Welcome to the eighth installment of the 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 topic comes to us from Ga’len at The Wandering Druid of Tranquility. He asks: “What new game mechanic or mechanics would you like to see created and brought into the EVE Online universe and how would this be incorporated into the current game universe? Be specific and give details, this is not meant to be a ‘nerf this, boost my game play’ post like we see on the EVE forums.”

Ship Boarding!

Part of the unique ability in the X-Universe series of games from EgoSoft was the ability for the player to script almost every action in the game. Some truly ingenious scripts were released like Carrier Commands, MARS fire control and ship boarding using marines. Now if we could use the NPC passengers in EVE Online for this purpose, it would make ship capturing a possibility instead of destroying a ship every time and looting it (such a waste of good resources).

The conditions for this to work is that Marines or Mercenaries need to be in your cargo hold for this to work and the target ship can also stock similar personnel to defend his ship. Obviously new skills and support skills needs to be trained like “Boarding Crews” etc and passenger transportation would actually be useful (Personally I have exotic dancers and spiced wine on board my ships).

Sample logs as you activate a module that sends a raiding party onto target’s ship when their shields fail (it would be great if we had an Ion cannon weapon which only affected shields?):

Marine Leader : “Approaching airlock… activating cutting lasers … we have a good seal.. get ready men!”

Loud bangs and Fighting ensues and after some time, the experience of the crew and the defense crew determines if the target capsuleer should be expelled from the ship and sent home.

A quick search for “Salvage Tug” on the Features and Ideas Discussion shows a lot of people wish there was a new class of ship to enhance gameplay. With ship boarding, it’s conceivable that boarded ships are then towed away to a station for re-use or profit.

Of course, the exotic dancers on board should be claimed

Other Banters:

Patch notes for Apocrypha 1.2.3, released 26 May 2009

FIXES

Critical

• Jumping through a gate will no longer cause the client to lock up.

After numerous complains, the engineers have finally figured out a fix to the issues when ships use the jump gates. This has caused many delays to travel. I’ve personally not experienced the lockups but an associate who helps me with large volume couriers had to wait a few agonizing minutes while his systems came back online after a nasty lockup. However it seems they won’t be able to fix this before next week so this might have an effect on the practical portion of the PVP Basic class.

From Mica’s Diary

With the wormhole having collapsed, I now had no way back to the home systems in Catch. This added pressure now renewed my resolve to find a exit and I continuing scanning fervently. However, with the Class 5 system spanning beyond 32AU, my core scanner probes could not cover the entire system making it very tiresome to track down each signal. The mess of gravimetric signals meant I had scanned down almost every gravimetric site but a wormhole exit!

Finally, a difficult signal presented itself and I thought this might be it. When I exited warp, I couldn’t believe my eyes! An entire of high end ores including Mercoxit!

The sheer amount of high-end asteroids in this belt was a sight to behold and I quickly took time to observe them. They certainly looked different since I last saw them. The mercoxit with its fiery crystals would have surely made Jar go wild with his Hulk!

As I finished surveying the belt, I found yet another signal this time a cosmic anomaly “Core Garison”. This looked to be more heavily guarded than my previous encounter and I chose to keep my distance and concentrate on the task at hand.

Finally! After spending countless hours tracking down each signal, I had found 2 wormhole exits successfully. One lead to another Class 5 system (J100415) without any spatial effects while another Class 3 (J113143) beckoned. The thought of being stuck for much longer did not appeal to me as I had no ships to take advantage of the bounties before me. I quickly prepared the ship and took a last look at the system map:

2 x Core Stronghold (Anomaly)
1 x Core Garison (Anomaly)
1 x Minor Perimeter Reservoir (Ladar)
2 x Average Frontier Deposit (Grav) 
2 x Common Perimeter Deposit (Grav)
2 x Ordinary Perimeter Deposit (Grav)
2 x Unexceptional Frontier Deposit (Grav)
2 x Rarified Core Deposit (Grav)
2 x Wormhole (Class 5 and Class 3)

This would have been an interesting place to create a tiny foothold but without the right equipment, every delay meant I would run out of supplies. As I made the jump into the wormhole leading to another unknown space, I hoped that there would be a safe way for me to get home.

From Mica’s Diary:

I had managed to get a good rest after a furious bit of scanning that had me uncovering a Ladar site (no Fullerite C540 though, more of the C70/C72 variant) and 2 Sleeper cruisers. I had wisely avoided getting close and had powered the ship down a few hours ago at a safe spot.

There’s a lot of signals in here and it gets frustrating having to re-scan each one down only to find that its a Gravimetric signal. The asteroid belts here aren’t fantastic and Jar would surely complain about the lack of high-end ores.

I do find a “Average Frontier Deposit” that has an interesting gad cloud swirling in the midst of the rocks. Without better science equipment, I dare not venture closer and enjoy the sight from afar. As of my current scans, I have found:

2 x Core Stronghold (Anomaly)
1 x Minor Perimeter Reservoir (Ladar)
2 x Average Frontier Deposit (Grav)
1 x Common Perimeter Deposit (Grav)
2 x Ordinary Perimeter Deposit (Grav)
2 x Unexceptional Frontier Deposit (Grav)

I’m beginning to wonder if there is anything else to be found! I decide to do a quick check on the wormhole exit and when I exit warp… I’m dumbfounded by the emptiness where the wormhole is supposed to be! I had known that wormholes were unstable and had prepared for the outcome but knowing I was “stuck” didn’t made it feel any better.

I now have a new goal.. to find a way out of this without landing myself in serious trouble when supplies ran out. Jar’s gonna have a good laugh when he finds out what has happened!

From Mica’s Diary:

Knowing from past experience, I quickly noted the wormhole location back to known space and proceeded to make safe spots so that I could get to work. Decided not to risk broadcasting my arrival but it seems my worries are unfounded as nothing is on scan.

The system locus signature reads as “J104537” which apparently is known for its black hole! Its a Class 5 system which is somewhat dangerous to be in and has the following effects :

Anomaly: Black Hole
Class: 5
Attributes:
Locking Range: -41%
Turret Fallof: -41%
Missile Velocity: -41%
Drone Control Range: -41%
Ship Velocity: +85%
Agility: +85%

My fast Helios is now zipping about at 800+ meters/second! After my safe spots are made, I decide to start probing out the system and see what treasures will unfold. The first two hits are easy enough with them being cosmic anomalies. Apparently they are “Core Strongholds”. Menacing sentry towers and Sleeper frigates roam the complex. I’m glad I have my covert ops cloak to keep me safe!

Half-way through the scans, I receive a communication from a corp mate. Apparently they were in the same system! I quickly told them about the Core Strongholds and they decided to make an attempt on it. I offered to get them a good warp in so that they could use their weapons at optimal ranges. My first mistake quickly came about as I had forgotten about a new “feature” the ship techs had recently implemented.

Warping to an encounter site at range will now work the first time you warp there. Previously your ship would land at 0km from the beacon no matter what range was set for the ‘warp to’ command.

I had set the ship to warp at range but as I exited warp, I stared in dismay at the wall of a Huge Veldspar rock that caused my cloak to fail. The sleepers were fast to react, with all 4 frigates quickly warp scrambling my engines and using stasis webifiers to slow me down. I furiously attempted to burn my way out of range but with sentry tower fire blazing on my shields, I could do little but save my pod.

My corp mates in a Dominix and Tempest decided to try their luck but unfortunately with no light guns to take care of the frigates, their drones quickly got chewed up and only luckily managed to escape to fight another day. I decided to reship and get back to what I had come for. To find out how long it would take to map a unknown system.

Got back from Empire after talking to my Fed Navy agent. Seems there’s yet another war on the alliance which requires all pilots to get back to 0.0.

Corp mate got me and some pilots into a “Sansha War Supply 6/10” complex but due to the mysterious disconnect that inflicts us once a day, we did not manage to clear those Sansha from our skies.

When we got back later, Sansha had yet another war supply complex, we decided to mount an offensive and quickly took them out with 3 RR Dominix and 1 Rokh. The 15th tier overseer kindly dropped us a Centum A-Type Medium Armor Repairer and Centum A-Type Energized Reactive Membrane which hopefully will help me purchase more ships for fleets.

It was later that day when I decided to do some quick scanning that I came across the mysterious wormholes that has spread like wildfire since the Seyllin incident. This would not be something new to me having already joined Jar to protect him from Sleepers while he harvested Fullerites from a Ladar site a corp mate had found some time back. However, I’ve not had opportunity to find out first hand how it would be like mapping out an entire unknown system. The system scanners classified the wormhole as “K162”. I quickly pulled up the info :

Wormhole: K162
This wormhole type is always the destination of another wormhole type.

With my trusty covert ops Helios, I quickly sent a message to Jar letting him know of my intentions. He was busy with Tech 2 production jobs and just said “Don’t get lost! Fly safe and find me some Fullerite C540!”. Checking through all systems to make sure I had probes and enough supplies, I made the jump and prepared myself for the unknown.

Local spatial phenomenon may cause strange effects on your ship

With the new Apocrypha expansion, a new explore series was created to complement the previous sets.

A series of recruitment advertisement for TGIND (Explore)