Pioneering Mining Operations

While training for mining barges and ultimately, exhumers, I tried out the mining destroyer, the Pioneer.  I was quite impressed.  It doesn’t mine quite as much as a barge, nor does it have a huge ore hold.  If you are in a fleet with an Orca with ore compression, the ore hold size isn’t really a big deal.  Does it fit in betwixt the mining frigate and a mining barge.  I feel like it does.  It’s a nice little ship.  It can hold 8 drones, so you can bring along your mining drones and still have a capable flight of scout drones for protection.  The biggest limitation I found was with CPU and capacitor charge.  Maybe it was my fit. 

While I don’t recall the exact fitting, I found it’s a bit squishy with passive shield mods.  If you’re in a fleet, it really isn’t a big deal as the barges/exhumers/command ships can cover you with their drones to take out the belt rats.  I don’t think I will bother with the T2 variant, the Outrider.  I quickly switched to training barges after I had enough skills to make them effective. 

I think it is worth a shot to train if you are new and want to focus on mining.  Going to barges requires a lot of tertiary skills to make it an efficient choice.  The Pioneer is a good steppingstone or if you just want to mine on the side.  That’s just my two cents.  This is just a quick shout out about the Pioneer and their faction counterparts, not a detailed use case.

Anyway, fly safe.

 

Ore Compression is King

I’ve had an Orca for a long time, but having not logged in for several years, I wasn’t aware of the ore compression system.  I’m in love.

Ore compression in space, in a fleet, is a godsend.  I was doing it the hard way.  I had an alt who flew a freighter and parked in the belt and picked up the cans the barges dropped, brough them back to the station, rinse and repeat.  Now, with ore compression, I turned that freighter pilot into another miner.  I started with the mining destroyer (Pioneer) but quickly trained to mining barge.  I am currently about a week away from exhumers.  Adding another barge to the fleet has made a huge difference in how long I spend in belts.  It’s also heavenly to work anomalies.

The Orca fits the Industrial Core module and the Ore Compression module.  Once in the belt or at an anomaly, you turn them on and anyone in the fleet within a certain range can compress their ore 100x.  So 100m3 of velspar becomes 1m3 of compressed veldspar.  The compression is lossless, so there is not a disadvantage to using it that I can see. 

It makes life a lot easier as far as logistics.  I’ve found that a belt in .5/.6 space takes up about 7.5k m3 compressed.  You can mine to your hearts content knowing that you really don’t have to return to a station for quite a while.  The Orca can hold about 185k m3 of ore IIRC.  If you run an Orca and don’t use compression, you are missing out.  If you are a solo miner, see if there is an Orca or Porpoise who is running a fleet by checking the fleet adverts.  Most miners, I believe, are happy to have someone join the fleet to take advantage of their services.  You might want to kick them a little ISK, but I never ask for it.

If you see me, Vexed Nova, flying in my Orca, hit me up or check to see if I am fleet adverting. 

As always, fly safe.

 

TIL about “The Agency”

Today I learned about The Agency tab on my Neocom.  What a beautiful thing.  Up until last night, I was searching systems for ombre and kernite anomalies by using the “opportunities” tab.  Well, for those of you who don’t know, that only shows out to one or two systems.  It does give details as to what the anomaly contains, but its range makes it a chore to search for them while in a fleet of an Orca, 2 Hulks and a Covetor.  The Orca lags well behind even mining barges in warp. 

The Agency tab contains a lot of information.  Not only can you search for anomalies, but you can also search for mission agents, ice belts, asteroid belts, etc.  While it wont necessarily tell you the composition of an ore anomaly, it will tell you where they are and you can select how many jumps out you want to look.  Be aware though, it also factors in faction-run mining missions.  Since I’m in Amarr space, it will bring up Imperial mining operations, which at level 1 or 2 wont allow my fleet to enter.  As of right now, drilling down on those shows that they are mostly veldspar anyway.

Just thought I put it out there.  An old dog can learn new tricks.

Fly safe.

 

What Have I Been Up To?

Well…It’s been a long time since I played EVE Online and even longer still, since I have posted to a blog.  Any blog.  Are these even still a thing?

YouTube had been around for a while, but things like Twitch have really taken off.  I don’t even recall Twitch back when I was updating this blog regularly.

My original intent was to chronicle my own progression through EVE through my corporation.  That corporation is no longer (although it still exists).  I have moved on and with things like “real life” taking priority, I kind of walked away from EVE.  It can be a full-time job if you let it.  The blog evolved a bit into other things, but I was hoping for it to become an insight into the industrialist side of EVE.  I don’t know if I ever really achieved that goal.  Probably not, and it didn’t run for long, but it was hella fun at the time and a bunch of people were actively involved in it in some way.  Whether it was fan-fiction or how to fit your ship to be efficient and safe.  Many of those fits and protocols are long since defunct and not relevant in the later EVE expansions.  However, the principles are still the same:  Fit to tank and fit for efficiency.

What I would like to do is continue where I left off.  Will anyone see this and find any value?  I don’t know.  I have all sorts of ideas, it’s just whether I will have the time to put pen-to-paper (figurately speaking) or not.

What’s new in EVE for me since my return.  Well, lots of new ships.  Mining Frigates and variants.  Compression modules for Orcas.  Hell, they even have mining destroyers.  Like, what?  With that, there are new blueprints that even I don’t have.  There are lots of new activities and new ways to keep track of them.  Lots of new, but still with the old bones of EVE.   That’s not a knock on CCP but there is a lot for old account to catch up on.

A long-time friend gave me the push to come back and check it out.  So far, I am happy stripping asteroid belts, but I long for an active corporation with lots of old and new people to fly with.  I don’t think I can devote the time to running a corporation, however.  RL money and time are tight.  I’m trying to pay for EVE through PLEX (Pilot License Extension) which is a way to turn in-game currency into subscription time.  I’ve been around for a long time (since 2009), so anything worth doing, for me, requires an Omega Clone.

I wasn’t planning on this post being as long.  Hopefully there is more to come.  Just be aware that the corporation is not recruiting and much of the information here is out of date. 

To those of you who got this far, thanks for your time.

Fallout Shelter: Game Review

Considering I haven't played EVE in a fornight, I might as well post something.  So here goes. 

If you're like me, you consider Fallout a masterpiece of gaming entertainment.  What's not to love about roving around a huge post-apocalyptic open-world?  The franchise is one of the greatest - at least in my opinion.  

Bathesda's announcement of Fallout 3's November 2015 release has put the fans in a frenzy.  The upgrades in technology have made the anticipation of their upcoming release somewhat fever-pitched.  Knowing this, it is no surprise that Bathesda wanted to capitalize on this and so they released a game (for IOS and now Android) named, "Fallout Shelter".  A management-type strategy game (with resource gathering/management) where you become the Overseer of your very own Vault.  You decide what is going to be constructed and who works in what room.  You can also be the little cherub that puts two people together in a room and waits for the "magic" to happen or you can even send a person out into the wasteland to gather outfits, weapons and caps (the currency of the Fallout franchise). 

Now, being somewhat of a fanboy, I drooled myself silly waiting for Fallout Shelter to come onto Android.  I kept checking for updates on the release and the instant it was released on Google Play I couldn't hit download fast enough.

The first few hours of playing, I lost control of my shelter and my inhabitants started to melt from radiation sickness.  To be literal, they didn't melt, but their rad level got very high and if a Radroach looked at them funny, they would die.  You can revive your dwellers, sure, at the cost of caps, but I found caps didn't really come fast enough to revive all my ill-fated dwellers.  Being me, I decided to start another vault.  I fared much better early on, but the God's were not on my side.  Raiders killed a good lot of people and I didn't have the caps to revive them all.  I refused to spend RL money, so I once again started over.  I did even worse and had to start over once again.  I had an issue with the save system as I could only save 3 vaults and there is no delete option.  There is also no cloud storage, so if you have to reinstall the game, you are out of luck.  

I might get crucified for this, but what I found, and pretty quickly I might add, is that the game is so shallow in scope.  Bathesda's Fallout Universe is so grand in breath, that I found it surprising that the game they made has very little to offer.  Getting the first 12-16 dwellers is pretty much a guarantee as the game is meant to give you the foundation to build a successful vault, but all too soon you realize that there isn't anything new to achieve.  Once you have lured (or birthed) a bunch of dwellers and arm and equip them, you've pretty much done all you can do. 

You get the occasional infestation or raider assault, but that's about it.  I found the game somewhat punishing and a bit tough.  If you are a fan of the franchise, give it a try.  If not, I wouldn't even bother.  

The graphics and artwork are very well done and the overall mechanics and controls aren't too bad.  To be honest, it is a great idea, but just not enough meat and potatoes to fill you up.

I mentioned the controls aren't too bad.  It does have one massively annoying foible: selecting and trying to drag a dweller is god-awful.   You tap and then hold to 'pick up' your dweller like you were some omnipotent demigod.  The problem is, that you have to be spot-on in order to pick up the dweller.  I admit, I have some sausage-like digits, but even at full zoom, you have to be a surgeon to grab them.  If there is nothing going on, it's bearable.  If you are under attack, it's infuriating.  

So how do I break it down?

Design: 4/5

As mentioned, the artwork is really great.  It captures the the theme of the Fallout Universe perfectly.  The room details are very good as well.  

Mechanics: 3/5

Overall, the mechanics are good (other than the damn dragging of dwellers).  The game can be punishingly difficult, but everything is smooth and polished.  I haven't had any glitches or crashes.  The SPECIAL abilities mechanic is pretty good, but the execution of it isn't very good.  You should be able to sort your dwellers in a list by SPECIAL.  

Storyline: 2/5

The game assumes you know the backstory of Fallout and doesn't really go into depth about it other than a few introductory slides.  There could be more.  There should be more.

Replayability: 1/5

Sadly, there just isn't enough to the game or enough to explore for there to be any replayability or even a reason to play very long.  Those with short attention spans or those looking for more immersion would be better off finding something else. 

Verdict: 2/5

Unfortunately, I find Fallout Shelter to be a dud.  The amount of downloads completely contradict my conclusion, but maybe I'm just not as big of a fanboy as I thought.