A Mule in EvE

For many months, I have been training to become an effective pilot in almost any ship I can think of.  A short time ago, I finished the training fro T2 Large Beams, T2 Large pulse’s I had for a while but needed the beams to help me snipe at range with an Apocalypse.

Primarily Manasi can fly all Caldari sub-caps, all Minmatar sub-caps, and all Amarr sub-caps not including T2  industrial ships. I happen to LIKE variety and many people I know, get to a fight..lose their ship, and are well… stuck.  I tend not to be stuck as I can pilot just about whatever I can find.

In addition to this, we build ships for our front line guys and this helps me understand the nature of each ship.  Having built hundreds of Rokh, Tempest, Maelstroms, Apocalypse’s gives an idea to the nature of the ship. Ship bonus’s count we build towards enhancing that bonus. Notice the Gallenete one’s I am missing …I am working on that…

Wait, wait, wait… I know some of you will say what happened to focus on ONE type and train it THEN switch.  Well that is pretty much what I have done.  Caldari ships were first, then came Minmatar, lately Amarr, Gallente will be the last one.

The Winning Combination ( from my point of view) is this:

1. Learning skills
   • Take the Advanced learning to 2-3 to start with
2. Engineering skills
   • Anything that improves your tank here be it shield / or armor
3. Electronics skills
   • Targeting skills are the call of the day here
4. Navigation skills
   • Speed speed and more speed
5. Gunnery skills
   • don’t fly any ships until you can fit PROPER guns
6. Ships

I know what you will say..Manasi that means I will be paying for a character I cannot use.  If you think that, then your mis-understanding me.  While you wait for your skills to grow master the frigates, then the interceptors ( interceptors require skill) over 1/2 of my kills (455 ) come in a  crow/raptor/stiletto…learn to fly them. Once your skills allow you in a  higher class of ship then go to that, but ONLY after you can shoot the damned GUNS. Once your gunnery skills allow you to get into the next class of ship THEN go there.

Wait, wait, wait Manasi why did you spread your skills so much? Well they are spread across different races of ships but for the most part they are all combat ships. I have flown as many different types of combat ships as  I can, in various different fleets to be come effective at knowing what they do, what to call primary, and what to ignore.

I want to FC and I want to do it effectively is why. Not just hop in command and call targets…that I can, and have done in the past.  I want to FC EFFECTIVELY, and to me that means studying ships I may come across.

Understanding the enemy, is crucial in this game, and when there is 230+ ships to fly in hundreds of combination’s the math gets dizzying.  I keep on learning. Understanding the motivations of the enemy is also important (hence, my keeping an eye or two on politics)

SO in an Op last night I got to play secret agent man and go on a solo mission for the FC.  Kinda cool, and not something I do every day.

Oh yea, and the I-hubs are well sorta bugged. We keep getting a repetitive reinforcement timer on 2 of them.

Anyway Secret mission went well.

In an Effort to drive up our industry counter we did a day long mining op

took some pics:

Not all death n destruction it seems.

Oh yes I almost forgot that  I did pulverize a Curse with my Apoc.  Mr. Curse driver, avoid getting in my optimal you fool…just a tip.

Good Hunting.

Many aspects of EvE are phenomenal.  I do not wish to change them one bit.  This growing pain over fleet fights is finally somewhat explained although the Why’s are left to us to discuss.

Here is the blog link…go read it

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=727

I was in the fight with Atlas in local in D-GTMI.  The picture are my proof.  now we know at least what he was doing.  For the that, I am grateful, that CCP is taking the time and energy to fix this issue and that they are taking it seriously.

Dev responses to posts are not evidence that they are taking things seriously.  Actions are.

I read the post and while full of some VERY good info:

(control-shift-alt-m) Node has a timer of 8 minutes.

If there is a number in the “Outstanding” row that means that the server is busy executing your command.

Finally we have a way of telling what is going on. Thank goodness.

If you have waited for 8 minutes for the grid to load you will not recover. If you have the monitor open and see the Outstanding number drop to 0 and your grid doesn”t load then you have no choice but to relog, and even that might not fix things if the server is still overloaded.

Ok so we open our monitors sit and watch patiently and wait for 8 minutes if the grid loading is an issue.

My question that went unanswered is …what is the source?
Why is this happening NOW?

My thoughts on this come from practical experience in a very large system that I work in. When we upgraded to 64 bit code on our MS SQL boxes we just about had a meltdown. No joke, the systems were responding so slowly that it took several WEEKS on 24/7 crunching just to keep them up and stable. I do not work on the DB but one of the guys responsible for our “fix” is a very talented guy that happens to work in my group, so the insight was both valuable and credible in my eyes.

So now we know they are working on the problem, they have some temporary workaround but wait the last little niggling thing:

One of the most important things to keep in mind when you are in a system with heavy lag is that you should not hammer any buttons and you should try to execute as few commands as possible. If you are waiting for the grid to load the worst thing you can do is click buttons on the interface or chat in local.

Mr. Jon Bjarnason…what your asking people to do is stare at a screen…touching no buttons, while voice communications are going telling you that your buddies may be ‘dieing’ and you want people to be patient?

I will try my best but dammit your asking adults, hopped up on adrenaline, hearing their friends ask for help, and you want patience….

Good luck with that my friend.  I will try but good luck with that.