More shots from the front lines…

The siege of 9UY continued this weekend with the infrastructure hub coming out of it’s first reinforcement timer Friday Morning.  I couldn’t make the Op, but from what I heard CVA didn’t put up a fight.  I did manage to make the Call to Arms on Saturday for the Station’s first reinforced timer.  Same thing as before, CVA was a total no-show except for a 7-10 man stealth bomber fleet that managed to kill… nothing. (AFAIK)

The view coming into the U’K POS is pretty.  I had been living in 9UY for the last couple days, so it was nice to finally get a home base of sorts.

A dread getting in place a few days before the timers were up.  First Minmatar dread I’d seen.

The CAP/BS fleet forming up on the -A- POS.  I proved my inexperience by broadcasting for armor reps while I was a) cloaked and b) still inside the POS’ shield.

The station in 9UY goes boom.  10 minutes of shooting and not a single scrap of resistance from CVA…  Starting to wonder if they’re going to bother to show up for the final reinforced time on Monday night.  The more tactical decision (at least in my opinion) would be to put up your strongest resistance for the first timer…  We only had 400 or so in system, with only 200 of those in Caps, Super Caps, or Sniper BSes.  I anticipate double those numbers on Monday as it will be the final blow to turn the system over to -A- sovereignty.  We’ll see.  I’m hoping to make the fight, but it all depends on how things go with work, and whether or not this tree screws up our power:

Providence burns…

I arrived in 9UY and did like I normally do, warped to the sun to start to create some bookmarks. (I suppose I’m going to have to change my tactics now that I’ve announced that, huh?)  Thought this was a nice artsy-fartsy shot with the reinforcement timer in the background and the foreground looking like it was on fire…

I caught up with a bunch of Against All Authorities and Ushra’khan pilots on a gate. Our corp’s ex-ceo was among them.  Somehow I’d managed to forget to exclude people in my corp from my “reds” tab… He woulda just bombed me if I locked him, I’m sure.

After warping into an enemy fleet we took the last hostile as a pet.  He had the entire fleet’s disruptors on him and he even got some repair drones to keep anyone from accidentally popping him.  Note that I still haven’t managed to remove Maestro from my overview…

another shot of our pet…

More to come as the campaign continues.  The I-hub should exit reinforced  on Friday morning, and the station will follow on Saturday afternoon.  Should be a great weekend.

What is a game?

I’ve alluded a few times on Twitter to this project “which shall not be named” and it’s getting to the point now where I can’t keep it all in my head and I want your help.  Prepare to be underwhelmed:

Where I work is thinking about creating a game.

Mushy and vague enough for you? (note: typing out the entire name of the place attracts our public affairs office’s attention… look here maybe: http://americanhistory.si.edu )

We’ve accepted the fact that while we have great content, unparalleled collections and (historical) resources-we could use some help to design a game.  To that end it looks like we’ll be hosting a sort of brain-trust with folks who are qualified to design games.  (Don’t bother asking me for an invite or an invitee list as I can’t supply the former, and I don’t have a final version of the latter.)

That’s a bigger step than most of you probably realize.  I think  that frequently educational/non-profit organizations like the Smithsonian assume that because they’ve got the content/message they’re qualified to design the perfect delivery.  What ends up being created is a not-so-compelling web-based activity that’s targeted at middle schoolers, but is so poorly executed that it gets pushed on elementary kids.  (nothing’s quite as brutal as honesty, eh?)

There are exceptions to the rule, but you’d be hard-pressed to qualify most of these activities as a “game” at all.  Which brings me to my point and question:

What is a game?

Here’s a wikipedia link since that’s the place most people will probably turn to first: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game

I’m genuinely interested to hear any and all of your thoughts about this.  Some additional things you might consider:

Does a game require multiple players?
Does a game require the ability to interfere with other players?
Does a game need to be “fun”?
What’s the relationship between “play” and “game”?
To what extent can you accomplish (or task the player with) “work” within a game?

Who you gonna call?

When your website crashes?

Evewarrior’s  recent bout of computer problems has prompted me to take a hard look at what I’m doing for disaster prevention and recovery.  To solve all problems with my local machine I’ve started playing Eve on the Mac side of my laptop which is set up to dual-boot XP and Snow Leopard.  Easy ’nuff.  (ok, ok, I did also change my password…)

Casiella posted this link up on twitter:  10 ways to secure your wordpress install.  Which is a great start to hardening (TFU) your blog.  I decided to take it a step further and figure out a way to back up all the sites I’m running off my single wordpress database.  (there are more than 6 on one DB)  Enter the CRON JOB.

A cron job is essentially a scheduled task.  You tell the server what to do and when to do it and it takes care of it all by itself.   I stumbled across this page that details a great, easy way to set up your own cron job to back up the essential data in your wordpress database.

blog safe! o7

Cancelled…

… my WoW account again this morning.  Like I told my wife when I reactivated-I didn’t expect it to last all that long.  The “why are you quitting?” menu is always entertaining:

“Offline play not available”… can we talk about that one for a second?  Who in their right mind buys WoW and expects there to be an offline component?  a- you’d have to have been living under a rock for the last 5 years to play video games and no nothing of WoW, let alone MMOs in general.  b- my boxes clearly say “Internet connection required.  Additional online fees apply”
I ended up choosing the “Left for another game” option.  So long WoW, thanks for reminding me why I quit.  See you in 8-12 months.

That time I stopped to think.

You’ve probably read Alexia Morgan’s account of what happened this weekend.  If you haven’t go take a gander.

Done?  Good, let’s continue.

The roam was a good time. Alexia speaks clearly and communicates commands well. (certainly easier to understand than Xi, the drunk Scotsman.  <3 )  While we were getting started I was just about to speak up and ask for a system to pop into my nav computer when he gave us one.  All the things you’d expect from a good FC and I look forward to more roams under his command.

Like he said, we were about to head home when we got completely overwhelmed on a gate.  I saw the bubble go up and immediately started to panic, and then despair as I saw the number of reds on us.   I locked up the closest thing to me before I realized I was sitting at 0 on the gate and could just as easily jump through.  I met Alexia on the other side and we warped off independently to make safe spots.  I got settled in my first spot and saw local spike as our pursuers entered the system.

Because I didn’t have a cloak I decided that my best bet was to create 2 more safes and warp constantly between the three of them so I wouldn’t be probed down.  I left my first spot and warped to a planet across the system to land at 30 or 70 (I never warp to 0 or 100 w/ hostiles in system.) when I landed I spotted a red crow sitting at the planet about 20km away.  My initial reaction was “GTFO, Autumnn!” and then I saw that he wasn’t really doing anything and thought “maybe he’s AFK and I can get an easy kill.”

About the time that I finished thinking this, he was burning down on me and before I could get aligned and out I was pointed.  I laughed a bit knowing it would take him a while to burn me down solo and lit up my MWD and attempted to burn out of his point range hoping he was lazy, or bad.  I didn’t agress so that I could jump out of system if I could make it to a gate.  Then there was a new red, and another, and another.  Finally, I watched a bubble go up around me as a flycatcher landed and I sat back and enjoyed the free trip back to V2.

Storal of the Morey:  Don’t stop and think.

What do I do outside of Eve?

Your character name: Autumnn

Your real name: Dan Hoerr  (pronounced “Her”, it’s german-skip the first vowel)

The country you’re living in: US of A

How old are you: 24, coming up on 25 (January 9th)

What kind of work do you do:

I do web/graphic design and programming for the Smithsonian’s  National Museum of American History.  This includes the entire fleet of websites we support and also a few of the touch-screen kiosks that you see around the grounds of the building.

I’m well versed in HTML and CSS.  Understand PHP, Javascript, XML, Spry… a lot of things.  I’d consider myself a jack of all trades as the most important part of what I do is being able to communicate with specialists.

What other hobbies or interests do you have:

I graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art with a BFA in Interactive Media, so its safe to assume that I’m interested in art.

I love music, particularly metal & most things closely related.

My wife got me into diving, which I thoroughly enjoy.  Her father runs a dive charter out of Morehead City, NC: http://tortugacharters.net and I’m looking forward to next season when we’re not preoccupied with planning a wedding so we can get wet more often.  (Isn’t that what they call doing PCP?  ”getting wet” I’m remembering a scene from Training Day or something…)

I like learning about game theory and examining the “metagame”.

Do you have a personal blog or non-Eve website you want to share:

You can find some of my portfolio and some general thoughts at: http://autumnrayne.net I subscribe to the slow-blogging movement though and hardly ever update that front page.

My wife keeps a southern food blog here: http://biscuitsandsuch.com you can check it out and be jealous of what I get to eat.

Potential Kitsune Fits

I know that I said my next post would be something in-character and autobiographical about Autumn, but I’m still trying to flesh out some of the more troublesome bits and pieces and also double check on a lot of stuff to make sure it fits within the eve “canon.”  It’ll be out Soon™

I mucked about with my skill plan yet again, because it looks like we’re going to start some regularly scheduled Assault Frigate roams.  Not that big a deal since Mechanics V (my only remaining pre-req for AF) was in there anyway.  The operation’s Flight Commander (FC) mentioned in his post on our forums that he might be interested in some ewar support for the AFs so I volunteered to bring either an Electronic Attack Ship or an Assault Frigate.  As it turns out I got tapped to bring the ewar.

When I was flying in an NPC faction warfare corp, I wanted to be more useful and attractive to fleets so I trained up a basic Blackbird fit immediately after being able to fly a stealth bomber.  I spent the last couple days trying to figure out what exactly I’m going to fit my kitsune like to support my gang and have come up with several possibilities:

Option 1:  Multispec w/ AB

[Kitsune]

Compulsive Signal Distortion Amplifier I

Compulsive Signal Distortion Amplifier I

Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters

Compulsive Multispectral ECM I

Compulsive Multispectral ECM I

Compulsive Multispectral ECM I

Compulsive Multispectral ECM I

‘Malkuth’ Standard Missile Launcher I, Caldari Navy Bloodclaw Light Missile

‘Malkuth’ Standard Missile Launcher I, Caldari Navy Bloodclaw Light Missile

[empty high slot]

[empty rig slot]

[empty rig slot]

DPS: 18  Jamming strength (per module): 5.4062  Sensor Resolution: 598mm  EHP: 1,592

Option 2:  Multispec w/ Sensor Booster

[Kitsune]

Compulsive Signal Distortion Amplifier I

Compulsive Signal Distortion Amplifier I

F-90 Positional Sensor Subroutines, Scan Resolution

Compulsive Multispectral ECM I

Compulsive Multispectral ECM I

Compulsive Multispectral ECM I

Compulsive Multispectral ECM I

‘Malkuth’ Standard Missile Launcher I, Caldari Navy Bloodclaw Light Missile

‘Malkuth’ Standard Missile Launcher I, Caldari Navy Bloodclaw Light Missile

‘Malkuth’ Standard Missile Launcher I, Caldari Navy Bloodclaw Light Missile

[empty rig slot]

[empty rig slot]

DPS: 25 Jamming strength (per module): 5.4062 Sensor Resolution: 956.8mm EHP: 1,592

It’s worth noting that I haven’t decided which rigs to use; the ones that up jamming strength or optimal range…  On one hand I’d get a 40k optimal with 23k falloff (up from 31 + 23).  On the other my jamming strength per module would jump to about 6.  (a gain of roughly 2 points total)  I debated fitting a cloak and some remote armor reps in my highs, but was then reminded that we’d be making this roam in an area of space where station access wouldn’t be that hard to come by.  It was also suggested that I fit some weapons so that I could take care of any drones that might come my way.  I have time to train up for  the Tech II signal distortion amps and sensor boosters, but I’d like to get back to my original training queue and be back on my way towards flying Minmatar ships before that.

Thoughts?

Teach a man to fish… (blog banter 13)

Welcome to the thirteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

The first banter of this 2nd year of EVE Blog Banters comes to us fromZargyl from A Sebiestor Scholar, who asked the following: On the EVE Fanfest 2009 page are pictures of prizes for the Silent Auction that was held during the event. One of these photos was entitled “Design your own EVE mission”. My question now would be what kind of mission would you write if you got that prize? What would the mission be about? Would it be one using the new system of epic mission arks? What would be the story told by it? Feel free to expand upon his questions and put together your very own mission!

I have to admit something that I’m sure will resonate with most of you: I think the missions in eve are bloody boring.  Not to say that Eve doesn’t have an interesting story with dynamic factions, etc.  but like most MMOs I’ve played, the missions/quests are a means to an end:  ISK or the odd implant.  (In other games the quests are means to leveling.)  I don’t know that letting me write my own text for a mission is the solution to making them interesting.

One of the most interesting ways I’ve made ISK in Eve was during an ice mining op for Dirt Nap Squad.  We were all sitting in vent drinking and someone was asking trivia questions, you’d X up in fleet chat to buzz in and the first to answer correctly got a million ISK from the corp wallet.

Instead of writing a one-off mission, I’d like to see an addition to the contract system that lets people write their own missions all the time.  For example:

• Corporation A has declares war on Corporation B.
• The CEO of Corp A decides that every 5 war targets killed should be rewarded with 10 million ISK.
  Targets should be able to be set by pilot, corp, alliance, or standing. (see also: fixing the bounty system)
• He sets up a corp mission with associated text and becomes an “agent” in stations for corp members offering them this mission.
  The CEO, or issuing party would become available as an “agent” in stations for the audience of the mission: pilot, Corp, FFA, Alliance, etc.
• Corp member Z sees this mission available, accepts it and decides to get a group of corp-mates to go hunting for the enemy.
  One would hope that these would become good incentives for corp-members to step up and lead groups, etc without the “leadership” having to do it all.
• The fleet kills 6 war targets that night and each member who accepted the quest is rewarded with 10 million ISK when they return to the station.
  This is all done without the need for the CEO to be bothered by each pilot in that fleet asking for their 10 million ISK.

Clearly the game would need to be told how many times you’d be willing to pay this 10 million ISK reward so that it can subtract the amount from your (or the corp’s) wallet and hold it in escrow. It seems pretty popular to run a corp/alliance campaign for a pre-determined amount of time and then reward the people with the most kills, veldspar, exotic dancers, etc. for the time limit. This mission-writing functionality could be expanded on to provide a baked-in solution to running campaigns.

Imagine the application for things like races.  You could set it up to be offered from 12:00 ET to 12:05 ET and the first person to touch all the beacons (or maybe take an item from a can at each waypoint?) and return to the station is the only one who gets the reward.

For people who aren’t interested in doing corp/alliance missions you should have the option to create “free for all” missions of a similar type.  Players would need to meet the criteria put out by the writer and then receive some sort of reward.  It wouldn’t always have to be monetary—perhaps medals, ships, spirits, or other flavor items could be offered.  The reward would always need to be put up by the writer to prevent people from writing missions that reward trillions of ISK or Titans.  City of Heroes ran into these sorts of problems with their mission architect system.  I’ve been playing a lot of Little Big Planet lately and a lot of the user-created levels are made just to give people trophies or achievements.

I think a system like this would do a lot to increase the draw of missions, but to also deepen the sandbox experience that we love Eve for.

Other Blog Banters:

• The Captain’s Log – More Missions Please
• Nukes Thoughts – Untitled
• Roc’s Ramblings – The Cave of Time
• The Wandering Druid of Tranquility – It’s another episode of Design Star: EVE Style
• A merry life and a short one – Fatal Rabbit
• The Elitist – Guristas Invasion
• Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah – Mission: Tangled Webs
• Eve Trader – Missions with Player Adversaries
• A Missioneer in Eve -Missioneer, not mouseketeer
• Zen and the art of Internet Spaceship Maintenance – First Blood

Put Your Blog In It…

Alexia Morgan, keeper of the evebloggers portal recently published a list of 8 secrets for the “80/20″ blogger.  I started to reply, but when it turned into a four or five paragraph response I decided it might be better on my own blog.

The point I most strongly disagree with Alexia on is #4:

4. Become a Google Wunderkind. Delete your archives.
Review all your posts. Clear out the ones that either aren’t popular, or are not a good reflection of how you want your blog to be. If you have less content but more of it’s linked from other blogs, guess what? You become an overnight Google wunderkind. Google doesn’t want you knowing this, but it works.

Yes, google *probably* ranks blogs who have less content but more links to that content higher than others.  I use the word probably because everything you hear about search engine optimization when it comes to google is largely a guess.  They have not released much information about what exactly they do to rank pages, and they change that algorithm all the time.  More importantly, this flies in the face of what Aether is all about–a blog of my own travels.  Deleting my lesser read posts would put holes in my story.  I suspect this would be true of many Eve blogs.

Some other comments:

1. Keep in mind that a lot of your readers are accessing your blog via RSS.  If you haven’t already, sign up for a service like feedburner before you assume that your google analytics stats are 100% correct.  They might show you that you have 20% returning traffic (which is great, in my experience) but most people who read blogs consistently have started to take advantage of tools like google reader or another RSS program.

2.  If you want to increase your traffic, do the exact opposite of what Alexia suggest in point 7:

7. Quit feeding at the trough.
Spend more time on your blog and less time reading websites or RSS feeds, and any other feeds you might be accessing. It’s wasting your time! Quit feeding at the trough and do some creative writing of your own, instead of using other people’s content. That’s what people feast on, and that’s where the success is.

Read as many blogs as you can that are related to your own.  Comment on them.  Get to know their authors and respond to their work.  They will likely reply in kind.  As you build a community, both your audiences and the search engines will respond positively.   At this point everyone should be tipping their hat to the hard work of folks like Alexia, Crazy Kinux, and Ga’len who have made this easy for you.

3. Services like blogger and wordpress are great, but get your own domain.  When you have your own domain name, it’s believed that google will rank you higher than others.  This is thought to be because you’ve made a monetary investment in what you have to say. Lonetrek.ws is a service based on providing Eve players their own hosting and domains.  Check it out.  (disclosure:  I’m not hosted by Lonetrek, nor am I affiliated or taking compensation in any way for the link.  :) )  Wordpress offers a “domain mapping” option which keeps your blog on username.wordpress.com, but makes it look like it comes from whatever domain you buy.

4. There’s nothing wrong with not posting for a while.  Real life happens, and sometimes what we do in game just isn’t notable.  It is completely acceptable to not post for a while.  (unless you have deadlines for a publication, etc.)  Also, please do not post “I don’t have anything to post right now, but I promise something will be coming soon.”  It’s ok–we’re not your mom–you don’t need to explain or justify yourself.  I’d rather you take two weeks off and come back with a meaty post I enjoy reading than have to scroll through drivel like that in google reader.  Feel free to apologize at the top of a substantive post.  (thanks to Rettic for making me realize how much I hate this.)

5. Don’t be afraid to borrow good ideas.  If you have to question whether or not you should attribute something to the original author … you probably should.  There’s no harm in saying “so and so had this awesome post… here’s my take/version/etc”  This isn’t being “Web 1.0.”  in fact, I’d say it’s decidedly web 2.0–the read/write web–and it also builds community and friends.

6. Link.  Link, link, link, link, link.  If you ever have the option to fill in a “website link” on a form, or at a forum: put your blog in it.  When you comment on someone else’s blog: put your own blog link in it.

7. This should go without saying, but don’t be afraid to ask for help.  All of our vocations cover so many areas that I think you’d be hard pressed to find something related to your blog that someone couldn’t help you accomplish.

8. Write about what’s interesting to you.  I might have come across your blog by googling “ninja salvaging”, but if you suddenly realize that 80% of your traffic is coming because you mentioned that you got ninja salvaged last night… that doesn’t necessarily meant that you should take up the occupation and write about it ad nauseum.  If you love what you write about, it will show and readers will respond.