'Engineers', my buttocks

The laboratory I work in is a dedicated area of The Company's building. It is similar to other laboratories in the building but different in feel because of the sound-proofed rooms, smell of grease, and large industrial chambers, plants and machinery, instead of electronic test equipment. Never the less, I tend to expect engineers from other disciplines to have some form of intelligence, the kind that stops them from arbitrarily opening doors to environmental chambers that have nothing to do with them or their tests. I am surprised far too often by my apparently unrealistic expectation. Luckily for them, the chamber was running a maintenance cycle and not involved in a days-long qualification test, but it was still an astonishing display of poor judgement.

When their test finishes, the same engineers decide that, rather than finding someone from my department, the best course of action is to switch off the chamber themselves. So it is that a large, noisy, industrial environmental chamber, controlled and data-logged by software running on a remote computer, is interrupted by untrained personnel turning off its three-phase mains power. This despite a warning from their previous incident. I swear, this is why bridges collapse.

Posted in Work | 4 Comments »
Tags: climatic

A note to New Eden's high-sec pilots

Warping AFK on AP is much more effective with the AP switched on. Otherwise, you're just AFK.

Posted in Gaming | 5 Comments »
Tags: eve online, mmorpg

Ganked by a spider

We clear the Deadmines. Big deal, everyone has. Gryan Stoutmantle must have hundreds of masked heads of Van Cleef rotting in Sentinel Tower by now. But a feat that few characters have bothered to do since Northrend was put on the map is to run from Stormwind to Menethil Harbour. Once an arduous rite of passage for the lowbie, the route was generally travelled the other way, elves coming from their depressingly dark forests to experience the snow of Dun Morogh and sunshine of Westfall. Part of the Stormind Renovation Project, the new harbour was opened once the pesky ice dragons had been slain, and the elves moved their shipping route directly to the human capital. There was much elven rejoicing. But Filesystem Checkwits are old-school, not too smart, and here to experience Azeroth.

We aren't too old-school or lacking in intelligence to eschew some of the more positive changes to travel, notably gaining mounts at 20th level these days instead of 40th. Some might say that the journey is more important than the destination, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't gain a 60% speed boost to arrive at your destination sooner and relax with your feet up. Actually, it's probably not wise to drink brandy in a smoking jacket when your destination is Shadowfang Keep, but you still don't want to run the whole way on foot. We are heading to Shadowfang Keep, in the far northern Silverpine Forest, in order to relive the danger of the old Darnassus-Stormwind rally. Being 22nd level makes us relatively safe from harm from the Wetlands beasts, but running through Arathi Highlands should keep us on our toes. Oh, and my paladin trainer wants me to pick up a hammer for him in the Keep.

The first few creatures we spot after crossing the Thandol Span in to Arathi Highlands are raptors whose level still cons as a number to us. Even though the numbers are in the 'delightfully deadly' shade of red, at least they aren't replaced by skulls, indicating a level of danger so high that we need to be protected from seeing their true threat to us. No, those mobs are just around the corner. We talk to the flight master in Refuge Point before heading deeper in to the highlands towards Hillsbrad Foothills. Our plan to stick to the road like epic loot to a hunter is scuppered by the presence of the forsaken courier who, along with his four bodyguards, walks the length of Arathi Highlands in to Hillsbrad.

Either we risk leaving the road to avoid the courier and perhaps face just as dangerous natural beasts, or we risk the road by riding through the courier and his entourage. Being sufficiently low level means that we can do both! Our aggro radius is huge against mobs over ten levels above us, so we manage to pull not only the courier and his pals but also a few creatures from the fields. With several deadly mobs attacking us from several fronts, it is times like these when our coherence as a group is fully tested. Needless to say, we panic and flee in every direction, our only saving grace being that none of us jump off a cliff.

Reviving ourselves, the lowbie odyssey through Arathi Highlands continues with a spider the size of a really large boar pursuing us almost to Hillsbrad Foothills. When Thoradin's Wall comes wthin draw distance we are hopeful we can make it, but the mob-only daze attack, spider venom, and our low level all conspire to kill us one last time in the highlands. The good news is that the forsaken courier has apparently disappeared, and Livya gains an exploration ding by entering the new zone! The path to Southshore and onwards becomes safer again, the only dilemma being whether to gank Horde characters on our way, but not being on a PvP server makes the question academic.

We enter Silverpine Forest and travel southwards, taking this opportunity to see the Greymane Wall and its closed gate perhaps for the last time, out of which Alliance worgen will pour once the cataclysm hits the land. Poor Wallace, the blind weaponsmith just outside the gate, won't know what's hit him. Livya is quite impressed that he's still got both his arms, though, and ditches some vendor trash on him, hoping to pretend it is good quality loot from Shadowfang Keep instead. The dungeon itself is now only a stone's throw away, just beyond Pyrewood Village. We have made our destination, now to slaughter its inhabitants.

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Tags: azeroth, filesystem checkwits, kiska, mmorpg, world of warcraft

Wormhole cruiser death squad

A non-aggression policy can be quickly modified when everyone starts shooting at you. The corporation maintains such a policy, which generally suits all members. By staying mostly in high-sec and avoiding annoying other pilots directly we can operate with little interference or worries about security standings. But the null-sec equivalence of w-space, where we have already lost ships to pirates, provides problems for this non-aggression policy.

Luckily, 'non-aggression' doesn't mean we can't shoot back, only that we shouldn't initiate combat. The only issue under consideration is what constitutes hostile activity. On the one hand, we need to defend our w-space territory actively, or we risk losing the rich resources available. On the other hand, we can't use this null-sec space as an excuse to attack anything that wanders through a wormhole.

There is also the concern about what ships should form the fleet when capsuleers in our wormhole operations are threatened. I suggest using cheap Tech I cruisers, or similar. In my experience, kill boards are balanced according to the ISK value of ships lost on both sides. The idea is that piloting a whole fleet worth only a paltry twenty million or so ISK will act as a minor deterrent to glory-seekers, whilst focussed PvP set-ups will still be relatively effective in the cheap boats.

If we can get dedicated point, ECM and DPS boats out in space and concentrate on a main threat we should be able to get a quick kill, whilst presenting such a low-value target in return that we probably won't be worth wasting the cost of ammunition on. At least, that's my theory. It must be better than retreating to and hiding in the tower's shield every time an unknown ship is seen on the directional scanner, letting Sleeper loot and exotic ore be taken from under our noses, and less costly than trying to field expensive Tech II PvP ships which will likely act more as a lure.

The war machine rolls in to action. Cruisers are churned off the production line and cheap modules are bought and fitted. A few experimental duels are attempted, gauging the effectiveness of each dedicated set-up, and it looks good. The wormhole engineers death squad is born. Rather than actively attacking anything that enters the system, in consideration of the non-aggression policy, the idea is to retreat from the current operation and launch the death squad cruisers. What happens after that is down to the actions of the encroaching ships.

Posted in Gaming | 1 Comment »
Tags: eve online, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, pvp, w-space

Waiting for the burst of energy

I occasionally opine that little in New Eden happens quickly. I have recently completed skill training in battlecruisers V, the duration of around twenty five days being part of a grander skill plan to pilot a Damnation command ship, which will take around seventy days of skill training in total. Researching material efficiency of BPOs takes at least a week to get to a reasonable value, the BPO for the Badger industrial ship taking months to reduce the wasted minerals for profitable production.

A friend of mine mentions that he reads how I play Guitar Hero in my pod whilst I travel around the galaxy, discouraging him from trying EVE Online as his first MMORPG. In fact, I could more than halve the travel time if I pilot manually, instead I take advantage of the auto-pilot function of EVE Online and the quick nature of Guitar Hero to get a regular drumming fix. Even so, travel time can still be significant, even if it can be improved or mitigated, which is another example of the slow pace in New Eden.

I work as an environmental engineer, creating hostile environments under laboratory conditions to test avionic electronics. The laws of physics are pretty tricky to break, and obeying such archaic notions of thermodynamics means waiting for changes to take effect. Having recently started a particularly involved test I reflect on the similarities between my career and my hobby. This test combines temperature cycling and vibration testing, cycling through an envelope considered typical for the equipment's in-service life, with periods required for the equipment to soak at high and low temperature.

In total, without set-up times, the equipment will be under test for thirty six days, continuously, day and night. Throughout the long period of testing I will need to monitor various temperatures and other environmental factors to ensure that all the parameters are within tolerance. With a few relatively short exceptions during the day, the changes to the equipment take effect over the course of hours. Admittedly, this is not a typical test, but most tests take hours to run, many take days, and it is only the occasional job that can be completed in half-a-day or less.

When everything is running smoothly I can relax and enjoy the scenery, but if something goes wrong I have to explode in to a burst of activity to remedy the situation and get everything simpatico once more, whether I'm at work or a capsuleer. I monitor expected changes and react to unexpected events with standard fixes, or the occasional novel response. Perhaps it is no surprise that I am not discouraged by the slow pace of EVE Online when it matches the way I generally work.

Posted in Gaming, Work | Comments Off on Waiting for the burst of energy
Tags: eve online, mmorpg, vibration

Sewing a fox tail

I like exploring the furry in me. After getting the raccoon hat, I am excited by the new fox hat on Shana Logic's site, enough to make me think about making a tail to go with it. Finding some affordable, long-strand fake fur fabric, in both white and orange, is the rest of the motivation I need to break out the sewing machine, along with some help from the Cosplay Catgirls book I have. Unfortunately, I wasn't sure how the fox tail would turn out, so I didn't take any photographs of the process, but I can give a description at least, as it is quite a simple pattern.

The main part of the tail is essentially a tube, created by cutting a rectangle of the fabric and sewing the two long sides together. Unlike my first tail, using fake tiger fur, I want to give a bit of shape to the fox tail, which I achieve by modifying the rectangle slightly. By making the two ends of the main section of the tail thinner than the middle, and adding gentle curves to the full width of the cut rectangle, the tail both fattens out from the base and tapers towards the tip. But before I can sew this section together I need to attach the tip of the tail.

The tip of the tail is just another cut of fabric, but using the white fur. As the edges of the fabric will be sewn together to create a three-dimensional tip, some thought must be given to the shape of the very end of the tip. For my tiger tail I wanted a domed end, which I achieved by cutting two semi-circles from a rectangular base. Joining the two semi-circles together gives a domed tip as required. However, for the fox tail, particularly when considering the shape I am after, I want a more pointed tip. A triangle of fabric joined at two edges of the same length gives a tip, but I don't want such a rigid line. Instead, I cut a symmetrical curve ending in a point that, when joined, should give a tapering point.

The first join is to attach the tip of the tail to the main section, only after which I will sew the long edges of the fabrics to themselves. To join the tip of the tail to the main section I want to hide the seam. To do so, I make all the seams by placing the right sides of the fabric together and sewing along the edge, so that when the fabric is reversed the stitching is hidden. But, before I attach the tip, I want to create even more shape to the tail, as I'd like the whole tail to curve upwards a little. My cosplay book suggests adding a wire to the inside of the tail, but I will want to curl the tail up to carry it in luggage at some point, I am sure, and I don't want to eventually break the shaping wire. Instead, I cut a concave section out of the edge of the white fur to join to the flat edge of the orange fur. This has the effect of cinching the fabric together, creating a natural tension that should pull the tail upwards a little.

I pin the white tail tip to the orange main section, cinching the orange fabric to the white. Satisfied that the sections fit together nicely I start sewing, with just a simple stitch. With the white and orange sections joined I can pin the long edges together. Once happy with the pinning I sew down the length of the whole tail, taking care when sewing over the join of the two fabrics, and when reaching the point of the tip of the tail. After ironing all the seams and checking that everything looks okay, I am ready to turn the fabric inside out. The cosplay book suggests stuffing the tail as you go, but I have made the tail sufficiently wide that I won't have trouble reaching down to the tip, so I invert the whole tail in one go. And it looks good!

I need a way to attach the tail to my clothes, the cosplay book helping with some tips. I decide to use a short section of thick, garden wire I find in a hardware shop, which I hook and sew in to the seam of the join I have created. The end of the wire comes out the top of the tail, where I can create a second hook that can sit over a belt comfortably. The wire is held firmly in the seam and is long enough to hook over my belt. I can start stuffing the tail. I have some washable polyester toy filling left over from my tiger tail, which I pack lightly in to my new fox tail. All that is left is to sew up the base of the tail.

My sewing machine is put away when sewing up the base of the tail, the open end that will attach to my belt. I imagine I won't be tidy, but luckily the long-stranded fur will hide my stitching. I have an orange thread that matches the fur nicely, so as tidily as possible I bunch up the fur and overstitch it all together, under the assumption that I mostly need to stop the filling from coming out.

The finished tail looks fabulous, even if I say so myself. The effort to create some shape has worked well, giving plenty of volume to the body that tapers to a point, with an attractive curve along the whole length. Now I just need to find some excuses to wear it, although that probably won't be a problem.

From my notes, I cut the orange fabric to a length of 24" and a maximum width of 18". The base of the tail, sitting at the small of my back, is 15" wide, curving out to the maximum of 18", for a few inches, before tapering to 12" where the orange fabric is joined to the white tip. The white tip is 12" across where it joins the orange fabric, the long edges following a gradually increasing curve down the tip's 12" length to almost a point. A section of fabric is cut from the white fabric that joins to the orange to create a concave curve connecting the two edges, a few inches deep at its apex, giving more shape to the tip. The two sections make for quite a long tail, but I am tall enough for it.

Posted in Creative | Comments Off on Sewing a fox tail
Tags: cosplay, fox, furry, sewing

First reflections on paladin tanking

What the shield giveth, the shield taketh away. Kiska, my World of Warcraft paladin, is setting herself up to be the tank of the group, which is fine with me. My warrior on the same server is specced to be a tank, as is my warrior on a US server, and the death knight on the same US server is not only tank-like but has fulfilled the rôle on many occasions. A crucial aspect of tanking is damage mitigation, as every mob is expected to be hitting the tank at the same time and, for this, armour is important. The death knight has a special presence for tanking which significantly increases the armour values of equipped gear, but for the warrior and paladin a shield is vital.

A shield can easily offer 60% additional total armour in a single item, which is why equipping one is important as a tank. The drawback to strapping a shield to your arm is the corresponding reduction in DPS, a restriction of having to wield a single one-handed weapon instead of a two-handed weapon or dual-wielding one-handed weapons. I have never found the drop in DPS caused by wielding a one-handed weapon to be an issue when playing a warrior, because the warrior's martial training provides many nifty uses for shields. The shield can be slammed in to an opponent for damage and to dispell buffs, reflect spells back at casters or interrupt the casting itself, or enable a powerful counter-attack whenever the shield blocks a weapon hit. Spending certain talent points makes each use of the shield more potent or more likely to proc, making the shield truly a valuable weapon for a warrior, and certainly worth sacrificing a bigger weapon for.

The paladin, on the other hand, does nothing with a shield except hold it in front of her. Of course, this gives all the benefit of the additional armour and block values, as well as any magical aid the shield offers, but it remains just a shield. This is fine when tanking in a group, as all I really need is the protection provided by the boost in armour. Equipping a shield also forces a one-handed weapon on me that, frankly, I want when tanking. One-handed weapons can be swung considerably faster than two-handed weapons, and I need to be able to hit multiple targets quicker than every four seconds, in order to maintain more threat than the DPS classes and healer. But when I am thrust back out of a swirly instance portal in to Azeroth, away from the harder elite to the squishy normal mobs, the shield becomes dead weight on my arm.

I don't need extra armour when fighting normal mobs. Or, at least, not when it significantly compromises my DPS. I wear heavy armour to start with, have plenty of healing available, and have a spell or two available to stop incoming damage in an emergency. What I really need is a honking great weapon to cut a path of destruction through the mobs to my target, normally a mineral vein. What matters to the non-tanking paladin is damage, not damage reduction, and without any special attacks that rely on having a shield equipped, all I am getting from the shield is damage reduction. Unlike my warriors, I see a real need for switching between one-handed weapons when tanking as a paladin and two-handed weapons at other times. Trying to solo mobs when I have a shield and one-handed weapon equipped would be a ponderous affair, offering no benefits beyond being able to go AFK and grab a snack.

Needing to switch between weapons as a paladin has drawbacks, the least of which is always making sure I have both a suitable tanking and DPS weapon. Although, as DPS is a secondary, if not tertiary, requirement when tanking, there isn't as great a need to ensure the one-handed tanking weapon is the best available. I find the main problem is dealing once again with the pointless weapon skill in World of Warcraft. One-handed and two-handed weapons rely on different weapon skills, which need to be improved separately. One of the great benefits of being a protection warrior is never having to worry about weapon skill as long you run around with a shield and a sword, and there is little reason to change from that configuration.

My paladin needs to change between a one-handed and two-handed weapon frequently and I am finding that my weapon skills are continually having to catch up with my level, whether I've been running solo in preparation for an instance run, or coming out of dungeons with a couple more levels under my belt. Weapon skill is a silly mechanic. Never the less, weapon skill is a mechanic I must tolerate so that I can be as effective as possible whether fighting solo for the light or ensuring the safety of my group. I can at least look positively on the need to have two different fighting styles as an opportunity to experience the paladin class from two perspectives, and enjoy playing a hybrid class.

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Tags: kiska, mmorpg, paladin, world of warcraft

Depending on the kindness of drops

Over at Killed in a Smiling Accident, Melmoth laments World of Warcraft's looting system. I empathise fully, having experienced loot-envy many times myself, including sulking about losing an ideal tanking drop to a DPS class. Loot distribution is a curious issue, as it's not just in MMORPGs that loot-envy occurs, having been felt in pen-and-paper RPGs for years, even before the first MMORPG was designed. Random tables or pre-generated loot cause problems in exactly the same way, either arguments of ownership when something particularly shiny is found or bitterness when a worthless item is plucked from the treasure chest of the climactic encounter.

An experienced GM can eschew random or pregenerated loot tables in favour of offering a balanced and equitable distribution of loot throughout the adventure, ensuring both that every character gets a suitably shiny upgrade and arguments about who takes what are avoided. To be able to distribute loot fairly, such a system requires an overseer that knows exactly the party composition is coming in to the adventure, what they have equipped, what is hidden in bags, and what is squirrelled away in bank vaults, which a GM can accomplish with complete access to players' character sheets. It thus remains baffling to me why the final boss in an MMORPG encounter still has a good chance of dropping loot that no one can even equip, considering the systems controlling the world are omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent, so it should be no surprise that this can cause resentment. But despite reading the argument in Melmoth's carefully considered writing, I am still left wondering about the real cause of his frustration.

By the end of the run through the Deadmines, Melmoth writes that he made out 'like the proverbial bandit', getting a couple of excellent pieces of armour, so it can't be that he feels he came away with nothing. Nor can he be feeling bitter that the loot system doesn't drop needed items, either favouring a certain class or ignoring party composition and dropping useless items, as he also notes that everyone got something they could use. It seems that missing out on the axe gnaws at him but, knowing Melmoth, he certainly isn't complaining that he didn't get every single drop. Yet even after getting equipment upgrades himself, and the rest of the party similarly, Melmoth argues that the loot system is flawed. However, gauging his disappointment, I suggest that the problem with the system lies not merely with loot distribution, but also in loot dependence. Loot may drop arbitrarily, random items plucked from predetermined lists regardless of party needs, but the relative utility of the loot itself is unbalanced almost to the point of being broken.

If you rely on a weapon for attacks and damage, the weapon becomes the most important item you can own. That extra DPS the weapon offers is simply incomparable to armour drops. For example, a warrior gains one DPS for every fourteen attack power, and two attack power per point of strength. To get a single DPS increase on a warrior requires getting a piece of armour with an extra seven strength, and that's on top of whatever ability buffs your current piece of armour has. At low-level, the kind of ability gains needed to boost damage output simply is not available on armour. In addition, weapons don't only have damage stats, they can also have ability buffs. A two-handed axe offering an extra five DPS and buffed with a significant amount of strength is not just shiny, it is radiant with an unholy darkness that corrupts any heart that dares con it.

It is not just the randomness of dropped loot in World of Warcraft that potentially causes rifts, but also the heavily skewed difference in the utility of specific loot. Even getting a couple of pieces of the best low-level armour in the game can leave a bitter taste when the game itself reminds you shortly afterwards that armour doesn't matter as much as a weapon. The inequalities are rife in World of Warcraft, and are unfortunately highlighted most brightly under negatively competitive circumstances. Melee and ranged attackers suffer most without a good weapon, an item that relies on drops to be upgraded. It won't matter that you are three levels above this mob, you're still using a weapon several levels below even that. Conversely, spell-casters suffer from drops not helping the power of their spells, the caster classes getting gradually weaker until an improved rank of each spell is learnt every several levels. It won't matter how much intellect the robe has that Archmage Arugal drops, your frostbolt will still be tepid for two more levels.

World of Warcraft is a loot-dependent, level-based game and, despite its popularity and influence, it should be clear there is much that can be improved. Dropped loot should not be quite so arbitrary, particularly when it binds to a character and cannot be transferred. After all, loot is meant to be a reward for overcoming the challenge. There is little reward in gaining a few silver from selling the dropped loot, particularly when comparable and more useful items cannot then be bought with the profit. Reliance on a particular item, such as weapons for fighters or a caster's spells, will only be fair when there is reliable method of obtaining a suitable item that will, at the very least, maintain equilibrium with level. Making the already arbitrary level boundaries worse by denying fair access to the required tools for a class only ends up emasculating characters and, by proxy, players. Melmoth is right that 'it’s no wonder that more and more players switch to solo play wherever they can'.

Posted in Gaming | 1 Comment »
Tags: melmoth, mmorpg, opinion, world of warcraft

Skill training continues towards Damnation

Having a long skill in the training queue makes for less maintenance, not needing at least once a day to keep the queue filled, which in itself is an improvement over having to know, and be logged-in, precisely when each skill is due to complete. Adding a three-week skill to the queue is a little demoralising, knowing that no direct character progression will occur until that extended period has passed, but at least I won't have to keep an eye on the queue for a while. However, it is dangerous to get in to the habit of not checking the progress of skill training, as its completion could crawl past with nothing new entered in to the queue. In the real-time skill system of EVE Online, not having a skill training at all times is a cardinal sin.

If the first week of training a long skill is spent noting that there are still weeks to pass before the queue needs to be modified, the continual checking making the training seem longer than it is, then the second week is spent trying desperately not to check the queue every hour or so. By the third week, I learn to ignore the static skill queue, such that I almost need klaxons and flashing lights to warn me that the training will complete within the day. Luckily, learning my lesson after losing a few hours of training earlier on my path to Damnation, I remain somewhat aware of the conclusion of battlecruiser V, catching it with about eighteen hours before completion.

After what seems like an age, having battlecruisers V within a day of completion finally allows me to add a new skill to the end of my queue. In celebration, and to promote a furthering sense of achieving my goal of piloting a Damnation, I buy the logistics skill book and inject it. I stack the first two levels of logistics to train after battlecruiser V finishes, before sinking back in to the depravity that is Amarr cruisers. It is refreshing to revisit my skill training queue after more than three weeks focussing on battlecruisers, but now I must endure again as the final two levels of Amarr cruiser complete.

In the mean time, with the feeling that my Drake will soon become even more resistant to damage, as well as delivering more potent missiles, I pilot Tigress II up to my Lai Dai mission base, where A Matter of Brevity welcomes my pod back in to her neural interface. My Lai Dai agents have the same situation with Guristas as I do with time, both of us having some to kill. A couple of missions later and I gain access to the high quality level three Lai Dai agent in the same station. I didn't realise my standings were increasing so satisfactorily. It may not be much longer before I have a good quality level four R&D agent in Lai Dai researching some datacores for me.

Posted in Gaming | 3 Comments »
Tags: damnation, drake, eve online, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, skills

Refuelling

Knowing is half the battle. Being able to recognise why I spend most of a session holed up in a station, rather than enjoying the impressive vistas of space, lets me focus my attention on making some progress, however small. Well, that and the large tower in w-space accidentally runs out of fuel, sending it and all its anchored modules off-line, which is a somewhat serious situation. I am tasked to throw some fuel in my Crane and hurtle off to restock the tower's fuel bay, bringing everything back on-line.

Refuelling the tower is hardly a glamorous activity, nor is it particularly social this time, as the emergency run is a solo affair, other corporation members performing slower logistical moves elsewhere. However, it is certainly necessary, and that it is part of a grander scheme is what appeals in particular to me. Whilst I still have some individual activities available in New Eden, mostly keeping my production line ticking over and the occasional mission running, being able to get involved in more coordinated efforts is really making me appreciate being in a friendly and progressive corporation.

My industrial efforts are being helped along by combining datacores with a partner for Tech II ship invention. A recent batch of invention attempts was quite productive, two Crane blueprints coming out of the laboratory with only three accompanying failed attempts. The manufacturing requirements of the Crane transport ships are also shared, leaning on our relevant strengths and availabilities. Even running missions is more interesting with more capsuleers. It may be possible to breeze through most missions by myself, but having others along allows for more reckless approaches to deadspace areas full of cruisers and battleships.

The main focus for most of the corporation at the moment is still wormhole operations, an area that demands cooperation. I am guided in to the w-space system holding the large tower, where I refuel the tower and spend a little time making sure everything is okay. Another capsuleer is available to bring all the systems on-line, so I head back out to k-space where I rush my Crane a couple of dozen systems to catch up with the other logistics operation, the moving of the medium tower in to a new w-space location. I manage to get to the k-space waypoint one jump ahead of the slightly scattered convoy, where I wait and end up making several jumps back-and-forth between k-space and w-space, hauling modules and supplies for the new system.

The new tower gets set-up in w-space. I take my Crane back out to k-space and dock in the closest station. It's quite late and I'm tired. I haven't been able to bring my w-space Drake here, partly because of the earlier refuelling, as I wasn't sure if the ponderous Drake would be able to catch up with the convoy, but that's okay. I have been useful with the Crane in helping get everything ready for another day. I'm sure that when a suitable wormhole entrance appears I'll be called in to fight against the Sleepers, once again working as a team to overcome the greater challenge.

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Tags: crane, eve online, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, w-space