Centring the rotational axis in the system map

I have a fresh system to scan, hopefully there will be more prey than hunters today. I find our home system's static wormhole easily enough, but I also find a second wormhole. Maybe the system isn't quite as fresh as I had assumed. Warping to this second wormhole reveals the K162 to be stable, making it a good idea to jump through first to determine any possible threat before heading away from our system. As I try to jump I am informed that the exit is stabilising, which indicates that there is no one present in the other system. At least I can have a poke around in relative safety.

The system leading in to our own is only a class 4 w-space system, not particularly dangerous in itself, but there are two towers visible on the directional scanner. I find them both and am tickled to see that they are owned by a corporation with an NRDS policy. That should keep us safe, as long as I don't get up to any antics. Even though I came backwards through their static wormhole I scan the system, as there could be some sites to clear or sit in ambush. I find another wormhole, almost on top of the first, but this K162 is reaching the end of its natural life so I leave it alone. After finding only anomalies and ladar sites here I head home and onwards through our own static wormhole.

Next door has no towers and no ships, and a bunch of signatures to resolve. I bookmark some sites in case we get a fleet later. As I am not looking for wormholes my progress is slow, but I find one eventually by elimination. It's the system's static wormhole, and jumping through puts me in an unoccupied class 3 system with so many signatures that I focus my efforts on looking for wormholes now. I find a static wormhole near an outer planet, leading to a class 3 system, and a low-sec exit to empire space that is EOL. That looks like all the wormholes, certainly all the obvious ones using my comparison method of scanning, so I jump through to the next C3 system.

A single Badger industrial ship sits in the tower in this system, and no more activity is seen. There are a fair number of anomalies, but only a few signatures in the system. My scanning method gets me a high-sec exit wormhole on my first hit, shortly followed by an EOL K162. I also find something really useful concerning the often clumsy scanning user interface. When resolving signatures the interface needs to be moved around so that the scanning probes are arranged around the desired signature, and as space has three pesky dimensions the interface needs to be rotated frequently to check that the z-axis alignment is correct. However, the rotational centre of the system map can often have a large offset that requires a lot of translational movement to accompany any rotation. It can get quite tedious.

There is also an irritating tendency for the rather cluttered interface to react to unintended selections, such as accidentally selecting a probe when simply trying to rotate the view. Selecting a probe centres that probe on the screen, which is generally not desirable when trying to move the view more specifically. But what I discover is that centring a probe centres it in all three dimensions, which effectively sets the rotational axis. So when I am chasing a signature a few AU off the orbital plane, and find that rotating the view sends the signature flying off the screen, I can now select a probe that has the same approximate z-axis component as the signature and rotate my view with the signature remaining near the centre of the view. It is an end to one of my little scanning frustrations.

Jumping through the high-sec exit only makes me happier, as I find myself in The Citadel region. The system is an old mission base of mine, a local station holding many unused and unsold modules, and I am only a couple of hops from my manufacturing base. It is a bit of a shame that I have drifted away from production, with life in w-space resulting in a lack of reliable routes back to specific systems, but it's nice to visit an old stomping ground. I make a note of the exit system in the bookmark's name and head back in to w-space. Checking on the systems I've mapped out shows no change in activity, and although an intensive refining array is now operational at the tower of our new neighbours, through the K162 in our system, there is no sign of life. I copy the bookmarks I have made and drop them at our tower, ready to take a break for now.

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Tags: badger, eve online, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, scanning, w-space

2010

A strange object appears from nowhere. A six-foot tall slab stands proud in the middle of The Company's seating area in the lobby, where employees and guests enjoy drinks and snacks from the coffee bar. Our watering hole, if you like. The monolithic structure is not featureless, it holds rectangles full of symbols, 'information'.

My friend and I are curious but wary. We forget our drinks and approach the object, coiled on our haunches in case we need to quickly retreat. Cautiously, haltingly, we get closer, closer, until we are within arm's reach. A hand stretches out only to be snatched back before touching the object, some yelps uttered in anxiety.

The object is approached again, and a hand reaches out a second time, and a third. But each time it is snatched away before the object can hurt us. More primal noises are made, another attempt to touch the object. Its wisdom will be imparted to us.

Luckily, the atrium isn't particularly busy this morning, so we don't get kicked out for acting like idiots. Nor do we end up clubbing each other with the empty paper coffee cups strewn around.

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Hunt and peck

The high-sec exit is tempting our man to buy a new Arazu recon ship. Actually, it's a replacement, after losing it earlier when counter-ambushed engaging a Mammoth. But he was headed out to empire space to go shopping anyway, so he just has a ship to add to his list. Personally, I am more interested in the information that the capsuleers in the class 1 w-space system are back in the now-dissipated anomaly, salvaging Sleeper wrecks. They were flushed from the anomaly earlier when we unsuccessfully try to catch them unawares, and maybe I have a second chance. I won't risk the quite visible Onyx heavy interdictor this time, favouring the rather more covert Manticore stealth bomber.

I make the couple of jumps through wormholes to the C1 and make sure that I cloak as soon as possible when entering the system. I like to think I know how to move away from wormholes cleanly, yet the salvager ship warps out from the remains of the site before I get close to him. He is either really lucky or vigilant when punching his directional scanner, or someone was monitoring the wormhole. My skill is called in to question briefly, before a Buzzard is seen returning to the local tower, joining the salvaging Harbinger sitting in the shields. There are only a certain number of ways to reduce your visibility and eliminating wormhole flares when jumping is not one of them. If someone is monitoring the wormhole directly your presence cannot be kept hidden. These pilots are clearly aware of the dangers of w-space and take steps to remove uncertainty. I won't catch them, so head back home to leave them alone.

The journey back to our home system is uneventful, thankfully. There are continued reports of rather dangerous ship movements through our system, mostly industrial ships being escorted by combat ships again. There is also now a Vagabond heavy assault ship on our static wormhole, which is a rather aggressive stance. It is also a rather juicy target, particularly as it is circling the wormhole at a range of thirty kilometres or so, too far to escape quickly. We have two stealth bombers monitoring the Vagabond's position, ready to launch bombs as an initial strike. A Lachesis could then tackle and neutralise the hostile ship whilst another piles on the damage. Again, we delay a little too long over the details and by the time we decide to strike the Vagabond has moved almost within jumping distance of the wormhole. But we'll put the plan in to action anyway.

Our twin bomb strike is co-ordinated and bombs are launched! The first hits the Vagabond but my bomb, launched a split-second later, only hits the wormhole, the HAC having jumped to the adjacent system to avoid the damage and the rest of our small fleet warping in. One Manticore warps away cleanly, I am able to re-activate my cloak and manoeuvre away from my initial position. The fleet returns to the tower rather than giving chase, not wanting to engage on anything but our own terms. Now we wait to see what repercussions our attack has. An Impel transport ship comes back escorted by a Tengu, but the Tengu doesn't leave our system. It instead sits cloaked on our side of their wormhole. A Flycatcher interdictor joins the cloaked Tengu but, apart from this defensive attitude and more ship movements, no overtly aggressive reponse is directed towards us.

I have no qualms about attacking these ships, but their defensive posture disarms me a little. If I were to rationalise it, I suppose they have nothing to attack and so we cannot see their full intentions, and their main operation is clearly to make use of the high-sec exit. It is also possible that our more aggressive posture at defending our system and the wormhole connections is helping to discourage direct attacks against us. We make one last effort to catch one of their ships, as I take an Onyx to sit cloaked on our static wormhole. I want to be cloaked so that I am not visible on d-scan, and so I can make the choice of whether to trap the incoming ship. I don't want to be caught by a strategic cruiser or two. My positioning on the wormhole is a little unfortunate, though, as a Falcon force recon ship warping to the wormhole decloaks me. Rather than jumping through he engages my Onyx, and I return the gesture, locking and firing my heavy assault missiles. But the Falcon jams me with its ECM and I only get a couple of hits before my ship becomes little more than a floating chunk of very difficult to destroy metal.

A Manticore decloaks and joins in shooting me, so without any offensive capability I warp back to the tower, engines not disrupted. My decision is the safe one, particularly when a Proteus strategic cruiser and Rapier force recon ship enter the system and warp to our static wormhole, obviously called to help tackle and destroy my Onyx. But I am safe and take this as my sign to retire for the evening. There may not have been much shooting, or fast action, but the intelligence gathering and ship manoeuvres has meant today has been quite an adventure.

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Tags: arazu, eve online, falcon, flycatcher, harbinger, impel, mammoth, manticore, mmorpg, onyx, penny ibramovic, proteus, pvp, rapier, tengu, vagabond, w-space

Meeting the new neighbours

We have visitors. There are two K162 wormholes in our system, both coming from class 5 w-space systems, both systems having potentially dangerous capsuleers. One system seems rather more of a threat than the other, as they are actively sending people through our system. So far, they have not engaged us directly and only moved ships through, but that may be because we are being cautious enough not to present ourselves as targets. Our scan man relays his intelligence so far, with the intriguing information that one pilot has lost two Proteus strategic cruisers to Sleepers aggressively protecting their gas. The Tech III wrecks remain unlooted in the ladar site, there for over an hour now, and our scan man wonders if he can sneak a Zephyr under the Sleepers' noses to steal anything interesting that can be crammed in to the small hold.

The Onyx that comes and sits on the K162 of the wormhole, in our system, makes our scan man rethink his survivability in the Zephyr, but sadly he has already gone in to the system to reconnoitre the wrecks. He will wake up as a new clone if he tries to come back. In my cloaked Buzzard I warp to the wormhole, bouncing off the Onyx's bubble and moving carefully away, to confirm his presence and affiliation with the corporation in the C5. Our experience tells us that, as defenders, to repel intruders we need to fight away from the wormhole. If we fight on top of the wormhole and get warp-disrupted our only escape is through the wormhole, away from home, but if we fight at range from the wormhole the intruders either need to close the range by flying towards us, away from their escape route, or jump through the wormhole to hand our defence the victory.

I try to encourage a small fleet of long-range ships to try to force the Onyx back through the wormhole, allowing our pilot to return safely. But before we can warp in safely I need to test how the warp bubble works. I know that if I try to warp to the wormhole the bubble will pull me in to it, even if I aim to drop out of warp at range. I reason that this behaviour occurs because my ship's systems are using a point inside the bubble as reference, and the warp bubble interferes with the calculations. But if I make a bookmark of an arbitrary point at some distance outside of the warp bubble I reason that I should be able to warp to that point without the bubble affecting me. I have moved my ship away from the Onyx on the wormhole and made a bookmark at a point suitably far away. Warping away and then back to that bookmark drops me on the spot within the normal tolerance, the warp bubble having no effect. We can drop a fleet at range from the Onyx and shoot it until he retreats. But our trapped scan man isn't keen on this idea for some reason. Instead, he logs off in the hostile system and hopes to be able to return in a little while. Shortly afterwards, the Onyx jumps back through the wormhole. The hostile pilot must have had some intelligence on our own pilot.

With no one now to shoot, my other colleague disappears for a while, leaving me alone. It looks like it's time to take my Buzzard out for a tour of the local systems. I ignore the two class 5 systems leading in to our own, heading through our static wormhole instead. Our neighbouring system has two towers and all the ships in the system are parked inside the shields of one or the other. A Mammoth hauler is seen briefly on the directional-scanner, but checking the high-sec exits shows no activity. A colleague turns up and wants to make a trip to high-sec to buy something new, happy to see that we have options for heading to empire space today. He spies possibly the same Mammoth I did and calls for assistance before quickly telling me not to bother. The Mammoth's guards of a Sacrilege heavy assault ship and Curse recon ship quickly reduce the Arazu to twisted metal, but at least our pilot gets his pod away cleanly. Our C5 travellers are clearly organised and running a tight operation. There is not much for me to do but continue scanning.

Jumping in to a class 1 w-space system looks to offer targets more at our level of experience and numbers. The system is occupied and I find a Harbinger battlecruiser and Jaguar assault ship in the tower's shields. The Harbinger warps away, the Jaguar follows, and there soon appear Sleeper wrecks on d-scan. My Buzzard locates them in an anomaly easily enough, not even needing to use probes. I grab a bookmark from a wreck, but it looks like they will be moving around to engage the rest of the Sleeper ships so an attack will need to be quick and agile. My Arazu-less colleague has a Lachesis ready to fly, and I return to the tower to swap in to my trusty, can't-fly-anything-else-threatening Onyx heavy interdictor. The journey back is quick and efficient, jumping in to the class 1 and warping to the bookmark cleanly, but the ships are gone, leaving only Sleepers. It is uncommon to leave a site half-finished and d-scan shows that both ships are still present in the system and not destroyed, so they probably were aware of our threat. Perhaps we weren't quite as quick or stealthy as we supposed.

We jump out of the C1 and sit on the other side of the wormhole for considering our options. Our scan man comes back, his Zephyr quietly piloted out of the hostile C5, and he happily comes in his Cheetah to spy on the C1 inhabitants, to see if they return to their unfinished Sleeper anomaly. But nothing happens, so we return to our tower. At least we don't bump in to the convoy of ships moving between the C5 and high-sec, getting all ships back to the tower safely being a good result.

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Tags: arazu, buzzard, cheetah, curse, eve online, harbinger, jaguar, lachesis, mammoth, mmorpg, onyx, penny ibramovic, proteus, sacrilege, scanning, w-space, zephyr

Exploring a quiet neighbourhood

A can of BMs appeals to the explorer in me. It's true that my scanning skills have improved, partly through experience and partly because of better equipment, and part of the thrill in exploring is finding the route in the first place, but when the wormholes connecting systems are already mapped it means I can pay more attention to everything else. In today's instance, when I jump through to the neighbouring system, in a Buzzard for potential scanning of targets, I am quick to note that we have been in this system before. Our previous visit wasn't just passing through either, we ambush and pop five Covetors and an Iteron for kicks.

Only a lone Drake sits manned at the occupied system's tower. There are no signs of mining barges here, or elsewhere in the system. All is quiet. It's time to scan and bookmark a gravimetric site or two, hoping for later piracy. But there is nothing here, just an anomaly and two more wormholes. Perhaps the miners are active in another system, but warping to and jumping through the next wormhole presents another system devoid of ships. I look to bookmark a few sites anyway before moving on again. More than a dozen returned signatures makes me think about only looking for wormholes and gravimetric sites, and resolving a wormhole on my first hit is an even better result. Maybe I'll find new targets in a different system.

The first wormhole I find is a K162 coming from null-sec empire space. A second wormhole is also a K162, this one coming from low-sec space. The third wormhole is the system's static, and this one I jump through. There is a tower visible on the directional scanner, but without a force field I can't say that the system is occupied. I find the tower anyway and am amused that it belongs to the corporation Lost in Space. Scanning finds me a static low-sec exit, which is reaching the end of its life, and a K162 coming from w-space. I head further in to w-space, where plenty of ships are pinged back on d-scan. Luckily, all but a Bustard transport ship are sitting quietly in one tower, the Bustard in a second around the same planet. I won't scan here, but instead back-track a couple of systems to jump through a previous K162. On the way back, I notice one of the connections is now EOL, so it's good I didn't continue onwards.

On my way to the K162 leading to w-space I pop through the null-sec exit to get another red dot of exploration on my star map, and then I'm back in w-space. The other system has a tower but no ships and no activity, and I am now informed that the wormhole leading out of our home's neighbouring system is now reaching the end of its life. I head back. All but our own static connection are now effectively EOL, which makes exploration or adventure rather reckless, as well as most of my newly made bookmarks mostly useless. Our neighbours aren't even coming out to play. I take the opportunity to relax at the tower and take a break.

Checking back a bit later, the wormhole coming from the class 5 system is still critically unstable and EOL, which is a bit disappointing as I was hoping that new connections would have opened up. What is interesting is the Bestower transport ship in the system. It looks like someone tried to collapse the connection to the class 5 system earlier but got cautious when the wormhole became critically unstable, and now the Bestower is trying to finish the job. The transport ship is attracting more than just my attention, our scan man is also patiently watching it jump back and forth.

We both know we have no chance of catching the ship on this side of the wormhole, as it can simply jump back, and neither of us want to take the risk of jumping back with it, where we can catch it, lest the connection collapse as intended. What we can do is wait and hope that the capsuleer's calculations are wrong, and he gets stuck on the wrong side when the wormhole finally collapses. Unfortunately for our bloodlust, the wormhole collapses on one of the Bestower's return trips, leaving us circling only empty space. But we were ready. With no more activity reported, I return to our tower to sleep.

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Tags: bestower, bustard, buzzard, drake, eve online, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, scanning, w-space

Finding an exit and more

It is late and the system is quiet. I am thinking of resting for the night, but our stranded pilot asks nicely of no one in particular if a little time could be spent scanning. I am rather addicted to piloting spaceships and agree to help.

I find our third static wormhole of the day quickly enough, jumping in to an unoccupied system that soon reveals its own static wormhole. The next system is occupied but, apart from a single Drake, looks quiet. I resolve a low-sec exit to New Eden in the system, which at leads leads to empire space. Dropping out of warp, I see the Drake moving towards the wormhole too. He jumps, and I wait. I don't want to jump through too soon and alert him to my presence in the system. When I jump minute or so later I find that the system on the other side is only one hop from high-sec and, conveniently enough, only four jumps from where our stranded pilot popped out earlier. The low-sec system seems quiet enough and my colleague is happy to bring his battleship back in this way, so he starts making the journey.

Whilst waiting cloaked on the wormhole, the pod of the Drake pilot returns and jumps back in to w-space. This is interesting, but I can't catch a pod so pay it little mind. The Heron scanning frigate that jumps in to w-space is more tempting, as I follow it and engage, but he jumps back to low-sec and runs off. My colleague's Megathron turns up soon afterwards and I guide him home through the two w-space systems, noting the Scorpion battleship now on d-scan in the first system. Safely home and with a convenient exit my colleague heads out again to return another battleship that got stuck out in k-space when a different wormhole collapsed behind him a little while back. And although I'm sleepy I want to find out what this other pilot is up to.

I return to the occupied system and warp to the tower, the location of which I made a note of earlier. The capsuleer's pod returns again, the Scorpion no longer to be seen on d-scan, and a Rokh battleship is brought out of the ship array. It turns slowly as if it is aligning to warp, and is gone. I warp to the low-sec exit wormhole to confirm my suspicions, and he does indeed jump through. It looks like this pilot is moving ships out of w-space, and from earlier and combined intelligence he is parking them in a high-sec system. This means he is making at least one jump, which increases his journey time and means I can return to our tower to change to my Onyx heavy interdictor. Maybe I can snare his pod when it hopefully returns again.

My Buzzard is agile and fast, making the two jumps to our home system quick, and returning with the HIC is hardly slow. But even though I am racing a battleship on its way out only a pod is coming back, so I can't be slow. I park my Onyx on the low-sec exit, activate my warp bubble, and wait. With any luck, the capsuleer's pattern will continue, and he isn't selling the ships to pay for a strategic cruiser. The wormhole soon flares and I get my weapon systems hot. The capsuleer sensibly waits for the session change timer to elapse before making a dash back through the wormhole, and I follow the pod to catch it on the other side. What I didn't realise was that warp bubbles are not allowed in low-sec space, even those surrounding a HIC, so my efforts to activate the system fail. The pod can simply warp away, so I am a little surprised that he doesn't. Instead, he opens a conversation.

I am offered fifty million ISK to leave him alone. As I can't stop him from running away I accept the deal immediately, and once the funds turn up in my wallet I jump through the wormhole and return home, honouring the deal. On reflection, the pod pilot probably knew I couldn't get him in low-sec, but that wouldn't stop me sitting on the w-space side of the wormhole and prevent him from returning safely to his tower. It is in his best interests to get rid of me, and throwing ISK at me was the easiest way. I feel a bit dirty, though. I was quite happy to blow up his pod in an act of villainy, but accepting a bribe seems more corrupt than piratical. I still consider it a successful operation, though. I was able to monitor the activity, find the pattern, and get in to a threatening position without being detected. That's good work.

I am only left wondering why he is moving the ships. He didn't appear to have help, so it is unlikely that the tower is being dismantled and moved. It is possible that he is leaving the corporation and moving his assets out, but it seems just as likely that I caught him half-way through an act of subterfuge, stealing the ships he could fly and parking them in a personal hangar. I don't suppose I'll find out.

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Tags: buzzard, drake, eve online, heron, low-sec, megathron, mmorpg, onyx, penny ibramovic, pvp, rokh, scanning, scorpion, w-space

No sites, no exit

The local systems have been reconnoitred. There is little of interest for us in neighbouring systems except perhaps in the class 2 system, but the connecting wormhole is reaching the end of its life. The only other connection heads in to a class 5 system inhabited by potential hostile capsuleers. We have enough pilots available to get a fleet ready for action, so we decide to collapse our static wormhole and hope that the replacement will lead somewhere with more opportunity.

It is a little risky to jump Orca industrial command ships through the wormhole when we have possible activity in the system on the other side. For protection, we sit some combat ships on our side of the wormhole to repel any attackers. Our Orca pilots see combat probes on the directional scanner in the other system, as well as a Harbinger battlecruiser and Caracal cruiser. Weapons are made hot in preparation, but no one follows the Orca's home. Either they are not looking for us or are not willing to jump through a critical wormhole. And although the wormhole is now critically unstable it still exists. We can't push another Orca through it and hope for the ship to return, so instead a battleship is prepared.

The battleship has a probe launcher and probes fitted, just in case the wormhole collapses on the outwards journey, which it does. Our pilot is now stuck outside our system and potentially has other ships to travel past. As he updates d-scan Sleeper wrecks start to appear, so it seems that the other capsuleers in his system are otherwise engaged and he makes a safe run through the previously scanned route to empire space. What we need to do is scan a new route for his return, which means first finding the new static wormhole.

Scanning a new exit looks promising. Our new neighbouring system is unoccupied and, although it is quite big, with the third planet orbiting 72 AU from the star, there are few signatures. I resolve a wormhole on my first hit, jumping through the pristine connection to another unoccupied system. Unsurprisingly, considering both systems are unoccupied, the second system's static wormhole is also in pristine condition, having had no one visit it before me and making our outwards connection otherwise untravelled so far. It's a shame we got a pilot isolated, as these systems would be ideal for Sleeper combat. The next system along is occupied but there is no sign of activity. I check the EMO signature and want to cut myself when it turns out to be a gas mining site, but quickly move on to resolve a wormhole instead. This one leads in to a class 6 system.

Jumping in to the class 6 system shows it to be occupied and the Orca, Rorqual and Revelation suggests that the inhabitants are well-equipped. Going from dangerous to deadly w-space doesn't suit our purposes, as well as reducing the likelihood of finding a suitable exit to k-space. It is decided to collapse our static wormhole again. At least this time we have complete information about what ships have passed through, letting us be more confident about our calculations. And we are. A few Orca jumps through the wormhole and it collapses, with all of our pilots on the right side this time. Now it is getting late and the general concensus is to leave our static wormhole untouched for now and rescue our stranded pilot tomorrow. Our fleet disbands and our home system settles down for the night.

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Tags: caracal, eve online, harbinger, mmorpg, orca, penny ibramovic, revelation, rorqual, scanning, w-space

Sci-fi London Film Festival 2010

The ninth annual London Film Festival of Science Fiction and Fantasy is another six days of genre films, panels and events. I book a few tickets for myself and a friend and we head down for a full day and night of film watching.

We first watch the second of two shorts programmes. The festival selects a number of short films to be played before every feature, and also combines the shorts in to a collection to be enjoyed in one sitting. The quality can vary but they generally are interesting and enjoyable, and it is good to be able to watch a dozen or so at once on the big screen. The End of Evolution is an interesting look at identity and funny in a quirky way. The director was at the screening so I hope he appreciated the audience's reaction. Consciousness explores a robot learning how to feel, and did so with the most wonderfully fake robot that it puts you at ease and draws you in to the story. Matt Berry stars in The Search, where he looks to the stars for contact but finds it closer to home, and has the most muted voice I have ever heard from him. I didn't even know he could talk normally.

When Will It Be Silent is an Israeli film that uses the short format perfectly, presenting the scene and provoking a reaction at each step until the touching end. Reign of Death looked interesting, with good production values, but although the motives of the characters can partly be explained by the ending they are questionable until that point and detract from the plot, clichéd as it is. Clone is presented as an experimental work, and really didn't offer anything but a visual effect or two. A twist on the zombie genre, Choreomania has people being infected with a disease that causes them to dance continuously, and is nicely shot with a keen sense of comic timing. It is well worth a watch. Homeland is an odd little animation where a woman knits a jumper, but for a strange creature that continues to grow new arms, so that the jumper continuously needs to be adapted and the knitting never ends. I'm not entirely sure what was going on but the short is surprisingly moving.

Extending the utility of a modern GPS unit has a man guided in to making better decisions, and has a lot of charm and some fun jokes. My favourite of the shorts must be Übermencsch, a tale looking at the consequences of a certain extra-terrestrial craft landing in Germany instead of elsewhere. It has a clever look back at an altered history as well as a powerful message. The last film in the programme, Ergo is difficult to gauge. Although it certainly looks interesting, as it is played upside-down, back-to-front, and temporally reversed it is really difficult to follow. When it ends, I hear someone say 'that was a strange ending', to which I say to no one in particular, 'technically, sir, it was an odd beginning'. Thankfully, it is animated and wordless, or it would have been even more bizarre. I would really like to see this played the right way around, as it looks like an interesting story. I speak with the festival director afterwards and he tells me that when they got a 35 mm print of Ergo they wanted to play that instead of the submitted DVD, but a previous projectionist spooled it incorrectly. Never mind, I think I got the gist anyway.

After the shorts we see a Mexican production. It is the year 2033 and a totalitarian government is in power and has banned religion and freedom of expression. Control is maintained by developing secret additives to drinks that suppress a person's will. A promising young man destined to be a future leader learns from a cult leader that his father is not dead but being held by the government, setting in to motion actions that draw him in to the rebellious underworld. The story and motivations in 2033 are well-plotted and don't feel contrived, and the acting is consistently solid. The production design and values are excellent, even without considering the tiny budget the director had to work with, and the film overall is interesting and enjoyable. The ending is deliberately left open for a sequel, but in doing so it doesn't quite provide a strong enough conclusion for the single film, but that is a minor quibble. A Q&A session with the director afterwards reveals that 2033 is planned to be the middle part of a trilogy of films, the next one to be shot being the first of the three, once this film hopefully makes back its money.

The director of fan-film Batman: Dead End has created a feature, Hunter Prey. A ship crashes in to a remote planet and its dangerous cargo is on the loose. The small squad of soldiers from the ship have to hunt down the creature and capture it alive for its return, but it soon becomes unclear who is actually being hunted. Hunter Prey looks fantastic and has some clever ideas and nice technology. The moralising can get a little heavy-handed in places but it is not overly distracting. The ending gets rather convoluted in the intricacy of the plot, not enough that it can't be followed but the level of consequence is perhaps a little difficult to believe. The film is pretty good and certainly worth watching, and it will be interesting to see what the director does next, with the increasing attention he is getting.

Lastly, the two of us stay to watch the comedy all-nighter event, four really bad films played back-to-back with comic voice-overs. The first is the Rutger Hauer film Salute of the Juggers, which looks to be a confusing mess of post-apocalyptic violent games. For this film a small group of comedians provides a new dialogue. I am not a big fan of improvisation and although there are occasional moments of comic genius the improvisation mostly consists of saying what is happening on the screen and is a little dull as a result. Salute of the Juggers may not have been the best film to provide new dialogue for, as the number of extended fights were difficult to make interesting, but it was a good attempt. Next is a live recording of the Cinematic Titanic crew performing their riffs over the gloriously low-budget The Alien Factor. The film is laughably bad and the jokes from the CT crew make for an amazingly funny experience, and even though this was played from about 2 am onwards I didn't feel sleepy once. Being able to watch the crew riff from their scripts is excellent too.

Two MST3K films follow, first The Unearthly with two shorts beforehand. The shorts were information films for kids and were funny in themselves, trying to encourage children to have good posture and then show what parents get up to when the kids aren't around. The main feature is amusing but a bit slow and I unfortunately miss a fair bit of the plot once I can't recognise the difference between two male characters, and grab forty winks instead. First Spaceship on Venus I have seen before and I try to stay awake but don't quite manage it, as the plot is rather dry despite Joel and the robots spicing it up. I still catch a fair bit of the film and am awake for the ending. It is interesting to see that both MST3K films are Joel episodes too. And after the hilarious Cinematic Titanic showing I am definitely going to see some more of their new films.

Sci-fi London continues to bring interesting and thought-provoking films to bigger audiences than they would normally receive. Even though I don't manage to see all I want at the festival, the programme and promotions make me aware of all the films being shown, which will allow me to try to see the ones I am interested in another time.

Posted in Video | Comments Off on Sci-fi London Film Festival 2010
Tags: 2033, cinematic titanic, hunter prey, mst3k, sci fi london

Very deadly core competency

I am almost elite. I have nearly all of my core competency skills trained to the highest required level, missing only two more before I can claim the overall certificate. The training has taken a while, although my last plan to increase core skill training being over a year ago is a little misleading. I got quite distracted from the core skills with the promise of a shiny Damnation, then lured in to the thrill of heavy assault and interdictor ships, even if I gain the elite core targeting skill as a consideration in piloting the Guardian logistics ship. But earlier this year I decided to hunker down and improve my core skills.

The training for core skills is unglamorous. It doesn't put you in to new ships, or let you use fancy new modules, and although any improvements you gain are just as incremental as with any other skill it can be less than thrilling to spend two weeks training to get a slight increase to your power grid. Training for new ships lets you buy a new toy, and often the next level of ship requires incremental training in the current one, which effectively becomes the new goal. Training in modules lets you play with new fittings, and increased training will open up more powerful versions of the modules that will eventually give more than the incremental boost of a level of training. Core skill training seems tame in comparison, until you actually see the benefits.

My ships turn slightly faster than before, which also puts me in warp ahead of other ships. When being chased or stalked by other pilots this can make a difference. My shields and armour are improved as much as they can be, and I can fit the best modules to improve them further. And I can squeeze almost as much as possible out of my grid and CPU to fit more than before, which really does show. I rarely have to worry about standard fittings for ships any more, which also makes fitting non-standard modules for specific tasks easier. Working with whatever we have in our corporate hangar out in w-space, and not being able to buy something quickly from the market, almost requires this much flexibility. Training in the core skills isn't glamorous, but it certainly makes a noticable difference.

I haven't quite completed the requirements for the elite certificate yet. I still need to train one more level in both advanced weapon upgrades and warp drive calibration. I may take the month-long plunge with the weapon upgrades at some point, after some more fancy skill training in new ships and more direct support skills. And I think the warp drive skill can wait until I am ready to slide my pod in to a maruader or black ops boat. It is only four days of training, but I'm not convinced it's required outside of the nastier battleship-class hulls. I am pleased that I dedicated a chunk of time to the core skills, training the longer skills first to make it mostly a downhill ride. Now my path is open to exploring even more opportunities.

Posted in Gaming | 2 Comments »
Tags: certificates, eve online, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, skills

Scanning a route to nowhere

W-space is mine to explore. I quickly find the static wormhole in our own system and jump in to the C4 on the other side. The neighbouring system holds no surprises, being unoccupied and mostly empty, the outer planet keeping a close eye on the system's static wormhole. The two more signatures left to resolve turn out to be a gravimetric and magnetometric site, and I jump onwards in to a C5. But the wormhole is stabilising, which means no one has visited the system on the other side since the daily galactic reboot, and I need to push my Buzzard a bit harder in order to pop through the wormhole.

It is curious that the system has remained empty for quite a few hours, and means that I am unlikely to find anything interesting. The system is unoccupied, although there are a couple of large warp bubbles somewhere and plenty of signatures to resolve. I get gas and rocks, rocks and gas, and a radar site. I am relaying some of this information back to colleagues in our home system, and one thinks that a 'C5 radar site sounds exciting!'

'Yes', agrees another, 'about as much as the 'self-destruct' button'. I keep looking for wormholes, finding an exit to null-sec space but having trouble locating the system's static wormhole. I whittle down the signatures to a few that look remarkably weak for wormholes and begin to think that I have inadvertently 'ignored' the wormhole at some point. It is frustrating, but I clear my 'ignored' list and start scanning the system again, quickly ignoring a whole bunch of ladar sites again. At least I have Fin to help me, which speeds the process a little. But not enough for us to find the wormhole before my probes disappear in a fizzle of failed electronics. They expire in the harshness of space before I realise I needed to recall them, and I have to launch more to continue scanning.

The last signature in the system, out of two dozen or so, turns out to be the static wormhole and it certainly doesn't look like a wormhole initially. Hoping to find something interesting at last I jump through and take a look around. It's a big system so I need to warp between a few planets to discover any occupants, which I do. There are four towers around one planet, one of which holds a Moros dreadnought, Revelation dreadnought, Kronos marauder, a Rorqual and a few Hulk exhumers. The Reaper sounds quite threatening amongst the collection until I find out it is a rookie ship, a slight improvement over a shuttle. The rest are quite dangerous, though, and I also find a Thanatos carrier and Legion strategic cruiser on the other side of the system. Even a Mammoth industrial ship floating unpiloted by itself near a moon is not enough to tempt me to open fire in such a system, and I head back without even dropping probes.

We are unlikely to attempt any activity with such neighbours nearby, which motivates us to collapse our static wormhole and see what else opens up afterwards. On the way back home, I quickly pop in to the unclaimed system F01U-K in null-sec to get the red dot of exploration on my star map. I consider sticking a flag in it and declaring sovereignty, but I need to get back before our womhole is collapsed. A few round trips with an Orca destroys our static wormhole—and the relevance of all my newly made bookmarks—and the evening starts again, looking for our new static wormhole.

The neighbouring system is familiar, with us having visited it about four months ago, but is unoccupied and empty of targets. The next system is also empty, with the only relief I am getting being that my comparison method for finding wormholes is now working reliably, resolving three wormholes in a row. One leads to higher-class w-space, the second to low class w-space but is EOL, the third a static exit to low-sec empire space. I warp to the stable wormhole leading to dangerous w-space and jump. Another unoccupied system, full of rocks and gas, and with a pristine static wormhole that I jump through to another C5 system. This one is occupied. There is a tower around a moon on the outer planet, but it holds no ships. I start scanning and find a wormhole quickly. The rabbit hole goes deep tonight.

I get another null-sec exit—I poke my nose through to IG-ZAM—and another static leading deeper in to w-space. This next system has two towers but nothing else of immediate interest and, launching probes, I find another wormhole leading deeper in to dangerous w-space. It is too late and too far removed from our home system to find any reasonable path to empire space or potential targets. I make a quick visit to the new system only out of curiosity. It is an occupied system, with two Moros dreadnoughts, a Thanatos carrier, two Dominix battleships, and a few other, less threatening ships sitting unpiloted in the tower's shields. That's it, I'm going home. It has been an evening full of scanning and exploring, but with nothing of strategic interest found.

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Tags: buzzard, dominix, eve online, hulk, kronos, legion, mammoth, mmorpg, moros, null-sec, orca, penny ibramovic, reaper, revelation, rorqual, scanning, thanatos, w-space