Elite Sequel May Not Be A Turd

Recently in wham-bam-thank-you-maam I mentioned the possibility of another Elite sequel from David Braben.

Well from the wonder that is the internet we now have a video.

Hmmm it looks interesting, though quite early days.

David chatting away also mentions some options for PVP which seem pretty elegant from treating it like a single player game, a closed PVP universe and an open FFA one.

Again, quite interesting.

Wham, Bam, Thank You Ma'am!

How time flies!  I have a heap of browser tabs lined up to comment on so don't expect well thought out responses or War and Peace length.

Right first up we have:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20165344

Yes that's right David Braben, yes THAT David Braben of Elite fame is looking to utilise the massive future fraud tool wonderful device that is Kickstarter to fund a sequel to Elite.  Well David we've had a sequel or two from you, they were buggy pieces of shit in the extreme, we now have Eve Online, give it up and design a space ship for CCP or something.

Your work with the Raspberry PI is appreciated though.

Next!

CCP have found some time to gather many but probably not all of the changes due on the 4th of December (2012 for those reading from the future).

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=73572

It's starting to look like they may be able to create a silk purse from a sows ear after all, however many ship balance changes at once are a worry.

Spin, spin, spin the OP ship wheel, hope you're a winner!

Next!

Forum posts are generally terrible with trolls trying to troll trolls who are trolling the trolls back with trolling glee, but one post caught my eye, something I'd been banging on about for a while.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=173443&find=unread

Dynamic Security Status of some description.  Yes good idea, do this.

Next!

http://www.vg247.com/2012/11/10/dust-514-and-eve-onlines-worlds-are-going-to-be-connected-slowly-says-ccp/

Well no shit as CCP does everything slowly, except when they don't and it's rubbish.

I'm looking at you AURUM, expensive monocle and Walking In Stations.

Everything about DUST514 is happening slowly, it won't be in full release until the PS5 is available at this rate.

GET IT DONE!

Oh and future people, you still don't have flying cars as the drivers are the problem, not the cars, and sorry we still haven't done anything useful to combat whatever it is you're pissed off at us about.

DUST514 Delayed

Originally expected to launch in late 2012, CCP Games' PlayStation 3 exclusive Eve Online first person shooter spin-off will be (unsurprisingly) extending its closed beta period through until 2013, according to a report on Eurogamer:


"Things are going well," CCP Games exec David Reid said. "We'll be in closed beta through the end of 2012, but it won't take much longer. With a bet this big you want to get things right."

Eurogamer's Dust 514 preview, written in August, found the game "unsteady" with "a lot of work" still needing to be done.

Reid said these criticisms merely showed the game was still in a "real beta" phase.

"You should expect to see some rough edges, some things not working so well," he said. "Other recent console betas have tended to be working launch demos. We're doing something unprecedented here, and we want to get everything right before we join those two worlds."

This will push DUST514 very close to the big gaming conventions of 2013 and the expected displaying of the new Xbox and Playstation consoles.

However this will also move the release away from the typical Christmas AAA titles like Halo 4 etc etc, which is probably a good thing.

The SS Blues

A while ago in Eve Online game time I manufactured ships amongst other things, namely T2 ships.  Now for one reason or another I stopped doing this, put drop sheets over everything in the hanger and left for null sec, only returning every second week or when I wanted to.

Recently, today in fact, so quite recently then, I decided to revisit my T2 production line to see if it would be profitable enough to start up again.  The figures looked good on the market but I had to check the costs were correct as those pesky folks at CCP are happy to muck about from time to time with the "ingredients".

After some searching I found a spreadsheet which seemed to suggest it was used for some sort of T2 production, opened it and was fairly baffled by what appeared.

Now in Eve Online we often have to use spreadsheets for a variety of tasks, sometimes created by ourselves and sometimes "obtained" from others and co-opted for our own nefarious means.

I was getting fairly frustrated with this one and started cursing the creator, which after checking who made it found out it was one of mine.

Right then...okay.

So the first task was to figure out if it was still correct, as I hadn't touched it since December 2011.  The amount of materials required was a little out, and the costs were well out as inflation has descended upon New Eden pretty harshly in the past twelve months. Essentially the document was sound, I figured out what did what and added some better descriptions so a post with a large similarity to this one doesn't have to be written in twenty four months time.

One of the issues I now have is the frailty of freighters.  Ten destroyers worth four fifths of fuck all can destroy one, taking more than one billion plus the cargo from your assets list with a howl that most certainly disturbs the people down the street in number forty seven.

The Orca is an option as it can be tanked and the trick with a 100MN Afterburner reduces the waiting time to warp, but the cargo hold is small in comparison.

What I'd like to see is a freighter that can tank, but is rather expensive, as a counter against a dozen ten day old alts destroying the hauling trade in Eve Online.

It would be adequate if this was before Christmas but any time this year is fine.