A brown dwarf with massive rings. I found this system quite a bit above the galactic ecliptic.
So, this is it for today. Just a bunch of nice pics. I think next time I'll go back to EVE, so please don't run away one person reading this!
Donnerstag, 2. April 2015
Be Elite In Deep Space
Today I thought "Why not?" to myself and decided to share some more pictures I made while exploring the galaxy in Elite: Dangerous:
A blue-white star seen through my ship's canopy. The canopy is a bit dinged up since I was travelling for some time already. Nowadays we have a nice debug-camera to make fancy shots without scratchy effects in the way, but back when I made this pic we could only make screenshots from inside our cockpits.
A brown dwarf with massive rings. I found this system quite a bit above the galactic ecliptic.
Here I am slowly sinking into the rings using my FSD (Frame Shift Drive) at the slowest supercruise-setting. (The FSD is a jump drive for direct jumps between different star systems, dropping you always near the largest mass. Supercruise is a fancy warp-drive mode you can use for fast travel inside a star system.)
Uh oh getting closer now...
And arrived!
After some bumbling around in the ring, I suddenly noticed the bulk of the brown dwarf star hiding over there. So I made this pic.
The FSD in action: My jump timer is counting down and when it hits zero, I'll get violently kicked to my target system through the spooky witch space.
Thanks to Frontier modelling the Milkyway as closely as possible, you'll get a lot of weird systems like this one here. If you take a good look, you'll see four suns in that screenshot. All part of the same star system. And now think about how the real world has even stranger star systems like that.
One of my more artistic pictures. But thank god I don't have to make screenshots through my canopy anymore, that got old really fast.
An ice planet. No heavy metals here, since ice planets in the real world don't tend to have a lot of heavy metals, regardless of what EVE may have taught you.
This rocky little stone would probably be labeled a "barren" planet in EVE. Here, it's just worth barely more than an ice planet. I think this thing had like 5% more metals in it's composition than the ice ball from above. Still not much.
So, this is it for today. Just a bunch of nice pics. I think next time I'll go back to EVE, so please don't run away one person reading this!
A brown dwarf with massive rings. I found this system quite a bit above the galactic ecliptic.
So, this is it for today. Just a bunch of nice pics. I think next time I'll go back to EVE, so please don't run away one person reading this!
Dienstag, 31. März 2015
Elite: Let's Get Dangerous
Now for something completely different:
This little picture is something I made after starting a long-range expedition in Elite: Dangerous.
The game can be as beautiful as EVE Online, even though in other parts the games are as different as night and day. While EVE takes a more holistic approach to space gaming, Elite is a true simulation of space travel. You and your joystick control your ship directly and the map is a painstaking simulation of the 400+ billion star systems found in our Milkyway.
When I'm not playing EVE, I like to continue my lonely journey through the emptyness of space, taking pictures along the way.
Elite: Dangerous is a nice game, even though it is kind of barebones at the moment. On the other hand, if you hate people you can just play in Solo-mode and never get annoyed by someone ever again.
As an explorer, I normally could ignore this and play in the normal "Open"-mode, but 400 billion stars are a lot and outside of the small human-settled space you generally see no-one either way. Sadly, in Open-mode the function to make HighRes-shots is blocked, so a picture like the one above would suffer quite a bit.
Theoretically, it should not bother me as much, since I have to resize and compress my HighRes-shots anyway before uploading them to the mighty internet to share. But I feel like having at least some genuine HighRes-shots on my HDD and anyway, I like to downsize the pics myself, thank you very much.
If you want to try it out for yourself, here's a link to the shop. (You can also get the original 1984 Elite for zero money, if you want.)
Don't worry, by the way: Trading and shooting is also possible, you aren't forced to go out and see the universe!
This little picture is something I made after starting a long-range expedition in Elite: Dangerous.
The game can be as beautiful as EVE Online, even though in other parts the games are as different as night and day. While EVE takes a more holistic approach to space gaming, Elite is a true simulation of space travel. You and your joystick control your ship directly and the map is a painstaking simulation of the 400+ billion star systems found in our Milkyway.
When I'm not playing EVE, I like to continue my lonely journey through the emptyness of space, taking pictures along the way.
Elite: Dangerous is a nice game, even though it is kind of barebones at the moment. On the other hand, if you hate people you can just play in Solo-mode and never get annoyed by someone ever again.
As an explorer, I normally could ignore this and play in the normal "Open"-mode, but 400 billion stars are a lot and outside of the small human-settled space you generally see no-one either way. Sadly, in Open-mode the function to make HighRes-shots is blocked, so a picture like the one above would suffer quite a bit.
Theoretically, it should not bother me as much, since I have to resize and compress my HighRes-shots anyway before uploading them to the mighty internet to share. But I feel like having at least some genuine HighRes-shots on my HDD and anyway, I like to downsize the pics myself, thank you very much.
If you want to try it out for yourself, here's a link to the shop. (You can also get the original 1984 Elite for zero money, if you want.)
Don't worry, by the way: Trading and shooting is also possible, you aren't forced to go out and see the universe!
Mittwoch, 25. März 2015
Bad Luck Days
Sometimes a day just isn't going to work out.
Yesterday I tried out my Astero again to do some exploring in W-Space. Of course in the very first wormhole-system I entered I got jumped by a Harpy at the very first relic site I tried out. Bad luck? It get's even better, I was religiously hammering my d-scan just to prevent getting jumped, but of course the Harpy slipped on grid the very moment I was kind of busy with failing the mini-game on the second can.
In hindsight, I should have probably taken it as a warning when my first try at hacking failed because I had five virus supressors in a row. (Those things, like healing nodes, have to be taken out immediately. Healing nodes are bad enough, since they heal everything except you on the hacking grid. At least those are rather weak and won't damage you too much when taking them down. Virus supressors however make you weaker, which means more tries to eliminate nodes and more damage you take by the nodes counter-attacking. Virus supressors also hit moderately hard, so combined with your suddenly weakened virus strength, they're a pain in the ass to take down.)
So I failed hacking. My second try started to look bad too, since I was at three supressors already when I noticed the Harpy on my d-scan. By then he was already on grid with me. Ouch.
I awkwardly closed the hacking window and tried to run, since I had forgotten I wasn't in a harmless little covert-ops frigate without weapons. Then it took me several more seconds to notice my micro warp drive wasn't working because I was scrambled. Whoops! No running away here!
Finally I activated my armor repairer just as my shields were gone, used my own warp disruptor and released my drones. From that point on it was a damage race. A race I lost: Just as the Harpy's shield tank was slowly cracking, my cap ran dry and he nibbled through my armor. This was an embarrassing end to an expensive ship.
My god, my reflexes are just so bad. One of the reasons I normally don't like frigates: In the time it takes me to react, the fight is already decided. In this case, I could have won the fight had I immediately counter-attacked. But of course I had to bumble around for a minute, which cost me the fight. And mad a bad day worse.
Well, sometimes it just doesn't work out like you want.
The Astero is a nice ship and armed, not like the rather flimsy covert-ops frigates, but as pirate faction ships they're also rather expensive. Together with my fitting, that was 120-200 million ISK down the drain. Back when I started out, this loss would have given me a heart attack. Today I can just sadly shake my head at my own stupidity.
Rest in Piss, stupid little Astero railgunned to death.
Yesterday I tried out my Astero again to do some exploring in W-Space. Of course in the very first wormhole-system I entered I got jumped by a Harpy at the very first relic site I tried out. Bad luck? It get's even better, I was religiously hammering my d-scan just to prevent getting jumped, but of course the Harpy slipped on grid the very moment I was kind of busy with failing the mini-game on the second can.
In hindsight, I should have probably taken it as a warning when my first try at hacking failed because I had five virus supressors in a row. (Those things, like healing nodes, have to be taken out immediately. Healing nodes are bad enough, since they heal everything except you on the hacking grid. At least those are rather weak and won't damage you too much when taking them down. Virus supressors however make you weaker, which means more tries to eliminate nodes and more damage you take by the nodes counter-attacking. Virus supressors also hit moderately hard, so combined with your suddenly weakened virus strength, they're a pain in the ass to take down.)
So I failed hacking. My second try started to look bad too, since I was at three supressors already when I noticed the Harpy on my d-scan. By then he was already on grid with me. Ouch.
I awkwardly closed the hacking window and tried to run, since I had forgotten I wasn't in a harmless little covert-ops frigate without weapons. Then it took me several more seconds to notice my micro warp drive wasn't working because I was scrambled. Whoops! No running away here!
Finally I activated my armor repairer just as my shields were gone, used my own warp disruptor and released my drones. From that point on it was a damage race. A race I lost: Just as the Harpy's shield tank was slowly cracking, my cap ran dry and he nibbled through my armor. This was an embarrassing end to an expensive ship.
My god, my reflexes are just so bad. One of the reasons I normally don't like frigates: In the time it takes me to react, the fight is already decided. In this case, I could have won the fight had I immediately counter-attacked. But of course I had to bumble around for a minute, which cost me the fight. And mad a bad day worse.
Well, sometimes it just doesn't work out like you want.
The Astero is a nice ship and armed, not like the rather flimsy covert-ops frigates, but as pirate faction ships they're also rather expensive. Together with my fitting, that was 120-200 million ISK down the drain. Back when I started out, this loss would have given me a heart attack. Today I can just sadly shake my head at my own stupidity.
Rest in Piss, stupid little Astero railgunned to death.
Mittwoch, 18. März 2015
EVE Online: Musings on T3-Cruisers
T3-Cruisers, or Strategic Cruisers, are a weird thing. Together with the new T3-Destroyers, they are going for versatility instead of speciality, like T2-ships.
Just as a short explanation for non-EVE people: T1 or "Tech 1", are all "normal" ships you can build/buy in EVE, like common frigates, cruisers, battleships and so on. T2 ships are more advanced ships, normally specialized to do something better then a T1 ship. A T2-logistics ship is generally better at saving other ships than a T1-ship, for example.
T3-Destroyers or Tactical Destroyers instead have different "modes" they can change after a short cooldown. Modes like Sniper-mode for long-range shooting or Speed-mode to get out of dodge fast.
T3-Cruisers, the older T3-variant, went down a completely different path. First off, you need not only the hull, but also a set of five subsystems (defense, electronics, offensive, engineering, propulsion), all build and sold separately by players to get a full ship. The four different cruisers (each for one of the four main races) all have different subsystems to choose from. Sometimes with some overlap, sometimes a certain subsystem will work differently or will be unavailable for certain races. The Gallente Proteus for example can use a propulsion-subsystem to warp faster, but the Amarr Legion doesn't get a subsystem with this ability.
This mixing and matching of different subsystems generates completely different looking and working ships depending on what you chose.
Which is the idea: If you want a cloaky, stealthy ship, just take the necessary subsystems and your T3-cruiser is now stealthy. If you want a death ship killing everything, you have subsystems for this, too. The funny thing is, right now CCP is working on a large-scale rebalance of all T3-cruisers, thanks to some wonky balance. Some combinations of subsystems turned out to be insanely strong, while others are underused or not very usable at all.
If you make cloaky T3s, for example, you'll notice you have to fight really hard to make a Legion (the Amarr-T3) cloaky and stealthy and fighty as all the other ones. The reason here is mainly the covert-ops subsystem which allows the use of a covert-ops cloak (which allows you to warp around cloaked and practically invisible). All other 3 T3-cruisers have a small damage-bonus to offset the serious gimping a truly stealthy T3 has to endure. This means most T3s can have all the stealth and scan-things and still have at least a comparable strength to a destroyer or T1-cruiser. The Legion covert-ops subsystem however, hasn't. Instead it has a bonus to capacity use, which means the laser-weapons a Legion uses will draw less energy from the capacitor, making the ships more able to not suddenly run out of energy at the worst possible moment.
This also means indavertently, that the DPS of a stealthy Legion is shit. If you're careful with crafting your perfect stealth Legion, you can get some sort of "good enough"-fit with less EHP, better active tank and about equal DPS compared to the other 3 T3s. This fit by the way isn't interdiction nullified, which means tough luck if you end up in a bubble.
The other T3s are vastly superior in that category, because they can get, with the same concentration on stealth, more EHP, equal or more DPS and of course they can laugh about bubbles and just warp away. Only the active tank remains superior, thanks to the synergy of combining several subsystems helping with supplying the energy-hungry armor repairers with the nanobot injector, a subsystem with huge bonus to active armor repair.
This sadly won't help you if you can't get through your enemies' tank fast enough, of course. Two stealthy Legions against each other would be the most saddest thing because of this: Both would never run out of energy and would also both never break through each other's tanks. Also someone would drop a bubble on them sooner or later. Then both die, the end.
On the other hand, some Legion-set ups are ridiculously good. But that's the thing: Some subsystem combinations are incredibly good, some rather bad. CCP wants to change this and as someone who generally has no use for the insanely overpowered set-ups anyway, I can't wait to see what will happen.
Another problem T3s have: Since their entire look changes depending on subsystems used, not all looks are visually attractive. To be honest, most T3s are unbelievable ugly. And when not ugly, the T3s are one of the strangest and most unique looking ships in EVE.
Just as a short explanation for non-EVE people: T1 or "Tech 1", are all "normal" ships you can build/buy in EVE, like common frigates, cruisers, battleships and so on. T2 ships are more advanced ships, normally specialized to do something better then a T1 ship. A T2-logistics ship is generally better at saving other ships than a T1-ship, for example.
T3-Destroyers or Tactical Destroyers instead have different "modes" they can change after a short cooldown. Modes like Sniper-mode for long-range shooting or Speed-mode to get out of dodge fast.
T3-Cruisers, the older T3-variant, went down a completely different path. First off, you need not only the hull, but also a set of five subsystems (defense, electronics, offensive, engineering, propulsion), all build and sold separately by players to get a full ship. The four different cruisers (each for one of the four main races) all have different subsystems to choose from. Sometimes with some overlap, sometimes a certain subsystem will work differently or will be unavailable for certain races. The Gallente Proteus for example can use a propulsion-subsystem to warp faster, but the Amarr Legion doesn't get a subsystem with this ability.
This mixing and matching of different subsystems generates completely different looking and working ships depending on what you chose.
Which is the idea: If you want a cloaky, stealthy ship, just take the necessary subsystems and your T3-cruiser is now stealthy. If you want a death ship killing everything, you have subsystems for this, too. The funny thing is, right now CCP is working on a large-scale rebalance of all T3-cruisers, thanks to some wonky balance. Some combinations of subsystems turned out to be insanely strong, while others are underused or not very usable at all.
If you make cloaky T3s, for example, you'll notice you have to fight really hard to make a Legion (the Amarr-T3) cloaky and stealthy and fighty as all the other ones. The reason here is mainly the covert-ops subsystem which allows the use of a covert-ops cloak (which allows you to warp around cloaked and practically invisible). All other 3 T3-cruisers have a small damage-bonus to offset the serious gimping a truly stealthy T3 has to endure. This means most T3s can have all the stealth and scan-things and still have at least a comparable strength to a destroyer or T1-cruiser. The Legion covert-ops subsystem however, hasn't. Instead it has a bonus to capacity use, which means the laser-weapons a Legion uses will draw less energy from the capacitor, making the ships more able to not suddenly run out of energy at the worst possible moment.
This also means indavertently, that the DPS of a stealthy Legion is shit. If you're careful with crafting your perfect stealth Legion, you can get some sort of "good enough"-fit with less EHP, better active tank and about equal DPS compared to the other 3 T3s. This fit by the way isn't interdiction nullified, which means tough luck if you end up in a bubble.
The other T3s are vastly superior in that category, because they can get, with the same concentration on stealth, more EHP, equal or more DPS and of course they can laugh about bubbles and just warp away. Only the active tank remains superior, thanks to the synergy of combining several subsystems helping with supplying the energy-hungry armor repairers with the nanobot injector, a subsystem with huge bonus to active armor repair.
This sadly won't help you if you can't get through your enemies' tank fast enough, of course. Two stealthy Legions against each other would be the most saddest thing because of this: Both would never run out of energy and would also both never break through each other's tanks. Also someone would drop a bubble on them sooner or later. Then both die, the end.
On the other hand, some Legion-set ups are ridiculously good. But that's the thing: Some subsystem combinations are incredibly good, some rather bad. CCP wants to change this and as someone who generally has no use for the insanely overpowered set-ups anyway, I can't wait to see what will happen.
Another problem T3s have: Since their entire look changes depending on subsystems used, not all looks are visually attractive. To be honest, most T3s are unbelievable ugly. And when not ugly, the T3s are one of the strangest and most unique looking ships in EVE.
 |
| Cloaky Legion: Weak as a kitten, but can take a punch. And sloooooowwwww |
 |
| Stealth Loki: More EHP, less tank, but looks sweet. Also more DPS, because of course it has. |
 |
| The Cloaky Potato (Sorry, Proteus): With blasters easily the highest DPS of all |
 |
| Stealthy Tengu: Everyone wants the Tengu. The Tengu is God. I hate this weird ship. |
Sonntag, 15. März 2015
Starting Blues II: EVE Strikes Back With Sleeper Drones
(Continued from here.)
And so I entered W-Space through my very first wormhole.
This cold, mysterious emptiness set my heart ablaze immediately and I was in love with EVE again.
I set out to scan everything inside this strange system. Even though moving my probes around one by one every goddamn time was the weirdest and most openly hostile piece of UI I ever encountered in a space game. For some reason it reminded me of some of the stupid bullshit Master of Orion III tended to pull on me, but here with the added risk of multiplayer.
For a time, I just warped around and tried to take a look at those strange, black drones scuryying around. Since I couldn't warp cloaked yet, this turned out to be an astonishingly dangerous adventure. My method was essentially this:
- Warp in at 100km
- Immediately cloak up after arrival
- Slowly creeping closer until I could move the camera to the drones for a closer look
With a flimsy Heron-frigate I of course was completely unable to do anything except look at things, so after a while I decided to leave. One of the wormholes I've scanned down lead back to another HighSec-system and I warped back. Luckily even as a complete newbie I was cautios enough to warp in at 100km instead of trying to warp directly to the wormhole, because someone was camping the HighSec-exit. This would have been a sad end to my little adventure.
A Phobos and an Oneiros were waiting for people like me dropping in for a visit. Together with a warp disruptor bubble, they would have pretty much prevented me from anything except dying horribly had I warped in too close. So thanks to my caution the Phobos had to go after me instead and I, after a short moment of confusion, ran away into the opposite direction.
My plan after vanishing under cloak and moving erratically in random directions to avoid getting decloaked was simple: Wait until the weird pair was finished and packed up.
Of course at that time I was still unaware of how crazy people in video games could be, so after a while I stopped observing them and went to lunch, assuming they would be gone when I came back.
Yes, it turned out they were still there, blocking my way out. At that point I just went "Fuck it!" and used my by then really weird position to warp past their bubble.
I don't know if they thought I had slipped of somewhere or if they were still expecting me, but my gambit worked: Thanks to me warping past the bubble, I got to the wormhole and jumped out before they could stop me.
This little adventure impressed me immensely and my love for EVE's mysteries was back. Since this were the days before the Odyssey-Expansion made scanning less stupid, I soon had to stop my exploration-travels, though. It's kind of hard to control your probes if your hand hurts like mad.
But in the time I was forced to wait with computer-related things until the pain in my hand stopped, I read up on COSMOS-sites. As soon as my hand was healed up enough I avoided probes, scanning and everything else with too many clicks like the plague and tried to run as many COSMOS-missions as possible. (This was actually my second try at COSMOS-missions. In my first try, I ended up with my Myrmidon in a DED-pocket meant for battleships and died horribly.)
Sadly, doing the incredibly broken COSMOS-parts of the game was so frustrating I never thought about making any screenshots, so I have to skip that bit and time travel to a more interesting age. Join me next time when I finally wrap up the early era before we time jump from April 2013 to July 2013!
And so I entered W-Space through my very first wormhole.
| Lonely here. And spooky. |
| Then the old scanning system immediately tried to kill that love again. |
| The first Sleeper-drone I ever saw with my own eyes. |
- Warp in at 100km
- Immediately cloak up after arrival
- Slowly creeping closer until I could move the camera to the drones for a closer look
| My ship would have probably exploded the moment this thing started thinking aggressive thoughts. |
| Things like this nearly one-shotted me the one time I fucked up my warp-then-cloak routine. |
A Phobos and an Oneiros were waiting for people like me dropping in for a visit. Together with a warp disruptor bubble, they would have pretty much prevented me from anything except dying horribly had I warped in too close. So thanks to my caution the Phobos had to go after me instead and I, after a short moment of confusion, ran away into the opposite direction.
| Just after my cap went out I left locking range of that Phobos and dropped into cloak. |
My plan after vanishing under cloak and moving erratically in random directions to avoid getting decloaked was simple: Wait until the weird pair was finished and packed up.
Of course at that time I was still unaware of how crazy people in video games could be, so after a while I stopped observing them and went to lunch, assuming they would be gone when I came back.
| Motherfucker! |
| If you look closely here you see my cloak is switched off. Prepare for warp! |
I don't know if they thought I had slipped of somewhere or if they were still expecting me, but my gambit worked: Thanks to me warping past the bubble, I got to the wormhole and jumped out before they could stop me.
| Back in civilization! |
This little adventure impressed me immensely and my love for EVE's mysteries was back. Since this were the days before the Odyssey-Expansion made scanning less stupid, I soon had to stop my exploration-travels, though. It's kind of hard to control your probes if your hand hurts like mad.
But in the time I was forced to wait with computer-related things until the pain in my hand stopped, I read up on COSMOS-sites. As soon as my hand was healed up enough I avoided probes, scanning and everything else with too many clicks like the plague and tried to run as many COSMOS-missions as possible. (This was actually my second try at COSMOS-missions. In my first try, I ended up with my Myrmidon in a DED-pocket meant for battleships and died horribly.)
Sadly, doing the incredibly broken COSMOS-parts of the game was so frustrating I never thought about making any screenshots, so I have to skip that bit and time travel to a more interesting age. Join me next time when I finally wrap up the early era before we time jump from April 2013 to July 2013!
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