A day's worth of things to love about Eve

So I was killing time in Eve before I had to take my daughter off to skating practice on Sunday and had a great little bundle of fun that made me want to write up four things I enjoy about Eve: two game things (a gudfite and the battle for Oto) and two community things (PLEX For Good, Parody songs). I'm going to push this out to some non-eve players so I'll try to explain things as I go.

Gudfite: Worm v Daredevil

This morning I had a short time window to play, so I flew over to run some sites to help Gallente keep control of our systems. I decided to hop in my Worm frigate in part because I wanted to learn to fly it better, but also in full knowledge that many people would see the ship and leave me alone. I dove in on a Merlin and he got away, doubled back on an Incursus whose warp stabilizer kept me from forcing him to stick around. The things got quiet until I had about 10min until I had to go, when a Daredevil showed up on my short-range scan.

Daredevil - that should be a fun. I'm expecting short-range neutron blasters on a very fast hull, so if he gets on top of me then I'm dead. I'm already orbiting 20km off the beacon so I'll have a good start. Acolyte drones are out already, and I pre-overheat my warp disruptor, web, and rockets. I double-click away from the beacon and hit the microwarpdrive as the Dardevil lands, and immediately lock him, sic my drones on him, and fire up the rockets. He charges at me and I see the the warp disruption icon and I think it's going to be over fast. But wait, he's still 16km away, so that mean it wont shut down my microwarpdrive - yup, still running. I've pounded through shields and into his armor, but he's got a armor repairer running as I expected. But wait, my shield is disappearing! He's smacking through my ship's defenses at 16km. I'm so used to running armor tanked that I'm still processing options as I see I'm in armor, which is shortly followed by my ship's explosion. 

The pilot and I exchange GFs in local, and end up having a great conversation as my pod races back to my home station. Turns out he was in a rail-fit Daredevil, which is unusual and certainly explains the damage projection.  He said he's never lost one (and I didn't see any on his killboard) which is impressive.  We chatted about the fight and about pirate frigates as I headed home to Fliet to log off.  A shout out to Kondrel Krense who may be an enemy, but who was a fun opponent as well.

Fights in Eve are great for post-analysis.  What if I had put out Hobgoblins instead of  Acolytes, which would have better at damaging the armor tank I should have known the Daredevil would have?  What if I had pulled more range to keep him closer to 20km instead of 16km, which would have pushed into farther into the long range of his guns, while he still would have been racing head-first into my rockets.  I wish I had FRAPS'd it to see more, too.

Community: Parody Songs

I pulled up my Eve Parody Song list Friday at the end of the day at work. While I have a lot that I like, the ones sticking in my head recently are Sindel Pellion's Blue List (Blank Space), Shut up and Shave's I Robbed a Goon (I Kissed A Girl), and David K Magnus' Hey Pilot (Hey Brother).

Honestly, I'm much more familiar with the parodies of these modern songs than I am the original pop songs.  When I hear them in a store I find myself remembering the Eve lyrics instead.  The creativity (and production values) here are a great testament to the breadth of Eve players out there as well as how much they love this game.

Battle for Oto

Last night I logged on to find that the neighboring enemy system of Oto was being pushed hard by my Gallente brethren.  I was surprised to hear that our fleet was made up of Atrons, which I certainly like for their high-speed tackle capabilities but which I hadn't seen us field as a full fleet (instead of our usual drone-centric Tristans).  We worked with a allied fleet to dodge back and forth trying to claim the sites in the system against a good-sized Caldari Corax fleet.  We got some good fights, and took down a number of their destroyers, but they were definitely being more effective in terms of controlling the sites.  Given the low cost of their chosen Corax fit I expect they did very well in terms of the war of attrition.  Looking at the killboard for the system I can see that activity has continued, if perhaps not with as much intensity as last night.

This is where I think Faction Warfare really shines.  Log in, have fights, lead battles that push back and forth to claim systems for your side.

PLEX for Good

After the recent Earthquake in Nepal CCP fired back up the PLEX for Good program.  This lets play donate game-time to be converted into dollars to the International Red Cross.  Last time around (Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines) Eve players donated over $190,000 worth of PLEX to this great cause.

My employer has a nice matching program for donations, so that's my first go-to.  But I'm really tempted to buy some PLEX and split it between the PLEX for Good and some new SKINs...