, etc. Fortunately, Eemiv has already trained up most of the core "fitting" skills that affect these systems to level V. I did a quick sketch of the math, and it looks like meeting this goal will require at most a month's time if I plunge right through it.
• Create a jump clone of Eemiv and move one of them out to low-security space. I enjoy high-security space mission running, but it's time to get my feet wet living and playing, too, in riskier low- or maybe even null-security space. Jump clones are a carbon copy of the character and, once every 24 hours, you can swap from one to the other. Therefore, I can e.g. jump over to my high-security clone after work and fly a mission for some ISK, and then on the weekend set out for more lucrative looting in low-security areas.
• Participate in at least two RvB weekend events, including one that involves flying and fighting in cruisers. This is for the Dengar character, and a chance for me to get more comfortable with PvP. Two weekend events might not seem like much, but even this might be a bit of a stretch because of a few competing real-world priorities.

I also have one stretch desire, not time-bound so it isn't a goal per se: train up Eemiv for tech 2 logistics ship piloting, and get experience supporting other pilots. This is a career/skill track I'm increasingly curious about, and even leans toward my playstyle in e.g. Team Fortress II and Battlefield: Bad Company II, where I often was a medic.