How to lose a Tengu in 20 minutes
by Askgar on Aug.31, 2011, under Eve Online
This is a pre-emptive blog post given that sometime soon (within the hour I would imagine) it will show up on the kill boards.
Yes, I lost my second Tengu.
This time I managed it without even getting it to the character that would fly it.
I was hoping that sitting and watching, moving to each gate directly and not going afk would save me from this happening but apparently I was wrong. Another expensive loss BUT it happens, I’m over it already and the only thing that annoyed me is that more of the loot wasn’t blown up.
I’ll link the kill mail when it shows but again, I’ve learnt and next time I will fly my main TO Jita, buy and fit the Tengu, the fly it BACK to the hole.
And please, noone tell me how I shouldn’t fly that value of cargo around in a ship like that, I know, I’ve explained up above and I don’t need anyone to tell me how stupid I am!
How to lose a Tengu in 2 hours
by Askgar on Aug.19, 2011, under Eve Online
I was hoping to keep this a secret for a but longer but after DotLan ratted me out with a ship loss in our wormhole I had to admit to my corp mate that yes, it was my ship and no, its wasn’t my Drake or Noctis (the other ships I usually fly in the hole).
So without further ado, I present to you… How (to lose/I lost) a Tengu in 2 hours.
- Purchase a Tengu and fit it well enough to solo C3 sites, despite living in a C2 wormhole.
- Fly it back to said wormhole.
- Fly to the POS to grab some ammo.
- Scan a site down to test out the Tengu
- Clear site while thinking, this requires a bit more attention than a Drake to make sure the Shield Booster is only on when needed.
- Bring in the Noctis to pick up loot.
- Warp to another site, hoping to repeat steps 5 and 6.
- Get to the last wave, an Advanced Sleeper Battleship with NOS.
- Fall asleep for an unknown (short) amount of time.
- Open eyes to see a pod on screen.
- Think “Hey, why am I in a pod”
- Think “Why would a player come in and shoot me but not kill my pod”
- Notice Sleeper BS.
- Sudden realization of what happened.
- Warp to a safe to log in embarrassment, and hoping no one notices.
- Realize there is a lot of valuable loot left in the site.
- Get Drake to finish clearing site.
- Get Noctis to salvage the site, slight tear in the eye when I rip apart the Tengu for anything I can salvage from it.
- Warp back to POS then log, thinking you got away with it because no one said anything.
So where do I go from here? I could simply buy another one, swallow the loss and move on. However I don’t think that option quite sums up the stupidity of what I’ve done. I am currently weighing up between buying another one, BUT repaying myself in the PLEX I’d have to sell to buy it, before I can buy anything else again (except ammo), OR, making myself do sites in a Drake until I can afford another Tengu without spending a PLEX.
However, I have learnt from this.
- If I’m tired, bring out the Drake, its buffer instead of active so can withstand a lot more punishment when someone isn’t there, or has fallen asleep.
- DotLan will ALWAYS see what happened, even if its without details.
- Just don’t play Eve when tired (thanks to @carljohnstone for that one)
I’m glad to say though when I noticed what happened I didn’t get angry, I was a little annoyed at myself for being so stupid, but I’m not going to let it get to me and affect my enjoyment of the game, in fact, its given me a new goal to work towards… repaying the loss to myself!
The Grand Adventure: Day 1
by Askgar on Jul.20, 2011, under Eve Online, Grand Adventure
The first day did not go well. I find an X702 wormhole, a C3 entrance, I jump in to find system J111634. Static mapper tells me its static is U210, low-sec, not a good start.
I use D-Scan and find a POS, another bad sign, but I scan all the sites anyway, just in case there’s another K162 going elsewhere. No luck, all I find is the other wormhole, and a grav site. I jump back out through where I came in and give up for the night, no adventure, nothing. Hopefully tomorrow will be more productive and I’ll actually find a chain of holes to jump through!
The Grand Adventure
by Askgar on Jul.20, 2011, under Eve Online, Grand Adventure
In the spirit of adventure, and us needing a new home, I’m about to jump into a wormhole head first, hopefully not leaving until I find a new home for us.
My plan is, I jump into a wormhole, the first one I find, then I keep jumping through non kspace wormholes, until I find an empty one (of the right class) OR I get bored and give up.
I’m going around in a Cheetah, no guns so I won’t be killing anyone (or even able to defend myself). I’ll be being as stealthy as I can and simply scanning down a wormhole, then jumping into another one.
I’m starting in my mission system, finding a wormhole then off I go. I’ll be charting progress as it happens, even if its just a list of holes I end up in.
Work vs Play
by Askgar on Jul.10, 2011, under LOTRO, Rants
I’m starting this post with a quote from me on the Van Hemlock forums.
I went through a period myself where I was playing a lot, I ended up at the top of the group, which was how I managed to only end up a couple of levels behind after missing a good month of playing. Now however when I think “what game do I want to play?” I think I SHOULD play LOTRO, rather than I want to, which instantly puts me off. Somehow despite it being the same game, leveling because I’ve got behind seems like work, while leveling because the game is fun is more enjoyable for no real reason.
After thinking about what I said there some more I came to a conclusion. When I don’t have any reason to play a game, and am just doing it because I want to, then I see the game as fun, i.e. play. However when I’ve got behind and need to catch up, or have another reason to play a game, then the game suddenly becomes more like a job, or a chore, i.e. work.
The major example is with LOTRO, which caused me to think about this, before I moved house I was level, if not slightly ahead of the group, I would log in just to potter around, gather some crafting stuff, do low level quests, etc. and I wouldn’t care about how much XP I got, just if it was fun.
However, after I moved house, lost a month of gaming time through no internet, and got behind, in both level and book, the game suddenly became a chore, it felt like I was only logging in to level up and suddenly, the same tasks I had before enjoyed, suddenly seemed like a needless grind, I was even avoiding group nights because I didn’t want to hold people up and feel like I was getting in the way.
I had a much longer, and more detailed version of this blog before wordpress on my phone crashed and I lost it, but I still felt this needed to be said so… here it is. I’ve now started playing properly with the group again and I’m only a couple of levels behind, and am level with others on the book content so all is good again.
The last stand…
by Askgar on May.02, 2011, under Eve Online
Tonight was my last night in Eve, at least for the next few weeks, and it has probably been the most eventful day in the wormhole since the threat to our POS a few weeks ago by the locals.
Mid afternoon I decided I’d take advantage of both my last day in Eve, and the bank holiday, and run a few sites before my sub lapses tomorrow. I logged in, hopped into my Probe, and proceeded to scan down all of the combat sites. 5 sites bookmarked and I thought that would keep me going until the evening so I swapped into my drake and started on a site.
First wave down, textbook site, then all of a sudden an Anathema jumps in next to me. I quickly warped home, monitored the system and noticed a Harby jump in after the Anathema and decided someone had come to clear sites and logged off to leave them to it, I’d rather not lose my ship and possibly my pod.
A couple of hours later I decide that they’d either be gone, or still clearing sites, so I logged in and checked. No signs of anyone so I warp back to the site I was in earlier and amazingly, its in the state I left it (minus the wrecks). I cleared out the sleepers, no problem, then came back with the Noctis for a textbook salvage… or so I thought!
Shortly after the Noctis jumped in the Anathema turned up again, surely they hadn’t been waiting around all the time JUST for me to turn up again. I did what any sensible pilot would do, scream, then warped back home. They didn’t get a point or anything on me and yet again, I’d escaped, and this time in an even less well prepared ship.
I hung around for a bit this time, nothing happened, but in the end I decided to log out for a bit, not wanting to risk it. Yet again, however, I returned, and this time I warped into the second site on the list, cleared with the Drake quickly then when I warped back to the POS I noticed that there was another Drake and a Harby hanging around somewhere.
After a few minutes monitoring them, checking out the site I’d cleared (it was not visible from where they were), I decided to risk it, I warped the Noctis in and cleared the site, being aligned to the POS at all times.
I wasn’t disturbed this time but I suddenly had a very itchy trigger finger, so I jumped into my Rifter and warped into the site I’d determined them to be in. A quick pilot investigation later and I left, no damage taken and still safe. I couldn’t find much information on the pilots other than some expensive faction ship losses, so kept watching them.
They cleared the site and left it empty for a few minutes, I warped in with my Rifter to check and it was indeed still empty. I thought I’d give it a quick ninja salvage but I couldn’t believe what happened next, a Noctis jumped in with the Drake (replacing the Harby). After discusion with a few corpies I put a point on my drake and jumped into the site, unfortunately I was 20k out and my point only reached 9k. I burnt towards the Noctis and pointed the Drake while doing this but made 2 crucial mistakes here.
- I forgot to bring my drones out immediately
- I fired my missiles at the Drake, NOT the Noctis (I’d like to claim this was a mis-target but actually I was stupid and fired the missiles at the Drake because the Noctis wasn’t in range of the point).
When I eventually got the missiles and drones on the Noctis it lost a LOT of shields fast, but was just about to warp out and so I missed my chance, I never got within point range but worse, I couple have probably destroyed it before it warped off if I’d just got my missiles on it from the start!
After this I kept point on the Drake and shot a bit but it would have taken ages to destroy, in which time I would probably be jumped by his friend, so I warped out and monitored for a bit more. I noticed a Daredevil appear with the Drake a little later and since then its been quiet, no more appearences and I can only presume they’ve moved on. A quick PI run later and I’m done for the night, and done for this month.
Hopefully next time I play even I’ll talk more about what I’ve been up to, but while I felt like blogging I thought I should get something down. I decided to leave out the really stupid parts from todays Eve playing, such as flying with an insufficient clone and…
Pink Day(Dye) in LA
by Askgar on Oct.17, 2010, under Guild Wars
Pink Day in LA is a fan run event that took place in Guild Wars on 16th October 2010 to support breast cancer (it looks like it has also run in previous years but I cannot find any concrete information on that). Unfortunately I couldn’t attend the actual event so you may be wondering why I’m writing about it here, that is because despite it being a fan run event, the Arenanet team created a special blend of pink dye, and a special pink dye vendor that will be available until the end of October.
I find this amazing personally, a dev creating not just a special single item, but a dye which they have stated in a recent GW2 blog article (http://www.arena.net/blog/live-and-let-dye-kristen-perry-on-the-gw2-dye-system) is rather complicated to create. It actually drew me into the game to purchase some, despite not REALLY being into pink, I’ll find a use for it at some point.
Anyway, just a quick post with me bringing the dye to peoples attention, and saying how amazing it is for both the people organising the event, but also ANet for giving them MUCH more publicity and creating a special dye for their event.
Eve Exploration Guide: Equipment and Skills
by Askgar on Oct.03, 2010, under Exploration Guide
After a long time of, well procrastination to be honest, here is part 2 of the exploration guide I have promised. In this post I will cover the skills you will need for scanning, and the equipment used.
Skills
There are 4 skills directly relating to scanning, these are:
- Astrometrics – Increases the number of probes you can launch at a time and enables the use of the probe launcher.
- Astrometric Acquisition – Decreases the amount of time required to scan per level by 10% (more on this later).
- Astrometric Pinpointing – Reduces scan deviation by 10% per level (again, more on this later)
- Astrometric Rangefinding – 10% increase to probe stength per level.
There are also other skills that aren’t required for scanning, but are useful for exploration, which I will detail there uses of in the next section, types of site.
- Hacking - Allows the use of the codebreaker module, for radar sites.
- Salvaging – Allows the use of the salvager module, for magnetometric sites (and occasional other sites in worm holes).
- Archaeology – Allows the use of an analyzer module, again for magnetometric sites.
To get started with exploration I recommend Astrometrics up to level 3 to allow for 6 probes at a time. For more advanced scanning Astrometrics up to level 4 is essential, to enable the training of all 3 of the more advanced scanning skills, then training all 3 of the other Astrometrics skills to level 3. If you plan on doing scanning at the top end then getting all of these skills to level 5 will speed up the scanning process, but I’ve currently felt no need to do so!
The other 3 skills, hacking, salvaging and archaeology should all be trained to level 3 at least, with salvaging to level 4 to speed things up, or even level 5 if you need to salvage Battleships.
Equipment
The most important items for scanning are a Probe Launcher (Probe Launcher I) and Probes (Core Scanner Probes), although getting the sisters equivalent will help speed up the process by increasing scanning speed and scan probe strength. If you plan on scanning down other players you will instead need an Expanded Probe Launcher, and Combat scanner probes, however this is an exploration guide and I have no experience of scanning down players and as such I will not be covering this.
There are other items that improve scanning, these are gravity capacitor rigs and also some implants that improve scanning ability, the virtue set and Prospector implants.
Finally there are ships with scanning bonuses, these are all frigate class and have both T1 and T2 versions.
- Heron (T1 Caldari)
- Imicus (T1 Gallente)
- Magnate (T1 Amarr)
- Prove (T1 Minmatar)
- Anathema (T2 Amarr)
- Buzzard (T2 Caldari)
- Cheetah (T2 Minmatar)
- Helios (T2 Gallente)
On top of the scanning elements, if you wish to make full use of the sites you find while scanning you will also need a Codebreaker (Radar sites), Analyser (Magnetometric sites) and Salvager (Magnetrometric sites plus salvaging ships in other sites, primarily WH sites).
Another module that some people like to use is a cloak, this is because once the probes are out you can do all of your scanning while cloaked and, as such, people cannot scan you down, this is important in both low/null sec and in wormholes, where people can, and will, try to kill you.
Anyway, thats it for the article on equipment and skills, if I’ve missed anything then PLEASE let me know in the comments and I’ll make changes. Hopefully the next part will be out sooner than this one took me to (get around to) writing.
Eve Exploration Guide: Introduction
by Askgar on Sep.21, 2010, under Exploration Guide
First, an introduction to the introduction. I have been intending to write a scanning tutorial for months now, writing down the method I have developed over my 6 months or so of using the scanning system. I seem to have ended up with a system that, presuming I use it correctly, will reliably scan down almost any site in high sec, or wormholes up to class 4, I have never tried scanning in low/null sec or a higher class wormhole but have no doubts it would work, although it’s possible that it would require higher scanning skills, something I will cover in the next article.
I don’t have a scanning ship in the traditional sense, I have simply fitted my hurricane up for scanning, its current use is a wormholecane, it consists of all the modules required to make use of the sites, bar mining, in a wormhole, again I will cover this later when I talk about the types of exploration sites. There are dedicated scanning ships, and modules, which I’m sure would make my scanning more efficient, but when i can bring one ship to cover all the bases then why bother swapping ships between each site, something very difficult in wormhole space.
I will be splitting this series into a few parts, these will be:
- Equipment Required – The modules and skills required to scan.
- Types of Site – What each site you can scan down is and what to do with them.
- Scanning Guide – A guide on my scanning technique.
- Hints and Tips – Pointers I’ve picked up during my scanning career.
- Wormholes – An extra section on tips for wormhole divers.
Finally, I can’t guarantee how long it will take me to finish this guide but I decided that if I wrote this introduction then it would motivate me to actually complete the series, and write the scanning guide I’d been intending to for months.
The value of Games
by Askgar on Sep.20, 2010, under Gaming
Partly inspired by a recent Vanhemlock podcast episode, and partly just a topic I’ve recently come across having purchased an iPhone.
In the podcast they talk about the difference between full price, and budget xbla/psn games, with there not being a mid price new games category, I would disagree with this, there are some games now releasing around the £20 – £30 mark, however I cannot think of any off the top of my head.
They covered on the show the main reason many people, myself included, don’t buy many games at full price, either getting them second hand or waiting for sales and budget rereleases, and it tends to be as we’ve grown up, we have more responsibilities and less spare cash and can’t afford to buy the latest and greatest every week at full price.
Another issue I personally have with full price games now is my iPhone, I can often buy £30 worth of iPhone vouchers for £22.50 and with a large number of good quality games under £3 which can give many hours of casual gameplay, Angry Birds is 59p and I’ve played it for at least 5 hours, much better value than the latest and greatest.
There is also the occasional high quality, more expensive game, I recently purchased Chaos Rings on sale for £5.99 and its given me over 20 hours of gameplay, with more to come. Other than MMOs, I can’t put that much time into games at home, I only have a couple of hours a night for gaming and that’s almost always an MMO for me, mainly because of the social aspect of it.
Finally we have subscriptions, I’m currently paying 2 and also playing some other MMOs without subscriptions, these suck up a LOT of time, and I know I don’t get the value of my subs. For people who exclusively play 1 game they are good value, approx £10 a month for as much playtime as you want. Considering very few full price games offer more than 20 hours of gameplay and cost substantially more, just playing the sub game for 3 or 4 hours a week is good value in comparison.
I think out of these, the best value are the iPhone games, a lot of 59p games have given me a crazy amount of playtime. Then we have free play unlockable content, eg. Guild Wars and DDO adventure packs, these are little better than single player games but I play them more for the social aspect. Next we have MMO subscriptions, with the social aspect I get more value out of it than just the playtime I have. Finally is the big budget non-MMO, I just don’t have the time to put into them and would rather play with other people in an MMO of some kind.
