Saturday shenanigans (now with 10% more tomfoolery)

This whole "no news is good news" (which I've always been vaguely confused by - is it implying that any sort of news is bad news or that having nothing to report is a good thing a la the curse, "May your life be eventful"/"May you live in interesting times" - I've always gone for the latter) might make for peaceful Hobbit living but fuck me running it makes for boring blogging. 

I haven't been console gaming that much lately, in part because I haven't been inspired to play anything.  Dawnguard was diverting for a bit, I never finished Witcher 2, and haven't had the extra dough to check out the arcade games.  Frankly, my XBOX is turning into something I just watch movies on which I could do with my computer any way and the XBOX Arcade games I would play end up on Steam or in the Humble bundle for next to nothing.  If it weren't for my crappy video card (GTX 460) which works just fine for most games but not for new releases I would probably cancel XBOX Live and sell my XBOX.

Been spending most nights boppin around EVE highsec, fine tuning my Ishtar, and generally staying out of trouble.  Lately I've been reading more EVE blogs and socializing with Aliastra corpmates and noticed something Mabrick (of Mabrick's Mumblings) brought up on his blog today about the "more risk more ISK" saying I've seen bandied about in chat along with decreases in profitability in highsec industrialism/manufacturing (causing a ding in his profit margins).  I've never mucked about with manufacturing so I'm not particularly concerned.  What I am interested in is the "more risk more ISK" mentality and the avarice behind it.  I've heard some players crow about their billions and pissing contest each other at how much they can make per diem and yip yip yip about nullsec and pvp.  I've also met a number of people who, like me, are pefectly content making a decent in-game living as carebears (miners, traders, missioners).  I was joking around with someone that I didn't understand what the Scrooge McDucks were doing with all their ISK.  There's a finite amount of things to buy in game and isk can be traded for PLEX which can be traded to game time so one could never have to pay for game time, okay I get that.  You can only fly one ship at a time and in theory one should "never fly more than you're willing to lose" and if you're not getting blasted every time you undock so as an individual you don't need more than a dozen ships spread across your regular business routes (though I'm gonna start leaving a Noctis in each of the primary systems I work in, but that's out of laziness).  What it comes down to is simple - I don't play EVE with the same mentality as a lot of other players (and vice versa).  For all practical purposes I am a hell of a lot nicer, friendlier, and more altruistic in EVE than I am in real life (I'm also staggeringly paranoid).  Somehow I've ended up with a decent selection of boats and gear and a bucket of ISK (since I never buy anything anymore and I just stockpile trade goods and sell when the market is good).  It's bizarre but I think my EVE experience is that of a mildly successful boring middle class capsuleer (who shoots the fuck out of NPCs with ball smashing drones of fury). 

In other news:
I've set up a facebook for hooliganyouth on the facebookery (if you're into the whole social media thing).

I want a brisket sandwich - stat.

Spicy shredded pork and stuffing is good.  Especially if you add sauteed onions and serranos to the stuffing.

Here's a picture of The Punisher at the beach.  Because I love you.

EVE Causality in Japanese

Because everything sounds cooler in Japanese.

Burn Jita: Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing or Something More?

Jita is one of the main trade hubs in High Security (HighSec) space in EVE Online and Goonswarm and their allies began launching large scale assaults there yesterday, in a a move titled "Burn Jita".  Today, this evening is when the full assault would begin and last through the weekend.  The reason behind this attack is (that I've been able to suss out) an attempt to shake up an economy that's grown stagnant and a High Sec populace who are under the impression they have some security in High Sec.  Also, because they can. This has made news across the gaming community from EuroGamer to Kotaku and of course the forums are all a flutter with trolling/counter-trolling/pseudo-Occupy rhetoric/"The Sky is Falling" and assorted game mumbo jumbo.  Hell, I'm suddenly up to my knees in EVE again. 

While I do not support or endorse any of Goonswarm's schemes or piracy I am fully impressed with their logistical abilities (not to mention coordinating such a massive operation).  I also support their anti-bot rhetoric.  However it is CCP and their "let the players do it" attitude that really impress me.  EVE is not an easy or forgiving game and as a sissy carebear I spent a lot of time paranoid and eventually never ventured into low or nullsec (especially as I grew further from the "never fly more than you're willing to lose" mentality).  New Eden is a scary place.  CCP keeps it a scary place, it allows Goonswarm to attack the heart of trade in New Eden, and allows schemes, double-dealing, fraud, and multitudes of virtual Madoffs and Toecutters a wide latitude of action.  And that's awesome.  I can't wait to see what happens after this.  Hell I might get back in the pool once and for all instead of being a sissy pisspants.

An aside:

I certainly think the entire "Burn Jita" assault could be more effective if they had just attacked and not said anything about it.  As it is, traders had fair warning and since space stations can't be destroyed their stuff is safe and some can trade remotely between stations.  Hell, in the time I played I never went to Jita.  I always heard it was a spammer shithole to make Nar Shaadar look good so I just never bothered.  My forecast is that while yes a lot of ships are being destroyed (even more so than usual in Jita) - a glance at EVE-Kill shows that most of the ships are garbage noobships and pods (though I'd rather lose my ship than get podded) or the slew of Goonswarm Tornadoes that ate it between 20:51 and 21:22 (apparently they use a Red Chinese human wave attack style aka Zerg Rush or 'Nids).  I'm curious in the long run how this is going to make a serious change to EVE and New Eden.  I can see how this might lead to a decentralization of trade (which isn't) a bad thing but it won't mean much in the long run.  Attacking Jita certainly won't collapse or destroy the economy of EVE (though I'm kind of curious how many people are going to rage quit or suspend their account until the mess blows over).

Holy frickin Moly!

While searching for how to tweak EVE for single large monitors I found this:

A selection of pictures I have taken while space truckin':

The last few EVE expeditions since the Yan Jung Smashstravaganza last week have been pretty quiet, primarily involving me doing cargo and supply runs and getting loot collected into central areas.  There's not a huge amount to do while space truckin in HighSec so I decided to take some photos of schtuff.  I'm actually enjoying the process and once I get back to exploring I hope to get some good shots of anomalies and the like.

Not sure where the hell this was taken.

Pretty.

My God, it's full of flare.

That speck out there?  Yeah, that's one of my boats floating in a whole lotta cold death potential.

I didn't stop and ask for directions in this neighbourhood.

"Tell 'em Large Marge sentcha!"

"Warp Gate Active."  No shit, Aura.

Are we there yet?  I have to go to the bathroom!

The Guns of Brixton lurking.

Large Marge don't cotton to sass talk.

Ghost Town coming back from a salvage run.

The Pork Chop Express heading into high orbit.

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.

EVE Online - Day 1 of 14: The return of Scoville Bessler

EVE Online - the MMO set in space - that isn't Star Wars or Star Trek.  I remember hearing about this game about the same time I was thinking of starting Warcraft but as we all know I ended up going with WoW until I got bored.  I'm also bored with all the games I currently own and I have until Tuesday to wait to get my grubby paws on L.A. Noire (narf, narf, narf).  So after some poking around on the world wide web I decided to give the free two-week trial of EVE Online a go.

After roughly forty-five minutes of installation (I watched an episode of SVU and ate take away in the interim) I was able to create my character.  I went for my standard Scoville Bessler female template only in EVE Online I spent nearly an hour tweaking her look.  I have to say that EVE has the best fucking character design template I have ever seen.  Seriously.  The level to which you can tweak your character's looks (including excellent scars, aging, and freckles!) is impressive but the ability to manipulate your character's expression is top-notch.  I managed to give Scoville my common expression of the Red Hook brush-off combined with smirk.  I hope I can a pic of her for you folks. 

Now the downside of such awesome character design is that you are only creating your portait.  Your in-game thingie you move around and interact with the 'verse with is the ship you helm.  At the point I am at, I don't have much in the way of ship customization, so basically I'm driving around space in the equivalent of Plymouth Horizon.  Wheeee!  Sigh.  However, I am also thinking of sticking with my crappy ship and just tricking it out with cool tech.  Por la Raza!

So, how's trucking around space?  I'm still in the tutorial but it's kind of cool.  It's a gorgeous game, which is good because I spent a lot of time autopiloting back and forth on training missions.  However that time in transit actually was pretty helpful because there is a galactic shit-ton of stuff to read, look at, and star maps to examine.  I hope I can actually do some exploring with out total risk of being turned into space dust.

One thing I have to say I really dig about EVE is the openness of the class system in that, there is no class system, no levelling per say, it's all how you play the game.  You build skills, talents in order to do what you want to do.  Additionally EVE seems to be pretty solo player friendly, which is always an upside to me.  I also dig the fact that the game world is player driven and created - to clarify a lot of corporations are player run and they dish out missions.  Neat.  I'm looking forward to playing some more tonight.

Add:

I've done a bit more searching around and reading of guides, watching official tutorials on teh youtube, and I'm starting to feel a little daunted by EVE.  I think I might be getting that "this is gonna be addicting" feeling.  IDK though, the monthly fee is $14.95.

Add 2:

Jesus - this Fleet Commander is awesome.  This is watching South Koreans play Starcraft.





Impressive space combat:

New MMO new lingo, what the fuck is "carebearing"?  I like "ratting" as a term for hunting NPC pirates.

Yeah, I think I'm just gonna stick to flying below the grid and not get involved with any intergalactic conflicts.  Hmmm...now should I be a bounty hunter ratter?