Low Sec Lifestyle

I finished my minutes. I am free! Free to write clever things. Deep, meaningful, clever things. The problem is, my mind is blank. Maybe tomorrow, when I get over minute fatigue, I'll be better. For now, I will whine about the Ishtar. I'm not whining about any of the silly reasons people normally do. Who cares about that? There is a deeper issue. Ishtar are no longer blue. Behold. This is exhibit one. This is an Ishtar photographed in its corral in six months ago. Note the luscious, rich, dark blue hide. Note the darker, navy accents and the sleek cyan detailing. Exquisite. On September 30th, 2014, the Eve Online Release Oceanus v8.48  was released. There is a notice about the adjustment of the CreoDron ships to give them back their green tint. The Gallente are well known to enjoy the color green for their spaceships. That is fine but it is not unheard of for a T2 ship to be far away from the base color of its parent. Thus, the Ishtar as I have known it has always b

In twenty two days days Chella finishes Amarr Carrier V. I think that it is a good time to build her a carrier. I moved one of my main cyno alts, who also happens to be my secondary capital ship building alt, to my capital ship corporation's headquarters and blew the dust off of our blueprints. I'm sitting on my last session of minutes to write. It will be my eighth and with what everyone else has done we should be finished before the weekend. That gives us time for our internal review where we try to catch typos and errors as well as double checking what others wrote (for we are all individuals and there are variances of style) and then we should have them to CCP on schedule. I am quite happy about this. For one, I'm tired of writing these things. For the second, I can get back into my Eve life and building a few capitals seems to be a fine way to go about doing it. I do not think that I have the time for large scale work. However, with ore compression I believe that I

Before I settled in to start my Eve Work day off with working on the minutes, I decided to take a moment to do something in game that I have been thinking about. My adventures, of late, have been quite limited. I'm not undocking. Not because I am unhappy or upset but because if I have time to undock and kill things I have time to work on the Summit minutes. They will be done by the weekend and this short period of exile from space will be over. I consider it a fair trade off. However, logging in and doing things is important to me. I've always advocated having more than one pastime in the game. One may find themselves with short periods of time to play or perhaps on the CSM writing meetings instead of flying around. These things just happen. What I decided to do, over my breakfast of tea and coconut shrimp, was to move my third TCS alt out of Bosena and send them to Sujarento. The reason behind this came from the fact that TCS sits upon 5 billion ISK in unlisted stock. Some

Tuesday, September 30th will be the next release. This one is known as Oceanus. Here is a list of the associated Dev Blogs . They are also extending downtime on September 29th and the 30th . Please keep giving me this lovely POS and team feedback. I appreciate what I have. I’m composing it into a condensed list, but more is better. This news post went out back in May asking for comms and/or comms + footage. They’d like everything including mining ops. If you have a bit of fraps and the urge to record yourself do so and submit it. I had some argument over the cyno displacement zone around starbases change where I was told I was wrong to approve of the edited version. Basically, I didn’t like the magical extra 25k of safety range that it gave. I disliked it becoming a mechanism that needed an overheated point or T3s on field to nab something playing shield games. I do not support things becoming a game of ‘even more people’ to do things. I was asked if I thought a frigate should b

I know i've been away a while but people voted for @Sugar_Kyle at the CSM elections. Maybe she isn't as mean as I remember. — Just Me (@AFrost99) September 25, 2014 I've spent a bit thinking about this tweet. I've decided that it probably came from my somewhat frequent arguments with people in Eve Uni chat and my tendency not to back down. I also had no problem with nipping some people in the bud who tended to become abusive or vicious. It makes me sad that I have not had the time to spend just chatting in Eve Uni chat that I used to but that does not mean I am not there and do not engage in conversation as I can. Still, I was tickled to be called mean. This is now my favorite tweet ever. It also has no relationship to the second part of this post. I had an anonymous commentor say: I would like to make this blog a one stop shopping site with links to some of the more popular Eve news sites - I notice that you don't have any linked here. For that reason

I get to see what neglect looks like for TCS. I opened Eve Mentat and found, to my shock that it had been thirteen days since I last updated it. I thought back, wondering how it had been so long and I remembered that my days before the Summit Week were composed of working on my document and going to work. Oh. I felt somewhat horrified, ashamed, and tired. This would be the longest stretch that I had neglected TCS. It was for good reason and valid reason. I nevertheless stared at the updating data with a bit of fret. Thirty two expired orders. Forty three fulfilled orders. About five billion liquid waiting to be restocked. Not so bad. In some ways I have guilt over not keeping the profit rolling. I'm a bit ashamed that I've let so much flounder around. I also know that I don't have the time to put it back into perfect orders. It is probably good that I am not a perfectionist. Sujarento is not as densely populated with items compared to Bosena. When I refreshed I sa

I have a theory when thinking about Eve game play. I consider human error to be a balancing point. I didn't coalesce this into a theory until an argument about the medium micro jump drive happened where I felt it should have a distance of less than 100k and the other party said that breaking the distances down would make everything harder for the pilot. This was further exasperated by recent discussions about 'head shotting' fleet commanders and the subsequent end to the fight that it brings. For anyone who does not know what head shotting a fleet commander (FC) means it is when the fleet commander is known or suspected and taken out at the start of the fight. The goal is to end the fight. Eve fleets are often controlled by one singular person. It is one of the many, many reasons that being a FC is stressful and being a good FC gives one a somewhat worshiped status. Some consider it poor sportsmanship while others point out that it is just another tactic when one is fig

I gave my mother her bag of licorice to her delight. When I purchased it, Sion said, "But you don't like licorice." I said to him, "Correct. I do not. But my mother does. I'd never force my taste onto her and deny her the licorice that will please her." I somewhat feel that way about the minutes. My days off this week are Wednesday and Thursday and I am going to start doing my write up for the summit this weekend. CCP Leeloo has announced the plans for the minutes. We have a few weeks to get them back to her where she will get them processed internally with a goal to have them released by the end of October. We had around twenty two meetings over the course of those three days. The minute format as I understand it isn't a transcription of every cough and um but a goal to bring you the topics, the responses, and the questions and answers that came up. My goal is for you to know what we talked about and what the various CSM members said in response. I&

In a way I wondered how I would step back into my Eve life when I got home yesterday. I realized that I had an interesting division of time for the future. My normal Eve life was getting out of control. I have things to restock and new doctrines to buy. On the other hand I have the minutes to do and they pretty much trump everything in game. Yet, I cling to my in game activities. They ground me. Any time I wonder who am I and what am I spending some game time playing helps. After curling up and dumping my brain and concepts out over the last few days and dredging through my own thoughts as well as the ideas and opinions handed to me I felt very drained and very tired. I had this thought, "Will I have anything to write about again?" It seems that the cure for soul crushing exhaustion is to get angry. Such was my state of mind when I wound up in an argument with someone that I have become quite fond of over one of the latest changes. And the argument was not about change in

The week has been the Summer Summit for CSM9. That did not mean that the world stopped for us. Things in Eve moved forward because we have the Oceanas release coming on the 22nd. CCP Fozzie has released a small interceptor tweak . Interdictors are also being retouched for fine detailing. The thread about it is up. This is not a rebalance where the ships gain complete new roles and identities. This is focused on fine tuning. I have spoken up about the fact that the situation where Titans were being bumped out of POS shields was not acceptable to me. I’ve voiced my disagreement as have other players. CCP Fozzie has posted changes to cyno usage outside of POS force fields . I am not fully happy with this change. I am happy that it will stop the Titan bumping issue. I am not happy with not being able to light cynos on shields. I feel that it will negatively affect tackling ships hugging force fields and I have expressed that. The topic came up in one of our Summit Meetings with CCP Fo

It is the final day and we have moved past Sion's shark consumption. We left Cafe Loki and just strolled back through town. I wandered in and out of stores looking for soft gloves or socks. There are lots of gloves, socks, scarves, hats, and etc all over the place but most of them are made of wool and are as harsh and scratchy as anything I have ever seen. I wanted something soft and silky and amazing and I didn't find that which is okay. The general game plan was to find this Ice Cream place across the street from CCP. It seems that they make their ice cream daily and it is the most amazing ice cream ever. So, we head to this ice cream place which is also near a grocery store and some museums. We go in and Corbexx orders some terrible concoction of salted peanuts and some candy that I hate. He said it was delicious. I was stuck staring at the flavors and not knowing what anything was because I'm illiterate in Iceland. I also have an ongoing problem with catching the

Updated Album I woke up at ten thirty. Tomorrow I head home but today is my last day to hang out.  I could have rolled back over and gone back to sleep but I said, 'naw' and checked my phone to make sure that it was indeed ten thirty. My internal clock is amazing. Sion and Corbexx had just woken up so we gathered together and went to look for breakfast.

Today was the last meeting day. I got in late and laid down around 0200. I was back up at 0730 and at the office by 0820. The evenings are talking. It is nice that the developers come out with us and then it is just more talking. Some of the looser topics come up during these times as they explain their concepts and ideas and we explain ours. They pick our brains as to what we spend our time doing and how we do things in Eve. It is productive discussion and more relaxed and casual which is why we spend the evenings out as long as people are willing to be awake. Thursday night was our latest night so far but I couldn't stay awake till the bars closed. Today contained two meetings that left me with questions to pose to the player base on Sunday. I wrote up a detailed summary for Sunday but one is about POS and the other is about Team usage in industry. POS are on the road map and they don't waste their time creating something that is cool and amazing that we would never want.

Steve and I had Sinful Pleasure and when we offered to Corbexx he is all, "No. I'll watch." Up at seven thirty again and out to walk to the CCP office by eight thirty. It was not bacon and eggs for breakfast. But a cold sandwich was fine anyway. We started at nine. The first session was the low session. I went in nervous but I had my list. We also had the null sec sessions today of which some tweets may be have been seen. That was a long session and heading to lunch was nice. Lunch was a meat thing with potatos. And then back to meetings the patented open window helped with freshness and air movement. My notes are extensive and while the days are long I was burning with energy. We had some CSM stuff st the end of the day and around 0715 we staggered off to dinner. It has been raining lightly but I was able to get a picture of the boat in the dry dock. It is silly to not try different places in the city like this. That is how I indulged in Sinful Pleasure. T

I'm patching Eve on my slow ass connection. will sadden some to know that there has been no crazed, naked dancing in the cold, northern ocean. Instead, evenings have contained a lot of good conversation with developers who are willing to brave our attention. Wednesday started the actual official meetings. We hit the office at 0830 hours and had breakfast. I teems that a hot breakfast of eggs and bacon is a rare thing for CCP and happened due to CCP Leeloo's super powers. It meant a stack of happy bacon guzzling CCP employees cheering on the CSM for bringing them bacon.It is not a bad way to be known. We wound up having breakfast with Hilmar and talking to him for our first hour or so before the meetings stopped and went hot and heavy. We even lost half of lunch for one of them which gave us twenty minutes to scarf down lunch and go back to our meeting room. The meeting room has a camera that pretty much creates a surround view of everyone at the table. All I can say is

Picture Album There is now a boat in dry dock outside of my window which is better than the bulldozers and construction equipment.

Album link here . Sion says I am cynical. That amuses me deeply. I don't feel cynical. Perhaps, however, I am. I'm not an innocent to life nor am I a pessimist. Still, the title amuses me. I informed him that I am in fact a small, walking sun full of sweetness and light.

This last week has been quite interesting and I'm happy that some of the stuff on our table has become public. CCP Seagull released more of the things coming in Oceanas in a Dev Blog this week. I like this style of Dev Blog. I’ve seen it done back in 2007 and 2008 as expansions were released. They are good, dense recaps that one can hand out. There are a new type of burner mission coming. This is good but they are still locked inside of the level four mission pool. The desire for burner agents and levels 1-3 burner missions has been shared with CCP by both the CSM and the player base. The first steps of metacide (module rebalancing) are coming.  Only a handful of items have been released so far. This will be a game changer because everything we know about why we fit things changes with each pass. The wormhole effects should help with spot checking and decision making as to what is on the other side. Of course, you still need to know what each class has for its color code.

It is about bedtime for me, tonight. Tomorrow, I get off of work early (8 hours instead of 12!) to get home, make sure I'm set, and head to the airport for my overnight flight to Iceland. I'll be landing around 0630 local time and then my week will start. I don't know what to expect. I've been to Iceland before. I went to Fanfest, 2013. Still, going because of the CSM is different. I'm both nervous and excited. I'm looking forward to meeting some people. I look forward to talking about Eve. I hope to present myself and represent myself well. But, as always I never know how such things will go. I'm not so much socially awkward as that I am an introvert. I do enjoy social stuff for my hobbies. However, my past with Eve events is a mixed bag of things often not being quite what I expected. But, unlike larger groups I'm expected to be here. I doubt it will be the wallflower experience that I have had at Eve Vegas and Fanfest. The fun part about tr

It is not an exploit if CCP has not deemed it to be an exploit. Yet, as I watched the latest Titan being bumped out of a POS I found myself not excited and thrilled but saddened. Somehow this thing that I was watching has been deemed okay. I'd love to say 'for now'. I hope that there is a 'for now' attached but I worry that is only hope. I watched this . I was horrified. I watched this . I read this . It looks like an exploit. It smells like an exploit. But, at the moment, it is not an exploit. I cannot, at this time, wrap my mind around why it is okay other than the fact that it has said to be okay. If someone came to me and said, "Hey Sug, let's go bump this thing out of its shields from outside of the shields," I'd assume that I would pick up a ban. But not today. Not for this. Not for some reason. Somewhere at the core I guess I can blame the POS code. I could blame the water physics of the game. I could blame the fact that spaceships a

A Look at the History of Expansions - Current List Previous post: Eve Online: Trinity It is May of 2008 and CCP has started to structure Development Blogs that bring the full scope of the expansion in a neater package to hand over to the players. The summer expansion, Eve Online: Empyrean Age is bringing with it long made promises. The original iteration of Faction Warfare will not allow alliances . There are a number of reasons for this, technical and otherwise, the most important of which is that we just don't want the major power blocs to descend en masse and take over everything. It's obviously not a hard limit on the players involved, but it's designed to encourage the idea that if you're a major player on the nullsec political scene you're already doing something incredibly worthwhile and shouldn't let yourself be distracted by the petty machinations of the Empires. This is not the Faction Warfare that we have now, but it is still its original sh

I woke up a few days ago thinking about my market which may be attributed to the fact that I was working on it right before I went to sleep. I was thinking about one of the most common questions that I am asked which is, "How do I get started?" It is not reasonable, to me, to expect individual characters to make three or four or five market accounts to run a market. Some people will do it. Many of the successful market bloggers have an army of characters to handle their market transactions. I also have my alt army that is dedicated to maintaining my orders but I do not believe that you can only be viable in a market with an alt army. And no number of alts will give you time that you do not have. I find myself tighter than I used to be for time.. What would be a pleasant morning working through my stocks may take me a day or two to get everything purchased and shipped. Moving items myself beyond jumping it from high sec into low sec is almost unheard of these days. It ha

Dirk MacGirk asked during the CSM9 Town Hall #2 if Eve was evolving or if CCP was moving towards an Eve 2.0. In my scattered attempt to share my bumbling path to using my Rorqual's Vat Clone Bay Zazz asked if removing standings for clones would break Eve. I'd love to write a complex, technical post about standings but I don't have that post to write. I actually know very little about standings and how they work. The reason I know so little about them is because I've not had to deal with them to make things work. I do not have standings for my markets for instance because the ISK that I lose is well worth it to me not to grind for standings. It is funny because I do not dislike PvE. I can accept that Eve's PvE is not stimulating or interesting. However, I don't mind it. What I mind is the grind. What I mind is being forced into the PvE. Give me an DED complex to do and I am a happy camper. Tell me that I need to grind two hundred and twelve missions to gain a

Eve is confusing. It is very, very confusing. It is often very, very confusing in really ridiculous ways. Buttered Scone is my Rorqual. So cute!

The next release is Oceanus and it is already on Sisi . It contains the French Localization that CCP promised back at Fanfest as well as a number of graphic updates. French Localization is live on the test server and CCP is asking for feedback from those who will read said French. I find the thread fascinating. I can’t understand a bit of the French but the english intertwined with it and the discussions over proper word usage are incredibly interesting to me. There are some new features for importing fits from EFT 's format into Eve. The graphics team is in action . No, I do not yet have news about the new Dominix hull. However, they are adding interesting and unique wormhole graphics to give visual clues outside of 'show info' about the wormhole. The new cloak and decloak graphics is very pretty . There is no mechanical change, just a graphical one. Cloaking will still be instant to other people. All of the pretty parts will be for you alone. When the graphics te

"No! No! Bad drones no!" I found myself frantically scolding my drones as they eyeballed Wex. I called them back to me and apologized to Wex for their viciousness. We were on Grarr's Saturday Navy Vexor Roam and we had invited Rykki and her kittens to come along. The tactics used in Snuff Box are different for me. I'm used to flying shield tanked ships by choice. Now, with flying armor, the mid slots are often full of ewar. I've never been into gatecamping and people using remote sensor boosters on their gatecamps is the sum total understanding that I've had for really using mid-slot ewar. With the larger fleet sizes it is often a viability. Now, midslots change like we're looking for a good pair of shoes. It is a new part of my education but I find that I do not yet have a solid intuition as to using them and I get so caught up in the fight that I do things like leave Guardian Wex unsensor boosted because I'm a terrible person. Rykki has becom

One bit of Eve technobabble that has always driven me insane was the way fleet doctrins are named. We have fatcats and slowcats and batcats and mattecats. There are wrecking ball felets, and fleets named after songs, and fleets named after roosters, and fleets named after people and they all mean something. That is all understandable enough but I, silly enough, spoke up one day in the past and said, "The names of all of these comps are kind of ridiculous and make the fit requested non-intuitive. Can we just use regular names for things?" The answer was no.  It turns out that I am wrong. And when someone says, "Chocolate Omega Blizzard Watermelon fleet undock!" I should know what I am fitting up. It should make sense to me. My habit of naming thinking of my ships as 'armor projectile' and 'kiting shield cruiser' isn't the way to go. My 'Rawrcat doctrine' is a snarky response to how clear and coherent random fleet doctrine names are.

"Sugar," said the grizzled veteran as he leaned forward and eyed the hangar below. His heavy forarm was scarred and tattooed from finger tips to elbow. The other was cybernetic. I didn't know if it was choice or circumstance that had given him that synthetic arm. Capsuleer's can have odd tastes. But it was his voice, heavy with confidence and irritation that captured my attention. "You need to figure out a way to get real ships back in space." He looked at me for a moment, his eyes a startling bright silver under dark brows. It was only a few weeks after I had been elected to the Council of Stellar Management. I was in a looking over a fleet of scared battleships in an atmospheric repair dock. It was not the first time that I had heard these words nor was this the more battle worn capsuleer I had heard it from. My own corporation was in system for repairs after a fight over one of ours mining starbases. That may have been what drew this veteran to come fi