Thursday, December 22, 2011

Traveling for Christmas

I will be traveling to Iowa with the wife and kids for the holidays. We will be gone for 11 days, during which time we will be visiting my parents, Cheri's parents and our siblings. I'm looking forward to a few days off of work and the gambit of games, both board and card, that we will play during the holidays.

I will also be going to LA for 36 hours during my vacation to see the very last Live Diggnation EVER! I'm very excited about this. I will be flying out of Omaha to Orange County with my sister Cindy. We will then be heading to Palmdale, CA and then to LA the next day for the show. Then next morning I have an early flight back to Iowa for the rest of the holidays.

I'll try to get another post in over the holidays, but I'm not sure when. Happy Holidays Everyone!

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

My Mom was Right

I hate to admit that I may have been wrong, but I just realized that my Mom was right. In college I was an art major, so basically I took the low road and slacked off a bit my freshman and sophomore years. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not implying that all art majors are lazy and more interested in life experiences than getting good grades and going to class but I certainly fit the bill during my first two years of undergraduate college. But I did do much better, grade-wise, in graduate school.

I got a business minor and now I seem obsessed with game that simulate economy, asset management and acquisition of currency. It's funny because I have never been that interested with these activities in the real world. But somehow, doing mindless tasks in a video game is less strenuous that doing the same thing in real life.

I have dabbled in the stock market, mostly in my retirement funds, but I have not had much success in that matter. But I never seem as interested in researching actual companies and their activities as I have in moving minerals and trade goods from station to station in the EVE universe. I realize that this makes for more questions than answers and they are all questions about myself and my motivations. Hmm...

Monday, December 12, 2011

Got back to Minning

Well over the weekend, I have gotten back into mining. I was finally able to get anchoring researched and I purchased a few large secure containers to stash my minerals in. It made the mining much faster and more secure that it has ever been. It was still not as fast as mining in a group, but mining into a large secured container in space is much more efficient than making several trip to a station with the limited cargo space in my mining ship.

Of course, my mining was finished after I got shot I fled in my pod to the nearest outpost. Once I landed I was informed that my security status had been revoked and I could be shot by anyone in the area and the concord would not protect me. But all I did was protect myself (badly) and I'm being punished. I just don't understand the PvP in this game. How come he wasn't flagged, or did he not care that he was flagged. Anyway, it's hard to say. I need to find a way to establish whether a ship is friendly or not quickly and how it will affect my ship to either attack or flee from a fight.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Gooder Eve: Collected

Here is a link to Gooder EVE. I'm very impressed with the way this on-going series is setup. Please give them a look as they are some very interesting ideas ... and just good reads.

"Gooder Eve is an on-going series that attempts to prod the Eve Universe into motion by suggesting ways in which it could be made gooder. These suggestions range from the serious to the silly, but each one is intended to start a discussion, engage your brain and hopefully start the ball rolling in new and interesting directions."

TOR Torn

There is this new MMO coming out called The Old Republic and it is based on a franchise you may have heard of ... Star Wars. There is a lot of buzz out there about this MMO and how it might be the next World of Warcraft. It is being released just in time for Christmas on 12/20/11. As it states in the title to this post, I am torn. I want to play it but there are several things holding me back; both financially and technologically.

Can I play another MMO? Well the answer is yes, but should I is a better question. As you may have guessed from my previous posts I cannot afford to pay multiple 15 dollar monthly subscriptions to feed my video game addiction. In truth, I'm trying to adjust my play to have EVE support itself monetarily. Unfortunately, I'm a little too new to be making that sort of ISK just yet. So if I was to start playing TOR I would have to pay 2 monthly subscriptions. I cannot afford 30 dollars a month for MMOs.

Secondly, I have always wanted to experience the launch of an MMO. I came into WoW around 4 years into the game. I have just joined EVE in its 7th year. When I joined FFXI it was in it's 8th or 9th year I think. I have never played a MMO at launch. I have always experienced the game as many players are leveling their alts and experiencing the content for the 3rd or 4th time. These is famed to be an excitement and electricity around when people are experiencing the game for the first time. I want to be a part of something like that, but is this the game? Is this my time to experience an epic launch?

But, The Old Republic cannot be played on a Mac OSX. Now there is a way around this, but dual booting into Windows on my Macbook Pro. Or I could try to run parallels, but that is going to be expensive as well. If you are interested in the technical aspect of running TOR on a Mac, here is a link to a thread that talks about playing TOR on a Mac. So this puts me in another finical pickle; I have to either get a PC capable of running TOR or I need to pay for Windows (and possibly Parallels) for my Macbook Pro. This is in addition to the cost of the game and another monthly subscription. I but you're saying "don't do it Chuck, it's too much money" and you are probably right. But it is Star Wars and it is a MMO launch.

In conclusion, I want to play TOR but probably for the wrong reasons. I love the Star Wars franchise and I'm interested in playing a Jedi but I don't have a need to play this game. I want to experience the launch, but I just want to be able to say that 'I was there'. Usually I take the approach of waiting until a game is reduced in value and the developer has had time to make some improvements to the UI. Is it worth the extra buck (and technical difficulties) to be there are launch? What do you think?

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

What to Do

I need to post today, to keep me to 3 posts a week. The problem is that I don't have much to write about. I was busy all last week and I only got into EVE to check my skill que and move some minerals around to build 2 Vexors. I have been training my production efficiency skill to reduce the amount of minerals required to manufacturer a ship. At the moment I have trained the skill up to level 3, which has resulted in a 11% reduction in the 7 minerals required to build the Gallente Cruiser.

I'm having trouble figuring out what I want to do with my character in EVE. Now that I have finished the beginning tutorials I'm having a little bit of trouble finding things to do. Originally I was trying to be a miner, but I found that profession monotonous after a few hours of running loads back to the base. So I have decided to pursue ship manufacturing as a profession. The problem was that I could not produce the ships for less that they were selling for on the market. So I looked into making my production more efficient and lo-and-behold there is a skill called 'production efficiency'. I'm still working on leveling it to 5 and hopefully then I can start turning a profit on these Vexors.

I was thinking that I should expand my production to the full line of Gallente Cruisers. I have an Exequror, Celestis and several Vexors. I still need to get a Gallente Thorax but I can't fly them yet. I think the next step is to get into some Battle Cruisers but it may be awhile since I'm focusing on my production skills, rather than my piloting skills.

The problem is that to produce the ships I need minerals, and to get the minerals I need to mine. But if I spend all my time mining I won't have any time for exploring, salvaging or ratting. So basically I have not picked a profession yet. I like salvaging, and it goes hand-in-hand with ratting but I have not found an efficient way to find pirates to rat. This has resulted in my flying from asteroid belt to asteroid belt looking for pirates to destroy and then salvaging their dead husks. I have also been trying my luck in low-sec but as you read before I keep getting podded in the 0.3 Old Man Star. I'll keep you posted.

Friday, December 2, 2011

Old Man Star 0.3

I had a pretty interesting trip into the Old Man Star system on Wednesday and it resulted in me being podded twice. I went into the system to do some scanning and I was hoping to find a radar site or a hidden asteroid field to mine. I did find many anomalies but no sites to hack or mine. I found a couple of Gallente Outposts which I decided to explore.

I wasn't podded twice on Wednesday but once on the first trip and a second time on a goofed salvage operation a few days later. This picture is a screen shot from when I was fighting the separatist pirates. I did not get podded by the pirates, but by a player who was camping the acceleration gate I needed to warp through to get to the pirates.

When I was fighting the pirates I had to warp away to my safe-spot and repair my armor and recharge my shields. I was going back for my 3rd trip to fight the last pirate and that's when the gate camper picked me off. I still have a lot to learn about pvp in EVE since I seem pretty easy to kill to a veteran player. Oh well...

Then I went back 3 days later to pick up some minerals I bought for ship production. Once I jumped into Old Man Star I found 3 ships waiting for me. I was still cloaked since I had just arrived, but once I engaged my warp drive to head to the signature I had bookmarked the shot me out of the sky immediately. I should have just jumped back through the wormhole, rather than trying to warp to another location in the system. I then tried to save my pod but that was destroyed not 2 seconds later. This marks the third time in a week that I have been podded in Old Man Star. I'm just having bad luck in this system. I really need to stop going there.