The race is on!

I need a few million ISK to insure and fit my Drake before trying to complete my first level three mission, which will default to failure within a day. It's lucky there are rats all over the region, as my agent is keen to give me as much work as I can take. It is not so lucky that the galaxy goes offline every day, some kind of high-tech enforced sleep ritual, I don't quite understand what goes on. The question is: can I complete Pirate Intrusion in just over thirty minutes?

I warp to the first deadspace pocket and light up my launchers. As the hostile ships become passive wrecks I point my Salvager module towards them and rip out any useful electronics I can get. My drones help out with some firepower, and the reheat helps to close distances more quickly. A second gate awaits my instruction to boost me to the second deadspace pocket, where I repeat my destructive passage, cleaning up everything behind me.

Then I see it, a message floating in space an unfathomable distance away from me: cluster shutdown in fifteen minutes. Speed between wrecks, Red Panda! Salvage like you've never salvaged before! Time counts down, salvage piles up in my hold. Two wrecks to go, two minutes until cluster shutdown. I am getting salvaging successes more frequently than ever before, which is lucky as my blood pressure probably couldn't take 'your salvaging attempt failed this time' from my on-board computer right now.

Less than one minute until the cluster shuts down, and the deadspace pocket is clear of everything but Red Panda, my Caracal, and some Veldspar asteroids. My mission is in the same system as my agent, so I don't need to jump anywhere, otherwise the salvage would have rusted away for all I cared. I warp back to the station, request docking permission, and... crap. I am left floating metres outside the station.

My mission reward and time bonus is waiting for me, as obstinately out of my grasp as piloting my new Drake. Soon, soon.

Posted in Gaming | 3 Comments »
Tags: caracal, deadspace, drake, eve online, penny ibramovic, salvage

Caracal down

My plan to complete my first level three mission before it lapses to a default failure is looking more likely, which is surprising considering that I went back to the deadspace pocket with my Caracal and a plan. It was, in retrospect, a feeble plan, but I thought I had to try. My plan was to warp in to deadspace armed to the teeth with heavy launchers and backed up by the strongest defences I could muster on Tiger Lily, pick off one target, warp back to a station to repair my armour, and repeat until all the hostile targets were destroyed.

The plan might have worked had it not been for two details. First, the sheer number of missiles raining down on my ship simply wouldn't enable me to linger long enough to destroy one ship, or perhaps even to start hitting the armour of one. And second, a reinforcement rat gang turned up just as I was trying to warp out, immediately in range of me and also equipped with missiles. It seems they decided I should get out of my Caracal and take my pod back to the station.

Tiger Lily was no more, and I had to buy myself a replacement Caracal, Red Panda. The insurance payout on Tiger Lily funded the Caracal, but then I had to pay for insurance on Red Panda, as well as buy a few modules that I didn't have lying around spare in my hangar. My courageously foolish attempt cost me a couple of million ISK.

My wallet is also drained from buying advanced learning skill books, not thinking I would be running level three missions for a while and that I had time before needing to buy a bigger boat. Since then I have been running missions and employing Penny Ibramovic's Salvaging Operations to boost my wealth back to a healthy level, and it is working quite nicely. I have made over twenty five million ISK in around ten days, and I can now afford a Drake battlecruiser. I can also pilot one, having recently trained in the skills to pilot it. All I need now is a bit more cash so that I can fit it out with modules and insure it against accidental exploding, and I will be prepared once more to take on the hostile force waiting for me on the mission.

Posted in Gaming | 1 Comment »
Tags: caracal, deadspace, drake, eve online, penny ibramovic, salvage

Stupid drones

You can't keep Kruul down. He just keeps on getting clones revived and can't help but kidnap damsels. It's a good argument for genetics. It's lucky that I worked out he only calls for help from elite mercenaries when directly attacked, relying only on his rather less effective henchmen until then. If only there were some way of telling my drones this.

I warp in, launch my drones, and start locking on to the henchmen, planning to ignore Kruul until I have despatched all his cronies. My drones, however, have other ideas, and unfortunately the first person to land a hit on my shields is Kruul. Before I know it they have flown off to counter-attack, and a dozen elite mercenary ships warp in on Kruul's command, flameburst missiles ricocheting off my hardened shield.

Indeed, so unaware am I that as I am punching the reheat to gain some separation I wonder what has changed Kruul's behaviour, calling in his paid friends before I even target him! It takes me a few moments to realise what has happened, but by that time it is too late. Luckily, I am able to fight off all the mercenaries to complete the mission regardless of plan going awry.

One drone was blown up by the time I noticed that the pair had engaged Kruul, and it serves it right, frankly. The other one is going to be reprocessed in to its constituent minerals when I get back to a station. I'll do it in front of the others, teach them all a lesson.

Posted in Gaming | 2 Comments »
Tags: deadspace, eve online, penny ibramovic

Corporation hunting

I am thinking more seriously about finding a corporation to join in EVE Online, if only to get out of the insipid default corp channel, which can make general channels in other games look like works of Milton.

I haven't found a corporation yet partly because of the sheer quantity of corporations in the galaxy to choose between, which could take a lot of time sifting through to find a suitable place of employment, but mostly because other people worry me and I have no idea what being in a corporation will entail.

It might be interesting to join an active corporation to find out what it involves and the different opportunities that are available for a space cadet.

Posted in Gaming | 3 Comments »
Tags: corporation, eve online, penny ibramovic

Death... IN SPACE

Coming out of dock from Perimeter station I hear sounds of a firefight. This isn't as uncommon as I would have expected in high-sec space, but it is still a little concerning when powerful ships decide to battle it out in front of a heavily populated space station. I have not normally hung around to watch the scrap, but this time I was intrigued. There were three ships involved that I could tell, and many drones were buzzing around the Drake in the centre of it all. It's not long before the drake blows up dramatically, but to my surprise the fighting continues! The aggressors pod the pilot, leaving his frozen corpse floating in orbit near the station.

I was a little taken aback by this, partly because it was such a merciless act, and partly because there didn't seem to be any Concord intervention afterwards. As I understand it, kill rights don't extend to destroying escape pods. Even so, I don't know what motivated the dogfight in the first place, or who first attacked whom, so I will not draw any assumptions. It was a nice display of fireworks, though.

Posted in Gaming | 4 Comments »
Tags: drake, eve online, penny ibramovic, perimeter

What's in a name?

Whilst helping to stab orcs in Hellfire Peninsula, Knifey bumped in to someone called Epicstupity.

I didn't stop to ask if it was an intentionally ironic name, just in case it wasn't.

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Tags: knifey, outlands, world of warcraft

The Verve reformed

The Verve are back. Again. This could be an exciting time, as I remember The Verve from all those years ago, before the jazz record label forced the band to change their name to avoid potential confusion, hence the definite article being added. I remember listening to the extended version of She's a Superstar where the song continues long past the in-comparison disappointing radio edit, with soaring guitars creating beautiful music that is just as amazing to listen to today as it was then. The debut album, A Storm in Heaven, mixed together songs that were both fragile and strong, offering gentle breezes before conjuring up thunder, and was a critical success despite not including their first few single releases.

The second album, just as pretentiously titled as A Northern Soul, saw The Verve grow. The same mix of songs was present, but somehow they all had more weight behind them. It looked like The Verve were going to be The Next Big Thing, until the announcement that they were splitting up, shortly before they released their final single entitled, poetically enough, History. From what I remember, there were tensions between singer Richard Ashcroft and guitarist Nick McCabe.

That The Verve reformed was good news, that they stayed together for just one more album was disappointing. Urban Hymns adds to the pretentious album names, as well as to their impressive body of work. Overall, the third album seemed more superficial than their previous work, relying on heavy-handed lyrics more than metaphor, although there are some gems to be found outside of the singles. The Verve split again, this time it must surely have been for good, after having tried a reconciliation album.

Richard Ashcroft turned solo after Urban Hymns, and it led to much chart success. However, whilst the songs kept a certain lyrical quality they were lacking in musical direction, ending up being terribly middle-of-the-road. Without the rest of the The Verve behind him, Ashcroft was just another solo artist. Yet he was popular, and understandably so. He fronted The Verve for many years, he was the man everyone associated with the band, particularly with the memorable and copied video for Bitter Sweet Symphony, the band's big comeback single after the first split.

People remember the vocalist more, the man at the front of the stage, the man with the focus for most of the song. They get most of the attention, from fans and media alike, and it takes a huge personality for a non-singing musician to get much recognition. For example, Graham Coxon may have enjoyed some critical and musical success after leaving Blur, but hasn't got anything like the attention Damon Albarn recevies with each of his projects, and it seems to be less to do with talent and mostly because Albarn is more widely recognisable. Such as it is for Richard Ashcroft.

Even with Ashcroft enjoying success through mediocrity I was quite looking forward to The Verve reforming, because of Nick McCabe's ability to create wonderful music with his guitars. I still listen to The Verve on occasion, all the way back to All in the Mind, and it is the music that keeps me coming back. I admit that I focus mostly on the guitars, but I certainly appreciate how all of the band create a fuller, richer sound together. I was optimistic about hearing new McCabe music.

I heard a song on the radio a couple of weeks back, and it had a catchy-sounding sample looping through it. I admit, I quite liked it to start with, but then the loop continued throughout the song, and not just here and there but for the whole song, without pause or change. By the end I was sick of that loop and, by association, the song, and I hoped I wouldn't have to hear it again. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, I heard it again, and again the loop sounded interesting to start with but quickly irritated because of its constant use. It was perhaps fortunate that I heard the song again because this second time I also heard it being attributed to The Verve, and that it was their new single Love is Noise. What a disaster.

The loop in the song isn't bad in itself. Like I wrote above, it is quite catchy. The problem is that it is clearly overused. There are no breaks in the song where the loop isn't heard, no changes to how the loop is used or the loop itself, it just repeats and repeats from the start of the song until the end. It becomes tedium itself. Even in musical genres like dance, electronica, and Krautrock, where repetition is key, it is understood that changes and breaks are what contribute to the repetition succeeding. In all kinds of artistic endeavour the blank form, including silence, is known to be able to enhance a work. And yet a band that has created some astonishingly subtle songs releases a horridly naive single, lacking any delicate or sophisticated touches.

It is possible that Love is Noise is the weak link of all the new songs penned by The Verve, but with it being released as the first single in ten years it seems unlikely that they would willingly choose anything but their strongest song with which to grab everyone's attention. Perhaps it was too much to hope for The Verve to be great again. Richard Ashcroft has enjoyed a huge solo career, larger than anything The Verve achieved, and the attention is unsurprisingly more on him than on the band as a whole. When the band are credited by DJs as 'Richard Ashcroft and The Verve' it becomes clear that we are no longer in the presence of The Verve as they were, but Richard Ashcroft's band.

As much as I was looking forward to hearing McCabe's wonderful guitars I will not be rushing out to buy the new album, although I will listen for further singles to see if the quality of music improves. At the least, I can hope that Ashcroft's MoR career gets a boost from having better musicians behind him, for the unfortunate times when I hear him on the radio. In the meantime I notice that both Stereolab and Dandy Warhols have new albums out now, two bands that have yet to disappoint, offering me a much better opportunity to experience new music from established bands than The Verve currently promises.

Posted in Audio | Comments Off on The Verve reformed
Tags: the verve

Cloaked and daggered

Mission running for the Caldari Navy has my standing increasing steadily, and with it I am able to move up in quality of agents. From the negative quality level two agents I have proved myself capable or working for a level two agent of quality 16. This gives me the same kind of missions but considerably more money for my efforts, as the higher quality agents are able to pay more for trusted allies. Running through quite a few more missions successfully I poke around the agent database again.

It's quite easy to find agents in EVE Online. All you need initially is access to any one agent, perhaps one you're working for or any agent in a station, even if unavailable to you, and open the information window for the agent. By selecting the large faction icon for the agent in that window you are presented with information for the faction, within which is a tab for 'agents'. From this tab it is possible to view all agents of that faction, divided in to their respective departments within the faction, and showing those who are available to offer you missions and those who aren't. Once a likely candidate for interesting work is found the information tab for that agent will show their location, and off you go.

By looking through the agent list again I find an agent offering level three missions is now available to me. Even though he has a lowly -18 quality rating the jump from level two missions to level three would surely offer much greater rewards over even those given by my high quality level two agent. Of course, with more reward comes more danger, and the jump in level of missions suggests more than just a few more ships trying to kill me. Never the less, I am curious to see what sort of life-threatening, adrenaline-pumping situations I will be thrown in to, so I head over to the new agent to introduce myself.

The new agent sneers at me, but most of them seem to do that so maybe it's a military thing. He sends me out to disperse some rats who are acceleration gate-camping in deadspace. With level two missions mostly pitting me against frigates with only the occasional cruiser I assume that level three missions will throw larger hulls against me more often. I strip a couple of the assault launchers out of my Caracal and instead fit heavy launchers, hoping that I will at least have a chance of surviving. With the 750,000 ISK mission reward on offer I am willing to risk having to replace my cruiser, and I have money in the vault to do that at least. I leave the station, warp to the stargate, jump to the next system across, and then warp to the deadspace region.

Naturally, it all goes horribly wrong. I was right in expecting more cruisers than frigates, but I didn't expect a full reversal. My ship warps in to find a dozen cruisers locking-on to me and a single frigate hanging around to give a sense of scale, making the other ships look suitably bigger and more menacing. I release my drones and start loosing missiles at some targets, but as heavy missiles start flying towards me like a deadly blizzard I realise I don't stand a chance. Trying not to lose any time I punch in a distant celestial object and warp out after only a few seconds. Even so, there are dozens of missiles on my tail, my shields are depleted, and the Caracal's armour is more broken than a third edition D&D splat book rule. I'm going to need a bigger boat.

Even with all this damage I will not face a hefty repair bill. The last time I was shot up quite badly was after performing some reconnaissance and I got some good advice to get armour and structure repair modules and activate them outside of a station. I took this advice and got my hull and armour back to full strength after a short while. I lost my drones, of course, but those are easily replaced, having even looted a few in some earlier missions.

I don't abandon the mission, instead fleeing the scene hoping that maybe I can earn enough money to buy a battleship before the mission expires, which isn't likely but you have to admire my optimism. It may not be a completely outrageous suggestion, particularly as I was asked to recon another system, by a higher quality agent than before. I was offered over 600,000 ISK to perform the new reconnaissance, and thanks to my previous experience I didn't have to spend any of that reward on repairing my ship. Although I now know how to repair my own ship the relevant experience was knowing I should hit the reheat and head to the the acceleration gate as fast as possible in the first deadspace zone, ignoring any and all rats that engage me, so only my rechargeable shields take any damage during the mission. If only I hadn't spent most of my money on the advanced learning skills I might have been half-way to buying a Raven by now. Ah well, my salvaging operations are raking in good money still.

Warping back to my previous agent, I let my armour repairing module run. I had taken it with me as vital necessary equipment to the station of the level three agent, so fitted it before making the return jumps to my level two agent. I activate the module on leaving the station but see that it gets deactivated after jumping in to a system. I try to reactivate it after a jump but ship's computer becomes a female HAL 9000 and tells me that it can't active the module, Penny. And here comes the revelation of the day.

I had initially wondered why my ship seemed insubstantial after a gate jump and simply assumed it to be a graphical bug to do with redrawing the ship when changing systems. After all, as soon as I started warping away from the gate my ship became visible again, which I assumed was a forced redraw invoked my substantial movement of the ship. But when I was told I couldn't activate the module the message was that my cloaking was interfering with the module's operation. Cloaking? What cloaking? I don't even have the many high-level skills to pilot a cloak-capable ship.

Cloaking! So that's why my ship is shimmering: it's not a glitch, it's a PvP defence mechanism! Just as using a hearthstone in World of Warcraft makes you for a limited time a target worth no honour when killed, jumping in to a system in EVE Online cloaks you for a short period. This defence mechanism protects against potential lag problems and gives players time to gain their bearings in the new system. Without the buffer offered by the cloak jumping in to a system would be far more dangerous. Lag could cause your reaction time to suffer considerably compared to any gate-campers already in the system, and even without lag a space cadet still needs time to find and target her destination and kick the warp drive in to action.

The massive beating I took on my first, and only for a while, level three mission was not in vain. I found out new information that both explains an observation held since becoming a space cadet and offers a better assurance of safety when jumping in to a system. I would say it was worth it.

Posted in Gaming | 4 Comments »
Tags: agents, caracal, cloaking, deadspace, eve online, penny ibramovic, pvp, raven, salvage, world of warcraft

Cmd-tab occasionally not working in EVE Online Mac

It is possible to Cmd-tab out of EVE Online's Mac client to the desktop, using the key combination's normal function to change application focus. I have found that occasionally the Cmd key seems not to be recognised when doing this and instead the client only collapses all open informational game windows, which is what a press of the tab key by itself should do. However, I have discovered what is happening.

At some point during a session I will have accidentally hit the caps lock key, probably in a mad keyboard mashing attempt to activate the right modules, which for some reason then prevents the Cmd-tab combination from working. If this happens, a subsequent press of the caps lock key (or two) is all that is required to restore the application-switching functionality to normal, allowing the EVE Online Mac client to be pushed to the background again.

Posted in Gaming, Technical | Comments Off on Cmd-tab occasionally not working in EVE Online Mac
Tags: eve online

Sapphire tries protection-based PvP

World of Warcraft has entered in to the Spirit of Competition, and commoners all over the world are talking about the battlegrounds of Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, and Alterac Valley. There may even be chatter about the Eye of the Storm and the gladiator arenas, but Sapphire, my warrior, is too inexperienced to venture to those places. With Spirit of Competition being intended for amateurs the current climate is meant to encourage everyone to participate, particularly those who are otherwise reluctant, with the offer of a special tabard for anyone who stays to the end of a battleground, and the possibility of other rewards for accomplishments.

Having previously spent many a session trying to push back the Horde in both Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin, as well as one hilariously aborted-through-disconnection attempt on Alterac Valley, back when I was a warlock with nothing better to do, I fancied the idea of revisiting the battlegrounds to see how much had changed. The competition gave me the push to visit the Arathi Basin battlemaster and enter a contest.

My memories of Arathi Basin are of the Alliance being vastly less organised than the Horde, even after cross-server matches tried to alleviate the advantages offered from population imbalances. The Alliance team would rush off in all directions with little plan, and be crushed by an advancing army with a clear, shared vision of victory. It's strangely reassuring to have the same experience again, in both battleground matches I enter, even though there is more semblance of structure in the Alliance's actions.

It is also good to see the little changes made since my previous battleground encounters. Everyone being automatically grouped in to a single raid was introduced when I was still playing PvP battlegrounds, and indeed I like to think that my very suggestion on the official forum helped that change come to light. It was terribly frustrating for an individual to have to invite everyone in to the raid group, particularly if people joined or left mid-way through a battle, and it was equally frustrating when you're not invited and getting no honourable kills. One addition that is new to me is the reduction to zero resources required to all abilities before the battle started, allowing for all classes to apply maximum buffs without being drained of mana, giving no excuse not to buff everyone and anyone, even if they join ten seconds before the battle starts. Of course, these are all gone after the initial, inevitable death on the Alliance side, but it's good to start with some advantage.

I wasn't expecting much from the battleground experience, partly because of my previous Alliance experiences, in general and in Arathi Basin, partly because I am rather rusty at PvP, and mostly because I am a fully specced protection warrior, equipped primarily to generate huge amounts of threat whilst mitigating damage from PvE mobs. I also find that in the battlgeround I miss my Piercing Howl ability, which is an AoE speed-reducing effect from the Fury talent tree and quite useful in PvP. I am quite surprised, therefore, to find that at the end of the battle I have the second-highest number of killing blows for the Alliance. Whilst it is comforting to know that I didn't directly cause the loss for the Alliance, it is just as disappointing to realise a protection warrior, who is seven levels below the maximum allowed in the battleground, made a significant contribution.

It is quite good fun to indulge in a little PvP again, even if the Alliance is still a relatively disorganised rabble. At least it means my suboptimal spec doesn't stick out like a sore thumb, and I can still contribute. And in my postbox I find a shiny new tabard waiting for me, to commemorate the the Spirit of Competition. If I try again, maybe I can even get a medal.

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Tags: arathi basin, battlegrounds, pvp, sapphire, world of warcraft