The Vherokior male was sitting alone at a table in the corner. The bar was a run down shithole, but Ambein felt strangely at home, despite the Caldari theme of the station. Even though he was a Capsuleer and had plenty of technology at his disposal, paper was speard out on the table in front of him. Each sheet of paper had the CONCORD logo watermarked on it and it all looked very important and official.

“Another round?” Asked the barkeeper as he approached to clear the empty jugs from the table.
“Yes please,” Ambein replied. “All these rules and regulations are doing my head in. I never knew there was so much paperwork involved with this shit!”
“Yeah, CONCORD sure likes to make things hard. Thankfully I don’t deal with them much as they don’t have anything to do with issuing Liquor Licences, that’s dealt with by the for Empires.”
“Lucky for you,” Snorted Ambein as the Barkeeper headed back to the bar. “I have to deal with them all the time, and that’s just to keep my Licence.”
“Being CEO means I have fuck loads of extra shit to fill out,” he called across the room. “And I have to review the new War Declaration Procedures that CONCORD has announced.”

The barkeeper returned to the table with a fresh jug of his finest Beer and a plate of snacks.
“Mind if I sit down?” He asked. “It’s pretty quiet at the moment.”
“Not at all, its good to have some company and I need a break anyway.” Ambein replied as he grabbed a handful of mixed nuts to chew on.
“I hear a new NEOCOM update is due for release,’ inquired the Barkeeper.
“Yeah, some nice UI improvements, coupled with some new Camera Drone tech being released at the same time. Space is about to get prettier.”
“Cool, I saw a HoloVid of a computer rendering of some missiles being fired the other day.”
“Yeah, the way missiles and explosions are captured and processed has been updated, looks much better now.” Replied Ambein before taking a sip of Beer. “CONCORD have also updated the Kill reports that are generated when a Capsuleer loses a ship, Much more information will be provided now. About time too, they are a useless wall of text, and haven’t really been updated in about 8 years, other than additional information being added a couple of times. They will look much better now.”

“There seems to be an increased focus on keeping you guys happy and shooting each other.” Mused the Barkeeper.
“Ha. The whole incident last year with the so called Jita Riots and the shooting of the Jita Monument seems to have put a rocket up their arse’s and made them realise that we are more powerful than they thought. I doubt they will want to go through that again in a hurry.” Ambein laughed. “And there are rumors that the four Empires are starting to gear up for war, which will just help fuel the advancement of new and existing technologies, new modules, possibly new ships, who knows what will come out of the War Factories when they are in full swing.”
Ambein leaned back in his seat and stretched his arms and legs. “Lastly there is a rumor that the Empires are taking a look at existing ships and thinking about re-purposing them into new or different roles, make better use of what they’ve got rather than sinking ISK into new ship classes when what they already have works perfectly fine.”

Their attention was drawn away from conversation as a group of teenagers entered the bar, muttering to themselves. They were clearly under-aged so the barkeeper excused himself from the table and went over to get rid of them. Ambein watched with interest as he approached them and asked them to leave. They started to form a circle around him and started to act threatening. As Ambein got up from his seat he head the barkeeper tell them to leave or the station police would be called. The teens ignored his warning and told him to get them a drink or they would rob him blind. The ringleader, an Amarrian, pulled out a small knife and held it in front of the barkeepers face.

“Oi, you lot,” Ambein called out as he walked over to them. “Fuck off now or that knife ends up lodged in your rectum.”
The guy with the knife turned towards him. “What? You think you can take the 7 of us? Bring it on you fucking slave piece of shit!”
“It’s your funeral, Slaver.”

TO BE CONTINUED

“Fuck Marrada. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“Sorry bro, I’ve been busy trying to get my head around everything. Not to mention prepping all our crew members for the big move.” Marrada replied sounding exhausted.
“It’s okay. We can deal with it. I’ve had a busy time myself. I’ll sort something out, I’m sure I can get a loan from someone if we need it. And once the move is complete, and we are back up and running we should be good. I’m also hoping Karras can come and join us within the next 6 months, sounds like he’s become a pretty decent mercenary soldier.” Skorp re-assured her.

The two siblings were sitting in a corner of a bar on the Spacelane Patrol Logistics Support Station orbiting the second moon of the first planet in the Poinen system. They were joined by Ambein Flambein, the now former CEO of 352 Industries. “I’m sorry guys, but I have been given the opportunity to help run and lead a new start-up Corporation.” The Vherokior was visibly tired, and was clearly overworked. “The paperwork to get this new venture set up is giving me a headache. Hopefully we can get it started soon. In the mean time, I have left Lengram in charge of 352. I wasn’t sure if you would want to close the corp completely or keep it in stasis.”
“Thank you for all your work Amb. I’ll get in contact with Len and get her to wind the corp down. I wish you luck in your new venture, and will help in any way I can.” Skorp shook Ambein’s hand and the two parted ways, possibly for the last time.

“Well, it is sad to see him go,” Skorp said with a tinge of sadness in his voice, “but he has some exciting new ventures he is working on that should spice things up in New Eden, assuming anyone takes any notice of him and his venture.” Skorp perked up a bit when saying that.
“Care to fill me in on the details?” Inquired Marrada.
“Sorry Mar, It’s all hush-hush for now, only 3 people in the entire cluster know anything about it, and only a handful more know that it exists. We’ve all been sitting on this for a couple of months now.” Skorp replied. “Anyway, we have more important things to deal with right now, like the impending move to Low-Sec. The system has been picked and things are starting to move along quite quickly at the corp level, we should be living in Low-Sec full-time within 5-6 months.
“Excellent, I shall make sure all the crews are ready and well aware of the risks,” Marrada said.
“Thanks Mar, although not everyone will be part of the move, I’m going to leave some ships here in High-Sec, most notably the Drake, although I may purchase a new one just for use in Low-Sec.” Skorp informed Marrada.

“So when are we actually moving to Low-sec?” Inquired Marrada.
“Not sure, but definately within the next couple of months, things are moving along slowly at the corp level. We should be announcing something to the Corp and Alliance soon.” Skorp replied. “Then its just a matter of getting people organised and moved down, which will be the hard part.”
“Excellent, I’ll make the neccaceary preperations, and as soon as I have all the details, I’ll get in touch with some of my contacts and get us some hanger space reserved, as well as get us hooked up with a nice apartment.”
“Okay, time to get back to work and make some ISK, I’ll catch you later Skorpy.” Marrada said as she departed.

But enough of that. I could probably get more exposure for my stoies if I posted them in the Fiction section of the Eve forums, but thats not really what I want. This is pretty much being done entirely for myself, so if no one else ever reads this, I still won’t give a shit. It also means I can point at it and say “Look, thats me! I’m on the internet!”

Hi Rixx, if you are reading this, mwahahaha, more drivel to clog up your feed with! Blog PvP! Weeeeee.

Also, for anyone else reading this, I have a new fiction post ready to go and another non fiction post ready for when I kick off an exciting new venture that I have been sitting on since Fanfest, but as my play time has been reduced of late (been playing other games) I don’t feel the time is right to lauch it, as it will require a lot of effort on my part, I’m also quite lazy. if anyone is interested in finding out more about this, flick me an Evemail, as I would love some investors and assistance to help get it off the ground.

Most people I hang out with on a regular basis know that I am young and single (Please form an orderly line Ladies). I am also unemployed, but that is not particularly relevant for this post. I live with my parents. About 2 years ago some friends of my family asked us if we would do respite care for them for the child they are caring for on behalf of CYF (New Zealand’s version of Americas CPA, they remove children from homes for various reasons and place them in foster care.) We said yes and started jumping through all the hoops required by CYF. During the process, we were asked if we also wanted to do emergency care for CYF. This is where you get a phone call at all hours of the day asking you to look after a kid for them for a couple of nights. We said sure, we would love to help. Some of the children we have for longer periods of time, several weeks in some cases while CYF look for a more permanent home for them. The result is that we end up with children of all ages staying with us for anywhere from just a couple of hours overnight to a couple of weeks or even a couple of months.

So, for all you parents out there, and anyone else who would like to comment I would like to get an idea of some games that would be suitable for children. I’m not looking for someone to just give me a list, I could get that from Google or by looking at the rating of the games and playing them myself. What i want is to get a discussion going on what some of your experiences are with some of the more popular games. Obviously, anything like the Grand Theft Auto series is completely out of the question, as is anything that is only played online. To get things started, I’m going to ask about the Portal series and The Sims games. What do you think? How much supervision needs to be provided for certain games. If you have your own blog, please feel free to do a post of your own and make sure to link to it in the comments! If you don;t have your own blog please feel free ot let me know how you feel in the comments.

I could also use some recommendations for some good education games, if such a thing exists!

Hello capsuleers,

The main feature work for Team Super Friends for Inferno is redesigning the War Declaration system (you know, Inferno being war themed and all). We’ve already made great progress (which I will outline below), but as Inferno is slated for May, we still have a way to go. This means that there will be some speculations and ifs and buts in here, as it remains to be seen how far we can take this for now.

The first question we asked ourselves is why touch the war dec system at all? Isn’t it functioning fine? The answer to that is yes, and no. The system is not broken, it’s not useless (though underutilized) and it does what it’s supposed to do (allow people to fight legally in hi sec). But things were not absolutely peachy.

The most immediate issues were the ways in which players could shield themselves from the threat of war. This comes in two main forms – war shielding and war shedding. War shielding is having alt-corps declare war on you to make it extremely costly for other corporations to dec you. By manipulating the retract option and when the war dec bill is due, you could keep cost at minimum for yourself. War shedding is joining a phony alliance after being war decced and then leaving the alliance, leaving the wars behind. This makes you safe 50% of the time, meaning your hi sec POSs are completely immune.

Apart from fixing these, and some basic usability issues, we also took a long hard look at the underlying concept for the war dec system; asking ourselves such questions as: who is it for? Is it for large alliances wanting to extent their nullsec wars to empire space? Is it for hi sec entities for settling their differences? Is it to make it easier for people attacking other people that don’t want to fight? Should it be a career path for corporations or even alliances? All or none of the above?

Out of these speculations we came up with a few guidelines, which can be summarized as follows:

Tighten the war system, so it becomes clear how wars start, proceed and end.
Make war progression (i.e. how everyone’s faring) more visible, both for strategic and status reasons.
Make fighting wars a viable career path for dedicated mercenary corps.
So what are some of the changes you will see in Inferno? I will list a few of them, which should give a good indication of what to expect, but as always, with Inferno still almost two months away, things can change.

Change the war dec cost formula so that the cost is no longer increased by the number of wars target corp is in. Instead, the cost is modified by the number of players in target corp.
Have wars move with you when you enter/leave alliances. If you are engaged in a war that you declared, you cannot join an alliance until that war is finished.
CEO/Director can now war dec, no more voting.
Wars can no longer be automatically retracted. The surrender option is streamlined (no more meeting in same station) and can involve formal concession of ISK. It also means these entities cannot war dec each other for a time period.
Wars have a weekly cycle, at which time the aggressor can choose to prolong (at ISK cost) for another week or end the war. As long as the aggressor is willing to pay for another week, the war can go on for a long time.
Wars are tracked, with all losses shown in a War Report, viewable by all participants. This lists clearly all losses on both sides in the war. To get this to work properly, we’ve (with help from Game of Drones) added everything to the market and fixed a few items that didn’t have a price (like Titans), with the price being based on material ingredients. Here is a mockup of the war report. This is a work in progress.

We’ve also given kill mails a bit of a face lift while we were at it. Again, this is a work in progress.

All corporations will now have a war history, which shows the wars they’ve been in and how they fared (ISK loss on both sides). This might also be viewable on a character level (i.e. see the character’s war history).
A defender corp in a war can call an ally to their aid. The ally then joins the war on the side of the defender. To facilitate this we’ll add a ‘mercenary marketplace’ to the contract UI, where corps can find each other (defending corps can advertise they’re looking for an ally; mercenary corps can advertise their availability). Joining as an ally is a formal contract and can involve transfer of ISK. Once you’re an ally, you’re committed to the war until it ends.
It is our hope that the changes outlined here will serve to make wars a more engaging, fulfilling and fun experience for all. As always it is very difficult to create a system that supports legal PvP in a one-size-fits-all manner, as people have different playstyles, needs and expectations. With the changes currently in the pipeline we do realize that wars become a bit more hardcore and harder to avoid. But the line that is being drawn in the sand here is that if you’re in a player run corporation, then war is something you must be prepared to tackle. The ally system and the surrender with enforced peace do give options beside just duking it out (or docking for a week), but if you absolutely do not want to be war decced, then the only option right now is to be in a NPC corp. This is not an optimal solution and we might iterate here in the future, but this is the direction we’re taking right now.

Finally, here are a few Q & A from the Fanfest and CSM feedback that will hopefully clear some things up.

Q: A declares war on B. B enlists help of ally C. Can A now bring in D? Or is this option only limited to the defender? And if A brings in D, is D at war with A and C, or just C?
A: Only the defender can call an ally. There is no limitation to how many allies he can call. The ally counts as being at war with the aggressor corp.

Q: War dec cost, number of aggressor wars.
A: The number of wars the declaring corp has still modifies the cost.

Q: War dec cost, target corp member modifier?
A: The war dec cost formula will not take aggressor size into account and will not count trial account members in target corp. But the formula is constantly being revised, so nothing is set in stone.

Q: Mercs can’t escape war?
A: That’s true and the same goes for the aggressor – entering a war is now more of a commitment and not something you can hop in and out of at a whim’s notice.

Q: Can mercs be in more than one war?
A: Yes, as long as later employees are fine with hiring somebody spread thin (corp war history, which includes ongoing wars is pubic).

Q: Limit on number of wars?
A: No, apart from the increased cost of war deccing many.

Q: How long will wars last?
A: As long as the aggressor pays every week and no one surrenders (or no surrender offer is accepted), then a war can last forever.

Q: Wars last for max 2 weeks?
A: No. At the end of EACH week, the aggressor chooses.

Q: What about mutual wars?
A: We’re still debating what to do about mutual wars, so I didn’t include any info on that here.

Q: What about corp-hopping?
A: We’re adding tracking in the backend to track this. How we will then display it in game is undecided, but we do have stories in the backlog for the character war history to show if the character left a corp at war. We also want to have it cost a little to corp-hop during a war. We’re also looking into not allowing you to join a corp you’ve left during a war while that war is still ongoing. We’re also exploring some limitations to joining and leaving a corp on the fly.

Q: Corp at war joining an alliance
A: Only aggressor corp is banned from joining an alliance (this is so alliances can’t use a corp to dec an alliance and then join to get the whole alliance into the war, there are a few other edge cases). A decced corp can join an alliance and will transfer it’s wars to (and from when leaving ) the alliance.

Q: Neutral parties in a fight?
A: This is part of crime watch and not handled specifically by the war system. RRing someone in a legal war fight in hi sec adds a Suspect flag. This won’t solve RRing as such, so maybe something more needs to be done, but this is what we’re planning for Inferno.

Q: Easier to see war targets?
A: We’re not making any changes to this at this time.

“What the fuck Marrada?”
“Oh calm down. I did the training years ago, the Sisters paid for it, and the surgery. It was necessary for my job,” Marrada replied.
Skorp was circling her, examining the Neural Socket at the base of her skull.
“You could have told me. Shit, I could sponsored your Licence Application and helped speed things along.”
“Don’t worry about it Bro, the Sisters have more pull when it comes to getting Capsuleers licensed than you will ever have.

“You could have been Mindlocked!” Skorp exclaimed loudly.
“That’s bullshit and we both know it.” Marrada snapped back. “Two reasons why. First, genetics. Our family has always been regarded as genetically “better” than others, it’s why our parents moved from Saisio to Kisogo. They couldn’t become Capsuleer’s themselves for political and professional reasons, but genetically, they knew we could, and moved so we would have a chance.” Marrada sighed.
“They were thinking about us. You, me and even Karras. Even you were the only one that had been born. They wanted us to have the best possible future. I don’t remember much about them, but I do remember that they were always looking to the future, everything they did, they did for us. They knew that it was only a matter of time before a solution was found that made being a Capsuleer less of a death sentence. And look what happened in YC 105.”

“Fine.” Skorp was starting to sulk now. “What’s the second reason?”
“I’m a stubborn little bitch.” Marrada laughed. “I’m very strong-willed and determined. We both know I don’t like it when I don’t get my own way.”
“It runs in the family.” Skorp replied. “Well, what’s done is done. Only thing left to do now Marrada is get you into the Corp. If you put an app into Legion of Darkwind I can get everything squared away and approve it for you. I hope you realise what you are getting yourself into.”
“Hey speaking of Karras, have you heard anything from him lately?” Marrada asked.
“Nope, but from what I understand, he’s having a blast hanging out with Mordu’s Legion, I hear he even got to meet the crazy old fool Mordu himself. And he’s supposedly going to be taking part in some new training program Mordu is putting together called ‘Mordu’s Private Trials’. Should be interesting.”

//

So for those who don’t already know, I know have a second account! \0/ I had a lot of fun the first week I had it, as i didn’t tell my corp, and “recruited” my newly created alt as if they were a different person. I would love ot have seen the looks on their faces when they found out! It will teach them not to read my blog, as my new alt is named Marrada Hearn, regular readers will notice that is the name of my mains sister. Which just made it funnier that no one in my corp had a clue! Most of this blog post was written during an ice mining op, which is always boring as shit. Hi Q!

I will TRY to write a special fiction post for Fanfest this weekend, maybe even a couple. Sadly I’m not going, but I do have the HD stream booked! My Quafe shirt looks great! So they will be from the perspective of someone sitting in their Captains Quarters watching from the other side of the Galaxy.

“Docking request accepted.” Aura’s voice announced as the automated docking process began. “Finally, I’ll be glad when this shit is over and I’m back in civilized space.” Skorp thought to himself as he relaxed. After being extracted from his pod he showered and got dressed before heading to the stations main concourse level. It took him over an hour of searching before he finally found the office he was looking for. He knocked on the door before entering.

“Who the fuck are you?” A voice called out from somewhere near the center of the darkly lit room.
“Don’t you recognize me? You tried to have me killed!” Skorp screamed back. “By my own brother no less. I’ll fucking kill you!”
“Fat chance of that happening. And even if you did manage it, you wouldn’t make it off this station before being arrested.”
“Ha! We’re in the middle of 0.0! There aren’t any police around here, only station security. I’d be on the pod express back to empire by morning.”

“Well, I see you have done your research, most people who come here don’t. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is The River, but most people just call me River.” The River extended her hand as the lights slowly brightened, which Skorp reluctantly shook. The River was a tall Gallentean woman of Intaki decent, with straight shoulder length blonde hair.
“Now, why don’t you tell me why you tried to have me killed?” Skorp demanded.
“Aw, how cute, you think you’re in a position to be making demands,” River replied patronizingly.
“You fucking patronizing bitch! If you don’t tell me what I want to know, i will kill everyone on this fucking station and tear it apart from the inside!” Skorp yelled angrily.

“Whoa, calm down there tiger, I’ll tell you want you want to know, but I want to have a little fun first.”
“What kind of fun?” Skorp asked suspiciously.
“The kind of fun that results in getting tested afterwards, and walking bow-legged for a couple of hours.”
“Well then, what are we waiting for!” Skorp stated matter-of-factly as the two started to remove their clothes.

Several hours later they emerged from a side room, slowly putting their clothes back on..
“So, now that we’ve had some fun, why don’t you tell me what the fuck your problem with me is,” Skorp asked
“My parents were killed when you rammed the station during your graduation.” River said quietly.
“Ever since then, I’ve been following you, waiting to get revenge. I thought i had the perfect plan, and it seemed ot go off without a hitch. But then the Sisters showed up and you recovered, you had severe memory loss from the incident, but you were still alive.”
“I was fucking brainwashed! There’s no way I would have done that on my own free will! I had friends and colleagues on that station too!” Skorp replied.
“I know! I can see that now, but I was just so pissed off, and it wasn’t until recently that I found that out, not until you published that first transcript did I realise my mistake!” River was starting ot break down in tears. “The only reason you found me was because i let you find me, so I could apologies and make it up to you!”
“No offence, the sex was great and all, but there is no fucking way that it even remotely makes up for what I’ve been through!” Skorp snapped back angrily.
“I know, that’s why I’m going to help you get your memory back. I have everything needed to restore it here.”
“Seriously? Fucking sweet! Let’s do this, then we can get back to having sex!”

Several days later, Skorp made the trip back to empire space with a smile and a passenger on board.
“Its good to be back,” he said to himself, smiling as he was able to remember his childhood once more.

My vote will go to Mike Azariah. He is the candidate that I most identify with. Care-bearing, High Sec dwelling, casual. But not afraid to venture into Low Sec either. We are both bloggers (though recently it’s been debatable if I could call myself a blogger, with my lack of posts) and we both love to Role Play. I have no idea if he reads my blog, but I definitely read his. ]]> http://www.skorpiuschronicles.com/?feed=rss2&p=558 0 http://www.skorpiuschronicles.com/?p=548 http://www.skorpiuschronicles.com/?p=548#comments Thu, 09 Feb 2012 19:52:47 +0000 Darth Skorpius http://www.skorpiuschronicles.com/?p=548 Continue reading →]]> The blog has been very quiet lately. I have no insight into my life, which is pretty boring, as a reason. I just haven’t felt like writing, in addition to having a busy weekend last week with the Superstock Teams Champs having been run here in Palmerston North (look it up on Youtube to find out why its awesome, then start booking flights for next year!) I am slowly crafting the next Friday Fiction post, but it probably won’t be ready for this week. Instead this weeks Fiction Friday will consist of me updating the Fiction page, and I might spotlight and comment on some other fiction that I’m quite liking.

In non Eve related news, I’m currently planning out my first Mod for Skyrim. It is my first attempt at making a mod in any game and I am in way over my head. I have a publicly view-able Google Doc that has all the details. You can find it here. If you want to help out, flick me a mention or dm on twitter, or leave a comment here. I could use some quest writing help and will need some help testing it. I still need to actually learn how to use the Creation Kit but that shouldn’t be too hard, I’m a quick learner when it comes to software. I hope to be able to use this mod as a way of getting into video game development, so I’m hoping I can make something that is top notch.

That’s it for today, just a quick update and letting everyone know I’m still here. I should have another post or two out over the weekend, but that will depend on how much of my time the Creation Kit eats!