Rooks and Kings has a wormhole-specific corporation called Guillotine Therapy (KEEN), they're french, they're good at what they do. The rest of the alliance lives mostly in lowsec and goes to fight whatever is reachable wherever it may be, as long as there's a fight.
Regularly, KEEN calls our attention to some fun to be had in wormholes, so we gather some people (or many, depending on the perceived fight size), pack up our gear and get ready to get in there...
Last week was one such time.
It turns out that one of KEEN's POSes has been put in reinforced by a small fleet belonging to "nocorp". So I pack up my loki, head towards the lowsec wormhole entrance KEEN found for us some 20 jumps away, travel through 5 wormholes to arrive at the POS. And now we wait, logged off, for the reinforce timer to tick down...
Knowing how these things go, I stay on comms in case something happens. Sure enough, we intercept an Aperture Harmonics [AHARM] covops sneaking in and some more of their ships have been spotted in our wormhole... Things may escalate... So I wait while my alliance mates chain collapse wormholes...
My fridge is empty and I'm getting hungry, I haven't eaten yet today and I forgot to eat yesterday. I inform people I'll be AFK for 30 minutes to go buy some food. There's still 3 hours before the tower comes out of RF, I should be fine. I come back to find this on our killboard: http://www.rooksandkings.com/killboard/?a=kill_related&kll_id=25284 .
Turns out we spawned a wormhole connexion to Aperture Harmonic's main wormhole, jumped through and a fight ensued... I'm a bit annoyed, to say the least...
Now we're camping both sides of the wormhole, I'm logging in, ready to get into any possible fight, I jump to meet the fleet on AHARM's side. They don't bring anything at this stage and we're just quietly camping, debating on invading or not, retreating or not.
After a few hours of camping, I get a call from a RL friend, I have to leave. It's fine, the tower is being repped, we should still be in their wormhole when I'm back, I'm assured.
I come back, to find out AHARM had come to force the wormhole to collapse, a 2nd fight was had, and I had once more missed it...
The next morning, I log in and a prober finds me an exit back to empire so I can get back to our wormhole the back way. I end up in a 0.5 system in Derelik my character is -4.77 security status, travelling in highsec in a loki is out of the question, I have to get to Placid. A quick check on autopilot with settings "prefer less secure" paints a grim view. 83 jumps, some of which through highsec. Grrrr...
I bring a freighter alt to my location, put the loki in it, and travel with my pod back to home. A fun 2 hours of hauling follows.
Now I learn that the entrance we found back to the WH is deep within 0.0 (and certainly not closeby)... I give up and do some planetary interactions while the rest of our forces go and kill random people in WHs all through the evening.
Better luck next time I suppose.
The story of the people who don't eat or have friends or get stuck hauling stuff is here: http://failheap-challenge.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=159
Monday, April 11, 2011
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Forum fuckups
Well, looks like CCP managed to screw up once more.
On the one hand I can be sympathetic. No piece of software is without bugs... That being said, some of the bugs exploited in here seem to reveal some gross ignorance of basic web app security. Ie, don't trust the client...
It's like, extremelly basic, web programming 101, totally stupid, retarded, ... no words...
There's not enough facepalm pictures out there to convey the enormity of the fail... It's mind boggling...
Now, Catari found the issues and reported them. It is my understanding he found them after the forums went live. Which means the devs had less than 24 hours to fix the issues before he went public. At that stage everything went downhill...
Reporting bugs to get fixes in place is one thing, showing off about CCP fucking up and making the situation worse in the process is another.
I've been asked "what is the CSM's position on this".
Well, there's no position to be had. Epic fail is epic fail.
I don't think we need to convince CCP that they need to tighten the security of the forum, or convince them to devote more resources than they are on it. We'll be certain to tell them in no uncertain terms what we think of that quite blatant lack of professionalism, but as much as bashing CCP is a popular sport on the forums, it's really not an interesting place to put oneself in if one wants to have a dialog (well, sometimes it is, but not in this instance).
In other news, cooperation and dialog with other CSM members still doing well. We're still all trying to get on the same page when it comes to positions on different topics, after initial discussion about its content, Mittani produced a draft of our first public announcement, a few members gave feedback in terms of form and content, all were incorporated into the latest version.
It's going pretty well I would say.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
And so it begins
CSM 6 starts today...
I wasn't sure I'd make it, but I did. I must say I was very happy about that, and a few people were surprised to see me there (which is something I also was happy about :p). So many thanks to everyone who voted for me and spread the word. Thank you, Gracias, Merci ;-)
The composition is really 0.0 heavy this time around:
- Mittani, Goonswarm
- Vile Rat, Goonswarm
- Draco Llasa, Razor,
- Killer2, Morsus Mihi
- White Tree, TEST
- UaxDeath, from xDeathx
- Seleene, AAA
- Trebor, Initiative Mercenaries
and myself, Meissa, Rooks and Kings :-)
There was much yelling on the forums about "0.0 ruining the game for everyone", so here's a few thoughts...
5 people from the same background saying the same thing is not equivalent to 5 people from different backgrounds saying the same thing. If individuals are nothing but mouthpieces for 0.0 and have no opinion or ideas of their own, they're not going to get anything more done, so that's one thing.
Second, despite coming from 0.0 background, I'm pretty sure some of these individuals have interesting things to contribute to things that are not 0.0 centric.
Mittani... Well, Mittens got elected by being his publicly douchebag self. That's a fair and viable election tactic. It got him elected, it worked. How he behaves on the CSM itself very likely will have little to do with how he got there in the first place. That's politics for you.
I know for a fact that he's more than capable of intelligent thought and discourse, is highly motivated, and has a certain well-known quality that will help getting the attention of the population of Eve (and outside of it too I suspect). Those things are a win in my opinion.
We'll see if he's capable of leaving his ego at the door when it comes to having actual live discussion and actually bring something to the discussions in Iceland, but if he doesn't, there's others that are capable on the council.
So far we got everyone talking semi-permanently together (permanent skype convo). Discussing things we agree on, things we disagree on, plans for communications, plans for getting stuff done, I've shared information as to how the CSM functions so everyone can turn their ideas into concrete things after. And we're probing each other a bit to see who thinks what and if we can truly have a unified front. For that's the thing, no matter where we originate from, it's safe to say that everyone wants to improve the game. We have different opinions, but that's a good thing, not a bad one.
While interspersed with lots of "lol, ur gay" moments, it's been 4 days of continuous meeting with the others, and quite productive ones at that.
As far as I'm concerned, I made it clear that I would be "on board" with the rest of the CSM as long as I agreed with what was said and done in my name. Considering the first bits, attempts at reaching a consensus have been seen, information and communication exchanges are happening, so there's a good chance this CSM will prove fruitful. Time will say...
It goes without saying that any proposal that 0.0 delegates oppose will have no chance of getting through (them having more than half the seats), but from the looks of it it's headed more into a direction where they won't oppose what they're not directly interested in, and actually try to provide meaningful input rather, than the opposite.
I will reserve judgment on the delegates until I've had more time to see them in action, so far no red flags...
I wasn't sure I'd make it, but I did. I must say I was very happy about that, and a few people were surprised to see me there (which is something I also was happy about :p). So many thanks to everyone who voted for me and spread the word. Thank you, Gracias, Merci ;-)
The composition is really 0.0 heavy this time around:
- Mittani, Goonswarm
- Vile Rat, Goonswarm
- Draco Llasa, Razor,
- Killer2, Morsus Mihi
- White Tree, TEST
- UaxDeath, from xDeathx
- Seleene, AAA
- Trebor, Initiative Mercenaries
and myself, Meissa, Rooks and Kings :-)
There was much yelling on the forums about "0.0 ruining the game for everyone", so here's a few thoughts...
5 people from the same background saying the same thing is not equivalent to 5 people from different backgrounds saying the same thing. If individuals are nothing but mouthpieces for 0.0 and have no opinion or ideas of their own, they're not going to get anything more done, so that's one thing.
Second, despite coming from 0.0 background, I'm pretty sure some of these individuals have interesting things to contribute to things that are not 0.0 centric.
Mittani... Well, Mittens got elected by being his publicly douchebag self. That's a fair and viable election tactic. It got him elected, it worked. How he behaves on the CSM itself very likely will have little to do with how he got there in the first place. That's politics for you.
I know for a fact that he's more than capable of intelligent thought and discourse, is highly motivated, and has a certain well-known quality that will help getting the attention of the population of Eve (and outside of it too I suspect). Those things are a win in my opinion.
We'll see if he's capable of leaving his ego at the door when it comes to having actual live discussion and actually bring something to the discussions in Iceland, but if he doesn't, there's others that are capable on the council.
So far we got everyone talking semi-permanently together (permanent skype convo). Discussing things we agree on, things we disagree on, plans for communications, plans for getting stuff done, I've shared information as to how the CSM functions so everyone can turn their ideas into concrete things after. And we're probing each other a bit to see who thinks what and if we can truly have a unified front. For that's the thing, no matter where we originate from, it's safe to say that everyone wants to improve the game. We have different opinions, but that's a good thing, not a bad one.
While interspersed with lots of "lol, ur gay" moments, it's been 4 days of continuous meeting with the others, and quite productive ones at that.
As far as I'm concerned, I made it clear that I would be "on board" with the rest of the CSM as long as I agreed with what was said and done in my name. Considering the first bits, attempts at reaching a consensus have been seen, information and communication exchanges are happening, so there's a good chance this CSM will prove fruitful. Time will say...
It goes without saying that any proposal that 0.0 delegates oppose will have no chance of getting through (them having more than half the seats), but from the looks of it it's headed more into a direction where they won't oppose what they're not directly interested in, and actually try to provide meaningful input rather, than the opposite.
I will reserve judgment on the delegates until I've had more time to see them in action, so far no red flags...
Preamble
I'm Meissa...
I hate blogs... I really do. Just the thought of sitting in front of this blank page to type :words: at people makes me cringe. Not only do I suck at wordsmithery, I'm a pro at procrastination. Not a very nice combination for a blogger... Whatever.
I've been a member of the Council of Stellar Management for a few years now. I first got in as an alternate of CSM 2, then a full member of CSM 3, then again as an alternate of CSM 4 -- this once on purpose, there was at the time a limit to how many times one could be elected as a full member and I wanted to be full member on CSM 5, but I didn't want to lose track of what was going on during CMS 4, so I carefully managed my election campaign to get enough votes to get alt but not so much that I'd get a seat. Tricky business, but it worked -- then full member of CSM 5, and once more of CSM 6...
I'm not e-famous, I'm a member of a 2 (or 3, depends) member corporation that started as a carebear corporation in empire. I wasn't CEO of my corporation, I just ran for CSM after my CEO (Kilhu Emmek) told me repeatedly I should run. I ran to show him I wouldn't get elected (haha).
Anyway, my story isn't much of one, I started as a miner, then industrialist in empire.
After a few months of missioning and producing, I grew interested in seeing what else the universe had to offer.
I went to lowsec lured by the promises of riches. I armed myself with a POS and a few modules to check moonmining R16 minerals. Not very profitable, but the idea seemed fun. It was indeed fun, and indeed not very profitable...
(Note: yes, that's a passive shield tanked hurricane)
So the profits didn't materialize, but a few chance drops from escalations got me above 1 billion ISK. I remember those escalations leading me into 0.0 for their last step. 2 jumps into the Great Wildlands. I was a scared little noob, I sat cloaked for 4 hours watching the comings and going at the gate separating lowsec from 0.0, looking at the colored dot on the map to see if there was much activity, camping, killing going on on the other side. Should I or should I not go? I eventually did go, was probed doing that site 4 times, still managed to warp out every time and cloak and finish for the prizes!
Anyway, I had 1 billion! I was ecstatic... At that stage I could buy shiny ships or blueprints or... I could try making more money in 0.0! Except I didn't know anything about it, other than it was dangerous... Kilhu (my CEO) knew that the Great Wildlands was NRDS, and happened to know someone in there. We got given permission to go there and do "our thing". The alliance in control of the region was Foundati0n.
So I moved around the region, did anomalies and angel/DED sites, got ganked a few times in the begining (I had prepared for this and purchased a set of passive shield tanked myrmidons). My plan was to die 4 times a week in those cheaply replaceable ships, and still make more money than I'd lose. It went according to plan. I didn't PvP then, just tried to cloak up if anyone showed up. I was so scared of PvP... I had set up the myrmidons for extreme tank, being able of sustaining 1300 DPS omni (and about 1900 against exp/kin), so when I was getting ganked, I regularly had time to call in for reinforcements.
I've had a number of killmails with more than 200,000 damage tanked, but 2 fights really come back to mind. One where I was coming back from doing an escalation in the drone regions. I tanked 7 guys (and killed a sabre) for 19 minutes, waiting for reinforcements to come. And right when they were about to, the hostiles jumped in an extra 3 and I died, having tanked 369k damage. The other one was getting attacked by 4 ships (hacs), and after 25 minutes of fighting and barely succeeding at tanking, they had to let me go because they ran out of ammo. That was fun.
(me getting ganked and being cocky, that screenshot was 10 minutes into the fight, still tanking but running out of drones :p)
After familiarizing myself a bit with how it worked (ie, reading docs), I asked FDN if I could use some systems for moonmining, they agreed, gave me a few systems, I set up a POS, then 2, then 17... (if you've tried to manage moonmining POSes solo, don't go there, it's a pita). Anyway, at this stage I figured I was making money, I could try and assist with the defense of the region that the local blues left to FDN to solve... Problem was I didn't know anything about fighting. I joined anyway, for the principle of it, in the only ship I knew how to fly (passive shield tanked myrmi in an armor tanked fleet, I sure was useful *cough* *cough*).
After a few months our "friendly" neighbours, Red Alliance, decided they wanted the region to rent it to people and started to invade GW. The local blues fled. FDN was left to defend on its own. At that stage I had made about 17 billions (and lost about 2bil in ships and pods), purchased a JF, a regular freighter, had started into T2 production, invested heavily in POSes and POS modules, got some ships and blueprints. I figured I could try and give a hand. So I got my fighting alt (Meissa is a good tank, but 30k SP in gunnery and missiles didn't get me far) a carrier... The only one I was close enough to get was the nidhoggur, but I still got it, knowing I'd lose it. It's the principle that counts right?
(fighting the red alliance in my new nidhoggur)
So I fielded the nid in defense of the region, and it didn't die too quickly, got a few fights out of it, we repelled RA and started invading Scalding Pass in retaliation, leading to some very nice fights with 700ish people. I lost the nid to a desync (damn you CCP), directly bought another one. We stole a few systems from RA, who went to cry to xdeathx for assistance since they couldn't repell us. xDeathx came, we lost, we got back to GW...
Foundati0n imploded a tiny bit later and there ended my year living in 0.0. After a brief stint back to highsec and WHs, I got invited to join former FDN members who had formed a PvP alliance called Rooks and Kings. Being a carebear, I hesitated a long time, thinking I wouldn't be of much use, but after a long conversation, I eventually joined and haven't regretted it. I usually fly command ships and guardians, they don't provide much in the way of killmails but they're important. My main alt flies carriers, guardians, HICs and sabres. Again support roles, which I prefer.
(me looking pretty during ops)
That's my story (was a tad longer than I expected).
As far as who I am in terms of "important internet spaceship person"...
I'm nobody, I'm not well known, I'm not an alliance leader and I don't want to be one. I have opinions that I like to voice, but I'm perfectly happy with leaving the decisions and the spotlight to others.
I'm not most communicative CSM member, but I have a good grasp on the game and I have an analytical mind, I usually do good argumentation for the topics we defend...
I form my opinions using my own experience and tapping into that of others. It takes me some time and thought to form one, so it's based on something rational and not just guts, but I'll happily change my opinion if the facts I relied upon are shown to be untrue or incomplete. As a consequence, once held, I defend my opinion tooth and nails...
I appreciate other's opinions if they differ from mine, as long as they're based on rational thought. We all have different priorities and that's fine with me. I actually welcome it. I'll frequently play devil's advocate on things I support if nobody else does...
No matter whether I support going for something or not, that doesn't change the aknowledgements of the reasons to support the opposite, it helps with not bashing anyone who doesn't reach the same conclusions I did, at least I don't dismiss their reasons as invalid, just maybe incomplete (or mine are!) or the person has a different perspective on where the balance should be...
So when I post, it's rarely to :rage: but rather to provide a more balanced position on whatever is being discussed (something CSM5 chair Mynxee called me being "too diplomatic"). That usually is seen as me sucking up to CCP, which I don't, but I never saw dichotomical positions to be very constructive.
That's me in a nutshell...
I hate blogs... I really do. Just the thought of sitting in front of this blank page to type :words: at people makes me cringe. Not only do I suck at wordsmithery, I'm a pro at procrastination. Not a very nice combination for a blogger... Whatever.
I've been a member of the Council of Stellar Management for a few years now. I first got in as an alternate of CSM 2, then a full member of CSM 3, then again as an alternate of CSM 4 -- this once on purpose, there was at the time a limit to how many times one could be elected as a full member and I wanted to be full member on CSM 5, but I didn't want to lose track of what was going on during CMS 4, so I carefully managed my election campaign to get enough votes to get alt but not so much that I'd get a seat. Tricky business, but it worked -- then full member of CSM 5, and once more of CSM 6...
I'm not e-famous, I'm a member of a 2 (or 3, depends) member corporation that started as a carebear corporation in empire. I wasn't CEO of my corporation, I just ran for CSM after my CEO (Kilhu Emmek) told me repeatedly I should run. I ran to show him I wouldn't get elected (haha).
Anyway, my story isn't much of one, I started as a miner, then industrialist in empire.
After a few months of missioning and producing, I grew interested in seeing what else the universe had to offer.
I went to lowsec lured by the promises of riches. I armed myself with a POS and a few modules to check moonmining R16 minerals. Not very profitable, but the idea seemed fun. It was indeed fun, and indeed not very profitable...
(Note: yes, that's a passive shield tanked hurricane)
So the profits didn't materialize, but a few chance drops from escalations got me above 1 billion ISK. I remember those escalations leading me into 0.0 for their last step. 2 jumps into the Great Wildlands. I was a scared little noob, I sat cloaked for 4 hours watching the comings and going at the gate separating lowsec from 0.0, looking at the colored dot on the map to see if there was much activity, camping, killing going on on the other side. Should I or should I not go? I eventually did go, was probed doing that site 4 times, still managed to warp out every time and cloak and finish for the prizes!Anyway, I had 1 billion! I was ecstatic... At that stage I could buy shiny ships or blueprints or... I could try making more money in 0.0! Except I didn't know anything about it, other than it was dangerous... Kilhu (my CEO) knew that the Great Wildlands was NRDS, and happened to know someone in there. We got given permission to go there and do "our thing". The alliance in control of the region was Foundati0n.
So I moved around the region, did anomalies and angel/DED sites, got ganked a few times in the begining (I had prepared for this and purchased a set of passive shield tanked myrmidons). My plan was to die 4 times a week in those cheaply replaceable ships, and still make more money than I'd lose. It went according to plan. I didn't PvP then, just tried to cloak up if anyone showed up. I was so scared of PvP... I had set up the myrmidons for extreme tank, being able of sustaining 1300 DPS omni (and about 1900 against exp/kin), so when I was getting ganked, I regularly had time to call in for reinforcements.I've had a number of killmails with more than 200,000 damage tanked, but 2 fights really come back to mind. One where I was coming back from doing an escalation in the drone regions. I tanked 7 guys (and killed a sabre) for 19 minutes, waiting for reinforcements to come. And right when they were about to, the hostiles jumped in an extra 3 and I died, having tanked 369k damage. The other one was getting attacked by 4 ships (hacs), and after 25 minutes of fighting and barely succeeding at tanking, they had to let me go because they ran out of ammo. That was fun.
(me getting ganked and being cocky, that screenshot was 10 minutes into the fight, still tanking but running out of drones :p)
After familiarizing myself a bit with how it worked (ie, reading docs), I asked FDN if I could use some systems for moonmining, they agreed, gave me a few systems, I set up a POS, then 2, then 17... (if you've tried to manage moonmining POSes solo, don't go there, it's a pita). Anyway, at this stage I figured I was making money, I could try and assist with the defense of the region that the local blues left to FDN to solve... Problem was I didn't know anything about fighting. I joined anyway, for the principle of it, in the only ship I knew how to fly (passive shield tanked myrmi in an armor tanked fleet, I sure was useful *cough* *cough*).
After a few months our "friendly" neighbours, Red Alliance, decided they wanted the region to rent it to people and started to invade GW. The local blues fled. FDN was left to defend on its own. At that stage I had made about 17 billions (and lost about 2bil in ships and pods), purchased a JF, a regular freighter, had started into T2 production, invested heavily in POSes and POS modules, got some ships and blueprints. I figured I could try and give a hand. So I got my fighting alt (Meissa is a good tank, but 30k SP in gunnery and missiles didn't get me far) a carrier... The only one I was close enough to get was the nidhoggur, but I still got it, knowing I'd lose it. It's the principle that counts right?
(fighting the red alliance in my new nidhoggur)
So I fielded the nid in defense of the region, and it didn't die too quickly, got a few fights out of it, we repelled RA and started invading Scalding Pass in retaliation, leading to some very nice fights with 700ish people. I lost the nid to a desync (damn you CCP), directly bought another one. We stole a few systems from RA, who went to cry to xdeathx for assistance since they couldn't repell us. xDeathx came, we lost, we got back to GW...
Foundati0n imploded a tiny bit later and there ended my year living in 0.0. After a brief stint back to highsec and WHs, I got invited to join former FDN members who had formed a PvP alliance called Rooks and Kings. Being a carebear, I hesitated a long time, thinking I wouldn't be of much use, but after a long conversation, I eventually joined and haven't regretted it. I usually fly command ships and guardians, they don't provide much in the way of killmails but they're important. My main alt flies carriers, guardians, HICs and sabres. Again support roles, which I prefer.
(me looking pretty during ops)
That's my story (was a tad longer than I expected).
As far as who I am in terms of "important internet spaceship person"...
I'm nobody, I'm not well known, I'm not an alliance leader and I don't want to be one. I have opinions that I like to voice, but I'm perfectly happy with leaving the decisions and the spotlight to others.
I'm not most communicative CSM member, but I have a good grasp on the game and I have an analytical mind, I usually do good argumentation for the topics we defend...
I form my opinions using my own experience and tapping into that of others. It takes me some time and thought to form one, so it's based on something rational and not just guts, but I'll happily change my opinion if the facts I relied upon are shown to be untrue or incomplete. As a consequence, once held, I defend my opinion tooth and nails...
I appreciate other's opinions if they differ from mine, as long as they're based on rational thought. We all have different priorities and that's fine with me. I actually welcome it. I'll frequently play devil's advocate on things I support if nobody else does...
No matter whether I support going for something or not, that doesn't change the aknowledgements of the reasons to support the opposite, it helps with not bashing anyone who doesn't reach the same conclusions I did, at least I don't dismiss their reasons as invalid, just maybe incomplete (or mine are!) or the person has a different perspective on where the balance should be...
So when I post, it's rarely to :rage: but rather to provide a more balanced position on whatever is being discussed (something CSM5 chair Mynxee called me being "too diplomatic"). That usually is seen as me sucking up to CCP, which I don't, but I never saw dichotomical positions to be very constructive.
That's me in a nutshell...
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