The Odds of South Koreans Becoming Targets For Aussies Improves!

CCP are making Eve Online more accessible to the citizens of South Korea with the impending release of Korean localisation.

"We’re also super happy to let the EVE community know that preparations for the launch of EVE Online in Korean will soon be complete!"

The interesting thing about this announcement is the proximity to our AUTZ time zone.  Ignoring day light saving time, South Korea is in the +9 time zone, eastern Australia is +10, so very close time zones.

Additionally, South Korea has a population of more than 51 million people, who are typically very tech savvy.

Not sure if the tech savvy part is a pro or con for entering the Eve Online world, but let's assume it's a pro.

If we're lucky the AUTZ may soon become busier.

I look forward to the new strategy, "Zerg Rush", becoming more prevalent in the AUTZ.

Your Kill Right was Used!

One of my favourite phrases in Eve Online.

However, first, the back story.

It was a comfortable Wednesday, the wind was still from the south east, the humidity was low, the grass is green from sporadic rain, and my neighbours were not trying to teach me the finer arts of Cold Chisel.

In Eve Online I often use a Leopard to zoom around in.  If you're not familiar with the Leopard it's a relatively expensive shuttle that warps quite quickly, but has very low hit points and is easy to destroy.  As I always use manual flying with the Leopard they couldn't target it at a gate, but it, like most low hit point ships, has a weakness.

Smart Bombs.

I knew eventually I'd lose the Leopard, as they're a high priority target for dirt bags with few resources except time.

I'd visited Jita that day to check on some items, and upon leaving it happened.

When I'm warping, jumping, warping, jumping, etc, I go into a bit of a trance and it took me a few moments to realise I'd not left the system when I should have.  Local was still spewing posts from pilots doing fire sales, promising to give ISK if you follow their bio, or not give ISK if you follow their bio, and the usual manifesto that certain individuals seem to share in trade hubs.

Why do I have a red timer?

I was zoomed out a bit, and shuttles are small, then realised I wasn't in a shuttle anymore.

I was in my pod.

I'd been smart bombed by someone near my out gate, he'd direction scanned me and activated the smart bomb at the correct time, destroying my ship.

Very soon afterwards CONCORD took a close and personal interest in him.

Well then...

Warped off somewhere, and then back to Jita 4-4 and docked up again.  The same place I was only a few minutes before.

Checked the notifications in my bottom right hand corner, found the kill mail, discovered I had a bounty, and looked at the other pertinent information.

First thing I needed was a new ship, but as I knew the Leopard was always a target, I chose something else, fitted it appropriately, and left the station.

On my way out of the system, this time using a dog legged route to avoid the smart bomber just in case he was going to try for a "two for one" deal, I realised I'd have kill rights against that guy.

Left the system, activated the kill right and made it accessible for everyone, and set the ISK amount at one hundred and fifty million ISK.  That would be approximately my break even amount for that loss.  The ISK wasn't the real issue, but as I'm old, it's the principle of the thing.

My safe assumption was the attacking pilot was an Alpha, who now wouldn't login for at least thirty days, or even just be bio massed and that account slot recycled, as the training requirements for such a basic attack are low.

Then I effectively forgot about it.

However the following morning, as I'm doing my daily mission, I see a pop up in notifications, "Your kill right was used".

Really?  Can it be?

Yup!

He must have undocked again much later on, in the same type of ship, with the same fittings, and a pilot called Arch Opir in a rail gun fit Ferox, spent one hundred and fifty million ISK to activate the kill right and blew him to hell!

Sometimes I love Eve Online.

Fleet-Up Shutting Down!

Some will see the announced shut down of Fleet-up to be merely a road bump in the life cycle of Eve Online, for others, it will be yet another sign of the impending apocalypse.

Personally, I found it to be an invaluable out of game tool that I, and my previous alliance, contributed to financially as a way of supporting those types of developers.

It is disappointing to see it disappear, but nothing lasts forever, and hopefully another developer with a keen interest in Eve Online and way too much spare time on their hands, will step in with a new third party tool that duplicates many, if not all, of the functions we enjoyed with Fleet-up.

Fleet-up, and the developer "wacktopia", you will be missed.

News post here.

Reddit reaction here.

Skill Points Avalanche!

With the normal trickle of skill points, and the current "event" of Skilling Spree and finally the Bonus Skill Point Week (BSPW) we are enjoying an uncommon about of usable skill points in Eve Online.

I've not read much negativity about the deluge of skill points this time, but that could be caused by a resigned point of view as it has become a "tilting at windmills" situation these days.

The Skilling Spree adds no enjoyment to Eve Online and just seems to be a way of pumping up login numbers, in return for a minimal amount of skill points.

Surprisingly, CCP have begun the BSPW at the same time, which, at least to me, seems a lost opportunity.  If CCP had introduced the BSPW after the Skilling Spree had ended, it would have extended the artificially boosted login numbers for at least another week.

Hard to see what they're doing with running these "events" concurrently.

It seems to me, at best, an unintentional clash between at least two working groups at CCP.

Works out well for the players, but it's a bit of a head scratcher.

Medium Sized Things Become Faster!

For some reason, probably balance issues, or maybe just pandering to the unwashed masses, CCP have increased the warp speed on a number of mid ranged ships.

While they're at it some other updates and fixes were also released, one of the fixes seems to correct an issue suffered by the hundreds of Apple (almost said Macintosh) users who "play" Eve Online.

Then again I use Linux, who am I to talk?

Details below...


PATCH NOTES FOR OCTOBER 2019 RELEASE - 2019-10-15.1RELEASED ON TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15TH 2019
Features & Changes:
Balancing:


Every Cruiser, Battlecruiser and Battleship now warps faster than before. Ship Warp Speed attributes have been increased for the following Ship Groups:
Cruiser increased to 4 (was 3)
T2 Cruiser increased to 4.5 (was 3.3)
Battlecruiser increased to 3.5 (was 2.7)
T2 Battlecruiser increased to 4 (was 3)
Battleship increased to 3 (was 2)
T2 Battleship increased to 3.5 (was 2.2)


Travelling via autopilot will also be faster now with the warp in distance changed from 15km to 10km.
Defect Fixes:
Graphics:
Fixed defect where certain machines with macOS were unable to render space scenes when post-processing or anti aliasing was enabled.
User Interface:
Fixed defect for popup that briefly displays Triglavian Stellar Accelerator information, when entering a system where the structure is deployed.
Fixed defect where Planetary Interaction was not available via bookmark context menu.
Fixed defect where the context menu for solar systems in agent conversation windows would show several duplicated items.
Fixed defect where map browser's burger menus would not appear when clicked.
Fixed defect where FLEX structures had a "Set Home Station" option in their context menus despite no possibility of being one.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!

Today I was going to record some vocal audio for some sort of Eve Online post.  However to do that I need at least some quiet, I don't need to hear a pin drop, but something approaching that level of sound would be nice.

My neighbours seem to communicate with each other by coughing.  I know when at least one of them is awake by the commencement of a nasty coughing fit, which often culminates with a final dry heave.  During the day they all cough in one way or another, broken only by the occasional shout of something unintelligible, and then more coughing.

I need to look up the definition of pleurisy.

We used to have a small truck visit the neighbourhood and home deliver ice cream, it had a large brass bell at the front that would clang away as it moved down the road.  It used to annoy the ever loving shit out of me each and every Friday, when this useless anachronism of a bygone time would wheeze its way around the streets, clanging away.  I've not heard it in a while.

I fear the next time I hear a vehicle with a clanging bell it'll stop next door and the driver will shout out "Bring out your dead!"

In addition to all that we also have the dog, sometimes two, next door.

The birds.

The wind chime.

Oh, there is the dog again.

Etc, etc.

I'll give it another go later on tonight.

Deeeeeeeeeeeeeeep Safe Bug Squashed & Intel GPU Woes!

As mentioned yesterday, an automated process went a bit awry when Emerging Conduit locations were being spawned almost sixteen BILLION AU away from anything else in the effected system.

You'll need a cut lunch to travel that far.

How long would that take?

Lets find out!

Using my Leopard as an example, with some basic warp implants, my warp speed is 24 AU per second.  In the normal day to day of Eve Online that is quite fast, but rather slow when travelling to our new favourite deep, deep, deep space location¹

Using the post from yesterday as an example, the Emerging Conduit was 15,913,581,488.05 AU away, which is quite far.

Using my speed in the leopard that gives us 663,065,895 seconds (rounded), which is 11,051,098 minutes (rounded), which is 184,184 hours (rounded), 7674 days (rounded), etc.

However in twenty three hours you could travel, at that speed, 1,987,200 AU towards the conduit.

Today CCP have announced, the spoil sports that they are, a fix to this issue and a remedy for those folks who took advantage of the situation.


¹Yesterday an issue was discovered which caused some PVE locations to spawn at excessive distances from the center of their solar systems. This issue has now been fixed.

In the near future a migration process will begin to automatically move characters, ships, bookmarks, structures and other items from these extreme deep space locations to more reasonable locations.

While this migration process is being implemented, it will be considered an exploit to begin deployment of any new Upwell Structures at the deep space locations that only became available due to this PVE location spawning bug.

Upwell Structures that have already began their deployment before this exploit notification will be moved in the near future, but owners of any Upwell Structures that begin deployment after this notification will be subject to penalties including potential destruction of their deep space structures.

In other news, for the dozens of people trying to play Eve Online using an Intel GPU, they have a fix coming to address some graphics issues.

We're currently aware of an issue that some of our pilots using Intel Integrated Graphics chipsets are experiencing which causes their EVE Online clients to crash, typically on startup but also sometimes in other areas of gameplay.

The root cause of this issue has been identified and we'll be looking to release a fix for it very soon once it's been tested fully. Hopefully this will be deplyed in a point release tomorrow.

Apologies for the inconvenience this is causing, we'll have it fixed as soon as possible!

Awesome.

Could Be a Bug?

Good thing we don't use fuel for normal travel.

Yet...