Blog Advisory – Feedburner and Akismet

Time for a bit of blog administrative business, which I suppose I could spin as a Blaugust post, it being related to the issues that come with a blog.  Or not.  Either way though, it is a post in Blaugust.  We’re about half way through the month.

Feedburner Email

I have been advised by Marina at Follow.it that Feedburner is discontinuing its email syndication program.  Her company apparently has a substitute service they would like to offer me.

And apparently at some point in the distant past I did post a link for people to get my posts via email.  I don’t remember encouraging it at any point after that, but there it is.  I have long since swapped over to recommending the WordPress.com integrated email delivery.

So, if you are subscribed through Feedburner and wish to continue getting my blog posts in you inbox, you will need to switch over to the WordPress.com service.  It is available in the side bar near the top.  Just enter your email address and it will send you a confirmation email that will let you select your preferred deliver method from “immediately on post” (not recommended unless you want to see all my typos), to “daily summary” (I’ve usually fixed a lot of typos by then), to “weekly summary” (which might be a bit too much of me in a single dose).

Feedburner RSS

There was a time when I used to do blog posts about RSS feed.  I think RSS is dying interface from a more civilized age now.

While we’re on the topic of Feedburner, I pretty sure I mentioned at some point that the Google had removed email account recovery as an option from the service (and from Blogger).  I missed the window for recovering my account and have no clue what the password might be, so I couldn’t migrate their email option over to another service even if I had the inclination to do so.

While Google said that they won’t be shutting down feeds of purging accounts Google, as my wife puts it, “Says a lot of things.”  Whether they mean it in the moment is debatable, but we have all learned that promises from companies have an unlisted expiration date.

So I think I am going to recommend that if you’re using a read to read TAGN, that you go with the default WordPress URL, which i:

https://tagn.wordpress.com/feed

I realize that about seven years back I asked everybody to go the other direction, so all I can do is reinforce my change of heart in meme form.

Use your best judgement

Everything will probably be fine for now if you don’t, but if I suddenly disappear from your feed, that might be the immediate cause.

Akismet

Some of you will recognize the name Akismet as the spam comment protection package that comes with… or at least used to come with… WP.com hosted blogs.  I reference it in my blog anniversary posts most years to indicate how many spam comments end up here.  I even have the counter widget down at the bottom of the side bar.

Well, Akismet was broken on WP.com for a stretch, at least for some sites.  That meant rather than about 200 spam comments landing in my spam folder every day I was getting at least 2,000 spam comments to go through, and usually more.

Which means that if you left a comment and it landed in the spam folder this month, I probably didn’t see it.  I am pretty good about going through and fishing out such comments, but when the number gets into the thousands, I just don’t have the will.

WP.com took their time getting to things.  I sent them a note a couple weeks ago, got a response back about ten days later that referred me to a bug they had opened on the issue, and then they closed the support ticket.  The bug got fixed about a week later, which isn’t bad I guess.

But if you leave a comment and it disappears you can always use the contact form on the About page to ask about it.  If I know the name on the comment I can almost always find it.

6,000

Also, after writing this I was looking at the stats and realized that yesterday was post 5,999, which means that this is my 6,000th post.  Another meaningless milestone achieved.

What Does Epic Want?

Always predict the worst and you’ll be hailed as a prophet.

-Tom Lehrer, quoting a friend

The big news in the video game world this week was around Epic Games and Fortnite.

Epic pushed a revision that allowed players to bypass the Apple store and pay Epic direction through their own service, even offering players a financial incentive in the form of a discount to use the Epic payment service over Apple’s.

Apple then removed Fortnite from their store.  This was entirely expected.  Epic knew they were in violation of the terms of service they agreed to when they put Fortnite into the store.

Epic wanted that.  That was clearly part of their plan as they immediately filed a lawsuit against Apple seeking injunctive relief to allow Epic to use their own payment service.  They even had a cute video to post mocking the Apple 1984 ad and setting Apple up as the villain.

Epic claims is that Apple Store is a monopoly and that is engaged in unfair business practices as defined by various state and federal statutes.

They did the same thing on the Andoid side of the house and got pulled from the Google Play store and filed a lawsuit against Google as well with the same set of claims.

Two monopolies selling the same thing is an interesting take, and all the more so since Google allows other storefronts, like the Samsung Galaxy Store.

Tim Sweeney has also been active on social media stirring up anger about the two tech giants that sounds remarkably like the stuff coming out of Washington lately.  He likes to play a PR game where he casts himself as the hero and whoever he is facing as a villain.  We have seen that tack against Steam in the past as he has defended buying out exclusives for games that were already up for pre-order there.

What Does Epic Say They Want?

The lawsuit itself asks for, as noted above, injunctive relief to allow Epic to use its own payment service.

This seems like a non-starter.  It is essentially a request that companies be allowed to offer their applications on the Apple Store, allow them to be downloaded for free, and keep all financial benefit for themselves.  No money for Apple.

This feels like the nuclear option.

Apple (and Google) will fight this tooth and nail for years and have an army of lawyers between them to keep that going with motions and appeals for at least five years before it goes to trial.  They let this go and Facebook, already pressing Apple as well, will be close behind.

There are also some outsiders who might have some interest in this, like Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo.  The Epic lawsuit is an assault on the “walled gardens” of Apple and Google, but it ignores the console vendors who run similar locked store fronts for their own services.

Epic tries to split hairs, in my opinion, by saying that Apple and Google products are necessary for modern life while consoles are not, but I am not sure that fine distinction will fly.

There is also an air of hypocrisy in Epic’s complaint as they themselves run the Epic Store, which takes a percentage of the money from developers who wish their products to appear there.  Yes, they only take 12% as opposed to 30%, but as the punchline goes, we’ve determined what they are and we’re now just haggling over price.  But unless they allow their developers to use their own payment services and bypass sharing the take with Epic, their store might serve as an exhibit for Apple and Google.

I am also not sure the end result of Epic getting their injunctive relief would necessarily be a good thing.

Despite what people might think, running the Apple Store isn’t a low cost operation and Apple (and Google) are not going to carry on hosting things out of the goodness of their heart.  They will want compensation and will look for other avenues, like charging for being listed or amount of downloads, or some other direct method that would hurt more developers than it helps.

And the ability to use your own payment service itself is something likely to help only big companies like Epic in any case.  For all the posturing, Epic is doing this for themselves.

What Does Epic Really Want?

More money.

This is my opinion, but I think that Tim Sweeney is irked that he has to pay Apple and Google 30% of the cut.  He wants to pay less.  I am going to take a shot in the dark here and bet Tim would be happy with 12% which, coincidentally, happens to be the cut the Epic Store takes from its devs.  A reduction to that would probably make all of this go away.

Such an overall reduction would be good for developers big and small in a way the payment plan scheme likely would not.

Apple and Google probably will likely push back on such a cut and we will have to see where things end up.  I wouldn’t be surprised to find the parties have arrived at an agreement over a Steam-like situation where apps that generate more than a given revenue threshold pay a reduced rate.  That will seal the deal on Epic’s motives.

As noted elsewhere, there is also a cost in lost sales to Epic by not be in the Apple and Google stores, so Epic has some incentive to make a deal sooner rather than drag this out to the bitter end.

A resolution like that will also save the consoles makers, Steam, and the Epic Store from a precedent that might come back to haunt them.  Imagine if you got a ruling that essentially says running an online store and requiring a cut of the sale price made you a monopoly?  The law is never static and some lawyer is always keep to stretch a ruling in order to make it fit a different situation, so long as there is some money in it for them.

Mobile is King

The other take away here is that mobile is king when it comes to gaming.  Consoles are still big in the US, and PC is big in the US and EU, but mobile titles bring in more money world wide and dominate in most of Asia.

Epic is suing Apple and Google, and not Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, or Steam, because the money stream from your phone or tablet is the biggest hose… the biggest overall by far and seeing huge growth compared to the stagnant PC numbers and declining console numbers… and Tim Sweeney wants more of that money in his pocket.

The End Result

When this gets settled, and however it gets settled, the rich will get richer and I will be greatly surprised if there is any benefit for small, indie devs at all.

All I want to do right now is Play WoW Classic

I’ve been in the for the four load tests, seen the game overcrowded and behaving badly, sat in long queues, been logged out multiple times, worked with the odd and archaic mechanics, and none of that has deterred me.  I am simply craving WoW Classic.

Why isn’t it the 27th already?

I had a Blaugust post planned for today, a lightly cautionary tale about how thinking you know somebody… and then acting on that… simply because you read their blog can be a mistake.  Something a bit contrarian for “getting to know you” week I suppose.  But I just can’t make that come together right now because I am a bit obsessed about WoW Classic.

If you are a long time reader here you might well be fully justified in thinking that of course I am all in about WoW Classic.  I can be tedious at times in my attention to the past, so you might be right to think this is just another nostalgia trip where I will get all worked up about the good old days yet again.

Didn’t I do enough of that for the EverQuest 20th anniversary already?

And you wouldn’t be wrong to think that I am, in fact, wallowing in nostalgia about now.  I have watched that video I made back in 2012 about the instance group and its first year in WoW more than a few times.

 

There are a lot of old sights in that video.  (I wrote a whole director’s commentary about it back when I posted it, if you are interested.  That would be a way to get to know a lot about me and the group.)

So, yes, guilty as charged on the nostalgia front.

But there is more going on here.  I am also in something of a gaming slump, and all the more so on the MMORPG front.

I feel like I should be logging in to Battle for Azeroth to work on unlocking flying and to see the new content that came with the Rise of Azshara update… but I don’t.  I have barely logged in at all for more than a month now, and the last time I did it was just to do some Darkmoon Faire stuff and a few pet battles.  I am just not feeling it.

There are, of course, lots of other MMORPG options.  I have a bit of a yen to go play something else, maybe get back to LOTRO for the Legendary Server to finish off Moria or perhaps some EverQuest II.  I just don’t feel the drive.  And starting a new game just makes me look at the choices then go back to binge watching Veep and Bob’s Burgers.

EVE Online is still there, but I feel like I am in a slump even in space.  To start with I have been continuously subscribed and playing since late 2011, the longest I have ever gone with any online game without a serious, six month or more, break.  But now there isn’t a war going on, our play battle deployment isn’t thrilling me, so I am feeling a lack of purpose.  I’ve been playing with some alts, but as with other titles, it isn’t holding me.  And the whole Chaos Era thing is hitting a point where I want to step back and let things settle down.  Chaos does not encourage commitment, it just becomes exhausting when it doesn’t stop.

And then I went and played in the WoW Classic load test last weekend and it felt so right.  Simple, fresh, familiar, easy, difficult, slow, fast, crowded, and homey.  I just want to run around and fight over kobold spawns or pick that first hunter pet and start working on skills or spend a silver on the skinning skill and skin all the corpses around the wendigo cave.

I mean, I might be singing a different tune out in Stranglethorn Vale some weeks down the road, trying to collect all those pages, or when I hit that level 40 quest gap.  But those are future problems.   I want the kobolds now!

But wait, there’s more!

I am also pretty excited that we’re getting the band back together for this.  There are still details to work out, like when we can all be online together to play, but we’re together on Discord making plans.  And, honestly, I miss having a regular group.  EVE Online gives me a sense of belonging, but I am always happiest in small groups.  And everybody in the old instance group seems pretty jazzed up about the idea.

And, finally, I really want to see how we do.  It has been a long time since the group first came together back in 2016… at the exact patch level that WoW Classic will be using… to roll up some characters with intent to do the five person dungeon content in World of Warcraft.

There are a lot of posts on the site about the instance group… it has its own category… but at one point I threw together a “summer reruns” post that collected the timeline of our journey through vanilla WoW.

It took us quite a stretch to get through from the Deadmines to unlocking access to Upper Blackrock Spire.  There was a six month gap in our narrative, which extended our time, but we were also pretty bad at doing instances.

Our being bad didn’t stop us back in vanilla.  Honestly, it didn’t really become an issue until later dungeons in The Burning Crusade, finally coming to a head during Wrath of the Lich King where our struggles to slay Prince Keleseth caused us to evaluate exactly how we were getting things done.  We actually took it upon ourselves to read some class guides over at Elitist Jerks, which improved our performance dramatically.

And while we are now about four and a half years out of practice as a group, we likely haven’t forgotten everything, so we won’t regress back to our 2006 selves.  That makes me want to see what experience has taught us.  Back in 2006 we took four runs at the Deadmines before slaying Van Cleef.  In Uldamon it took us three trips and multiple fights to bring down Archaedas, and it was a near run thing when we did manage it.

The Moment of Victory

Then there are the things we missed.  I don’t think we even did any of Dire Maul back then.

So there is a question of “how hard were those dungeons?” versus “how bad were we really back then?” to be tested.  How much have we learned over the years plays up against how much have we forgotten and how much has more than a decade changed us.

There are probably more threads in the weave that is my longing to get stuck into Azeroth of old, and they are all bound together and making the wait difficult.  The proximity of the launch, just a week and a half off, seems so distant that I can’t stand it yet so close that I don’t want to distract myself with anything else.

This is going to be a long wait.

Summer Movie League – Gonna Need a Bigger Lineup

Week eleven of our Summer Fantasy Movie League is in the can and it was the sort of week that people long for, one where a film or two exceeds expectation allowing for a big score relative to the pack… if you make the right picks.

While we are past the blockbuster portion of the summer season, this past week looked like one on which an astute pick or a gamble might let a lucky player climb up the ranks.  The choices were as follows:

The Meg                 $334
Mission: Impossible     $260
Christopher Robin       $177
Slender Man             $171
BlacKkKlansman          $84
The Spy who Dumped Me   $83
Dog Days                $69
Mamma Mia 2             $65
The Equalizer 2         $63
Hotel Transylvania 3    $62
Ant-Man and the Wasp    $52
The Darkest Minds       $38
Incredibles 2           $41
Teen Titans GO!         $31
Jurassic World          $29

Last week when I was finishing up the week ten post I felt that Slender Man was the wild card for the week.  It was based on what is now a well known meme, horror movies always surprise me, generally doing much better than I expect, it didn’t have much competition on the horror front, and the box office projections for it were all over the map, running from $9 million to $25 million.

All of that seemed to indicate that it could do well… or not… which pretty much defines a wild card.

For my Monday Hot Takes league picks though I was not willing to risk it.  I went conservative, running with 3x Mission: Impossible, 2x The Equalizer 2, and 3x Teen Titans GO! for my pick.

The other possible wild card was Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, for which there was no long range forecast and no projections on Monday night when I was writing and doing my first round of picks.  It was priced by FML with the expectation that it could run to about $5-6 million, about half of what they seemed to be calling for Slender Man.

And then there was The Meg, which didn’t seem like much of a wild card at all.  Its long range forecast numbers had been sinking week after week, so that by Monday night it seemed like a toss-up as to whether it would out-perform Mission: Impossible, the latter going into its third weekend.

And I could see why projections for The Meg might be modest.  While not running with a statistically valid sample size, nobody I asked knew what The Meg was about.  I had to look it up myself on Monday night to get the brief on it.  And when I did read up on it, I wasn’t all that impressed by the idea of another shark movie in a world where the Sharknado series, set to release the sixth and promised last installment in the franchise, seemed to have sucked all the oxygen out of the shark tank.

I mean, I love me some Jason Statham, but I wasn’t sure he was going to be enough to carry The Meg very far given my perceived obstacles.

So I did my Monday night picks and felt I needed to keep an eye on Slender Man to see if it was going to hit the high end of expectations or not.  That was the anchor to which I was expecting I might swap.

The movie news sites seem to be past their summer box office obsession now that the blockbusters have passed as well.  It wasn’t until Wednesday that Box Office Pro showed up with some forecasts, and they only deigned to call a top five rather than the ten they were doing earlier in the season.

But in that top five there was BlacKkKlansman estimated at $12 million, ahead of Slender Man, which was only in for $10 million in their estimate.  If true, that made the Spike Lee film very much under-priced and a very likely candidate for the best performer of the week.  It was also clearly going to be the filler of choice, delivering the most box office for the buck.

They were less enthusiastic about The Meg however, calling it at just shy of Mission: Impossible, the latter expected to top the week.

So I swapped by lineup around, going with 2x Mission: Impossible, 5x BlacKkKlansman, and 1x Ant-Man and the Wasp.

Summer Movie League – My Week Eleven Picks

Box Office Pro tends to be a bit optimistic on its calls, so I felt that my other plan, 1x Mission: Impossible, 7x BlacKkKlansman might not be optimal for a league with no best performer bonus.  However, that pick went to all my other leagues.

That is where I left things until I saw the Thursday night preview estimates pop up on Twitter.  Actually, I only saw one estimate before lock time for all of the other leagues, the estimate for The Meg, which was $4 million.

That seemed like a lot.

There is always the question as to how much one should value the Thursday night previews, with talk of multipliers between 5x and 8x depending on a range of factors.  But I was thinking that if Mission: Impossible did $6 million in its preview and topped $60 million, then The Meg was most certainly going to get well past the meager $20 million forecasts.

And so, minutes before the final lock, I swapped all my still unlocked leagues to 1x The Meg and 7x BlacKkKlansman.

And then, of course, The Meg did $45 million for the weekend, more than double Mission: Impossible.  Warner Bros. did a last minute social media campaign that helped lift it past modest projections.  The Meg was the way to go, with the optimum pick for the league being 2x The Meg, 3x BlacKkKlansman, 1x The Incredibles 2, 1x The Darkest Minds, and an empty screen!

Summer Movie League – Week Eleven Perfect Pick

A perfect pick with an empty screen is a pretty rare bird, so it isn’t surprising that nobody went for it, and only two people were on board with The Meg, leaving the scores for the week looking like this:

1. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex – $121,319,505
2. Goat Water Picture Palace – $97,034,466
3. Wilhelm’s Abyssal Pocket Playhouse – $97,034,466
4. Joanie’s Joint – $90,687,957
5. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – $81,631,751
6. Too Orangey For Crows – $78,904,468
7. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – $74,657,452
8. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – $73,483,913
9. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $68,495,990
10. Ben’s X-Wing Express – $55,706,528

Only ten people got their picks in for the week, which I think is a new low.  Ah well.

Corr won the week, with Goat and I tied for second with the same pick.  The tables were turned from last week, when Corr and I different in lineup only on the main anchor.  I chose right that time, going with Mission: Impossible over Christopher Robin.  This time he got the anchor right.

Meanwhile Po, who went with The Meg as anchor as well, was pulled down by betting heavily on the under-performing Dog Days. which was in seventh spot for pricing but ended up in twelfth for box office.

Slender Man, while about spot-on for the price, was not a good option in the face of two over performing titles.

The scores for the season now look like this:

1. Corr’s Carefully Curated Cineplex – $1,014,013,866
2. Wilhelm’s Abyssal Pocket Playhouse – $1,000,863,301
3. Goat Water Picture Palace – $967,074,533
4. Miniature Giant Space Hamsterplex – $900,240,793
5. I HAS BAD TASTE – $890,174,972
6. SynCaine’s Dark Room of Delights – $886,033,509
7. Ben’s X-Wing Express – $874,876,673
8. Darren’s Unwatched Cineplex – $874,791,320
9. Vigo Grimborne’s Medieval Screening Complex – $874,563,834
10. Po Huit’s Sweet Movie Suite – $864,197,348
11. Joanie’s Joint – $818,064,804
12. Too Orangey For Crows – $817,567,373
13. grannanj’s Cineplex – $813,493,200
14. Kraut Screens – $689,378,141
15. Paks’ Pancakes & Pics – $641,653,028
16. Biyondios! Kabuki & Cinema – $639,347,136
17. Skar’s Movies and Meat Pies – $611,478,501
18. aria82’s Cineplex – $605,936,381

I am going to have to go back and note, for the final season scores, how many weeks people missed.  The cut to make the list this week was $600 million.  Next week I think it will be $700 million.

Last week I was $10 million ahead of Corr.  This week he is now $13 million ahead of me.  Again, we can see how quickly that close of a lead can change, though it does require the leader to make a mistake, so I am depending on Corr to blow it if I am to have a chance.

All of which brings us to week twelve of the season, the choices for which are:

Crazy Rich Asians      $358
The Meg                $356
Mile 22                $296
Mission: Impossible    $193
BlacKkKlansman         $129
Christopher Robin      $128
Alpha                  $89
Slender Man            $84
The Spy who Dumped Me  $61
Mamma Mia 2            $56
Hotel Transylvania 3   $55
The Equalizer 2        $51
Ant-Man and the Wasp   $43
Incredibles 2          $39
Dog Days               $23

This week sees Jurassic World, Teen Titans GO!, and The Darkest Minds fall off the list.

Coming in we have Crazy Rich Asians, Mile 22, and Alpha.

Crazy Rich Asians, another comdey-drama, this time set at a rich wedding in Singapore. It leads the pack in pricing this week, though only by a hair. The last long range forecast has it running at about $15 million for the week, though it has been trending up. Either somebody thinks it is going to do significantly better than that or they think that The Meg, priced two dollars less, is going to drop precipitously from its $45 million week eleven opening. In addition, Crazy Rich Asians opens today, so there will be no Thursday night previews to pile onto the weekend total, but we’ll be able to see how it does on its opening night before the league closes.

Mile 22 is Marky Mark back as an action hero. There is also John Malkovich in it as well.  Mark Wahlberg always strikes me as a stand-in for a real action hero, like he is somebody you go with when your first choice isn’t available.  But might just be me.  Anyway, this is supposed to be the launch of a new action franchise, if the film does well. Long range forecasts had it at $18 million for the weekend, which I guess either means that such forecasts aren’t really worth mentioning or that the people who do FML pricing have better sources than I do (most likely the latter), because it looks like somebody thinks it will only do 83% of what Crazy Rich Asians will make over the weekend.

And then there is Alpha, a prehistoric tale of a boy and his dog. Seriously. It is about an ice age hunter who befriends a wolf. Early estimates put it in for around $7-10 million.  That puts it awkwardly in the crowded high end filler section.

Which leaves me trying to decipher the FML late summer pricing strategy. Last week FML got it badly wrong on two films, and while they have given BlacKkKlansman the usual over-perfomers pricing punishment I cannot figure out the plan for The Meg.

If The Meg drops 60% from its opening, which would be a big drop, it still lands at around $27 million, which is more than any estimate I can find for Crazy Rich Asians. Is The Meg a one-week-wonder, destined to collapse completely? I don’t know, but for my Monday Hot Takes picks I wasn’t inclined to believe that, so I went with 2x The Meg, 1x The Spy Who Dumped Me, and 5x Ant-Man and the Wasp. File that under “things that make sense on Monday night.”

But now it is Wednesday morning and the league is going to lock in less than 24 hours so be sure to go and make your picks.

Delve – Still Ratting, Still Mining, Still Manufacturing

The New Eden monthly economic report for July 2017 is out, a little later than usual, but better late than never.

Getting straight to the ISK sinks and faucets chart, it does look like the changes in June update regarding super carrier ratting have continued to hold, as total bounties remain on a downward slope.

July 2017 – Top Sinks and Faucets over time

That still seems like a lot of ISK from bounties, even if the trend is downward for the moment.  CCP made no further adjustments in the July update, and tomorrow’s planned update does not mention anything in that regard in the patch notes.

However, while the overall amount from bounties is down, in Delve they are actually up some, topping the July number by about 400 billion ISK.

July 2017 – NPC Bounties by Region

That is still down from the May peak, when the number was 8.8 trillion ISK in bounties.  But the bulk of the reduction in the bounty pay outs seems to be coming from other regions in New Eden.

Likewise, the care bear reputation of Delve is reinforced by the mining output for the region.

July 2017 – Mining Value by Region

That chart shows the value of mining in Delve up from 8.5 trillion ISK in June to 10.2 trillion ISK in July.  Of course, those values are influence by the market value of the output, so if actual ore mined was the same, but prices rose, that output value would rise as well.  I don’t watch the mineral and ore markets, so couldn’t tell you if actual amount mined was up or if prices are rising some.

And then there was production, which was up considerably since June, no doubt consuming all that mining output and then some.

July 2017 – Production Value by Region

Delve became the number one manufacturing region in New Eden, edging out The Forge by about a trillion ISK in value.  Though, if you add up the regions close to Jita, The Forge, The Citadel, and Lonetrek, high sec manufacturing for the Jita market is still dominant.

Looking at the key economic indicators chart, you can see that Delve still imports a lot, most of it from Jita, while the exports are negligible.

July 2017 – Key Regional Stats Compared

So I suppose I can be all “Yay Delve!  We’re #1” and such.

However, since the beginning of August the Imperium has taken its show on the road, landing in Hakonen in the Lonetrek region, where we seem determined to anchor a Fortizar no matter how many attempts it takes.

With all the combat pilots moving north, those left behind hoping to rat and mine in peace have been in for a rude awakening, with Rorquals and carriers going down in flames to roving gangs.  The Delve defense system has been denuded and losses have been mounting.

So the question will be how much of an impact will this have on the Delve ratting and mining numbers?  Will Delve top the charts for player ship losses come the August report? Tune in next month to see what sort of change is in store.

Fortizar Down in Hakonen Again

Round three of the battle to secure a Fortizar in Hakonen ended pretty much the same way that the previous two attempts did, with the Fortizar in question exploding.  I sat on grid to watch it after most everybody else has stood down.

One might well paraphrase Wellington for this fight.  “We deployed it in the same old way and they blew it up in the same old way.”

The now familiar pattern started as the timer drew down.  They first arrived with Machariels and Abaddons supported by Apostles for triage.

Battleships spreading out on arrival

Then a cyno went up and the mass of super carriers and Apostles, with a few titans in support, jumped into the system.

Hostile supers on grid

They in turn put fighters and drones on the Fortizar, stopping the timer at 13m 51s, a point from which the repair cycle never budged.

Timer stopper

We had capitals on stand-by, but did not bring them out to face the super capital gauntlet again.  No aggressive drops of dreadnoughts in hope of knocking out a few supers happened.  We stuck with sub caps for this round.

I was with the ECM Burst fleet again, hovering on a perch in my Atron, waiting to be warped in on hostiles to break their target locks.

Again my Atron swoops down upon the foe

After a few runs my security status was down to -7.1.  I am no longer safe to wander through high sec.  I will have to do quite a bit of ratting at some later date to fix that.

Our main striking force was a pair of Typhoon fleets whose progress I could mark from my perch by following the explosions.

Typhoons blowing up, they didn’t align in time

At one point both Typhoon fleets warped in on the far side of the fight, putting the hostiles between themselves and the Fortizar.  I put my camera on the fleet as it began to erupt in a near continuous series of explosions.

They did not stay on grid for long, warping off after taking quite a few losses in exchange for a few Machariels.  Our defense was called off shortly thereafter.

The fight itself was not plagued by as much time dilation as the previous two rounds, something a people on coms were quick to attribute to the fact that many of the groups in the conflict declared war on each other since the last fight.  That was alleged to lighten the load on Crime Watch, though the fact that there were 800 fewer people in local for the fight seemed a more likely explanation to me.  The war decs will likely just mean less worry about gate guns firing on people.

The battle report reflects the fact that we spent less time on grid fighting, with total losses adding up to less than 10% of the second fight and only 25% that of the first.

Battle Report Header for Round Three

The ratio of losses remained close to the same 70/30 split of the previous two fights, so we are consistent on that front.  We clearly lost the ISK war, but we drew some blood.

As a skeptical line member, whose only insight into overall strategy is what he reads in the papers, I am not sure where this Fortizar plan is headed.  It was reported that the fight managed to cover the deployment of a couple more Astrahus citadels in hostiles space.  These “roach motels,” as they have been dubbed, are set to be open to anybody, so if you want to camp in Tribute or Vale of the Silent, there are now rest stops where you can tether and repair or dock up for the night.

Attempts to return the favor by dropping citadels in Delve have been thwarted so far.

And even as we were fighting last night, another Fortizar was anchoring in Hakonen.

Aptly named “Another One”

This Fortizar is different in two ways.

First, it is in a slightly different location, since it was deployed while the one that just died was also going online.  Everybody will have to make new bookmarks.

Second, it is set to anchor and hit its 15 minute repair cycle during EUTZ, giving out European brethren a bite at the apple and some content of their own.  Will Jay Amazingness and the European members of the Imperium fare any better than we in the USTZ have done?  I suppose we’ll get the answer about two hours after this post goes live.  The fun is supposed to start at some point after 18:00 EVE time.

Anyway, as the line member space tourist, I’ll keep logging on for these fights.  It is what I signed up to do.  Join the Imperium and see New Eden!

Astrahus Busting in Aridia

Citadels are all over New Eden at this point, with the medium sized model, the Astrahus becoming a common site just about any place I fly.

Saturday gave us the opportunity to clean up a few of these citadels.

A fleet went up on Asher Saturday evening (at which point it was already Sunday in New Eden) with the objective to go shoot some things, which is usually a euphemism shooting structures.  It was an Augor Navy Issue fleet, which meant lasers, which are good for structure shoots as you generally don’t have to reload a laser unless a frequency crystal burns out over time.

I was actually in the middle of something and didn’t see the fleet was up until almost 45 minutes after it had been announced, generally a sign that it might be too late to catch up.  But it was Saturday evening, structures take a while to shoot, and we haven’t been going too far afield for these sorts of things, so I decided to log in all the same to see if I could join in.

Logged in and on coms, I was able to spot where they were using the map option that shows where fleet members are located and the destination was linked in fleet after I had set out, so I was able to take gates and link up with the fleet shortly after they had arrived at what sounded like was their second target for the night, an NCDot Astrahus that was coming online.

An Astrahus in Aridia

When a citadel finishes its deployment cycle, it then has to go online, a process which isn’t too long, but which can be interrupted by shooting at it.  This is the best time to kill a citadel, as it cannot defend itself during that time and you can kill it right then and there without any additional timers.

I appreciate that CCP decided not to carry on with the whole entosis link module thing when it came to citadels.  Everybody shooting something is at least a bit more interesting (and much prettier when you’re using lasers) than a fleet sitting around watching one person use their Fozzie laser on a structure or command node.  But to keep citadels from just being blapped quickly out of existence by a supercap fleet when coming online, there is a cap on the amount of damage that can be applied.

For an Astrahus, if you are applying damage at the cap, it takes 22 minutes to kill one when it is vulnerable.  So we were out there with our Fountain allies, LowSechnaya Sholupen, blazing away at the citadel named, if I recall right, Steak and Onions.

ANIs shooting the citadel

This was the second NCdot Astrahus on the list of targets for the night, another having been popped earlier in the evening.  NCDot apparently wanted to seed the route down to Delve with citadels to cover any potential move op, but didn’t use a neutral alt corp and subsequently didn’t show up to defend the citadels as they went online.

And so I got to see my first Astrahus explosion. (kill mail)

Citadel goes critical

I will put the explosion sequence I caught in the gallery at the end of the post.

After that, our we diverted off to help LowSechnaya Sholupen with a tower belonging to The-Culture (formerly that part of Black Legion that wanted to live in null sec) that was coming out of reinforcement.  They even provided a titan to bridge us over to the fight.

An Avatar tethered on a different Astrahus

Given how careful we tend to be with our titans, it was kind of fun just to see one hanging out on a citadel waiting to bridge us.  We were bridged out but arrived a little too late to get a kill on the tower.  The shields were already up past 50%, so they could add more stront.  Along the way there Asher was looking for somebody with a cyno… and eventually somebody had to go buy one… during which time it came out that, while nobody had one, several of us came armed with festival launchers.  SynCaine was in fleet and called me out for being on that list, so I targeted him and sent some copper fireworks his way.

SynCaine’s ANI

The cyno was so we could bring in a few LowSechnaya Sholupen to join us in the fight that eventually developed around the tower, where we traded a few ANIs for a Minokawa fax machine and some Rattlesnakes, which won us the ISK war for sure.  On the down side, mine was one of the ANIs that went down.  Hopefully somebody looted that festival launcher.  Good thing I brought down an extra.

If you look at that kill mail, I clearly forgot to clear my cargo hold after moving the ship down to Delve.  Ah well.  I was at least reminded to empty out the cargo holds of a few other ships.

I was able to watch the battle from my pod as the hostiles couldn’t spare any attention to blow me up.  That put me on a couple more kill mails as a pod, including the one for the Malediction that had tackled me.  When the fight was over I had to warp over to the POS to get somebody to blow me up and send me home.

That was it for the moment.  The fleet headed back home and there were some administrative things to look into.  But a while later a Confessor fleet went up in order to bust the third Astrahus of the night, and the second for me.  Keeping to what seemed to be a food theme, this one was called Meatball Sub.

Your meatball sub will be up in about two and a half minutes

This citadel shoot also went uncontested.  We got ourselves anchored up and, once the timer finished its count down, opened fire on it.

Confessors firing on the Astrahus

LowSechnaya Sholupen and a couple of their allies joined in for this kill as well.  Even with a smaller fleet… no dreadnoughts helping out this time around… we seemed to be able to hit the damage cap fairly easily.  You can tell when you’re there as you will start registering zero damage hits every so often as the damage output exceeds the cap.

I tried to get a different camera angle on the second Astrahus when it exploded, but the underside view wasn’t dramatically different.  And it all leaves the same wreckage in the end.

Astrahus remains

Once done it was back home to Delve.  Not exactly a huge set of blows against NCDot.  Astrahuses are pretty expendable.  But it was nice to finally get to see a couple of them explode.  If you’re going to shoot structures, you ought to get a pretty payoff when they blow.  More explosion pictures in the gallery from the op below.