A Mule in EvE

Archive for September, 2009

EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month’s banter comes to us from CrazyKinux himself, who asks the following: First there was the MMO on the PC, and now with the recent announcement of DUST 514, EVE will soon be moving onto consoles. But what about mobile? Allow your imagination to run wild for a second and describe how you would see EVE being ported to mobile devices, whether the iPhone/iPod touch, Blackberrys or Android-based devices. Dream the impossible for us!

Eve with an Mobile device…How would THAT work?

Well I am envisioning the use of the COSMOS tool that EvE Dominion will give us combined with the tools that we already use to be able to monitor things going on in-game while you perhaps may not be able to actively participate in.

One thing I really would like to see is a way to automate the shipping of materials ( whether they be minerals or parts or whatnot) via an NPC transportation company. Via a contract that is viable in COSMOS, setup a contract with a NPC shipping company to move gear.  I do not mean a player Corporation , I am sure these exist, but for this exercise I want an NPC Corp. I know Courier contracts exist but you have to put up so much collateral that small corps simply cannot use them.

Remember if you wants ship you gotta have em built, if you want em built you’ve got to have the raw materials.

The idea is to blur the lines between PvE and PvP to a greater extent…

We would set the parameters via the Mobile device…as an example:

• I want to move 250 Million units of Tritanium, or if my math is right 2.5 M m3 of space (value ~800M @3.25 per unit) to my home in Vale of the Silent
• at 15:00 EvE time ( this is critical the NPC corp must set the time window)
• The 30th of September
• Leaving from a XX station that has the supplies ( either bought in advance or placed there)
• With medium security for a cost of 900M (provides 2 frigates & 3 cruisers for each transport..for say 10 transports, which increases or decreases based on the amount of material)
  • levels of security would have different costs associated
• I will get insurance l of 750M for the shipment ( this is held in escrow)if the shipment is eliminated or some doesn’t make it…
• All of this once completed..would start a convoy within a given time period specified by the NPC company, going to The Vale with freighters secured by your Corp funds or insured by the purchaser.

Costs: 900M

Insurance of 750M

Reward: the goods as a reasonable cost

Risk: the convoy being stopped and overrun

All of this action to be done via the mobile device (something with a web browser)  so basically… supply chain management via the mobile device working through COSMOS.

This would allow for an NPC corp to help you do logistics and with the use of a Mobil phone to help navigate the contract system, I think something like this might work.

Who would benefit:

1. The builder of an corporation, could schedule runs so that minerals show up at a primary build site without having to jump them hither and thither. ( not all Corps have 1 or 2 Jump freighters)
2. Pirates would see an NPC convoy as a good target, and providing they are uninsured or lightly defended, a good source of income.
3. The players could act as escorts, via a  broadcast to all the friendlies…Convoy coming through System XX to head to system YY
4. The NPC’s would be for “hire’ so that money would flow back down from the block of people that wanted the supplies through them to the bulk mineral suppliers. The NPC corp could just act as the middleman, and while not trustworthy certainly more trust worthy than a Corporation you don’t know.
5. Once an NPC corp is setup people could undercut prices/ time to market etc…based on collateral system in place.  The current transport contracts have costs upwards of billions and only serve as a target of opportunity warning to those who set the contracts up.  The costs are such that a small corporation could not find a way to live in 0.0 without a JF.
6. Logistics would be reserved for Built ships, making them needed by corporations but not solely dependent upon them. It can often benefit a business to have supply chains separated from manufacturing…especially with  a 4Billion dollar ship on the line,
7. Anyone who wants a ship but does not want to pay exorbitant prices for a ship in 0.0.

Well that is my hair brained idea…what do you think?

Check out these other Banters to see what they are thinking:

I have been keeping my eye on all the changes coming to EvE.  Sea State change post and others as well.

My beloved Minmatar ships might be getting some love , or not I cannot tell if they are going to make Auto-cannons better or worse.  Thanks to Casiella Truza for that info

The Tempest and the Typhoon also get some love as well, as detailed here

This weekend I was involved with administrative activities for CEPTA, so not much hunting to be done

I did sit in my Thanatos for the first time on Friday and that was awesome!  I understand just a little of why the carrier pilots like them so much.  She won’t see too much action yet though till some more modules ( via skills) come on line…but if I need to jump it I can!

IN other news, Minor threat and Razor have fail cascaded ( btw this mean they are losing sov at a very rapid rate and will be out of 0.0. before too long)  Those that have been reading this blog will know that I harbor no love for either Minor threat or any other enemies but fail cascades still suck.

12th Blog Banter will be tomorrow so we shall see what that brings.

I am hoping for more detailed news ( but my guess is Fan Fest will answer most of those questions)

~TheMule

Let us suspend our EvE internet spaceships for just a minute, and instead lets our thoughts wander to a happy place, called Blogville.

Blogville has two towns, the public knows one side as a Mule in EvE, the other is a peaceful  kind of  place, with little traffic and some information placed there.

The residents of A Mule in EvE like the noise and the banter and the good people that come to visit.  Little blogville ( it’s secluded neighbor town) is even quieter with even rows of houses and everything that a small town needs all managed by the mayor (Manasi).

One  day( last week sometime)  some evil son of a bitch decided to raise little blogville to the god damn ground.  The mayor (me) was not very happy when he found out (yesterday), in fact he became quite pissed off that someone had come in to his little town ( where not much happened and only a few people lived) and dropped a god damn A-bomb on it.  Vaporized, demolished, all gonne bye bye, no mas. Sadly, said town has now been removed, from all maps and no longer exists.

The End.

Moral of the story ( as all good stories have moral) do not I repeat DO NOT leave your WordPress installation with the default table names structure of wp_.  That is the 1 mistake I made.

Do I have backups?  Of course, I’m no idiot.  I am however pissed that some asshole decided to obliterate the posts and the pages and all the little things I had  done on my development blog.

Shortened version:

Some asshole hacked my Development blog and eliminated the posts, comments, and other stuff there, so I shut it down.

Dev news

One thing the new Dominion stuff is bring is a NICE reason to leave the NPC corps an 11% tax rate.  Thank god for that…that will certainly push folks a little to seek low tax rate corps.

Amongst all the other changes, which I have detailed in previous entries.