The EVE Online June Update to End Cloaky Camping and Open a Low Sec Gate to Stain

CCP announced last month that they were taking aim at the menace of cloaky camping, and their solution to the issue went in with today’s patch update.

No longer in testing, but they didn’t put up a new graphic

As previously mentioned, CCP’s plan to address cloaky camping is to introduce a deployable called a Mobile Observatory which sends out a system-wide ping every 10 minutes that has a chance to decloak any cloaked ships in the system.

The blueprints for Mobile Observatories were seeded into the market today and the associated changes are now live.

The Mobile Observatory

As you can see from the above, the structure only lasts for an hour and 40 minutes, so you get only 9 pings out of it once deployed.

As a counter, any ship that does cloak is given 15 minutes of protection from being decloaked.  CCP has set that timer the same everywhere, but has indicated that it may, in the future, give different modules of hulls a bonus to that time.

This change has not made those for or against cloaky camping happy.  Those looking to eliminate the practice bring up the expense and the vulnerability of the deployable, which can be blown up with just a few salvos from a stealth bomber.  Those who favor the practice fear that these modules will be spammed everywhere and multiple times per system so that being decloaked after 15 minutes is almost guaranteed.  I suppose we will see who is right.

Also in today’s update are four new empire gates, including the long asked for low sec gate to the Stain region.  The new gate locations are:

• Hykkota (The Forge) Ahbazon (Genesis)
• Irgrus (Metropolis) Pakhshi (Genesis)
• Kenninck (Placid) Eggheron (Solitude)
• Saminer (Tash-Murkon) F7-ICZ (Stain)

I expect that the Stain Russians are both very happy and are already camping that gate.

A monument has been placed in each of the systems where these new gates are locate that list out the names of the top players and corporations that participated in the event around the gate construction.

It also means the end of StainGuy, who long advocated for this low sec gate to Stain and swore he’d biomass his character if CCP ever actually put in it the game.  He is going to mothball the character instead to keep anybody else from grabbing the name… but not before a final farewell.

Those are the two big items with today’s update, but there are a number of smaller items, including the ability to filter the fleet composition window.  But for me, the other big fix was the change to the UI Only Mode indicator.

UI Only Mode, or Super Potato Mode, introduced last October just in time for some epic Keepstar fights in Delve, allows users to turn off the graphics rendering with the command Control-Shift-F9.  The main downside was the large opaque reminder that players were in UI Only Mode that hung right in the middle of the screen in the way of just about anything you wanted to look at. (e.g. scrolling messages, brackets on grid)

It would just sit there

With today’s update that message now fades away after 30 seconds, leaving you to peacefully watch overview brackets in peace without a big sign in the middle of the screen.

The T5ZI gate in 1DQ and the bubbles around it

In a way having the UI off and just brackets on is like having an air traffic controller view of an area.  I sat for a while and watched ships move around the gate and Keepstar grid in 1DQ.  It was relaxing in its own way.

Delta Squad’s symbol above the main Keepstar

Anyway, the patch has been deployed and is live, so the changes are in place and we have to live with them.

Full details are available in the patch notes.

CSM16 Voting Begins Today

Voting for candidates in the CSM16 election begins today (and not yesterday, as CCP accidentally indicated for about 20 minutes yesterday morning) and runs through until downtime on June 15th.

The time to vote is NOW!  The instructions are at the link above.

CSM16 voting is here

I have been skeptical of the whole idea since it was announced back in 2008, back when people served six month terms and we had two elections a year, and I haven’t really changed my mind on that.

Picking subject matter experts for a focus group through a popularity contest, which is what all elections amount to, does not seem like the best idea and the CSM only has as much influence as CCP allows it.  It lacks any agency.  (Unless it takes the discussion out of school, which worked exactly once.) Things have been good lately, but bad times are not that far in the past and CCP seems to ebb and flow on the importance of the CSM.  Good ideas have broken on the rocks of CCP indifference for years and bad ideas been championed by CCP against the advice of the CSM.

Still, you work with the process you have, not the process you want, and hope for the best.  You want good people there when CCP decides to listen.  So I encourage people to go vote for sensible candidates that represent their views.  Or meme candidates that will disrupt meetings.  Whatever you think will help.  You do you.

There are 47 candidates on the ballot.  I listed them out with links to their candidate forum post.  I also tried to sort them out into a few general categories, but aside from “incumbents” your mileage may vary.

The candidate field for CSM16

In order to publicize the election, CCP has a daily login reward event going on this week, featuring skill points and some of the other standard items.

Daily Login Rewards

Per the usual routine, Omega clones get all the rewards, Alpha clones get only the top row.  And, of course, Alpha clones cannot vote.

As for how the election will go, that is always an open question.

As I noted in the candidate post, with World War Bee going on there are more players invested in the game, at least theoretically.  But the war is in stalemate and both sides can only bloviate as they try to win the war on /r/eve while the peak concurrent user count has been in a state of decline since about week 32 of the war, back in February, which coincided with PAPI’s recovery from the M2-XFE loss and their finishing up taking all but the final constellation in Delve.

Maybe turnout will exceed last years 36K ballots cast… or maybe not.

Most major null sec blocs will have their suggested ballots.  So far the only one I have see has been the Imperium, which announced theirs on the Meta Show on Saturday.

1. Merkelchen
2. Innominate
3. Brisc Rubal
4. Baculus Orden
5. Broodin
6. Angry Mustache
7. Micromancer
8. Xenuria
9. Suitonia
10. i Beast

While the ballot is ten candidates long, the Imperium’s votes are generally only enough to get two candidates in for sure, so Merkelchen and Innominate are all but guaranteed a seat.  After that point candidates on the list have to have a constituency outside of the Imperium.  Brisc Rubal has managed that in the past.  Suitonia, i Beast, and even Xenuria have followings outside the Imperium as well, but I would be surprised if more than four people on that list of ten made the cut.  We shall see.

Anyway, since I insist on guessing ahead of time, here is how I think it will play out, in order of who will make the cut, revised from my previous estimate:

1. Merkelchen (first round)
2. Gobbins (first round)
3. Vily
4. Innominate
5. Kenneth Feld
6. Phantomite or Rixx Javix
7. *wildcard*
8. Mike Azariah
9. Whoever is second on the TEST/Legacy ballot
10. Brisc Rubal, ahead of 11th by less than 100 votes

So there we are.  We will see how wrong I am on June 21st when CCP announced the results.

Anyway, once again, the instructions for voting are available here.  Do what you need to.

Related:

• CCP – Daily Democracy – Vote in CSM 16
• INN – Voting for CSM 16 Opens Today

Ansiblex Clash in Cloud Ring

On Saturday I was down in Delve again in a fleet for a project that will be the topic of another post later this week.  But while people were down there, PanFam came by and reinforced the Ansiblex jump bridge and Pharolux cyno beacon in F7C-H0, the staging system for the Goon Expeditionary Force deployment.

We came back on Sunday for the final timers, with some early pings to ask people to be on hand and ready should PanFam decide to come back and contest the final timers for the two structures.  I logged myself in and got in my Guardian, assuming that Sacrileges would be the main doctrine yet again, and I was not disappointed.

The ping came that PanFam was coming and I quickly jumped into the Sac fleet being run by Apple Pear.  That fleet filled up and a Jackdaw fleet was called as well.  In addition, the Initiative had some Abaddons ready to go and capitals were logging on in case the fight escalated.  When the word came to undock the hostiles were already in system and time dilation was kicking in.  I got to watch ships streaming out of the Keepstar for almost a minute before the client got around to drawing the structure.

Undocking from the invisible Keepstar

There were PanFam Hurricanes and Feroxes already on grid around the two contested structures, with the beacon under attack.  We warped out and interdictors starting dropping warp disruption bubbles to hold the hostiles down.

The Pharolux cyno beacon being hit

The Hurricanes were close by when we landed and the Sac fleet began hitting them when we landed.  Anchored up, I put my drones out to take care of any small targets that wandered into range, but initially we had little to do as logi save keep up.  The Hurricanes were focused on killing the beacon, and we were likewise focused on the Hurricanes.

Sacrileges moving on anchor

They were lingering outside of drone range for me (60km) so I mostly had my drones chasing around their Sabres and the occasional command destroyer that might MJD us away from the fleet.  With the beacon down the fight moved towards the jump gate.

The new center of the fight

We remained focused on the Hurricanes.  The Ferox fleet was further off and TEST alliance was around with a small fleet of Zealots and another of bombers to try and third party on the whole thing, but Hurricanes remained the closest targets.

Hurricane taking hits by the Ansiblex jump gate

Meanwhile, at the peak of the fight, time slowed down, as it always does, with time dilation down to 10%, which meant everything was taking ten times as long to accomplish.

A sign of a big fight… or an Imperium move op

The TEST bombers began making runs on our fleet.  Running in slow motion meant our ability to react was good, I was able to turn off my MWD with each run, but it also meant they had lots of time to consider their warps and launches.  Things began to get busy for logi and people broadcast for bomb damage.  We had to get somebody in command to set the marker for when people should broadcast (below 50% armor) to get a handle on the stream of requests.

Meanwhile, we had undocked super carriers and a few titans who warped onto grid to take shots at the various hostile fleets.  There was also a fleet of dreadnoughts waiting to drop if PanFam escalated to capitals.  However, the dreads were disappointed as no targets came for them.

Then the jump gate exploded.  The Hurricanes had done their work.

The jump gate goes up

But that did not mean the fight was over.  There was still a fight going on around the wreck of the gate.

My Guardian in a tight turn to keep up

Interdictors kept bubbles up on the hostiles as they tried to pull away and more Hurricanes were hit as they attempted to run.

Hurricane target

The TEST bombers kept making runs, keeping those of us in logi busy.  Looking at the kill mails for some of them, they were being less than picky about targets, hitting PanFam and us (and themselves occasionally), but we were a big, obvious ball of ships so were targeted regularly.

The fight eventually moved to the gate out of the system where we congregated to try and grab those trying to get away.

On to the gate

There the fight petered out as those who were able got away.

PanFam won the objective, the beacon and the jump gate were both destroyed.

The Keepstar framed by the broken jump gate

However, the cost of doing that was pretty high according to the battle report.

Battle Report Header

We clearly won the ISK was by a fair margin… by a margin big enough to replace the two structures certainly.  A new jump bridge was in place not too long later.

As we were coming down from the fight, covering capitals as they got back to where they needed to be, a pair of ISD Polaris frigates showed up to see what was going on.

ISD out for a Sunday drive

They were no doubt scoping out what we had been up to.

ISD on the overview

ISD does a few things, including work on the stories from New Eden that go on The Scope or the Interstellar Correspondents page, so maybe the fight will get a mention.  I am given to understand that ISD members with the “BH” prefix are “bug hunters,” so maybe something happened during the fight that send them out to take a look.

Either way, the fight seemed to get positive reviews from both sides over on /r/eve.

Friday Bullet Points Gaze into the Future

Another Friday where I have a few items that I could probably force into full length posts, but I just don’t have the stamina to get there.  So I will pack them into one post.

Truth in Advertising?

There was a recent Star Citizen weekly update from RSI that seemed to unintentionally confirmed my suspicions.

It barely feels like it has been 25 years

The update itself was a lore item about some in-game entity celebrating its 50th anniversary, but the first glace at the top of the message made me wonder if they were admitting it was going to take 50 years to get where they plan to go.

Apple and OpenGL

One tidbit that came up at Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference was the plan to deprecate OpenGL support with the Mojave release of the MacOS and in iOS 12.  This led to a panic about there being no more video games on the Mac.

I haven’t been to a WWDC since 1995…

OpenGL has been around for a long time and, among other things, its openess helped nVidia get in and dethrone 3dfx Interactive and their proprietary Glide API back in the day.  And deprecate doesn’t mean pulling it out wholesale.  It will still be there for a couple of years.  But if you find a problem or need an update, Apple isn’t going to help you.

Still, Apple will drop it eventually.  Past history says that will probably get announced in 2020 or so.  Apple would like you to use their Metal interface instead, and some companies have support for that on the way.  You can use Metal with World of Warcraft currently if your hardware and OS are current. (And probably should use it, as it fixes a crashing issue with WoW.)  But if you are a serious PC gamer you probably have a Windows partition on you Mac, if not a Windows machine already.

Blizzard and Diablo IV

It was noted that Blizzard had posted a job listing looking for a dungeon artist for an as yet unannounced Diablo project.  This led to a hysteria of complaints and the projection of personal feelings onto the idea.  Just Google “diablo iv” and look at the headlines. (And yes, I am going to call it Diablo IV at this point.)  Everything from “when are we going to get it?” to “Oh lord, no!” pops up.  So I figured I ought to note this as the week the controversy began.  We know nothing so far, but some people are already angry.

I for one welcome our new demonic overlords.

Despite the one-two punch of the auction house and the horrible itemization (the latter which I remain convinced was there to drive you to the auction house), Blizzard eventually got the game in order by killing the auction house and fixing itemization, making Diablo III a pretty decent game.  The “always online” bit is still annoying, but Blizz is hardly alone in demanding that.  And they have continued to tend the now six year old game, which is more than they ever did for Diablo II.  By any practical measure the game is a success and warrants a sequel. (It sold lots of copies on the PC and consoles.)

Hopefully Blizzard will run with what they have learned and stick with the roots of Diablo as the foundation for the next game rather than, say, making it a Battle Royale title or something.

Minecraft Subnautica

On a closer horizon, the Minecraft Java Edition 1.13 release, the Aquatic Update, looks to be slowly making its way to us.

Under the sea…

The update entered pre-release at the start of the week, whatever that means, so I think we should be getting the official release soon.  I have actually been avoiding our Minecraft server, knowing that I’ll want to go play when this hits.

Free Games for Amazon Prime Subscribers

In yet another benefit for Amazon Prime subscribers, you can now download any of five free games before the end of June.

Amazon Prime benefits

The games are Tumblestone, Treadnauts, Strafe, Banner Saga, and Banner Saga 2.  You need to have the Twitch client to download them (the Twitch client is what the old Curse client became when Amazon bought Curse… and Twitch) and you need to have linked your Twitch account to your Amazon account.  This sounds like a recurring deal, so there will likely be more games in the future as the Amazon Prime largess train continues on.

As an aside, the first version of this Amazon post I saw said it was six games.

Is it five or six?

However the image only shows five games and I didn’t click on the link until later, so I don’t know if there was a sixth game at one point, if a sixth game was planned but was removed and the word didn’t get out, or if it was always five games and somebody just messed up.  (h/t to Corr who first linked this to me and who had that second image handy.)

Pokemon Zygarde Download Event

Despite the impending end of Pokemon on the Nintendo 2DS/3DS, download events continue for the current core RPG titles.  During the month of June in the US you can go to your local GameStop for a download code for a shiny Zygarde.

Zygarde

This event is only for Pokemon Sun & Moon and Pokemon UltraSun & UltraMoon.  Instructions for claiming the legendary Pokemon are available at the Pokemon site.

Minecraft 1.12 World of Color Update Goes Live

While I haven’t been all that active on our Minecraft server of late, the Minecraft team has pressed on with new features for the PC version of the game, releasing the 1.12 update, called “World of Colors” yesterday.

World of Colors indeed

The high level change log list is this:

• Added Glazed Terracotta blocks
• Renamed Hardened Clay to Terracotta
• Added Concrete Powder blocks
• Added Concrete blocks
• Updated base color palette
• Added advancements
• Added recipe book
• Added Knowledge Book item
• Added Parrots
• Added functionality to save toolbars in creative mode
• Added text-to-speech narrator
• Added new sounds for the Note blocks
• Added commands relating to recipes and advancements
• Many minor fixes and changes
• Removed Herobrine

As to what the bullet points mean, you have to go to the wiki for some of that.

Color is certainly the theme, with the new concrete and glazed terracotta blocks.  Mentioned a bit further down the list is that beds now also come in colors.  The default bed with the red blanket is gone, the blanket will be the same color as the wool you use to make it.

Black wool and white wool examples

Beds are also now springy, so you can bounce off of them.  This bounciness negates some falling damage and a player can fall as far as 41 blocks onto a bed and not die.  I made the two beds above and jumped off the top of my forest manor a few times to test this.  You do indeed bounce off of them and take much less damage.

Advancements have replaced achievements in the game, which means you get to re-earn essentially the same set of achievements all over again.  There are some differences, the idea of advancements being to help guide new players, but many of them are the same.

I killed a creeper with a bow and got these two…

There are also new hints as to how to play which show up when appropriate.

When I first logged in…

Technically, that isn’t correct.  You move with W, A, S, D, and your mouse, as in a first person shooter, but whatever.

Probably one of the bigger changes in this release is the introduction of a recipe book.

What can I make?

This brings the PC version in line with the Windows 10, console, and Pocket Edition versions of the game.

The book shows you the items you can make, adding recipes and you obtain items that can be used to craft.  For example, I picked up an iron block out of a chest and it added the anvil to my recipe book.

I already have a few, but thanks

This should be a great help to new players, as the recipes in the crafting system can be somewhat arcane and you either had to memorize them or look them up online.  When you select a recipe while at the crafting station, the game will populate the materials for you.  Clicking it again will give you two copies and so on.  If you’re missing ingredients, the ingredients will be highlighted in red… though it would be nice if only the missing ones were.  And, if you step away from the crafting station to fetch your missing ingredients, items left in the crafting station won’t fall on the floor any more.  They will now go back into your inventory.

Of course, after all of that, the reason I had to log in last night was parrots.  Found in jungle biomes and tamable with seeds, that was my quest for the evening.  And I had to look for quite a while before I found one. (Though I saw a lot more ocelots than I usually do, so it seems like their spawn rate got tweaked.)  Finally, after trekking through the jungle, I spotted one, fed him some seeds, and tamed him.

My green parrot

They come in five different types of plumage, fly around while following you, and land on your shoulder when then can.  Also, they die if you feed them a cookie.

Anyway, more to explore with Minecraft, the game that keeps on giving.

 

TNT Joins the Keepstar Club

TNT CEO Wibla announced yesterday that our Keepstar project, which had been collecting donations of ISK and materials since February or so, had finally come to fruition.

Oh my, what might this be? #tweetfleet #eveonline http://pic.twitter.com/aDgVCaHyLP

— Wibla (@Wibla_) June 7, 2017

I kicked in a billion ISK, which isn’t all that much relative to the cost of the thing, but which represented about 10% of my ISK on hand at the moment.  So I had to go visit it.

The TNT Keepstar named “Wibla’s temple of SHOOTBLUES”

The Keepstar is the largest of the Upwell Consortium citadels. It is big enough to allow super captial ships to dock, something that was a big change when they were introduced a little more than a year ago.  And, since the YC119.5 update, there are alliance and corporation logos visible on them.

The TNT logo between the uprights

That logo is pretty big.  I tried getting a sense of its scale by flying my Ishtar, a cruiser hull, up to it.  You can just see the green tethering line ending in my ship. (It is easier to pick out if you click on the picture to see a larger version.)

Tiny Ishtar, big logo

All I can say is that it is very big, which makes the Keepstar itself huge.  There are a few other structures anchored in the vicinity from which the Keepstar is easily visible.

A human structure clearly visible from 3,000km away is big indeed.  You can see the other structures from the Keepstar… the Azbel at 3,000km is visible in the background of the giant logo screen shot… but they are much harder to pick out.

So we are in the Keepstar club now. one of nearly half a dozen such structures in Delve at this point.  I did see that we opted not to include the alliance leader display option on our Keepstar.  I am not sure how this setting works, but I do see the menacing visage of The Mittani on GSF citadels every so often.

Mittens is watching you

We might be better off without a capital ship sized Wibla on our Keepstar.

The Pokemon 20th Anniversary Continues with a Manaphy Event and More

The celebration of the 20th anniversary of Pokemon continues.  This month’s legendary Pokemon is Manaphy, a legendary Pokemon from the Pokemon Diamond & Pearl era.

Happy Manaphy

I remember Manaphy well as, during the Pokemon HeartGold & SoulSilver era, getting a Manaphy was my key to collecting all 493 Pokemon then available.  I had to play Pokemon Ranger Guardian Signs to get it and then use another DS to transfer it into SoulSilver, but the deed was done.  Then I left it in the Pokemon Day Care with a Ditto to breed Phione and, for a brief moment in time, I had collected them all.

Instructions on how to download Manaphy to your copy of Pokemon X and Y or Pokemon Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby are available on the Pokemon site.  You have until June 24th to make it happen.  There are other Manaphy themed items available as well.

Meanwhile the word is that the June Pokemon Trainer Club newsletter will contain a code that will allow players to download Mew.  (To get the newsletter you have to sign up for the Pokemon Trainer Club, detail for which are available on the site.)

The alleged reason for the Mew code is that the GameStop cards from February giveaway went very quickly and ended up on eBay selling for real cash money.

Mew GameStop Card

In order to make it up to fans who might have missed out on the GameStop card, this will be an opportunity to get the missing Mew.  The only catch is that you had to have signed up for the newsletter by June 1st, so I hope you are already on the list.

That is this month’s anniversary news.  The upcoming download events for the remainder of the year as we count down to the launch of Pokemon Sun & Moon are:

• July – Shaymin (Nintendo Network)
• August – Arceus (GameStop)
• September – Victini (Nintendo Network)
• October – Keldeo (Nintendo Network)
• November – Genesect (GameStop)
• December – Meloetta (Nintendo Network)

Still plenty of rare Pokemon to collect.  More information is available at the Pokemon 20th anniversary site.