Now on SiSi: the login screen for the next expansion

Hot on the heels of the change to agression mechanics comes another devblog announcing the shortening the docking timer: http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=3050

Some people say that this will facilitate “docking games” even more (which are on the top of the things to fix on the CSM crowd sourcing list), but I don’t think so. The trouble with docking games is the the ability to dock too soon after starting a fight.

This change helps people to avoid getting caught by a station camp, since it allows us to redock before drifting out of docking range. Not too bad a change, IMHO.

A small start, but it looks like CCP finally got around to check into issues people were complaining about for a long time:

http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=4787&tid=1

I hope the next step is an increase of the re-dock timer so that those station camping battleships can’t dock after deaggressing.

Strange item found on the testserver.

Does this mean we get to hack into other capsuleers customs offices?

I just read the announcement that CONCORD will remove all planetary customs structures from low&nullsec  and will leave maintenance and tax revenues to us capsuleers. Interesting move, there will be fun times ahead. But I don’t believe there will be much profit in operating an office or much change for the average planetary industrialist.

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From the official forums:

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1448215&page=1#14

This new process also means that there will be no more hoarding of items mentioned in those notes before patchdays, I think. Time to check out the test server more often.

I admit it, the kill in a Mastodon I started this blog with isn’t too impressive, since the Mastodon is quite well tanked in itself. So I did again, this time with a Mammoth which looks like a much easier target. And it worked. Twice.

Looks like you engaging haulers in enemy hisec has become a game of russian roulette. You never know which one bites back and which doesn’t. But I’m willing to play, so far I’ve more often killed a hauler than it killed me.

And by now a certain Thrasher pilot will think twice before attacking me and leave me alone when I’m hauling for real.

Just finished editing some footage I took during the bunker bashing we did in Uisper.

Yeah, it is boring, but that is the nature of those bunker bashes. Make sure you don’t fall asleep before the appearance of the Amarr defense fleet at 1:50

Outer Ring Excavations just started selling the blueprints for their new salvage ships, the Noctis. I was in that horde of traders rushing to the ORE stations and trying to make a profit from the initial market madness, here’s how I survived the trip.

Preparation

A few days before the sales date I studied the starmap for a better route than the direct one the autopilot was showing me. As many seasoned pilots suspected, the horde of traders would attract an even larger crowd of pirates, hoping for easy kills and money.

ORE only has two systems where they sell their blueprints: 4C-B7X and NM-OEA. From empire space 4C-B7X is closer, but the autopilot route leads through the Syndicate region which according to the starmap statistic can be pretty violent even on normal days.  So the route I came up with, bypassed the Syndicate region and went through some low- and nullsec systems directly to NM-OEA. I had to do some jumps more than on the direct route, but I felt the effort would be worth it.

Two days before the big event I flew a specially fitted Loki to the NM-OEA station. The main parts of the special fit were the covert ops reconfiguration and interdiction nullifier subsystems. Additionally some warpcore stabilizers, just in case some fast tackler manages to get a lock before I cloak up. The trip was very smooth. I encountered a few deserted bubbles and neutral pilots. In NM-OEA a spend some minutes creating an insta-undock bookmark on my chosen station and then clonejumped home.

Execution

A few hours after the BPO release I clonejumped to NM-OEA and undocked to check the situation. Outside was only a lone pilot, not the sensor-boosting fleet with instant locking interceptors I was expecting. So I redocked, grabbed a pile of the BPOs and headed out. Nothing much happened from there on. The route was quiet as on the way home. There were some gate camp, but they were minor in size, and I could simply fly through them thanks to the interdiction nullifier and my cloak.

Second trip

By now a corpmate of mine, JackBrace, had logged on and we went back to NM to fetch some more prints. Jack also moved into that nullsec region the day before, so he waited for me there and scouted the immediate area. No surprises for me on the way in. On our way out Jack had some briefly exciting and violent moments when exiting NM-OEA. Some pirates had bubbled the gate and Jack he fumbled while activating his cloak, so he got locked and podded while I warped off. Thankfully Jack is a cold-blooded capitalist like me and understood thata a new clone and a cheetah cost only a fifth of one of the blueprints I was carrying. So he enjoyed the fast trip home while I had to do rest of the long and boring trek alone.

Analysis

On my second trip the starmap already showed first signs of conflict in the area:

Those are 24 hour statistics, so they include ships destroyed before the madness started. Note that the route I chose lead around the biggest hot spots.

Below are more detailed statics on both ORE systems. To the right you can see the huge spike of ship and pod kills on the release day in 4C-B7X.

The NM-OEA system remained relatively calm during the whole day. It is interesting to see that 4C-B7X had a slightly increased activity in jumps before the release date, obviously people were moving ships in to prepare for the big day. I’m not sure what to make of the spike in kills in the NM system two days earlier. It looks there’s a war going on in there that I don’t know of.

http://evemaps.dotlan.net/system/4C-B7X/stats/2010-11-18:2010-12-02
http://evemaps.dotlan.net/system/NM-OEA/stats/2010-11-18:2010-12-02

…well, maybe not exactly teeth, but fat laser pointers to illuminate targets:

This incident happened during the aftermath of this battle that cost the Amarr militia a Dreadnought and a Carrier. From what I heard our militia was clearing the space of  navigational hazards when that unlucky cruisers showed up and got obliterated in a matter of seconds. See the whole killmail here.

Good work Curtiss! Targetpainters are very nice modules that actually help the rest of the team!