Finally I got the mail from CCP that I’ve been waiting for. Five days of free activation, and that free ship.

Time to log in.

Time to undock.

I was fooling around with Twitter (of all things) and stumbled upon a site called Podlogs. Looks like a blogging community for EVE-bloggers. I haven’t been following the “scene” as it were much since I went on my hiatus, mostly just checking the occasional Dev blog from CCP (which are few and far between). So, uuh, yeah, I guess that’s all old news for you guys.

Anyway, I’m still alive. So nyah!

This hardly comes as a surprise for those who have been following this blog and noted its recent inactivity, but I’m taking a leave of absence from EVE. I recently found employment and between a job and a family it’s hard to find time for EVE. Ironically, that now when I can afford the monthly fee without trouble, and possibly could invest in a new rig to get my Premium and pew-pew on, I find myself unable to do so.

So Shaun will be put into a clone vat for a while, until the time when (not if) I return to EVE.

Until then, fly safe.

Well well well, it’s finally out there, somewhere. Taunting me. Wooing me. Tempting me.

EVE: Conquests can probably be bought from a number of gamestores, but now it’s atleast in stock at both EVEonline.com and over at white-wolf.com.

I’m still hoping the rules will be made available online in one form or another. 75 USD is a pretty steep price, and I really prefer to get to know a game by reading its rules first.

The EVE-themed boardgame EVE: Conquests should be released today, according to various internet sources. However, I have yet to find any information on it from what could be called official sources. White-wolf.com and EVEonline.com are both very very quiet about this, which bothers me.

At the above link there are a few pictures of the game in case anyone’s interested. I’m still waiting for someone to upload the rules so I can have a proper look-see on the gameplay.

EON ran a competition in issue #13 where you could win a copy of the boardgame. I participated but I guess I came up nil

Right, so now for something completely different.

For promoting the new edition, the fourth, of D&D, WotC asked the much talented people over at Penny Arcade and PVPonline to come and play some tabletop rpg, recorded it and then published it as a podcast. That was season 1. And recently they released season 2, this time accompanied by none other than Wil Wheaton.

I really don’t feel like these guys need more promotion, and certainly not from me, but I figured that it might be of interest to someone out there who happen by this blog and kind of just has their eyes closed the rest of the time.

So links a-coming:

Season 1

1. Episode
2. Episode
3. Episode
4. Episode
5. Episode
6. Episode
7. Episode
8. Episode

Season 2

1. Episode
2. Episode
3. Episode
4. Episode
5. Episode
6. Episode
7. Episode
8. Episode

Or hell, just go WotC’s podcast archive and look for them yourself.

Each episode also has one or more illustrations by the aforementioned talented artists. So yeah. Well worth a look-at.

I got this link on Facebook, of all places, via the EVE: Online feed. It’s an article by The Mittani over on tentonhammer.com on recent events. Completely fair and balanced, of course.

It also provided me with this link. I don’t know up and down, left and right regarding EVE’s alliance politics, but I do know glorious USSR-esque posters when I see them. Simply brilliant work imo.

Who wouldn't want one of these?

Chribba (if you don’t know who Chribba is, check out his evelopedia entry) has a new venture: a lottery. I believe the first one had as the price an Archon mothership. This time it’s a Wyvern. Fully fitted and rigged and with a full tank and all.

Tickets are at 10 mil isk each, and you can buy as many as you want, however once 2000 tickets are sold, the drawing will be held.

Info etc can be found in this forum thread.

It's So Pretty

The graphical rework for mining, the beams, the drones and the roids, was a long time coming. Yeah. That’s all I have to say about that.

A while back I acquired a Covetor and quickly fitted it in a way that by no means let me use my skills to their full potential when it comes to mining, but instead allows me to adequately mine whatever types of ore I come across, while still being a cheap enough ship that I won’t cry my eyes out if and when it goes poof.

My Covetor, Deep Throat, is fitted thusly:

• Hi
  • Strip Miner I * 3
• Med
  • Survey Scanner I
• Lo
  • Expanded Cargohold II * 2

I really ought to switch the Survey Scanner to it’s t2 equivalent, but a t1 was all I had in storage at the time of fitting, and since I’m inherently lazy… meh.

There be... uuh... ores in them there roids!

With the advent of the new exploration system I’m more likely to actually do some exploring, since it no longer entails waiting for 5+ minutes for a negative result all the time. And with more exploring comes more sites found, and these sites have to be exploited, otherwise, what’s the bloody point?

Thus it came to pass that as I had narrowed down two gravimetric sites I decided to do some solo mining in dangerous territory. I had to go through lo sec to get to the sites. And in fact one of the sites was (actually, at the time of writing, is) in lo sec. This makes the Covetor the perfect ship. I don’t expect to be blown up, but even if the chance is slim, the ore there is not worth the risk, when it all comes down to it, to fly in with my Hulk, The Reaper.

The lasers, they hurt my ship.

The types of ore I’ve found in those grav sites are, in no particular order, Jaspet, Hemorphite, Hedbergite, Dark Ochre, Spodumain and Crokite. I can’t be arsed to look this up, but I suspect that Jaspet, Hemorphite and Hedbergite would otherwise be found in lo sec belts, making me stupid for bothering with a grav site to mine them, but hey, whatever. Atleast in a grav site I’m reasonably undisturbed, and less likely to be found.

Mining solo is, by the way, bloody boring. And not very efficient. Deep Throat can only fit a bit over 6000 m^3 in its holds, despite her name, and that’s just a bit over two cycles for my set of strippers. So every 7th minute or so, I find myself warping back to a station, my cargohold filled up. It has its advantages though, mining in not-so-secure-space means I can’t let my ADHD run wild and alt+tab out and roam the interwebs, chasing whatever random tidbit of information I suddenly feel a craving for. But mining like this I can dock up and do my little bit of googling and surfing, and then get back in the game, not feeling guilty over leaving any corp mates hanging and waiting.

It’d probably be more profitable to just find a suitable belt in hi sec and get working on that Veldspar. Hell, if I went to 1.0 (and maybe 0.9 as well? I forget) I wouldn’t even have to “worry” about rats and could just concentrate on mining and mining and mining. But that would not be as much fun. And if I’m not having fun, then why the hell would I be playing this game. Yes, it’s a game. There. I said it. I’m not taking it back. Nuh-uh.

Updated asteroid looks and laser effects. Nifty.

There’s still some ore out there for me to harvest before someone else finds the grav site and empties it. There is, however, a bit of a rat problem. I’m starting to feel that I need a bit more firepower, because I just realized that there might be battleship spawns a-coming in lo sec nowadays. Or I just play it cool and warp the hell out once that happens. Either way, it’s only a Covetor.

Update:

2009.03.31 10:12:00

Victim: Shaun Livingstone
Corp: iMine Industries
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Covetor
System: Namaili
Security: 0.4
Damage Taken: 3899

Involved parties:

Name: kakakarrr (laid the final blow)
Security: 2.9
Corp: C.P.S.
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Ship: Tempest
Weapon: 800mm Repeating Artillery II
Damage Done: 3766

Name: Sansha’s Cannibal / True Power
Damage Done: 133

Destroyed items:

Strip Miner I
Spodumain, Qty: 186 (Cargo)
Expanded Cargohold II, Qty: 2
Acolyte I, Qty: 2 (Drone Bay)

Dropped items:

Strip Miner I, Qty: 2
Acolyte I, Qty: 3 (Drone Bay)
Survey Scanner I

—

Meh. Fair enough

How the kill went down:

I had warped back and forth between the site and the station. I noticed one person in local and checked him out. No warning bells so far. I did my little mining, and then enother guy showed up in local. Hum hum. Atleast they’re not in the same corp. Not wanting to be an alarmist or anything I clicked to align to my station (yeah, why wasn’t I aligned in the first place? We live, we learn…). However, just as Deep Throat begins to twist and turn to get into position, a ship pops up in my overview.

I begin pounding the warp button but to no avail, my ship’s simply not aligned. First salvo takes me deep into armor, and by now I know it’s just a matter of time. I briefly ponder the future of my implants as I keep clicking on warp, hoping against hope to atleast get my capsule into safety.

As it happens, my capsule makes it to the station. Some loss but hey, no worries. Atleast I got my pulse racing there for a little while. Fair kill and all that.

All I’m wondering is how he found me so fast. Was the first guy, member of an NPC corp, his alt that scanned me down? Because he was in the system for some time before this other guy showed up. This other fella was not in the system for that long a time. Hell, who would even scan using a Tempest?