EVE-Mag.com

Logonski for the Win!

Published on 13. Sep, 2009 ... written by Moof.

Picture credit: Wotlankor

This is only my opinion and others may have a different one. We all have different views on the morals of what we do within EVE. Some people would never take from someone else’s NPC wreck (I know that’s crazy but I have meet such a person) and some would never honour a 1vs1 (I always do). I think or hope your getting the picture here.

So … “log on traps”. This is something that for me is a problem and something that I really despise. If your not familiar with this, the basics of it are as follows:

1. Fleet A warps to a gate/belt/planet
2. Fleet A logs off in space, leaving a ship or 2 as bait
3. Bait is engaged by Fleet B
4. Fleet B, who engaged bait, rub their hands as they think they have easy kills
5. Fleet A logs back in (and will be warped to the point they logged off)
6. Fleet A lands on gate
7. Fleet A kills the fleet who engaged the bait

Now, I’ve had this happen to me a number of times (this may turn in to a rant so I apologise now) and every time it does I shake my head.

The fleet who have the log-on-trap done to them have no time to react. All you just see is Local filling up and your scouts (yes, you should have scouts in other systems or covering gates) can’t report intel as there is none to report. One moment it’s your fleet and a couple of targets, the next you have 20 ships landing on you from out of no where and you are dead meat.

Some of you will be screaming “It’s a fair tactic!” at the above and be shaking your heads at what I am saying. To some it may be a fair tactic, however, for me it is about more than tactics, it’s about skill.

There is no skill at all in doing a log-on-trap! You are not testing yourself against another fleet to see who is better, who maintains discipline better, who has the better FC, etc.

Basically your admitting, that if it came to a straight up fight between your fleet and another, you would lose and you have to revert to the most underhanded of methods (imho) to win fights.

“Ohh but its no different to you and your pirate friends ganking someone”

Well it is: I have ganked people in my time. I have baited and then had a fleet jump in to kill people. The difference is that if the people I was doing this to had had eyes in the next system (scouts for the win) then they would’ve not died. Their mistake, their problem!

When people pull a log-on- trap on you, then you have no chance to react or respond. You’re dead and because of the lag that comes with the large amount of ships landing on the grid at the same time, it is very likely that you will be podded as well. Byebye High Grade Slaves.

I get in to fights because I want to test myself and my fleet against others. I like blowing stuff up, if it’s a fair (yes a pirate is saying this) straight up tear-up in space and I or my fleet lose, we will say good fight in Local and the same if we win. If someone baits me successfully and I don’t check other systems etc. then it’s my fault and I will give the people who did it a Well done! If you die, you die … that’s EVE. But when I or my corp members are killed by a log-on-trap I feel cheated.

Now some of you will respond and say EVE and Fair are never used in the same sentence. Yes, I would agree! There is no limit to how low some people can or will go to get kills or swindle (I love that word) people out of their ISK. EVE is a place where you can all make your own choices and do things in game that you would never consider doing in real life.

Can the people who pull log-on-traps turn round and honestly tell me that they love doing it and it makes PVP so great? Could they enjoy it and brag about what great PVP players they are?

I’d say no … they could not.

It is something that you can do and is not considered an exploit of the game mechanics, but does that mean it’s right for people to be able to do this? Before you comment on this article or give your opinion, just imagine: you and eight corp mates engage a ship. You’re all in Battleships or Tech2 ships with scouts all around. Next thing you know, there are 20 or 30 neuts landing on you. Then you’re in Kisogo, sitting in your pod, back in station. All ships destroyed with no warning. Now tell me if your happy about having a log on trap sprung on you.

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BaEB – Choosing a Topic

Published on 11. Sep, 2009 ... written by Smak.

This is the first part of the “Become an EVE Blogger!” series here at EVE-Mag.com. You’ve read the Intro on this series, so let’s get started.

In this article I’ll share my thoughts on choosing a blog topic, as well as looking at article topics.

When choosing the main topic for your blog and topics for your articles, you should really think about what exactly you are interested in, especially in the multi-facetted game of EVE. Think of what you enjoy most! Many aspiring bloggers are tempted to start a blog with a certain topic based on what others are already doing. Some write about stuff, that others think is cool. Be true to yourself and go for what you like most.

There are many blogs out there with different topics like Pirating, Mining, Trading, PvP’ing, Fan Fiction and so on, but most of the successful blogs are mixed-topic blogs. Some of  these blogs center around the author (the guy who runs the blog). In my opinion, a healthy combination of various topics makes the blog a really nice read.

Personally, I really enjoy reading about all the stories Pirates experience … fights, losses, victories … combined with a big load of humour and useful insights on tactics. Not only are these stories a great read … if you know how to read between the lines, you’ll probably find a lot of information on game mechanics and on fitting your ship for havoc. Learn from the Ebil Piwates!

To sum it up, here are some key things to pay close attention to when it comes to topics. Please feel free to add your thoughts and ideas in the comment section below this article:

1. Where’s your passion?
Passion is key, so make sure you really enjoy the things you’ll write about. No matter if it is PvP, Ratting, Mining, Mission, etc. … if you are passionate about something this will really shine through in your writing and keep you motivated and excited for it on the long run. People recognize, if the author is commited.

2. Embrace your readers!
A good blog stays alive through user interaction. Blogs use a very strong tool to keep in touch with your readers: the comments section. This is a typical feature available on all blogs. You should provide an e-mail address as well for those personal conversations and fan mails. Developing a successful blog is building a community around it. Think about CK’s Blog Pack and the Blog Banters again, mkay? Building a community means staying in touch with your readers. So if a reader drops you a comment, either on the blog section or personally via e-mail, take your time and respond in a timely manner. Devote some of your time to your audience!

3. Debate with your readers
New Eden is made up of all different kinds of people from different geographical regions, social stratums and cultures. When blogging it is most obvious, that a lot of pilots will find you and your musings on the interwebs, may it be through Mr. Google or through links from other blogs. Some readers may or may not agree with what your are writing about, and some readers may even strongly disagree and attack you verbally. Be aware of this and try not to take it personally. Every blogger has to cope with this.

Here on EVE-Mag.com I do allow for comments which strongly disagree, if they are not offensive and if they are to help and find the correct the post to the good . People are not always in consensus with your opinion and with what you write about. This is part of blogging, and the nature of bringing opinions together. To not let it end like a part out of bounds look at it like your blog was your living room: if someone acts out, he has got to leave. Basta!

4. Go in-depth of topics
Especially EVE is a game, that constantly changes and evolves. For example, think of the different patches and rebalancing, a.k.a the nerfs. Think of the political changes in Null Null space. There is so much to research and write about and the many blogs outthere are able to provide this information on the spot once the information is public. This is what keeps blogs interesting and makes readers come back for moar.

The Take-Away:
If you want to have a prominent and succesful blog, you must be authentic to your interests and passions in EVE-O. Get a feel for which topics are hot (or will be hot in the near future) and try to keep your content interesting. If you can manage to do this, you’re well on your way to become an EVE celebrity

What made YOU start a blog? Please share your thoughts in the comment section. Thanks!

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Become an EVE Blogger! – Introduction

Published on 09. Sep, 2009 ... written by Smak.

Picture credit: Wotlankor

Starting a new blog is always thrilling … because you never know, if you’ll be successful and if your readers will give you the appropriate feedback. Before going online with your EVE blog, there are a lot of things to consider. It isn’t done by simply installing Wordpress on your webserver or creating a blog on Podlogs.

• What is needed to start blogging?
• Which blog topic should I choose?
• How do I set up a blog?
• Where can I have my blog hosted?
• What should I do next, once my blog is up and running?
• etc.

These are questions often asked by beginners, and hopefully this series of articles in Become an EVE Blogger! (a.k.a BaEB) will help you to establish your blog after some time. Speaking of time: Maintaining a blog is very time consuming and requires a lot of commitment. Take CrazyKinux for example. He’s one of the most prominent bloggers outthere in the EVE community. He started his blog back in 2005 and he is still is enthuastic about it. In the last year his blog got a nice boost in readers and traffic, thanks to his monthly Blog Banters and community driven projects like The EVE Blog Pack. In another 12 months time, CK’s blog will continue to be one of the most established (if not the center) of player driven community sites, thanks to his commitment!

What does this mean for you, as an aspiring blogger?

To make it short: Look at your blog on a long-term basis … something you’d want to enjoy in 6 or 12 months time from now as well. Where do you want it to be in the future?

Think. Plan. Work on it everyday.

This upcoming series here on EVE-Mag.com will give you some useful insights and I hope, that you’ll enjoy this series and find some useful tips & tricks. Please feel free to contribute and share your experiences as an EVE blogger by commenting here on the site.

All the best,
Smak

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Ghost Outrider in the Sky: Part 1

Published on 08. Sep, 2009 ... written by Casiella Truza.

Picture credit: Wotlankor

This series is written in the in-character perspective of a young Brutor/Thukker pilot codenamed “Ghost Outrider”, documenting her adventures fighting under the banner of the Tribal Liberation Force.

I pulled my Rifter into a Six Kin station in Heimatar and disembarked quickly. Signaling to the local maintenance crew that she needed refueling, I made my way to the local capsuleer office complex. The directory listed all the corporations that had rented space, so I just glanced over it until I found the one I sought.

My former CEO had put in a good word for me with a new militia corporation for which she’d done a production contract. While my graduation record from Republic University and subsequent work for my Thukker tribe had proven my reputation well enough to get admitted directly to the Tribal Liberation Force as an independent pilot, I preferred to join up with a corp and join the fight that way. I could still fly solo from time to time, but this way I’d have much better support and camaraderie.

I put in my application with the friendly young receptionist and wandered over to a nearby cantina for a few drinks. People tended to leave me alone whereever I went, and this didn’t turn out any differently. While having a few glasses of my favorite Thukker ale, I took the time to review the current state of the militia wars. Principally, the heavy fighting occurs lately in the Hed constellation but the 24th Imperial Crusade penetrated from time to time deeper into Metropolis to contest systems there. Defensive work would suit me best at first while I got my wings set.

A ping on my datapad pulled me out of my reverie. The leadership at the militia corp had accepted my application, just as I’d hoped. As the war wouldn’t wait, neither would I. The regional map showed Gulmorogod in contest, so I set a course directly for that system. It took me right through Amamake, perhaps one of the most dangerous, pirate-infested systems in the Republic. I didn’t have any trouble there, though, and jumped over to Gulmorogod.

My overview showed that someone had already found two compounds in the system, but no 24IC pilots registered on local comms. A few pirates and other pilots did, though, so I’d need to take extra care. I scanned the minor compound from a distance but no threats appeared. I warped right to the gate and into the compound itself.

On my way, a fleet invite from a pirate showed up on my screen. If I accepted it, he could instruct my ship to warp to any location he wanted in the system, and my ship systems would happily comply with the directions from the fleet commander. Chuckling to myself, I politely declined.

The compound contained a few wrecks of regular Fleet vessels, sadly. Additional response forces buzzed around angrily, though no Amarrian pilots remained upon whom they could take out their vengeance. I received word from the local commander that the local complex had indeed withstood several minutes of intensive assault, so I’d need to descramble the electronic mayhem before I could get back to hiding the compound again.

My Rifter’s afterburners fired up and carried me into a tight orbit around the complex, within easy range of the anti-malware system installed by the militia. After a couple of minutes, I’d descrambled the work of the earlier Amarrian pilots and started to re-hide the compound. The whole process took about twelve minutes, during which time I kept an eye on my overview, local comms, my directional scanner (set to short range so I would know if anyone had reached the acceleration gate), and the strategic map to plot my next activities.

Once things had returned to nominal status, I got word from the TLF that they’d registered my activity and made a note on my dossier. Warping out, I got a query from the earlier pirate regarding the codename for my ship. Evidently he’d found another prey, possibly even a militia pilot, and wanted to make sure of the pilot’s identity. I didn’t really know why he’d chosen to avoid engaging me, probably due to our chat in Local earlier.

For a brief moment, I considered going back and helping the militia pilot that would probably engage quickly, but decided that I’d probably get there too late as I had already jumped into Amamake.

I joined up with my commanding officer after this and we ran a defensive patrol up through Metropolis, but none of the contested systems had any complexes that we could scan down. I docked up in Klogori and shut down systems for the night. Better get some shuteye before getting back into the fight the next day.

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Help! My Missions …

Published on 05. Sep, 2009 ... written by Dangerous Daswe.

This article isn’t about corporation management, but is simply on the subject of helping.

For the last few years I’ve been playing EVE and I’ve always thought that mission runners suffer in silence when it comes to asking people for help. If you’re in a corp you can ask for help from your corp mates (or a friend) which is sometimes good and can also lead you down the path of looking after the new guy helping you because he’s constantly ignoring the target requests. Now, if you’re independent and haven’t got the corporate help you tend to have one option remaining. That option is to ask in the dreaded local channel. We’ve all done it; all regretted it. It’s a mix between getting:

• Honest Folk of New Eden (rare)
• Pirates and Griefers
• Ninja Salvagers scanning you down
• People with a ‘Norman Bates’ complex

But in all honesty you rarely get anyone willing or able to help you, so you’re stuck where you were 10 minutes ago. Thanks to the guys at PODDED (Stealth Beer) Podcast and their plugging of a new podcast, I believe that there is another option for aspiring and even existing missioners to get some help when they need it from a nice friendly community that isn’t out to gank you, steal from you or insult you. As the guys (Dillon Arklight and War Childe) mentioned, the new podcast is called “Missions Collide” and since iTunes only took a minute downloading, I got their podcast that’s dedicated to mission, advice and the new Tech 2 Tea! Now, after listening to it on the journey to work and then again when I got home, I thought that it was a tremendously good podcast for their first attempt. BorisHotch and Song Li well done. But then I thought this was too good to be true, as how often do you get a good community/podcast in eve that’s not PVP oriented? So I joined the help channel “helpmymission”, as plugged in the podcast, and was pleasantly surprised.

So I just joined the aforementioned channel and said ‘Hello’, thinking I’m on my own in the channel, suddenly it updated with 81 members of the channel, almost instantly I was welcomed to the channel by it’s creator and EVE philanthropist, BorisHotch. He welcomed me to the channel and suddenly a lot of people were saying “Hi’s” and “Hello’s”, not something you get in many channels. Within a few minutes of chatting and seeing other people chat I felt as though I’d found a hidden community of missioners that is unseen in EVE these days; people asking for help, and others offering instantly to go to the systems and help these people. It was nice to see the multiplayer side of EVE isn’t lost on mission runners as a lot of people think of the profession as solo artists grinding for ISK. This community is doing it for fun. Even more surprising to me is these people are allied in no way: truly independent soles helping each other, really pushing the teamwork aspect of EVE-O. It’s a truly rare sight! Now, I was having a chat with Boris again, and found out the channel has more visitors and regular members than the EVE mission help channel, which says a lot to me, but yet I’d never heard of the services the corp and channel provide before today. According to Boris it’s been going for 18 months or so, amazing how a podcast can open such a community to the public eye.

Now as I said earlier the channel is called “helpmymission” and is now a must-have channel for any mission runner. Still, it doesn’t end there they have much more.

For a newcomer to this community I was amazed by how many services and channels of advice they have. They have: a dedicated IGB website you can access (all details in the channel “helpmymission”); a donated ship and module pool for aspiring mission runners to use free of charge; and resources to all the eve related help tools (i.e. EVE Survival Guide, EVE Fitting Tool, EVE-Mon and EVE Meep, only to name a few). For a newcomer and veteran player alike … it’s a great help. Hell, they even have a nice lottery service available to the community of the channel. In the time it’s been running it’s given 47,921,000,000 of prizes worth of ISK and more if you add the ships that were donated. Now what I found amazing about this is that the prize pot for every lottery is 100% player donated. Speaking of donated, I found out they have an extensive skill book library that’s completely free to people who need the skills! So, for newcomers these guys are going to be your best friends. There’s loads more things they do as well but best bet is checking for yourself on this as the site has so much stuff!

Even more amazingly the entire service/corp that does this headed by Boris is 100% non-profit as well. To date I’ve never seen someone so dedicated to helping others as BorisHotch and the people of “helpmymission”.

I could easily go for hours writing more about this community to which I’ve been welcomed, but I have a better idea for anyone who does missions, industry and trade (as it’s not missioners only):

Why don’t you add yourself to “helpmymission” and see for yourself.

You’ll never be alone on The Blockade thinking can I do this alone when you have met these guys and gals. Hope this helps people as that’s all I really want to do!!!

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