Vexor, Vexor, Vexor, Vexor, Ishtar! Ishtar!

Finally I am one day away from getting into the Ishtar!  From what I read on EVE-fail and Memoirs of a Carebear I should be in for a good time.  Happy fat kid hand clap glee.  I'll post pics when I finally take it for a spin.

EVE is sometimes very exciting to play.

The Continuing Adventures of Scoville Bessler: Sco gets conned by Browncoats

I know I was planning not to do another EVE post but the experience I had last night, I just have to write about.

I got conned.  Yup.  I had the feeling it was a set-up but hey, win some lose some.  Now the funny part is not when the pirate lured me off the beaten path (he was posing as a fellow n00b who wanted to practice PVP plus he offered me candy and a puppy and puppy made of candy) and proceeded to SVU me, what amuses me to no end is what happened after he stopped shooting at me and tried to hold me for ransom.

The pirate demanded that I pay him 5mil ISK (the in-game currency) and he'd let me be on my way.  Yeah, right.  Besides the boat I was in with all the equipment wasn't worth 5mil.  So I offered to pay half and the rest when I was safely out of harm's way.  He refused, I don't blame him because I wasn't gonna pay him the other half.  So we are at an impasse the pirate and I.  Then I remembered something I saw during the EVE Tournament, you can set your ship to self-destruct.

"Then he got an idea. An awful idea. The Grinch got a wonderful, *awful* idea!"

What would happen if I set my ship to self-destruct and abandoned ship?  So that's what I did.  I Kobayashi Maru'd the motherfucker.  Sure he could salvage the wreck but I had The Pork Chop Express  insured for the full amount so no real harm done.  I was laughing so hard I couldn't breathe.  What a cluster-fuck of a mugging.  My hat was off to the guy though, I haven't fell for something like since I was underage and trying to get alcohol.  I sent him a million ISK any way just for amusing me so much.  At least I didn't get nabbed by these guys:






AND, to things even better, the schmuck (I was duped so I was a schnook) was part of  the Browncoat Mercenary Corp, led by one Saffron Reanolds!  I'm lucky I didn't end up naked on a rock in the middle of nowhere.  I just wish I had been in "The Hero of Canton".  I suddenly felt a slew of people sing, "The man they called Jane."

I love this game, in case you couldn't tell, because of shit like this and other stuff too.  Plus they never make you pay for new content.

EVE Online: the trial ends. Thoughts and an interesting sci-fi concept.

Scoville Bessler ends her fourteen day jaunt in New Eden on a high note, or least a fairly decent middle range note.  I've learned the basics, picked up a few tricks, made some contacts, blew up and salvaged a shit ton of pirates, droids, and Caldari and a couple of Amarr ships here and there.  As a member of the Gallente Federation, currently at war with the aforementioned realms, I haven't met any Caldari or Amarr yet but I don't like what they stand for - the Amarr in particular are a bunch of religious fanatics with a society based upon slavery (though there are also some Machine worshippers that make me happy in my 40K place).  Caldari might as well be called Randians. 

I've got a nice little system of mission grinding/salvage/and sales going on.  I've starting saving salvage for a buyer who constructs her own ships and sells them.  Yeah so I'm a sanitation engineer & junk peddler.  What?  My primary focus with Sco is getting her skills really up to skill before venturing too far astray.  That way I don't have to waste too much money on new ships and gear. 

Once I get my paycheck I might sign up for a month but I'll have to juggle finances first.

The interesting concept I began thinking about a day or two ago was a discussion I had in-game about my avatar Scoville.  Someone asked me if she was a man or a woman.  I replied that Scoville is a woman but that I was thinking of starting a male alt.  The person joked that they weren't sure, in a very polite way, because Sco had both masculine and feminine qualities in her portrait.  Then that conversation was over and we all started goofing off again.  Yesterday, while I was out making deliveries, I was glancing at the conversation box and some people were joking about how few actual women played the game and a lot of women chimed in that they did but then some guy pointed out that a lot of men have female avatars (the guy who was joking with me about Sco) so I jumped in and quipped, "Yeah and sometimes you just can't tell."  Then it kind of hit me that a society - so deeply based around clones and cloning would or could have radically different notions of gender, gender roles, sexuality, etc, etc.  Granted these are still human societies and some rely on cloning and cybernetics more or less than others additionally humans can still be born naturally.  It's not clear what direction I'm going with this, might be aimless rumination.  In anycase I involved myself in the conversation about clones (in particular Sco) potentially not really being concerned about gender, I wanted to make an "Orlando" reference but people probably already think I'm a weirdo.  Especially in the case when a clone in the case of capsuleers (pilots in EVE) have a clone waiting in case of pod death - you're grafting a personality into a body (read the article, it explains the concept much clearer than I can).  So in any case now Sco identifies as herself first, clone-status and gender-status are other people's concerns not hers.  How very Intaki of her.

And that's the end of EVE crazy talk for the time being.  Classes start up soon.  The weather is getting hot.  Hope you are all well.

A combo personal and brief update on adventures in EVE...

If I have been - or if I continue to - maintaining radio silence for the next few days or weeks I'm okay, I'm addicted to EVE.  I know that LA Noire came out yesterday and I've been waiting five years for it to come out and I'm still a Rockstar whore but it comes down to a financial decision.  Plus I know that LA Noire will plummet in price soon enough, even if it's not a GOTY edition (I'm still waiting for the Fallout Vegas edition with all the DLC).  Summer will be pretty slim with disposable income, as it will be for a lot of folks, and air conditioning is vital in Texas but you pay through the nose for it.  Bastards.

In personal news I received my grades for the semester: 2 A's, 1 B, 1 D.  I think D stands for "Didn't care." or "Didn't put any effort." into English class.  Apparently analyzing poems and literature isn't my forte (nor do I give a fuck), though I did okay with drama.  Throughout my entire life, if I don't care then I won't be bothered.  History and Ethnobiology were the A's.  Boo-yah.  Besides I'm not going to grad school to analyze fucking Joyce.  Not that there's anything wrong with that...

School news, whatever, whatever, EVE Online.  I wish I had started playing this instead of WoW.  I'm plugging along in the free demo, got through the roster of tutorials (there were about six or seven), have a good basic set of skills - still have yet to decide which direction I want to take - still leaning towards explorer/recovery/salvage/looter/courier/pirate hunter that I usually play.  Yes I know it sounds like "Firefly" but I was playing this class before I saw it thank you.  Pure Han "shot first" Solo scoundrel...this time I think I'm going for Lando as the ultimate goal.  I've had a massive amount of fun so far playing EVE but I've also developed an appreciation for the pure monotony of space travel, especially in high security zones where you don't have to worry about pirates or PvP waiting for suckers to warp out of gates (I haven't encountered this yet thank god but I've been sticking to high security zones).  I've managed to get a freighter that is pretty quick and cuts travel time by a third but still...whew.  Fortunately even during warp travel there's a huge amount of stuff to do.  Granted most of this stuff to do is logistical, doing business, mapping routes, planning what cool stuff to buy, etc., etc.  so it's not like you're sitting there staring slacked jawed at a loading screen. 

Now paperwork and shuttling gear back and forth isn't riveting stuff so where's the fun?

• Are you the kind of person who will merrily spend hours building a ship a  la Chromehounds?  Do you like tweaking power levels, weight/speed ratios, weapon ranges, and more and more?  Does the concept of creating the ultimate fitting for your bad ass ship, with off-market mods under the hood make you tingly in your bathing suit area?  Oh yeah.  I might not be a gear head, grease monkey in RL but in game?  Fuck yeah.  I usually spend about a hour at the beginning of each play session: checking my settings, doing a systems check, and seeing what new equipment might fit onto my ship of choosing.
• A very, very important and humorous saying in chat that I've seen repeated - usually in response to a player lamenting the loss of their ship - "Never fly more than you're willing to lose" (or willing to insure).  In EVE you will have your ship(s) destroyed (whether or not you get "podded" aka having your escape pod blown up is another issue).  Most players keep a stable of craft for a variety of uses and often (if possible) more than one of the same craft.  My current total of ships lost are - two rookie n00b ships, the freighter Miss Ska Tonic, and the freighter The Yellow Rose of Texas.  So far I haven't been podded but I bought a back-up clone just in case.  I also took out platinum full coverage insurance for my current boat named The Pork Chop Express which is a destroyer kitted out for survey, salvage, and mining.  I'm working on tricking out a freighter for speed but will probably save my pennies for a rainy day.
• The reason I have kept my losses low is because I haven't ventured into lowsec aka Low Security regions yet and chances are I won't for quite some time.  Additionally since my previous losses I have become a lot more cautious warping into unknown space (I taught myself a trick to quick warp in and out of an area - hopefully I won't get caught with my pants down by rats with warp drive scramblers). 
• Deep space scanning EVE does it right.  As many of you folks may know - I game for exploration and by proxy loot.  One of the primary ways to do this is to find anomalies, hidden jump gates, gas clouds, deadspace, derelict space stations, space hulks and the like.  You find those through a process of sending probes into space (right now I have basic probes) and through a combination of luck, skill, tri/quadrangulation, and profanity.  Of course as you gain skills and better gear the process gets easier.  There a certain amount of patience and delicacy involved as well as I had to trick myself in thinking (spatially) in three dimensions on the computer.
• I also am learning how to target multiple bogeys at the same time.  There's got to be an easier way because right now it's like trying to roller skate in a buffalo herd.  I might have to map a controller for combat.
• Amusing - tracking down a UFO in space.  For some reason the idea just hit my absurdity button.

Hope you all are well.  More news to follow soon.  I promise I'll do some movie reviews ASAP.  Promise.

Scoville Bessler