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:

CCP has a great idea on working with the player base to help shape the world of New Eden. Every six months, a vote takes place to elect members to the CSM (Council of Stellar Management). This is the second time I’m voting and after reading the past council notes, I’ve decided to vote for Omber Zombie.

Articulated Sky has also kindly created a banner to create awareness of the process.Take a look and use it in your blog post to spread the word. Power to the players!

You may also want to view candidate interviews done by Hallan Turrek.

I've Voted. Have you?

During my stay in 0.0 with Sylph Alliance, I quickly realized the benefits of production and trading to support getting ships blown up in fleets. Starting from basic ammo and modules trading and slowly moving toward production when Production Efficiency V was trained, this helped to provide a steady income.

However in 0.0, you’ll quickly realize that most people there fly Tech 2 (T2) ships with T2 fittings. I looked towards skilling up into that area and got most of the science skills trained up to 3 or 4 to help increase the chances of invention success.

Key skills
PE V (Perfect manufacturing)
Science V (Copy time)
Engineering V
Mechanic V
Electronics V
Electronic Upgrades V
Race Encryption IV to V
Related Science Skill III to IV

Useful Skills
Metallurgy V (ME research)
Trade Skills
Industrial/ Freighter Skills

With some help from corp mates, we managed to get a nice process going with everyone pitching in to help out in the process outlined in the following diagram.

Now that I’m back in Empire, I’ve taken a look around the regions where I operate and quickly set out to get back into T2 production. This consists of six to eight T2 modules so on average it requires approximately 300-350mil ISK capital to get things going. From there, the process of copying blueprints, purchasing materials and production begins.

My last batch of eight types of modules had an invention success rate of 54% for a total of 540 modules. After manufacturing all of them, I passed them to my contact at a mission hub and thus began the sales process. Latest reports show that the investment has been recovered with profits of approximately 102.5%. Not too bad for some time and effort spent working the science and industry slots.

Combined with working for Duvolle Labs agents for datacores, this should provide a nice steady income stream. Next is to keep working on Gallente Federation standings so that a research POS can be anchored and this should alleviate the bottleneck with long wait times for Empire copy slots.

From Mica’s Diary

After an accident in J104537 where I lost my helios due to the bad warp in and clashing into some huge veldspar rocks, CONCORD apparently has managed to find the wreck! Those guys are amazing!

2009.04.03 19:54
Dear Mica Breeze,
A salvage operation recently recovered your "Helios" class ship from a debris field in "J104537".
You should be able to retrieve your ship at "Daedalus Forge".
The salvage team could not find any items that were ejected from your ship prior to its apparent destruction so if you were not able to retrieve the cargo canisters there is sadly nothing we can do.
Law requires us to notify your friendly insurance company and they have deducted any financial payout from your account.
Sincerely, 
Your friendly neighbourhood CONCORD police squad.

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!

Since we recently started a T2 product line, I thought it might be useful to collate all the products/services our corporation is providing. Thus shop.tgind.net is born. In-game friendly in its current state, I hope to add in a customer order system and work order program for our capital production line instead of relying on our internal wiki.

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

A series of recruitment advertisement for TGIND (Explore)

Sensing the need for some publicity, I started designing a series of advertisements to highlight our Capital Production capability.

A series of capital advertisements for TGIND

Wow, got to see a Rorqaul up close in the alliance ice mining operation. There was also mackinaws aplenty while I had to content with mining in a retriever and being relegated to hauling duty for awhile since the retriever’s output couldn’t’ match up the the mackinaw.

Dark Glitter is apparently the most profitable ice for us to mine and also helps with supplying Liquid Ozone and Heavy Water for POS fuel. With exhumers training finally coming to an end, I hope to be able to contribute more in such ops in the future.

Finally! We have moved towards an achievable goal of producing capital ships for the Alliance. Our very first investments get us enough capital to invest in some Capital Ship Component BPOs.

Revelation produced by TGIND, it was a proud moment to know it would later go on to take down a few RED POS.