Pod and Planet: Commentary on Immortality

Taking His Medicine is one of two stories that sprung to mind when brainstorming for the Pod and Planet Fiction Contest.  The other one, tentatively titled Demonslayer is still just a bunch of notes that perhaps can be transformed into a story by the time the next contest comes around.

Both stories revolve around the meaning of capsuleer immortality when put into the context of a universe full of life rather than the narrow strictures of a videogame.  The immortality of a capsuleer has a big hole in it - it only applies when your death comes while plugged into your pod.  Once caught up in the idea of being immortal, always able to jump into a fresh clone body unscarred by whatever you did to the last one, the prospect of losing your life could turn your psychology into something decidedly inhuman.  Why in the name of all that is holy would you want to go about Walking In Stations when some fool baseliner could end your life out of jealous with the stroke of a knife or the twitch of a trigger?  Why would you dare eat food prepared out of your sight?

This isn't even getting into the hatred leveled against our average capsuleer.  Whether a mission-runner or a nullsec warrior, a capsuleer will have been responsible for the destruction of billions of ISK of ships and the termination of hundreds of thousands of lives.  The only capsuleers without this burden are the station-dwelling trading and industry types - perhaps they are the only sane ones.  After all, they grow rich out of the spotlight, with the benefit of being able to spend that ISK while jumping from one perfect clone body to the next.

Also consider that the capsuleer experience is a very recent thing in the broader picture of the society.  Ten years is nothing - not even a generation.  The first volunteers for the pods, probably primarily twenty-something year old military officers, are now thirty-something years old.  The long-term effects of being a capsuleer is only just being seen.

For a video game we want to ignore these things.  It's a good excuse for why we get to restart the game after losing a fight without having to roll up a new character.  As fiction writers there is a big choice here: to stick with the narrower video game vision and handwave these things, allowing our heroes and heroines to be glamorous movers and shakers.  There's a darker choice that I've made here, where the weight of the "reality" of immortality is felt crashing down.

The newer DUST-style Templar implants offer a better option.  With such implants the world does open up for capsuleers.  Our characters could dare to walk around in stations and partake of normal pleasures - though what pleasures are normal for the immortal?

The fantasy genre has long played with the immortal POV character, particularly since Anne Rice brought vampires to a newer and wider audience.  The Eve capsuleer may put a science-fiction wrapping on some of the same themes explorer by many writers of vampire tales and RPGs since then.  As readers and writers we may enjoy that our capsuleers are more able to enjoy their food, drink, and sex - and they are certainly no less blood stained.  The same things that made the vampire genre so rich certainly can make a capsuleer genre compelling.

Pod And Planet: Taking His Medicine

This is my entry for this year's Pod and Planet Fiction Contest in the Eight Thousand Suns in New Eden category.  To find the other entries for this year go to Contest Entries and Reading Bank, YC115.  I've made a separate blog entry for some author's thoughts about this story and the meaning of immortality in Eve.

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Taking His Medicine

Eight Thousand Suns in New Eden

* * *

Acting relaxed when other people are tense is part of my job.  Just the travel to the tiny independent station in lowsec was enough to make friends question my sanity.  They see the holovid operas where every every gate is camped and even a civilian personnel transport is a target for a booster-crazed ganker.  Not just the baseline pirates who usually would rather get protection money, but a nigh-immortal capsuleer who will risk their own ship and crew “for the lols.”  Some of my friends and associates haven’t left highsec for the last ten years - since the growing availability of pods created the capsuleer menace of late night drama.  Many are young enough that they barely remember when there weren’t capsuleers.  But then my profession does tend to largely employ the young, or those who can pass as still being young.  As I slip into that second category, contracts like this are what I need.  The young might lose their composure in such situations, while those of us who have seen it before can keep our professional demeanor.

So when the station boss, Harold, kept pacing back and forth across the false wood flooring of his private quarters I just eased back into one of the leather oversized chairs.  I hiked one leg up on the arm of the chair, but only drew the eyes of the other person in the room: Harold’s chef Anki.  If it ever comes around that I can’t distract a young man with a stretch of my legs then it’s time to retire.  The fact that he had the look of someone raised in strict Amarrian culture was to my advantage.  I don’t turn down advantages any more.

"Boss, he's docking up now." The tower operator’s disembodied voice came over the intercom.  Anki gave me a shy, nervous smile but turned back to his boss.  Harold had stopped pacing finally.

"Thanks, Roger.  I want to know if anything warps within 250 klicks for the next few hours.  If anyone asks, we're closed for some repairs and expect to be open for business again tomorrow.  Field up and nobody else docks without my say."

Harold swiped at his battered wrist-comm then tapped a rhythm on its surface.  "Jared, we're clear.  Your scanners should confirm four on station: Roger in the tower and the three of us in my quarters.  Welcome and come on in."

I straightened and stood up as Harold turned back towards me.  Time for me to earn the exorbitant sum in the contract.

* * *

Jared looked rough, rougher even than I expected.  The pod doesn't give you any room for niceties, what with the body plugged up in pretty much every orifice.  Or so I’ve heard from other capsuleer clients.  He’d pulled on clothes at least, even if nobody had worn those old style cuts for years.  The patches had been ripped off, but I recognized the Federation trim and colors.

"Amanda, huh?" His cold eyes looked me over as if he was valuing loot from a gank wreck. "You don't look like an Amanda.  Deteis?"

"Mostly.  Little bit of lots of things."  I kept my eyes on his, forcing myself to keep my face relaxed and pleasant.

"I've killed lots of Caldari.  Maybe a hundred thousand." He took a step closer, staring down into my eyes.  The stale smell of pod grew in my nostrils.  Harold had warned me, but even without that I could see the pain that echoed behind the glare.

"Just don't make it a hundred thousand and one tonight, okay?" Smiling at the right time was part of the job too.  I shifted my weight, subtly curving towards him.  That his eyes drifted to my chest and then to the curve of my hip was a reassuring sign.  Somewhere inside of there was a man, trapped behind the killer.

His eyes closed, his body seeming to draw inward. He turned away.  "Damn you Harold, all you could find me was a squid?"

"She's out here in the middle just like us."  I had never heard Harold's voice so soft.

“Scanned?”

“Body scan plus all her things.  She’s clean.  Her bag’s in the bedroom if you want a personal check.”  Harold nodded towards the door.

The capsuleer nodded once.  "Fifteen minutes, then send her in."  I could see the tension through his back as he stalked into the bedroom.  He looked like a man who was always expecting someone to try to stab him in the back.

Harold looked at me as the door closed behind Jared.  "You sure you're still okay with this?"  It was honestly more than I expected of him.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure."  I gave him a wink.  “I’m a professional.”

* * *

He took me roughly, which I was prepared for.

Some capsuleers do that because they’ve lost some vital human element and now only seem to get off on pain and tears.  They’re dangerous and I try to avoid contracting with them.

Some capsuleers do that because, for all of the tales of their freedom and power, they are dominated by other capsuleers every moment they are in their pod and they feel a need to lash out and dominate someone else.  These I’ve learned to tolerate and manipulate - they generally pay well too.

Some capsuleers put all their fears into that desperate moment of release.

* * *

"Look, I'm sorry about calling you a squid."  He couldn't meet my eyes to say it.

"I've been called a lot worse before."  I settled in beside him, a short arm's reach away.  For some clients the only time they let themselves be vulnerable is in those naked moments after their lust is spent.  Part of the job is knowing when to just listen.

"That bit about killing Caldari - the worst thing is that I could have said that about any faction.  I could have said that about any pirate nation.  About any kind of people in all of New Eden.  You name them, I've killed them."

"So what keeps you from stopping?"

He laughed, a dark bitter thing.  "I don't even know how many bounties are on my head anymore, but there's got to be at least a half-dozen that only pay out on my permadeath.  People who are just waiting for me to be out of my pod in one place long enough."

"Isn't there any place out away?  Off in Null somewhere?"

“Ha” his laugh barked out.  “Null?  You must not know anything about Null.  I can’t trust anyone in Null.”  He pushed himself up on the bed and swung his legs as if to leave, a bitterness in his eyes.  That look softened a little as his eyes ran over my body.  “Damn.”

He was gentler the second time, softly kissing the bruises he had raised before.

* * *

Afterwards he was ready for other appetites. He opened the door and smell of cooked meat wafted into the room. Jared only bothered to pull on shorts; I've found that many capsuleers have lost cultural feel for body modesty. I grabbed a simple gown from the pile where Jared had searched through my bag.

Anki stood by a simple table set for two, draped with a white table cloth. I could almost imagine it was the exclusive setting of some of the more wealthy clients of my past, if I overlooked the raw metallic backdrop of the utilitarian quarters.

Jared stared a long moment at Anki, until the smaller man turned his head down in submission.

He turned to Harold. "How long has he worked for you?"

"About eight months. You know what the turnover is like out here. Keileigh took off for some line job at Bourynes after last time."

Jared eyed the food as Harold continued.  “All the ingredients came through sources I trust.  I watched Anki make all this while you…“ his eyes flicked to me, “.. while you two were busy.  I put samples of everything in the bioscanner you sent.  Damn it man, it’s not like this is the first time.”

There was a long pause as the brothers stared at each other, history weighing on them.

"Well, I'm hungry enough, come on Jared." someone had to break the tension so I headed for a seat. Anki jumped to get my chair for me, his eyes clearly torn between the discretion of his Amarrian training and the viewing opportunities offered by the thin cloth wrapped about me.  The eyes I wanted to distract right now were the capsuleer’s, but their cold hardness had returned, focused down hard on his brother.

“Jared we do this every year, but it’s not enough.  You can’t stay in that machine.”  Harold was almost pleading.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”  Jared stalked forward until he was in his brother’s face.  “No idea what it is like.”

“You’re slipping away.  This isn’t enough to remind you what it is to be human anymore.  All this we do to remind you …”

"Come on Harold, you know I need it."  Jared's hands surged forward and Harold stumbled back.  "Come and give me my medicine."  His eyes had the wild look from when he first stepped in from his pod.  "Do I need to remind you again?  Remind you why you're stuck in some backwater lowsec dive while I've piled up the ISK?"

"Yeah, cause you look like a trillion ISK right now."  Harold gave a long tired exhalation, his eyes not looking up to meet Jared's, his body half turned away.

Jared leaned forward, eyes wide. "Come on, you want me to remind you why we’re really here… about the Center... about her?"

Harold turned towards him, fist rising from his hip in a quick arc, lifting Jared off his feet with the impact.  Harold had warned me his would happen, but it didn't keep me from sliding away from the table and putting my back to the wall near the door to the kitchen just in case I needed a quick way into cover.  Anki nearly dove into the kitchen to escape.

They knew each other so well; after that first hit it seemed that each of the next blows were anticipated.  They circled and traded jabs without committing.  I had to wonder if all capsuleers had some rituals to avoid mindlock - a way to remind them of their flesh.  “Meat needs” I had heard a capsuleer once call them.  Was this something else he needed - to feel his body battered in some way other than feeling the signals of missile hits on his hull?

Once they might have been evenly matched, but Harold had aged honestly while Jared's clone body reflected what he was like when he had first been strapped in a pod a decade ago.  That showed soon enough when a heavy hook drove Harold sinking down to his knees.  Jared stood over him, great labored breaths racking his chest.  I couldn't take my eyes off of them.  Somehow it felt like this was the most meaningful way they stayed connected.  How many times had they done this?

I heard the door to the kitchen slide open very slowly.  It was that careful motion which caught my attention; it felt wrong.  When the snub nosed gun came into sight I felt myself freeze.

"The Nation sends its regards."  Anki's voice seemed colder, calmer than the shrinking menial I had taken him for.  The gun went off with a loud explosive sound and Jared spun away as blood spattered the back wall of the room.  At that moment it seemed all I could see was that gun as it shifted slightly and fired again.

I'd like to say that I was some holovid heroine, but what I realized at that moment was that he probably didn't mean to leave any witnesses and he didn't yet know I was right there.  I did the only thing I could think of, which was to grab Anki’s gun hand at the wrist and him as hard as I could in the balls.  The gun fired again right as I felt my toes smash into him.  Anki folded over as the pain exploded across my foot.  It didn't hurt so much that it kept me from kicking him in the face and again in the side of the head as he went down.  After that he didn't move, but I just kept kicking him until the gun fell out of his limp hand.

"Amanda."  Harold's voice did not sound good.  "You've gotta help me."  Harold was clutching his left arm, blood soaking through his sleeve, but he was staring at Jared.  I felt bile rising in my throat.  Jared’s side was torn open, blood pooling on the floor.

“You have a doctor somewhere nearby?”  I rushed over him, stripping off my gown and trying to figure out how to wrap it around him.

Harold shook his head.  "Not near enough. We've got to get him into his pod."

Jared’s head rolled towards me, but his eyes were unfocused.  He tried to speak, but it was barely a whisper.  I leaned in close.  “It’s okay Jared, we’ll take care of you.”  I felt like I was babbling.

His eyes focused briefly on mine and he whispered weakly, “They told us we’d be Gods.”

***

We struggled to get him to the pod door, but once we laid his body out inside it seemed the machine knew what to do.  I could see his chest just barely rising and falling as the pod sealed itself around him.

"Roger, come in Roger."  Harold barked into his comm.  "Fire up the defense grid.  Jared's pod is coming out.  Lock it and pop it, fast as you can."

"What!?" Rogers confused voice was loud even through the commlink.

"Don't argue with me.  I'm force-undocking him now.  Lock and Fire.  I repeat, lock and fire."

I staggered over to the nearest port window, my right foot a ball of pain anytime I tried to put weight on it.  There was a thump as the docking ring let go of the pod and it was shot away from the station.

"Come on Roger, don't let me down here."  Harold begged as he slumped to the floor.

I've seen ships destroyed before.  Crazy capsuleers dueling outside of busy stations and hapless freighters caught by a suicide ganker.  It has always been a moment of fear and apprehension for me, something that makes my breath catch.  I've never held my breath hoping to see that explosion, never been so glad to hear the chatter of autocannons.  At least, I hoped it was the tower that killed him.

I never found out.  Harold got patched up.  I got my pay plus a substantial bonus and got on the first ship out of there.  I haven’t heard from either of them since.  Sometimes I’m tempted to look up public records for Jared, assuming that was his real name, to see if he’s gotten a new CONCORD bounty since that day.  But if he hasn’t, does that mean he died before the pod could transfer him to another clone, or that he somehow got out of the capsuleer rat race.  I honestly don’t know which one I’d wish for him.

As the blood leeched out of my thorax...

Recently a lot of my Eve time has been either struggling to get my indy alt to the next level or diving in and out of wormholes.  And that Eve time has been more limited thanks to a number of RL issues (on the plus side, Go Red Sox!).  But there has been far too few explosions involved.  So last night I decided I wasn't going to do anything else until something exploded.  Follow along and see if you can spot my mistakes.

Roaming 'Rax
I know I need to get out of just running Thoraxes.  I think that will change later this month, but that's not the topic for today.  I threw together a Thorax to make use of the MAAR, which I've been meaning to do for a while.  Setting out from Dodixie I headed for Gallente low-sec.  With the increased activity in the Gallente/Caldari FW systems I saw that my path was a bit hotter than usual.  FW systems can be great for solo play, but when big things are happening it seems that I'm unlikely to find a solo engagement rather than being hit by a 5+ person team.  And that's about my preference, not theirs - I know they need those groups to counter the other side.  I'm an intruder in their FW world.

Thru belts I spy a... Cruor?
I'm slipping through, scanning belts and such, when I get to Onne.  I warp to the Deninard gate at 100km, dropping a Midwarp bookmark to come back to later to let me investigate more.  But as I hit I see a Cruor also land near the gate.  Oooh, I vaguely know what that is.  I wonder if it wants to play.  I start towards it to see if it will engage or head on away and sure enough it turns into me, now at 96km and closing.

"So, you think a Thorax can take a Cruor?" I ask on the comms of some guys I've been hanging out with.  The quick response is that it will probably kite me to death while neuting from range.  Right then, I load Null into the blasters with the thought that I can apply some surprise damage out to range.  Maybe a bit of playing with our motion can get me some low transfersal to apply damage in.  I have a cap booster, so I'm hoping that the other pilot will be surprised that I'm not capped out immediately.  At 40-somethink clicks I get the Hammerheads out.  Sometimes I run with two wings of lights - that would have been nice for this time around but what can you do.  The Cruor immediately starts knocking them down.  I hit the Cruor with a couple volleys of Null and he's down into armor, but repping.  But the Cruor isn't kiting, he's diving into close range.  I try to pull away to lower transversal and gain range but it's too late.  The scram has disabled my MWD and that with the web has dropped me down to something like 23mps.

I switch over to Fed Antimatter and I have a web and scram on him, but I'm not landing any dps of note.  I pull the Hammerheads (down to 3) with the thought of springing them again in a moment after perhaps he's not looking for them, but I don't expect they'll matter much.  As a matter of fact I actually just forget about them once they're in the bay.  I try all the weaving I can in or out of the orbit, but with my paltry speed compared to his I might as well be stationary.  My shields are gone and my armor is slowly weakening.  I switch the MAAR to "Auto-repeat off" since I expect I'm only going to get specific chances at my cap as my boosters aren't keeping up with the neuting.

It quickly becomes clear there isn't anything that's going to work, so I align to the gate.  As my ship dies I hit Jump and ... huh?  Oh crap, pick another celestial, Deninard is only 60km away.  Scram, pod pop.  Hey, that's the new podded animation!  Bummer, that was my most expensive clone.  As I awake in a far away station I send Tyen (the Cruor pilot) a convo request to convey a GF, and he seems nice enough about it all.  For all the bitching about Eve being full of mean people, I really haven't run into too much rage from those I kill or mocking meanness from those who have killed me.

Oh, that Tyen?
I mention my loss to a friend on a private channel and link my lossmail.  He congratulates me on getting killed by someone famous, since that is Tyen of the Nightmare in New Eden event.  Hey, another bonus on the fight.

The Ships
Turns out Tyen lost the Cruor and his own pod later than night so we can compare the ships.
My Thorax (43M) - My Pod (155M)
Tyen's Cruor (110M) - Tyen's Pod (208M)

Notice the familiar looking loot in Tyen's cargo?  Clearly he killed me and two other people before dying, so overall I hope he had a good night of it.  It does make me wonder if someone else picked up my corpse (if it is the one of the two that dropped).

Analysis and Lessons Learned

Battles Won and Lost before the first volley.  It's a common statement that Eve fights are often lost in planning.  Let's look at my side - a Thorax I threw together fast with rigs that were intended for a failed earlier fit, but still I'm not too unhappy with it.  Yes, I might have been better off in this case with the double-web Thorax I've flown before, but then that neut/nos pair would have taken me down even faster.  The mixed light drones would have been good for this fight, but not if I was engaging another cruiser.  However, looking at my pod and his we see something else.  My pod was originally meant for my mission-running days, focusing on battleship tank, and while that is a bonus to this active-tanked Thorax it's probably not the best match.  Tyen's pod isn't a perfect match for his ship - he has a rapid launch implant that does nothing for a Cruor.  It is reassuring to me that we were both running with 3% implants, so perhaps my choice of cost/benefit was good.

Taking the fight.  One of the guys on comms said "when I see someone in a expensive faction ship I assume they know what they're doing."  Amazing failfits posted about the web aside that's probably a good assumption.  I also only had a vague understanding of the Cruor as I turned into the fight (neuts and dmg bonused lasers), and when someone else suggested the neuts were range bonused I didn't confirm that.  That led to me closing range instead of trying to make the Cruor chase me.  Here is Tyen's fit in Osmium - under MWD I can outpace him.

It might have been interesting to see what I could have done to him with Null outside of scram range.  Not that my Thorax is a really a kiting ship anyway.  If I had recognized (or looked up) Tyen's name I would have also known his experience level - though I did noticed the -9.8 sec status.

Drone use.  Pulling the drones or not probably didn't influence which way the fight went, but they certainly did me no good in my drone bay.  Even a lucky hit here and there might have kept him running that SAR, and given that he had no cap support that might have mattered.

Cap lessons.  Osmium gives him 41s of cap with everything running.  That seems really low to me, though I'd have to play with it to see how much longer he can hold out when the SAR isn't running.  The Nos he clearly can turn off once he's knocked me down, though with the newer mechanics he does definitely have more benefit for fighting up class.  All this is interesting, but of course I don't know his fit going in.  An advanced skill is intuitively knowing what an opponent likely has going in, but I'm not there.

SOMER, Blink, Profit

So, this post isn't about the scandal - I quickly decided I wanted no part in that.  But it is about how to profit from all this SOMER Blink madness.  I've mentioned in a previous post that I thought that SOMER Blink could be profitable for people who were willing to be patient and do the math.  With SOMER now offering 1 Billion Blink credit when you buy a GTC, now is a good time.

SOMER also isn't sitting still though.  I decided to buy some GTC to help skill up an alt and potentially pay for a fancy new ship (more on that later).  After running the spreadsheet (of course there is a spreadsheet, this is Eve after all) I found that the Vagabond would yield about 1.3M ISK profit for every 1M ISK spent in buying the 24M ISK ticket (given the particular weight of Blink credits versus promo tokens that I use, anyway).  I bought the GTC this morning and bought tickets for Vagabonds (and other things) whenever I got a spare moment at work.  I'm not saying it's me, but the price of a Vagabond ticket has now changed to 27.5M, reducing the profit to less than 0.5M ISK.

For those interested, the EV for the Cynabal and Orca still offer just over 0.5M ISK +EV.

Enjoy the chaos.

Right tool for the right job

I think a lot of Eve is about having the right tool for the right job.  This goes for your choice of ship and fit for PVP as well as the inevitable spreadsheet for market/industrial PVE.  

This Blog post was brought to you by...
I often find myself thinking about topics for the blog in the middle of driving, and then I've forgotten by the time I get to my destination.  No problem, I thought, I'll just fire up my relatively new iPhone and ask Siri to write these things down for me.  What do I get?

"I had read out of market orders with Walt mart about that don't be something podcasts

Comparing next T-3's been delivered Sumiton the article or have for alternative to T4 is really?"

Umm, thanks Siri.

T2s - HAC and Recon
Recently I've trained in HACs and Recon.  Under the "T2 are specialists" mantra I was considering them for various uses I'd like to put them to. The contrast is the wormhole workhorse of the T3 cruiser.  I consistently hear about billion-ISK T3s, and that's right out of my range.  I think that a fairly barebones HAC or Recon (i.e. T2 modules, maybe a faction item here or there) running at 250M - 300M ISK could be acceptable.

So, are they the right tool?

• Solo Straight-up Roaming.  Nope.  If I drop into FW plexes in a HAC then I don't expect I'll get fights.  Ditto for cruising the belts and celestials.  I expect I will get blobbed eventually, if I stick around in one system.  For this application I think the T1 cruiser continues to be the better choice.
• Cloaky Roaming.  Yes.  I have not been successful in getting a fight here, though I've only spent a few hours on this so far.  The idea is to take a cloaky recon around the usual targets (tag rat belts, for instance) and look for targets I can take.  The part that I'm not as thrilled about is that I feel my maximum target is probably at the destroyer level, though I have a feeling that out of desire for a fight there are probably T1 cruisers I'd take on as well.  I hope to learn more about cloaky combat from this.
• Small Gang Roaming.  Yes, for the right gang.  The HACs can certainly bring the pain.  The price tag is one I will definitely have to think about though.  
• Small Gang Cloaky Roaming.  Yes.  Vult already posted about our little run with this.  I think there's more potential there, and in this case the Recon is definitely the right tool.  Now if only there wasn't local so people could see when we showed up...
• Wormhole Diving.  Maybe.  I said back at the beginning of the year that I was seeing Wormholes as a goal activity.  This is where the specialist versus generalist really kicks in.  In wormholes I expect to need to be able to do three things: probe, cloak, and kill.  As we could see in Vult's video of our roam, the Proteus was able to cloaky up on someone and then provide massive dps to quickly kill them.  My Recon could sneak up on someone cloaky, but not provide a lot of dps, so I'd have to be calling in the team.  My HAC could provide dps, but couldn't cloak or probe.  If I'm resigned to the Recon providing the point and some EW support then I could probably make room for a probe - which at least then is doing more than a CovOps.  But the real tool to provide all three still is the T3 (at least until the inevitable nerf).

Industry tools

So my industrial alt ran out of market orders while trying to both sell my goods and gather all of the components needed to start rolling out T2 ships.  T2 manufacture has been rough for me just in getting the pipeline going.  So what tools am I missing right now?

• The right spreadsheet.  My spreadsheet was working okay for T2 work.  Limited number of inputs and only one layer.  From using IPH it looks like T2 ships are only going to be profitable for me if I make the components as well, so I've bought those as well.  That means now there are two layers to manage.  The inputs for the components, then the components and other inputs for the ship.  Hmm... needs work.
• The right target market.  My T2 modules move very well.  I've got good places for them so I can move a fair portion of them without fighting the regional hub 0.01 ISK battle.  I try to balance the expediency of the hub with the profit margin of the outlying systems.  The problem is that having lots of stacks in lots of systems is the demand on my incompletely trained indy alt and my reluctance to take any training time away from Jakob.
• The right skills.  This is a recent pain when I maxed out my (not incredible) number of market orders on my alt.  I had to give in and pause Jakob for an overnight to get one more level of Trade in, then duck back to training weapons!
• The right facilities.  In other words, a POS.  This one I think I'll still hold off on.  The public slots are often queued up, but since I'm generally only cycling jobs once a day (or once every other day) then the T2 modules are going to be done before I get back to them with or without a queue wait.  The big thing that a POS would give me is no wait time on the various kinds of research, which could be nice but with a third alt feeding me copies I'm no longer bottlenecked by BPCs.

So my split life - Industry and PVP.  I may need to hook over to more PVE to bring in some additional ISK for a while though.  The Industry is still spooling up, though I feel it's about at the point where I can be throwing more things over to Jakob... like HACs...

Rubicon and the solo/small gang pilot

Some brief notes about Rubicon from the perspective of a new-ish solo / small gang pilot.  For the purposes of this post let's call small gang more like 3-5 pilots.  I know that some of the big guys consider small gangs up to like 20 ships, but I'm drawing the line where you tend to not be able to afford a lot of specialized roles (unless that's the central conceit of the gang doctrine in question).

Warp Speed Changes - it's not all about the Interceptor

So for large gangs and major nullsec forces certainly the warp speed changes are all about the Interceptor.  There certainly are people who can take on small targets solo with an interceptor, The Interceptor is getting even less tanky, but I'm not sure how much that matters given that they're all about speed tanking.  In many Interceptors they're getting more CPU/PG so there may actually be more options there.  So yes, I'll be queuing up the Interceptor skill along with much of the young pilot population of New Eden.

But for those of us in smaller operations I'd argue the warp speed change may really shine at the Assault Frigate level.  It will be warping in faster and actually be beefy enough to take on the kind of target you'll find in belt or FW plex.  Consider the chart posted by Fozzie - the Assault frigate can spot a target in a belt on D-scan 10 AU out and be on top of them in 15 seconds.  A cruiser would be 30 seconds, an Interceptor 11 seconds.  Yes, if you're paranoid and align as soon as you see local increase then anything short of a mining barge or battleship should be out of there before you can lock them, but we're down to a matter of seconds or fractions of a second.

Speaking of which, I'm not clear on whether system gates or acceleration gates are at all impacted by this. I tried going through the Feature thread but didn't see anything in there.  I'll update if I find anything.  That will be important for those who frequent the FW plexes to find their pew.
Edit: of course I find it right after posting.  Yes, Acceleration Gates will be faster for small ships under these changes, as they trigger a warp behind the scenes.

Sisters of Eve ships

Yes, these will be incredibly expensive for a while so I probably won't be getting into one until Spring.  I know that people are grinding the LP like crazy now, but I expect there's going to be a lot of demand.  Will the Stratios be the new wormhole-scout/diver of choice?  Will it be the hunter of lowsec?  All of the above?  I'm sure we're going to see it all tries.  Watch the killboards starting Nov 19th.  There is a lot of back and forth on the fittings on the Feature thread.  I'll be looking forward to hacked EFT and Pyfa databases.

Personal Mobile Structures

The "yurt" for your own stuff could be interesting, but it's all going to boil down to how much cargo space the thing has.  I believe it has been definitively said that it won't be able to swap out T3 subsystems, which is a real shame.  That would have met the wormholers long-standing request and could have made for some interesting lowsec play too.  I could see people hiding out and swapping in and out fits to scan down all of the signatures, then go cloaky-killer to look for people arriving at those signatures, or go PVE fit and run those signatures yourself.  Someone comes into system - run back to your yurt and fit up to fight or hide.  Find a target with an active shield tank, switch one of your ships over to have neuting power.  All without making yourself seen at the local station, and risking getting jumped going in or out.

And expect to see lots of Stratios and Astero with Sisters Combat Probes looking for yurts.  I'm sure we'll very quickly see people test out exactly what it takes to down whatever minimal defenses they have.  That might be quite a fun side bonus for solo / small gang folks if there isn't a full timer and just requires a Battleship gang level of dps.  You jump someone's yurt and then either get the goodies inside or they have to come fight you off.



In summary though I have to agree with a number of podcaster pundits I've heard - Rubicon sounds like a lot of fun stuff, but nothing as ground breaking as the title implies.  On the other hand, the real action for Caesar didn't happen until after he'd crossed the Rubicon ... 
Alea iacta est.

Things I know nothing about (and you too)

Today's blog is about things I don't know anything about, and I'll close by suggesting there are things that even you, incredibly experienced and jaded eve blog reader out there, don't know that much about either.

I had someone complement my blog in local yesterday.  Yeah, having a blog that says I like to go through lowsec looking for tags or targets isn't exactly going to make someone want to stick around a belt in their PVE boat.  Then again if they are alert enough to look up who entered local and follow the blog link in my bio then I wasn't going to surprise them anyway.  If he had complemented my blog and also come out to give us a fight that would have been ideal, but since there were three of us I can understand.  In any case it helped push me to update.

How to Pick Fights

Two Thoraxes down to a Scythe Fleet Issue and a Rupture.  I pretty much figured I didn't have a chance against a faction cruiser, but what the heck.  From chatting with the pilot afterwards it sounds like I came pretty close to smashing through his reps.  I think I know what I did wrong there which is both frustrating (I could have beaten him) and reassuring (it wasn't an entirely foolish fight to pick).  The Rupture was one of those great examples where the other guy saw what I had, then shipped down to a T1 cruiser to come meet me.  Both of those losses actually ended up in great conversations with the people who killed me.  So much for Eve being full of evil-minded blobby jerks. 

On the other hand, just the other night I ran into someone who apparently was all set to take on my Thorax with his Sacrilege, but then was pretty pissy in local when a corp mate of mine showed up in local.  Yup, HAC vs. T1 cruiser all good, but HAC vs. T1 and an unknown is us being terribly unfair I guess.  Honestly, he probably could have taken us both.  The other ship was a Pilgrim.  I'm guessing that a Sac really isn't going to care too much about neuts since its firing missiles and is probably plated.  If it tore down my Thorax first it's not like the Pilgrim's drones are going to be able to kill it before the HAMs rip apart the Pilgrim.  A good example where the pilot could have had quite a win to talk about if he'd only taken the fight.

Recently went for a cloaky roam with corpmates.  I got to learn a bit about scouting down targets, but unfortunately that also meant that I wasn't in position to get in on either of our two kills.  Ah well.

Capital Stuff

Why are there no T2 capital guns?  I ran into this when looking at some of the big killmails in the news.  Seems like something that might be a small feature to throw to the high-end players.  It's still out on the horizon as something for me, since I could drive towards flying a Moros - though the guns is the smallest part of that.  It seems like CCP is trying to make the path to race up to higher end ships easier - which is mostly good for people spinning up a Dreadnaught alt I suppose.

Wormholes

I have a lot to learn here.  I'm intrigued by the idea of daytripping to wormholes.  Solo doesn't seem feasible though.  If I start by assuming the ship needs to have a probe launcher and a cloak, and it needs to be cheap enough that I can afford to lose it, that narrows it down a lot.  Pretty much a Stealth Bomber for PVP, unless I'm willing to write-off a Arazu or Pilgrim.  Then there's a question of what I'm going to find in a wormhole that I can solo with that.  Certainly the Tiger Ears blog is an inspiration, though her cloaky Loki has a lot more dps than the ships available to me.

Which brings up when I should fit out my first Proteus.  Advice from a corpmate was that having the subsystem skills to 4 wasn't quite good enough.  I may take some time to get those up to 5 then test out a PVP fit in some PVE situations to get a feel for it.   What I can afford to lose is a very ambiguous thing - I have a lot of hulls spread all over Eve, but having the right hull already fit for what I want to do is different.

I'm guessing PVE should be off the table since I'd probably have to rotate three ships through. CovOps to find a C1/C2 hole, Battlecruiser (no probe, no cloak) to run a site, then Noctis to salvage - and since I don't have Salvaging 5 I understand sleeper wrecks are going to be very time consuming.  Sheer ISK-making wise I'd probably be better with L4 missions.


Things We Know Nothing About

Anything I don't know how to do must be trivial. - said by Eve Pundits everywhere

I used to be a commercial software developer before I moved into management paths.  It is a pet peeve of mine when I see people saying things like "The interceptor immunity to interdiction is a trivial change, they just have to change some line like bubble_immune=true somewhere."  If all you know about programming is scripts or trivial size college projects, I can understand that naivete.  When you're talking about a product with tens of millions of lines of code in multiple languages, developed over 10 years, it's pretty damn unlikely it's that simple.  Given what we've heard about the level of modularity and encapsulation we've heard about (ex: the POS code) I'd bet a lot of ISK that it isn't as simple as a private member of Class Ship that returns true or false.

Now I wasn't playing Eve back then, but weren't bubbles introduced well before T3 cruisers and their interdiction nullification capabilities? If so, that means that barring a refactoring effort it's unlikely that the two things were cleanly designed into whatever engine is used for warp movment.

So when you hear somebody out there saying that a particular Eve feature would be easy to do, unless they are CCP or ex-CCP, just save yourself some bitterness and ignore them - they're almost certainly clueless.