A reply from Exxon-Mobil

I recently mentioned how Esso refused to serve me petrol unless I took off my motorcycle helmet. I was angry enough at this absurd policy that I wrote to Exxon-Mobil's head office to complain, and I got a reply. The reply stated that Exxon-Mobil take motorcycle business seriously, and that the policy to remove helmets is in place for two reasons. First, the cashier needs to check that the person buying petrol is over sixteen years of age; second, there have been a few robberies where helmets have been used to foil recognition.

I'm not quite sure how many under-sixteens try to buy petrol, but I personally ride a large supersports bike that is simply not available to anyone without a full licence. I am also not that short. I am not sure what taking off my helmet would prove that cannot be clearly seen by any reasonable person. As for robberies, I imagine that anyone wanting to rob a petrol station would not be deterred by a 'no helmet' policy. It would be amazing if robbers saw the sign and said to themselves 'wait, we're going to have to take off our helmets, they will recognise us! Let's rob some other shop'. And I doubt they would be stopped by someone asking them to take off their helmet, instead of simply robbing the place. Indeed, if a 'no helmet' policy is an effective deterrant why not instead put a 'no robbery' sign on the door? The policy to remove helmets seems startlingly like security theatre.

I can't agree with the policy. It may seem a minor inconvenience to have to remove one's helmet, but unless you wear a helmet regularly you are unlikely to recognise how much of an inconvenience it can be. I can see how convenient this argument is for me, in that I am stating that if you don't wear a helmet you can't make a valid judgement, but I believe it to be the case. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it were the cause of the absurd policy, where people who don't wear helmets underestimate the inconvenience and assume that bikers wouldn't object.

If the weather is wet then all my biking gear will be wet. Taking off my helmet cannot be done whilst wearing my gloves, so I have to take them off first. This exposes my hands, and my hands now get wet from holding wet gloves and a wet helmet. Where do I put my gear whilst I pump petrol? The ground will be wet, because of car tyres dragging water from the roads in to the station, so I am left with pumping petrol one handed, which is more awkward than it could be had I two hands free. When finished, I have to put my wet hands back in to my gloves for the rest of my journey, which leads to an unpleasant and uncomfortable ride.

And if the weather is cold my bare hands have to clasp the pump that is permanently open to the environment whilst getting petrol, and all the gear I wear to protect me from the cold is useless, unless I take off my gloves to take off my helmet to put on my gloves again to pump petrol to take them off again to put my helmet back on and finally put my gloves on again. Compare that to simply not taking them off to start with.

Regardless of the weather, the simple fact is that taking off my helmet is more inconvenient than not taking off my helmet. There is another petrol station where I can pump and pay for petrol, pop to get a takeaway from the fish and chip shop next door, and ride away all without having to take my helmet off. Given the choice, there is little question as to which petrol station I am happier to frequent, which is why I cannot believe Exxon-Mobil's statement that they take motorbike business seriously. After all, as I stated in my letter, they have lost my business as long as the policy is in effect.

Posted in Personal | Comments Off on A reply from Exxon-Mobil
Tags: motorbike, petrol

Not buying Spore

I had got caught up in the hype surrounding Will Wright's latest game, Spore, to the point where I was quite excited about finally getting to play it. That there was a lot of buzz about the game for quite a while contributed, including seeing adverts for Spore before every film at this year's Sci Fi Film Festival in London, as did a Mac version of the game being available on release. However, despite the hype and the availability of the game on my platform there arose the issue of DRM, or Digital Rights Management.

It was revealed the Spore would be released with SecuROM, which would allow for three legitimate installations of the game and no more. It is possible that contacting Electronic Arts, the publishers of the software, would allow more installations to occur, but that is not guaranteed. I may not be in the habit of reinstalling software often, but I still don't want to be left with a useless disc after an uncertain amount of time, and that is assuming there are no technical problems to start with.

My first thought was that if EA are going to treat me like a criminal, by not trusting me with my legitimately bought software, then I may as well act like one and pirate the software, getting myself a fully functional copy without DRM. But then I realised the problem this causes. By pirating the software I would effectively be confirming EA's suspicions that DRM is needed to prevent unauthorised copying of their software. I would rather see no DRM, and indeed would have bought Spore by now if it had none. To that end, I simply won't be buying the game.

Spore is just a game. It may be the best game the world has ever seen, but it is still just a game. I am playing three MMORPGs at the moment, have plenty of other hobbies to keep myself entertained, and don't see this situation changing. Having another excellent game to play would be quite jolly but it is far from the end of the world to abstain from an entertainment product.

Posted in Gaming, Personal | 2 Comments »
Tags: drm, ea, spore

Rather not be fishing

With every new character in World of Warcraft that I plan to play significantly I always promise that this is the one where I'll keep my fishing skill in line with my level. There is some lure to fishing in World of Warcraft, with many types of fish being ingredients that help to increase your skill in cooking, and changes have brought in floating debris that can occasionally offer a character a surprise catch. There are also a couple of low-level fishing quests in Auberdine, encouraging early adoption of the profession, or 'suckering you in' if you prefer an alternative expression. Even so, there are fundamental problems with my fishing experiences.

Fishing is supposed to be relaxing, but the interface denies this relaxation entirely. I cannot cast my line and let my imagination, or my browser window, wander in a random direction, or pop off to get a cup of coffee, or engage in meaningful dialogues on IRC about 'what's up?', because I need to pay attention to when I get a bite. When I get a bite, I need to reel it in, which is also not as straightforward as it should be. I can't just press a button or select a hotkey, I need to cmd-click on the float I have cast with the line, which is in a relatively random location in front of my character that changes with each cast and, although it is comically large compared to real floats, is not a particularly big target. Essentially, I need to concentrate on my fishing, which seems to fly in the face of the activity's raison d'être.

Having to concentrate on a gaming activity is hardly a criticism in itself, though. After all, I actively concentrate on many aspects of gaming and expect to have to do so for the most part, unlike stupidly long gryphon flights or crafting a dozen identical widgets that I immediately throw in to the rubbish bin of a vendor. But fishing requires remarkably less skill than other activities in World of Warcraft, and for an MMORPG that is making quite a statement. Press a button to cast a line, cmd-click on the float, loot and repeat. And this doesn't change either with character or skill level. So there I am, sitting in front of my screen concentrating on seeing when a float splashes in the water to indicate something is caught on my line, not daring to look away in case I miss the splash and waste that cast. An essentially mindless task is demanding my almost-constant attention!

Imagine if you had to sit in front of your screen every time you took a gryphon flight and occasionally click on a slightly changing beacon in front of you, because otherwise the gryphon would get distracted by a sparrow and start flying in circles with it. If you didn't click on the beacon every ten seconds you'd never make any progress, never get to your destination. That would be pretty tedious, I would think, but that's what fishing is like. You aren't doing anything, but you can't do anything else either because of its demand on your attention. Ironically, this has been made worse by the change to reduce the time period of each cast, as there is less time between catches and casts to perform something meaningful. And yet I seem to forget this and promise that this next character will be the one where I finally become a skilled angler.

Even if I could get through the tedium I could only become a skilled angler by increasing my skill level. When I travel to a region where it is so difficult to fish in that I need to attach a lure to my line, and has some floating debris to entice me to whip out my rod, I consider it reasonable to expect my skill level to rise with each catch. After all, in other professions a successful completion of a difficult task always rewards a skill point. What I don't expect is for my skill to improve with every fourth catch, particularly when I am dropping four out of five fishes to start with. Having only about one in twenty casts reward a skill increase is punishing my time investment and almost ensuring I won't continue.

I have no idea if I will persevere this time. The idea of fishing always sounds so relaxing, once I've forgotten my previous attempt, right until I realise I am having to stare intently at a float for several minutes straight for little reward. If I get the urge to start a new character and think, once again, that fishing wouldn't be such a bad idea after all, I need someone to slap some sense in to me. Or at least point me to an add-on that makes fishing much less of a chore. I'm sure there must be such an add-on, but the standard interface should offer a better experience than it does. On the other hand, I may have found just the right activity to perform whilst listening to certain DVD commentaries.

Posted in Gaming | Comments Off on Rather not be fishing
Tags: fishing, mmorpg, professions, world of warcraft

Tracking EVE Online skill training on an iPod Touch

Whilst casually browsing the iPod Touch applications on the iTMS the other day I found a piece of software of interest, EVE Tracker by Saggysoft. It's a simple application that allows you to keep track of your skill training in EVE Online on your iPod Touch or iPhone. Although the application is not likely to make me want to rush home so that I can switch skill training, it is more convenient to check EVE Tracker every now and then on my Touch than having EVE Online running on my main computer all the time in order to hear the friendly 'skill training completed' alert.

At least, I assume it will be more convenient when I finally get it working. EVE Tracker, like other skill monitor applications, requires your EVE Online API key to be input before it can gain access to the information it requires to track your skill training progress from the central servers. Whilst copying and pasting the key from the web page would be trivial, manually copying and entering a forty-digit hex number in to an iPod Touch is a little tedious and prone to error, and after a few apparently unsuccessful attempts I gave up for the time being.

The good news is that the notes for the next version of EVE Tracker include 'adding functionality to load the EVE API Key web page and parse it automatically', removing the need for manual entry of the key. I look forward to the next release, as I will then be able to check every five minutes how many more days my current skill training will take.

Posted in Gaming | 4 Comments »
Tags: eve online, eve tracker, ipod, mmorpg

An even more stable City of Heroes Mac

I have still been getting the occasional crash when playing City of Heroes or City of Villains on my Mac using Crossover Games. Whilst infrequent enough to be tolerable, having to reload the game from a crash is inconvenient, particularly when playing in a group. A splendid chap posted a helpful tip in the Crossover compatibility centre for City of Heroes/City of Villains forum, suggesting the use of the /unloadgfx command after changing zones or visiting graphics-heavy areas.

Rather than typing in the command each time I wanted to use it I instead bound it to a key, using the following command in the chat box: /bind l "/unloadgfx" I used the command regularly during a session last night, by hitting the 'l' key, which caused nothing but a second's delay in gameplay, and The Micro-manager was able to complete the mayhem of a couple of task force missions without experiencing a single crash in a two-hour session.

I have only played one session since reading the tip, but the difference was significant, particularly during a session with the most graphically intensive fights so far and a number of zone changes. Whilst using the command is clearly a compromise I find it preferable to press a key every few minutes than having to reload the game every twenty, and the contiguous gaming time allows for a more enoyable experience when playing in a team with other people.

Posted in Gaming | 1 Comment »
Tags: advocate, city of heroes, city of villains, crossover games, mmorpg, the micro-manager

Explosions mean success

My new agent in EVE Online was happy to see me, as he had reports of a large object in a deadspace pocket causing some sort of problem for the navy. He doesn't have to ask me twice to take care of the situation before I am jumping in to my pod and requesting clearance to exit dock and enter the space lanes. A quick jump through a stargate and I'm aligning to the deadspace pocket, ready to flick the warp drive active. Within a few seconds the stargate is left millions of kilometres behind me.

Coming out of warp can be disorientating, as the drives disengage and your ship is slowed back down to real-time every object around you appears to zoom in to focus at once. One moment you are smoothly travelling several AU per second, the next you are on the edge of a nebula with a dozen or more hostile ships locking on to you from different directions. It takes time and practice to build the skills needed to take in all the relevant information quickly, discarding low-threat targets to concentrate on the more dangerous ones. Woe betide the inexperienced pilot who locks-on and open-fires on the wrong target, although learning from that kind of mistake is not soon forgotten, if it is survived.

I am continually honing my threat-assessment skills when dropping out of warp, and this time I spot the largest structure in the deadspace pocket quickly. It looks dangerous, with all manner of pointy aerials and other high-tech instrumentation sticking from all of its surfaces. Despite the presence of hostile ships, no doubt guarding my target, my best course of action is to destroy this possible machine of the apocalypse first, letting my shields soak up enemy fire in the process. I lock on to the target, as well as a few others to keep my trigger-happy drones amused, and set the switch on my heavy missiles to maximum kill rate.

Piloting Coiled Snake, my Drake battlecruiser, ever closer to the mysterious yet clearly dangerous structure I hope to get inside the minimum range of its most deadly weapons, whatever they may be, as my missiles eat their way through the shields and down past the armour. With its inevitable destruction at my hands, having ended up so close to the structure I am offered an amazing fireworks display, Coiled Snake almost engulfed by the ensuing fireball of the second biggest explosion I have ever seen!

That's odd, one of my drones is messaging me on the display in my pod. 'Great, kid! Don't get cocky.' Hearing missiles continue to pound on my shields makes me realise its point, and as the ball of flames dissipates a little more I am able to get a better reading on the remaining ships. It doesn't take much to clear the rest of the deadspace pocket, the morale of the enemy clearly shaken by the destruction of their mothership, and I soon find myself heading back to the station, making one hop via the stargate, with a full drone bay.

I report back to my agent with the news of the glorious destruction of the mothership, replete with sound effects and vigorous hand motions, helpfully trying to brighten his dull existence behind a desk with some action. 'That wasn't a mothership.'

'Then what did I just blow up?'

'The space telescope. As luck would have it, that was actually your target.' And with this grateful thanks for a job well done I am hustling back to my pod with a contented smile. With someone behind me calling out 'Did you even read the briefing I gave you?' I jump in to my salvaging Cormorant, renamed the Marquis of Granby, ready to hit the vacuum of space to clear up the mess I left behind and pick out the valuable salvage from the mothership's wreck.

Another successful mission!

Posted in Gaming | Comments Off on Explosions mean success
Tags: agents, cormorant, deadspace, drake, eve online, futurama, mmorpg, penny ibramovic, star wars

Dynamic autopilot navigation

The ship's autopilot in EVE Online is like HAL 9000, as it will happily follow instructions to get the ship to its destination whilst killing the crew in the process. Manually warping to a stargate will get your ship close enough to be able to activate the gate generally as soon as your ship drops out of warp, handy if there is a gate camp, but the autopilot prefers a more insouciant approach. It warps to fifteen kilometres out from the gate to enjoy the spectacular space vista as it glides in to activation range, which makes your ship vulnerable to attack for a significant amount of time.

That's not to say the autopilot is useless. Setting the autopilot with a destination brings up information on the HUD, detailing your current and destination systems, how many hops you need to make, and listing as many intermediate systems and their security ratings as it can fit. The next stargate waypoint is also coloured distinctly in the overview, allowing quick selection and warp drive activation after entering a new system. Even if the autopilot isn't used to pilot the ship directly, its navigation system is certainly worth switching on for these features. Flying to your destination is then a simple recursive matter of selecting the right jump gate, warping to within zero metres of it, and jumping.

It's interesting to realise how quickly I've got used to quite a number of systems and their interconnecting jump gates, dispensing the local need for the autopilot's navigation systems. It is interesting because of the abstract nature of the connections, as they are effectively a linked list of names, but with multiple links and lists. I am not remembering that I have to head to Perimeter and then take a left past the ringed planet to Urlen, and if I hit the nebula I've gone too far, I am only remembering the names, the order I encounter them, and the several further names that each one links to. I thought I'd be referring to the EVE Online Strategic Maps book more than I am.

Not that I don't refer to the strategic atlas, as it is an excellent reference that allows you to scan across a large number of systems easily, making the maps a useful resource I am happy to have to hand. But the strategic atlas is mostly used when locating systems new to me, or finding how far away an agent is sending me on a mission. I get used to the close proximity systems and their linking jump gates quite quickly when running missions, and this creates further links in my memory's map. I also use the autopilot's navigation systems when making multiple-hop journeys, for although I could work out the route it's easier and quicker not to have to keep referring to a map.

When it came to checking the availability of higher-quality agents recently I found a suitable person to work with, requiring another change of outpost to relocate my Drake and Cormorant and retrieving all my loot and salvage to be sold or reprocessed back at HQ. Heading to a new system meant not knowing the navigation routes around adjacent systems. I could get about half-way from HQ to my destination using my memory but then I'd be following the map. Instead of trying to pilot the ship with a book on my lap, particularly when I'm in a pod full of goo, I punch my destination in to the autopilot and let it calculate an optimal route.

One good feature of the autopilot is that it can be programmed to avoid low-sec systems, routing around the direct path in favour of better security. A feature I haven't found is programming the autopilot to avoid Jita, and the first hop on my current journey is through the centre of lag and scams in the galaxy. Whilst being perhaps a more direct route I would not count on it being the quickest, with the possibility of that one hop through Jita lasting an hour or more, but you don't fly around Caldari space for any significant amount of time without working out how to bypass that quagmire.

I point my ship towards the Niyabainen jump gate and, after jumping to that system, then warp to the Tunttaras jump gate. I know that I am adding an extra hop to my journey but not having to enter Jita is easily worth a hop or two. Having entered Niyabainen I notice something interesting: the autopilot's navigation system has dynamically updated itself. Rather than insist that I should still be heading to Jita to progress towards my destination it has reorientated itself and worked out a new optimal route, one that follows along my current path. The jump gate of Tunttaras is neatly highlighted for me.

The rest of my journey is a relaxing flight, served with gin and tonics, as I follow the route marked out by the autopilot, noting the intermediate systems in my own memory for reference. It wasn't too long ago that anitquated route-finders would stubbornly persist in getting me back to Jita so that they could begin their planned journey, so this dynamically updating system is nifty! It is amazing what they can do with ship's computers these days, and it ensures the autopilot is a handy system to use even after manual overrides.

Posted in Gaming | Comments Off on Dynamic autopilot navigation
Tags: autopilot, eve online, jita, maps, mmorpg, niyabainen, penny ibramovic, perimeter, tunttaras, urlen

The Micro-manager comes to Europe

The Micro-manager has accepted a promotion, sideways of course, that has sent him out of the US to the EU. Reluctantly taking some retraining in the process energy now pulses out of him when asking for status updates, instead of fiery bursts. All his abilities to irritate and annoy for long stretches of time are still based on his remarkable willpower, though.

It hasn't taken long to become comfortable with the new workplace, as it is quite similar to the old. Indeed, the international offices of any company can seem familiar once you've been with the company long enough, and The Micro-manager's relocated offices are even located in areas of the same name: Mercy Island, Port Oakes, Cap Au Diable. Before the end of the first week he was asking everyone to go ahead and come in at the weekend, even on Sunday for a team-building exercise that ended up with only a few ugly disfigurements and one amputation. All in all, quite a success.

There are always a few troublemakers, though, and for The Micro-manager these are the Circle of Thorns and the Mu agents of Arachnos. Some Circle of Thorns employees have an aura that imposes an accuracy debuff on those close by, and as the Micro-manager is quite obviously a hands-on kind of fellow the debuff affects him for as long as it is active. This is quite frustrating, as I end up trying to point at the screen where the Circle of Thorns should be clicking with their mouse but, with the loss of accuracy, point in the wrong place.

Spending a lot of time with the same mobs and getting nowhere is frustrating, but even the Circle of Thorns can learn a lesson in irritating villains from Mu agents. The Mu drain endurance from nearby people, mostly by talking about their weekend or pets insufferably, right to the point where you have no endurance left and barely have enough energy to walk away from them. It's one thing to be continually trying to throw your coffee mug at someone, it's another not to be able to lift it in the first place. The Mu agents leave me powerless whilst they prattle on about little Timmy's performance as the sheep in the school play.

It's lucky that I can gain inspiration and ask them if the more annoying employees if they could move their desks down in to the basement, where I can eventually ignore them and continue with the important tasks of ensuring people are reminded about the TPS cover sheets. And so The Micro-manager's power grows.

I'm not sure if there are any differences between the clients for the US and EU servers, as I am under the impression that the game's loader is the only different downloaded needed to access the different servers. Either way, it seems that playing City of Villains using Crossover Games on my Mac crashes a little more frequently on the EU server. This could be a coincidence, or down to perception issues, and it is still possible to play for a significant amount of time without crashing, as well as Crossover Games actually making it possible to play City of Heroes and City of Villains on a Mac with little fuss. With any luck, the planned commitment for Codeweavers to officially support City of Heroes will bring improvements in stability soon.

Posted in Gaming | Comments Off on The Micro-manager comes to Europe
Tags: advocate, city of villains, crossover games, the micro-manager

Weekend, CDs and tickets

This weekend found me in the centre of London again, which makes three trips in to town in three weeks. The first trip I had planned to meet up with a friend for a birthday lunch but had managed to get my dates wrong. It still suited me to go in to London so I went anyway, and picked up Chemical Chords by Stereolab and Earth to The Dandy Warhols. The second trip was the date of the birthday lunch, so I headed in to London and had a pleasant lunch with a couple of friends. On that trip I picked up Rip it Off by Times New Viking and also tried to get a ticket for a gig, but was told that it wasn't listed and if I came back next week they would have more information. Well, why not, as it is a pleasant enough trip and I could get myself a ticket for the Sci Fi London Oktoberfest whilst there.

The gig I tried to buy a ticket for the previous week was still unconfirmed by the venue, but that was okay. A newly advertised gig that I would like to go to is now on the night before, so I bought a ticket to that one instead. I then went in search of the location of the venue, as I hadn't been there before. I had looked up its general area on the internet earlier and roughly where it was but didn't know the venue itself. It turns out that I have walked past it many dozens of times without paying attention to its name, and as it isn't a usual venue for gigs this isn't surprising. Now I know where it is I don't need to worry about finding it on the night. Walking back from my reconnaissance I took the opportunity to pick up the new album from Fujiya & Miyagi, Lightbulbs.

As for getting a ticket to see the band whose recent gig I missed I came away empty handed. The agency I like to use doesn't have tickets for this particular venue, and doing some research shows that, in fact, no tickets are available to buy for the regular events. It looks like I will have to get to the venue early to avoid missing out, which may present the same problems as before. However, I have the incentives of not wanting to miss out on seeing a favourite band twice within a fortnight and the venue offers free admission for members, with free membership, so I can offset the uncertainty of admission with a free ticket if I manage to get in. I'm going to be positive about this.

Posted in Audio, Personal | Comments Off on Weekend, CDs and tickets
Tags: cd, dandy warhols, fujiya & miyagi, gig, sci fi london, stereolab, times new viking

Taking the hits

It is time to deal with a pirate invasion. This is the kind of straightforward mission I like to get from my agent, and my agent seems keen to offer me this kind of work. Go out and blow up some rats, she says. It takes all my presence of mind to remember to accept the mission before jumping in my pod and leaving dock, as there has been an occasion where I have had to sheepishly request docking permission only moments after hitting vacuum before. The rat invasion is in the current system, so I align my Drake to the reported location and activate the warp drive.

The rats aren't too keen on seeing a heavily armed battlecruiser warp in to deadspace and lock-on and open fire on me, but that's okay because I am also heavily armoured. Having been given advice on what systems to fit to my Drake I can now start to see the benefits. The 'passive' tank set-up extends and hardens the shields whilst increasing the recharge rate at the expense of capacitor output. Even though my shields had dropped to half power at one point the passive set-up had recharged them to over 75% strength by the end of the fight, and that was with my Drake taking a constant pounding. As missiles and gunfire continued to slam in to my shields the recharge rate was quick enough to mitigate most of the damage, and this is without the huge drain on the capacitor that a booster requires.

There are still more improvements to make my Drake's passive tank set-up more effective, both from buying higher-quality modules and skill training. I'll need it too, particulary if I make more rookie mistakes, like warping in to the third deadspace pocket and drawing two groups of enemy ships instead of one. As I warp in I notice a group of frigates close to my Drake and another couple of groups further away, with the more distant groups also containing cruisers. I lock on to a couple of the closer frigates, to keep track of what my drones are up to, as well as a locking on to a cruiser or two in the other group so that my heavy missile launchers can open fire.

It is after I have my targets that I realise it is only the closer group of frigates that has noticed my being an interloper, with the other ships not taking aggressive actions towards me. I decide to take care of the frigates before engaging the cruisers, in an effort to keep the number of aggressors manageable. I set my drones on a targeted frigate before switching to the next locked target and, flicking my launchers live, watching as a volley of heavy missiles burns its way... in the other direction. I am, of course, still locked on to a couple of ships in the second group, having not reselected targets after reprioritising relative threats since warping in to the deadspace pocket. This brings many more missiles thundering against my shields and is why I could always improve my ship set-up.

Attacking more foes than I had intended is far from a serious problem, though, and it is not long before all of the enemy ships are reduced to wrecks slowly tumbling about an axis or two, the occasional electrical arc lighting up their gnarled interior. Reflecting on the destruction of valuable resources makes me realise that I have forgotten to bookmark the location of a wreck in the other deadspace pockets, so when I bring out my salvaging Cormorant, still named Flycatcher for now, I'll need to use the acceleration gates and a standard reheat module instead of the micro warp drive. A small lapse in memory, and as many of the ships are frigate-sized and came in close to use guns my tractor beams will make quick work of salvaging from all the wrecks.

Another mission is completed successfully! My level three mission running is progressing well, to the point where I think it is time to move on and find a new agent. Browsing the list of available agents I find one who is available to me of sufficiently higher quality to warrant moving stations again. I'm getting better at moving stations now, even with an extra salvaging ship to transport. Using my Badger to retrieve all my salvaged loot and a shuttle to zip between systems, which also fits in the destroyer's hold, I can get settled in to a new station with minimal fuss. I'll make the acquaintance of my new agent and see what interesting people he wants me to blow up soon.

Posted in Gaming | Comments Off on Taking the hits
Tags: agents, badger, cormorant, deadspace, drake, eve online, penny ibramovic